Check out 16 Return-To-Work Programs In India For Ambitious Women Like You!
Sometimes, we travel to places not with our bodies, but with our minds. This is a story of one such travel.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/pannoniusrex/13540819134
Long ago, while on the metro, I was seated next to a middle-aged, well-dressed woman who had a small book open, and was scribbling into it at a steady pace. My curiosity had gotten the better of me and I stared at her without realizing I was.
You see, I love people-watching. I love observing their little quirks, what makes them tick, and one thing leads to another and I’m building tragic love stories into their lives or creating grander versions of where they came from and how the world will surprise them tomorrow. They didn’t call me a dreamer for nothing I suppose!
So, the lady looked up and out the window, pursed her lips, squinted her eyes into a distance and furrowed her brow. There really was nothing out there to see, but the gray stony walls of the underground tunnel. But she stared into the distance, alright. I watched her stare into the distance. Without a warning, she looked at my reflection in the glass window and smiled at me. Instinctively, I smiled back, and averted my eyes. Embarrassed at being caught staring, embarrassed for my own wild dreams for her.
She turned her neck back at me and asked me in a soft, simple voice.
“Where are we? I lost track of time.”
I mumbled the station and glanced up at the map to help me out, because I was not keeping track myself, since I had to get off at the last stop anyway. I had no idea why she explained herself, but she did.
“I write things down of the places I don’t want to go to any more, and then I staple them down, so I don’t accidentally go there.”
I nod my head, like that made perfect sense. As an adult, at once confused and on the verge of shame as I felt an intruder into her mind-space, and making what I think was a half-baked attempt to look nonchalant. Yet, there was that inquisitive child in me who wanted answers. What did she mean? Places? What places? Like travel? She didn’t look like she was travelling? Except from work, just like the rest of us? What are these places that she doesn’t want to go to anymore?
What places? Like travel? She didn’t look like she was travelling?…What are these places that she doesn’t want to go to anymore?
…and without a blink, all of these questions steadily poured out of my wide brown eyes. The one outlier in my body language that I can most likely live without, but cannot. It’s a curse and a blessing, depending on the answers I get from the recipients I aim those eyes at. This time it was a blessing, because she smiled again, a knowing smile, with her nose crinkling at the corners where her blue eyes met and drew themselves back into laughing lines, clear crows feet that belied the age that the rest of her assured.
Damn those eyes. They don’t call them windows to our soul for nothing.
She started speaking, low and clear, and drifting in and out of my path, like she was talking to no one in particular.
“There are places that our heart and mind take us to. Places that we don’t always want to go. Happy rolling hills and the meadows and the ferris wheels in the county fair, and the hot tub in our backyard, the family kitchen with the aromas of thanksgiving dinners, and the diaper smells mixed with baby formula during midnight. They are wonderful aren’t they?”
“Pleasant and happy memories, and flashes of life that wrote memoirs in our heart. The chapters by which we mark our lives in this journey. They don’t need reminders or jogs for us to bring back to our present and toss them around, play ball with them, then fold them neatly and tuck them away in their proper place, filed away for later references. Those are the places that we always want to go back to.”
I smile and nod at the steadiness with which she recounts them all, like she recited from a script, a well-worn script. One with dog ears and smudged pencil lines, and folded numerous times, going yellow with age.
“Then there are places that I don’t go anymore. You know the kind I am taking about.” She paused and looked at me with an eyebrow raised, and a smile that didn’t reach her eyes.
I sigh.
I knew where this conversation was going. I turn back at the window and stare out. Thinking back to the places that I didn’t want to go.
“Tears forming icicles, from harsh barren terrain. Without a living thing in sight. The places with such thick trees that they form a barricade hard to scale through. The kind of place where the only whisper is of the voice in your head that tells you repeatedly that you are alone and that no one will ever find you. Like when you are spinning on the top of that very same ferris wheel and everyone else has disappeared. Those places. I write those down and staple them down.”
“Does it help?”
“Mostly. If I go to the same place twice, I write, and then burn the paper. Symbolic, but it helps me. I never go to those places again.”
She shrugs. I look through her holding me down, yet failing.
“We are nomads. In our head. Yet, we are also survivors. We have to burn the bridges that we do not want to cross anymore.”
I nod and turn my misty eyes out towards the window.
“Try it sometime, I can tell you visit the same dark places a lot.” She whispers into my ear as she gets up and slides off the train, and gets lost in the crowd.
This post was first published here.
Pic credit: PannoniusRex (Used under a CC license)
Rads lives in the suburbs of Washington DC along with her husband, three kids and dog. Profiled on Her Story, she is an optometrist and a data analyst in previous years, and is now playing read more...
Women's Web is an open platform that publishes a diversity of views, individual posts do not necessarily represent the platform's views and opinions at all times.
Stay updated with our Weekly Newsletter or Daily Summary - or both!
Neena was the sole caregiver of Amma and though one would think that Amma was dependent on her, Neena felt otherwise.
Neena inhaled the aroma that emanated from the pan and took a deep breath. The aroma of cumin interspersed with butter transported her back to the modest kitchen in her native village. She could picture her father standing in the kitchen wearing his white crisp kurta as he made delectable concoctions for his only daughter.
Neena grew up in a home where both her parents worked together in tandem to keep the house up and running. She had a blissful childhood in her modest two-room house. The house was small but every nook and cranny gave her memories of a lifetime. Neena’s young heart imagined that her life would follow the same cheerful course. But how wrong she was!
When she was sixteen, the catastrophic clutches of destiny snatched away her parents. They passed away in a road accident and Neena was devastated. Relatives thronged her now gloomy house and soon it was decided that she should be married off.
Women today don’t want to be in a partnership that complicates their lives further. They need an equal partner with whom they can figure out life as a team, playing by each other’s strengths.
We all are familiar with that one annoying aunty who is more interested in our marital status than in the dessert counter at a wedding. But these aunties have somehow become obsolete now. Now they are replaced by men we have in our lives. Friends, family, and even work colleagues. It’s the men who are worried about why we are not saying yes to one among their clans. What is wrong with us? Aren’t we scared of dying alone? Like them?
A recent interaction with a guy friend of mine turned sour when he lectured me about how I would regret not getting married at the right time. He lectured that every event in our lives needs to be completed within a certain timeframe set by society else we are doomed. I wasn’t angry. I was just disappointed to realize that annoying aunties are rapidly doubling in our society. And they don’t just appear at weddings or family functions anymore. They are everywhere. They are the real pandemic.
Let’s examine this a little closer.
Please enter your email address