the journey of cracks

It is the hardest to discover that one was after all even a little beautiful, when one's beauty failed for the mirror. It is the hardest to discover that one's capacity to be loved lay hidden and trampled below the inscriptions that sought to praise one. It was like searching behind all the placards and declarations of love and solidarity that waved in the breeze, behind lovers expressing solidarity, who slumbered when the night of pain and need arose. 

You arrived, alone and empty handed at the edge of the very world that you once thought you conquered, more aware of your wounds and losses held intact than the imagined gains from those who slumbered. There was nowhere left to go from the edge of those inky, dark waters. You faced the absence of the world ahead and you faced your own back, fragmented and full of crumbling pieces. Loves that could have been important. Insignificant and hopeless! Loves that were still somehow important, because they hoped you would someday respond.

And then, what would you do? For one moment full of self pity, when your throat would choke over, you would think of a failed life and yourself in it, as its failed hero and inconsolable victim. You would contemplate jumping into the inky and wet depths below. All was lost even if you once thought you gained, since what you gained no longer felt important, since importance had itself changed its meaning.

In a cold night of a foreign, glittering and slumbering city, inky and icy waters below your feet, plunging from an unknown bridge would be your destiny. 

But somehow, the moment would pass as your head reeled and numbed.....and as you gripped the icy-cold railing, rocking on your heels and realized suddenly the silent gaze of a disheveled, homeless and old man sitting with a dilapidated cart full of belongings, at the edge of the same bridge, alcohol bottle held slanted in his hand, a trickle of his urine flowing out, as he smiled knowingly at you. His rage at your self-pity would hit you in noxious waves of disdain and contempt, slapping you in the face, as he would continue to watch you, cackling into his beard. Finally he would break into a somewhat impolite song. His voice would raise itself into a shout as you sidestepped the impending trickle and hurried away .

You would smile a little to yourself as a tear would roll down your cheek, even as you shuddered a little. You would thank the powers that be for the visit and the reminder. Yes, you would return to the world of the slumbering.

You would resolve to live courageously, trying to hold the cracks intact. Half this and half that. Half this kind of brown and half that kind. Half this kind of migrant, half that kind. Half this kind of gender and half that kind, somehow trying to transition but unable to find what you wanted to say amidst different placards and inscriptions that tried to place you in what seemed like a vast boundary land of those, who are without 'identity'. You would struggle on in a world that was essentially constituted by identities and political struggles fashioned by these, trying to convert your losses into victories and mourning as your victories turn into losses and smacked you in the face. But trying to walk on. Always saying "it does not matter if someone, who should have, because you did, does not care in return". 

You would go on with your journey of cracks after that, trying to feel lucky for all those who did finally love you after all, when there was no need for them to, because you never did or asked them to.  

(I tried to look for the homeless man again and again in the area around the bridge, where the other homeless persons sometimes crowded around with their dogs and carts. I even described him to a few people but I was never able to find him again.)

Deepra Dandekar