Waving Light
Archives of the domestic museum and everyday obituaries
I have been greeting “hello” and saying “thank you” every single day when the house help leaves, when the dhobi drops off the laundry, when my cook is already halfway to the lift. It’s instinct by now.
Perhaps it began back when I was three, waving earnestly at every security guard outside the NIT campus as my father pursued his PhD. I still wave at security guards. Every time I enter or exit a campus gate, the guards look momentarily baffled, then break into a smile.
Quiet, lingering, and undeniably there, some patterns stay like sandalwood on the skin.
I suppose I notice/observe too many things. Even the ordinary kind. Vestigial, too.
And lately, as I have to fold life into taped boxes and newspaper-swaddled memories, I’ve begun noticing a different kind of silence. The kind that follows something that's ended without declaring so.
Empty protein bar sachets that are left limp on the counter. Slippers too weary to carry forward. A basil plant that didn’t survive my half-hearted watering. A torn notebook page or paper litter, half a poem heard on reels, someone’s number I don’t remember saving – to name a few everyday obituaries nobody writes. Nirmalya (निर्माल्य) much.
“Zindagi ke safar mein guzar jaate hain jo makam, woh phir nahi aate...” – Kishore Kumar hums in the corners of my brain while I sit cross-legged on the floor, surrounded by the museum of my own domesti-city.
The mundane is surprisingly stubborn with its sentiment.
I still remember how the trees would wave at me during my morning commute in Bangalore. Branches fluttering with the kind of flourish that made you believe they were cheering for you. On the way home, though, they’d always be mostly still. Asleep, maybe. Or just done watching me work so hard all day?
But perhaps what’s even more fragile are moments we never realise were final. Like the last time you ever wore your school uniform. The classmate you laughed with just one more time, unaware it was goodbye. My old-school core WhatsApp group knows this emotion too well.
Just a day like any other. Until it's not.
“चहा संपतो, पण कपावर तुझं हसू उरून जातं.” (The tea gets over but your smile stays on the cup)
Our life is a series of micro and macro farewells until it's time.
That’s why Tadow (my second book) meant so much more. It was born out of moments too fleeting to hold, but too precious not to write down. And Mazarine couldn't outlive me. But did out-feel me.
We always believe we’ll have one more walk, one more meal, one more text. But the truth is, not everyone palats like Kajol and hopes like SRK to see what they’ve left behind. Some goodbyes are spoken. And the ones that are not – are probably absorbed by walls, by winds, by the mop leaning quietly in the corner.
And even when the world rushes, gushes forward, linger for a moment, just long enough to say thank you. To a blah windy morning, to an unwanted habit, to a soiled fountain pen, to a Maggi masala packet, to a friend who quietly closed the door behind them.
Lily Aldrin in HIMYM advises, “Say goodbye to all the times you felt lost, to all the times it was a ‘no’ instead of a ‘yes,’ to all the scrapes and bruises, to all the heartache.”
It is a quiet resistance against the speed of things. Because nothing really waits. Not even the memories you thought were parked safely in your chest. (This year’s dengue has erased a few of them.) :D
And hence, I will wave. Even if there’s no wind and the trees don’t wave back. I will still wave at NIT security guards at the age of 47, and they might call me crazy. Especially then!
Perhaps the most radical thing we can do is pause. Long enough to mean it.
Here’s to living in sentences - yours, mine, ours. :)
Writeously yours,
Shalaka Kulkarni