Long Ago
I have been carrying you around like water in my palms.
March longs for September.
I am here, between these months, thinking about how elevators are a tragedy; it is the reason why people often forget we aren’t on the ground.
I have been practicing remembering you like my namaz.
Some people believe it’s a violent religion.
The days become long-winded — like the monkey toy I had when I was younger. The one where you had to twist the key for a while, and then it dances for you. And when the spring comes un-winded to an end, the monkey slows down. That is how it is.
Something tells me we are not in different places.
I had this funny incident the past day. One of my friends tells me he is serious about going to Saturn. I am too humble; I believe him. I asked him worriedly, “how will you write to me, then?” He laughs and says without hesitation: “Why would I write to you?”
To some extent, we are so free that even the planets obey us. And we are free to forget too. The absurdity of living, a concept which I couldn’t get rid of for these past months, exists within you and me — we who have trouble forgetting. To expand here means to explode. It is why we can’t measure the universe.
I have rotated around your hips, traced the trajectory of your motion, and waited for another revolution to bring me in your transit. Do you do the same too? If I don’t orbit to you today, I will be responsible for another thing that breaks us.
I hear this is what produces asteroids in space.
I feel like you are much closer to me.
There will be an eclipse when we cross paths again.
The other day, I was sifting through television, and I came across a news piece about Indian disputes with surrounding countries, and how the sea would stay silent after the last gunfire.
I say nothing. I didn’t eat lunch that day. Instead, I visited this little Neem grove behind my apartment. It is nothing much, but I visit when the days become too difficult. And for a while, it is only me there. And I can feel the sun trying to heat me. Suddenly, I feel like I walked past the border of another country. There are too many arrows held at me. I am tired of holding my hands over my head.
Next week, I notice how the news becomes ‘old’ again. What’s left are expectant people hoping something louder happens next. What I mean is, you are like the borders of India. You are the television-set on full-volume and the mass turmoil too. I am ashamed to set foot in your territory. All the streets that you are made of screams of poverty. The peace we try to keep seems delayed violence. You speak to me, and all I hear are soldier’s feet. You stand like the great wall of china, and yet, in truth, there is no one attacking you. I want to give you all the land you need, just so that you will stay quiet.
You weren’t an immediate threat to anyone. Unlike the borders of this country, you never showed symptoms of wanting to break apart. You left when you knew better. So the next time you burst out on the telephone, I will stop picturing you as asteroids.
My friend will skip across planets and invent machinery that will catapult him further away. He doesn’t realize he has stopped orbiting a long time ago.
I suppose he is waiting to collapse.
One day, he will pause and try to look for me. Perhaps, he will see me again. Maybe, he will understand that how you saw me towards the end.
Some day, I will see myself from a different planet and only then realize how distant I have become.
I am sorry for being this way.
Somewhere, you became a land that occupied too much space, and I became someone who did not know what to build for you. So I let my people fight and mistake silence for peace. I will let the written memories of you be the Quran because we are all violent sometimes.
You have fenced such a large part of you from me, that when our lips meet, I accept that the barbs wires would split my tongue.
When places begin losing their geography, we mark them by landmarks. You ask me if I know a landmark for you, I shrug. I don’t.
On the day I decided we won’t see each other again, I held you like my plastic monkey toy. I am sorry we didn’t work despite spinning the keys. I think we were witnessing the last moments of that performance. I don’t twist the keys again. I know you are tired.
This world has too many borders and too few countries. We were no different.
You were my namaz, and when kneeling down became an act of showing love, I knew it was better to stand.
The both of us are lonely — still orbiting places that have lost their essence of what holds them. We made planets of places that were too small in the first place. My friend seems lonely, too. I think we made borders because we are afraid of being touched. Afraid that when you do, our skins will change again. Let me consume all regions, and name all continents by the name of one state, let me resurrect my skin with a newer constitution, so you won’t have to raise your arms against me. So when you speak, you won’t sound like you have just crossed another border.
If you think about it, our civilization has modelled satellites to take pictures and predict the weather. So when it rains, all my men keep their palms above their heads. It is to remind ourselves we are still not gone.
The traffic outside wants to tear apart my home.
My mother has a habit of singing at full pitch when no one is at home.
My television is not loud enough today.
Perhaps, being loud is a cure for us.
For every day I don’t speak in class, they blame me for being too silent. I understand that now.
Here I am again, in the elevator waiting for the ground floor. When it arrives, I don’t step out. I let it take me back.
I stare at my palms, and for a moment, I am surprised. They don’t have water in them.
