The Cubicles of Life
I am starting this article nearly a month after my wedding. It’s November and I am really trying to find my voice or my point of view. I always find writing on blank sheets easier than telling things outright to people. I wish I could just talk about things to people. Why do I romanticize letting narrative cook in my head and then weave stories out of it? Okay, so here goes my narrative of how the lens has changed for me as a married woman!
Moving to a new city after marriage sounds exciting – (and scary as well). Maybe moving to a new city anytime in your life is scary. Married or not. But – I feel – doing so being single is a good kinda scary. You are allowed to make mistakes. The mistakes that become your lessons or the stories that your future self will be proud to reminisce. Hang on. But it can apply to your married life as well. The jitters of how it started and how it will go. While the what-ifs clog your mind with nervousness and fear, all those emotions will culminate into a story worth sharing someday anyway. You might laugh at those moments of doubt with your partner someday with your hair all grey and wrinkle-clad smile.
Home, Kashmir, Beginning
Wait! This wasn’t the narrative I wanted to start this article with. So, you read the title – ‘Cubicles of Life’ – the three words I could think of looking at the well-lit skyscrapers of Mumbai under a dark, starless sky from my new home’s breezy balcony; when I came here some twenty odd days back. I think this balcony is going to be my favorite space in this house!
The Cubicles of Life
I had just traveled away from my home back in the mountains, my Kashmir – in search of building a new home for myself. Though I am not a big fan of being redundant with the words, I can’t resist the urge to write more about home – the place that made me who I am. Ah, the urge and the rules don’t go well together. So, bear with the redundancy.
Pink sky - just like my mother's Nuun-Chai
Where is my home? The one that I left behind or the one where destiny is taking me? Why can’t the two co-exist? If you ask me, I would fancy a small home in the Pir Panjal range by the shore of the Arabian Sea.
Home - Pir Panjal at the shore of the Arabian Sea
Bringing back my fluttering thoughts, so I still stare at these skyscrapers. Strangely, my eyes struggle to fixate the gaze at one building, one window, one story at a time. Let me paint the picture for you.
So, I am standing on the eleventh floor on a beautiful breezy balcony covered with plants – I can see ten skyscrapers in a single frame. Running the glance and calculations, you can say each building has around twenty to twenty-five floors. Don’t crosscheck my math. Imagine I am seeing about three hundred well-lit windows. But honestly, each window reels a life, a story, of people and their hopes, fears, and dreams. Hard to focus on just one. The writer in me wants to capture every story – maybe over the days to come and reflect their reality – or maybe take a snapshot now and let my imagination and assumption merge their realities with euphuism.
Honestly, staring at these hundreds of small, well-lit windows with life dancing in each one, I named them the Cubicles of Life. Now the question remains, will I be determined to stare at these cubicles to draw their realities over the coming days and present them to you, or will I take the other route?
Disclaimer: I picked up the strands of this article almost after twenty days – and, surprise, I chose none of the above plans for presenting the stories from the “Cubicles of Life” to you. So, here’s what I did. For all these twenty days – in the moments of happiness and fear – I came to the balcony and saw these stories unravel before my eyes. I tried to capture most of them in my journal – with a mix of reality and imagination. I will share a few of my favorites with you.
The stories from the cubicles of life come to life as the sky turns dark and the lights in these cubicles brighter. Thank God, my balcony is not lit – and I remain camouflaged in this discrete night, safely not letting anyone around me know that I am staring into their lives.
1. Love
Of all the things I know about love, it still holds the power to amaze me, every time leaving me stunned with its sheer ability to change lives in a million different ways. And, I tell myself that I don’t know a thing about it- at all. Sometimes love erupts like hot magma. Sometimes, it comes in lulls and sighs. So, my first story from the cubicles of life is about an old couple – a very adorable one. The couple must be either in their late 70s or early 80s. It melts my heart to see the lady – whom I have named Juliet - sitting on a swing hanging in her room- while her man – Romeo (obviously), sits just in front of her on a rocking chair. There is never any gadget or any other thing in their hands. An absolute zero distraction. The couple sits in their room almost every night before going to bed, and they talk to each other and be there for each other. Something which is just a basic yet profound act of love. This love is rare. The kind, slow, consistent, peaceful one. And, just when it’s time for them to sleep, Romeo always takes his stick’s support to get up to help Juliet get off the swing safely. Ensuring his weak arm still provides firm support to his lady. And they hold hands to walk maybe to their beds, and the light turns off.
Love
Sometimes, love combusts into extinction, and sometimes, it just ceases to be. The long and short of it – we love others just the way we expect them to love us. And, as our expectations change, so does our idea of love! Seeing young lovers never gives me butterflies. I always think their love has not stood the test of time yet. What is a relationship without that? Seeing old couples look at each other with sheer kindness melts my heart. The wrinkles on their skin testify to their love. Every single strand of their greys depicts the glorious victory of their saga.
Standing miles away from this cubicle of life – I see a once young couple who must have fought for their love to be with each other or maybe whom destiny had brought together. They must have their hardships and moments of doubt but still embraced each other by letting time brew their story. Here they are, holding hands and going to sleep peacefully together till death does them part, unfortunately.
2. Beauty
The second story reeling from one of these cubicles is about beauty. The beauty, not the way this city of glitz and glam sees it. But how we all are seen by the people who love us. Like how our best friend hypes us or how our mother thinks there is no one else like us in this vast world. I wish we could see ourselves in the mirror like our best friend or mother sees us; life would have been easier. Why do we want to seek others’ validation anyway?
Beauty
So, I see this young chubby girl in her late teens – wearing her yoga pants and a tee staring at herself – what I assume should be a wall mirror. She always stretches her shirt out to hide the creases of what she believes her dysmorphic body shows. She combs her curly hair in a ponytail and ties it up with determination - exactly the same way, every night - to lose that extra inch to shed that extra kilo. Why? To be healthy? Or to feel pretty or be seen? Honestly, I want to yell at the top of my voice and tell her, “You are beautiful. You are enough. You are seen. And, you are heard.” I want to tell her, “Run all the miles away to be confident in your skin and have stronger acceptance of yourself - but never lose an inch of your body to get validation of your existence from a guy who won’t even remember your name.”
She grabs her yoga mat and starts making a move. But she seems sad while shaking her hands. I often wonder if we can get rid of the weight that our body bears, but what about the things that weigh our hearts and spirits down? Who is held accountable for throwing unkind, cruel words at us – mostly women and girls of a certain size, shape, and color? Beauty is a matter of the heart. It’s the core of your existence that you choose to be instead of who you are forced to become. Beauty lies within, and it certainly lies in the eyes of a beholder. If only I could hold the hand of my teenage self and tell her, “You are enough. You are kind. And you are wise. That’s all the world needs. And that’s all you will ever need.”
3. Companion
From another cubicle of life, I bring to you a story about the importance of having a companion. I do not want to name this story about what I see – which I know is about loneliness. On the contrary, I want to be hopeful and write the would-have and should-have part of it. From what I see in the mornings reeling in this cubicle, is a man who just sits near his window and puffs a cigarette. He endlessly stares at the wall in front of him, he does not even bother to look outside the window. With no one around to tell him to stop.
Companion
Unfortunately, this cubicle of life does not light up in the night. All that I can see is one small red dot oscillating back and forth. I assume it's him puffing cigarettes just the way he does in the morning. I wonder if this is his fortress of solitude or just a cage of loneliness? How special his cigarette must be to him? Is that all he has got? Maybe for him, a cigarette is his companion. He holds it between his fingers like the tresses of a beloved and puffs it out like a first kiss of love. Maybe all the ashes that fall off are the sorrow he has overcome with time and the burning tip is his power of accepting life as it is?
December is almost ending and I feel it’s time to pick the threads of this article and see what else can we add to the narrative. So, these were three of my favorite stories from the cubicles of life. Mostly because there was a comfortable pattern no shocks and no surprises. It was just the same thing every hour, night after night. Earlier I used to ponder how these stories have survived the monotony of cyclic repetition? But now I think about it, I have become a part of a mundane routine too. I do the same thing at the same time of the day and night. I am also following a cycle too, ain’t I? I am also living in one cubicle of life after all. If anyone would see me in the cubicle of life under the night sky – I would be found doing the same thing at the same hour, but I am more than that chore or routine. It’s more about my joy to live with the person I love the most in this whole world. The routine is the quest of a girl who is becoming a woman. Maybe monotony is not that bad, it’s layered and weaved with nuanced moments.
I will come again to this draft to fill two more stories from other cubicles of life that have found a place in my heart. In these stories, I have found a beautiful monotony of Hope and Dreams.
Change of plans. While I was syncing in the monotony of life in my cubicle like everyone else, I lost track of time and never got time to type the stories here. It’s August. It’s my birthday today. And a lot unraveled in the last eight months. I am too exhausted to write about the details. In these eight months, I found myself by the shores of the Arabian Sea yearning and thinking about Jhelum. There were months I was asked to visit Jhelum to let people in my cubicle of life have their space and convenience.
But this month, I feared returning to my cubicle, it didn’t feel like home. I remember seeing my favorite balcony in my dream even before I got married and I felt a deep sense of loneliness. There were nights when I was actually standing on my favorite balcony and I was alone and lonely.
Moments when I felt alone and dived into the stories from
the cubicles of life
I was wrong this was not my home – I tried my best to make it one – but other people living in this cubicle always treated me like an unwanted guest who had overstayed her visit. Coming from Jhelum this time, the Arabian Sea felt stranger than ever. My cubicle of life was locked. I was locked out of it. It was evident that it was not my home. In a mere eight days, I was handed over a paper that screamed the end of my marriage. What was the reason? Maybe I would write about that story some other day but this time on my birthday, I know one thing - a house can be a big skyscraper, a small cottage, a well-lit penthouse, a dark hut - but a home is a place where the doors are always open for you – and you are always welcome.
As an unmmaried girl, for me home was - a place you find in others. After a year, as a woman who was thrown out by in-laws - from a promised abode of safety and love - a home ~ changed that definition of home for me. Home is a dimension spread across time and space that truly and undoubtedly is yours. Here’s to building and being my own home. Everything seems hopeless right now. But like a bird who musters all its courage to gather twig after twig from the known and unknown, I will build my nest. And that nest will always be open for those who need to feel at home- when they are lost.
September has ended its second week and I am leaving the Arabian Sea. It’s time to go back to my Jhelum. I don't know what else could I write to finish this incomplete narrative. All I can recall is the fateful August night when I was locked out of my cubicle of life. On that night - the Arabian Sea was ferociously angry. Jhelum was withdrawing its feeble currents back. Something really terrible happened in the city of lights and dreams. Hopes were crushed. Trust was breached. A bride was turned into an entity with blank tags for society to fill with the labels. She belonged to nowhere. Jhelum dried. The Arabian Sea kept roaring. The lights dimmed away. All cubicles of life were dark and lifeless. It was a starless night.
Locked door - unmasking the lies
Shuja Tasleem
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