Moving was never easy
by Sunil Sharma
Leaving is always tough…because everything calls.
The walls that were dull and dreary now look different and
suck in with a force = the gravitational pull.
The rooms are stripped — just a jumble of concrete dimensions
and become again a structure of concrete-n-glass hulking over you.
The bare floors echo the lingering footfalls — amplified, broken symphony of sounds varied
A tread here. A jump there. A skip over there.
A curving sound that ultimately dies down, once the doors are clicked shut.
Navigating the detritus of the past requires skill, patience, otherwise
one can trip, entangled by a protruding wire or the boxes, tiles and papers, forming a sea of crumpled memories, for the new owner/tenant to dispose/ clear.
The staircase, the windows, the uneven roads, the facades, the smog!
Well, every detail fascinates and matters; for the last time, the drab view does not repel.
The eyes wander lustily; ears hear the lost arguments and the clear laughter, now so rare, with everybody glued to gadgets.
The ugly neighbors look so good and agreeable in the last goodbye done with vigor!
The crowded grocers’ and the vendors’ tiny shops appear so cute and magical!
While the packed household waits in the van, each item properly labeled, you stop and give a glance backward at the place that functioned as home/neighbourhood,
The familiar! Soon to be un-familiar. And a new journey to be initiated!
In that precise second is obtained the revelation:
Every moving is an emotional trek across time and space done by the humans for the millennium, along lines predictable.
A move simultaneously transacts loss and gain, stasis and motion, pain and happiness, old and new truths, in that fleeting moment.
IMAGE: “The Melancholy of Departure” by Giorgio de Chirico (1916).
NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: A move takes a toll. Leaving behind is difficult. The everyday is exchanged for another everyday but locations make the transition demanding. Then, slowly, the predictable script falls into a predictable groove. Then comes the epistemic realization: Folks are same every place. Stasis is death. Movement forward is evolution. Moving away and transplanting in another environment is, well, renewal of spirit and mimics the human saga of the last millennia.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Mumbai-based, Sunil Sharma writes prose and poetry, apart from doing literary journalism and freelancing. A senior academic, he has been published in some of the leading international journals and anthologies. Sunil has got three collections of poetry, one collection of short fiction, one novel and co-edited five books of poetry, short fiction and literary criticism. Recipient of the UK-based Destiny Poets’ inaugural Poet of the Year award—2012. Another notable achievement is his select poems were published in the prestigious UN project: Happiness: The Delight-Tree-2015. He edits English section of the monthly Setu, a bilingual journal from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Silver Birch Press 