roshni

 

What do you know about me? I'm a senseless sphere of goof. A finger puppet speaking through my words. The sphincter of a mouth on this one! I wish he'd shut it. Should I kill myself or drink coffee? I'm unpredictable even for myself. A lot of people around me speak of my well-being. It exists only in their mind. My being is thoroughly wiped off and replaced everytime a new person walks in. To choose. To win or to lose? To sleep and to snooze. And to furnish the walls with blood; excuse the hats and the boots; and the whistling and the floods. Of storms made of prose and of poems. Of trees and of thorns. For faith. For hatred. For love. How could you ever be so far behind? I'm just a passenger. Biding my time.

Yesterday I stood at the door of the 7PM local train from Virar to Churchgate. Unspaced gaps; through Dahisar till Bandra. As we made the pit stop at the signal before the bridge between Dahisar and Borivali, the train stopped for 10 minutes. When a local train stops for too long at one place it feels as though life around you has stopped till you notice the birds settling on the windows. The cotton candy skies flowing; the blind man who conveniently dodged a suitcase on the back of a coolie at the station now asks you for a couple annas to buy himself dinner. Your friend still makes it late even though you're stuck on an empty track waiting for an express train to stop. You notice the houses along side the tracks. The cat that grooms herself at their doorstep. The men walking to and fro - going about their daily business. For that moment, you the outsider has a pervert's view into their rooms. You think about the kids that are born and die where they lived. You think about the stench that the residents have grown accustomed to in their years living, eating and shitting in the same hellhole.

I remember this analogy I gave Chinmay a while back after returning from Gurgaon. He said something about not feeling special. About not feeling good about the offer he received. Or not satisfied with what he had. He felt things were not in control. I told him he was lying to himself. You've been in control. You've got a lot of things done. Life has been working in your favour. All you need to do is believe it'll work out for you. To which he responds he doesn't see it happening. I say, you don't see it because you're too close to it. You're thinking of things with a different mindset. You know when I came to Gurgaon by the Rajdhani, I realized how lucky I am by one particular moment. If I had the blinds closed I would never realise it. I saw this village along the railway tracks after kilometers and kilometers of nothing and mountains. The train had slowed down a bit; there were these three kids on a cycle racing the train. I was watching them and they were smiling and enjoying whatever it was they were trying to do. One of them saw me watching and showed me the middle finger. And something in that moment struck me. This kid in the middle of nowhere will never experience what I do. He will never sit inside a cozy home, or be on a top-tier train to another city to visit his girlfriend. They didn't have range there, it was literally a ghost town. 

In a ghost place, in the middle of nowhere in the mountains. Thinking about how many villages I saw like that. Just nothings. No people, emptiness, land, people living in makeshift houses. Brick houses with little to no point. It makes me think how lucky I am. Even though I live in a country which is 95% of this and I've been living so luxuriously that I can decide my own future. That I can say in my final year that I don't want to do engineering and pick up a camera and shoot. The amount of power I hold within my family, my friends and the people I love. Its unreal. What are the chances of this happening: a Vallance Alvares or a Chinmay Kadam? You shouldn't be the one feeling empty. Or hollow even. You're one of the most powerful people in this country. You have a seat waiting for you, money with your name on it, countries that would be glad to house you, people who know how to comfort you. 

You have things that put you above the oldest and weakest people in this country. 

You are the architect of your own unhappiness.