The train has finally picked up speed. The soothing, rhythmic
motion has overcome the inertia. It has taken me months to get here. To even
get to this place where writing about this does not feel like a call for
attention. A superfluous attempt.
Leaving is not new to me. To those that stay, leaving is
always a means of escape; those that leave will always tell you that they had
to. Without debating the truth of either, leaving is perhaps the toughest call
you will make. Inertia will perhaps truly characterize each of those baited-breath moments before you
leave. You will wait for something to happen, something that will goad you into action, or inaction, or anything. Then you will leave. Sometimes, so that you can come back, content that
you left. Sometimes, so that you can find new shores. Sometimes simply so that
you can leave.
I leave a sizable chunk of my life and a done up apartment
behind in Kolkata today. For the first time in years, I knowingly wanted to
keep alive a thread of attachment in the lanes I’m forgoing for another. An
apartment that is set up as home. For those who wander to find home, will
always want to keep whatever semblance they can find of it. Going through life and my older posts
sometimes makes me chuckle at my own search. Perhaps the knowledge that there
is one I can call my own is a comfort. Perhaps it is only another throbbing
thread of attachment kept alive for the one place I’ve always come back to; or
wanted to. Time and again.
As life tossed everything I knew to be true and over time grew
familiar and comfortable with, in the course of a few bad months and a few more
worse instances of inertia, some that were mine, some that I took upon myself,
the only realization that has stayed is that of self, and that it is to be
valued and preserved over all else. Time tests everything. And many that you
thought were failsafe will fail. Some, quite to your surprise and distaste. You
will mourn the loss; you will then, at some point again, pick up the pieces and
build new forts and cities. Inertia is only a static state of being; a stagnant
one at that. New chapters and new stories will demand telling. And you ruffle
through the pages before you move on to the next chapter. But move on, you
will. To the next halt. And then another!
:)
As I leave, here’s to the memory of that inertia. You did me
no good. But without you, I would not again so badly have welcomed the
restlessness. Here’s to each of my friends who became and to each that didn’t
stay; you know who you are. Here’s to all those bonds I unmade over the last
few months, here’s to the few new ones I made. Here’s to the life I lived and
loved and here’s to the new one I’m about to embrace. Here's to all the times I stayed, and all the times I packed up and left. Here’s to all those posts in my drafts that did not make it, here’s to this one.
