Life into Art: Vignettes from Recent Existence

 

Not many days before the one on which this blog has been published, a kind soul and a helpful collaborator of mine had told me that I should think higher of myself than I usually do because I am ‘brilliant’ at things. While brilliance, of course, is subjective and aspirational, and something that I strive to achieve at a higher level throughout the various standpoints of my life and over time my capacity to think more, write more, and of course, create more remains, I also think about the roots of it.

Of course, as a child, I did use to read a lot of things, and different ages made me subscribe to different things. An inclination towards spirituality slowly and gradually turned into a fascination towards mythology, which leaked into a love for folk traditions and an awareness towards my mother tongue, a passion to write and speak more often in my mother’s mother tongue that is Bhojpuri and my father’s that is Magahi. Anyone following me off this screen or on it would know that I have a side job of being a film critic because I happen to be a passionate cinephile with adoration for moving images.

But we will come to this illustrious bullet-pointer later because simplification of it would only become a biodata of hobbies and I don’t want that since I don’t want this specific blog to be about that. I started it and started writing on it only to explore the innermost me and enquire about it by myself, and while that too is incomplete without mentioning some people I consider important to be mentioned, that’s just myself.

I sometimes sit on my bed doing nothing. Or maybe watching something, or studying only perhaps, and my mind goes somewhere else, somewhere familiar. That place of familiarity is not warm, but rather cold and brutal. I tend to remember the process and cry. Yes, with tears filling up my eyes. I then shut off whatever I might have been doing at that time and sink my face into the pillow and be one with myself, and for about ten to fifteen minutes it would be hard for me to come out of that black void. Thankfully, these undignified attacks of depression, as I call them, choose to arrive in the moments of my isolation.

And what happens next? I sleep, not putting my phone on silent or in flight mode, but rather maximizing the sound, keeping it to the side of my head, and closing my eyes, praying the goddesses of sleep overcome me. They probably don’t think it is a good idea because when I close my eyes, it is just the white-sheet spirits of more and more thoughts that take over me. And lo, someone arrives. The façade of being ‘normal’, ‘absolutely healthy and fine’ begins. I am rather fearful as I write this because while I am still alone, my cheerful face is starting to come down. Is the overthinking ghost in the room already?

Oddly enough, I am thankful for an element of it. What element, you ask? That it has specifics to it, this condition. It has events attached to it, and it has names attached to it. People who helped me navigate it became pages and characters of that history as much as people who put me through it. The pandemic has been hard on all of us in measures big and small, so the roots of it, I consider trivial to talk about. But one of the very first things that do come to my mind is the fact that I had a best friend. Now, there are not a lot of people who I can call my best friends because some happenings in recent times have made me question that word.

But if there was a best friend of mine until only some time ago, it was her. Yeah, it was a woman. She was a dazzling entity with flowing hair and a bright smile seeing only a glimpse of which would make anyone’s day. Don’t take my words sideways, our friendship is a stem of another history of conversations but let’s not go there since this stem is the building block of this another one that I am talking about here. She would not be named, because to name her I would have to ask her, and we are not on talking terms really, so there’s that.

Our long-distance friendship had been extremely, extremely fulfilling. There were lengthy conversations, texts spanning hundreds and hundreds of messages, gossip about whatever had been happening with our schoolmates post our school time, and revelations of our deepest troubles to each other. I still clearly remember my routine of the day at some point in time- it was just moving to the topmost floor of my terrace on the bright, cool summer nights, and calling her, knowing that she would answer without a miss (she would, always, assuredly), and then getting consumed in the flow of our words, intermittently being flirtatious and then going back to our normal selves, cheerful or dull, depending on the day, depending on the topic of discussion.

It seemed like a perfect recourse to me, and it was, in so many surefire ways. I always looked up to her, and I still look up to her, as someone who was so much better than me, and her presence in my life was such a medication as well as a feather to a crown. The last time I had found someone of such a luminous nature being a part of my existence, it was probably someone who was already there from before- perhaps my mother, and my buas. I familiarized her with my closest family members, and she would approve of my sister’s party look from a video call (this was last year).

This non-love poem has little negativity to it. Things might or might not have worked between others, but it was something of an unsaid promise that we will eventually come around, and nothing will fall apart even if things will change. Why is it, then, that when things did fall apart not much long ago, and thunderously so as I might say, it left me primarily cold and unfeeling? There was a third-party intervention impossible to overlook, and it would have left anyone severely traumatized. So has the injury cut so deep that I can’t help but talk about it so comfortably without nursing it, either with someone’s help or my own?

I have talked about it to people with whom I think I can talk about it, but really, is it all that happens to this? There were not many immediate physical reactions to it. I recall crying copiously when my roommate was not around in my PG and thinking about it making me somewhat weak and making me lose some of my appetites and me refusing to go out for a dinner with friends, but these are forgettable images, really- the bottom line is, the separation did not come with the dramatic implications I was anticipating. It was a little disappointing, mostly shocking. That doesn’t mean I don’t think about her, though. And I am not sure what I am going to do in my next low phases, just like the ones that came after her sudden, unpredictable turning-point departure.

These things don’t mean that there are no things that don’t break me. Always remember, an overthinker is bound to have his eyes misty more often than you will believe he will have. It is not like he cannot be depressed or low just because he would already have that scenario created in his head previously- the inner him would never have appreciated that severe jolt on his senses, and it will fundamentally break him. There are several ways you can invade the sensitivity of an overthinker, but unless you want to destroy him and his life, I would advise you not to.

You would think, huh, why overthink stuff? Just be productive and ward it off by being busy. Let me tell you, then, that overthinking is never a product of sitting idle and not doing anything. At some point in my life recently I had no time on my hands, and I was busy for twenty hours out of the twenty-four we have in a day. And yet, your brain and heart are like railway tracks for the train of thoughts and if someone has constructed that train inside you and there’s this track provided by God almighty, the train will continue to be operational. It’s human nature, there’s little you can do.

Now, my coldness might have something to do with the fact that while I am very much a ‘friends person’ and have friends to hang out with (there’s an amazing one who lives not many houses away from that mine, love man<3), and I was also usually interactive during my time at school and after that as well, in the college, I left behind in Delhi; I might be more of a family person. I usually chatter mindlessly about what kind of a wife I would want, and I attach all sorts of adjectives to my answer to make my mom or my buas laugh until their abdomens ache, but deep down, I think the right person has to be the one who keeps my family together.

My idea of family has always been extensive. It is not just mother, father, and me (I so wish I had a sibling of my own but that’s a different discussion that I don’t like going into now). It would have to include the lovely maternal cousins of my father, my buas whom I cherish so much more than the one I have of my own. They give me a sense of extended family belonging that I never seemed to have, and it’s almost like a found-family thing that I cherish a lot. The urge for someone like my own sibling to talk to has me connected to M, my amazing, amazing sister. We fight each other and love each other and stand by each other like bones support the skeleton, and I often think of what I can do for her, what more can I do for her. Not to express that love time and again, because our bond goes beyond expression and I hope it remains like there. Ah, talking about it brings such a smile to my face.

You know, I have this favorite brother as well. Out of all of them, the one who was born seven months before me, the summer buddy to my winter spirit. Interestingly, there was little thought I would have given at the mention of his name if this was a story ten years ago or something. Not because we were in a conflict, we never were. But I find it beautiful how the aftermath of both of our school lives blossomed into an eventual friendship before we could understand and then start talking to each other. There were friends who ‘got’ me before when they heard me, granted. But with him, it is as if someone can process whatever they are listening to. It is not a relatable thing, not exactly inexplicable either, but there’s a sense of understanding.

My bond with him is the one that I trust to have the solidity of siblings. Now, in life, reciprocation is very tricky. I once got in touch, through contacts, with a person well-versed in psychology, and with welled-up eyes, I told him how a lack of reciprocation disturbs me to some length. It was all because I tended to become clingy and a little toxic about its detail, and I don’t want to present myself as some godhead who can do no wrong. If I think I have been treated even with the slightest unfairness by anyone in my life, even my parents, I acknowledge that I have been unfair to them as well. I am in awareness of the incorrect things I have done and the incorrect thoughts that I have nurtured, and I am apologetic and in a state of repentance.

And the one unforgettable answer that I will never forget is that it’s perfectly fine. It’s okay. It’s okay to love someone more than they love you. And here we talk of a form of mutual respect that transcends the one that needs conversation. Sometimes, you should let the sunlight coming from the sun of hope, fall through the window of your heart. It is not a medicine, but it is a source of vitamins that will keep you going no matter what. Things between us are slightly better now, the conversations have some ability to be open and honest, I am a human and I want some people to be perpetually in my life, and this one, I don’t want to lose. Finding success and romance are keywords to the chapter of life, but I still pray to my gods daily that they heal me, and bless me. And bless my tribe too, in the process. Bless that sister of mine. Bless those parents of mine. Bless my buas. Bless the best friend I have as well as the one I lost. And bless the brother of mine the sense of brotherhood of whom empowers me, no matter how sharp our conflicts are.

Adios!