Post Card Town

“Give up to the grace. The ocean takes care of each wave till it gets to the shore. You need more help than you know.”
-Rumi

June 8, 2014, I was 20 years old, 1208 km away from the river when I was told, a lot of my college friends are missing. A night has passed, I was 613 km away from the river and I was told nearly 30 odd number of our college friends are missing. 30 or odd. The numbers are odd but not the lives! The night has passed without ever knowing how many of our friends made it and how many have we lost to the flow of the river. After two days, we learnt that we lost 24 of our friends.

I never understood or discussed the word ‘grief’ neither did my friends, family, professors, teachers and the spaces that held us to the void we lived with. 'I’m not affected as much as my friends who witnessed 5 or 10 odd km away from the river,' I told myself and carried on with my life.

June 14, 2017, I was 22 years old, 160 odd km away when P told me that we lost Madhu to a road accident. A lot of loss, still was not ready to encounter the word, ‘grief’ neither in English nor in my mother tongue-Telugu.

2018, distance doesn’t matter anymore, I was 23 when I was told a friend younger to me killed herself.

2019 July, I was 24, four more months to turn 25 years old, I was told a friend elder to me killed himself.

2020, I was 25 years old. Distance didn’t matter. Age didn’t matter, I was told, I lost a loved one to water, again.

2021, 26. Another loss.

Through the span of 7 years, I lived in a lot of towns, while a lot of loss is encountered. Was loss experienced and endured? I don't know.

I never understood the word ‘grief.’ Never discussed it with anyone around.

November.2021, In a post card picturesque town of Rajasthan, Pushkar, I saw a group of women at the lake, taking turns, covering themselves in colourful veils and crying their heart out. A man was helping women to cry but neither I could see any men around, crying nor participating in the ritual.

‘Drapes of rituals
tears of longing
colours of grief

let everything wait for, we want to breathe.

I wrote this poem without thinking that I waited 9 odd years breathing, coming to terms to immerse myself in grief.

May 2023, reciting a poem I wrote for Madhu on the book launch of Colourless, I broke down and thus, began to experience the word ‘grief’ in my own ways.

I took a lot of postcards to write and colour everything I was holding onto. I filled the postcards with love. ‘Grief is another form of love.’ I’m told. To all those to whom I couldn't hand out the postcards, I coloured my love- sometimes mellow, sometimes sharp, sometimes bright, sometimes dark, sometimes curly, sometimes wavy, sometimes chaotic, sometimes powerful, sometimes powerless, sometimes simple.

I learnt to let the grief/love exist, within me, as all the other feelings exist.

Why Postcards?
Postcard is an empty space, that travels but does not have one final single destination. So seems to be our lives. It begins at the desk of writer, and then the post box, post office, inventory, post man, postbox again, receiver and it’s lives in between the pages of books or the boxes that are forgotten and retrieved time and again. Reflecting on our lives and wondering where we keep moving and how we express our emotions, I picked a post card and poured out the love.

A collection of 190 postcards are available for purchase. If you want to own the postcards from the series of post card town, write to me at abhinayrenny@gmail.com. A collection of 9 postcards(framed) costs 300CHF