I don’t know why I’m writing this; maybe it’s some kind of inner desire to share. My heart hums the piano keys of Nana’s ‘Aitai Yo’. I was meant to write from my head, but it’s my heart that’s taken over lately, reciting these melancholy beats. Maybe it’s the summer breeze or the tranquil stillness of it all. But It feels different this summer, and I’m yet to decipher whether they’re good or bad feelings. It was only a few months ago that I had a thought of futileness. Physical matters like appearance, money and a factual opinion that they aren’t real and they don’t matter or at least they shouldn’t. In Sikhi, it’s called Maya, the illusion of the material world.

I often daydream, staring out of the window with this yearning to be free like a butterfly fluttering through the sky aimlessly with no real direction. This vision of living in the country, basking in the glory of a warm solitude. Instead, I sit in this adolescence we call reality. A colder solitude that fills the city from building to building as if it were a power cord running electricity.

Still, my thoughts wander as they always do, and nostalgia comes to me in gentle flashes, and remembering the past now feels liberating, refreshing. Which is probably why that tenderness of love is in my head. I still look back on our times, maybe I’m writing this to you. I retrace the words you asked me that night, Do I love you? and my answer was How could I love someone I don’t know? I stand on that side, as I have always done. Afraid of putting my whole heart into anything, scared of the reprimand and loss of believing anyone. However, I am not writing this to you.

To ground these feelings, I read the words of today’s Hukamnama, which mentions Maya, it speaks that

This body fabric is conditioned by Maya, O beloved; this cloth is dyed in greed.

Ang 713 of the Guru Granth Sahib

Conversing that these illusions we feed ourselves are no good, we should remove the attachment of greed and impurity and strive to focus on our spiritual form and being pure. With time, we’ve been accustomed to an obsession with physical attributes, forgetting the soul preserved in flesh that can’t be seen. It’s natural, although, because what we see first is the appearance, forgetting that what lives within is what makes us.

I read these words by Bhairavi Raag at 14:45 pm, studying each line carefully under the cooling fan at work. There’s a rush inside of me that reminds me daily, I’m leaving soon. It was inevitable. Closer, I am to that butterfly that stumbles through the sky in white, proud and beautiful.

Even as time moves on, my heart feels tender yet heavy, filled with ambition but also a longing to do nothing but watch the summer drift by, and the air become autumn. The summer heat may slip away, and the crackling leaves fall, dropping a single note of bliss, but will my heart still sing this bittersweet melody?