Ahead

27th Dec 2021

My heart has found a new bit of truth to fascinate itself upon. To confuse itself and to tremble. To fall upon and weep. It does this all the time. But now it stumbles. Cause it's a child now. A child that gets confused at a new shocking piece of information that somebody has just shared. Just as Santa Claus is a lie or Mahabali is. Just as the 'kokkachi' that would come to disturb one's sleep at night if one does evil things, is a lie. Or something like the earth is real round and still living beings on it cling on without falling off into a huge pit.

A realisation of similar kind has knocked at my senses. Something that deprives comfort, takes away all the magic and strikes you with a tough hammer. The hammer of reality. It struck me too soon, I complained. I find it amusing and disturbing at the same time. Something that pricks me and still clings on.

When I was a child, I longed to become an adult. Probably each of you might have had the same weird longing. I call it weird. Because it is. Pulling off an attitude in a saree improperly tucked in was my cup of tea, a few years back. I entertained myself by pretending to be a ticket collector or conductor in a bus and by pulling off roles of a strict librarian or a doctor scribbling zigzag letters on a slip. Also, I used to engage myself as a ' weary housewife', cooking hot streaming stone porridge, served with dried leaf pappadams and sandy sambar, the obvious result of imposed gender roles that influence a child's mind from so early an age. Most importantly, taking up the real role of a teacher hitting hard on the handles of our sofas for being 'mischievous' literally causing their sponges to spring up was something I liked to do the most. Most often, I used to get rebuked by my mom for dirtying the white walls or for ruining the sofa edges. Nevertheless, I continued, finding delight in those few hours of being responsible, being taken seriously, being an adult.

The realisation I was talking about hit me a few days back. Or it had been probably hitting me for a few months now until I started to consider it. It's just that I've stopped being a child. Or even being a carefree, less responsible youth with nothing much to worry about. It's just that I've started entering into the adult world, having got an entry pass some time now. Maturity is not what I'm talking about. I'm referring to situations, circumstances, passing years, lapsing time, looming solitude at the end of an indescribable 'something' and approaching death. Above all, a world wherein responsibilities get tucked into one's shoulders, sticking on. From which there is no escape.

This hit me all of a sudden and I think the pandemic has a part to play in its sudden leap. For almost one and half years, many people of my age have been stuck totally at home, without meeting people, getting to know about the gruesome tragedies in the outside world through the media. After this gap, going out was stressful, at least for some. Social anxiety gripped me tight. Somehow I pushed myself forward and now, there is no going back. After all, the past is always past. What is left is to look beyond the horizon. What awaited me at the end of that loop was harsh realisations.

Going to church in my village and meeting people there made me think. Many young women, who were budding youths during what feels like yesterday, have married. Some have got kids. So many new faces passed. Groups of children, who were so small yesterday, have grown so big, turned into teenagers, different from what we were (though we are just a few years apart), in that they carried android phones, clicking pictures together outside the church on that wintry Christmas night and posting them on Instagram, tagging each other. They were in their own world, commenting on recent developments in social media. Some of them were like real 'kids' during what feels like yesterday, sitting on our laps and dozing off, until they were handed over to their mothers waiting outside when the school bus stopped. This may sound silly, but I found it difficult to accept that years have gone by, and I was just an 8th or 9th grade student back then, even younger than what they are now. It was as if they weren't this big just two years before. I felt a stone in my heart, grinding its way through, whispering in my ears that they shouldn't have grown up, so shouldn't have I.

The other fact is that my mom is about to retire. I used to think of her retirement as something that would never arrive, an ambiguity on the farthest end of my current existence. But now that's near. My parents are getting older, which fuels up the greatest of all my fears. When I think of what will become of me in a few years from now, I have not the slightest clue. What I'll pursue, where will I be, how will my relationships be with people around me, will I even exist, and a train of such questions swinging back and forth without answers. It feels as if those days when I came back from school each day and lazily spent the evening with my grandmother beside, waiting for my parents' return from work, had departed in sheer suddenness without bidding a goodbye. My grandmother is now no more. The time that I spent with her is long gone. I know that those days are past, but now it seems that the future is driving toward me like a truck without brakes. Things have changed. Times have changed. There is the pandemic and its uncertainty, which seem to follow life itself.

The thought of having to leave my best friends in Chennai within a few months makes me feel sick. The thought of having to experience this world more with weighted responsibilities, the thought of having to fight more disturbs me. It's not that I'm trying to run away from the sweet and sour cups of wine that life has to offer. It's just that I was an idiot, who mistook childhood to be a constant. Who mistook people to be permanent companions, who would never leave. Who mistook adulthood to be a beautiful breeze.

Yesterday, I went with my family to visit a few bedridden old women. This journey also opened my eyes about the futility of holding grudges with people because life is too short to do so. There was this one grandmother we visited, and we expected both of them (mine and the one we visited) to laugh and talk about old incidents like they used to, but what we saw then was unusual. As they looked into each other's eyes, they held hands and tears started brimming over their frail eyes. Not even a single word did they speak in that moment of meeting each other after so long, but the mourning silence between them spoke a million. People around them, their children and grandchildren keenly watched what was happening. It was as if they were sharing with their eyes the fact that, we're the only ones left in our generation, we who toiled in heat and cold, years ago with our other friends, most of whom have left this world. It was as if they were acknowledging what little of their times, their spaces, their own world which the later generations could never comprehend was left, awaiting death and decay.

I tried to understand what was going on in their minds. I thought of such a state when people of my age would've been wiped out from the world, with one or two remaining, and me being one among them. A cold shudder went up through my spine. A situation where nearly everything left in the same world we used to dwell in would be unknown to us. Where a new set of people, a new set of technology of which we do not know, a new world which could never understand what our life was all about, would occupy the whole world. This thought is actually terrifying. And so is old age, and the weariness and the wetness that it has to offer.

I suddenly felt that I'm old, sitting in a wheelchair, like my grandmother is. I prayed that such a situation should never come into my life. The life of the old aged is frightening to the core. Just putting ourselves in their shoes will do. A condition where one would've to be dependent on somebody for everything is the worst. I also imagined such a state wherein my friends with whom I had fun would no longer exist, the gaps of whom would be filled by people who are yet to be born. I realised that it's better not to live in a world where people who made you alive no longer exist.

Such thoughts helped me gain some light. That life is too short, it doesn't wait for you, it moves too fast wherein the red flag is somewhere on the way, and when it waves at you, it would be better if you could feel good about something you've left in this world as a treasure. It could be a single smile of yours that made someone's day. It could be about something you fought for, an unjust circumstance you fought against, something you did which could make at least the slightest difference in this world. It could be about your presence in someone's gloom. It could even be about forgiving yourself.

The best part is that, years will fly, and the future will frighten you enough, but you will always have the present for yourself. There will be moments of laughter, moments of utter despair, moments of ambiguity. But you will also have something to hope for, that will drive you ahead. Ahead through the stormy shores of life, letting you forth towards sunset. Nonetheless, sunset is beautiful.

- Vinaya Mary