Sillage

Sillage

/siːˈjɑːʒ/

Noun

                           1.the degree to which a perfume's fragrance lingers in the air when worn.

                 2.The faint goodness you feel in memories left when people in those memories are distant.

 

Before I began, let’s bring it on: I use a lot of metaphors and I use a lot of ‘;’ in my writings. Well, just accept the fact that no one likes a good thing to end; writing to me is an integral part of my mind and heart and to end the sentences I have so very well tried to write down with a full stop (.) scares me. ‘;’ gives me, you, all of us an end and a start just like anything, just like life. It does not end or start; it just pauses and resumes.

For metaphors, it’s just my inability to tell the truth the way people want to see it. I am a good human being and I don’t lie or say truth. I am caught between good and bad intentions. And all of us coax and manipulate our words to make them more hurting, or less selfish, or more convincing. Speaking in metaphors is like hiding all those feeling all those time when you wanted to tell someone you love them, maybe not for a relationship but just for the sake of telling you love them and they are good humans, and covering all your ‘I love you’ with ‘Thank you’ because when you feel it in your heart it’s love and when you feel it in your guts always, it’s a thankful love.

Speaking of me (the one writing), I always had a wish to go climb mountains not metamorphically, but really. To see the world from the zenith; maybe because I was born in the foothills of the Shivaliks or because I was brought up away from them, either way craving for the mountains persist. Like you want to swim either because you love waters or you are fearful, like you love the idea of love either because you loved or you are afraid to.

Let’s not forget I have been to mountains many times but never ever I have been to the mountains in the real sense. I have been through the jungle walking on the ways craved out on dried fallen leaves by pedestrians; those ways that can be viewed like a messy line on a flawless green paper; sometimes are engraved in the mountains like a predestined way to someone’s heart. But just like a way leads us to a particular destination, I used to reach my destination without actually having a journey. You can get into someone’s heart with a way made out of their like and dislikes, but to reach soul is a journey on broken happy past, happy hopeless future and a sea of lies and nugatory that one builds to protect the small soft center of their soul; because you can know the things I tell you but to know the things I hide is looking into souls; because to tell someone you hate the color pink is easy but to tell them why you love black is tough.

I wanted to run wild in the woods; without caring if the nettle bites me or I trip down or if I lost way because running wild would be exploring the forest. It would be knowing the soul, it would be doing something different by not following the conventional paths, it would be a true journey, it would be all the good things at once when you climb that mountain happily to see a single waterfall above and the whole city below. This reminds me that number never actually is important. How many days you loved, how many hours you talk, how many pictures you have together, how many times you tell you love each other, how many friends live in the city, ‘how many’ is not the correct measure of bond or something as unique as love; ‘how much’ is. How much you want to be together, how much you know each other, how much can you take, how much happiness does that one waterfall brings you. The bustling city feels sad that time and the silent forest feels cherished. But you are happy to follow what you yearn for and sad to leave behind something you never loved actually. Why does it happen? Suddenly the horns of cars sound like weeping children calling you back and the winds in the trees above haunts you; but at the same time the waterfalls call you and the dark hot air of city hurts you. It’s the immovable love of the unknown and the consistent fear of losing the one known. I call it the mystery of love.

All these mountains and trees and waterfalls are the pictures I get after listening to ‘Mystery of love’ from the movie ‘Call me by your name’. It’s a scary song because it reminds you that you’ll eventually lose people and excites you because you may lose a person but not a memory. It’s like one of those times when your mom buys you new clothes in return of your old ones. You are happy for new clothes and sad for the ones you’ll have to give up.

After probably 3-4 months I am going to be alone like I am right now writing this but alone with a conscious awareness that if I have a break down, I can’t run 3.6 km something to see my friend. I never did run tothough; but with the coming months I just feel like I should have, once. The best part is ending/climax doesn’t hurt, interval does. You know the story continues, you know there will be the next part, you know you’ll meet but one thing haunts “uncertainty”; whether the story will be better than before or get worse, will the person even remember the first half, will you be remain the protagonist or will turn into a mere distant pole star that once amused a child and now bores the man.

So a thought arises, to give up watching the movie right now; to close your eyes and replay and replay the replays of the good times, the first time. To be thankful for the times you trusted them more than yourself, trusted them with your secrets, and told them the things you were even afraid to tell yourself. No matter how spoiled we are or we will make this situation, we hope it ends like the good old “first time”. But the “first time” now scares you more; now the memories starts making you cold. The more you remember how close you were the more you realize how distant it can go. The secrets once known could collect dust and those birth marks reminds you of that sorrow. I won’t ask you to not cry because not all tears are evil. But reaching the top and starting from the bottom are both similar feeling; fear of unknown and fear of known, love of unknown and love of known. But when you are in the middle of the trek, one of us looks up to the waterfall embracing the love while the other one fears the city beneath and you get that feeling; the way the first shower brings hope of the coming rains, but we hardly pay attention until it’s the last rain of the season. But to be caught between reminiscing old rains and wondering about the coming rains is an ugly situation. To be ecstatic for climbing up and all success yet in whist for leaving a ground behind.

What is it like to be in love? it’s the most wonderful and terrible thing all at once. I did not have a childhood full of abuse, pain, anger, depression or hurt. But it was deprived of everything and yet when I thought about it, it was nothing absolutely. Maybe I expected much from life and then, I was not to blame, we all have been fed up with a coaxed lie turned in a beautiful metaphor; we were always told to survive the 20 years of our life to live the next 60 peacefully. But the problem\error with me is I want to either live my life right from the start or just exist, I don’t want to survive in my own body between my own people in my own world; I want to see those mountains to run wild. But to have and bring up a 12-year-old girl who wants to see the soul and refuse to overlook heart was a challenge. So they said “negligence made you careful, hate made you kind, pain made you stronger.” But I was a kid. I didn’t need to be stronger, careful or kinder; I needed to be safe; I needed to be loved. I had the tenderness of someone who was never loved but was forced to improvise.

Never be ashamed of how much you love, who you love, how you love, how slow you take it or how fast you fall, if the other one loved you the way you did or did you love them the way they loved you. Like Hephaestion, Alexander’s lover, who died for his love, we feed on sacrifices. And pain makes us more willing to find love. Because we all are gonna die; some are gonna die earlier, some will stay longer but we’ll die and that is both a truth and lie.

Because if you never loved, you never lived. If you ever loved, you never died. Like a smell of perfume that fills the room even after the person is gone, you will still remember that person, it will still remind you of the good things until the person enters the room again.

If you never wanted to run wild, you were never calm and tamed. If you ever wanted to run wild, you were forced and tamed.