Today while taking a train home I noticed this old, frail woman confined to a wheelchair. Even though her body seemed to decay with each fleeting moment, there still seemed some light in her eyes. Nevertheless, I felt this strange sense of pity, for she seemed to be travelling alone, even in her delicate state. A deep sense of trepidation then, seemed to have engulfed me.
We go through the motions of life every single day, building relationships, mending some, and sometimes, breaking a few. In our entire journey as human beings, our life knowingly or unknowingly pivots around these relationships.
No matter how far you go in life, it doesn't matter if the people you care about are not there with you to see it. This is what I was told one day by an old man. Now old age is positively correlated with wisdom; which funnily enough, was something again told to me by another old person. So I believed the old man and tried to, if not nurture, but at least not screw up my relationships.
But seeing that small woman, sitting in a wheelchair all alone, in a metro filled with strangers, with not even a single loved one, or at least liked one to care for her made me question this entire labyrinth of life we make ourselves fall into. This process of construction, destruction, nurturing and dismantling of our relationships, if the outcome at the end is to be sitting in a wheelchair all alone with no one but strangers to fall onto.
But then, we began each of our relationships with 'strangers', strangers who became integral to our lives, sometimes the favourite hue in our lives and sometimes the core to which our sense of purpose gravitates.
Childhood buds who have shared everything with you from broken teeth to skinned knees, from homework to first crushes. Those friends, no matter how old and implicit they seem in our lives right now were actually strangers before that first hello or the first let's play together.
Lovers, who you can do anything for, who possibly know you even better than you know yourself once had to peel all the layers to your soul one by one, to reach depths even you were afraid to swim in. Lovers, who make the word 'home' mean much more than just a place were once strangers before that first smile.
College friends, school friends, work buddies, gym buds, spouses, ex spouses, ex girlfriends, ex boyfriends, ex best friends, and so on.
From strangers to 'your people' to sometimes strangers again.
Ex lovers, whose name once made your head rush to now just making your fingers curl up with contempt.
Former best friends, who drifted apart for no apparent reason, or sometimes for reasons.
School friends, college friends, work buds, gym friends, ex spouses, ex lovers, siblings you haven't seen in years.
Doesn't it seem futile to build so many intangible treasures, when in the long run the only one you could fall back on is you alone?
Doesn't it seem wiser to not let people around you affect you, no matter what the old wise man said?
But giving it a second thought, in the long run we are also dead.
So not forming relationships with people might be akin to not breathing because after all you have to die one day. And that even though is as certain as anything else, still doesn't account for all the days that you don't die.
So, even though I might have lost some people, and would lose some others even still, it would still be better than not knowing them at all. So I brave the possibility of being cut to pieces and even being left in that wheelchair alone, to fend for myself on my own.
But today is the day I live in, and let me say hello to you, with a smile on my face and a gentle thudding in my heart.
