L'autumne
My 27 year old self spoke to me. Yesterday.
Through a friend who preserved an email I had sent in those times when emails were a luxury. They had to be sent by preserving a spot in the Computer Room in the basement of the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore. A spot fiercely contested by those who wanted to play Age of Empires. A spot fiercely contested by those who were competing for the top spots in the Director's Merit List. From that spot, I wrote an email. To a friend. The friends and my communication to whom sustained me in a place which was fiercely competitive, and I was not.
It was mesmerising to read that small excerpt. Those few lines. Those thoughts from October 1998 - traversing through time - to Nov 2022. The girl looking out through the tall windows to the blue flowers outside while complicated management concepts got taught inside. The same girl who looks up to the sky and watches the birds in the blue sky while her companions have complicated conversations about life.
Still the search for beauty in complexity. Still the struggle to stay beautiful in complexity.
24 years.
The autumn of then still as hauntingly gorgeous as the autumn of now. The mist, mellow, Keats still as alive. Meme si the scars, meme si the tears, meme si the follies.
Only because a friend preserved.
"Love After Love
(Derek Walcott)
The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life."
posted by Tuya @ 17:37
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