“I am nobody, I was nobody”; she thundered, that was perhaps the last time her rage struck me, it has been calm ever since, a calm so disrupting that it almost feels numb, as if debilitating my senses. ‘Nobody’, perhaps she mustn’t have realized it, a spur of the moment reaction, as I thought to myself but it wasn’t to be. Yes, she was a nobody; but had made an impact like nobody else too, nobody had ever pulled my soul into and towards themselves as much as she did, nobody repelled it either the way she did.
Nobody, not just anybody could do what she was capable of, transfixing my mind with a purpose unknown, exciting and numbing it at the same time, being my quest and terminus, being the oar and the anchor.
Nobody, She in fact was nobody, not just anybody could have played muse and critic, could have been the source and the delta of all the thoughts that arose, nobody just nobody could have lifted and slammed me and my spirit the way she did. She was and will remain nobody, just nobody whom I can compare or contrast with just anybody else.
All the while she stayed, she was just a nobody, beyond touch, beyond expression and beyond all things that can find physical attribution in my life; her absence now proving the same as I probe deep into finding the existence of her dwelling within me, her duality. Nobody, just not anybody could have done that, being present and absent at the same time. Being in my thoughts and the words I carry and breed in my mind, just not anybody. She’s a nobody, well; I will let her remain so. Just a nobody, nobody like anybody.
It was a revelation for me, as if she had opened up the crest of something divine, that one line. It set me on course to seek nothing like anything, something I hadn’t aspired for before, seeking nothing out of everything and find everything in the nothing that now remains. That’s She !! A nobody, just not anybody.
She is yet to be written about, yet to be thought of and yet to be traced, yet all that I am left surrounded by is the sound of her voice resonating in my ears: “I am nobody”. Yes, you have been, you shall remain nobody, just a thought, a lost touch and the warmth of your breath on my face, and an invisible pull tying me down and calming me in the midst of mayhem. Nobody, just not anybody would be attributed that way, ever again.
And, as I try thinking of her, I go open Dickens again.
“The unqualified truth is, that when I loved Estella with the love of a man, I loved her simply because I found her irresistible. Once for all; I knew to my sorrow, often and often, if not always, that I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace, against hope, against happiness, against all discouragement that could be. Once for all; I love her none the less because I knew it, and it had no more influence in restraining me, than if I had devoutly believed her to be human perfection.”
Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
Perfection yet to be found. Nobody is perfect and yes, She’s nobody.
abhishek purkayastha 