Lost and Found

You know how some frames are just stuck in your memory for no particular reason other than the one you gave it?

31st July. 1.50 PM — My fellow camp mate and I are wandering through the tiny lanes of Balat where each turn leads to an even tinier lane, like secrets waiting to be discovered.

Imagine me holding out my arms, back of my palms facing me, parallel to each other, thumbs barely touching to mimic a frame frozen in time. Does it add to the story? No. But is it how I want you to see it? Yes.

Divide the landscape frame into half and take the right side of the half and divide it again. Towards the extreme right, you will see a graffiti clad wall. Leaning half her body weight onto that wall, is this curly-haired girl writing something with a faint ball pen.

Half a minute of small talk revealed her middle eastern background while the huge backpack on her shoulder gave away the fact that she was travelling solo. I feel like the only word which did justice to her presence was ‘elegance’

As I turned to write something, I realized that the pen we borrowed from her wasn’t working properly on uneven surface on the wall. I couldn’t help but feel secretly glad that the faint inked pen had spared me the effort of writing something of equally relevance (at this point in my life).

We looked around to return the pen, only to notice that the girl had seemingly disappeared into oblivion.

I think I needed to read this quote that day as much and maybe she needed to write it? A huge part of me going on this trip was to escape this metaphoric feeling of being lost. If I’m physically in a place I don’t belong, does that feeling even matter?

31st July 2.00 PM — I clicked this picture