# River Crossings and Other Silences
I understand the weight now. When I wake and look in the mirror, the shadow under my eyes—it isn’t the lack of sleep. It’s the accumulated colour of evenings, the sediment of blue-dark nights, all those dusks when I wanted to say to someone—stay, stay a little longer, finish this cup of tea at least, let this song end, let this rain stop, let this cigarette burn down—but I said nothing. The cigarette burned to ash, the ash fell into the tray, and watching it I thought—this is how it goes, burning itself shorter, giving a little light, a little smoke, then ash—and even that ash, when you brush it away, leaves nothing, only a smell in the air, only a yellow stain on the finger, only that habit on the lips—empty-handed now, I still sometimes bring my fingers to my mouth as if holding something, as if grasping what has gone out but won’t let go.
I said nothing because holding on is easy, letting go is hard, and I’ve done the hard thing again and again…as if hardness itself were my dharma, as if renunciation were my ornament—an ornament no one sees, that no mirror catches, only a hollow space carved inside the chest—round, deep, echoing—when the wind blows it makes a sound, like a flute, like crying, and that sound is what I call my music, my only music, which no one hears but which I play every night before sleep, in this broken clock’s quarter to four—where time has stopped, but I haven’t, only circling that frozen moment like a moth around flame, like prayer beads through a finger, like a kite string wound on the spool, tighter and tighter, any moment it could snap, but it hasn’t, not yet.
## IV. Walking Toward the River, or Some Note Left Behind
To cross the river was to enter another country—this was my childhood certainty. The far bank meant mystery, meant possibility, meant all those things that should have existed on this side but didn’t. The wind that came from across the water carried strange scents—perhaps of other soil, where different crops grow; perhaps of other cooking, where different spices burn; perhaps of other lives, where different dreams are dreamed—and that scent itself was the foreign land, that scent was longing, that scent was the pull that doesn’t grip the feet but seizes the chest, the head, that place where dreams are born—in the marrow of bone, in the current of blood, in that dark factory of cells where desire is made, where discontent is forged, where that strange instinct is crafted that uproots people from home, sends them onto the road, teaches them to cross rivers.
Now I know—on the far bank lies the same soil, the same rice, the same weary people sitting in the same dusk by the same kerosene lamp eating the same rice in the same silence, gnawing the same bone with the same teeth, wiping the same sweat with the same hand, and in the same night dreaming the same dream in the same dark—there must be something on the other side, surely there is. Yet despite this knowing—this knowledge that sits in the mind but never reaches the heart, the way a letter never reaches its destination when the address is wrong—despite all this knowing, when I look toward the river, I still feel there is something else on the far bank. Perhaps there is.
Perhaps it isn’t a place at all, nor a person, nor a thing—perhaps it’s only the desire to cross over, only the dream of getting to the other side, and that’s enough, that’s the river’s true gift—the river doesn’t ferry you across, the river gives you the longing to cross, and in that longing there is life, in that longing there is youth, in that longing there is waking from sleep in the morning when you don’t want to wake, when you have no will to drag yourself through the day, but the river is calling, the far shore is calling, that unknown smell is calling.
The water is murky today—ash-colored, as if someone upstream burned things and scattered the ashes into the current. In the monsoon, the hills have sent down so much—tree roots that could no longer grip the earth; feathers of dead birds that once floated on the wind; broken pieces of someone’s earthen pot, still painted with blue flowers; fragments of someone’s dreams, looking like moss—slippery to the touch, slipping from your grasp when you try to hold it, floating downstream to places where no one will search for them. In the middle of the current, a boat is floating—wooden, old, paint peeling, water seeping slowly through its bottom, yet it floats. That’s achievement enough—not sinking. That’s courage enough—bailing out water even as it seeps in, and bailing while moving forward, moving forward while believing that somewhere there’s a shore, somewhere there’s land, dry earth somewhere, where the boat can be tied, where you can set foot, where you can stand.
Every morning, waking from sleep, pressing your face into the pillow and lying there for five minutes—those five minutes when the decision is made—shall I get up or not, shall I accept another day or refuse it—then rising, then washing your face in cold water, looking at yourself in the mirror once, then brewing tea—that’s the boat’s floating, that’s standing against the current, that’s the silent rebellion that no history book records, but that every person performs every morning—opening your eyes and accepting another day, claiming it as your own, even though that day holds no promise, no reward, no gift, only time—to spend, to endure, to let pass, sometimes to love—yes, sometimes to love, though that’s no certainty, only a possibility, only a perhaps, only that distant far shore that sends its scent on the wind but never comes near, never comes at all.
But the river doesn’t stop. The river knows no grief, no memory, no clock stuck at three-forty-seven. The river flows on at this very moment—in the murky water a fish leaps up, jumps, shows its silver belly for an instant, and then dives—and seeing that leap, the boy on the riverbank cries out, claps his hands, as if the fish leapt for him alone, as if the whole world had arranged this just to show him. The boy doesn’t know I’m watching. Once I didn’t know anyone was watching either—in that age when a fish’s leap was enough, when the river meant joy, when water meant play, and when the evening light fell on the river it turned to gold—not quite gold, ash-colored gold, burned gold, that light which is the last light of day—then darkness, then moonlight—and in the moonlight the river transforms completely, becomes a stranger, turns silver, the way a familiar face becomes a stranger sometimes, in sleep, when the moonlight from the window falls across it and you think: who is this, do I know them, am I safe with them—and then they stir, still in sleep, place their hand on your chest, and you know—yes, I know them, safe, still safe.
5.
# The Woman Who Stands on the Roof and Counts the Stars
She cooks all day—fingers scalded when she strains the rice, old wounds not yet healed before new ones appear, her palms becoming a map etched in burns upon burns—but no one reads that map. She washes clothes—her hands turn white in the soap’s foam, her nails crack at the edges, and the stains on the fabric lift away, but the stains on her hands never do. She measures her child’s fever on the thermometer—that red line of mercury that climbs with each degree, pressing weight against her chest, falling again so she feels her own fever rising—a fever that never shows on the thermometer, that lives not in the body but in the mind, the kind no medicine can cure. She manages her husband’s anger—that anger which arrives without reason and departs without forgiveness, which enters the house like mud on his shoes, and she wipes it away in silence, as she keeps everything else—ordered, clean, in its place—but where is she? Where does she belong in this house? The kitchen floor? No, that is her workplace. That edge of the bed in the sleeping room? No, that is where she rents her rest. Then where? Then the roof. Only the roof.
She too is a dark cloud—though she does not know that name. Her words are bitter, her truth is bitter, the food from her hands is bitter with spices, the kind that heals the body when eaten, but who will heal her? Who will force-feed her from a teaspoon and say—swallow, you’ll feel better soon? No one. So she becomes her own medicine—every night—climbing to the roof, swallowing the sky. At night, when everyone sleeps—her husband on his right side, his face toward the wall; her child curled on his small bed, knees drawn up; her mother-in-law in the next room, snoring after her pills—she climbs the stairs barefoot in silence. Every step is familiar—which ones creak, which ones don’t; she knows, because she makes this journey every night, this secret pilgrimage repeated without end.
The roof door opens to wind—wind that belongs to no one, that blows by no one’s permission, wind that catches the edge of her sari and makes her believe she has wings; makes her believe she can fly; makes her believe there is another world beyond this roof, where she is not only a mother, not only a wife, not only a daughter—where she is a name, a desire, a song that no one has sung yet, but whose melody already lives in her chest, whose words already rest on her lips, needing only a little silence, a little sky, a little of that freedom which no court grants, no law provides, which only darkness and stars offer—without conditions, without petitions, without witnesses.