wondering

I sit here feeling like a brown leaf floating with the river. Drowning under its waves and resurfacing once in a while to feel the warm sunlight again and to see the blue sky and the clouds floating across it and then I drown again under those waves stronger than me. This makes me feel like I am aimless and that I am being dragged with the river against my will. These are times when I tell myself,"I used to be green and colourful and I used to have a purpose." Now things are still. My life moves like a snail while my day breezes past me like an F1 car! I stand perplexed at the complexity of it all.

I sit all by myself in the open space of Caferina looking over Durbar Marg, with a novel in my hand sipping coffee and watching people and cars roll by.I see young people and old people and those in between. Somewhere between them I find myself stuck. Unable to move though I am free as a lark. I know what I want to do now. This, I say, will give a purpose to my life. I wonder again, "Is it all that I want?" "Will it make me complete?" "What about other things then?" "Will Ms.Y wait for me or would she disappear in the crowd while I am gone achieving what I expect to make my life purposeful?" "Would I be loved again?" "Will there still be a hole in my life even after feeling purposeful?" I light another cigarette and inhale it deep letting the nicotine kick start the flow of juices deep inside my brains cells making me feel light for a fleeting moment and then the moment is gone. 

Winding down the years gone by I find myself thinking about myself in New York, roughly two years ago. That was the only time in my life when I felt alive. The city felt like home to me. I was never awed by the big city. I absolutely loved it, still do, and always will. To me New York felt as though the energy in me had taken its form as a city. It was me and I was it. I was one with it. Full of life, energy, enthusiasm, and ambitions. I remember telling myself while walking around NY,"People in NY need to put a smile on their faces!" not knowing that it was here that my lights were going to be put out soon and with such brutal force that it would have me reeling on my already bleeding knees and begging for life; that it was here that death would be the only indulgence of my mind(passively in the beginning and actively towards the end) for the next year and half almost killing me in the end.

"How do you like NY?" was the first question I was asked. I did not know what to say as I made my way out of JFK and I did not answer.Being able to speak my mind was not my forte then. How I wished it was! "It's just the same. Its a place just like any other with buildings and streets," quipped the person who had come to pick me up. I thought it made sense and left it at that.

Being thrown into a new place is not a new feeling to me. I have been in Mumbai for my Bachelors and in Haryana and Delhi during my Masters. NY though happened to be a horse of a  different breed  altogether( considering all the factors which were mini storms that would take up the form of a destructive hurricane in my life). In NY everything is fiercer-from life to jobs to academic competition. The final one being the one that I had to endure. Everyday was a struggle with inferiority complex combined with having to deal with the double edged sword of having a close relative living right there in New Jersey and working in Manhattan, just a fifteen minute walk from my dorm apartment, and a relationship that was draining me lifeless.

Having my own room was the closest I have ever come to being able to call anything my own and it was one of the few things I loved while living in NY. Going grocery shopping on my own and learning to cook for myself were the first of the few liberating experiences of independence I have ever had. It was blissful though first few weeks of cooking was not so pleasant as I had to eat whatever the end product of my cooking turned out to be like. I was on my own and I was my own man. I had never been more happier. Life had never felt more fuller and more rewarding!

Well, nothing lasts forever. I learnt it the harshest way possible. The exuberance and the spring in my feet were soon replaced by feeling of endless sadness and of being lost without someone at arms' reach to whom I could have turned to for help or assistance. Weekends were occupied by visiting my relative and her boyfriend and returning to my dorm with a heavy heart, a disturbed mind, and an existence filled with rage. I had spent my life after my high school abroad and most of my friends were temporary and I never got a chance to bond with them as much as I would have liked so I never reached out to anyone. Not only that I never reached out to anyone I did not even think of anyone when I was down. I was just sick and I never came to know what was eating me up until it was too late to do anything about it. I was already sucked in the quagmire of depression and hopelessness before I realised what was happening to me. What happened is history now and need not be made public. Few people know about it but none know the entire truth. I now prefer to leave it at that until I am courageous enough to dig up graves of my misery again.

Two years sInce I touched down at JFK life is a fog dimmed morning. I do not like to go slow and I cannot risk speeding too much. Life is more full of questions, the answers to which lay in the future unseen. Life is not a mundane routine that flows unconsciously but a quest for answers. Life is not a dull passage of day that flows into the night and back and forth again but not pleasantly interesting either. Life is not smooth sailing but a thrills and chills filled roller-coaster ride now. It is an uphill climb-the steepest that I have faced in my life. And all I have for my parting words are,"I do not need pity nor sympathy laden love. It is worthless to me. All I need is compassion and understanding and a bit more empathy. All I need is you and your love and for you to hold me through the storm." Asking you of this makes me feel like a beggar but I needed to say all of this to you,  and i hope you were listening to me. And I wonder."Was it any good that I confessed this to you and the whole world?" All I can do is wonder and I am wondering......