The Street of Experience

I was in no hurry that day (as you might expect of any other sane, normal, lazy person like me). Out there on the street people kept flowing as usual. And I was pushed along the flow, during which I had no idea where I was going. I stumbled back to the university gate after some disillusioned moments and whatever I had happened to think of during that time evaporated from my mind completely.

I stopped at the tea-stall just outside the main gate of the university. People usually don't have tea at noon... and since I was not People I just had to have tea at that time. It was just a way of showing that .... umm.... that I liked tea.

But that day something was different with me. I was conscious of my consciousness, of two eyes that could see and a brain that could think. No other part of my body existed. I felt like a flame, burning and illuminating, and could feel the other flames around that burnt like mine.

But were they conscious? These walking legs, and moving hands, and open eyes, and thinking brains... were they conscious that they were not individual parts?

It takes time to get used to the melodrama of College Street. The cacophony is like music; it sings to you a song of life, celebrating its chaos.

All these people, who are in so much hurry, have so many different reasons to come to college street. Many of them are perhaps coming here for the first time, some bewildered, some in search for the right shop, some amazed by the sheer amount of books scattered all around.

Someone has perhaps come to buy books for his little child, someone to buy notes and suggestions for his son or daughter appearing for board exams, someone in search of books by his loved authors, some teachers, some examinees, and most and most of all young students from various parts of the city and at times even from outside it, pursuing degrees of various degrees.

Tired and sweating, some take breaks at tea-stalls (where I am to be found also at times). The fast-food stalls at the street-side are nearly always busy catering to various visitors. In fact many times, relatives of patients admitted at Medical College also drop in to have some quick snacks.

That's another place : the Medical College of Kolkata. Patients all around, dirt accumulating and degenerating, all kinds of people everywhere, some worried for their loved ones, some going home, some resting, some getting harassed, some wounded, some suffering, some living, many dying : as far as your eyes go and your heart feels and your brain thinks, you are reminded everywhere of one thing : mortality : the uselessness of our physicality.

Strange place this. Here, around Calcutta University, you are reminded of life all around, and just beside it, death. Being in a place like this can have many effects on someone. Wouldn't a young fella feel anything weird if he were to pass by a morgue everyday? It's good to be reminded of mortality, good to feel that death is not really as far away as we imagine it to be. To the contrary it is, in fact, right here, all around us, everywhere, watching us, thinking, waiting. It takes away one's fear of death.

As far as I am concerned, I now continue to feel like the flame every single day that I pass; I continue to feel without the body; I be and I become.