In
the backdrop of familiar music, she decided to explore a new place. A place
that boasted a life unknown to her. A place that in its little ways reminded
her of a time gone by when she was someone still grappling to find herself
without the motivation to pursue the end. it was not a rediscovery of old roads
and selves, that was not what this journey had to be about.
She
sat in a quaint balcony with a song that asked her to look to herself. Looking
around, there was the comfort of magenta roses and green chillies, the fruits
of a terrace garden much like her own – that took her back to the women in her
life who had found profound joy in green hobbies, something she had been part
of but never found ownership in. It needed a commitment that she had over time
realized was not in her. Her relationships had also been like the wilted burnt
shrubbery that was now her terrace. Had something gone wrong? She wished to
find a convenient narrative from the whole repertoire of popular culture images
that invaded her everyday. But easy solutions had evaded her. She had to make
sense of her life despite the villainising narratives that made self pity and
disgust easy. The feather light breeze brought a smile, and would have stayed,
but for the song heady with meaning that reminded her that every smile extracts
its cost. She had always been miserly. So the breeze stayed, but the smile
shifted to the back of her labyrinthine mind.
There
were other preoccupations to keep oneself suitably busy. Like what, you ask. Like the sudden torrential rain that saw her
rushing into the shelter of the house. Once upon a time, she used to step out
when it rained. Once upon a time did not find its way to a happily ever after,
or perhaps she didn’t let it. Too predictable for her liking. She gazed at the
clothes line whose clothes were ready to surrender to the winds and make
unknown flights. The clips that had tied them down were going to lose their
grip, as is the fate of many a tether provided the willingness of the tethered
or the sheer force of extraneous agents to which in life we are wont to be
subject. The security of the ropes that keep us tied down may be worth holding
on to sometimes, but it must be a choice, not a convenience. She saw men and
women rushing to get the clothes and everything else out from the way of the
showers. They came back battered but successful. Life lesson # 2.
She
went back into the room which was part of somebody’s home. Somebody, not hers.
Where was home? Once again her mind went to the women of her life. How did they
make their home that was also hers? Or was it? Home in all its glory that came
from popular rhetoric. When she goes back, she told herself in that moment,
which could have been any of the many moments she had done the same thing..
where was the novelty? Was thought spiraling in nature? As if it had marked out
one path to traverse, or perhaps marked destinations? Perhaps if destinations
changed, new routes would be discovered, through winding temptations of old
goals. Perhaps…
So what did she tell
herself, you ask. She told herself that when she went back
she would try to make her home. Not the fabled room of one’s own that she had
read much about, that underscored its value every now and then. But just a
place that could be hers. And hers alone. So she could understand what hers
meant. Not cheap imitations of others. Not prescribed aspirations. Not literary
prototypes. Or stereotypes. Or maybe she might end up being that, which would
be okay but only after probing the depths of her longings, not the theoretical
exercise that had risen to the ranks of habit, the actual living experience was
the true test of her desires. The high moral ground was never hers, and she
must step down from the intellectual ground too. She may flail, fail, fall, but
it was necessary. She looked around within the catacombs of her mind and
wondered if it was too late now. Then again, is it ever? ‘Yes it was’, said the
faces that floated up on her mind’s horizon. Familiar faces. Of those who bore
the brunt of the storm to get her back into the safety of the house when the
clips were giving way. She sighed and concluded the music must change. The
moment of reckoning had waited long enough. it wouldn’t mind some more of it.
In
the backdrop of familiar music and the foreground of oft trodden thoughts, she
shut the door and decided to sleep in.
