Page 105 - Musings 2022

How to Build a Life When the World Burns

Chirayu Tank
2018A2PS1009P

The story addresses conflicting ideas on surviving and existing between different atrocities of
life.

It’s the age of receding pandemics. Receding wars. Receding hairlines. Receiving Love. We

have survived three pandemics and two wars. While I wait for the text from Kabir, somewhere
another country burns. There are terrible things. There are sad things. But what’s more sad and

terrible is how I, Meera Ninjay, try to build a life when the world burns.
I think I love being in love. I love being loved. Who doesn’t? My mother says she doesn’t trust

me when I am in love. I would die for it. Rip me apart and give my heart. Do terrible things to

me. Because what is love if not doing it all for someone.
Speaking of burning, I burnt the toasts again. Sometimes I think maybe most of adult life is

spent navigating ways to save fresh produce from dying and food from burning.
I swallow the burnt toast while the TV plays another news of houses burning down in a war-

stricken country. I look around at my makeshift apartment. It’s not a lot but I guess it’s still
home away from home. Where else do you go after a frustrating day at work in a new city

where everyone’s escaping just like you do.

Maybe that’s why people spend years building a home. Safeguarding it. Adding things to spin
memories around. The sound of another bomb blast breaks my thoughts and I focus back on

the screen. Another life lost. Another Civilian. I remember reading Bashar Badrs Saabs quote

“ लोग टू ट जाते हैं एक घर बनाने में

तुम तरस नहीं खाते बश्कियााँ जलाने में”
(People fall apart while building a home, while you don’t think twice before burning full

colonies).

I think most of my life exists between conflicts. Ongoing Wars. Partitions. Broken Marriages.
Frustrating jobs. Ailing parents. No one tells you that once you are older, you don’t learn to

live with the conflict. You just keep weighing each moment, each decision, each day on a non
calibrated scale and measure the consequences. You stay in your marriage because you fear

being lonely. In that job, you pay bills for your parents’ treatment. Away from home because

no one understands what it’s like being in your mind.

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