Terminal Clarity

Attachment, tubelights, and other moments of sudden wisdom

I was reminded of this couplet a few days ago, and have always loved how uninhibitedly audacious it is. It’s really not melodramatic or even tragic, but so smug in its completeness it makes you (or maybe just me) yearn to experience that feeling.

In quite a literal translation,

      What is left to see?
      I attached my heart. I saw.

There’s no contingency in it. No Plan B. None of the many fish in the sea, let’s swipe across other options, emotional insurance policy energy. No keeping a little corner of yourself uncommitted so you can leave without too much of a fuss, and just a shrug.

It speaks to me as the clarity of someone who seems to have gone through it all, and come out not confused or lingering or half-sure, but finished? Fulfilled and so certain.

Terminal clarity.

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There is a medical term for it. Of course there is.

Paradoxical lucidity. Doctors explain it. Families mythologise it.

The body flickers back on just before it powers down, like that one tubelight in every desi house that refuses to die gracefully. It has been dim for months. Threatening with a low, persistent hum that contributes to household anxiety. Everyone is teetering towards calling the electrician and blaming each other for not having done it earlier. “You said you’d check.” “No, you said.” Domestic politics in fluorescent light.

And then one day, it suddenly begins to work perfectly again. White. Bright. Steady. You forget your irritation. You forget the electrician. You almost trust it.

It flares triumphant for thirty seconds. Bright enough to make you squint. Bright enough to feel back to normal.

And then, surrenders.

A grandmother who hasn’t recognised her children in months suddenly asks for mango pickle. A specific spicy raw mango one. A father who hasn’t spoken in weeks says his daughter’s name properly, with the right intonation, the familiar softness, and she will replay that pronunciation in her head for the rest of her life.

The brain gathers itself one last time.

Doctors explain it with neurons and neurotransmitters. Families explain it with destiny and grace.

I will not pretend to understand the science or the divinity.

But the timing. The timing is what unsettles me.

Why must clarity arrive at the edge?

Why does lucidity wait until it is too late to change anything?

Why not six months earlier? Why not in that so-called messy middle, when conversations could have been had, forgiveness could have been offered, mango pickle could have been shared more than once?

Why must clarity prefer drama?

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Slight segue. (It will make sense in approximately three paragraphs.)

My mum always reminded me about how if you hold something very close, you can’t see it very clearly. Quite literally, the vision blurs out. The edges disappear. All white noise, no shape.

So yes, perspective is imperative and helpful. Zoom out. Breathe. We have seen the motivational quotes.

But here’s the more uncomfortable bit: sometimes it isn’t distance that clouds you. It’s being fully in it. It’s participation. When you’re inside something, a year, a love, a decision, your eyesight is crowded.

And then I realise, mildly annoyed with myself, that we’ve already packaged this into a proverb.

“Hindsight is 20/20,” we say, as if it’s cute. As if it’s inevitable. As if we’re not mildly devastated every time we prove it true.

Fully marinating in a reality means that you tend to bargain. You are hopeful. You are tired. You are performing “fine.” You are telling your friends it’s “just a phase” with a laugh that is one octave too high. You rename discomfort as growth. You rebrand restlessness as ambition. You call silence maturity.

You edit reality in real time.

Then it ends.

And suddenly you’re a philosopher. Suddenly you have bullet points. Suddenly you have new-found vocabulary. Suddenly you can narrate the whole arc with devastating clarity.

Oh. That wasn’t ambition. That was fear.
Oh. That wasn’t compatibility. That was convenience.
Oh. That wasn’t busyness. That was anxious-avoidance.

Clarity loves closure. It’s almost rude how articulate we become once there’s nothing left to mess up. Shockingly brave when the future is no longer at stake.

I live to admire our own wisdom (or lack thereof) in retrospect.

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Scarcity has a similar habit.

During the pandemic, travel became illegal-adjacent, forbidden-adjacent, complicated-adjacent. Airports, those fluorescent (yes, a nod to the tubelight) purgatories of overpriced, suspiciously moist five-day-old-coleslaw-filled-sandwiches and delayed boarding, become suddenly sacred.

But the turbulence wasn’t about flights. It was about choice. It was about feeling caged. Confined without choice. The loss wasn’t about Paris or Phuket. It was about the reassurance that you could leave. the ability to leave whenever we wanted. That the world was technically available to you. That doors opened.

The moment borders closed, everyone became romantic about movement. About road trips. About “we should totally do that Goa plan.” Friends who had lived ten minutes away for years were now planning hypothetical Iceland itineraries together.

I’m not trying to diminish the uncertainty and fear the pandemic caused, that was real, enormous, destabilising. But this travel-associated yearning was its own subplot.

“When this is over…” is how every one of those Zoom friend hangouts started and ended. (We said it like a mantra. Or a threat. Hard to tell.)

Scarcity rearranges devotion.

You don’t fall in love with airports. You fall in love with the possibility of departure.

And once that possibility disappears, you are willing to spend more, sacrifice more, inconvenience yourself much more, just to feel that circle of access close around you again, even for a tiny moment. Even if the flight is at 4:15 a.m. Even if the sandwich is still terrible.

It isn’t the destination that sharpens you. It’s discovering that the door you never bothered to lock might not open again.

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There’s a smaller, slightly humiliating version of this.

Your phone at 3%. Or my phone, which is somehow always at 3%.

At 87%, you scroll like you are immortal. You open three tabs you will never return to. You reply to nothing. You watch half a reel and then abandon it mid-sentence. You are casual with time because you assume you have more of it.

At 3%, you dim the brightness like a Victorian conserving candlelight. You close apps you didn’t even know were open. You ration your swipes like they cost you something personal. Suddenly you are disciplined. Focused. Ethical.

It’s hard not to notice that we become our best selves under threat.

Which is slightly embarrassing.

I would love to believe I am naturally intentional. I am not.

I am intentional when the bar turns red. I realise that scarcity doesn’t install values. It exposes them.

And that exposure doesn’t only show up in battery percentages. It shows up in much less technological places.

Like suitcases.

You can tell what matters to someone by what they pack when departure feels real and urgent. What someone chooses to carry isn’t ever what their Instagram bio states.

The old sweater that photographs terribly but was gifted by a partner. The passport. The slightly embarrassing photograph that has survived three phones and two versions of you. The charger, obviously. Always the charger.

Nobody packs the decorative bowl. (Unless they are deeply chaotic. In which case, I respect it.)

I think about minimalism here. The reverent white shelves. The language of “decluttering.” The performance of detachment.

Sometimes it’s taste. Sometimes it’s aesthetic discipline.

And sometimes, if I’m being honest it feels like permanent suitcase logic. Own less. Anchor less. Make departure easier.

Minimalism can be aesthetic, but often also be autobiography I suppose.

And then nostalgia does something even stranger.

I lived in the tiniest box-room in New York City once. So many memories, some cinematic, some frankly claustrophobic, and the very practical recognition that two adults cannot pass each other in this room without negotiation. The water from the sink leaked over on to the three feet of floor space I was granted, there were extension cords in yoga poses, the radiator hissed at me with its opinions with my life choices, you get the idea. Eventually, you leave. Or rather, in my place the pandemic kicks you out (not by choice, would not recommend).

And suddenly, you remember the light coming in during the winter and how it felt on your napping face. The fidgety-ness of a plug point that rarely could handle the weight of your adapter, and the long distance things you were trying to hold on to.

Memory tends to be ruthless and so selective, all at once. Removes all the clunky admin, and just keeps the cuteness and the jasmine.

Clarity arrives delayed but with such kindness. Which is deeply inconvenient, because it proves you were capable of noticing all along (and cutting yourself some much needed slack). You just didn’t.

And I suppose that’s the through-line here, however dramatically I’m trying to frame it.

Clarity does not seem to be a rare mystical state. It seems to be an attention problem. One that sharpens itself only when something is scarce, threatened, closing, ending.

I become disciplined at 3%. I become sentimental after departure. I become articulate once the risk is gone.

It would be nice to believe I am wiser than this.

I am not.

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And yet.

I began this whole thing with Faiz as if he had the answer.

      aur kya dekhne ko baaki hai
      aap se dil laga ke dekh liya

What is left to see? I attached my heart. I saw.

When I first read it years ago, I heard triumph. Completion. The kind of sureness that makes the rest of us look like we’ve kept a “just in case backup option” saved under a different name.

But now, after tubelights and suitcases and notices to depart and my deeply unimpressive 3% discipline, I hear something else.

Not certainty. Risk.

Because attaching your heart without a Plan B is not clarity after the fact. It is clarity in advance.

It is refusing the comfort of the parallel tab. It is resisting the tiny, ticking instinct to keep one exit slightly ajar (in case, who knows). It is choosing not to wait for scarcity to rearrange your devotion.

And that, if I am honest, is far more frightening than paradoxical lucidity; which I suppose arrives when there is nothing left to lose. This version demands you risk losing first.

Which may be why most of us (read: me) prefer the dramatic edge. The diagnosis. The closing door. The red battery bar. They force us into sharpness. They compress us into honesty.

Voluntary clarity requires no such theatrics. It asks you to notice the smell of tadka before it becomes memory. To stand in the verandah at dusk without documenting it. To listen to that one family story even though you’ve heard it seventeen times. To say the thing before it becomes a regret you narrate beautifully later. It asks you to attach your heart while the door is still open.

I would love to say I live this way.

I do not.

I am, apparently, a fan of last-minute revelations. Of poetic hindsight. Of being articulate only once the scene has shifted.

But every now and then, I catch the bar at 47%.

And I try.

And maybe that’s all this really is, not terminal clarity, not perfect immersion, just the small, slightly clumsy attempt to notice before the flicker.

      aur kya dekhne ko baaki hai.

Maybe the question isn’t rhetorical.

Maybe it’s an invitation?

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In these last few months of trying to write more, I’ve realised I only produce anything half-coherent when I’m either absurdly happy or significantly gutted. If you’ve read this far through my not-entirely-lucid brain, thank you for staying.