There are times when I don’t want to be the way others want me to be! I just want to be myself, just for the sake of it…for being the person I am! For being the individual who has been brought up to be this weird; for being a person who wants to be free; for being challenged by the basic human competence of normalcy! There were times in my childhood when I wished I had a magic wand like the fairies who stormed all the fairy tales of my childhood; changing the world with a swish of their wand! Ma used to often tell me to be more normal and more human. Alas! I developed all the traits, in a little distorted way…adding an ‘ab’ before the normal and an ‘e’ after the human! None of the qualities which could see me through this huge booming, buzzing market around me…
Sometimes I hate to wake up in the mornings…hate to face the world…hate to see the people running for their lives! Hate to be someone the world wants me to be! Hate to do what I hate the most – pretend! Pretend to be someone I am not! Someone I can never be! Pretend to be a part of this system which is so alien to me…And yet thus is the rule of the game! How old am I? At times it feels I have the world to see…at times I feel I have seen so much - it pains to bear the burden any longer. At times I wonder who I am…am I the person my parents have brought up with so much care to be labeled as an ideal person? Or am I the escapist who can only brag about her frustrations and still continue being the same machine that emits no smoke and yet produces only what is expected…the pent up potentials ventilating through my lines written in the middle of the night!
Am I the same person who set out with a head full of ideologies…to change the world…to do what I want to do? Am I the same person who was destined to die an unknown death…unknown to the world…unknown to the own self? Am I the same person who tried to die and feared the consequences of death? Am I the person who wants to live life appreciating its beauty? Am I the same person who is scared to look down from a height and yet want to see how the world looks from the very top? TOP…a misnomer! I don’t want to be at the top…I never wanted to be…but it feels amazing to hear the winds singing in my ears…to feel the warmth of the sun caress my cheek from up close…to feel the wild breeze ruffle my unruly hair…
I often look at the urchins playing by the road in the dirt and feel I could be like them…and yet if I would have been them, I would feel, looking at the people I represent now, a mad want to be like them! Why do we always fail to get what we want? Why do we always want what we don’t have? Is there not a single soul walking the face of earth that lives their life their own way? If not… then it is utterly frightful to be living on this planet! We all live to live our dreams, don’t we? And if they never get to see the dawn of reality, could there be a scarier proposition? We spend our entire lives hoping we will get that ‘something…someday’. Scary that this ‘someday’ never happens to us! Monotonously we live and we die, not realizing that all we have done all our lives is WAIT! A little something makes us happy and we think we step closer to our dreams but what we perhaps don’t realize is that the dreams move a step ahead! Dreams – something that we all live for; something that keeps us going; something we nurture tenderly in the very bottom of our hearts…and yet something that we can never grasp!
What if I dream of blue skies and green fields? What if I dream of snowy mountains and sparkling seas? What if I dream of a sparkling morning breeze and a soothing moonlit night? What if I dream of a bright spring morning with the sun, still dripping with the morning dew streaming down the window frame? What if I dream of a moist rainy day staring at the droplets of rain by the window sill? What if I dream of a lazy winter afternoon, reading a book sitting on my terrace soaking the warmth of the sun rays? What if I dream of a spring evening with the mild breeze filling my senses with the fragrance of the wild flowers? What if I dream of a summer night with the norwester lashing down in all its fury?
Dreams grow with us…and all we are left with as we grow older are memories of the dreams which we nurture in the depth of our beings…and more importantly those which nurture us tenderly and keep us from dying of shame and failure. And one fine morning when you expect the least, you suddenly find yourself far away from all realities…carried away to the land of nowhere! Beyond all happiness, all tears, all wants, all failures…all hatred. For there is the land of love!
We cry over lost friends, lost lives…lost acquaintances; we might have met for a few forgettable moments. Not very many hours ago did I shed a drop of silent tear for someone I hardly knew. It comes almost automatically…with a wish that even a teardrop from a complete stranger would be sufficient to get him back to life. But fate rules us, pawns of destiny! I know he would never come back. People would talk about him for a while, few days, weeks perhaps even months…but life hardly stops for anything…even for death. Not even for our dearest soul…unless of course it is ME…the all encompassing, all-centric ME!
How I wish all the stories about the soul leaving the body and being able to see and feel everything around would be true. If only one would be able to see what people feel when dead? I want to live this feeling of death and be able to feel what I can never feel in all my life – the end of an uncertain tomorrow. The fear of dreading what every moment of the tomorrow would throw at me; the fear of losing all I love; the fear of being all alone in this booming pseudo humane existence around me; the fear of not being able to see, hear, touch and feel the people who make up my self – haunts me day and night.
Sometimes I have this strange wish to die…strange wish to end all fears! And yet I am scared to death to die…paradoxical…thy name is Me!
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