It was a Saturday evening, around 8 or 8:30-ish. I was out to get milk from my daily vendor who does cowkeeping.
When I went in, I noticed something was off. I tried to put my mind on it. What was it?
The lady I get my milk from, everyday whenever I swing her door open and her eyes meet mine, her face floods into a million smiles. Everyday we meet at 8, and she manages to pull this magic trick off every day like a pro would. This is usually my cue to keep smiling as an acknowledgement of each other’s existence as neighbours and then calmly hand over my bottle to her as passively as I can.
But on Saturday, Sunday and on other consecutive days, something was off. It wasn’t the electricity. Then what was it? It didn’t take me much time to notice that she wasn’t smiling. Not anymore. I carefully noticed - her face has lost its glimmer as if the Golden Gate bridge has turned its lights off without any notice to its visitors.
Being the skeptic and pessimist that I am, I took no heed to jump into conclusions. Big ones.
My mind was on a total thought rollercoaster. An emotional one at that.
“Does she not like me anymore?” “Did someone say something nasty about me to her?” “Did she overhear me complaining about the neighborhood?”
Humans, and their constant urge to be liked. To be like by literally every organism imaginable. Their lover, their cat. If your partner asks you the question, “Would you still love me if I was a worm?”, how do you keep a straight face, and answer honestly without hurting their feelings?
It’s as impossible as scaling the peaks of K2. Very.
In all insecurity, I forgot to think about these questions:
“Is she doing okay?” “Did something upset her? She has been sad for a week now.” “Should I talk to her?”
I forgot that society doesn’t revolve around me. In fact, there’s no central axis which is protruding from any individual in particular.
In society, everyone thinks they are the one beaten down. That no one is in more sorrow than them. That if anyone’s working hard and deserves attention, it’s them. Oh, how we are all society’s lambs, but dying to be the favourite one held by a deity.
In the society I live in, I see myself as a reckless, rebellious person. How? Well, I don’t care about what I’m wearing when I go out to my neighbours. I walk out in my sweaty top and almost-invisible bottom. When I’m out for milk, I carry a tall, round, Borosilicate glass instead of a milk cane made of plastic or metal, because I’m afraid of microplastics in my bloodstream more than my parents in my subconscious brain.
Not too rebellious, because I get too self conscious when I go to any stretch beyond 100 meters, and start searching for the nearest branch in my closet, eagerly hoping that I haven’t sent it away into the pile of dirty laundry. For some, anything worn once counts as dirty laundry. I’ll rather be the one who will wear it twice or thrice, and make sure it doesn’t have any murky smell. If that isn’t rebellious, tell me - what is?
It isn’t much.
The Saturday wasn’t very eventful, considering how I just shook, got off my chair, shrugged off for a solid minute as if that’ll give me a warmup before I make a run for the milk, and let out a profound yawn before I walked out. Anyone could see it in my eyes how I just hate getting out of home, my ultimate comfort zone.
I don’t get to be special, if I’m not at least better in putting in efforts.
When I’m drowsy, I’m no different than a drunk girl outside a pub, claiming she can drive her dad’s Rolls Royce tonight. Except that she’s spilling her guts over the crosswalk, and I’m spilling my heart out onto the whitest whites of papers.
Every year, people fall asleep at the wheel, and add to the number of casualties and mortality rates. Every year, I loathe myself and wonder, why is it that people shouldn’t loathe me in response.
All this still doesn’t reflect who I am as a person. At least on this Saturday, I was insecure as anything. But what I didn’t factor in was - that’s never an excuse to stop thinking rationally.
I asked the lady, “This is little milk. Think you could double the quantity? And if so, when?”
The words which came out of mouth were the last straw that broke the camel’s back. This is where she burst into tears and told me how of her cows just died. Minor illnesses, and dropped dead. This is a cow, technically a cattle for slaughterhouses, but for her, she was her daughter, her dearest pet for 10+ years. And now she didn’t even get to say goodbye.
Instead of thinking about her, I was thinking about me. I mean, what the hell was I thinking?