The Weight of Waiting

To wait is to inhabit a different kind of time. It is not the time of the clock, but the time of the pulse. In the north, we learn this early. You stand in the cold, breath hitching in the air, watching the edge of the forest. You do not move. You do not think. You simply become part of the stillness. The world is a series of small, sharp movements held together by long stretches of silence. We are always looking for something to break the surface, something to justify the patience we have spent. But perhaps the waiting is the point. Perhaps the bird, or the wind, or the sudden shift in the light is only a reminder that we are here, and that here is enough. What remains when the movement stops? What is left in the space where the gaze finally rests?

Nirupam Roy has captured this stillness in the image titled Sky Look. It is a quiet study of a moment held in suspension. Does the bird see the same sky that we do?