Beyond all reasons

It was a bright sunny day. She turned on her bed and looked around sleepily. After a few minutes of identity crisis, she realised who she was, where she was and then remembered that she had the whole day to herself, after a long time. There was no alarm, there was no running to work, there was no schedule to follow. It was a break. She had works pending or things that she might do beforehand, but she chose otherwise. It'd been a long time since she had last felt free. She got up with a lot of fresh air  inside. By the time she was done with her morning chores, the electricity took a leave. "This is the third time in this week", she muttered and sat down in despair. Now she was stuck. "I am not going to let my peace fade with this shit". She decided to get out and go wherever she felt like. It was better to be scorched by heat outside than to die of suffocation in the room. She went out.

She was happy. She was having a free flow of thoughts. There was no perceivable preoccupation. And all of this was after a long time. She was feeling something else. She couldn't understand what it was, but it was something new in ages. She was walking down the streets and was beaming with delight. Sitting quietly in the cafe didn't annoy her. She was calmly sipping her coffee with eyes closed. There was something that filled her. Delight? Maybe. Peace? Maybe. Lack of craving? Maybe. She realised that she was feeling complete. What was lacking before and what was complete now were things she couldn't figure out. Not that she tried too much to figure them out. She could just sit for hours and keep her eyes closed without having an urge for anything. She was no more engaged in any conversation with herself. It was not an absolute blankness though. There was something, a something which she couldn't further elaborate.
When she was back on the road, the sun couldn't bother her. She was engrossed in seeing the road covered on both sides by trees with leaves tinged golden green by the sun, the red buildings behind the trees, the occasional passing of two or three cars, the group of people sitting in a shadow behind their auto-rickshaws and wiping down the sweats with their shirts, the shopkeeper's wife falling out with her husband, the overall empty and peaceful surroundings. The art exhibition had never been something she was any expert at or had the minimum of knowledge about, but she felt she could understand a bit of some paintings and sketches at least. She was trying to look at every detail of the picture to bridge between the ideas she was forming from it. She was oblivious to the presence or absence of anyone else in the gallery. She didn't get afraid of being judged. She could be unintellectual unlike anyone there, but she was totally comfortable with it. She had no hurry. She took as much time as she wanted in front of every picture. She took snaps of one or two that made some impact on her. Out of the gallery, she roamed around the whole building. Her orthopedically unstable sole did not betray. It never retaliated. She could form some ideas to initiate her next piece of writing. She hummed. And she felt that the songs going on inside her were in sync, with what she didn't know.
The dream was put to a halt by a call. But it was unable to counteract her "something". She got into the cab. She didn't need to put the earphones on, because she had no paucity of music inside. Looking through the glass at the sky she suddenly got hold of her "something". It suddenly opened itself up in front of her. The synchrony, the completeness, the peace, the inexpressible thing filling up her void were nothing but the one thing she had always been scared of. It was a different engagement within herself. There was no waiting for a message to arrive or the phone to ring. The absence made it omnipresent. She sighed. She had been through this once before. And she knew what it might lead to. But she knew even better that there was no going back now. The heaviness she'd been carrying inside her for how long she didn't know settled everything else down. It felt like something was choking her. It wanted to come out. It might rain inside any moment. She closed her eyes again. Two small drops flowed down her cheeks.

Preface to Sleep...

S: "And it's another night. I don't know why I long for them throughout the day. Once I'm out, I try to return. When I return, I try to find things to justify my being here. I'm tired. This goes on for the whole day and I badly wait for the time when I'd switch off the lights glaring into my eyes and go to sleep. The time has come, like every other day. And like every other day, I'm putting up a lot of effort to sleep. I am lying down calmly. My eyes are closed. But I can't sleep. Nothing has gone wrong. And a lot of things have gone wrong. I'm not sure I can actually analyse what is going on in my mind. I've selectively done away with the analysing work long ago. No analysis means no stress. Or is it not so? No analysis may also mean escaping from the reality. I do that occasionally, but I hate that. Sometimes it occurs to me that I am clueless about most of the things in my life. The more I think about it, the more clueless I become. What exactly am I thinking about? I must put an end to this night-time rumination." She shifted a bit to make more space for her partner lying beside her. She knew that her partner was awake, staring at her. She could feel the stare and shrank a bit. "Why does this person have to do this all the time? I know I've been living with her, but she is not supposed to screen every movement, every gesticulation of mine. She knows I'm not sleeping. But she should sleep. Why doesn't she understand that her sleeping off is important? I want to lie down comfortably. No, I won't open my eyes and let that stare penetrate me."
R: "She is not sleeping. She's been on bed for a long time. But her eye-balls are moving under her tightly closed lids. She goes through it everyday. I know what she's been thinking about. Lack of analysis is not the problem with her. She over-analyses. She thinks about the wrong things and makes the wrong judgements. But she's incorrigible. I stare at her all throughout to communicate that she's going to a wrong track. She never listens. A stubborn idiot she is. She is not having a particularly good time. But there are things which are good. She never realises that. She prioritizes the stupidest things and keeps on sticking to why-s, how-s, what-s related to them. I can never make her realise that I'm with her, no matter what. But my presence is just a habit that she's grown. She doesn't believe in me. Now that she's not opening her eyes is because she knows I'm awake and seeing her. She doesn't like my telling her what exactly should be done. She avoids me because I can see through her mind. She has become grossly avoidant. And I can't do anything about it no matter how hard I try. Like all other nights, she'd think about all things in a jumbled up fashion, get clueless, and force-stop her thinking. When nothing would help, she would get up, take one tablet and then would fantasize about things she wanted and things she could have done. She would imagine conversations, finish them in the way she wants. Eventually she would sleep. I can't stop her from travelling to this fool's heaven. Once I could. Now I can't. I just can't. I'll try to talk to her in the morning, though I'm not very hopeful that she would entertain. But I can't leave things as they are. I must try tomorrow again."
S: "She's still staring. I know it. I know what she means. She's trying to win over me. I can't have this any more. I need to sleep." She got up, went to the table, took out a tablet from the strip. She hesitated a minute before putting it in the mouth, then swallowed it and came back to bed. "Now I'm going to sleep in half an hour. And I can daydream. Yes, I'm free to daydream. And I would. She can't stop me. I know she's going to communicate tomorrow morning just after I wake up. But tomorrow is too far. I shouldn't waste this moment for her. I've stolen this moment from her, though not unrevealed. But this is mine. At this time, I'm the king of my world. I create it, I design it, I frame it, I rule it. I'd never let her enter here. Moreover, I have learned strategies to avoid her. I'd not let her babble tomorrow, the day after and the day after and so on."

After all, they've been living together for twenty-six years, in the same shell.

Taking myself off...

It was slowly moving. Bright sunlight, so bright as to scorch my skin, was flooding through the small window. I was on the brighter side of the runway. I shut the window shield to avoid exposure, to sunlight, to outside. Even a minute didn't pass when I opened it again. I didn't wish to look out, but I didn't wish the cold darkness to shiver my arms either. And I felt better. Cut-off from anything I know I'll pass through in a few minutes is not acceptable for me. I looked out, with my head held tightly against the seat to delay the photophobic headache I knew I'm going to have. I saw nothing significant. I observed nothing to remember. I was not feeling anything, no dismay, no irritation, no joy and nothing. I was waiting for the plane to take off so that I'd get a cup of coffee. I shifted my laptop bag to the seat beside me which was unoccupied (luckily enough). My feet were paining with the strain they underwent while walking from the gate upto there. I took my feet carefully out of the sandals and sat in the most unsophisticated manner I can imagine of. By this time, the plane gained speed. The faster it ran, the preoccupation with coffee faded and I was suddenly excited. I kept looking through the window. It was as if I'd been injected with a good dose of adrenaline and I was, out of the blue, all set to fly. The worries took a break and I started fantasising... Fantasies of all kinds, real or unreal, filled me in. The moment the wheels left the ground, I was also leaving the earthly realities and going to my own world, the world I'd made long ago, for myself, with my closest people in, talking and doing things that made me happy. My parents and I were talking about the last books we read with the points we liked and we didn't, about the movie we were definitely going to watch together, about the diary where we would write reviews separately and then read them together, about certain people who wanted our life to be a mess, but we never said anything to them and just acted, about the house we'd live in when I'd start working, about my father's practice which he should slowly close down to be able to live with me wherever I stay, about the recipe blog my mother should maintain to let the exquisite recipes she knew be carried forward... My cousins and I were gathering together and were laughing and smiling about everything, we were playing our games as we did when J was alive; D2, D3 and I were asking D1 to go the mothers and talk about household things; D2 was composing a song and we both were singing; D3 was talking to us about photography using jargons and we were threatening him to use our own jargons if he didn't stop... T was looking at the mirror and playing snow-white, with me sitting beside, amused. T and I were lying down side by side and talking all night (that is half of a night for her after which she slept off, leaving me to count sheep and cattle for the rest of it)... Awe was coming with a smile and we were walking, talking about everything, with me hiding my excitement and smiling and grinning and chuckling and giggling and laughing... There was no anger, no pain, no illness; everything was perfect. Everything was as clear and beautiful as the shredded blue and white cloud outside my window. Then there was a sound from somewhere. I was slowly coming back. When I was able to perceive the sound fully I realised that it was an announcement of on-board sale. I didn't notice that my cheeks were wet. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, reopened my eyes and reached for my bag to take out the handkerchief. After dabbing it on my face, I looked out. The cloud was still there. However, it seemed somewhat darker, the blue was not so blue after all, it might have been partially muddy as well which I didn't notice before. We were most probably going through the lower level of stratosphere or the upper level of troposphere. The sky is usually clear there due to change in altitude (has nothing to do with any romance of course). The sun was not scorching any more. Estimating the time, I was just fifteen minutes past my take-off, and so would be flying for about another one hour and forty five minutes. I turned my gaze from the window to the opposite side and ordered for one cup of coffee.

Inside out

There's something about the atmosphere I'm in. It's cold, silent, with a long-known smell all around it.  There are busy people turning up again and again with some important work. There is half-hourly visit of people who are trained to smile under all circumstances (do they compensate for this when they go home or have they grown a habit of smiling even amidst all adversities?), with eyes fixed on the bed in front and the infusion bottles above, vocal cords maintaining a monotone, mouths uttering words they know we know. There's a person lying down in front of me, eyes closed, occasionally frowning in pain, snoring sometimes and sometimes waking up, looking all but helpless.
There has been another closed environment I've been in, a month back. It was cold, silent, with the smell of artificial flowers in it, with busy people turning up and asking about convenience and inconvenience with that trained smile of assurance. The visit was very occasional, on asking maybe, or sometimes once a day as a routine. This same person was there, talking to me, listening to my babbling, smiling at everything I said, hiding all symptoms of his distress, and assuring more than anyone as always.
For years, I've been with this person who believed and hoped that I will grow up some day and be sober, all the while making me cope with every environmental change. I would mess up, and he would warn. I would further mess up, and he would scold. I would be on the edge, and he would manage things to help me survive. I have never seen such a person again, who would have so much of patience in dealing with anything in life (I'm one of the biggest troubles). Now I'm looking at him, lying down, in front of me.
People are coming in the afternoon, three, four, five, six... all saying the same thing and doing the same. Concerns are overpowered by sympathy, without the person really needing them. They will come, talk and go, making way for another group to come and do the same, making me sit or stand at a corner shrinking. I don't want to run away from this place, because I have the longest lasting companion of mine to take care of. Yet I want to vanish in the air, so that nobody including myself can see me. I have always been on a losing side... loss of all I had, all I wanted to hold on to. There is a loneliness everywhere. I remember all the nightmares I've been having since 15-20 days. I know I cannot stay back to see him recover, walk merrily and hug me saying "everything is going to be fine, I'm there. Even if it concerns me, I'm there". Yes I still believe in cure as more than '5 year-survival'. When he moves his legs and frowns with the twitching of the abdominal stitch, when he asks me to hand him over some water, when he closes his eyes to cover up every distress and pain he has, I want to stretch my hands and say "everything is going to be fine, I'm there". But I'm not there. I won't be. I can't be. I'd go back to the exile, making four times daily calls to ask about his health (my mother would clear up her throat every moment, I would be silent and then recompose myself and talk, and the hero would say "huh, I'm fine"). Enough for someone to do, isn't it? After the calls would be over, I would sit in the balcony and look at the sky clouded by light, tears dropping down, all restlessness smoked out for that moment, with complete avolition, and forced closure of thinking capabilities(though not being angry with anything because I've learned its futility the harder way). I'd go on believing life is fair and everything is going to be good, and will again be hit by another truth of a different kind. There's no end. And I'll remember how I sat with my back against the wall, looking at my best friend, my father, with the hope that he would look at me with the smirk in his eyes and say, "dhur boka, swopno dekhe eto bhoy pele chole?"

Welcoming

Sitting at the centre of the capital, I'm trying to get used to a lot of things. Even an exile requires a lot of initial efforts to settle down. An elaborate description will require a lot of patience, so I'm keeping it simple and to the point. Settling down means getting used to things that are new or apparently new. For people as lethargic as I am, any new thing is like a headache. Travelling for 12 hours thinking about what I'm going to do in the next 3 years or for the next 3 years marked the initiation. Adjustment (can't call it a disorder till now) started from the moment I boarded the train. End of the journey brought a new stack of procedures. Last two weeks have been another journey, - from college formalities to searching for a paying guest, from buying daily goods to filling water in the cooler, from listening to the babbling of the landlady to probing for hostel allotment, from finding route charts to avoid being deceived to fight for a proper allotment, from installing an air conditioner to arranging and organising things in the newly given room, from sticking yellow paper on the window glasses(to ward off eyes of the sun and human) to calling up sweepers to clean up our mess, from standing at the balcony looking at the courtyard below to suddenly realising that this is not where I belong to while talking over phone, from maintaining a more or less tolerant and cool attitude towards things I came across to suddenly getting irritated with everything even without provocation, from holding up my fear and believing that nothing would go wrong to ending up bothering everyone with my insensible preoccupations, from waiting to return to the room all throughout the day to staring blankly after the duty is over thinking about what I'm supposed to do once I get back here, from deciding to study hard during the rounds to opening the book and reading nothing, from being a cheerfully ageing girl to becoming an anxious, afraid and shrinking personality - the journey has been fascinating indeed. And it hasn't ended yet. A lot is yet to come.

Going away closer

Diary of an inconsistent blogger - this should've been the name of my blog. But for me the most important factor for maintaining consistency will be peace. And here I am, going through an ever-increasing unrest, waiting for its disappearance. Three months of no work, almost no thought to no work, appearing and disappearing thoughts, to no work, persistent thoughts, to no work, increasing thoughts, to no work, entangling thoughts, to no work ,and complete clouding of mind - have rendered me incapable of writing or even thinking straight.
I've spent three months dreaming to be somewhere, and have ended up being somewhere else. I have never lived in Kolkata. For the next three years I won't be living here, too. But then, thinking and re-thinking about all the points I've considered to let myself go with the flow. Not going creates a risk of losing, but going never does. I know it, and I've known it for a long time. Then what is stopping me? Myself, indeed. A place is a place, and it hardly matters how wonderful it is if there is no string attached to it. With the best metros, widest roads, shiniest shopping malls it cannot appeal to me like a dirty humid city with less sophisticated amenities does, because the latter has everything I live on (including the materialistic things). There have been innumerable suggestions on why and how city 1 is the best for me (including suggestions of finding a good city 1 guy; I mean, do they understand that I wouldn't care less?), and I listened to all of them, with my unrest unchanged and lack of interest intact. But then I couldn't do what I wanted. I have no one to blame but myself, for the lack of courage to stay at a less reputed college leaving a higher ranking one. All throughout this process there was no calling back and I decided not to stay (none comes as a consequence of the other, both are simultaneous). There is no point in sitting and hoping for others to help you decide (People do that just to project the whole thing on others if anything goes wrong). I simply kept my options open to accommodate any sudden change. And I had to do nothing. Quite peaceful, eh? So here I am, getting ready for another voyage.
P says I'll be fine. She'll be there. A, B, C, D all say I'll be fine, they'll be there. And I believe I'll be there, if not fine. Lots of things have been left for time to grow or sustain or abolish (in the worst scenario) them. I'm just sleeping, and waking up. Ma is doing the packing. I'm thinking, well actually, not thinking. Baba is arranging the other things. I'm not thinking. I have been looking forward to too many things in the past months. Even last Friday, I was looking forward for the Saturday. On Saturday, I was looking forward for Tuesday. And in the next 12 hours, I won't have anything to look forward to for some months at least. Fine. My friends will be here living, working, laughing, smiling, catching up, and I'll get into it through Whatsapp. Fine. All trip plans will be postponed for three years. Fine. Everyone will go on with his or her own life, and I'll just get an update (bad or good). Fine. People promised to come to visit me, and that may prove to be classical promises (may not also). Fine. I might be replaced (no self-importance, only I know what I mean). Fine. In a nutshell, too many fine things will happen. And I'm not used to such a fine life. That's what is stopping me.
Anyway, beyond mockery and helplessness, there lies hope. Things may not be as I'm seeing them. I wish they are not. Dayanita Singh's book has helped me choose this title. (Well I copy-pasted). Every page of this book contains two opposite images-Images that mean two perfectly opposite things. That is why the name is so contradictory. Exact opposites lie together, embedded in each other most of the time. That's the whole point of my hope. Maybe going away will take me closer.

My gene's faces..

Similarity runs in genes. Let me start it with the story told by Awe. He was telling me about conferences, department, colleagues like A, B, C, D and of course K, who chased him to make him run across Dharmatala streets at 7 or 8 in the evening (the actual culprit behind this rage being Awe himself), who sometimes nailed people in the department (due to abundance of pins from the tickets), who hung her bag from her left shoulder across her waist and adjusted the strap like dragging out a sword from the scabbard and then re-inserting it, and who had many more of such well-expressed habits. Anyway, one day Awe was travelling from his hometown to his workplace. There was a girl sitting opposite to him in the train. Gradually they got into a conversation and Awe got to know that she was K2, K's sister. But they had very little similarities to be identified as sisters. K2 was darker, healthier, taller and looked quite different from K. After a long period of conversation, K2 got up to go to the washroom. Right on standing she adjusted the strap of her bag hung from her left shoulder across her waist like taking out a sword from the scabbard and then re-inserting it...
After listening to this, I started to think of what I do that my gene does. Since childhood I have been told by a number of people, almost all who came across me, that I looked like my mother. But now there is a group who believe that half of my face is like my mother whereas the other half resembles my father. The line of demarcation though varies. Sometimes it's below my nose, sometimes above it, sometimes right on it, sometimes it is oblique and most of the time it is so vague that I really admire the observer for having such a sharp eye to distinguish every part of my face and my parents'. Sometimes my aunt is brought into the picture when my nose is concerned. There is a constant flow of opinions about my eyes, brow, forehead, nose, cheeks, area between nose and lips (half of it, full of it), upper lip, lower lip, angle of mouth, earlobes including their ditto resemblance and slight modifications (to the right, to the left, sharper, darker etc.) also. Thoroughly dissected, my face hardly looks like my own.
Coming to habits; my parents have a lot which I don't have and vice versa. I bite nails which is an off-and-on phenomenon. There are times when I take days off and let the nails grow. An examination or any event I'm anxious about comes, and my teeth are again employed. B, my brother, has the same habit but his is constant. Once he expressed joy over the fact that he played piano, not guitar or else he couldn't have bitten the nails (Nylon-string guitars are played without plectrum and well-shaped nails are a necessity to pluck the strings properly). Next, I have a habit to fidget, mostly when nervous or even thoughtful. None in my immediate family does that. Then, I rub my fingers over any outgrowth including acne until it gets darker and turns chronic. I'm given a series of threats and warnings that this might happen or that might happen if I go on doing something so unhygienic (qualitatively similar to the warnings against my nail-biting). I listen very carefully, nod my head in full agreement, think about it very deeply and suddenly realize that I was rubbing on it all the while. There are multiple other habits like scratching on forearm while sleeping, frowning whenever I'm concentrating on something, frowning again when I'm on the road alone etc. But I can't connect them to anybody genetically. And none of these exactly resemble habits of my ancestors or even brothers and sisters. Thankfully, people who know everything and understand everything hardly go beyond my face and try to disentangle any thread in identifying other similarities.
The only similarity that convinces me of genetic acquisition of traits (in my case) is that of the natures of my father and me. There are some observations made by T, my cousin. A lot of my gestures, according to T, are carbon-copies of my father's. My ways of reading books in a half-lying posture with my elbow flexed on bed supporting the weight of upper half of my body, of holding pens and brushes, of walking strongly trace up my genetic connection. Though I would like to raise a protest against the point of walking. However. Both of us can go on reading story books without noticing anyone around and often when we look up from the book, the person looks either terribly irritated or terribly surprised. But my father often listens to someone sitting in front without glancing at him/her and looking at every other corner of the room including the ceiling, whereas I look right at the person talking, not hearing a word of what he/ she is saying and thinking about a completely different something. Then, we both are stubborn, partially dominating, headstrong, more into spending than saving (this link runs even farther; my grandfather was no less than a millionaire when it came to his ideas of spending), but my father is logical and I rely mostly upon my fantasy. We both are good with our suggestions (my father holds the crown though). And there may be some more, too. As a whole, if I'm visibly resembling anyone, that is my father more than my mother. Whenever I see Baba sitting or thinking or watching TV, I remember Awe's comment on K and K2, "see how gene runs".