There are some instances in life that make you reflect not just on what you’re doing, but actually on who you are. Instances of these can come in any form – be it a random comment by a friend, a random shuffle through an old album, a phone call from your grandmother, or just a dream.
For me this morning, it was a piece of music, and the perspectives popping into my head were just… well, unsettling at the first glance, but somehow peaceful thereafter. I was on my way in to work, and I was listening to a favorite bit of music. Not the usual head banging rock and metal trash with the unmentionably disgusting lyrics. It was a simple piece of music, with pianos, violins, cellos, flutes and an assortment of drums, a la James Horner or Hans Zimmer or Mark Mancina or any of those highly underrated composers who don’t really get their fair share of praise which they deserve for their mind blowing works.
Anyway, this particular piece has always been one that truly transports me – to the point of making me realize that all that I do, all the people in my life, all the influences – all of these are just distractions after a point. The one thing constant in all of this is Me. And it’s not about being selfish either. It was more of a recognition of me being who I am – confusion et al. And the visions that this simple bit of music brought about in my mind were the stuff of the dreams of any philosopher worth his salt – or at least I’d like to think so.
For starters, I started thinking of the comfort I get from the simple things I do. Anything at all, in fact, including how on a dreary evening, I’ll go down to the bookstore and buy myself something to read. The way I sometimes suddenly wake up at 3 in the morning and instead of going back to sleep, I’ll walk onto my balcony and feel that cool, soothing breeze that seems to magically appear somewhere between midnight and dawn. The way I simply lie back on my bed and look out at the 4 o clock sun over the buildings to my west. The way, when I’m sad, I walk up to the sea shore, sit there and reflect on how far I’ve come. The times when I’m with friends when they’re all drunk and silly, and I realize that despite their faults, how much I actually care for them.
Times like those, and other times too.
Like the time when I used to be in school, and I’d go back to my village on holiday, and when everybody would be asleep, I’d take my cycle and pedal down those broken roads to the temple on the hill, lie under the trees in the copse by the riverside and hear the gurgling of the water by the rocks, occasionally interrupted by the roar of the air force jets flying overhead from the nearby base. How on the evenings there’d be a power cut, and I’d just drag a comfortable chair into the yard, sit there and look up at the winter sky, shimmering with stars like a velvet blanket. The sun rising at an impossible hour in the morning and falling straight onto my face, and me rolling the blanket up closer, rolling over and going back to sleep.
All this brought me to think about something I’ve never even wondered about before. Where will I be around forty to fifty years from now? And how is all this going to be? And the images in my head took a whole new turn – with me being 65 years old. I went back home, to the old house, in the old bedroom with the creaky fan spinning at a speed setting of 3. The house is empty; all my older relatives are gone. My cousin, the one person on my side of the family, is married off and gone, leaving me all alone in that big house with so many memories locked up inside. How would I react to something like that? How would I feel when I look up at the ceiling, and know that nobody is going to call me for evening tea, or switch on the TV in the next room. No phone ringing because there’s nobody to call, no dog barking in the yard… no life, except the rustle of the breeze through the trees outside.
Would I stay sane, or would I just go crazy?
And surprisingly, the answer was no. I just found myself thinking, what would I do next? And I just ended up getting off the bed and walking to the kitchen. Making myself some tea, reminiscing on the lazy evenings spent there and then walking down the road to the hill. Climbing the rock that was so much my anchor through my growing up years, sitting there thinking of where my old friends might be today, and what they might be doing. Reflecting on the vagaries, on the sands of time, and then after the moon comes up, climbing down and walking home. There’s a whole lot of things I could do right now, but I would simply choose to live. A complete life, lived by my own standards and principles, with my little joys, sorrows, failures and successes, tied up with those I love the most, yet independent in my own way.
There is a long way to go for all this to happen. The home fires still burn bright. I call up every so often to hear my sister chirp away on the phone, while the rest of the family takes turns to speak with me. The dog still barks in the background, the fan still squeaks. The neighborhood gossip mills are still alive. Old people moving on, new kids being born. And through it all, its that one grip of stability, the place where I can always be alone, but never lonely.
