FORGOTTEN

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I lie on the sofa and stare lazily at the ceiling as the rhythmical tapping on the roof begins, as rain drops make contact with the zinc sheeting. It progresses from a nonchalant tempo to a steady rattle as the volume of raindrops increase, filling the atmosphere with the unique scent of the mixture of dust and moisture as the dust is being liberated to the air when the water bounces off the earth. I’ve always loved that scent. Once, a young me would frantically search for the source of the scent once the rain starts to fall, most times finding it as I sniff the outside walls of our house where the rain had touched. I remember licking the painted walls, not caring for the dirt and bacteria that I picked up in the process, The only important thing being that scent. 

It’s that scent that draws me now to the barred window of my house as the clouds graces the evening with it’s generous showers and the cold wind softly glides in from the window and kisses my face. It’s not a particularly gloomy day, neither is it a bright one, even more so now as it rains, a soft shade of grey clouds in the sky, mumbling a low growl of thunder. 

I press my face into the dark green iron bars of the burglary proof that boards my window, and stare out on the view being offered on this axis. The haphazard litter of houses situated too close together while trying to comform to the irregular margins of the narrow street is what greets my eyes – little houses with corrugated aluminum sheets crowning them while gracelessly flaunting wood rafters which have grayed from the combined action of rain and sun, jutting out above the enveloping walls to support the almost useless overhangs. 

Where I live would easily and generally be classified as a ghetto in all connotations of the word and so it’s not terribly unnatural to find such sacrifice of privacy in the situating of the houses which is such that the entrance of most buildings are most likely the backyard of another. 

Solemnly absorbing the scent of the rain, the rhythm tapping above me on the roof, while watching as the rain drops, hitting earth before gleefully bouncing off in a splash leaving a little displacement of sand in its wake, my eyes are drawn to a white scarf that has been left hanging on a drying line nailed to the side of the little house that is closest to my window. 

The scarf looks to be made of a flimsy material, presumably chiffon and is steadily beaten about by the soft wind that accompanies the rain. Most of the other drying lines do not sport any clothes hanging on them and I suppose the owners have rushed out to retrieve their clothes just as the rain had started to threaten. For some minutes I pointlessly stare at the white scarf, pelted by rain as it billows in the breeze and one word rises to the fore of my mind –

Forgotten. 

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A melancholic shiver washes through me as I stare at this seemingly ordinary picture and a memory flashes back to my mind. 

“what’s your biggest fear, Dola?”

“heart break” she replies without missing a beat. It seemed she always had that answer ready. 

“what’s yours” she asks me. I already know what my answer is – I also have given it a lot of previous thought – but I deliberately let the seconds tick as I look down on my legs which was swinging over the edge of the half wall we were sitting on. She waited patiently until I spoke

“to be forgotten. My greatest fear is to be forgotten.”

Thinking back to that red-tinted evening, I realise Dola might have considered it a weird thing for me to be afraid of let alone have as my greatest fear. I wouldn’t blame her too if that was what she  thought – it’s quite understandable that a teenager who is just having her debut into the world of adolescence and it’s fabled trips of bliss of ‘finding love’ and ‘being loved’ and also the dreary narratives of having a heart broken,  she could easily fear having her heart broken. She most likely would have limited herself to thinking that a broken heart might be impossible to mend. 

I had known better.  I’d already believed in the inevitability of having one’s heart broken – say, it’s just a thing that must happen. I also knew that one way or the other, a broken heart, even though might never be the same, can definitely be mended. I even believed at the time that maybe our hearts needed to be broken for us to become. I once read of a Japanese tradition, where broken porcelain bowls are put together again, using melted gold to fill the cracks therefore making the outcome more valuable than the initial piece. 

As far as I was concerned, there was nothing to fear about heartbreak. 

But being forgotten…

Sometimes I believe I do have a valid reason for being so afraid of the idea. Sometimes I hide under the justification that it must be a pointless life – one which is lived leaving nothing behind to be remembered by

Other times, I just have no idea why the feeling scares me. 

Today, I can explain it better to Dola that she in fact is scared of the same thing. That maybe being forgotten is in deed the cruelest and truest form of heartbreak. 

On the one hand, I worry that everything I do or say should in fact contribute somehow to the grander goal of perpetually living on (I’m an adept believer in the butterfly effect theory) even after I move on. On the other hand, I just don’t care about the grand actions and the lofty memorabilias to be recounted by a residual population. On this hand, what matters is the little – those minute nuances and overlooked shenanigans, my intricate essence – never being forgotten and it doesn’t matter by whom; large populations reading and learning of the entails of my existence or a singular soul on whom my lowly memory is etched

Just the assurance of posterity.

Source: Writerscafe.org