زمانے بھر کے غم یا اک ترا غم
The sorrows of the world, or just one grief of yours?
یہ غم ہوگا تو کتنے غم نہ ہوں گےIf this one grief endures, how many sorrows disappear!
Something has been bothering me. Eating away at me slowly. Everyone says that’s normal. That it’s nothing to worry about. They suggest the usual solutions.
“You should probably get married.”
“Have you tried therapy?”
“If you work out for a million hours every day, you won’t feel the sadness anymore.”
However, I don’t pay much attention to any of these suggestions.
Initially, I thought I was just scared of being alone. That maybe I’m just caught up in this male loneliness epidemic that’s plaguing our society now. Then I realised that that’s just for people who have their heads up their asses. Quickly, I checked where my head was, and it was securely placed on top of my neck, and very much out in the open.
I understand that eventually there will come a time in my life when nobody will be there to just sit down and have a chat with. Everyone I know and love will either die, leave, or just live out their lives… without me… as they should. It would definitely be weird if I were a constant part of someone else’s life. Imagine if I were just there in my best friend’s family vacation photos. That would be so weird.
Or would it?
It would.
Right?
Right.
Regardless, something was bothering me. And it wasn’t my first time having this feeling. I’ve been here before. I don’t know how to describe the feeling, but it all starts with this one thought,
“Oh! Everyone is moving on. I seem to be the only one still stuck."
And by stuck, I don’t mean stuck in the past. I mean, stuck in the present. Not stuck-ed. Not stack. Just stuck. Plain old stuck.
Watching everyone move on felt like being part of the audience at the cinema. Specifically, that moment at the end of the movie where the hero would ride off into the sunset. Everyone I knew was the hero. But I wasn’t even the hero’s best friend. You know, the one who sometimes gets lucky and gets to ride off in the background with a monkey or a dog besides him, while the hero is making out with his lover? Yeah, I wasn’t a part of that.
I was the audience. I’m not even a part of their movie. I just watch and clap as the hero does their thing. Cheer them on like a true fan, as they get their happy ending. And then I’d leave and go back to my shit-hole of a life.
But this time it was worse. The shit-hole life I had to go back to had somehow gotten worse than before. Maybe it was because I was lying in a hospital bed, unsure why I was there. I thought to myself,
“This year was supposed to be good.”
I say it as if the other years were supposed to be bad.
But this year was supposed to be good. I don’t know how, but I was so tired from the year before that I genuinely hoped that this year would be better.
Did I hope to find love? No.
Did I hope for a successful career? No.
Did I hope to get rich? No.
So in what way was it supposed to get better?
I don’t know.
But this isn’t how it was supposed to be. I wasn’t supposed to be stuck in a hospital on my birthday, surrounded by incompetent doctors telling me how they have no clue what’s wrong with me.
I expect my doctor to figure out what’s wrong with me. Do whatever they have to, so that they can help me. Not just leave me here to rot in an expensive room that I can barely pay for.
As a patient, I would want to trust that my doctor can help me. Especially when I’ve clearly told him how I’ve had a horrible week. I am not proud of it, but somehow I managed to get my phone and my favourite sneakers stolen, all within the span of seventy-two hours.
Yet, even after hearing all that, this incompetent, good-for-nothing, waste-of-space of a human couldn't be bothered to take my situation seriously.
Tired, I decide to fall asleep. It’s not like there’s much I can do anyway. I am broke. Financially, physically, and emotionally. Might as well give in. But even sleep manages to abandon me. I know I shouldn’t be surprised by it. I’ve never found it easy to fall asleep. But sometimes it isn’t about not being able to fall asleep. Sometimes it’s about what comes before and after the sleep.
Frustrated, I start crying.
I cry for a while, until I’m tired and forget why it is that I was crying to begin with. By this point, the drugs, mixed with all the crying, have clearly done something to my brain. Because at this point, I could see myself. I could see myself sitting up in my hospital bed. I could see the tube from my hand running to the IV bag. Then there’s another tube attached to the mask on my face, which is helping me breathe. Now all of this was real. But I could also see things that weren’t there. I could see an MRI scanner in the back. It was emitting this light. A large glowing ring behind me.
But that wasn’t all. What I was seeing was different. The IV stand wasn’t just an IV stand. It was a trident. The IV bag hanging off one of its prongs. The mask? It was providing me with the nectar of life necessary to survive on this cursed land. The MRI scanner’s light behind me? My halo.
That’s when I realised that I wasn’t just a mere mortal. I was a heavenly being.
I laughed for a while. Mostly out of pity for myself.
“The dumb shit you have to tell yourself, just so you can keep living.”
If a heavenly being is what I had to be to make sure that I didn’t kill myself, then so be it.
Suddenly, I heard someone approaching. From all the shouting, I could make out that it was none other than my very own parents. I hear my mother say,
“He fell sick because his phone got stolen. I’m sure of it. That, and all the other unnecessary detours he took. All that, just to save a couple hundred rupees. And now what? We have to spend ten times that just to make sure he doesn’t die.”
To which my father replies,
“Don’t worry. Once we sell the land, we’ll have enough cash to buy a new car. Then he can travel comfortably.”
As they enter my hospital room, I tell him,
“Nobody is buying that land.”
He laughs. He laughs not because I’m funny. I am. But in this moment, he didn’t find me to be hilarious. He laughs because he believes that he knows something that I don’t. It’s the laughter of a man who believes himself to be wiser than everyone else in the room. There’s nothing more dangerous than that when you’re a heavenly being. Because obviously, as I am a heavenly being, the chances are that I am most definitely the wisest in the room. But as always, nobody else seems to understand that. Especially the one who was laughing.
Curious, I ask,
“Why do you laugh?”
To which my father replies,
“Once you’re better enough to leave the hospital, we’re gonna go meet someone. He’s gonna help us sell the land.”
Now, if there’s something I know about my father, he was really great at finding trouble. He would go to the ends of the earth to find some of the worst people on the planet and try to help them. Only to get screwed over by every single one of them. This is one of the ways he turned me into a heavenly being. Why? Well, if my father had said the same thing to me a couple of years back, I would have run away in fear. Because I hadn’t yet developed the necessary skills to defend myself from the evil that he planned to bring upon us. But he had made so many such mistakes in his lifetime that it had helped me attain the mystical powers of ‘intuition' and ‘foresight’. Two key components that helped me ascend to my heavenly form.
And so, I prepared myself for whatever new evil that was about to plague my existence.
Months had passed, and another, much more competent, doctor had figured out what was wrong with me. She also happened to be a very smart and kind woman. Unlike the ugly wig-wearing, condescending bastard of a man from before, who had also managed to extend my hospital visits as much as possible with his medical expertise.
Despite this, physically, I had managed to stabilise. Although I wouldn’t call it a recovery. I was nowhere back to being my old self. Although I wondered if that was something I should hope for. My ‘old self’ wasn’t really the best example of something you’d want to get back to.
But my mind had only managed to fall deeper. Like a lantern that had been tossed into a bottomless pit. The flame was still burning, but you would be lying if you said you could see it down there. So deep had it fallen that the only one who could witness those depths would be another fallen flame. Yet there were none.
Whatever it was that was bothering me hadn’t gone away. It could only ‘go away’ if I could first figure out what ‘it’ was to begin with. So much time had passed, yet I still had no clue what it was that was making me feel this way.
I had hoped that once my health had gotten better, I’d stop feeling this way. But clearly that wasn’t it. So, I figured that maybe if I had gotten over the fact that someone had just stolen my phone and two days later someone else had stolen my sneakers, maybe then I would feel a bit better. So I did do that. I got over it. Yet, I was left feeling the same way as before.
I hoped that maybe if I could find a job, then I’d feel better. But I knew that was a lie, so I quickly gave up on that. I knew very well that I didn’t really want a job. I just wanted money like everyone else. The job part was just the annoying attachment that came with the money.
So as of now, I am no longer dying, I barely make a living, and I want to kill myself. But I won’t because I am a heavenly being.
Although over the course of this year, I have realised that I am a heavenly being with friends who have clearly not made any effort to even come see me. Mostly because they’re also heavenly beings. But to be fair, I wish heavenly beings would help each other out every now and then. Visit each other’s abodes. Sip on some amrutham. Eat some good food. Maybe even a slice of pizza or a cheeseburger, if the heavens permit.
But I understand. They too have their lives like the rest of my normal friends. They too, like me, are busy being heavenly beings.
Despite all this, I had finally managed to come face to face with the evil that awaited me. The new curse that my father had decided to drag into our lives.
Although it was only after coming face to face with this evil that I realised that there was no evil there to begin with.
That is, unless evil had decided to take the shape of a cute little round man. Who also happened to be a doctor who hated doctors.
Now imagine my situation. After being through everything I have with doctors this year, I have found someone who understands my misery. My hate for doctors was something that had gone invalidated for most of my life. It felt even worse when it was invalidated, even after everything that had happened to me recently.
Now, to have someone who is also a doctor himself, an expert in the matter, validate what I believed in was exactly the kind of convincing I needed. This was enough. I knew that I was not in the presence of evil.
Even if he had not been a sweet little old man, my intuition told me that there was nothing really wrong going on here.
Worst-case scenario? He’s going to eat away a couple of hours from my life with some nonsense that he believes I needed to hear. After all the time I had lost this year, a couple of hours merely felt like nanoseconds at this point.
I greet the Doctor but he can’t seem to hear very well. Regardless, he extends his hand and says,
“Welcome kanna. It’s so good to finally see you.”
I shook his hands as softly as possible. Which amused me, as the usual thing to do in such situations was to give a firm handshake. Ascertain a sort of ‘dominance’ or meet them at their level in some sense. If not, most men, especially the older ones, would just judge you.
“Put some strength into it.”
“Show some confidence.”
“My daughter has a firmer handshake than you.”
I feel sad for daughters with firm handshakes. Something had to die in them to make space for that firmness. They’re the reason I had to learn how to give a firm handshake. Pay my respects to the fallen.
But I couldn’t help but shake Doctor’s hand as softly and slowly as possible. Which made me happy, as I got to shake it as I intended, and not as expected.
Why? Because this man possibly had the softest hands I had ever touched in my life. It was unfair to call them flesh and blood. If anything, they were closer to what I imagine a sourdough starter would feel like. Or what I imagine clouds would feel like if they were something that could be held. Soft and supple. If I poked his hands with a needle, it wouldn’t bleed. It would just let out a whistle from all the air that would escape it.
He looks at me for a while and says,
“I got you something.”
He reaches into his bag and pulls out a box of mysorepak. In that moment, he reminded me of those gods and how they all have their prasad. Some with their modaks, some with makhan, or sometimes even laddus. As such, I assumed the Doctor’s prasad was mysorepak. Which made sense. Soft and sweet, just like him.
To be honest, I am not a big fan of mysorepak. I am a fervent supporter of kaju katli supremacy. But I accept the offerings of the Doctor, as I do not wish to upset him.
To my surprise, this happens to be the best mysorepak that I have ever eaten in my life.
Content with the sugar that has entered my bloodstream after months of being starved of it, I sit down in front of the Doctor. To my left is my dad, and to his left is my mother.
The Doctor looks at my dad for a while and says,
“Let us begin?”
My dad, confidently unsure, nods his head and agrees.
As if activated by some secret code word, the Doctor immediately pulls out an extremely long spatika mala from his bag and wears it.
He holds another, much shorter spatika mala in his hand and watches it closely as it swings around like a loose pendulum.
I, along with my mom and dad, sit there silently and watch the Doctor scrunch his face and concentrate with his eyes closed as the mala just swings from his hand.
After a long while, he places the mala down and says,
“There is nothing to worry about.”
My dad lets out a sigh of relief. For the past few weeks, had prepared himself for the usual outcomes in such situations. Most of which would be, “We need to do a pooja here. Something to cleanse your land.” But luckily, it didn’t come to that this time. Mostly, he was relieved because we didn’t have that kind of money to splash. The main reason to sell this land was to get that kind of money. Although it wouldn’t be used for poojas or priests. Unless a feast is considered to be a sort of ‘pooja’, and a chef a ‘priest’.
The Doctor, now with a very serious look across his face, looks at my dad and asks,
“Did you promise your mother something?”
My dad looks back at the Doctor with confusion. He says,
“No? I did everything I could have for her as a son.”
The Doctor, now a bit angry, asks,
“Try to remember. Was there something you were supposed to do?”
My dad, once again, unable to recollect if there is any such thing, looks back at the Doctor in confusion and says,
“No sir, there is nothing as such. I have done my duties as a son to the best of my abilities.”
The Doctor, now impatient, asks,
“How were your mother’s final rites done?”
To which my dad replies,
“She was cremated.”
“Is that what she asked you to do?”
The question brings a sort of heavy silence with it. My dad happens to be the kind who can’t hold his tongue even when he is supposed to. But this one question manages to shut him up as well.
The Doctor asks once again,
“Is that what she had asked you to do?”
My dad softly replies,
“No.”
“Then what was it that you had promised her?”
“She had asked me to bury her body.”
“Why was that?”
“She was scared of the pain she might feel during the cremation, as they burn her corpse.”
“Then why didn’t you do it?”
My dad had nothing he could say to this. You could see that he was starting to tear up. The silence persisted. My mom and I had managed to lock eyes a million times in these few seconds. We knew that dad would break any moment now.
What the Doctor had just asked wasn’t just a normal question. This was something that was very intimate. Something that only the three of us knew.
Once again, the Doctor, in a much deeper voice, bellows,
“I am asking you, why did you not do it?”
My dad, unable to answer, can only manage to whisper a few words,
“They didn’t let me.”
By they, he means everyone in his life at that point. His boss didn’t give him time off. He needed his employer’s permission to leave work and attend the funeral. But it wasn’t just him. Even his siblings didn’t wish to speak to him, so he couldn’t tell them either to fulfil his mother’s wishes.
I explained to the Doctor all of this because I could see the confusion on his face. He looks back at my dad and tells him,
“Well, she is very upset with you.”
My dad looks at the Doctor with a look of shock. He asks,
“Who is upset with me?”
“Your mother! She is extremely upset with you. That’s why she’s sitting here next to your son.”
It takes all of the strength I have in me to control my laughter. I know I shouldn’t laugh, but I can’t help it. The urge to just laugh is something that’s always troubled me since my childhood.
With a hint of a smile across my face, I ask him,
“Doctor… what do you mean she’s sitting here next to me?”
“Do you not sense her? She is sitting to your left, stroking your left ear.”
He looks at my dad and says,
“That’s why he’s been so angry all this time. He’s not an angry person by nature. She is making him angry because she is upset with you.”
A part of me was annoyed that my dead grandmother was stroking my left ear. We were never close to begin with, so I don’t understand this show of affection. Also, I do not like people touching me. But a part of me was also slightly pleased because now my anger meant something. There was a certain weight to it now. It wouldn’t be considered the tantrum of an imbecile. Rather, it was now the wrath of a dead woman. Her unhappiness with the living who have done her wrong.
Before I could enjoy this moment a little more, my mom asked,
“So what do we do now?”
The Doctor looks to me, then my mom, and then back to my dad, and says,
“First, you have to apologise to your mother, and make sure to do her final rites properly. After which, we have to do a Rahu Pooja for your son.”
I look at my dad thinking,
“We don’t have Rahu Pooja money right now, father.”
Before I could say this out loud, my dad asked the Doctor how expensive all of this was going to be. To which the Doctor replied,
“Your mother is upset with you. She wants you to say sorry. Not bribe her. So no, it’s not going to be expensive.”
My dad lets out a sigh of relief. He then asks,
“But what about selling the land?”
To which the Doctor replies,
“First, you complete this task. The rest will sort itself out. If not, we’ll see to it when the time comes.”
So now, selling the land has become a secondary issue. A side quest. The main issue at hand is that my dead grandmother is pissed off with my dad, and stroking my left ear.
As someone who doesn’t believe in any of this, it was definitely a very awkward situation to be in. If she had been patting my mom’s head or scratching my dad’s stomach, I could have avoided this whole thing and stayed at home while they went from temple to temple, trying to apologise to her. But as always, I happened to draw the short end of the stick. Now I had to go everywhere to get rid of her.
But I don’t mind. Just because I don’t believe in it doesn’t mean I won’t go along with it. I could see how much my dad was convinced. My mom too, was mostly sold on all of this. I didn’t wish to ruin their happiness just for the sake of what I do and do not believe in.
And maybe someday I might have to ‘draw a line’. A clear boundary of things I stand for and things I don’t. But I think what I consider ‘my identity’ doesn’t seem to concern itself with religious beliefs. It’s more specific about things which matter, like ‘good’ and ‘bad. And what I have learned in all these years is that the way of life I have chosen for myself isn’t something that’s necessarily considered to be ‘easy’ or ‘simple’. If anything, it’s a bit unrealistic.
Most people I know claim that they are delusional, but they’re not. They’re not delusional. They might be detached from reality. Auto-piloting through life. They are dissociating. They are not delusional.
I am delusional. I have a toxic relationship with reality. When I see those girls who believe they can “fix him”, I think of myself. I am one of those girls. Reality is him.
Because no matter what happens in reality, I keep believing that if I watch closely, listen, and adapt, then things will get better. That maybe this time, I will be better. That I will be ‘good’ and not ‘bad’. That things will get better, and I will finally be happy, and maybe not alone.
With this hope in my mind, I have finally reached a small temple in the middle of nowhere to finish the final task on our Dead-Grandmother-Pleasing List. The Rahu Pooja.
The temple isn’t as grand as I expected it to be. Definitely not as grand as the other temples I had seen this year. As part of our little displeased-spirit-pleasing errand run, I had managed to see some of the most beautiful temples in the country. And it didn’t help that this temple was located in the middle of nowhere. Definitely doesn’t feel grand when you’re surrounded by literal nothing in all directions. And to add to it, the name of the temple translates to “The Lord of the Plantain Fields”. Which is hilarious because there was not a single plantain in sight.
Despite all this, I still went along with my mom and dad into the temple. Ready to be done with this whole fiasco and say goodbye to my dead grandmother.
As per usual, we went through the basics of traversing through a temple. Visiting each and every God that was there in every nook and corner of the temple.
Eventually, one of the priests came up to me and asked me to enter this barricaded area. He asked me to sit down on the mat that was placed there. In front of me were fifty or so statues of various snake-demigods. Some that I recognise, and some I don’t. I sit there and observe the nine that were in my line of sight. They sat right in front of me, almost face-to-face.
Lost in my own thoughts about the difference in each one of these idols, I was surprised to see two people entering the barricaded area. Initially, I was told that only I would be allowed to enter and be seated for the pooja, and that my mom and dad would have to watch from afar. Or at least from the outside of the barricaded area. But for some reason, the priest had suddenly decided to ask them if they too wanted to be seated alongside me.
I didn’t necessarily appreciate this. After everything we had been through this year, this was supposed to be ‘my moment’. My dead grandmother is stroking my ear. I would have liked it if people took this whole thing a lot more seriously. If anything, earlier this year, when we had to visit another much more famous and pleasantly located temple for my dad to do the final rites, I made sure not to steal his spotlight. Just stood there and missed my breakfast to watch him do his thing. But clearly, he doesn’t seem to feel the same.
Well, it didn’t matter, as now they were also a part of this pooja. So much so, the priest asked me to close my eyes and to let the thought of God fill my mind.
But I do not know what God looks like to begin with. All I know of are various paintings and sculptures made by men who claim to have seen God. I can’t fill my mind with that. Even if I wanted to, my mind was still lost in the depths of that bottomless pit it had fallen into. A flame that was at its end. So much so that I myself could no longer see it.
The more I tried to concentrate, the less I could remember. Forget trying to fill my mind with the thought of God. I couldn’t even fill my mind with the thought of myself.
All that remained was that same nagging feeling.
“What am I doing wrong?”
I was much healthier now. I had just managed to find a job. My grandmother’s spirit was about to leave me alone as well. So what exactly was bothering me? There shouldn’t be anything ‘bothering’ me. Everything is good.
“This is everything I had hoped for,” I told myself. “I am healthy. I have a job. Yes, my phone got stolen, but now I have money to buy a new one. I can buy as many shoes as I want now. Because of my dead grandmother, I got to travel so much. See so many places. Soon I’ll be back to the life I had before everything went to shit.”
“The life that I had… was that really a good life?”
"Am I still the person who wants that life?”
I could sense my mind falling deeper. I was losing my grip over my thoughts and myself. The confidence I had spent years developing within me had managed to disappear. The weight of my existence crushed me so much so that I wished to disappear. And by ‘disappear’ I do not mean to end it all and kill myself. That too was something that required an insurmountable amount of strength and conviction. None of which I possessed at this point.
I truly just wished to disappear.
No past. No present. No future.
I wished that the life that I had lived would be erased, the life that I am living would stop, and the life that I would live out to never happen. For I do not have it in me to carry on in this world.
Alone or not, life was just too much to make sense of.
I realised, sitting in front of these demigods, that I, a heavenly being, could no longer see myself.
I realise in that moment that I did not exist.
In front of me, the priest was decorating the idols of the snake demigods. Beautiful flowers adorn their hoods. He was applying sandalwood paste to each one of them. I could smell it. There was something very comforting and relaxing about the fragrance of the sandalwood paste. It’s not a smell that I’m familiar with, but I found it extremely soothing in this moment. Something that managed to fan the dying embers within me.
I knew that in this moment, if I wanted to, I could find myself once again. But it would be with the help of God. I knew that if I held a rudraksh or sang one of those famous Sufi songs, I would be able to regain what I had lost of myself. The confidence to carry on, despite what life threw at me. I understood why so many knelt at the feet of God. It was for this. It was for the strength to wake up every day and put one foot in front of the other. Or simply, it was for the strength to not end it all. I knew that if I gave in to this, I’d be able to face the harsh reality that awaits me.
But was that worth it? I thought to myself,
“In a way, I am crippled. But is the crutch I want to hold on to… God?”
If so, to say that I have found myself once again would be a lie. I would have died there and been born again. As a new man. A man who seeks the help of Gods to participate in life.
I apologised to the serpent demigods in front of me and told them,
“Let me be. I cannot accept your help. I will live better. I will do better. My arrogance is what got me here. I will learn to be humble and try once more. If I fail, know that this was my last act of defiance. The death that follows my next failure is nothing but an acceptance of my defeat. For I would be humble by then, if not humbled, and have the clarity to see my own failures as plain as day.”
And so, I closed my eyes and prayed. Unendingly. Again and again. The only prayer I have told myself from the time I learned to remember. I prayed,
“I will do better.
I will do better.
I will do better.
I will do better.”
As I opened my eyes once again, the priest handed me some flowers and told me to picture God in my mind and to throw the flowers at the nine snakes that sat in front. But once again, I am reminded that I have never seen God.
All I could picture was film productions and their crew, the films I wanted to make, the person I loved the most in the world, the excitement she had towards life, and a smile on my face. Those are the only Gods that I know of. So I held them as tight as I could in my mind and threw the flowers at the serpent demigods.
In my mind, I knew I didn’t need God to help me. But I did need something. There was something missing in me that nothing seemed to fill. I didn’t know what it was, but I prayed, with my eyes shut tight. Hoping it’ll find me.
Tears started to flow down my cheeks.
Suddenly, I felt a hand on my head. The hands were rough and withered, but the touch was gentle. I have never felt the touch of my grandmother’s hands. Mostly because she was unwell, and I barely got to meet her. But I think this is how her hands would have felt.
For a moment, I thought, amused, that it was actually God. I opened my eyes to find an old woman praying to the Gods, asking them to bless me. I laughed at myself, as tears continued to stream down my face. One by one, the old women who had gathered there over the course of my pooja went past me, placing their hands on my head and asking their Gods to help me out. Like a mother asking their son to help out a stranger.
Never before that have I ever felt such happiness in being considered a stranger.
And in that moment, I knew what I had been longing for.
All I wanted was some kindness.
I wipe my tears away and get up. The priest hands me the prasadam from the pooja. I do not know what it is, but that doesn’t really matter. I share it with everyone who had gathered to watch the pooja. One by one, they all blessed me and told me,
“Don’t worry. Your marriage will happen soon.”
“All your worries will soon be gone.”
“It’s going to be okay. You’ll get a job soon.”
But I knew I didn’t want any of that. I knew exactly what I had to do.
I was no longer scared of being alone. I do understand that to have someone, a friend or a lover, to hold close does seem nice. But I know I can’t hold on to everyone forever. As selfish as it sounds, I would never let go of the ones I love, even if Death itself were to ask me for their hand. But that is a possibility that exists only within the realms of my mind. In reality, I know they have to leave. But I can’t live life scared of that moment. Scared of losing the ones I love. Confused when they are no longer there to hold me. And if everyone is bound to leave me, then so be it. I shall make things easier for everyone. I shall leave first.
I will wander these lands as a stranger. For a stranger is the only one who seems to receive any kindness in this world. Everyone else, even the dead, is stuck begging for it from the ones they love.
I do not wish to spend the remainder of my life begging.
A stranger I will live.
A stranger to every stranger I meet along the way.
A stranger, I will leave.