I know it’s pretty narcissistic and obnoxious – gifting yourself a conversation.
But with a bulk of yet another year that has somehow vanished in a wink , I am, these days , still in the midst of leftover thoughts – too thickened to think anew.
This is a gift I used to normally?indulge in , at a certain time of the year. A time when I reconcile my calendar,?and walk back eleven months.
To a long lost friend. Called me.
I dig out my white minutes – precious strands of time, that survived. Like setting an alarm clock back to an holy hour, and preparing cautiously for a new birth, in yet another year - once more.
Nursing idle thoughts about a million possible paths that could have been taken till here. But weren’t. And smiling while reflecting on the few that shouldn’t have been, but were taken nonetheless.
That’s how rituals come into being. Habits appearing as default but disguised in design.
Something like buying a new newspaper in an ancient town and reading something you already know.
Or reaching the page of obituaries, where gradually the same people start showing up , and dying every year, till you eventually become friends with them.
?This is the time of the year when you lie sleepless in bed,?late into the night, thinking you’re almost about to link them – these uncertain patterns of clues .
Alas but, you lose them always to the impurity of sunlight & the din of the day.
You, who could subtract music from the winds as a child .?And add causeless rebellion to your march as an adolescent.?Who survived the onus of half met promises as a grown up .
And who valiantly stowed away the futility of heartaches, in piling yearbooks of time.
Getting older is the ability to grow new feelings, without completely displacing old ones – hence leaving us a little more distant, and a little further out of reach from ourselves. Every year.
Hence this reconciliation. On the first day of December, the in-between month. When your present year has not slipped into memory yet & the next one is a while away.
A month when you may talk to yourself, without letting words disfigure your conversation.
As your mind gets older, you realize you can only hold one sound in it at a time.
This is that time of the year when you empty your mind of the peripheral sounds of the year that was & pick the ones that you wish to take along.
And revisit them in years ahead , to your heart’s content.
Here are five scattered thoughts of mine from 2021, the year that wasn’t.
- Lost & Found : A passing year no longer holds anything in it that you haven’t had before. There are no treats, secrets or sudden discoveries to archive. Yet how enticing it seems to dig back into each year, like reading a postcard from yourself. Each you, taking different routes, speaking varied languages - and arrive at what you left behind. Your past selves converging into one. Its infinite realms containing you ?, adding up , with diminishing strokes of innocence. We all have that element of blank that we crave to crawl back to. From where we all began, and if there was a day we didn’t exist. To where it will all end, and when the day will come when we won’t. All your yesterdays - They stand true now and rally around you like a collection of chronicles from distant battles. You hold them gingerly to the sun, before gently tucking them away. Year after year , into your brown diary. Just in case you need to know someday, Where on earth did you go ?
- They who left : There’s a precious little that the departed can do anew, in the confines of old albums. There are no surprises, new smiles or tears. And yet how different each of them seems as we keep flipping the pages over the years. My ?best friend never ?fails to wrench my heart, simple, innocent and content to be himself - Like someone who will go on living forever. Then there are those large group pictures, Cracked at centers, and creased at corners -With family photos of generations in a room. At someone’s wedding , thirty some years ago. Or my favorite aunt ( now gone for eleven),making a joke about the bride and the groom. I inspect the faces and reactions in the frame. The old gray scale smelling of a strange kinship, with far-off strangers, linked to me in some way, most of who have, now presumably gone away .I know of course the insane absurdity of this premise. Chasing the departed is silly & sentimental & unwise. But on some days like this when, while quietly walking through some long lost yesterdays in faded old albums, I reconcile our distance that’s been constant in its making. How often the first coffee of a brand new December but -brings optimism, like news from another sunny age. ?As if whoever had to depart long back, did not do so then. How often, taking help of & quoting the law of averages I have visualized that someday, somehow & somewhere -Surmounting all possible odds, our paths might cross again..
- Re-Reading : The first time you read it, your goal is to grasp the book - it’s central theme, the core narrative and the objective of the author . The next time is when you unfurl its layers – subtle nuances, the space between words, and so many other things that you normally miss during the first reading. You might actually overlook 60% of the soul a book during the first read, in a hurry to reach the conclusion. Something like music. Unless you listen to a good composition a number of times, you do not assimilate the music as it was meant to be, while being created. Reminds me – Music, poetry & love can never be received on the same plane as on which they are released. They are always perceived at a plane that’s higher or lower than where they originate from. Their non-linearity is their magic.
- The Gaps :?Non-present things evoke a queer intimacy. Like the shape of forgetfulness - Binding us in concentric circles, equidistantly stitched, from one end of the infinite , to the other . It’s the absence of alternatives that imparts form to a story. A relative dimension to its journey, and an algebric hint of a destination. As you pay attention, you can hear the silence of falling things, before they reach the floor. And the music of faraway rain, playing outside a closed window. Memory is the cage that frees our flight. Hope is the space that holds its bars. You need to do this on a weekend evening The corridors webbed with shadows, sneaking on you with an emptiness - And you, not bothering with the lights. The trick is, to watch your own absence imprisoned inside a hallway mirror - In the confinement of space. And of time. Once you have located your position - marking your silhouette where it isn’t, you will see how nicely it grows on you, the surreptitious grief, like an accident. Unrecorded in this tiny stroke of history.?For a few minutes, try staying locked. Like just another scene in another life. Two men, driving in opposite directions. Whose eyes meet, but only for a while ..Before vanishing around the long curve -Of a road that they will keep travelling. And losing themselves, again and again….And in that moment you’ll see again, a platter of dreams that outlived you. Some deformed, and others broken. Dreams that otherwise cast no image, But stand beside you, silently grafting your own absence into your presence.
- Weather forecast- 2021 was like a season , that was always about to end. The air would smell of flowers, and the perfect weather would keep holding on.?Gambling one day after the other. Cautiously surviving the forecast of another hurricane on its way. And as it ?now leaves, we agree it was a quick year. But still an ominous pause stays, as it slips out of sight. ?Like a door that closes with solidity, behind travelers with heavy bags, headed too far to travel light. And?just like it is?with the weather, with its fury of thunder and snow, often unpredictable and unknown, nature too, ?seems to have, a mind & a map & rhyme of her own. Like someone once said - Endings are always written?before beginnings, And since?this was all ordained, you can’t help but let it go with a smile . And look ahead. ?To a new innings. The dawn inspects you from your bedroom window. And in it , from an incomprehensible distance in the newborn blue sky above , floats in the?sound of the first?birds of the day. Like two lost children who hadn’t come home for dinner, they are?singing by?themselves, calling out to each other in their own private conversation?. Oblivious to the fact?that the world , nonchalant?in its otherness , is gathering?voices out here, stealthily about to lay siege on their exclusivity.
Adieu 2021. No new year resolutions from me this time. I have stopped playing stand-up comedian to the Gods !
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General Manager at Pro Natural Resources Sdn Bhd (Bhatt holdings Group)
2 年“Adieu 2021. No new year resolutions from me this time. I have stopped playing stand-up comedian to the Gods !” Sums it all. ??
Lighting Strategy and Learning Consultant. Currently Consultant and Vice President at Havells India Ltd
2 年Loved the conversation