The Glass Between Us
The blue wool sweater my father wore every Sunday is gone. It was not just a garment; it was a specific texture of safety, smelling faintly of pipe tobacco and the damp air of the garden. When he stopped wearing it, the world did not end, but the air in the hallway changed. It became thinner, less anchored. We spend our lives trying to touch the world directly, but there is always a barrier—a pane of glass, a layer of atmosphere, the inevitable distance between one heartbeat and another. We look out at the rain and see the world distorted, stretched into streaks of gray and silver, as if the reality we crave is just beyond our reach, weeping against the surface. We are always moving, always passing through, watching the landscape dissolve into something we can no longer name. If we could finally wipe away the condensation, would we find the truth, or would we simply find that the glass was the only thing holding the world together?
Tanmoy Saha has captured this feeling of transit in his work titled Driving in the Rain. He reminds us that sometimes, the most honest way to see our surroundings is through the veil of what separates us. Does the rain make the world clearer, or does it only deepen the mystery?
