Have you ever craved to be a God? An Omnipresent One!

To see and, at the same time, not to be seen is quite a privilege, and we are never going to taste it—utterly regretful!

a still from pokhar ke dunu paar

Dear dear Stranger

It’s December-ish eve; a chill enters the pore of my face, provoking a thin thunder to my body, which is in the middle of the train; standing, struggling, wrestling, stifling, and my mumbling mind? Where is my mind? Where should it be? Skillfully once again, my body hints that it is on another never-stopping train—what should I write to you now; on which question should I double-click? Should I write to you about some of the weirdest incidents that happened to me while travelling these days, or should I submerge myself within my psyche to ascertain another quirky existential angst?

In a moment, I’m going to dive in there—Have you ever craved to be a God, even if it is for a split second, have you ever? Means God, but... not an omniscient one, not even an omnipotent one—but certainly you have no problem being an omnipresent one? It’s just—you want to sit on a pedestal (not hierarchical), in a position where you could see the people without being seen, zoom in on the people, and then zoom out—sometimes in the close-up and other times in the mid shot—what they are doing, how they are walking, which one is in misery and which one is pretending to be jovial, which one is in love, which one is caged in love, and which one is trying to just exist somehow.

You just want to observe the behavior of the body, the walk, the inkling there, the tension in their muscles, the shrink and expand of their faces, the twinkling of their eyes, the color of their shirt, the shade of their lipstick, the caress of their hands, and the skin (the dry one, the soft one, the rugged one, the cracked one), and then you hear their voice; the way they talk, the way they laugh, the skimmish sound, the pause between words and sentences, and then you become aware of the inflexible part of them, the vulnerable part of them, the passive aggressive part of them, the explicit anger in them, the desire to discontinue the conversation, and yet the continuing part of them—in these moments I find a tale—the most raptured one.

Last year, when I was at the university, I used to sit on Gate No. 8, observing the people walking, smiling, commenting, smirking, fighting, existing, and so on. And every day I saw different and the same people. While it’s stirring to see every face with a different emotion, with a different walk, and with a different tone of their body, seeing and observing the different people on a daily basis is a self-transcendence experience, a device to know how I might be doing the same act and become an object, and other times subject for interpretation, for mocking, for becoming aware of our own disgust for other people. To see and, at the same time, not to be seen is quite a privilege, and we are never going to taste it—utterly regretful!

Other mediums, like cinema, provide the opportunity to see without being seen, but you know the lack of the human face, the human voice, the flesh, and the blood in them. While discovering these, I always told my closest friend that I wanted to sit on the roof of this university daily and see these people. Only I wanted to see them, and nothing else. I listen to people’s conversations. I love them. I want to be a God—not omnipotent, not omniscient, but yes, I have no problem being omnipresent. I want to sit on the pedestal and observe. I want to see, but not to be seen. This quality is always needed. It seems somehow if I could see the people and they couldn’t see me, it would be better; I would be better.

Extra: this part I wrote, and I found I couldn’t insert it above the paragraph; it will disturb the coherency. So here, I call it Randoetter (random + letter), haha!

The other day, while sauntering and chatting with my sisters on the road to my village, we smelled the ashes of cow dung cake, and while smelling those, my sister uttered, Oh, these ashes. The smell of these ashes seems quite, quite tasty to me. These ashes seem edible, or likely edible? I was a little, if not more, flabbergasted while listening to it. I replied to her with nothing! Our conversations stopped a bit. And I thought, How dark! And I thought, How disgusting!

One more interesting anecdote to add: if you allow me, which I think you allow, while coming home, I saw a dog who has been staring at me from afar, and I had churned-fried eggs in my hand. While seeing the dog, I feared that he might attack me to snatch these edibles, so I, with an intense conscience, brisked while observing him, but you know the funny part: he did nothing; after some moments, he stopped looking at me, as if I'd not existed earlier.

Best,

The Stranger.