Stepping Back
If not for the extra class, I would’ve reached home by now but not today. Today is a different struggle for existence. Struggle to find a spot to hang on from the micro’s doorway. But first, it’s a run to Ratna Park before the last micro leaves. One might say I could’ve ‘pathao-ed’ myself but, you know, student life aka broke life.
It would’ve not been a big deal getting to Ratna Park if it weren’t for all the people leaving after office or going for a night out, as it was the weekend, crowding the way. Worse are the people who don’t fall into either category, the ones who like to stand at a spot and do nothing. ‘Why can’t these people go on with their lives instead of crowding the streets?’ or so I thought. For now, it’s a game of sliding between and figuring out a path of least disturbance among the slow people. It’s no less than completing a full parkour course or hiking in an uncharted forest. And if you somehow manage to get close to Ratna Park unscathed, it’s getting over the overpass that’s the final straw.
The already narrowed path, through which people from four different directions cross, further narrowed by people looking over the overpass onto the slow-moving traffic almost as if they were mesmerized by some spell cast on them. I always hated these kinds of people. Standing in the middle of the dust and smog of the valley, staring at seemingly nothing but lines of metallic boxes coughing out smoke slowing in turn choking us to death. I always wondered where these people came from and if they really didn’t have anything to do with their lives. Like how boring your life is that you would rather spend it staring at some vehicles going by instead of doing anything else. On any other day, I would have simply ignored these people and moved on. But today has been unlike any other day. From getting my first ‘A-’ on a lab report to winning a college football game for the first time today has been one of the best days in the past few months. For some reason, it seems that the forces of the universe have decided to nudge me over to a new path in life. So, like every hypocritical person in the world, I decided to just stay there, stand on the overpass and watch things as they go by.
I start by watching the cars and bikes go by, the yellow headlights signifying the stars as the blacktopped roads make up the night sky. I start noticing the small things, the ditch in the middle of the footpath, the streetlight that doesn’t work, the roots of a once mighty tree that now causes people who don’t notice it to stub their toe. I actually see people as people with actual lives. The old woman taking her time while the crowd rushes reminds me of my grandma. The kid outside the park playing with a twig reminds me of Tagore’s poem ‘Playthings’ and the last few lines from it which summarize the dilemma of every adult.
“(Child) With whatever you find you create your glad games, I spend both my time and my strength over things I never can obtain. In my frail canoe, I struggle to cross the sea of desire, and forget that I too am playing a game.”
The mother carrying her infant on her back while scolding her other slightly older kid for refusing to walk reminds me of my loving mother. I guess that’s how every mother’s love is, harsh at times but full of pure kindness. The cyclist struggling to cross the intersection in the midst of the fast-moving traffic reminds me of my own days back in Chitwan when I used to sweep through the hordes of traffic on an old bicycle fueled with nothing but spicy chatpate. Every person I see in this moment I can relate them to a part of my life. This exercise of stepping back from the rush takes me back to my school days when I sometimes used to stop all the gossiping and go sit at one corner of the classroom and watch as my fellows went on with their gossip without a care in the world. It was at those moments that I would wonder about the purpose of my presence in this world about my contribution to the increasing entropy of the universe.
I’m not done thinking things through when a college student rushing home from class ends up stubbing his foot on the remains of the roots I saw earlier however unlike me, he’s not intending on stopping before he reaches home. At that moment it came to me as a wave of realization, we as humans are different and not that different from one another. Simply put, we are all different particles in a travelling wave that differ in phase simply going through the crests and troughs of life until we eventually dampen out.
