QUERENCIA

I was flipping through the pictures in my phone gallery and she sat there with her drawing copy flung open beside me - pumped up with excitement like a pink balloon on seeing me after a shameful hiatus of eight long months! There were two crayons – one black and the other white – and she wanted me to choose one. I asked her what she planned to draw. She said she’ll be teaching me how to draw a cloud… and then went ahead with her cautiously punctuated lecture, “There are two types of clouds. One black and the other white. The black one rains. The white one doesn’t. I like the white ones. They don’t make the street dirty. Now you choose the crayon.” My five-year old cousin.

So here was some food for thought. I enquired back, “What about the grey ones? Draw a grey one for me.” “There are no grey ones. You think they are grey because you want to mix things up. You people always mix things up and confuse me”, she retorted animatedly. PROFOUND.

Yes. We do. I wish we didn’t. I wish we were as simple as a kid choosing between black and white crayons. And confident in our own measure. Doesn’t the expanding horizon of trying to understand the world sometimes leave us fumbling in our own backyard? We fail to make simple choices because we think of pleasing everyone. And that’s because we are expected to do so. That’s ‘growing up’ – creating a ghost image of ourselves. And it’s like butchering the last leg of innocence.

Now I was gazing out of the window on my way back home… following the curve of the rusty railway track… waiting for that ‘black cloud’ to drench it down and plate it silver. Finally I had found the right word for that state of mind. ‘Querencia’. A place from which our strength is drawn; a place from where we know who we are and; from which we speak our deepest beliefs. The word took me home. And I was a child again.