The Other Side Of The Wall - Brick 4

You ever feel like time's running out? And when it does, everything you hold too dear, too close slips off?

Weird. I have never ever felt like it. Maybe with this lockdown, I have too much time, maybe with my work sabbatical, I have time to stretch my eyes off the digital lights of the damned laptop and stare and gape at the sky longer - and I can consider things a lot better, little longer.

I have been living my best life without work. I wake up in afternoons, I am watching films I have kept stalled since forever, I am reading pieces off the internet, cooking, laughing while sipping homemade wine and what not!

But hell starts to break loose when I check the time. 1.30pm.. I'm getting my heartbeat faster. 3.30pm.. I am count-downing. 5.30pm.. I want to run to the balcony and let the last air of the lit sky hit me. 7pm.. It's getting dark and my panic attacks come back to invade. 9pm.. I officially lose it. What follows, is choked up cries, howling behind my palms pressed to my face while I watch my dinner boil on the pan. 11pm.. I feel helpless and by 2am, I sleep on a pool of tears.

I don't know what brings it - I have spent afternoons decoding my own behavior, helplessly scurrying through plans to feels better, trying to search for a pattern, trying to talk it out - but it all returns.

Sometimes when I am in my balcony at 6pm and the sun has already set, the lights are getting dim, the people from the adjacent terraces start to descend their stairs - I want to bit my lips and press my nose to stop it from pinching my skin. I want to grab the sun by its head and bring it back to the sky; right on top of my head and buy more time. I can't stand it getting dark. I can't stand the balconies and the terraces getting empty. And most importantly, I feel I am losing out time.

Weird. I have never ever felt like it. Now all I can think of is this.

(Rest for another day..)

The Other Side Of The Wall - Brick 3

I have been living on realisations now.

I took a sabbatical from work. Crazy, you'd think! Specially when the world economy is all over the place, the biggest of the corporates are firing their force over petty Zoom calls, when companies are shutting down, salaries are getting deducted, people are 'asked' to stay home without money - Why on earth, I, someone who just trashed her one and half years of experience in a field to start afresh as a writer, take a sabbatical. Why I, a petty writer, making a life out of writing drafts for people noone cares about, make my employers see the vulnerable part of not needing me in their job? Why me, someone who is not good at her job for starters, would make myself more useless?

The answer is, peace of mind.

I had dreamt of a vacation, not because I need to be those hashtag wanderlust kinda Instagram picture-perfect influencers talking about climate change while sipping coffee in Santorini, but someone who can sleep peacefully. Someone who wants to sit in her locked up house and watch the sun rise and have the luxury of running to the terrace to let the first chirp of birds hit my eardrums, the first cold wind of the day before it starts to get unapologetically hot to hit the face, and come back to my bed to my well-lit room and find a cover for my eyes and sleep off till afternoon. Without alarm is the word you're looking for.

And these four days of sabbatical made me look into so many things that I have taken granted ever since. I see my partner waking up before me to get me the first tea of the day, I see him staying awake to massage my feet because second day of menstruation, I see the opposite terrace has a guy - worn out hair, always with a kite and talking in sign language to another girl on the terrace to his right - that other day I saw him tendering to a pegion. He slowly took it out of the cage, rubbed something on its wings and kept it back. I see how the ever polluted grey skies of Delhi is invaded by kites now. And whoever doesn't have a kite, they tie strings to a plastic bag and let it fly to the direction of the wind. This other day I went to the balcony and saw a huge textured cloud, my partner beside me stared at it and said, "You know people of Delhi only get to see such beautiful clouds on flights, and here we are, not paying a fare and looking out of the balcony."

The balcony to my right has all the access to a sunset, this other day I saw a whole family sitting on their terrace and staring at it - I wonder when was the last time I did that, get my whole family to the terrace and make them silently stare at a fleeting sunset.

I am cooking, exploring, and watching movies so much more. Cliche, you'd say. Well, not for me. I, who wakes up half hour before my shift starts and shakes at the thought of work, gets into a panic attack till I need my back to be rubbed to get my normal breathing back, this sabbatical of doing unimportant and unimpactful things isn't a cliche for me, it's a breather.

So here I am, putting my job and my earnings to a risk, because I need to sleep without alarm. And I will, always, do that again in a heartbeat.

(Rest for another day...)