“Inertia is the property of a body by virtue of which it is unable to change the state of its motion”, this is how I memorized and assumed to have understood the concept of inertia. After a decade of knowing that definition, my understanding of inertia hasn’t developed much, except I have the intuition that it’s rather fundamental.

Meantime, I have become the kind of science guy I hated. Look at the title of my writing. What sense does it make by mixing the concept of inertia with a smile! Who doesn’t hate that? Probably not an artist, or a poet? But a physicist would most likely hate it, even a philosopher would. Their language is so assertive and so unambiguous, if used properly.

This story is about her smile, that particular one. When she said, “I can’t stop smiling”, I was reminded of inertia. If you start smiling and can’t stop smiling once you start it, then it’s the inertia of smile, in my words.

I spotted her when my eyes were scanning for some beautiful, loving, wise, intelligent, funny, bold, open, spiritual, adventurous, self-loving, open minded, positive and needy girl after I was sure that my first love - relation was; in common language; breaking up. Of all the attributes, I had been looking for, I found the first and the last attributes; beautiful and needy; in her. The dark circles, hesitant smiles and defensive looks were clear sign that she needed a hug, a humanly hug and acceptance without questions. My mind tricked me to believe it as nice choice.

I sneaked into her Facebook profile before she didn’t even consciously knew that I existed. I understood few things and yes, I was right that she needed to be heard. As I always say, there’s an art in seeing and you can see everything if you truly look and observe. I enjoy problems, accept challenges and like revolting. Otherwise, I would have just said “Not this girl” when I started gathering pieces of information from her profiles. The default nature of human mind is to choose path of optimal satisfaction minimizing the troubles. We are tricked so much by the mind, but I tried to listen more than just to my rational mind and go for her.

Luckily for me, she reached to me first. She texted me first, of course not aware of what was coming between us but for me it was like “this is it”, everything was so clear to me. Everything was just the way my intuition told me. No story seemed alien to me except for herself. She is no less than an alien. In some corner of my self, I always had a vision, I would meet someone with exact that story, nothing surprised me except it was really happening..

Why she called me for that first cup of tea is her side of story. How many more cups of tea we went on sipping that day is the story we both started creating.

From her breathe that seemed to be coming without touching the life element, from the voice that seemed stuck right between the throat and the heart, I was clear she has stories, that only god knew. She appeared so nice, her life; she had maintained; so artistically so as to make it appear perfect. However, to me, it appeared that her life was missing the soul. As I usually do, I asked her how honest of a human she was. She gave three different answers in a minute, which didn’t only express her confusion but also an willingness to be expressed, no matter how hesitant she was. I told her sarcastically, “how can anyone have such a perfect life with absolutely no problems? You have such a great life, don’t you? “. She knew the answer, I knew the answer, how much pieces she had been broken into, how many scars she had been hiding, literally and otherwise.

Her life ACTUALLY broke a few days later. A thunderstorm hit her life. I never told her that I wanted to give her a hug and hold her hands when I said to keep herself strong, after a long silence between us on hearing her broken and traumatic voice. That evening, was cold and dark and brutal. We hadn’t known each other much, maybe it was just third time of seeing each other, and we had that cup of tea in a puzzle, questions about life and fate, lifeless. Silence was the only thing I had to give. I always knew how empty we all are but it had never been so apparent. I always had that acceptance of uncertainty in life, but never had it hit so real in my face. We managed to survive that evening. There are no words in my dictionary to describe her survival that day and the days to come. I’m simply wordless and only thankful to the universe. That I can only appreciate in the conscious silent pauses between the conversations.

The cup of tea gave birth to many coffees, meals, lemonades, soups, salads and what not! And the evenings to days, night, rain, breeze, sunset, clouds, the sunny daylight. Boundaries started to melt itself as if it was welcoming both of us into a union, a universal union. Could I ever forget how we simply accepted each other? No movements were sudden, yet everything happened so fast. It was such a smooth transition without any jerk.

I wouldn’t say we started dreaming, but of course we started envisioning the future. We started imagining the possibilities of the best and the worst case. Of course this means somewhere inside us, there’s a wish of being together, and both of us are aware of the uncertainties and hence haven’t gone for anything hard and fast. Every single day I have been asking “Where do you see ourselves in our future?” and have been hearing more and more mature answer. The maturity of the answer is yet to saturate I believe. When we both knew we were escalating upward in the goodness of our relation, I told her, that I don’t like deciding anything at such moments. I want the relation to peak and then, go through a valley, and only then, we shall decide anything, because I believe that human can be understood better in the valleys of their life more than or at least as much as in their peaks.

I ate so much. I ate a lot of fried rice, salads, mushroom soups, aalu, cold lemon and so on. When she slowly started forgetting her favorite foods and drinks when we started eating together, I only saw willingness. She also started ignoring her favorite eating habits and few other habits effortlessly. Undoubtedly, both of us were and are happy. We look so tuned to each other. I often ate more than I needed. I was truly satisfied with everything without an ounce of question, doubt, fear, confusion and I wanted my belly to reflect that sense of completeness in my life. I felt perfect, happy, satisfied, full, complete. During our chats, I reminded her frequently that such resonances are mostly short lived and the apparent harmony, understanding, similarities in philoshphy and the charm are mostly “the heat of the moment”, and it might be to early to generalize all that. We both agreed upon giving that time for ourselves. Somehow, we aren’t keeping the track of the little things that generally are considered important in romantic relations. We could easily forget the first time we had the lunch together, or the evenings we walked together. We often lost the track of time when we sat talking or were walking through the streets though both of us are so busy in our own way and in our own routine. The sweet togetherness, understanding and teen-like feeling made us both feel young and rejuvenated. Maybe both of us were in need of that rejuvenation, that recollection of energy, to regain the strength to fight again. Be it my aching heart or her tired limbs, the massages were always real as well as metaphorical. Hearts are broken and legs get tired every once in a while in the journey of life. And we need a pure and happy heart, as well as strong arms and legs to move ahead in life and fight.

Everyday is not Sunday. Among two of us, it mostly is my duty to remind both of us of that fact. She has gone through her own beautiful dark times and has own kind of acceptance of it. We both agree that not all day should be expected to be equally beautiful and happy one, but I don’t know how much practical each of us are. That’s where ‘being human’ comes into play, but we are already habituated being happy when with each other. Embracing uncertainty is my way of life which also implies chances of amazing and beautiful possibilities. I know, at times I sound unclear about my answer, but it’s life that is uncertain and hence me. She started telling “Let it be..” to her serious questions after I didn’t give a clear answer to those. I want life to give the answers. I can’t answer, but I can pray. Even that without expectation. Let life flow! Sometimes I see us diverging in our views about how much to leave it to life and how much to take it in our hands. That is called individuality. Individuality; I just noticed; has duality in it. Duality is immensely beautiful. I believe only by understanding the duality completely, can unity be embraced completely. A common mistake people do in early to intermediate stages of relation is to try to hide the differences so as to appear more compatible or tuned to each other. My way is to know more about each other and enjoy the differences in philosophies, goals, life-style and so on. Things might look bitter at first but one shouldn’t expect sweetness everytime. Sometimes आलु and sometime करेला is totally fine. We work during the day and rest during the night. We talk sometimes, so, nothing is wrong sitting silently and just listening sometimes. Differences should not be taken as clashes. Actually, differences are the sources of new creation. We just need the right way to look at it and be playful.

Sometimes she makes fun of my awkward science and engineering. She says she doesn’t get it. I say, I just experiment. I just experience. It’s not that I have the answers to all the experiments I get involved into. I just want to see what are the answers, if possible. I just want to experiment with the secrets of life. I do whatever I feel like doing. What a sense of freedom! Liberation! We don’t know everything and can’t probably understand or accept everything. Let’s accept that unacceptance and the unknown. I hope there’s a future waiting us, probably a weird one but a serene one. I hope there are some smiles waiting us ahead in the future. We just need to make sure we hear the what life is whispering to us and we need to hear that in silence. And if life asks for a goodbye, so be it! All I can do is thank life for everything. Thanks life!! And thank you for everything…

Last Updated: Saturday, 7 Mar, 2020 20:40:04 NPT
Author: Madhav Humagain (scimad)