It was almost o'clock

There is a time in the day when the world is achingly beautiful. So beautiful, in fact, that going over Kurla Bridge is like a sweet dalliance over a rainbow. These moments usually escape me when I leave my home, my sweet cosy little flat - where my chair by the window, a visiting kite, table scattered with books, and old coffee cups, I have built a home. Or a refugee shelter. As if there's a difference.

But on days that I travel to visit the father, I get an auto rickshaw, settle down with some crusty music on YouTube, and go, usually thinking of the next set of bills to be paid or the next email to be written or the next chiding to be given. I usually travel with a full head.

But sometimes, there's a song I didn't choose. But I remember I had liked it in college when I had such low self-esteem that I didn't even know that I was allowed to have taste. And there's the song that lasted all those college years until I got my first job, when my self-esteem was so inflated that I thought that only my taste mattered. And when that wound got filled, that song - like a scab - fell away. For me that song was Fleetwood Mac's 'The Chain'. I don't know why I had liked it so much - or even if I had liked it at all. I suppose I had just found it heady, fresh - like the first sip of summer wine. Around that time in college, I had also read a book by Wally Lamb called 'She's Come Undone.' I remember being disconcerted by that book - a coming-of-age novel of a woman whose childhood involved trauma, obesity, fat shaming - some incident of an assaulter making her feel as if she should thank him for the assault because at least he made her feel desirable. The novel ends with her finally accepting herself and finding a partner - but it is a very quiet ending. There is no great romance, and I remember there being some reference to a blue bowl and a fortune-teller's sketch of a man who she later realizes, resembles the man she is with.

I was a heavy girl and maybe stories like this one resonated, yet felt very distant. (Maybe I had not experienced assault until then. Not the kind that coagulates with every other sentiment of being used yet abandoned.) After graduation, I had thought that I would revisit the book. But I never got around to that. 

But this feeling - of something sad and beautiful and unending - like Fleetwood Mac's music or Wally Lamb's story - is very fleeting. It is a tad scary too. Because when that emotion comes, I sometimes feel a bit disembodied. Like a crossing has happened. A rite of passage has been extended.

I only hope that if such a journey should exist in another dimension, the road is prettier than the Kurla bridge. But even if not, one carries the capacity of remembering tremendous beauty.