Being, Of oldness

Self as a place of return

I have been a traveller for very long. Nomadic being has been the fulcrum of my existence for about two decades now. I think nothing of throwing away kitchen containers, and getting new ones. I think nothing of new curtains, new salt-and-pepper shakers, new addresses, new clothes, new friends. Newness doesn’t frighten me. It is the remarkable quality of rootless persons. I call myself adaptive, migratory. But striking slow roots in the city of Bangalore, I feel frightened and optimistic in the same breath. Like embracing the touch of old clothes, repainting old walls, recognising the smiles of old friends. Old things return in one’s life as redemption, while new things come as good fortune.

[Sketch from 2013: Self-portrait, New Haven]

My mother doesn’t let go of kitchen containers for decades on end. They form building blocks of her domestic empire. I have no desire for such empire, no desire to hold onto things, not least to tighten the grip. Holding on seems scary. Letting go (at least until this time) seemed easy. Like my frequently changing addresses and physical locations, I have tentatively begun to fumble for the unchanging vestiges of a self. One that is not a pack of cards, a kaleidoscope, a deep-seated one, an endless, unchanging one.

The self emerges as a subtitle or a guideline into not being drawn into the world sometimes, to say not now to people and things, and to sit back and embrace the already existing, the taken-for-granted. The self emerges as an old friend - no longer exciting, but assuring in an inevitable return. Suddenly, on a winter Sunday, one realises one has grown old, even as one acquires oldness, as return.