It's the month of losing

In October, I organized my big suitcase and packed my home inside it and closed the windows and ran away.

It's the month of losing. It's a month that creeps around you, like death creeps around a memory. In this month, we mourn for the living, for colossal, little lives. It's the month when the childhood sweater was given by mother to the poor neighboring kids. It's the month when, slowly walking through drowsy street, I discovered a love letter addressed to me, written for my blue school uniform and two braids.

It's still that month when she lowered her eyes, anxiously scratching the earth through her big toe, slowly speaking, murmuring and resisting the touch on her cheeks turning yellow. In that month, she changed postal address, dress, her way of walking and her eating preferences. It's that month when we take out her photo from the stacked photos and burn incense for her. From the frame beside hers, her owner doesn't exercise his power over her anymore; rather, he looks indifferent.

In this month, we talk about her a little more than usual. Often at dinner tables, comparative study of wills and life insurances. This entire month, she will live with us, silent of course.

It's in this month I didn't let my lover kiss my neck and pricked my thumb with the needle my recently-dead grandmother left behind.

**

There have been Octobers before. Octobers when the evening had been smudged with the shade of smoke coming out of burning coal constantly fanned by old women selling litti. Octobers when mornings laughed along with the milkmen and school bus drivers, occasionally taking puffs of beedi from them. Octobers when I kept standing at the bus stop with the intention of going to my own street, but ended up waiting for the beggar madman of the bazaar. Octobers when I knelt down, covered my knees, put ice on the bruises that I gained by the virtue of loving and prayed for a lover that would teach me how to cross busy roads without traffic signals.

When you start waiting in October, the leaves don't fade away anymore. The sky doesn't strip into orange hues, mother never finishes drying the 'amsottyo' in the sun, father never returns from the Army. Eyes often start itching, swollen, reddened and benevolent. Still, fixated on the door.

Those for whom we waited at the bus stop, even when a minister's favored siren passed by, those for whom women who used to work in construction sites sacrificed half of their daily wage, those for whom I used to light a lamp in my shiuli-covered courtyard on silent evenings—did they ever show up?

The boy at the other end of the phone waited for a sigh. He mended my torn scarf and drew little shiulis over the back of our photograph. He waited outside coaching class when the chill in the air had just started to spread its territory and everyone wanted warmth in their bones. He stood there, shivering, rubbing his elbows with his palms, in sunlight softer than the inside of a ripe papaya. Did I ever show up?

In October, I organized my big suitcase and packed my home inside it and closed the windows and ran away.

One of these Octobers, I will take off from work early, come home and sit in front of the phone with the directory. I will call her first, won't say anything, maintaining the illusion of the god-fearing, frock-wearing me that she knew, and hang up before she finishes making sweets for me to visit. Except she resides inside a frame now which doesn't have space for her bangle-wearing hands to move.

I will call my father then; he won't pick up. I will impatiently call again, and this time he will promise to see me the day I get highest marks in zoology. I will tell him that I have barely passed in it and almost all other subjects except history. I will see him returning to our kitchen, with fresh coconuts and milk to make kheer.

I will call the lost beggar madman; he knows I am well, I know he is standing in the queue to get vaccinated. Now that I have a stove and utensils to cook food that's edible, he can have my cooking doll set. It's October and the sweets and lights of festivity should visit everyone's hands.

One night, very late, when my blood will be weighed down by substances like despair, I will walk restlessly in the corridor. At one point, I will walk slowly to the shiuli tree, probably with a little cough. Under the tree, I will let my deprived fingertips feel the tiny dewdrops on the tiny flowers. I will sit down and dial the number of my old lover. I will want to ask him about his cat, his aloe vera tree, his semester work. Deep down, I know I will want to start a conversation about that day in October when the wind chime in our small window fell and shattered into pieces. I will want to know where he kept the ointment because I looked for it after getting a cut from a small piece of glass. I will plan to ask him about that October afternoon when disarrayed autumn light weaved sadness and melancholia of a lover's fate, and I stood in the study, looking for times that I tried to enclose with muffled cries and gentle touch. If he asks me, I will tell him about my college applications, the new ocean-blue kajal that I bought, the facade made of memories that I carry around me, since that October where distance grew its branches over our bodies and silence took the form of cobwebs between us.

It is October, and I have come to a liberating conclusion. In October, you should learn to shovel all the love you have from the dark corners of the room, from the soot of a lamp extinguished before prayers were said, from pale bedsheets scratched by newborn's nails and cry, from the slumbering town—small like the palm of a hand, equipped with mourning and Shaluks—from the sweaters and grandfathers' kambal laid out in sun to gather warmth before the shivering of winter settles in the subconscious. And then, you should categorize them and place them in different envelopes and post them to an unknown town.

It is October, and I have learned through the constant weaving inertness and melancholia, you can't pass the month even with all the love and grief you find on window panes and curtains.

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Written for Mosaic by Sumana