“Stranger”
is a word which intrigues me so much. Apparently enough, it seems that I miss
my relatives, my friends, my neighbours, who constitute the major part of our
lives, but then, on more profound scrutiny I realized it was the strangers in
my life that I miss the most. Are they strangers? Or are they not? Because I
see them every day, in the form of my milkman, my newspaper boy, or that random
man at the edge of the road who sells street food. They are known strangers,
for our physical forms know each other, but the heart has remained strangers to
theirs, ever since. Kudos to the power of the humans to stay in proximity and
yet far!
Most of the times we don’t even bother to ask the names of so many strangers in our lives, like the ones in our college, but they become so much known that they get woven into our fabric of life, and yet they remain strangers. We have a lot of friends who, when we pass by, we wave a ‘Hi’ to, but we barely even know them.
Time and again has it happened that when I visit some shop after a long time, the shopkeepers unnaturally inquire if I am fine. Those sparks of worries make it visible to me. If our hearts never met, how could I explain this? And if our hearts indeed were acquaintances, why then, the ‘stranger’ image? “It’s all money, if you don’t go to his shop, he loses customer,” people explain, but then he has many more customers other than me, why so much attention to me? Besides, the whole world revolves around monetary causes, but then relationships still exist, and I do believe in relationships, very strongly. I see a staff member passing in front of my class or notice someone travelling by bus every morning as I go to college but I never interact with him. Then suddenly for some days I don’t spot him, and when I do finally see him again is my soul at peace. This feeling is amazing, the pent up emotions for an unknown person can never be explained or expressed, but this relationship amongst strangers is strange, sublime and silent.
This is like a game that we play, like hide and seek, life is like a long train journey and in between large and important stations which we very well know of, these strangers in life are like small unknown stations which we are eager to know about, but never do we break our journey in between to find out about those stations, we let that curiosity keep us driving, and this is precisely the game, the day these ‘strangers’ would become ‘known’ the game would be lost.
By Saptarshi Roy
BFTech 3rd year (2012-2016)
Most of the times we don’t even bother to ask the names of so many strangers in our lives, like the ones in our college, but they become so much known that they get woven into our fabric of life, and yet they remain strangers. We have a lot of friends who, when we pass by, we wave a ‘Hi’ to, but we barely even know them.
Time and again has it happened that when I visit some shop after a long time, the shopkeepers unnaturally inquire if I am fine. Those sparks of worries make it visible to me. If our hearts never met, how could I explain this? And if our hearts indeed were acquaintances, why then, the ‘stranger’ image? “It’s all money, if you don’t go to his shop, he loses customer,” people explain, but then he has many more customers other than me, why so much attention to me? Besides, the whole world revolves around monetary causes, but then relationships still exist, and I do believe in relationships, very strongly. I see a staff member passing in front of my class or notice someone travelling by bus every morning as I go to college but I never interact with him. Then suddenly for some days I don’t spot him, and when I do finally see him again is my soul at peace. This feeling is amazing, the pent up emotions for an unknown person can never be explained or expressed, but this relationship amongst strangers is strange, sublime and silent.
This is like a game that we play, like hide and seek, life is like a long train journey and in between large and important stations which we very well know of, these strangers in life are like small unknown stations which we are eager to know about, but never do we break our journey in between to find out about those stations, we let that curiosity keep us driving, and this is precisely the game, the day these ‘strangers’ would become ‘known’ the game would be lost.
By Saptarshi Roy
BFTech 3rd year (2012-2016)
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