A-Tisket, A-Tasket

“You are so much more than just what you are in this moment. You are everything you have been, and everything you ever will be.” -Me.

Warning: Cheesiness and melodrama overload.

I've been on the receiving end of the ‘Don’t talk to strangers’ speech from my parents and teachers far too many times in my childhood, and I continued to be fed this advice repeatedly by friends alike as a teenager, who knew that I was perhaps too naïve and trusting for my own good. I’d like to believe that I've changed. That I'm not the girl who believed in unicorns and Santa and true love any more.

Today, I call myself a realist, and more times than I could keep count of, I have friends questioning me with a tone of accusation – ‘Where’s the optimism gone, Resh?’ They squint at me with heavy suspicion, convinced I am the evil twin that has killed their lovable friend. One who urged them to believe in ideas that were ridiculously improbable, to have faith when the chances of anything good coming out of a situation were astronomical. Some will be bold enough to say it to my face – ‘This is not the Resh I used to know!’ And some others will try to mask their pity at how far I've fallen with the solemnly delivered lines, ‘So *pregnant pause* you really don’t think you’ll ever get married *sigh*?’

Honestly, I still don’t understand what the big deal is. Some things you believe in work till a certain age, and then you just grow, and believe different things that will work for you now. Why treat the whole episode like some part of you has died? Maybe it has just grown into something better. Just because it isn't filled with ‘Jab we met’s’ Geet-worthy giggles and philosophy doesn't mean it’s not a good life.

And then a few weeks ago, I surprised myself. Whether it was pleasant or not, I still cannot say.

It was on the day of Onam. I was dressed to the nines in a crisp new veshti-mundu and jasmine flowers in my hair, trying to hail an auto-rickshaw that would take me home from work. After being able to find one with some difficulty, I gave the driver the location of my address. He made a comment about the traffic, which I didn't quite catch over the din of our surroundings. I cocked my head and made a noise that sounded equal parts exasperated and question-mark. The auto-walla then responded in broken English, trying to translate what he’d said earlier. I began to converse with him in Hindi, wondering why he was struggling with a language that was clearly foreign to him. With his explanation, and one look at my own apparel, I realized that because of how I was dressed, he assumed I couldn't speak much Hindi. I laughed and told him I was a Bombay girl, and that I didn't dress like this every day.

This lead to a casual chat about Kerala, and my family and our culture- the kind of conversation that is commonplace among two strangers in a country with so much diversity (or so I thought). From the way he spoke Hindi, I figured he wasn't from the State, but from the northern part of India, which he confirmed. The discussion steered towards my profession, and when I told him what I did for a living, he squealed with genuine joy and praise for my vocation. I thanked him awkwardly, but he insisted on going on about the merits of my calling and how I should be grateful to be engaged in such a noble profession. I told him I was.

I actually felt really light and happy at being able to have such a distrust-free conversation with a stranger after years. It didn't seem to occur to me that I should draw the line somewhere, and the earphones I had pulled out of my bag at the beginning of the conversation - hoping to plug them in in the initial 5 minutes to signal I wasn't interested in small talk – lay uselessly tangled on my lap.

And then this respected bhaiyya that I had grown to like (read: didn't want to cut parts of his anatomy off just because he was a man) directed our little tête-à-tête to the one place I fervently prayed he wouldn't go to.

‘Saadi ho gayi hai aapki?’ (Are you married?)

I knew this was a giant red flag telling me to back off now, but there was something about the way he asked the question.  It wasn't lecherous or even teasing for that matter. I think he actually believed that he had earned the right to ask me about my personal life. I replied in the negative, and to my absolute horror, found myself repeating the question to him, even though I really didn't care.

‘Hum saadi karna hi nahi chahte,’ he said. (I don’t want to get married at all.)

‘Kyun?’ I asked, my curiosity overtaking my brain.

He began a monologue about how relationships and marriage have lost their meaning, and that he didn't think he would ever find anyone who would share his life the way he wanted them to.

‘Hum akele hi theek hain,’ he finished. (I’m better off alone.)

‘Aap aisa kyun sochthe hain? (Why do you have to think that way?),’ my traitorous tongue was asking before I could think it through, and then, before I could sanction the poisonous words that flowed from it, ‘Aapko manchaha jeevan saathi zaroor milega.’ (You will find the life partner of your dreams.)

It was all happening too fast then, before I could cringe at the corniness of my own statements, the gentle argument too quick for my rational mind to censor it first. He kept arguing that his ideal woman didn't exist and therefore, it was pointless looking for her, and I kept grasping at straws, reaching desperately in the recesses of my past, to reassure him in whatever words I could, convince him that she did. I don’t know if it helped. I guess I’ll never know.

In retrospect, I wonder why it was so important to me that this stranger should believe in the things that even I didn't any more. I just felt really bad for him. I wanted him to have that hope. I rationalized later by telling myself that that man didn't have the alternate ideas that I have chosen. He didn't have his beliefs replaced by another faith that would see him through, and help him stay positive anyway. It seemed to me that his lack of faith was not because he had placed it elsewhere, but because he had given it up altogether. Then again, who am I to draw that conclusion on his life and his belief system? So maybe my justification is bullshit.

Maybe, the things we truly believe in never really leave us, no matter how old we grow or how much reality we see. Maybe they are embedded in our soul and become a part of us, so they can pick us up when we are at out lowest, and if not for us, can be sought to comfort those around us. They lie dormant in our hearts, waking only when we are most desperate, to remind us of what we have forgotten.