Aham Brahmasmi

Every morning, when my eyes open for the first time, when my brain wakes up to the inescapable reality of the today, when my lungs tell me that they’ve kept up the tiring work of keeping me alive, when the tips of my fingers are still tingling with the evanescence of dreams I had subconsciously reached out for, my heart goes thump-thump-thump, screaming into my ears that without you, every waking up is an exercise in predestined futility. And every night, just before my eyes close for the last time, when the gap between my toes has accumulated the imperceptible dust of the shattered day, when the waves of deliverance have touched the roots of my hair for the briefest of seconds, when the riotous desires from the omnipresent halls of collective humanity have lived and died in my sweat and blood, my heart goes thump-thump-thump, whispering into my disintegrating cognizance that without you, every going to sleep is a scream into the nothingness of oblivion.

When a client keeps me waiting for what seems like an eternity – and then walks in pretending as if nothing is wrong – I just want to go “ Tumhaare liye maine chhe minute rakkhe theh – teen minute tumhaare bolne k liye, teen minute mere bolne k liyein. Tum apna teen minute gawa chukein ho. Ab sirf suno! ”

Memory, you cursed fool! You bring a slow smile to my face only to follow it up with a lightning stab of sorrow, you appear as an oasis on the horizon of my mind's desert only to entice me into chasing a fugitive mirage, you waltz in light all that once was and dangle in shadow all that could-have-been, you make me live a hundred blessed lives only to die a thousand haunted deaths. Memory, you inseparable and indomitable, you doom and deliverance, you cursed fool!