Swallowing Life Pt. II

Ravi unlocks his phone, a small chill travels down his spine but this feeling seems to be internalized at this point, a feeling which doesn’t feel new at all. The email reads

Dear Parent,
We regret to inform you that Mr. Ravi Gupta will be suspended for a week due to his absence and failure to appear for the midterm exams last month. If this pattern of absenteeism is continued, he might not be allowed to appear for his University exams coming up next month.

Ravi didn’t know what to feel, which emotion should he tap into? Should he be happy that he isn’t doing something that he doesn’t enjoy and is finally breaking free from it, or does he sit down and lament at being a failure and not doing the bare minimum to pass in his course. This juxtaposition finally fades away as he looks out of the window and sees a small boy sitting on the edge of the road.

The boy appears to be homeless and is unaccompanied. He sits there alone wearing a ragged shirt and equally ragged jeans, feeling the chill of the weather but also being acclimatized to not having any warm clothes. He looks at the traffic pass by, cluelessly. The signal turns red and all the cars come to a halt, it turns green and all cars start moving again.

Ravi looks at him, then at the file of cars that are constantly honking, trying to get ahead even if it is just an inch. He wonders, how different he and the homeless kid sitting on the sidewalk are, but at the same time how similar they are. Is this what life is, running around and around till you realize that you wasted your time running around, he ponders. The kid seems to be lost and so does Ravi, but they seem to be in the same universe, in the same space-time continuum of feeling odd, outcast, and outnumbered.

This space has no boundaries, no states, no countries, it's just a space where people who don’t “fit in” seem to assemble. All this time Ravi thought that this place is a pitch-black box with all light escaping it from its periphery without even entering it. He felt he was alone in this place, not having any sense of direction or guage of depth.

Finally, he had someone he could share that space with, he knew that it wasn’t just him all alone looking to explore this new expanse by himself. He knew where he belonged now, in the depths of life, where no one could swallow him