I am longing for death.  Forever longing for it.When people around me crave to live, do everything to have a life, I could never understand it. I could never understand the meaning of their desire. I always wanted to die… slowly, painlessly, and alone. Over time, my death instinct  became an inexorable habitual thought. The yearning to merge into an infinite darkness is there, always. The swelling torment I can't put into words. There was nothing, until him, that could dilute my urge to die. I used to think I can hold on a little, until he disappeared. I was obsessed to wither completely.  Look at me now. I think I have died, when he left. What a metaphor, the old cliché, you may think. I can declare this without embarrassment, but I can't express it. It is really so heavy to be afforded by my vocabulary, thoughts, and consciousness...

Many moons ago, I listened passively to Nee Mattume by T.M. Krishna. And yesterday night, like a little miracle, it came back to me.

 "Nee Mattumey Yen Nenjil Nirkkiraai Azhikka Azhikka Azhiyaamal Tudaikka Tudaikka Maraiyaamal Oli Veesi…"

 And I felt it— how memory becomes devotion, how longing becomes a prayer even in silence.

I keep falling into the song and i don't know how that song became him, about him  by him, for him. The same person whom i wrote about once as "if love is drowning , then he is the mouth of the river" which made  a friend of mine say that she is jealous of that guy, and which in turn made me blush and proud.And the song kept playing yesterday, and the sleepless night became so soft that I turned into a little baby who was unable to speak. And I realized this:

Even when I forget myself, something— a murmur in my blood, a half-remembered gaze, his shadow against a winter wall— is pulling me back.

Not into life— not quite. But into the ache of staying.

And maybe that’s what I am now. A vessel of ache. A body stitched with invisible threads of what was and what could never be again.

But songs don’t lie. They echo because something in you is still resonating. Still vibrating. Still here.

So let me rest in this ache tonight. Not to cure it. But to cradle it, name it, sing it. Let it have its shape. Let it be known.

Because even if I am longing for death— somewhere, something in me is still listening for songs. And maybe, that is not nothing.

Then comes...

 "Thannai marandum

 Thaavi vizhundhum Oyaamal

 Munnum pinnum Murugudan 

Oli veesi…"

And I listen to it in his voice.

That voice pulled me out of myself— not to save me, but to remind me I still bled.

And maybe, maybe that’s all he ever did: held a mirror so close to my wounds that I couldn't pretend they were gone.

It wasn’t mercy. It wasn’t malice. It was him— a quiet storm, a stillness so loud it echoed inside me for days.

His voice in that song— not sweet, not rehearsed, but trembling with something sacred— it made me bleed, but to something else.

To something older than pain. Something I couldn’t name. Was it love? Grief? Or just the cruel kindness of being remembered by someone you’re still trying to forget?

And so, I listen. Again. Again. Again.

Not to recall, but to survive.

Because as long as his voice hums through the cracks in this music, I am not gone. Just… unraveling slowly.

And maybe that, too, is a kind of staying.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

THE BOOK OF SETHI

PROLOGUE: THE FIRST TIME GRIEF SANG I don’t remember the first time I heard Ali Sethi. I remember what I lost when I did. Something inside me— the part that kept sorrow folded beneath my tongue— opened its eyes. It wasn’t music. It was recognition. A voice that didn’t arrive like thunder, but like memory—slow, precise, mercifully cruel. It sang in the key of ache I inherited but never named. This is not about songs. It’s about the ruins they left glowing. It begins, always, with silence. And then: Ali. 1 TO THE VOICE THAT ARRIVED BEFORE STORM Some nights, I don’t know if it’s rain, or your voice pressing its forehead against my window. Ali, you don’t sing— you stitch. Each word, a needle pulling centuries through my skin. I keep your ragas in my wrists— they flutter when grief walks in, asking for tea and permission to stay. Who gave you the right to know what longing sounds like before I could name it? Who taught your throat to echo the ache I buried beneath my mother tongue? Sometime...
Read more
If love is peeling oranges, then  God is the transcultural smell  residing inside crescent of fingernails. Consuming prayers,  a bead of fragility in hands,  he tells you that : In love we are blind,  In love we are far sighted. His delicate crockeries inside  a filthy broken sink is  his metaphor for us. The way he scrub them is his synonym for violent love  and antonym for soft grief. Once in a while, the shards of his anger  turns me into a silent film  suffocating under city lights. Then you change into a morning  with mourning , Into a ship torn under monsoons, Into a broken concave mirror, Into a prime number in solitude, Into a black hole singing opera. Still we exchange kisses with words  inside  the holes on our throat.  God chain smoking in his evening gown interrupt us with a question,  What is your religion? This is when a love letter switch into  a propaganda poem  written by plum faced ang...
Read more