FOR THE LOVE OF ESCAPES AND EVENINGS

I’ve made this ritual of going to the terrace in the evenings. I say ritual because routine is a word I want myself to forget. Just casually slip it out of my vocab. Corona took a lot away, took too many away, but what it gave us are these tiny exit passages, you know an escape when it just gets too much. The terrace is my exit. I get up there and just look around, funny thing that each day is exactly same since lockdown struck, but each day the sky looks different. I see just a bit more orange here, a pinkish tinge there, the everlasting blue and the glowing red. Truly the sky is God’s canvas. Another funny constant that I notice are the people I see from up there, an old couple in their veranda, always sitting in the same dusty chairs, talking like they’ve got a million stories to reminisce . You might think a couple surrounded by echoing four walls would run out of conversations, but they always chatter. These little kids on another terrace with their mat and snacks, grinning, playing stupid games so seriously, with the eldest one inventing a new game every single day. The house behind, which lost too many people to the wave like crumbling sandcastles, holding it together, doing walks together, playing with their dogs, just trying to let go of what’s passed. There’s this another house where the whole family sits out during the evening , chats, eats and laughs. I wonder how many families gather like that now and did they even get their chance.There are many others talking to distant relatives, dear friends, sharing the pain, whining, remembering, lending an ear. I always avoid looking at one side, the one with the hospital. The glowing lights of their board pronounces what horrific, tragic time we’re in, and how that one building is the sole witness to it every passing minute. It tells me that all these people in and around my house are lucky to be the way they are, unlike the people whose lives have been shaken, uprooted and torn. But humans are one resilient race, we refuse to give up on our hope for a calmer tomorrow, we refuse to give up on our people, the ones in and out of the blurred lines of what’s called family. And why shouldn’t we? Isn’t a sunset a stark beautiful reminder that there’s another day to do all of it over again?