Himu (pronounced he-moo) couldnt hold back his tears now. He had his feet up, while on a comfortable chair on the balcony of his new apartment in downtown Chicago. His wife was on the phone with one of her old friends. Himo had just slipped back into the past - ably assisted by the glass of absolut vodka in his hand. His father always called him Himaayat, as did the INS officer who stamped his visa the first time he entered the US. But he felt more comfortable with a name, that did not mean or stand for anything. He had been successful in life but always worried about the future and felt anxious about the present. Wanted rituals to help feel sane, and at the same time felt anxious because he didn't feel the wind in his face.
He was now thinking about the one bedroom apartment in Mahim where he grew up till he was 18. His current state of relative bliss reminded him of the times when he spent some evenings staring out of this apartment on the 4th floor. People walking by - women going to the temple, fathers returning home from work, kids playing games, stray dogs busy trying to catch their tails. He could have spent hours in that state of reverie. The best place to be is where you can see others when they can't, he thought. If he could relate his current state with one of 30 years ago, did he really have to travel so much in life. What if he had stood there on his balcony, holding onto the grills, for 30 years - would he have "felt" any different today. Even if there was an accelerated simulator for life, he thought, I couldnt have controlled values to all the input parameters. But then like Kavita had said "We make life sound too complicated". Maybe life is just a handful of states of mind - and if you profiled anyone's life, we would all have spent very similar amounts of time in each of these states. Although we keep taking these gazillion different arcs into and out of these states of life.
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