Samir Shukla
By Samir Shukla
We were at a restaurant waiting for our table. I was sauntering about outside, killing time, and caught a bit of conversation between two elderly women as they were leaving after their meal.
“You know, that was a good year,” said the woman in a white dress.
“Yeah, it was the last good year of my life,” replied her friend in a red dress.
I couldn’t make out whether she was sad while saying that or had a smile on her face.
Those two lines were the gist of their conversation before they strolled past my hearing range, headed toward their respective cars.
I don’t invade others’ conversations, but if I’m stationary in a place and a conversation or someone chatting away on their phone reaches my ears, well then, I become a gatherer of chatter, a participant of sorts. I receive their thoughts, a spirit hovering about, if you will.
Most of the time they are just routine words, but sometimes you catch slices of nuggets, maybe said in anger, in jest, with a laugh, in sadness, and then just when your attention is raised, they are gone. Their words flutter and fall to the ground or get blown away by the breeze.
In today’s era of whipping out the phone and recording anything that gets one’s attention, and transmitting it into the world of social media, these brief encounters of human words left to their own natural dispersion, feel more real, timeless. An uncountable number of such moments have spanned the eons of human time.
Spoken thoughts sprinkled onto passersby.
These floating conversations, the words, get into your thoughts, and you either process them out, ignore them, or, if something interesting was uttered, pause and think about what those words may mean to you.
I must admit, I wanted to hear a bit more about these women and their chat. What year were they talking about? Why was that one particular year, whenever it was, the last good year for one of the women?
Time spares little sympathy for us. Our lives are marked with a lifetime of work and risk management, mingled with moments of joy. We look back fondly on certain days, or specific memories, sometimes wishing we could stop the clock and go back to a past week, month or year. Even single minutes become markers of life, those times when we may hear some life-changing news.
So, what is a year but a calculation that humans have dreamed up, an aggregation of myriad human happenings and seasonal changes in a specified span of time.
Wars, violence, pandemics, political upheavals, these make conversations darker, somber, and often cause feelings of the world seemingly going haywire. Some people linger in this grayness longer than they should. I suffer occasional sadness, anxiety, anger, but I don’t linger in these weeds. I simply cannot. Our days and our years are too short. Lives are chugging along faster and faster.
Who wants to mope under cold, gray skies? That warm, shiny sun always comes spinning back around. A nasty cold winter eventually gets swatted away by the carefree spring. Always. I’m not sure if I’m sold on the proverbial time healing all wounds, but it sure as heck softens and makes them manageable. Life’s ongoing, incoming, and outgoing chatter makes sure of that.
Children are a lovely boost against this grayness. Their unending joy and energy are contagious. They are like little balls of suns, jumping, running, giggling, with delight, letting life naturally unfold. Ask a kid in the swirl of a playful moment what year it is, and you will get a puzzled look. If possible, find a way to increase these encounters, with those little bright eyed chatter makers.
A grayness that seeps in deep can ruin your day, week, maybe even a whole year. Who needs that?
I don’t know anything about the two women I encountered outside the restaurant on that night, what their background was or what transpired in their lives. Why one marked some specific year as the last good year.
I just know that my good year is every year, despite the inevitable setbacks and trials. This is something we all must face, process and move on. Sure, financial hardships are a tough obstacle. Grief is the toughest one, but it also must be softened using the velvet hammer of time.
My good years? The one I first breathed outside the womb and all the others in between, to here, now.
So, ma’am. Yes you, the one in the red dress. We briefly crossed paths. I’m channeling my thoughts your way, wherever you may be. I wanted to chime in. My last good year will be the one when my expiration date comes due.
Samir Shukla is the Editor of Saathee Magazine
Contact: [email protected]
Twitter / X: @ShuklaWrites
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