Written: 4 July 2017
Source: A draft on this very blog

Context: I wanted to bring down the number of draft post count, currently at 1633, and stumbled upon this.

Nothingness

Eid Mubarak, belated!

This year too, I didn’t visit home for Eid, due to lack of available privilege leaves and work commitments. It was fun. Really different from my first Eid away from home. That time I was all alone, as my roommates had left for their respective towns for diwali celebrations. Alone in a 2BHK for 3 days straight. Only time I stepped out was to fetch milk and meat, failing which I came back empty handed, more upset, more emotional and homesick.

Eid 2015 was again here, not alone as I had a friend accompany me for better part of the day.

Eid 2016 Shahid was also here. I had no leaves left and he was on probation so we both stayed here. Had lunch at home and dinner at pizza hut. It wasn’t as bad.

This year, I wasn’t alone. Me, sister, and both brothers were here so it didn’t feel bad. It was really fun. And not emotional at all. Okay maybe I was emotional 3-4 times but I hid it well.

I still couldn’t help but feel ‘nothingness’, you know what I mean?  Like you’ve everything and yet a void inside that swallows you whole?

It’s a strange feeling.

Is it sadness? No.

Is it loneliness? Not really.

I can’t call it homesickness. Just a quiet emptiness that appears without warning and sits beside you while everything around you is perfectly fine.

Maybe it’s what growing up feels like.

When we’re younger, happiness seems so easy to define. Eid means home. Home means family. Family means food, laughter, cousins running around, elders discussing things they’ve discussed every year for the last twenty years. There’s comfort in the predictability of it all.

Then life happens.

Jobs happen. Responsibilities happen. People move to different cities. Priorities shift. One by one, traditions become memories and celebrations become arrangements.

And yet, somehow, this Eid was probably one of the happiest I’ve had away from home. We laughed, ate together, clicked pictures, made fun of each other and spent the day exactly how siblings should. There was nothing missing.

Except there was.

Maybe what I missed wasn’t a place or a person. Maybe I missed a version of life that no longer exists.

The older I get, the more I realize that nostalgia is not really about the past. It’s about wanting to feel the way you felt in the past.

You can recreate the food, visit the same house, meet the same people, but you can never become that person again. The child waiting for Eidi. The teenager excited about new clothes. The student counting days until holidays. Those people are gone.

And perhaps that is the nothingness I keep feeling.

A small space left behind by every version of ourselves that we’ve outgrown.

It’s not necessarily a bad thing. Maybe it’s proof that we’re moving forward. Maybe life leaves little gaps in us so new experiences have somewhere to settle.

Or maybe I’m just overthinking after eating too much sheer khurma.

Either way, Eid was good.

And for now, that is enough.

2026 Reflection

I steel feel that nothingness, so I guess I am still not much different from who I was nine years ago. Nine years… How time flies.

Shabana Mukhtar