After the Scars

It is a regular Sunday morning and I am at this beautiful place midst of mountains that’ll put the definition of green to shame. There are a few huts where we are, crowned tops of the typical red slaty plates, bamboo porch furniture, an outside fireplace, blue skies, clouds dancing as per the winds and sun playing hide and seek with either us or the mountains. It’s all so quiet, not the scary quiet a peaceful quiet. I almost feel like a criminal for playing and introducing 3 rounds and a sound by Blind Spot in the vibe. I close my eyes and the words, “…and the seasons will change us new, but you’re the best I’ve known, and you know me” are whispered to my soul carried by the wind. 

I smile on my own to myself and see a girl at a distance from me. I saw her last night as well, lying under the naked sky. She seemed too busy for me to give her a friendly acknowledging nod. It is just the two of us, strangers in this place. 

You know there’s this concept of a human library in Copenhagen, wherein people are the books, their stories, sit with a person they read out their stories to you. While being in Copenhagen seems like a long-stretched dream right now with the pandemic, I am improvising. This girl I am with is enjoying her solitude clearly and I don’t want to disturb her. So, I am going to imagine her story. Just as I prepare myself to dive into weaving a story, I see her smile. On her own for her own. This is no ordinary girl my mind laughs and says, and I must agree. She seems like someone who had to learn walking again, metaphorically of course. The fallen angel if I may take all the liberty of these freeing mountains surrounding us. 

 My mind is deep into assessing why did she fall in the first place? Love, career, dwindling aspirations, loss, fear seem like obvious paths to take yet this girl’s personality entwines with these simple possible reasons and feel so heavy, so complex. What if it was all? Piece by piece all mounting on her for one day her to collapse into a long abyss. I’d like to think it’s that. 

Love that might have seemed timely at the time but was timeless and still flutters in the locked corner of the heart. A career that might have needed aid to climbing up and above, and she failed on every occasion to provide to that. Dwindling aspirations that might have seemed too time-sensitive, and too pernicious to carry on with. Loss, of hope that once might have been enrapturing and now was mere debilitating. Fear, fear of mediocrity? Fear of living like a conventional conformist despite having the potential to create a niche of the eccentricity of her own.

Constructing her story, I almost forgot she was still around. She is at the centre of the bullpen of these huts we’re residing in. One hand in pocket another carrying a tall glass of juice (…or was it a holiday cigarette? It shall remain a mystery). It was almost as if she was commanding everything around and yet setting them free, even the wind and the sun, I swear!

My mind having fun of its own broke into an attempt of being Roy Orbison, going, “…you look lovely as can be. Are you lonely just like me?”. If I were to give in to the playfulness of my mind, I guess even I’d break into the song for this fallen angel.

Now to the next part of the story, what would the journey of reassembling have looked like? It reminds me of that question from my days of preparing for competitive exams, demolition man (and a lot of its variations). So, every time a hardworking mason puts bricks together to build a wall a demolition man comes and demolishes half of what was built. The route to recovery might have been something like that, two steps ahead and four steps back. For how much time? 6 months? A year? TWO Years!? 

But what I can say from the look of bravado, she’s finally fine. Revived, if you may.

As I was about to put back the book of this human, Honey, the caretaker shouted, ‘Lunch time’. Talk about ironic Honey not once in my stay here has served something sweet neither has, he spoken sweetly. Anyway, finally, we’re seated eyeball to eyeball at the lunch table, more like a park picnic table. The girl gives me an acknowledging nod and we proceed with eating. I am so tempted to talk to her so much so my confusion has birthed a black figure on my left shoulder and a white on the right (I didn’t say an angel and the devil, you thought about it first, you!). The black pulling my ear and shouting do it, talk and the white one whispering mind your own business. 

Come evening the mountain tops are aureate now, the sun making its grand exit, the wind no more frolicsome it is chilly. My mind seemed to have lost its voice like a mother busy preparing dinner. I am at the central fireplace; honey is building fire. The girl walks in and rests on one of the many chairs surrounding the source of heat in this chilly now night. 

And then nothing.

There’s fire, stars shining right above us, and two women enjoying their respective solitudes as Edith Piaf sings “…give your heart and soul to me and life will always be La vie en rose”.