The Sim-ilar Archive Of Every Double Ganger

Chapter 7

-------------------  VASUDHA   ---------------------------

The thing I was most passionate about, was running. And so here I was, about 500 kilometres away from my house.

Supposedly, running away.

I had never thought of myself as a criminal.

Was it a criminal offense to leave everything behind and run away? I did not know. But right now. I know nothing.

I am sitting near the bus stop in this city. The name on the stop showed me that I am in Pune. I had heard about it. But not enough to make it my destination.
I am not running away yet, some part of me replied. And I readily agreed.

As of now, I was away on a state level gymnastics competition. It was not difficult to fool somebody who knew nothing about anything.

My head swims back, to the goodbye I had to do , without my permission. But if everything was up to me, I would forget it all together.

On most days I controlled my brain, but on days like this, it tried to control me, and I let it.

My mother came out of the kitchen of our house to bid me farewell.

And that is really saying something because she had to travel the distance between Nagpur and Sangli to do that.

[I would say that I know how much it is, but I don’t bother with statistics until it’s that important. ]

And she crossed that distance even though she rarely ever exits the kitchen. She looked at me with the smile I had grown up to trust.
I used to look at that smile and know that everything was okay. Until everything was not Okay, and that smile? That smile was still there.

It was now the representation of a lie. And instead of making me feel warm in my chest, it made it tighten with a feeling I could not recognise as my own. I was not used to this feeling.

But I noted to myself, that I would find out what it was.

But because the human brain is supposed to feel love and fear and things like that, and since I have still not managed to hide away every part of human away in me, I felt it.
I felt love for her. I could not blame her for this.

And then I felt fear.

For one mini second I felt scared about what I was going to do. And then I felt scared that I was feeling this way. Panicky. Like my bile was reaching out through my ducts towards the sky.

And then the “cold” set in. I have this thing in me. I call it the “cold”. It is the thing that makes me me.

It is this feeling inside of me that I could never name. It sets inside of me from time to time. Time when I know exactly what I am to do. And then all the emotions wash away and I am left fearless.

I do not know when I encountered this feeling. I was not always like this.

I was as weak as they came.

But things happen and the glint in your eyes change.

And when the cold set in, I looked at my mother one last time and took a mental snap shot. And I moved on.

Because there was something I had to do.
And that something did not require any emotions

If one day, I wanted to be the person I imagined myself to be, this was prerequisite.

Today I would have to be this person if one day I wanted to be me.

Me was a being stuck in the very deep, amidst my pain and fear and hope. I would have to wait for a safe place to unleash it.
I would not be safe here. My being would not be safe here.