The Psychology of Choosing Seats and Bouncing Legs

By Bharti Bansal

As the door opens, an empty crowd enters, everyone's eyes meet like a fair of iris and dilating pupils on seeing someone interesting. Their blank faces, with voices echoing inside their heads, these voices jiggle like coins rolling on the floor, stopping just right before the silence of their feet. The eyes probe each desk—a prayer of sorts—which god to choose, which to neglect. A sudden religion emerges and now everyone is shuffling seats, looking for the friendliest desks. A person looks at me and decides against it. Another comes and goes, the desks filling up, the last one emptier than the shadows on their countenance, perpetually present. What gods feel lonely? The offerings of smiles are passed among them and received generously. The crackling noise of turning pages and silent whispers—everything reminds me of God's place.

Outside, workers tend to the gardens; this beauty of perfectly trimmed plants and bushes, every little thing rests on their shoulders. The noise fills up the room, and students keep settling like sediments. There is a hierarchy among the benches. First ones, always with pride, let the students grace them. Last benches—almost a locality where anyone visits. A trivial power dynamic establishes and circulates as a process, everyone breathes in the same. I look beside my seat and find nobody has chosen it. The professor, in this class, talks about deep learning and association-isms. Everything is connected to something else. He gives a funny example: in a terrible storm, you remember the breakfast you had. Amidst all the deep learning algorithms—this one is overlooked by students. It interests me, makes me curious about how the selection and sorting take place. Intrigued, I find the neurons of my brain triggered like a fish taken out of water. I start shaking my leg—patiently at first, then vigorously. The unoccupied bench beside me shakes along with me, a type of resonance between a living and inanimate object. I realize how everything, when left untouched, joins us in lamenting the absence. Perhaps, the abandoned chair of your home reflects sun a little brightly today.

Amidst this personal turmoil, peripheral vision is funny. I think someone is looking at my bare loneliness and finding it hilarious. I want to be an owl and keep an eye on everyone who looks at me even slightly. A sense of control is better than having no control at all. Flowers outside have dried and died out of autumn, but an aesthetic develops, loved by the selfie-taking students. Inside, the professor has moved on to newer, fascinating topics. How the first machine learning algorithm mimicked the human brain cell. A perceptron. Operating through the excitation of some mathematical functions behaving like the neural activity of brain. The competition among brain cells—survival of the fittest—more active neurons overpower the lesser active ones, leading to their ultimate death. A food chain in our mind, with us being both the predator and the prey. Ironical as it sounds, we have become our own parasites. He then proceeds to say, "Smiling more leads to stretching of your facial muscles." Suddenly, I remember the laugh lines around my nani's eyes—memory frozen on face. A continuous laughter leaving its trail behind. Body and its ways of preserving nostalgia—herbarium of little joys. Which reminds me how I haven't laughed in three weeks. In the class window, I see the reflection of my smile and a little dimple pops up like a pea-sized being, waving a hello but never staying. My face always in a state of blankness, I keep reminding myself to let my lips stretch into a smile whenever someone sees me.

Yet another student starts shaking his legs, and the bench in front of me starts shaking too, which shakes my bench as well. A cascade process begins and somehow we are connected in our unrest. Another starts doing the same. I notice one-fourth of the class shaking their legs, bouncing them up and down, pendulum of restlessness always keeping them on foot—quite metaphorically. We have all merged into one shaking ball, and the world seems round in its truest sense. As the clock strikes 10, the professor stops his curious conversation about brain and neural models, while I look at students filtering out of the classroom, looking at their friends and laughing. Some wait for the others to come along, while some walk slowly for their friends to catch up. Nobody looks at me. But the bench waves me a goodbye.

I walk with my head down, associations working in full-blown momentum. I remember my childhood and its inherent aloofness. I remember my friends always walking ahead of me, never once stopping to look back at me. Nobody has asked me a question in so long, I have forgotten that my voice exists. My legs, tired of this restlessness, trudge along with the crowd, hoping to go unnoticed. What kind of shadow can a person cast if he has no light inside to begin with? Stories begin in the classrooms; love happens too. Before leaving the class, I notice a girl noticing a boy and I smile in personal relief. Even though it eludes me, someone is in the process of falling in love. Like an untouched jar of water suddenly shaken. Sedimentation has disrupted and the hierarchy of the benches has been broken.

Time does things to people and places. Father repeats Nawazuddin Siddiqui's dialogue, "Kachre ka dher bhi jagah badalta hai, tu toh phir bhi mera heera hai." (Even a heap of garbage changes its place, yet you are my gem!.) I find solace in the knowledge that Nawazuddin was lonely too, and that his mother believed in his loneliness when he wanted to be seen. I guess we all want to be seen. I believe the sky is bluer only for us to register the contrasting shapes of birds. Even the armed forces of the world exist because there are countries to be defeated. And then the planes, and people flying them. Even snow turns into an avalanche by the heavy footsteps of a skier. I walk alone through the cycle filled roads and reach my room, and sleep knowing tomorrow will be the same.

Yet another visit of rain leaves the droplets on the window turning into a perfectly shaped little puddle. A fly drowns in it. It has changed its place—into something chaotic. But nothing remembers its absence. Not even me. Perhaps everything that is not cared about does change itself into an avoidable void. Who says the void is gazing back at us? I say, jump into it and see the shaking legs vibrating it, like an already broken boiling egg. These are the kind of dreams I want to be known for. Not my loneliness. Never my loneliness.

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About the Writer:

Bharti lives in Himachal Pradesh. Her striking poems speak of home and heart, while she herself stays quietly behind her words.