As it is: A cab ride home

I am on the backseat. The day has ended but the night hasn't arrived yet. The journey is long, pleasantly long. I have nothing to do, exactly what I have been craving. And for sometime, I am a nobody. Just an observer being carried around by a random stranger. The air is hazy and street lights glimmer through them one after the other like a shifting carousel. There are other people around, some like me, going home after being somebody for the day and some others going out hoping to be themselves for the night. It is noisy but also quiet. There is nothing I am supposed to do. I can let go and let myself be shapeless. I am not on the steering wheel, I am not responsible for my life, a random stranger is; and it feels weirdly comfortable.

I glance over his phone to see how long before this ends. It is not an eternity but still enough to give me a taste of it. I lay back and let myself be absorbed by the moment. And when I really think about it its not the ride which gives me happiness, it just give me the permission to be, not exacly happiness, just "to be". If only we could think of our whole life as a cab ride home, a home where we will be nothing but dust. But real life is hard, or at least seems to be, we struggle, we strive, we laugh, we cry. We struggle to be ourselves but at the same time trying so hard to be someone else. They say fake it till you make and all it has ever made me is a high functioning impostor. Deep down I don't want much, just the freedom to savour everything this life has to offer, the good and the bad, to feel alive than to just live a "good" life.

But for now in this journey back home I feel at home. I hope nobody calls me, I hope nobody texts me. This inevitable incidental solitude feels more peacful than any earned one. This silence makes me notice things which I am totally oblivious to when I am trying to be Vishal. The sound of the engine revving, the shifting of gears, the transmission which tells me if the cab is run on gas, the gentle whiff of the empty air freshner. It feels like my senses come alive when I am not trying. Feels like I can isolate everything from the whole experience and appreciate curves and corners particular to each one of them. And while I am lost in my little world the journey goes on, every turn sways not just my body but also my mind. The ever changing view filling my heart, looking at both the rich and the poor with the same eyes, without feeling any pity or any envy. Everything just "is".

And it goes on, and unfortunately I arrive which actually bring me far from home. My body and mind stand up and I regain shape even if I dont want to. I am Vishal again, but I also got to not be him for some time. And I can't help but be grateful that even in a world that grips us so hard I was able to escape it for a while. It sounds strange but forgetting yourself from time to time also helps you be yourself again in a much better way. The night has arrived and the moon is shining, smiling gently, maybe because it seees that I experienced what it is like to be him, to just be.