I kickstarted my lulled journey after almost three months of a difficult hiatus. The world feels different now. Not that because it has changed. It feels different coz I have.

The window with which I used to witness the world has suddenly become a lot cleaner. It has begun showing me my very own reflection now. Things I used to perceive outside have suddenly become far less important than those within. The music hits differently now, watching a screen feels different, and the food tastes divine.

I couldn’t use my mobile phone, or my laptop, play video games, listen to music, watch TV, eat cereals, get out of my room, or worst of all – even read a book. All kinds of inputs from the outside world were forbidden. I was caged in a room with a bed, left at the mercy of my head. The only respite I was allowed were things that would emanate from me – writing and drawing. For the allowance of these two activities, I remain truly thankful.

The ordeal I was on was a tête-à-tête with my body. An inevitable introspection where I had nothing else to do but spend time with myself. When you take away every element of distraction from your life, all the things that you were or are chasing suddenly lose their meaning.

Being locked up in a place made me aware of my phantom pursuit of life and its very pointlessness. I used to bawl out like crazy telling myself and everyone who came to trade time, that I didn’t have it. But when my breath got slower, I realized my days too became slower with it. I had all the time in the world, only this time I had nothing to do.

Time is a funny concept. I felt the weight of it, the very girth of it when I had tons of it to spare. Days crawled in the beginning. So slow they became, that I already had enough of it within the first week. I became hungry for cereals, my mind playing memories of all the scrumptious food that I had in my entire life. Like a prisoner who dreamt of liberation one day, I too started counting days by drawing lines and then cutting them off.

I wasn’t tired because there was no physical exertion. Nights became longer when I couldn’t sleep tossing and turning on my bed. I went back and played a whole lifetime of memories. I played everything that I remembered from my childhood and realized that I had one hell of it. I was fortunate to have a roof above my head at all times, food in my belly, and a steadfast friend in my brother. The struggles of my mom and dad made me more humble, and more grateful. They did so much for their children, and are still doing it, that one cannot help but wonder if there exists any purer form of love in the world.

My exile also made me realize that I had never actually sat freely to mull over the past. There were plenty of things worth remembering in it. Yet the human condition often keeps the unpleasant stuff closer to its chest. Every breath that was tied to a memory made me realize that it was all an experience. Everything unfortunate was brewed in learning, everything that had followed was varied forms of rapture.

Holding my breath to do breathing exercises made me realize that I was fortunate enough to be breathing at all. Every memory was tied to this very blessed truth. I was lucky to experience my life in good shape and health. In fact, I am fortunate to even get such an opportunity to be exiled in the first place like the stories we grew up reading, even though it was some diseased doing.

It did for me what I would have probably never done for myself. It helped me to turn my eyes inside out to see the real me, not the perspective the world witnesses, not a page that a social medium presents. It made me realize the most immutable fact there is – “I am more.”