Migratory Life

 

There is a strange grief reserved for those of us who have lived our lives learning the geometry of departure - who have folded home and bits of themselves in the large suitcases, carried entire neighbourhood, relations behind in the ribcage of their hearts. They leaves. They had to leave. 

They no longer hope or believe in permanence. Because, they each time they saw home within something they had to lose it. Lose it the cruelty of situations. Still, thet carry a part of them everywhere they go. They keep furnishing the empty rooms with the tenderness of belongingness and ownership - no matter how temporary it is.

Each time we leave, people ask us about the thrill of new beginnings, of the excitement of exploring new streets, building new homes- within people and spaces in a brand new city. They ask me how do we feel who are just messengers of love and devotion, of sincerity, who keeps moving one city to another- ever migrating, ever moving begun from childhood and late adulthood. 

Those who carry the weight of becoming a brand new self under the breeze and skyline of new city, who carry the weight of every doorway closed until they retire. Once they belonged inside. Once they had a desk and a chair.

They do not know they weep under the rainfalls. They shiver with fever while leaving something behind. Each time they burn themselves in the departing fire for the intoxicating promise of becoming someone new.

For us, every new home arrives with new adjustments, a quite apprehension, the rugged books finds a new shelves, the old plants gets new jar exchanged. The laughter changes. So, does the tone and cues. We keep adjusting and moving on- from people, from situations, old habits. They live and smile in our memory lane while we try to fit in. Fit in the new cycle.Old walls witnesses your suitcased life getting packed and wrapped up in a bagpack. You are heading towards the new. The both excites and frightens you. Because, you know the weight of adjustments. The cost of departure that you pay with losing familiarity only to be familiarized with the new. 

Perhaps, the visitors are used to live by the rules of migration, just like the migratory birds, they build home in a wetland knowing they'll have to move on when the season ends. We rehearse the old rituals of getting to know people, memorizing the routes and the calculation of keeping in touch. For now you don't know, how much time and efforts will it take to build another significant relation. 

Again, somewhere in between the weather of mind will change. Clouds of attachments will gather where we once promised ourselves drought and sterility. The grounds of bondings will get fertile now. We will reap, what we sow. Certain, voices will become familiar, a day to day comfort zone. Some streets will become our go to place, as if we have traveled here many lifetimes. The coffee shops would become sacred as if it calls attention for the intimacy of prayer. Connections will grow, chatters will flow, so does the quiet understanding of love language we share, my love language to them is transformation. Transforming themselves from the pain, the agony, they have. To retrieve and rise from the ruins they accumulated, to fade the scars of burns they might have and rejuvenate. I want my people to be strong and empathetic. They must learn the language of understanding and kindness, when they are with me in the coffee shop. 

Some people rebuilds everything from the scratches, repeatedly, for every transit. It's their destiny- the quiet inheritance they acquire. Hence, they fear the new, not because they are incapable of loving it but because they know precisely how they will and what heartache will it bring after another departure, another transition. Some people die thousands times a silent death in their daily lives- still they know how to pull it together and keep moving on with a smile. 

They know that one day the new rules, new culture, lifestyle and the foreign language will occupy our tongue, wrapping our dream. The strangers will become the people we seek in sickness, celebration and sorrow. They make our ordinary life bearable and relaxed. They becomes a fabric of our identity without whom we can't think our daily existence. They become the song we everyday sing. 

And still, despite the foreknowledge of grief, despite the certainty of future partings, we perform the ancient labor of belonging. We unknowingly get attached. It's beyond our control. We start eating from the same plate. We start to cry together for each other's grief. 

For what choice there is left except to continue the bonding?! To surrender, once more, to the infinite optimism of affection?! To open the doors for destined people, perhaps, to become to witness another collapse of the star in its absence. The constellation of absences grows. Grows with each transition.

And so, according to the old rules of this life of perpetual construction and collapse,we will make room for the newcomers, sometimes with a predicted knowledge - pattern recognition or simply, let them in. We will teach ourselves the geography of their minds, of the new cities. We will build home in places where we told ourselves once we won't settle. We will collect fragments of belongings from each departure, leaving things behind, until we ourselves become an archive of countless addresses and houses. A memory lane of people both good and bad. 

Perhaps, that is what home ultimately becomes for migratory people like us- not a singular place preserved for timelines, but collection of rooms, a gallery of faces, and an accumulation of farewells with such reverence and painful that even loss begins to feel as devotion. 

We leave. We arrive. We unpack. We gather. We grieve.

And against all evidence, against the history of every farewell we have ever endured, we dare to love the new as though permanence had always been promised to us.

We leave. We arrive. We unpack. We gather. We grieve. 

And, against all the history of goodbyes we have ever survived, we dare to love and cling to new as though permanence had always been promised to us. But, within all the migration abd transitions we learn the new language of permanence- that is to remain present and live, let live. To enjoy what we have untill it becomes another star in the constellation of losses. We love what we have and remind us always, perhaps, this won't stay like this forever. We accept our fate and keep moving on from places to people to significance. 

©® Farheen Akter Bhuian 

Timeline: 11.11 am, Tagar, Sick, coughing, sore throat, whining.