notes
on departing and arriving
this week’s Thought (singular)
very difficult to pack a room when you’re still living in it. what if i need this empty notebook that i haven’t used in two years some time in the next three days?
a very warm welcome to all new readers. i love new readers so much that whenever i get an email about a new reader, i manifest that they moisturise. thank you for joining us. may your hands be smooth and smell really nice.
a very warm welcome to old readers as well. may good sense continue to prevail.
Before We Begin
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hi
as of writing this, i’m t minus 24 hours from boarding a flight back home, and i’ve been having Thoughts. about what i’m leaving behind, what i’m going (back) to.
i wrote about the physicality of space last week, about honouring time by honouring place. i leave parts of myself behind in this college, in my hostel room in the double-sided tape on the walls in the memories of my batchmates, and i carry parts of it/them with me. i didn’t feel anything about this for a long time, and i was worried that something was wrong with me - that leaving a place that saw so much of me and me growing and me experiencing the most dramatic two years of my life should induce a more physical reaction when i leave it. that it should feel like more, somehow.
i’ll miss the people and i’ll miss living in the same apartment as my friends. i’ll miss the community of a girl’s hostel. i’ll miss being able to step down at 3am to get something to eat when i’m hungry. i’ll miss walking around campus at midnight. i’ll miss eating with my friends, borrowing shampoo when i’ve run out, getting dressed together for an event, studying together before an exam, taking care of each other when we’re sick. i’ll miss the cats and the birds and the trees and the clouds. i won’t miss being a student in an academic institution, but i’ll miss living on a college campus.
i want to be able to look back at this time and think fondly about it. i want to leave behind something of essence here.
three years ago, i had written a thodi about homesickness, back when i was interning in bombay.
at the time, i was moving back home after six months in a different city. now, i’m moving back after two years. my questions are different, but it still feels like a callback.
home has always been a place you can go back to, whenever things get difficult wherever you are. but where do you go when things get difficult at home? every tough period i’ve had in the last two years has been at least partially resolved with either a call or a visit home. there’s always people and a place i can turn/return to. but when i’m living there, things are different, no?
i’m a different person than i was two years ago. the space that i made mine in that house might no longer fit me. i don’t want to go backwards, contort myself into a shape that used to be comfortable there. i want to remake it. i want to put up things on the walls now, fill the bookshelves again, take out the trash from the cupboards. it won’t feel like mine until i update it the same way i’ve changed.
i’ve been thinking about who i’m going to be next, and how that person is going to fit into a house that had a different me in it. there’s probably only one way to find out.
in the edition from three years ago, i had also written this -
convoluted as it was, i agree. there’s nothing to it but to feel a feeling. i’m ready to go back home to my city that i’ve missed, and that i hope has missed me.
ps: happy march!
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A Picture!
English Recitation Competition
This Morning, Jay Wright
This morning I threw the windows of my room open, the light burst in like crystal gauze and I hung it on my wall to frame. And here I am watching it take possession of my room, watching the obscure love match of light and shadow — of cold and warmth. It is a matter of acceptance, I guess. It is a matter of finding some room with shadows to embrace, open. Now the light has settled in, I don’t think I shall ever close my windows again.
In Passing, Lisel Mueller
How swiftly the strained honey of afternoon light flows into darkness and the closed bud shrugs off its special mystery in order to break into blossom: as if what exists, exists so that it can be lost and become precious.
Prayer, Arundhathi Subramaniam
May things stay the way they are in the simplest place you know. May the shuttered windows keep the air as cool as bottled jasmine. May you never forget to listen to the crumpled whisper of sheets that mould themselves to your sleeping form. May the pillows always be silvered with cat-down and the muted percussion of a lover’s breath. May the murmur of the wall clock continue to decree that your providence run ten minutes slow. May nothing be disturbed in the simplest place you know for it is here in the foetal hush that blueprints dissolve and poems begin, and faith spreads like the hum of crickets, faith in a time when maps shall fade, nostalgia cease and the vigil end.
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this week’s Song
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thank you for reading, and see you next time <3