Chasing

You smile at me, I act like it doesn’t matter

Angela Hanley

I started exercising to be fitter, then to recover what I had lost, and eventually I exercised so I could get to see you. 

When you came, you came with spring in tow, so I smudged my golden eyeshadow, showed off my best outfits, acted indifferent, and our movements synchronized as certain vault tracks blasted in my ears. 

The aliveness you feel around certain people, inexplicable really, except you smile at me, I act like it doesn’t matter, she disappeared when I came into your life, I admired your big arms, you sneak a peek at the kind of tweets I like, I regret not putting on some cute nails, both of us are just the same, always frowning, always moving, always waiting for each other.

____

November brings with it the promise of December, of better days, of chill fogging up the windows. It rains incessantly in Chennai and that eventually turns me nocturnal: I lay awake till 2am, listening to Slime You Out or lurking through old Soul Manna tarot readings or watching random bollywood celebrities exercise in one reel and then the next one. I wake by 11am, stumbling out of bed when it’s sunny, sipping an amul cold coffee, checking my emails and forcing myself to be in the real world. The day goes by quickly as I am on phone calls, as I type furiously, quickly, then stumble to the kitchen or the gym. What else is there to life?

November makes me feel like nothing matters, and so I swipe left and right and my heart flutters multicolor when I am near him and then I take 3 business days to reply to my matches and it is just such a funny time, so filled with absurdity, because romance should be important, but all I spend my best hours doing is perfecting paratha recipes and mourning my writer’s block and letting this month unfurl slowly as I burn it from the other end, watch it wash over me as I take one 11 am day, two days, and then this is my life. It will change just as quickly. Post christmas shock waves will lead me to a metaphorical cliff’s end: to move or perish, I know that.

You grow older and you know you.

____

I cannot characterize my time right now into a bucket (“acing work”, “first stages of love”, “remnants of grief” etc). I was in the acing work chapter that summer in 2019 when everything in me was ablaze for a project, for the hunger of being in office forever, asking doubts, talking to my mentor, making presentations. I was in the first stages of love that summer in Delhi when I was talking on phone all the time and I was so high in the clouds that everything else was just trailing. I was picking up the pieces of grief in Pune when I would go for walks in the society park and listen to podcasts all the time, so completely having surrendered and still missing the answers.

And now I am in a place of knowing, and I am in a place of doing better, but there is still so much mystery to life. 

I am chasing someone, surely, but I don’t know who it is. Boys who have a good sleep schedule are less interesting, and that tugs at me. Boys who are self absorbed are a bore, and that conclusion arrives to me easily. Boys who are vulnerable are interesting, and that surprises me. 

I spent so much time changing but having changed surprises me. 

____

Maybe it’s the yearning itself that signals our aliveness, announcing our place on this earth. In the emotional landscape of self improvement, life phases and hopeless crushes, the bigger picture takes time to emerge but it does eventually: this is life business and the specifics don’t matter. The stake you laid on this earth, that was all you, doing things only you knew how to. Doing things only you wanted to. The hope was part of it, the mistakes, the people, the houses, the days spent not knowing better. 

That was the ticket.

You spent that day, didn’t you, on that roller coaster with your best friends, wishing the feeling lasted forever. Laughing like mad men. Or that other day spent spooked on the first season of Dark, not knowing how you would wake up in time for work the next day. And that day once, holding hands under neon lights in a chic village alley in your hometown. And oh that one, in a small town in Croatia, walking out of a museum that made you cry and then eating burgers with friends. And that shower in that loft, it smelled of flowers and fresh wood and you never wanted to leave. And the day you tore down an entire ghee roast dosa without once looking up, and that time you made a paneer paratha from scratch for the first time, or the day you published the first post of Almost Grounded, or the night you drove through a new city with a nice boy, or that day at the gas station, sipping coffee, or that one time your friend invited you to come with her to the city you were planning to solo travel to, when you felt the stars aligning for you, and had the best time of your life.

That’s what the ticket was for.