Transition.

Hey.

I am catching you during a period of transition.

Your nails are bare, without any trace of nail polish. Your face is wiped clean of all make up, even the kajal that always lingers around your eyes, so much so that your face now feels unfamiliar without it. Your cheeks have visibly thinned and your skin is tight across your jawbone. You look so beautiful in this barren simplicity. So untouched. So fresh. Your features so soft without accentuation of make up that one can easily imagine the child you had been.I cannot count the wrinkles under your eyes if I try. 

The lady is here to apply Mehndi on your hands. All of your cousins and friends are sitting in a circle around her assistant, but you are on the sofa, with your arms propped on the pillows, palms upwards. Giggles and chatter are drowning the sound of the Bollywood Music playing in the background. Somebody just tucked a strand of hair behind your ear, and gave you a small bite of the Gulaab Jaaman. You seem too polite to say no.

One of your relatives holds your face in her hands, her bangles jangling loudly. She is asking you how it feels.

You smile ever so slightly. ''I don't know. It's too much happening all at once''

I think it's a very honest response. Some moments can be so overwhelming that they bypass our ability to experience them in detail, giving us a strange sense of numbness. 

Yet, In this general state of feeling overwhelmed, there will be discrete moments which will hit you like electricity. Some hours down the line , your heart will beat to the beat of the drums. Your senses will be joyfully overtaken by the smell of roses. You will be adored, and cherished, at least today. 

And then there will be quiet.

Later in the night, when your sister cuts an apple for your father, he will remember the way you cut it, your sister will miss the you-shaped hole in the center of your shared bed, and your mother will hug your clothes that are still hanging on your bathroom door, and cry.

But you will not know that. 

There will be a time, some months down the line, if not some weeks, when you will not care about the chipping nail polish on your finger, you will not wear make up to bed in hope of waking up pretty, and you will start taking a bit of space for yourself. The small moments like this will indicate that you have completed your transition into a new life and have become comfortable with the old habits spilling into it. 

There will be more transitions, those days in life when it will feel like you are in middle of two destinations, and you will remember them as defining moments of your life. And even the life itself will end with a final transition. 

And today, I feel that we were passengers in a train, and I saw the preparations surrounding the moment when you got off at a station. Yes, my ride continued without you, but I am hoping that removed from my eyes and knowledge, you are living a life worth living, that the difference between peace and numbness, is evident to your heart because on account of its extreme familiarity with the former. 

All the best.