Rajendra Nagar — Feeling Dull

I watched as a cricket game was congregating outside of the community center we were hurdled in. I should have been paying more attention, but the discussion was in Kanada, and I couldn’t help but look — the meandering baby goats, the children far too young to be without their parents and the cars far too large to be traversing through the slum, the aging sign from Eid Mubarak, two wheelers haphazardly parked in every direction, and of course walas, selling everything from pani puri, to chai, to marigold flowers.

And truthfully, I was lost in my own thoughts. Pain at all I had been seeing, hearing, and feeling, and confusion about my role in all of it. Every moment I felt an ache in my heart, I tried to sit up strait, and not give into my emotions. Every time I felt water begin to fill my eyes, I breathed the dusty, carbon filled air, deep into my lungs.

When I turned back to the group, one of the women looked at me with concern. She pointed to me, then to my face. She proceeded to grab her own face, contorting it to look tired, confused, and upset. I tried laughing it off, but she grabbed my coworker and told her what I needed to hear.

“You always look so happy. But today you look dull….she wants to know if you had your lunch.”

She didn’t say it to be rude, or make me feel embarrassed. She looked at me inquisitively, mimicking eating food, with compassion and love.

She was right, of course. That afternoon, the love in my heart was as pale as my foreign skin, and they could see through it all. Next to the loud and bold pink, purple, and green saris, my tired heart paled in comparison. The colors which blossomed in every house in the slum’s alleyway, were absent in my face. And what made me even duller was the facade I wore.

I had no simple words or phrases I could say out loud that explained my confusion and sorrow.

“I should have had a larger lunch,” I finally said.

Satisfied with my lie, the women wobbled their heads in response, and we moved on with the day.