I woke up a little early yesterday. With a bad taste in my mouth. I woke up sad. I am convinced I tasted sadness. This sadness did not go when I ate blueberry yogurt for breakfast. It stayed in spite of the nice smell I put in my bathroom. It did not budge at the nice songs. It insisted, this sadness of no cause, to be carried around like a stubborn child. On my lap. Heavy and insistent.
At the office, I forgot to attach files to emails before sending them. After office, my hands refused to go home. They were scared of all the Alone there. And what it would do to the sadness, now in my bag-pack. I went to Pagdandi. Because I felt like being on my own. And I wanted hot chocolate. There are ways of being on your own in the company of three men sitting at your table reading Jacqueline Woodson, a textbook and newspaper respectively; who do not bother each other unless their knees bumped or one needs a tissue too far out of his reach. One of the men, when got up, I noticed had only one leg. When I went out, I saw him wear a grey shoe on his right leg. What does he do with all his left shoes?
I sat on the stairs and saw a three-legged dog, like snow, limp his way across the street, to reach a girl he seemed to have developed a liking for. The girl, terrified of the dog kept behind her bike. The dog saw the girl seeing him, being seen by me. The girl left, took her bike. What does the dog do when people he loves are scared of him? At a bar now, we sat, all humans crumpled in a way gassing humans might have needed them to be. We sat at a high table near the screen playing football highlights. A couple, who were doing dating right, sat beside us. The unobvious effort put in clothing. Flowers, white, on the table. Almost dancing, but not. Smiling that looked like laughing.
It only fits that I was reading Nicole Krauss talk about gestures, and how they are just residues of the language we used when we were primitive, this language that flew out of our hands, earlier today. She said During the Age of Silence, people communicated more, not less. In the bar, the music was so loud everyone had to talk to each other in gestures. Raising your hand and waving got attention. ‘Why’ became curling of fingers with the palm facing the ceiling. Curling of lower lip with head tilting just a little bit meant ‘impressive’. The boy curled his lower lip and tilted his head to the right when he saw the girl dance. Then I saw her, the girl, funnier if you call her aunty, who gets multiple photos of herself clicked by the party photographer, checks if she likes the photos (thank you Digital SLRs) and says “send it to me, okay? Pakka send it to me.”
Some bobbing heads watch the match. A man does a victory dance on the screen. There is a big group of college-going friends, who always start dancing. Not that people are not grooving in their chairs already, little hand gestures, bobbing of heads, and occasional synchronous doing of the dance steps made famous by the official videos of pop songs. But this group, owing to their big number, is experiencing a lowering of inhibition, will be the first one to get on the feet and dance, and not just around the bar counter. You will also almost always see a girl having difficulty walking straight of all the cheap alcohol of ladies’ night. Selfies are being clicked. Hands asking other hands to join the dance. And let’s not forget to mention the creep sitting on a high chair, in a corner, observing people, intending to write about them later. In-office. On her own.