Stones in my overcoat pockets by Richa Sharma
Imagine sinking when you know how to swim.
Imagine sinking when you know how to swim. Worse still, imagine sinking because temporarily your memory of the fact that you can swim has been taken away from you. You retain your capabilities to emerge safely ashore, but your hands and feet are tied down. Imagine that your mouth has been choked shut and water around you is fast filling into your nostrils and thence, weighing down upon your lungs. You are sinking further now. Imagine yelling at the top of your voice but there is no sound. No one has heard you yet. In fact, the more you yell and call for help, the more every conceivable living entity drifts apart from you.
Busy as we all are, with respective pre-occupations of ours, let’s just take a moment here and again get back to imagining.
What would the fiercely brilliant and gorgeous Virginia Woolf have been thinking when she was stuffing her pockets with rocks? What must have the knowledge of an imminent end to everything. Things one fought for, the quest for equality, the immense, fragmented, deeply soiled love that one harbored for so many different men and women, over many years, felt like?
What must it feel to know that it was going to be death by water, sealed, validated and materialized by stones?
Panic and anxiety sometimes feel like all of that has been written above and sometimes beyond.
On sunny days, it means sitting safely on the shore.. But not being able to let go of the stones in the pockets of your overcoat. For just in case you might need them. Again.
