I open my bag, fetch out the notebook I need, flip through its pages. A stray folded page flies out. It is from 2017 when I was neck deep in something.
Notes, especially on stray sheets, are vehicles of nostalgia, flying you to that specific place and time. Or about so. Nostalgia or memory is like riding the Floo network, sometimes precise, sometimes very, very imprecise. Anyway.
Coming to think of it, photos take you back in time, too, but a paper with notes scribbled on it is a very different deal than a photo. And in one specific aspect, it's diametrically opposite of a photo. In photos, you have the imagery stamped, but no idea regarding the thoughts in your (or any other person's head for that matter); you are free to imagine those thoughts depending on your/their expressions. In a note from the past, you have the thoughts to the last T, but you have no recollection or a very blurry memory of the scene in which those thoughts were written; and then you are free (or helpless, whichever way you look at it) to imagine the place, the people who were around you at that moment.
Regardless, this lone, lost paper has some scribbling in someone else's handwriting. I look closely, and my heart stops.
रगों में दौड़ते फिरने के हम नहीं क़ायल,
जब आँख ही से न टपका तो फिर लहू क्या है?
Of course, one remembers Ghalib at such a time. As they say, Ghalib's shaayri is not Zameeni, but Aasmaani. Abstract. Endless. Unprocessed. Absolutely fitting for unprocessed emotions.
How do you process emotions or thoughts without the world around you stopping to make sense? So, I do the only thing I know (and what a fucking useless way it is, dealing with these thoughts). I look into nothingness and just hope that this wave of emotion subsides. Will it away. Like you will away a wave of nausea. You stare, you swear, and ultimately, you snarl in frustration, and step out for fresh air.
I wander on the road outside the university. The air infused with fresh plant scents and the stale firecracker fumes is weirdly invigorating. The mind starts ticking. I mean, it's not complicated, right? We all mostly know our issues. The absentees have always been a difficult issue for me (isn't it for everyone?). So, I go one step beyond the obvious and start asking, what is it that you miss about them? What would you do differently?
There are a couple of answers. But I already know the truest one among them. The answer is 'time'. Having more of it, and thereby, more of them. Giving more of yourself to them. Spending more of it with each other. Feeling them with all your senses. Or if that's not possible, at least having this reassuring feeling that they are somewhere in the physical form, just not accessible to me right here, right now. But if you tried hard enough, you could reach them physically. And could touch them. Or maybe just see them. Even if from a distance.
Lost opportunities. Such is life. Lessons for the future can often be due to mistakes of the past and result into heartaches of a lifetime.
