I’m seven years old. Not yet seven, in fact, and I’m taking this bus to school and back, and the bus in picture is not rickety, I’m not writing an indigenous novel for heaven’s sake, it’s fair enough and everything is fair enough, and it’s crowded so that some need to stand while the rest of them get to sit, and I’ve my turns, but I’m someone who likes to sit when I stand and stand when I sit, yes I do remember that. Maybe everyone’s like that, but I’m saying it, so I’m like that and I don’t know about everyone, because they’ve either not said it or I’ve not listened, and anyway, this is when I see myself standing and I’m standing next to this girl, all pale, blue-eyed, sweet-looking, and I’m trying to get her to look at me, my problem lying in the fact that she’s three years older and a foot taller, but she’s just two grades away. ‘Just’. And I try every single day to get her to look at me, to get her to talk to me, although I hardly know what I could engage her in, she could possibly know to add four digits together, but big deal, I could do that too, I’m supposed to have been the ‘prodigy’, but maybe she’s one too and maybe she could do things that I can’t do and the fact that I can’t might drive me farther from her, and that’s ironical, because I sense no closeness yet to fear about getting far.
And that there’s this day when I started as usual, singing popular songs in my own way to get her to look this way, something from this ‘up and coming’ musician called A.R.Rahman, and that I not only got her to look at me, but to smile at me, and to cry almost immediately, and stoop to my level, kiss my cheek, and tell me before she got down that this was to be the last time I’d be seeing her, and that she’d miss me forever, and that I can’t forget her or her name, though I wouldn’t be revealing it over here, because I’m still not sure that she’s not a figment of my imagination, strengthened by persistent belief, those are not unknown; they’re almost trivial, sort of out of context. And I needed to mention her over here, because there’s this new somebody who reminded me so much about her and that’s merely a similarity in the way and extent of tears I’m made to shed because of either of them.
“I could be dying thinking about you, but you might not know that I exist.”
I thought I’d write this post about the ‘older’ concept, but I thought I’d shine some light on the importance of a ‘push’ to keep one going. I guess this could look, to you, to be a whole digression into something that’s got nothing to do with what I’ve said till now, but no it’s not and no you’re not right in thinking so, for what I said exactly fits with what I’m going to say and there’s this continuity standing tall, indestructible.
The destination is hardly alluring. I mean, what’s the use in something that’s always there and something that you’d see right from the first step and you just go on, going ahead with ‘your way’ till you reach it, and then it’s ‘Hurray’ and you get the prize, but you think about it when you’ve got it in hand, you try to retrospect and try to figure out what actually got you going, and you find that all along, you never gave the prize a thought even, and it’s always something different, something out of the way, something virtually unconnected, that made your path interesting, made it fun. I guess that’s when you really, really think about her.
Heck, I’m the world’s biggest liar.
I’m not even halfway through, and I find myself unable to think about anyone else. Maybe I took the liberty to immerse myself in this ‘sea’, solely because I didn’t buy my tickets, but I did think I didn’t find the show interesting and that that’s because I’m not in the show at all, and I’m thinking about Blues music in an Opera house and that’s hazardous for either form, because defeat in one case doesn’t imply victory in the other, it’s just a split of defeat or the whole of it, coming from 200 percent. So what’s my point, what am I saying? I don’t know, I lost track, I guess that’s what multi-tasking does to someone, it always takes its toll on all things you’re doing, only that you wouldn’t know it for sure, it’s never the obvious. But when you do such things like writing and eating and watching a film together, I guess this chocolate sure can’t remind you enough of her, and neither would the Dark Knight.
She took me through four days. And I have this really bad habit of always wanting a guardian angel if I ever get a whiff of one, and I also like to say ‘please’. Even though I find it never helps these days. Not even with a couple of tears in the eye. ‘Damp’ never looks dainty.
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