Garden of Grief

Grief is a tiny balcony in the house called the past. Once you are done wandering through the rest of the house, you sit down quietly, holding the various year-shaped cushions, and stare at the balcony. Should I check it out? No, it will be the same. Has the garden on that balcony died? Or has it flourished since I last visited it a couple of years ago? I am not sure. You peek through a curtain to look at the balcony. Your little memory plants now have little memory flowers. The garden of grief is blooming. It's getting water from somewhere. Eyes, maybe. You can't resist. You try plucking a flower from the window without stepping onto the balcony. Carefully. I can't sit here all day, you tell yourself. Carefully. The flower is in your hand. The plants have surrounded you. The balcony has become the house. The rooms have now become the tiny balconies in the house called grief. You have traveled through time in the land of nothing. You can't go back. You don't want to go back.

A visual keeps coming back to my mind. I am twelve, maybe. It's the month of May. Summer vacations are a week away. It's 4 pm, and I am still in school, memorizing a poem. My school has decided to send me to a poem-reciting competition, which is happening the next day. It's a Hindi poem called "Pathik" (traveler). The school principal, herself, is helping me with the expressions. I used to have expressions on my face back then, which could be molded as per anyone's requirement. With age, they went away. She wants me to win. She wants her school to win. I am not sure whether I wanted to win or not. I don't remember. But with the kind of attitude I have in life, I think I just wanted to be there.

The competition was happening at a different school, on the south side of Delhi. I, of course, didn't win. I came second. Not bad. But what I did win was an essay writing competition happening at the same venue. That, too, I couldn't have won had the topic not been abstract. We had to write an essay on "Yesterday." And so I wrote about everything that happened to me the previous day. The principal seemed very happy until she found out about the contents of that essay, where I wrote about how she was having lunch while I was standing in her room, memorizing the poem. On our way back from the venue, she dropped me off 200 meters away from my home. We didn't talk the entire journey. However, the visual that keeps coming back to me is that 200-meter walk. I took a longer route home, and for the entire half an hour of that walk, I was reciting the poem non-stop. Like a lunatic. From start to end. Over and over again. Each version sounded exactly like the last one. Like a broken record. In my visual, I remember everything being completely silent. There is nobody on the road; the houses are empty, the birds have flown away. It's just me and my loud recitation of the poem. Strange indeed. That was also the last time I saw that principal. During the vacations, I switched schools as our family had to relocate to another part of Delhi. That lonely walk, however, for some odd reason, is etched in my mind.

अपने भी विमुख पराए बन कर

आँखों के सन्मुख आएँगे

पग-पग पर घोर निराशा के

काले बादल छा जाएँगे

तब अपने एकाकी-पन में

पथ भूल न जाना पथिक कहीं!

I have a good memory for bad memories. It's a superpower that I wish I did not have. If I had control over my brain, I would be formatting it every couple of years. Just keep the necessary memories and delete the rest. Of course, that's not possible. I put the poem flower back on the branch of the poem plant. The plant smiles at me and vanishes. It will be back again soon. For many years, I had wondered how there was nothing to grieve about in this story. But now, as I sit expressionless, typing it all away, having not recited a poem loudly since, I realize that the person I am grieving for could be me. How self-centered! The temptation to pluck other flowers is quite strong. There is a huge tree as well, at the back of this garden, smiling at me. It has been smiling at me for many years now. And I have been avoiding it for many years. Not a single flower has been plucked from that tree. I wish to visit it someday. Not today, I tell myself before taking the time taxi back to the present. "Where are you? It's Saturday night," my friend texts me. "In the balcony," I reply. For the time being, at least.