I keep telling myself, I must be myself. In the lonely bus drive, in the later hours of work when the typing on the keyboard echoes through the large lobby, I keep listing the demerits of imitations when I am walking alone across the noisy, crowded street, and now as I focus on being myself I hate the hawker shouting from the roadside, I convince myself he is the posing intruder. The other time I keep searching the myself, as the sunshine goes brown in the evening over my roof, and the moon gets the color of ever more expensive silver I look for myself in the horizon, the distant me. Listening to the strangely soothing scissors playing over my head, sitting between the unending self images in the barber's shop, the idle I try to search for the image that resembles me the most.
As I board the bus I remember the mountain top, with the sun beating on the rock, and the Himalayas shining in the north-west, I place myself, only myself and just as myself in the solitude amongst the pine and just when I hear the amicable wind rustling through the woods, a sudden distraught feeling resembling anger surfaces and I aggressively resist the cacophony of the buses and sounds of their horns. I dwell upon the din and the din I realize is the plot to unsettle my insulation, a scheme to pierce through the blanket that I so laboriously adorn myself with. Then the anger recedes to give way to contemplation, on what I try to conserve? What I fear of losing? Why I must be the I? And what is the I that I must be?Amidst the search inwards, I dwell around and go back to the curving streams and the sinuous roads, where the voice of human intervention is consoling and heartening, I go back to the brook over which is the little blue bridge, over which I walked so often. I was a little boy and I planned to own the bridge someday, stop all traffic over it and throw stones into the river. The stone drops from the height of the bridge falls into the water and splatters into the relatively deeper waters of the river. “Splash…” , In the local bus an elderly man, grey hairs, and lean looks stands besides my seat. Tired from the day’s work I am reluctant to rise for him, I close the open book and very reluctantly, trying to resist the proclivity to rise, I get off the seat. Without premonition another tide of streaming questions barge at me, and again the fear of losing myself unveils from the smokescreen of cryptic thoughts. Do I miss the shining dew of the morning assembly, or the wild berries that I guzzled, what attracts me to these sincere solitudes, what makes me feel comfortable in a lonely bus travelling through a lonely road with me as its only passenger. At this thought, I shudder, I am lonely or I am a recluse.
Am I recluse, a loner? The inquiry demanded an answer, and I decided, the answer is a negative. A strong confident no removes any reasons to dig further. The wind from the window in the moving bus seems frolicsome as it plays with my hairs. The hairs need a cutting, I realized. A friend to wish a birthday to, a novel to read, a note to complete and a movie to watch, I quickly listed out the plans for the next day, and thought of the valley that went deep down, as it went deeper its colors changed, the depth of the valley always captivated me with its ability to consume volumes, to keep everything so snugly it its womb. The valley of sporadic mango trees, of the rows of terrace farms, the stones that never got bored and never moved, the valley that turned damp every morning as the fog from the mountain slid into the womb that conserved all, the morning fog in those winter days made my valley white and wet.
The frolicky wind on the window seems to dry me, rid me of my dampness, how uneasy it must be I thought to make space for all, and then the deluge again. The questions that pulled themselves from the memories, stemming from every pine needle that I picked on my way to school searching for the elusive lucky needles that were found in a set of four. Invariably any day when I found the elusive quartet was a lucky day just because I had found it. Each pine needle coming back in questions, the questions always bordering around, why I must be myself? or How I must be myself?
I travel past a pond, leaves swimming upon it, and a lonely crow perched on a half submerged trunk, the distant lights of the city flicker in the joy of achievements of the day, and in the anticipation of tomorrow. The moon outmaneuvered by them, there on the rooftop with my family I counted the planets, the bright Venus, the red Saturn, they marched right above me, I searched for the constellation and when my parents pointed one for me I tried hard to make a pattern, and usually I couldn’t. In the bright skyline, the stars are nowhere to be seen, the planets are missing, but it’s beautiful, the brightness is dazzling and provocative, it stirs up emotions. Like the Himalaya, the valley, the pine it evokes the senses into admiration.
The Long queue outside the temple of local deity, the unending hum of devotees, a complete chaos, anarchy of devotion, the pattern less, incoherent chimes of the bells, thousands of them ringing in the small temple. The jeeps honking on the adjoining road, the sound of the conch shell, utter noise and utter confusion, and I was my own, no questions, no argument, I found the sounds, the clutter, the confusion all mine. I get off the bus, grasping somewhat of what I am, I am my memories, I am the beauty that brushed me while I travelled, I am what I am. The crow that sat on the pond tree shall be me. The glittering lights shall be me.
Contented I walk past the bus stop. The clouds floated over the blue mountain it rained, the green landscape was beautiful, the clouds came down further streams immersed, and vegetation sprouted, the rains continued and caused havoc. So what must I be? And how must I be what I must be? A dog runs to me, short and thin, I get down on my knees to caress him, the questions will be thought about some other day.
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