Drifting across, Childhood: Alternative 1
Read this as a conversation, a musing, a prompt, a cue, or just storytelling for no reason —
No reason, because there might not be coherence, but there certainly are stories. A story of moving away, but not about it — rather about everything else. About the childhood — girlhood, boyhood, family evening, or just a gush of wind with the dust. Let’s talk about these stories which make us not-adults.
It hits me each once in a while,
the realization — that once
at an exceedingly arbitrary point in life,
I moved away.
I moved away.
From who I was,
with each passing day,
each day but not so linear in that,
most probably not step by step (I would’ve seen it coming then, wouldn’t I?),
I think I moved away in leaps —
leaps in time, space and underlying emotions.
Not all these points were critical, turning, or divisive;
some looked like too similar a summer afternoon
to separate from the previous or the one after,
I probably would’ve lazed for a bit and slept in,
clueless how the perennial gully cricket team/teenage conversational cafe/animal activist group/fitness commune/philanthropists’ collective/event management team —
the all-in-one anti-adult congregation would just,
cease to exist.
This wouldn’t be about the change of ‘grounds’
because of a neighbouring aunty’s impatience-fuelled overreaction after four broken potted plants,
or an uncle’s overwhelmingly unreasonable anger for the sake of a few shattered windows.
This wouldn’t be like our made-up exam stress to get the new cricket bat after best scores (like that ever happened!),
or the summer visits to nani’s home,
when the missing would not be bothersome,
but looked forward to —
for the permanence of these evening rituals, a few streets away, was unquestionable.
Unbelievably unquestionable were tomorrows
(or maybe the lack of a personal understanding of death) —
when the permanence didn’t seem too daunting.
The ordinariness of wind,
mixed with a near-singular purpose
of existence;
if this was all there was —
no marks, medals, certificates, or crests,
no accounting of the spent hours per week, or
finding dividends through gross productivity,
so be it —
there lay better questions to make sense of;
when the heart’s content was a measure still beyond calibrations,
the rebels of an own kind — true to the rebellion.
This was it.
And one fine day,
I moved away.
But, did I?
