Concreteness

When my age was that of a pin, the window to the left of our home's living room, opened up my speculation to a colossal, happening world. Rickshaw-pullers tink-tonked all the way, the feriwala selling an array of colourful les-fita to the sheer surprise of the more wiling-to-buy-them girls and small, innocent, bubbly street children delving on munchies. Summer was a brooding, hot month of the year. Sleeves rolled up, bottoms bent at the knee, life for men and women was chaotic and monotonous. Straws dipped in coconut, hands held in unison and the smell of biryani over the hot weather, for the first time resistible; this was the world screaming and bumping about.

That window, the shape of an enormous rectangle, four corners of it rust and zinc coated- held me magnetic to a world where happiness flies in sparks. Sparks that you can see when the electricity goes off and only a kerosine lamp is ablazed on a tea stall in the vicinity. And with power cut down, came a chance to mediate on the warm blanket of a flute played by an anonymous, the tune every day changing into something more than magic. There was always a longing that met it's end with the end of the last finger touching the flute's string. Making something artistic, this creativity flourished admist an odd hour, when couples sat sipping lemonade on the verandah and a tired, exhausted Kokil asleep on a circuit board. The music still plays even after it's strings might have made it to some other hand.

From that window, the world looked so passionate and innocent. In every five millimetre area there was either a tea stall or a small shop, selling homemade pancakes, tea, mimibars and cakes. The road was one then, still undivided by the preying eyes of politicians. There in one unspecified corner was an architecture like that of a zebra-crossing. White strips admist the stony black entity, painted the road to a confusion. When it rained, hangings pots from the verandah celing would accumulate water, a bucket full, later used for washing the balcony. On midsummer evenings, I and my sister created pots out of semi-solid mud, courtesy of all the new pots that we found lying still. The caress that gave the pots such different pyschique was also one that bemused us to whose one was the best.

I read alot of Sidney Sheldon, Agatha Christie then. The descriptions of small events, of the keratin of a character's nail- it was made alive and so vivid that there were times when I went off to sleep with the book just below my bed pillow; in order to wake up to read the last lines. Excitement, passion, intrigue and an urge to find out how the life of a character takes the about turn- there was feeling for them, there was healing them, there was residing in them and living for them. With a very high heart, with soaked tears, I found a company, who lend an ear to listen to my fears, to my greivances without even pretending to turn a blind eye: the world of wordsmiths. When I was reading, there was a persistent wish to be in their world, to undo the mistakes they made, to attach clearer footprints to their lives. That when when the inquistive, willing to learn girl in me woke up, acknowledging that she understood how words can crop emotions, seal them or make you feel them.

I always engulfted myself to this question, "Can love be true?" "Can somebody truly love you for what you are, without wanting you to change ever?" "Can love always be by your side, like your shadow in the mirror and your guiding star for the sky?" I knew yes it could. There was overwhelming power in love, to undo all your miseries, to put faith on your heart and then screw your heart with a tight cap. It can give you elasticity, it can give you reliance, security and believe that you are afterall extraordinary no matter how ordinary you are. It is the way you connect, the way you shower love even when you have been betrayed a thousand times- that makes you extraordinarily beautiful. Beautiful. A person who loves you, will never expect you to meet up his arena of beauty. He will just look into your eyes once, and feel a magnitude of beauty from you transferring onto him.

I am still that same girl- the girl whose eyes rain dreams, dream of gold, with tints of silver on them. The girl who never kept her legs raised even on her footrest, thinking it would insult anyone passing by. The girl who walked a road, stopping every few second to touch back and say sorry to every piece of brick that she had unintentionally walked over. I am still me, with very few changes: I have darker hair now, I am taller and I am less talkative. I still find love on the hands of a frail looking woman cooking rice on a stove for her kids. I still find love when a father beats up his child, because the child stole two taka chocolate from the shop. I still feel passion, when a stranger from the maze stands up in between sessions, putting his restlessness out, that someday he will be the President of America. There is still life in me even after so many bruises, knowing that someone I believed in so much no longer desires my presence. It is still me. Me. And me.

The most amazing this is I still crave for a few moments with myself. I still choose to talk with my subconciousness, with the one in my heart, who is a little bit more crazy and innocent. I talk, talk and talk. Our conversations start from complains over electricity cut-down, to family, to dreams, to fears and ending with disagreement. She also talks back. Sometimes we get into a grave tussle, breaking down into tears and then rubbing each other off it. We look at life with a same perspective: sometimes seeing the best in the worst and sometimes the coal in the saffron soil. Any song, with it's verse does not become old to us. It's melody, it's beauty keeps on dancing with it's wind toxicating the lives of others.

Impressively, i still believe in never changing oneself for someone else. It force has mass and acceleration, then it is not only a collective force that has more mass and acceleration. Sometimes a concentrate force's attraction is more than a collective one. Our thoughts, the wisdom in us has an indomitable force. You will see it strike back like a worn off match stick. Like an afraid bat under an elephants unshaky legs. I still believe, at the end of the day, you need to find yourself- the part of you that tells yes this is me and this part of me I want to drink as the reason for my existence.