Waiting To Exhale.

I'm writing after a very long time and I'm just feeling like I'm in two minds right now with everything I'm looking at. What am I looking at? Pictures.
Pictures, pictures and more pictures. These are the sounds of my life.

On one side of my table, here are strewn some of the most darling photos of my childhood.
Mum and Dad with me and a picnic basket at our favorite park. Mum holding a handful of candies away from me and laughing with that gorgeous wide smile at my red, strained chubby face awash with crocodile tears as my plump fingers steadfastly aim to reach for my Mum's withdrawn palm. Dad and Mum cajoling me into blowing out the only candle on my first birthday chocolate cake (which was followed over the years by so many more, with each one more precious and beloved than the previous.). Mum in the driving seat looking at Dad in the top mirror while she confidently takes her first drive through the more crowded side of town. Me dozing away at the table with books while my Dad is working out some complex algebra that he thinks I'm actually paying attention to (haha!).
More testimonies to the love we share as a family. Amen.
And then some.

Then some of my lighter photos. My best friends and me pretending to be the rascals we actually are. Us at the coffeehouse, trying to look older. Us stuffing ourselves with pizza and beer. Us striking poses for special photos that we have names for and remember even today...
These photos become all the more important today since we're all so far away and in different places today. This, other than the regular lovey-dovey e-mails that tend to take on a more monotonous tone and the once-in-a-while ''long margarita nights'' that we get together for and never forget, is the only memory we will all share together of the times we actually knew how to be cute; and to love like we would never get hurt.
A time when I thought I thought nothing was impossible. Nothing.

Near my knee, there's the coffee-stained main page of the newspaper with photos of foreign dignitaries alongside a cover story on trade relations. Beside this, the tabloid with some snazzy photos of teenage celebrities and who's-who in Hollywood, Bollywood, Kollywood and who knows what other woods that be springing up out of the blue these days. Beside that, the cookbooks with a million recipes. Splash of colors. The more mundane and happier side of life.

I'm looking at the television. Pictures in sepia of hungry orphans with tired faces squatting and looking on with surprised expressions at the camera with a side-photo of the country's food grain being consumed by mice and dogs scavenging in torn gunnybags. Convicted politicians dressed to the nines with unapologetic smiles and followed by dozens of shouting supporters touting the Victory symbol in black&white. Youngsters angrily arguing over current issues in a newsroom. A CRPF jawan's blood-stained helmet lying on the grass. Broken green glass bangles in the sand and a beautiful new bride crying and wiping away silent tears with a mehendi-adorned hand while the bugles blow. Models preening for the flash while others kill themselves.
Pictures of the outside world that in equal proportions wrench my heart, make me pause and think and then make me feel helpless and angry.

On the sofa, there is my secret collection of photos. Photos I've printed out. Of people.
I'm getting more photos everyday.
Young and old, men and women and children.
Patriots. School children. Aspirants. Normal, talented and otherwise happy people.
These are the faces of the people I've never personally met and for the rest of my life I will never be able to forget.
People who lost their lives to mindless and abominable reasons that I don't think they themselves would have ever considered possible.
Ragging. Molestation. Rape. Murder. Terrorism. Humiliation. Sacrifice. And then some.
People who were loved by other people. And who actually gave a damn about something.
People who stood by a single principle they put their faith into and lost everything for it.
I need these photos everyday, every single day, to remind me of how important my life is. How important it is for me not to waste an hour, even a minute.
It is only with such incredible and impossible losses that we come to terms with life and learn to savour every second of it.

I need all of these photos every single day. I keep looking at them, just like people need coffee refills and cigarette packs.
Without these colors and these faces and these memories, my life is not my own life. I am not me.

Daily life and everything in it so inexplicably gets intertwined with my own life - my own family and my best friends - that I cannot help but wonder what it is that hurts me so much about these photos of lives I'm not a part of. These people I never knew and who have made such an impact on my life and make it all the more worth my while to appreciate the bitterness of the long road ahead.

I feel like a silent spectator to all their suffering. Suffering which I was not privy to.
It consumes me and holds me captive for a long time.
With all things I have learnt to overcome, I have still not learned how to deal with the closeness of my life to another person's misery.

The question we should all ask ourselves is this - is this all there is to our life? While we sweat and fret and complain and fume over the smallest things everyday, there are ten special people around the world dying too soon.
I'm just struck deep somewhere within by the inevitability of loss and pain.
Life goes on, I suppose...I'm just waiting to exhale.