#1

Do you think we lost touch somewhere in the middle?

With whatever we used to believe in: fluttering eyelash on skin, bacon for breakfast & a sad twang of the guitar in the sunlight. We mixed up people & objects & desire. Or maybe I did.

Then what happened, you ask?

I moved. With bags, a confused head, & foolish youth-centric misconceptions.

Each time I search, I end up in Calcutta. With the old buildings, a favourite terrace & the many roads travelled and the many floors sat on. I miss the buses, the quick auto rides and conversations. I miss one old house, with bizarre pencil scrawls on the wall, where I discovered myself in bits and pieces. I miss my home, the terrace where I used to sit for ages, or walk, ominously talking to self. I miss that nestling feeling. I miss my friends & my trysts with romance and life, I miss my old ghost wandering around aimlessly, effusive and often intoxicated.

In Bombay, I’m constantly on the edge, looking looking looking for peace. I do things at a feverish pace. I feel like I have to establish this ground for me to walk on, like I’m striving for a sort of perfection which doesn’t even make me happy.

This is not what I want to do and the strangest thing is, in a way I am okay with this chapter. I don’t see a continuation, because that would indeed make me a lot more restless than I already am. It’s like a gypsy wind, this kind of restlessness.

I fantasise about being grubby, filling reams and reams of paper with the stub of a pencil and travelling. I fantasise about a kind of liberation I have never let myself have. Looking up at the sky, cooking for people, caring for sick animals, writing- in sand, in cold air, in tents, on a boat, on a mud-filled truck. No children, no lovers in the sky. Enough money to sustain.

I want utter freedom from the shackles of my mind, it’s various crevices and darkness. I want light, I want to rid myself of petty anxieties, doubt, panic and paranoia. I think I shall start with a baby step.