Stuff comes up on a full moon night

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 It is amazing how early a day can begin and how late it can end but nothing much gets done. 

A heavy day today. Actually I am feeling more sad than what I had expected. 

It was a beautiful full moon night. So I just left everything late evening and went out for a walk. It had been emotionally exhausting. 

A friend has been unwell and it can be quite serious. A colleague's last day at work. Another colleague is going to move out of my project next week. 

Too many people going away.

Just feel a little...like you are at the station watching your friends get onto the train and go for a  excursion while you return to school with Sister Mabel to clean classrooms.

I always forget that these things end. That everything ends. This little vein of dazzling connection with a collaborator. It ends. Your colleague who sends you pictures of her little pup over weekends...that ends. The wrapping up of a tense little project but where you met decent people with courteous manners...that ends. A panic message at 4 am met with a soothing response ends. 

Sometimes as a freelancer, I think that I have made myself that way...this armoured tough person who can walk away from anything. And I can. And usually I do. 

The flaw in that design is...I don't quite know what to do when I am not the one who's leaving.

Anyway, the full moon. It was resplendent. It shone like it had forgotten what it was like to wane.

That's important I think. One must forget that things end. That's how you remain open to greeting something new, I guess.

But... today I couldn't forget. Today I remembered. I also remembered that night when I heard a song that would give me the words to possibly describe every meaningful relationship I had.

It was a rainy night. I was working really late, past 2 am, in a teensy little office at Kalbadevi. There was a techie friend with me. He stepped out for a smoke and pulled down the shutters of the office. The radio was on. Mostly Hindi music. But around 3 am, there were old English songs. Songs sung in low, deep voices. 

One of the songs started and the melody, the voice were haunting, the lyrics so beautiful...I wrote them down, quickly, furiously on the printer paper lying about. 

My friend returned with coffee and egg bhurjee for us. By that time, the song was over. So I read out the lyrics to him. He didn't get what the big deal was but noticed the catch in my throat. He asked me to go to sleep. Maybe the exhaustion was catching up.

Anyway, as some of the people I have connected with leave (or have left) I wonder what it would have been like to have a little bit longer with them...to understand how their brains ticked, how their journeys started, where they were headed, what rainbows they chased... People I never met in person, will possibly never meet again. 


Anyway, I don't have the paper with the lyrics now but I remember this...my favourite verse from the song:

When they begin the overture
They start to end the show
When you think I'll never need you
Then I knew that you would go
The sound of all our laughter
Is now echoed in a sigh
And the first time that we said hello
Began our last goodbye

All for the best, I suppose. Good people deserve to enjoy moonlight in peace and joy, wherever that might be. 

So, to the surprise of a doggy and a teenager doing squats, I sat on a park bench and waved at the moon. 

Maybe we were all looking up at it at the same time.

Anyway... onwards.




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