mundane

Over the course of my occupation at the art gallery, I met with a variety of people and paintings.

As the guard at the front gate, all I witnessed was the entry and exit of the people and the hectic bustle on the urban city roads. Initially, the humidity convinced me I would not last long with this job. Every day, I sat in front of the noisy cooler, and a wobbly table with a register and pen, recording the names of everybody passing. I was disinterested in people— and my only purpose here was to watch the people. 

I was always curious about the paintings, and the atmosphere inside. I knew it was a cold, icy place. The fog on the people’s glasses that exited implied that– quite literally.

Then I switched to a night job, inside the museum. I was right, the air conditioning was unnecessarily bone-freezing. I kept to myself for the time being, switching off every light in the building, and guarding the place as I should. One particularly cold day in October, when the air conditioning was off, I ventured out, to examine the paintings. 

Some were revolting, I wondered how someone could persistently make them, knowing it was not a pleasure to the eye. Or maybe not. Who was I, a person of a tender age of twenty-three, to judge? Art is a form of free speech.

Not being a fan of people put me at a disadvantage with portraits. Yet, at a closer look, they were captivating. The golden rim of the glasses of The Artist shone, his calm, serene eyes complimenting his frivolous smile. Every pearl of the exquisite heavy jewellery the Indian lady adorned gleamed, reflecting the hardships it had gone through for years. I remembered reading about pearls. How oysters formed layers to protect themselves from harm. Layer, by layer, a pearl was formed. A tiny, shiny pearl. How could something like this captivate the hearts of humans? But then again, I had never gone to the sea, nor seen an oyster. I was not one to judge.

The scenic landscapes were always eye-catching. I presented myself as a mountain person until I actually saw the oil paintings of the mountains. I found myself skipping them, finding them repetitive. A few were worth examining, most weren’t. Having lived in the mountains my entire childhood played a big role in having already seen all the picturesque places. Every day the mountains wore a different colour. On every turn on the roads of the valley, the mountains seemed to change shape. One dull painting by an anonymous artist caught my eye. The painting of the lights, all concentrated in a single location on a mountain. It was the same as the view from my terrace in my childhood. 

As a child, my joy was limited to being able to buy a pack of chips and a bottle of cola from the extra money left from buying groceries, lying on a mat on the terrace, adoring the Mussoorie lights. As I grew older, my desire to visit the source of the lights grew along. I eventually visited the place as a teen, discreetly skipping school one day, with a pocket heavy with cash. I was able to ignore the glances people gave me for my uniform, the nice weather distracting me. It was a pretty day and a pretty journey.

Though disappointed to know most of the lights were of the large hotels and resorts–which I couldn’t afford to go to– I found joy in the mall road. Hand-knitted sweaters being sold on carts, old ladies fanning the smoke escaping from the grills where they roasted the corn cobs with their bamboo hand fans, small groups of local friends walking back home, pulling on their ugly school neckties, opening the first two buttons of their shirts as sweat dripped from their head, pushing each other around, playfully fighting– being young boys.

At night, I stood at the edge of the road on the top of the mountain, gazing down, to where my home was. It was prettier. It was prettier than the lights of the mountain I had seen since my childhood. The minute lights of the cheap bulbs twinkled faintly. The large stadium lights gleamed their best. As the sun sank, I sat down at an open terrace tea point, with a full view of my town. The plastic chairs were comfortable enough for me to fall asleep on, whilst I watched down at the valley. The first day I went up the mountain was the best day of my life, though it brought me a lot of trouble with my parents. I was just a teen. 

My night job didn’t last long. Though I enjoyed the company of the paintings, my body was not made for working at night. I went back to sitting at the front gate in broad daylight. 

And so, my interest in people reappeared. The ice cream stall outside the gate occupied a place in my heart. Everybody came to the art gallery with delight. But no soul left with the same delight. The people who came alone were always quiet, in deep thought. The parents were distracted and tired, their kids pulling on their pants and pointing towards the ice cream stall, which seemed to attract them more than the pearls of the Indian lady, or the blue eyes of the English soldier, and the couples were too in love to ponder over the paintings.

After quitting the job, I returned to my hometown, buying a small house with a piece of land in a village not far from my original home. I grew lychee trees and strawberry creepers for a living. Most evenings, I found myself on the plastic chairs of the raw set-ups of the tea points, sipping away at boiling cups of lemon tea, staring down at my home in the rural valley from the top of the mountain as the sun sank. On other evenings, I went to watch music performances at the restaurants of the lush hotels and resorts. I was just twenty three.

A/N: i swear i was gonna write something different but guess i just needed an excuse to express my longing for the special place in my heart.

its like 4am (yes its a school night ahdsjhksj) and i hope this piece makes me feel the same way when i wake up like it does right now

ALSO MY LANGUAGE AND VOCABULARY IS DEGRADING SO BAD HOW DO I FIX IT IM DESPERATE