The other day, a woman offered me her seat in the metro because she saw me jittering and I almost made her God, imagined a shrine and kneeled in my head. This write up might be an epic on how there is a difference between holding hands so you don't stumble and fall and holding hands only to realise the falling has always been, the fall never ended and to rest, there hasn't been made a pandemonium yet.
There has not been a day when your hand has clasped mine with the tightness that usually goes in when two people who love passionately hold hands with, when two people are sure the other one wouldn't break simply by hands clasping.
Like a sand castle, you touch me with featherlight fingers, sure that I would indeed break if held too strongly. I think you're scared of me collapsing, shambling down, breaking and mixing with dust.
You're scared because you haven't seen things disintegrate, let alone have a hand in it. Maa holds my hand and drags me, forcing me to sit right in front of her.
I've braided my hair tightly, she gasps when she entangles it. 'Itna kas ke choti kyu baandhi ho? Chehre ka rang bhi udaa hua hai. Sab theek haina, beta?'
I nod because words fail me.
She caresses my head after having a conversation with my very silent self. Warm oil seeps down my scalp as Maa massages my head, tying a loose braid when done.
'Itna kas ke kisi bhi cheez ko apne aap ko dard mat dene do', she says. I start braiding my hair loosely again. To be offered tenderness often is a reminder of how you've been ruined.
Who would walk up with a glass of water to a water pitcher and demand relevance? I think things that come with cautionary tapes around them, accentuate the possibility of impending accidents and I handle them with care. I invent gentleness on the tips of my fingers, walk the slowest one has ever walked only to realise I've never been able to move at all.
To look tenderness in the face and being fed with it is to take baby steps, tip tip toeing in a field which is ready to collapse any minute. Just as much a reminder of ruin, it always has, always will, bring with itself an unimaginable possibility of healing.
