July firsts

Do you remember our second night: the quiver in my step, the disbelief in my senses and the hours terrified?

Do you remember our first night: caught between no roof to sleep under and no friend to go beside; building forts out of white sheets and black backpacks on bunk beds?

Do you remember our second night: battling the rain and swimming with suitcases; the flooded pavements were a sight slight better than the gloomy apartment?

Do you remember our first night: making conversations with strangers was easier than I had been given to think?

Do you remember our second night: I was anxious and afraid for I hadn’t known you enough?

Mumbai, it has been a hell of a year.

4:26AM

The day breaks early today with colours incandescent.

The open skies of the open terrace breathe life into me, and I find purpose again.

‘Ode to Track Pants’

“Do you have a dress?” you ask.

“No, I don’t wear dresses,” I say.

“What will you wear to the club?”

“Track pants and t-shirt, of course.” I dismiss you.

“But you should wear a dress to a club!” you insist.

“You’re stereotyping. I can wear whatever I want to wear.”

“Do you own a dress?”

“No.”

“I am going to buy you one.”

“NO.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t like dresses. I’m a track-pants-person. I used to wear them to work too! I wear them everywhere.”

“Why don’t you like dresses?”

I stutter and stammer, wishing I could summon my guardian angel to put sensible words in my mouth so that I don’t communicate to you like a sack of potatoes.

“Why do you hate dressing up?” you relentlessly pursue.

“I dress up! I dress up.. once every quarter when I feel like it. I like being comfortable in the clothes that I wear and I only ever am comfortable in tracks and t-shirts.”

“Dresses make you feel uncomfortable?”

“I am conscious of my body, yes. It’s part of the reason.”

“You shouldn’t be. You should wear a dress. Let’s go shop for a dress.”

“I hate shopping.”

We don’t shop for a dress.

Nine days later, as I roam a shopping facility that a metropolitan city provides, I look at the rows and rows of clothes on either side of me and find the words that would’ve helped my case nine days before.

I don’t consider clothes an investment of time, energy and money necessary to my existence. I like the six t-shirts and three tracks I own. I do not receive commensurate returns from the investment made while ‘dressing up’. The four times a year that the returns are indeed favourable, I do ‘dress up’: I borrow and I get by.

Nine days later, as I roam a shopping facility that a metropolitan city provides, I come across a little black dress.

I would still wear tracks and t-shirts if I were possessing the type of body that would not make me self-conscious.

Nine days later, I own six t-shirts, three tracks and a dress; and four is still the number of times I am likely to find the aforementioned returns favourable.

Love Affairs In, With & After Nepal
India

‘Bliss point’

A final few hundred steps were climbed to believe that you can do anything, you can be anything, even if it is everything, even if it is nothing. You are okay.

Three thousand and five hundred steps and then three thousand and five hundred more were climbed to reach bliss point. There was hot tea, careless laughter and dumbfounded disbelief.

Three thousand and five hundred steps and then three thousand and five hundred more were climbed to reach bliss point. There was rain, there was hail and there was snow. There were clouds, mountains and a chimney stove. There wasn’t money, there wasn’t electricity and there wasn’t soap. There weren’t telephones, warm baths or fresh clothes. It was bliss point.

Three thousand steps were climbed to taste the sense of an ending (and a beginning).

Two thousand and some hundred steps were climbed to feel the limbs give up and the conversations with feet cease.

Twelve hundred steps were climbed to feel the lungs complain and the frustration pile up again.

The sun slid down the sky that threatened to tear the dark clouds asunder so that tears and fear threatened to magnanimously make their presence felt.

Two hundred and sixteen steps were climbed to realise that bliss does not come easily.

Little by little, a wise trekker once said.

Love Affairs In & With Nepal
India

‘Time’

The sun tan on my hands is akin to the memories in my heart – both perhaps will fade with time. Adrenaline no longer courses through my body as adventure no longer moves my feet – both certainly will be rekindled time and again.

The torn map in my hands is akin to the feelings in my heart – both perhaps seemed pivotal to my being at the start but neither certainly could plead its case over time. Blood no longer rushes to my head as 9.8 metre per second square no longer is the approximate rate at which my body is freely falling towards the earth – time had stood still and certainly will again.

Love Affairs In & With Nepal
India

6 months hence: Piertotum Locomotor

How can the sky be the limit when it in itself is limitless?

I laughed, I cried.

I fell, I flew.

I learned.

I grew.

35

But for thirty-five seconds,
Can I weave a harmless dream?
Of a place where tomorrow brings true,
That what today hopes to do.

Please for thirty-five seconds,
May I weave a harmless dream?
Of a place where I love you,
While the shooting stars streak across the endless grey and blue.

Time flew.
Some day I will too.

Sigh.