Thursday, January 31, 2013
An incredible surge of emotions choke me. My throat keeps gurgling, as if this mammoth lava of emotions is struggling to erupt through my lungs, through my windpipe, bringing forth all that has been building up inside for days. Unnamed emotions, unnamed worries, stress, pressure, I can go on, trying to name that unnameable ‘thing’. Language fails me. I’m mute. I’m crying. As I rush out of the library to avoid being seen, I sit right outside. It’s almost dusk. The sun has just set. The sky is still colored with traces of the ‘dying’ sun. I stare at the pale orange sky against which stand these gigantic silhouetted silent trees. I don’t know their names. I haven’t had the time to look at them ever since I came here. But I pass them every time I leave the library to go home (or the one room where my life has been revolving around library books, computers, wires, chargers, smell of incense, of stale food cooked days ago, bedsheets, and laundry hamper, cushions and pillows, Skype windows and Google chats). As my mind races through all the thoughts that have been whirling in an endless loop, I look at the giant trees, and feel a sense of calm. A silence beyond all the madness of the world. They stand there, patient, still, silent and content.
The sun, the wind, the soil, the water – all that they need, all that they know. The sky changes color as I type my words, desperately trying to capture every emotion that is spilling out, afraid I will lose them, afraid I will not remember them. The evening has a different smell to it. The colors are changing fast. The pale orange brightened up a bit till it disappeared completely to give way to a pale blue. The silhouettes of the silent trees have become starker and more prominent. The street lamps glow and appear from here like urban, electronic glowworms, equally spaced along streets I walk every day. An invisible brush has put a broad black stroke across the sky, and it is dark. And cold. I sit here, outside the library, in between the trees and the rows of brightly lit, equally spaced desks inside. I am facing the trees that appear completely black in their fully silhouetted forms. My heart swells with love and gratitude. I feel a part of this universe, only because I let myself feel that way. Ten feet away from the drama of a stressful PhD program that awaits me inside the library, I am happy that I share this space and time with this setting sun, color-changing sky, and these magnificent, awe-inspiring trees. I blow a silent kiss to them. I imagine it’ll reach them in some form or the other.
