Yesterday, instead of taking my usual bus home, I opted for a rickshaw. While passing Basabo, I felt drawn to the overbridge, a place where I often come to stand and enjoy the view of trains passing beneath the bridge. Not too late into the night, I stood there waiting for the trains.

For a brief time, no trains passed, and I swear it was a pin-drop silence. A restless city faded into the December night's smell, its darkness. I am not a silence appreciator, but it was serene, absolute and wishful. I felt like the world was holding its breath for five minutes. I stood there with a sodium light, drizzling rain and a blurred edge of escaped reality. The deadlines, the urgencies, the expectations, all seemed to melt away. I could sense my senses. With every breath I could hear of mine, I wanted to stretch the moment to forever, to make it permanent. It was eerie but beautiful. It was eternal but impermanent.

The stillness was soon interrupted by a train. My mind returned from the magic as the city regained its motion. Reflecting on the feeling, I realized that the beauty of it was its briefness. The knowledge that the moment won't last, made it more meaningful.

I think permenance is an illusion that gives us control. The control that comes with knowing something will be there forever. We crave the comfort of certainty, until it's gone. Like the most beautiful rainbow I saw beside the beach in June; I knew won't stay for even minutes. Like the touch of a dying wave on my feet in October; I knew was at its end. Like my fondness for certain songs in January; I knew won't last till the next year. They're all beautiful to me because they left me, they ended.

The knowledge that these experiences won't last forever made me feel an urge to take it all in, to savour it intensely. I became more attentive to the subtle details of life: how the sunlight falls on the ground and the shadow creates art, how I prepare myself to take in all the smell whenever I pass by a bakery, how a seasonal ripe mango tastes, how I suddenly discover a moon peaking through the buildings, watching over me. The nervousness of a first day, the excitement of a first date, the smile of a loved one, the touch of their fingertips feel so perfect! Because I love their briefness. I understand how precious they are, ageing like history. I know these will soon end. And I believe it's their very shortness that makes them so special. It' their impermanence that makes them irreplaceable, so divinely beautiful!