fading contours

 fading contours

recently i learned that not all silences have to be filled. one would think an introvert would be more familiar with this truth but there are some days when my ears feel like holes, not openings. the silence deafens and i feel unarmed and naked against this echoing lack of meaning.  i’ve only ever learnt to write letters of apology addressed to these silences, questioning the shadows of vulnerability that suffocate me ever so often. but not all of these silences have to be filled and the ones i do choose to fill - because it is, indeed, a choice - need not be met with words. 

this is what i’m afraid of: invasion. rigid boundaries, permeable boundaries - do these really mean anything different? is it not part of being human to be made and remade? to be invaded by others’ problems, to be burdened and burden? to make space and to take up space? the other day i was reminded that SPACE — the faraway building that hangs somewhere between a classroom and a cinema hall (perfect for history classes) — is actually an acronym. it stands for something. even space is invaded by other meanings and we claim to remain uncombined and untangled from the lives around us. lives, like hands, are meant to be intertwined after all. 

hands, like lives, are also meant to be painted, not just paint. in addition to adding the breath of colour to canvas and other souls, they also collect upon themselves every feeling the human every felt. the sting of a cut whose origin remains unknown, the hard parts that refuse to let up, and the mehendi on it that the girl painted on you with small, shaking fingers. they collect the sphere of smells in their warm centres. and today, the heavy henna on my left palm smells exactly like every other henna my palm ever embraced and i’m almost surprised that across my different worlds, this smell never changed. 

i made friends and i lost some. a few of them went bad, mostly the citrus friends. two pears that are soft and hard at the same time, an apple that was lovingly named "jitendar" by my roommate, and an orange ball of fluid supernovas slowly losing its vibrance to a decay of crimson. i blame it on the rain mostly, and the unfair expense of maintenance. 

somewhere between the glare of march and the rains of april, i stumbled into the me who finally justified what was so far an indescribable and yet formidable affection for literature. she came out on the wada road, right as i was passing by the social centre and brushed past with a whisper. themes. she left.perhaps, the infj part of me simply jumps out at any opportunity to categorise and label but sifting through my thoughts and indignations i found sixteen years’ worth of agreements; intertextuality, if you will. 

theme number one: defiance of social norms. admittedly, this was not much of a surprise since the philosophy hl on my term transcripts was a dead giveaway but you would be surprised to know how long i’ve been ignoring the signs. the norms in question are simple and omnipresent. being coherent, having reason, limiting oneself to a short-sighted set of ethics. the very fact of existing fulfils the requirement; which is why i prefer to exist between not wearing weather-appropriate clothes and asking a cheering crowd to please shut up. another unsurprising theme would be irony. 

every single object contains theme inside of it and lives are but compendiums of themes. recognising that v was in fact a bulletproof idea rather than flesh and blood, and that joan’s eating disorder was not merely a disorder of eating but a disorder of relationships, made me discover my own location in the plot of life. 

and thus came the final realisation. this: protagonists don’t exist without other side storylines. and in my life, i wouldn’t persist if i wasn’t constantly finding myself in others. i met my culture in a week meant as an introduction to unfamiliar visitors, the culture of dancing through awkward lyrics and of embracing the accents of voice and silhouettes that invade…  and if these encounters and invasions are, rather than contaminating, refining, then perhaps, i’m slowly learning how to be invaded.