“Oh yes, another October went by... So what's the big deal with that? It will come to you next year.”
I have heard people talking in this manner, affirming — only to avoid mending a broken soul. What they never realise is that their words can dampen a charred ground, but they can never clear off the rubble.
Well, this shouldn't have bothered me in the first place. Then why would it bother anybody?
However, I broke down. Tears didn't swell up in my eyes. I kept cancelling plans over WhatsApp texts, and my fingers shuddered in a white static noise that only I could hear. People affirmed, they enquired after my health half-heartedly, my cats dozed into the death of October.
My mother kept asking me questions. They came my way and bounced back away from my laptop screen, which dimly dazzled in the halo of pending assignments my mind cannot comprehend anymore.
Dead leaves rustled on the damp street across my house. I kept looking at the clock, counting each minute plunging into a time warp that doesn't make sense to me. A fading desire to indulge in a bowl of warm fancy food faded in the backdrop, as a man scrubbed my bathroom floor rigorously.
So I chewed the soap bar and swallowed lumps of it.
Blobs dried in the corners of my eyes, and I peeled them off. The air smelled fishy, as my cats hissed at each other while licking their bowls.
I rolled over the bed. Work still kept blinking against my back. My belly growled, and I washed it up with my saliva. Fever settled on my skin and bones. My throat ached with pain, and the pain reminded me of you. Did I ache for you?
This reclusive October refused to embrace me and left me with so many questions still hanging like a loose thread. My room echoed with your voice, but in the corner I saw a phantom of my yesterday.
I kept shrinking, shrinking to the point from which I cannot come back home. The lights wriggled, the festival didn't reach my courtyard, glaring headlights of the passing cars scanned through my dark room, almost setting it on fire.
I see through the vacant lot that covered my yesterday with the weeping willow of my father's planted oasis. The Durga bedi cracked under the weight of this agony.
I tried to tell about the stories of Durga Pujo that happened nearly a decade ago. Instead, I said, “You know the Pujo doesn't feel the same anymore.”
I pretend to be fine. Fine with my work, with my life, the friends I have, the family I survive with... But I touch my face in the hope of mangling it violently.
I read my favourite author, who once said in her essay to find joy in the saddest places.
As I did, I only saw my vandalised corpse, lying like foliage.
So quiet.
So peaceful.
I smiled through everyone's lies. I crave to strangle each one of them with my existence.
October sighed and went by. Punishing me for my incomprehensible strata.
I turned away in my bed, sick with fever and pain shooting up from my ankle.
I long. Long. Long for Hysteria.
— Indira :)
