Keep Driving

I am sitting inside an auto rickshaw in Mumbai, wishing I could forever sit inside it without ever stepping out. Jump the signals, drive fast, and take me to my destination. Of course, the driver doesn't listen. So I get down. I am taking a flight back home. At the security check, the cop can see me already dreading life without internet for the next two hours. I don't have the strength to entertain my own thoughts anymore. It's okay. I will be home by the end of it. Just a matter of a few hours, I convince myself. Home. Or a couple of decades. Whichever is faster.

I often wonder what extreme sadness is. Is it the death of a loved one that affects you so much that your feet stop responding? You just lie down on your bed and never want to get up. Or is it killing your dream with your own hands, and that changes you as a person? You are not that chubby, bubbly, happy, lively character that you used to be. Is extreme sadness just a sudden, momentary thing or is it lifelong misery? Does it get over in a year, or do you suffer alone for the rest of your life with no one to share it with? And can it ever be shared? I don't know.

Is extreme sadness the feeling that you get when you realize nothing is going your way and then you think of changing as a person from the next day onwards? And the bloody next day comes, and you are the same. And you don't feel like changing yourself as a person. And you are okay with it until the next time the same realization hits you again. And the process continues. Till you become numb. Is that extreme?

I don't know the answer to any of this. But I often wonder. Wondering is the most amazing thing, I feel. You can create any number of imaginary scenarios and secretly relate to them. No one can know. And you can cry thinking about it or feel extremely joyful. Again, no one would know. It's like feeling emotions that you might never ever actually feel. Wonder is perhaps my favorite word too. I wonder what I would do without wondering.

Does anyone remember Bhupen Hazarika? The guy who sang Ganga Behti Ho Kyun? What a legend. I know he died a while ago, but recently, I was reading something about him, and it made me nostalgic. Dil Hoom Hoom Kare was the first song that used to play on the radio in the morning, and for some reason, it played throughout my entire childhood. I hated the guy so much back then, but now when I listen to that song, I am almost choking up. It felt like he shaped my childhood while all he did was be a background score when I was brushing my teeth at 7 am and getting ready for another crappy day at school. I miss Bhupen Hazarika. It feels like if someone told me that song would play at 7 am tomorrow, I might just wake up. And I haven't woken up at 7 in the morning since God knows when. It's a slow day when you wake up at 7.

It's crazy how one day time passes so slowly as if it's testing your patience, and you are literally watching the clock ticking and it's moving but it's not moving. And the next day, six months have passed. And you are like, what? How? Where was I? And between these days, you live, unknowingly perhaps, unwillingly maybe, but you do. All the sadness and joy and happiness and misery and pity and every other feeling, all wrapped up in this time period. The day you were born and today. The brackets of life that limit you. You can't go beyond this. These are the only rules.

I think I have now understood one thing. Nothing will ever be sufficient, be it happiness or sadness. You can never say you are at your happiest or saddest because life doesn't give a damn about what you think. It can keep firing happy bullets at you until your humblebrag just becomes total brag, and then if life wants to, it can drop sadness explosives on you as well. Life is bipolar, and I seriously think it should visit a therapist once in a while.

The flight lands. I parked my car at the airport two days ago. I walk towards the parking, as slowly as I can, trying to procrastinate the present. I hope for the car to not be there. I hope for most things in life to not be there. But it's there. Everything is there. I start driving. What other choice do I have anyway!

It's raining right now. The trees have fallen, and there won't be new ones. They were coming in our way, so nature decided to help us and uproot them all. Some day the trees will ask for help, and we will be uprooted. I think that's how it works. I drive the car wishing I could forever drive it without ever stepping out.

Is thinking this extreme sadness?