Sail Through Styx - A SwaSan SS

Chapter one

Seeking the light

From my spirit's gray defeat

From my pulse's flogging beat,

From my hopes that turned to sand,

Sifting through my close clenched hand,

From my own fault's slavery,

If I can sing, I still am free,

For with my singing I can make,

A refuge for my spirit's sake,

A house of shining words, to be, 

My fragile immortality...

- Sara Teasdale 

I find it in the rising sun, the feather light golden rays that peeps through boughs, winks through the gaps in their leaves; I feel it in the air, that shifts from season to season, that brushes off dusty clouds from the endless robes of skies; and I see it in my own eyes, as I bore into them through the spotless mirror in my room; or I hear it in my voice, whenever I stop worrying about the correct pitch and tempo, and simply listen to my own octaves rising and falling in graceful tides; it is everywhere, even flowing in my dreams; the hope, the yearning, the desire to live another day.

It is not denial as some may call it; the cavern cowards crawl into, when they know the last of their days are here. For cowardice comes with fear, fear with anticipation of pain, I have known this pain for years now and I have no anticipation left for it anymore. The suffocation tied and tightening around my ribs at times; the dizziness that empties, lightens and finally blacks me out in regular spells, the bile rising in my throat, sometimes forcing out any hastily gulped helping of food, the irregular pulse that throbs against my ears until I'm afraid of my own heart beat; all that, is as familiar as the weight of violin on my shoulder, or the grip of my chin keeping it in place as I play to the silent moonlight creeping into my room.

As Tibetans believe, "Losar" is the beginning. It is the festival of their new year, a sprout of colors, music and joy in the winter. Something, growing up in Himachal, I had started to believe in too. Among them, there was the glimpse of the hope I was holding on to; the hope of continuum, of going on, the hope of return. Sometimes, when I was by myself in a lonely corner, when it was no longer needed to act as my mother's "Brave girl", I would find myself clasping that hope tighter yet, holding it in a clenched hand as I slept at night. 

There was an innocent kind of immorality. It was not something that required evil sacrifices, or wicked schemes as witches and villains in the novels and movies often chased after. Instead, it was living in the hearts of those who have known you, living through their memories, breathing when they speak of you fondly, recalling the good things that you have done. 

"Let's make memories that would last a life time," Ma said, smiling her too - dazzling - that -  it becomes - unconvincing, smile, when I blew my eighteen birthday candles. Behind the sheen of happy tears in her dark, loving eyes I could see the doubt lurking, that this could be the last time she watches me do that.

I grinned at her, gulping down a mouthful of festive air with the knot forming in my throat.

"Yes, let's do that," I said in my best impression of cheer. "Let's make memories enough for a life time."

"We could go to your baba in Perth, he was saying the other day that he knows a very good doctor too..."

Watching my expression she lets her cautious tone trail away. If there had ever been a pact between us, it was that we do not talk of him; my Baba. I had loved him as a little girl, so many years ago. He was the hero of my juvenile world as any father would be, for their precious girls. That was until I realized how fragile his determination was, or how easily he would bend to the whims of my grandmother. It was before I knew that my existence had been kept a secret from his side of the family living in Kolkata. Why, oh, just because my Dadi hated Bengalis like my Ma, and now I myself.