The usual suspects

Last night as I was trying to sleep, and I guess was almost asleep, some barking brought me back to my senses. Actually, it was not the barking as such. It was the feeling that this barking of dogs was not usual, and like the reflex action of trying to fathom the unusual, I was wide awake, till I was sure it were the next door dogs, doing something in the corridors.

It just made me realize how the usual things become unusual after a while.

The usual sounds of the night almost always included some random dog barking somewhere, the comforting, secure drone of the ceiling fan humming, the TV or radio playing from the apartment downstairs, with some seasonal sounds thrown in (the birds [chokh gyalo] and the insects).

Probably that is why, in this last five and a half years, I've never been able to relate to afternoons over here. They just do not feel like afternoons. Not in the sense I felt them becoming back home....hard-earned, draining, slowly descending and soothing and uniquely remnant of the day that just was....like the whiz that stays in your head after you've talked all day. Afternoons here, that is, the time period around 3 pm--6pm almost feels like 11 am back home. Even so on days you didn't spend reading a book and didn't get out at all from the bed; even when you have been working in an office from 8 am. Yes, I did ache to get a break from work and get home, but the feeling was almost like you felt at 11 am...that you could work more, and the time wasn't hard-earned...you didn't feel it pass you by, though you have certainly seen it pass you by.

The absence of the usual....could be because of the sounds and the air....and certainly the things that hold the moments of afternoon or night or even morning, are inestimable and justifiably so. Recognizing something or acknowledging it, depends so much on the premise of familiarity; which is wholesome, good and pretty comforting and all that. The only downside being the feeling of the usual remains so frustratingly specific and bounded to certain tempo-spatial constraints.

Wish it were so with certain persons. Even though there is no such thing as forever. Even though you might have loved a certain movie and feel somewhat guilty when you don't like it later,.... years after when that loyalty to acknowledge a thing, a being, fades out or is just lost. Just like that.

Conversely, the phrase 'carving a niche' questions this process whereby something doesn't need to replace other things. It could just be. Space needn't come out of replacement, although it's usually the case that all relatively unfamiliar things takes a while to settle down, takes a while to be recognized and then predictably, everything falls into the all-encapsulating habit and fits snug into their captured places.
Like the vanilla-mint flavoured toothpaste that I first used this morning. Almost felt like a dessert and it was unsettling to brush with it, to say the least. But I know that I will get used to it, although it can never possibly be representative of what a toothpaste usually should be.

Like the afternoons. And the nights. And moving around in the city. Like being on your own.