A Writing Exercise

Waking up every day is without a comparative these days. I could have written earlier, “the beating of my heart was in sync with the 6.40 am train that passed my house, audible even from the 14^th floor”. But even when living in Mahim that would have been an exaggeration. I struggle to find ways to describe the contours of a day these days, because I don’t stop to see them anymore. When I force open a word window (for which I have unwittingly paid 7k this year, as auto-debited to much a rude shock yesterday) I feel like a 10^th standard Hindi board exam paper has been pushed towards my nose and I have no choice but to write a letter to the Dholakpur Municipal Council about the importance of garbage segregation. My scramble for the right words in a foreign language, only to come across as rudimentary and forced, seems about the same.

I would have been gentler to myself had English been my second language, but for kids like me, it holds the unique position of being the only foreign mother tongue. I think in English, but with a Marathi accent. If I speak, think, consume literature in just one language, why does it evade me so? Writing felt for the longest, the only thing I knew to do and do well. The only thing, given any task, I could wriggle my way through willingly. Here is a list of things I do not know to describe anymore:

1. How to recognize a person the moment they walk in without having to turn your head, a function only of how they smell and maybe how their feet clang while walking.

2. The black walls of Antisocial, somehow making it bigger and smaller at the same time, packed with every single person I could fall in love with just because the music and the lights do their job very well.

3. My body when it jolts me awake with a racing heart and a desire to throw-up every morning, caused by the firm belief that every decision in the last six months has been the wrong one, and my hapless attempts at reining in my breathing by counting – 4 counts inhale, 5 counts exhale, 4 counts pause.

4. My friend Kruttika’s laugh, or how she makes this face when she eats something in a way that consumes her, and not the other way round.

5. The beauty parlour in my nani’s neighborhood that was a tall matchbox with little maze-like sections for nails and hair and waxing, and its sudden gentrification into a hip new salon that had a complimentary snack tray for customers? Hello?

6. Waking up at 6.30, going to the gym from 7 to 8, coming home at 8.30, getting ready for office, leaving at 9, walking to the station, timing that walk to gamify the whole thing, keeping an eye on the step count, taking the 9.17 local from Goregaon to Lower Parel, walking from LP station to Peninsula Chambers, stopping to pet the cat with heterochromia on the way, maybe a Starbucks cold brew, clocking in at 10.30ish, clocking out at 9ish, waiting for it to be 9.30 so I can take a free cab home. Working till later on some days.

7. How when Sid Sriram sings, his alaaps have a tinge of that American accent in them.

8. My aaji’s feet swollen to resemble yams cased in slippers, purple and black with tiny toenails sticking out.

9. A missed video call notification from your best friends, that you saw ring fully in front of you and did nothing about.

10. The feeling that your best years are passing you by in a way that you realised you missed your stop because you fell asleep tugging to your bag, and wearing the back on your stomach and getting down at the next station and taking the train in the opposite direction.

I’m out of things to say. I shall try again next week.

[Cat with Heterochromia]