All Alone, All Along

A vision that, for long, would frequent my thoughts momentarily and sometimes even disturbingly was of a small vacant room facing a rather wide-opened window. Drenched in the bluish-orange glow of the twilight, I would often be sitting languishingly within, ruminating such loneliness as born out of the the loss of one so loved (not necessarily caused by death), all the while looking out of the window. A vision, both of sight and insight, of such macro scope the window facilitated that it would hardly commensurate its size. Like a projection screen it would play out the time stained memories, all pieced together into a whole, like a film strip; except that no conscious chronology streamed its flow. I can glimpse through my experiences - revisit those shadowy corners of pain and misery and those brighter spots of happiness, only without being lost in the ever spewing cobweb of present realities. I forever attempt to gain a full view of my lived existence, but it never afforded the complete view of the ever emerging horizon. I don’t know if I should say that the vision renders me impassive to all electric influx of realities in my mind, or if it does accelerate such influx with rousing clarity. The radiant orange afterglow often reminds me of the orange serenity of the monks. Sitting by the window in the bus I wondered at the infinite expressions that innumerous faces wore. The deafening silence that the warm orange glow permeated abstracted all motions and life out of these faces; rendering them like the stolid baked earthen masks bearing suspended emotions - of a bawdy laughter, an ugly pain, a stilted arrogance, a garish pleasure, a hungry cry, a distant fear, a mawkish love and so many more to pin down. This ‘he’, that ‘she’, those ‘they’ were just faces, just strangers I did or didn’t know. I am all alone, and had been so all along. Those fleeting momentary indulgences of company, love, trust, bonding may obscure our vision, but can one deny our inherent lone earthly existence by our innate want of company? Can one deny those rare spasmodic recognitions when you find yourself standing alone amidst an expansive sea of strangers who jostle past you? Who can deny of never being consumed by that piercing fear of loneliness, the agonising ache that comes with the cognizance of there being no one to fall back on, despite the familiar faces around? The ‘he’ I miss, the ‘she’ I cherish, the ‘we’ that I belonged to; all seemed displaced, a mere delusion. In my opinion, ‘Individual’ is by far the most under rated word.

Rain...

As the water trellised down the windscreen and a hundred white feet of bodiless birds splish-splashed on the road ahead, a silent vacuum filled in as I sat in the rear seat of the cab. All those billowy clouds of multitudinous thoughts floated away, as my senses, soaking in the apparent surrounding, hypnotically suspended the banalities of humdrum thoughts. I allowed the splinters of rain to prick at my face as I slumped back and slowly rested my head on the seat; nonchalant to where the cabbie was taking me. Over the past five years I have travelled this stretch of road so frequently that even a stolid inert gaze at any part of it would be a satisfying assurance. The faint darkness of the damp air had cast a silent tranquillity on an otherwise cautious and involved passenger, as I am, and on the busy bustling road of incessant honking and unending traffic congestion. The old cabbie drove on the empty Sunday-road, but I could see the meandering trail of tyre tracks that the preceding car was leaving ahead of us. I looked up at the dark sky through the cab window and felt the grey smoke and dampness around me. I wanted to write something. No, I'm not a poet or a story teller. It was just about the weather, about the drive and I tried capturing in my mind the feeling that was impressed upon my countenance, but I failed in finding the words that would adequately express them. I wondered why it is the rains that inspire me most. Why the bright sunny morning didn't appeal me better? The faint darkness of the rains is as cool as the pleasant winter winds of tropical lands that ignite the warmth of passion, but its dampness reminds me of a suppressed melancholy, somewhere in the distant corner. I heard the rumbling train pass-by in a whiff below. I saw the miniature suns, formed of the water drops, upon the windscreen. But I didn't smell the parched earth. I missed him. I thought of our meeting that was a while back. I longed to feel that presence again. It, however, suddenly crossed my mind that a friend of mine is bereaving the loss of her father. I thought of aunty, at her loss, her startling change in life; but I also thought of a friend who had just settled in for a conjugal life. I wondered if the rains moved all to their passions of love and pain. Would one, at the noon of one’s life, be moved to the passion of love when the dimness of rain approaches? Or does it just fume the passions of a young heart? The cab crossed the road by the lake. I saw the water swell to its brim. I saw the multi coloured umbrellas, with heads propped under them, lined around its bank. It started pouring rapidly. The splish-splashing and splattering increased, as I heard the raindrops dance on the roof of the car. Fog percolated in the windscreen and vision obscured. The wiper swished and squeaked and the cabbie wiped the screen to clear off the fog from within. An otherwise sunny afternoon seemed like an early twilight today, with street lamps all aglow. I thought of the street dwellers, the dogs and cats. Rats could creep through the tiny gaps but the dogs and cats and men couldn’t. I wondered if the rain washed all the leaves of a tree clean. Could a leaf, unwashed of its dust smear, belie of the rains? I was yards away from my home; I finally broke the silence and asked the cabbie to stop right up. It was raining as one would say with a conventional idiom “like cats and dogs”. I got off the cab, ready with an open umbrella which was evidently insufficient to keep me dry. Mud and dirt reached up above my ankles as the rain splintered them on me. Later, sitting by the window in my room, as I saw the smoke float pass below the bright yellow street lamps as rain drizzled down like flecks of gold!

Onset

What is it of today that strode me to take the plunge again years after, I don't know! It's perhaps the damp afternoon or the lackadaisical passivity that is born out of the sudden pangs of anxiety ahead of an interview.  My certainty, thus, shrouded by the mist of uncertainty, I start afresh to pen my rambles and ruminations. Fluid and amorphous as they may be, my blog will be a mélange in itself. Mélange, Eo Ipso!