( CONTAINS MENTIONS OF EXPLICIT LANGUAGE. READ AT YOUR OWN DISCRETION.)
It was cold; really cold. I had never worn more layers of clothing ever before in my sole decade of existence, but it felt like the weather didn’t even bother to pay heed to all the fabric enveloping me and instead proceeded to stab me with pinpricks of pure ice.
Ireland was a completely unfamiliar place for me. Although I had been informed that I was born in this quaint country itself, it still felt like an alien world to me, so far away from any concept of normal life that I was accustomed to.
Whereas I was an active participant in the hustle and bustle of Pune, fighting for my seat on the school bus every day, rushing towards the dirt ground as soon as the shrill sound of the hammer hitting the school bell rung out, if there was one thing for certain to a younger me it was that life was not static in the slightest. Everyone had somewhere to be, something to do and God forbid if you tried to stand in between their busy schedule.
But this was new.
It was calm. Quiet. Almost eerie, it felt off. Why wasn’t anyone shouting or yelling? Where was the laughter of those annoying middle-aged women who sat at the exact same place every day to gossip about the newest useless society drama? And for Christ’s sake, WHY WAS NO ONE HONKING?
WHERE ARE THE BEEP-BEEPS, ASSES?
We reached our stop, and a monotone set of grey tiles welcomed us into what I’d call home for the next few years. My parents were ecstatic in front of me, for them, this was the dream something they could only fantasize about but for me, it was just strange.
The first time my father had come to this tiny little island beside the UK, he was still a young man who was just married and was offered the opportunity of a lifetime to pursue a lead engineering role in Microsoft, but this time things were very different. Not actually, in fact, it was the exact same situation, he got the same offer from Microsoft to the exact same place. The only thing that was different was the date on the emails and the fact that they had a new child to accommodate.
My father wanted to immediately head into our new house and get set on decorating it in the most Indian way possible. (He decided the best way to introduce ourselves to the neighbors was to make dal tadka and set off the fire alarm causing half the building to evacuate, so he wasn’t exactly very familiar with the concept of ‘acting white) but my mother had something else in mind.
Something she was glowing with excitement with. I’d never even seen her so excited, so I decided to follow her to see what the absolutely magnificent Irish creation which she had held in such high regard.
A train. It was a freaking train.
A tram to be more specific, but either way a 10-year-old Pratyush was very unimpressed. We stepped up to the automatic booth, the first of its kind I’d ever seen in my life and one that I would become very familiar with over the next half-decade or so. Soon after a whirring sound rang through the cool air making it feel like we were in a Tron set and not a picturesque scenery we were in and then I saw it.
She was beautiful.
Curves so perfect Da Vinci would cut his fingers to get something as gorgeous, eyes so beautiful I could look at them for years. A body was so sleek and exceptional that no IITian could dream of coming close to creating something as beautiful. The Lúas was amazing. Nearly a hundred feet of metal and paint but made not just as a utilitarian ride for your average white man going to his 9-5 in the pouring Irish rain, was made with love, with passion with the utmost attention to every crevice and corner in this incredible feat of human engineering. Up to that point, little old me had only been captivated by space and astronomy, but right at that moment mechanical engineering could not seem any less attractive (a thought that would make my now commerce student self would puke) after it slowly halted in front of the smooth granite station, we stepped in and she was just as beautiful on the inside as she was on the outside.
Sitting down on the surprisingly soft and comfortable cushioned seat it finally set in. That funny feeling. The one that haunted me from as soon I had set foot out of the plane into this cold country. The one that made me want to cry like a little baby and just nap. The one that made me miss the very few friends I had back in Pune. The one that made me yell in Hindi at every single melanin-lacking fucker who kept looking at me. To just leave.
Fear
I could sit and type out every single fear I realized I held so deep within my chest, but I won’t. Mainly because every single person who has the capacity to understand the words, I’ve written up to this point has already faced this fear. The one that cuts off wings and destroys dreams and creates crater-sized holes in people’s hearts. But who knows what a young boy could do with this fear? To let it soak in was to destroy all hope that existed. To ignore it completely would be a fool’s move but to make it all disappear with a sense of courage was naïve.
I don’t know what I did, in all honesty, I just don’t remember. It felt like another lifetime where a small boy sat in a pretty tram realizing that life wasn’t all that great.
But what I do remember, is fear.
~ Pratyush Chouhan.
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