Rewind and Undo

I stared out of the train, feeling the wind on my face. X always says it is because that moment when we are pushing our way towards the door and hanging precariously, half inside half outside, it gives us our personal space in this crowded rush of Mumbai. I was fascinated by the reason but for me it was something different. I stared, sometimes with radio plugged in (thanks to my technology savvy uncle who was utterly disgusted my by old fashioned mobile, which would have made a better object to hit someone rather than to be used for talking), to see if anything ever changes in this city. Many people have written about this city, fortunes made and lost, history made or plainly the powerful effect of Mumbai. I travel the same stretch of harbour line everyday, twice and see the same vashi creek (it looks better in winters as lots of birds flock in), sometimes greyer than usual because of the filth floating in it, followed by the mangroves or what is left of it, after the land has been filled up to accommodate the ever growing population of Mumbai. Sometimes the people who enter the coaches from different stations also seem same. They even smile at me as they get in. But mostly it makes me think of where I am going? Whether anything ever will change at all? I may move to Kolkata in April, but that’s just geography. A beep of message jerked me back to reality. It was Y asking me when I will be back…

I wonder why so many people stay together in marriages or in a long relationship? Is it because one it is done, there is so much to undo that it is better left as it is? Being together and still behaving as if strangers. If each one of us was given a chance to undo our past, what all we would have done to be back where we were? Sometimes I envy Y, his needs are simple… atleast it seems so. Food, game on PS2, whatever is in front of him at that moment and work. Love, affection and loyalty are taken for granted. I wonder if he wonders. I know X wonders (I would give anything to take a sneak peak into his mind). In the meantime, I have moved ahead, no more sideways. And I feel things going away, moving apart… like the big bang theory but it is so slow that you can’t see. You can just feel it.

How come our parents never seemed so shaky? They never fought, never had multiple lovers, always remained loyal and did the right thing (ok, ok I know they where not saints, but then they were ‘parents’). I want to erase my past, my present and feel the fresh, untainted love again, but even if I could undo, I think most probably, it would drive me out of my mind.