NORMAL

She was barely making eye-contact with me. Just sitting there and looking at her toes and
sometimes at those of passersby. Like there is nothing more beautiful in the world around
her than the toes and the tiles beneath. Why that is, I don’t know. Perhaps the ground makes
her feel safer. Or is it because she feels she has to give all her attention to the ground about
which nobody care or acknowledge, but which is silently supporting everyone? Maybe the
ground judge no one, despite everyone’s trampling, stomping, stamping and banging and
what not.

“Most people don’t get me,” she says. “They ask me questions like, ‘What’s your problem?’
or ‘Were you beaten as a child?’ But I never respond. Because I don’t feel like explaining
myself. And I don’t think they really care anyway.” Just then, a young man sits down at the
bar on the opposite side of her. He’s a little drunk, and says, “You’re pretty. May I buy you a
drink?” She stays silent and looks back down at the ground again. After an awkward moment,
he accepts the rejection, gets up, and walks away.

“I could use some fresh air. I don’t know about you, but it is okay if you want to leave now. I
am going out,” she says. I followed her outside anyway. It was quite chilly. I just stood there
looking at the cars passing by, chattering people nearby, glancing sideways at her sometimes.
She still stands there looking at the ground. “Why did you follow me out? Wouldn’t you rather
be inside, with the warmth and the merriness?” she asks. “I am here because I want to be. I
am also not normal. Even I am wearing the same sneakers that you are wearing which has
gone out of fashion for decades,” I replies. A shadow of a smile crossed her lips and she looked
up at me and then at my fingers. “Oh you are married. And so out of the market huh?” I
laughed. “What can I do? Sometimes life gives such hard lucks,” I reply. Her sly smile opened
into a flicker of a laugh. In the light of the nearby neon lights, her eyes suddenly felt like not
dead anymore.

“In that case I would like to tell you a story,” she says. “I am listening,” I reply. That was the
first time that she was looking up at me for more than ten seconds.

As she speaks, her emotional gaze shifts from the ground, to my eyes, to the moonlit sky, to
the ground, and back to my eyes again. This rotation continues in a loop for the duration of
her story. I don’t interject once. I listen to every word. And I assimilate the raw emotion
present in the tone of her voice and in the depth of her eyes.

When she finishes, she says, “Well, now you know my story. You think I’m a freak, don’t you?”

“Place your right hand on your chest,” I tell her. She does. “What do you feel?” I ask. “I feel
my heartbeat,” she replies.

“Now close your eyes, place both your hands on your face, and move them around
slowly.” She does. “What do you feel now?” I ask.

“Well, I feel my eyes, my nose, my mouth… I feel my face.”

“That’s right,” I reply. “But unlike you, stories don’t have heartbeats, and they don’t have
faces. Because stories are not alive—they’re not people. They’re just stories. Which stays
like that for normal people. Whose very existence makes any person a ‘normal’ person”. She
stares into my eyes for a prolonged moment, smiles sincerely and says, “Just stories we live
through.”

“Yeah… And stories we learn from.”