Will O' the Wisp

 While growing up most of us have come across many encouragements and enthusiasms from caregivers of the unit called the family to pursue education as long as one wants. All the concerns, appreciations, criticisms and gifts of the child surround the fact of how much they secure in an exam. The first disruption in the smooth and active encouragement happens when the child takes up humanities instead of Science, especially if they had required marks to go for science.  Many find institutional education useless, many find it useful, either way, one is expected to carry out education till they receive a certain degree.  Fair enough. Many among them struggle to complete their education, some are very convinced with the social conventions, they like to flow with the river without a rift and many start liking the subject they take up. I'm one of the latter students.  But one of the greatest shocks happens when after a certain point in life, education seems like a distant reality, it seem

The customary exercise of the night following the day and the day following the night continues. The questions with no answers keep piling up. The remembrance of the one who is yet to be met brings tears to eyes. The theories beyond science take a new shape with every passing day. The self boundary narrows for the world outside and widens for the one within.  Life continues its tale Without caring much for anything else The bugs keep buzzing, I never know if I have seen them before. I look at them wondering if they too suffer pain and happiness like humans  Maybe they wonder the same, looking at me. 

 I've always wanted to be loved. For as long as I remember. But it is never a very unconditional desire. I want love, the one that pushes you beyond your limits (because I think very little of myself, which takes away most of my ability for the action), the one that is present with you in the cups of tea, the one that nurtures, that grows, that protects.  In every age group, I've missed love in different ways, different times. Now when I'm 23, I want to fall asleep to Aesop's Fables. To the king and the queen who lived happily ever after.   I've my theories and observations from life. I do believe in deep longings taking shapes in form of meaningful relationships. But I don't know if it happens with everyone. Or maybe it does, we fail to identify it. Tagore rightly questions, Jodi Tare nai chini go sheyki amaye nebe chine? https://youtu.be/izm3X7W9GBc

 I sail small boats. With no one on it. By choice. I take the long routes, I wait and watch the sun. My destination is no shore or mountain.  My destination is the waves of the water. My destination is watching the fish and the birds, it is the tune that I play on the flute. My destination is no place. So, I sail. Towards another place. I hope to see a land. Of liliputs, or giants. Of geometry or horses.  I sail small boats. With people on it. By choice. I still take the long routes. I wait and watch the sun. My destination becomes my companions. To talk, to touch the water together, to discuss the moon and the nights. We write snippets of poems, or maybe long poems together. We read them out loud. Sometimes they make sense, sometimes they don't.  I again return, not to any place, but the middle of the water. I start sailing. This time alone. Because I want to. My small boat moves. Towards another land. I hope to see liliputs, or giants, or maybe someone Gulliver never found. :)

Every time I close my eyes, I see the sky  I see the sky with different patterns  The patterns don't make any sense to me They are not the shapes I know of I try to look at them consciously But they vanish.  I try to concentrate, they vanish  I open and close my eyes again.  Every time I close my eyes I see the sky This sky doesn't have a moon and hundred stars But it too takes me on the journey to the unknown I try to find people, I try to find people I've never known  Instead I find patterns.  The patterns I try to make sense of and then realize Do the people exist in the universe as patterns? Do they talk in my language?

 Very often than not I go back to my childhood pictures. I see a different person there. Someone who was so excited to grow up, go to school, make new friends, meet people, play sports, click pictures, count birthdays, spoke till the other person almost asked her to stop. Memories have mostly faded away of that age, I only remember how I felt in certain situations. Very often than not I go back to the pictures. My eyes fill up. I say sorry to the picture. Every time. I mean it more than I've ever meant any word as I say.  I'm sorry, for not being able to protect it. I'm sorry everything didn't turn out to be as it was thought. I'm sorry for turning out to be a reluctant, apathetic person. I don't feel bad about being apathetic. I don't feel bad about the dangerously pessimistic thoughts I have every day. I don't feel bad about being hopeless. I feel bad because 20 years ago I was a person who wanted to be a good individual and yesterday night I was a per

 I have never visited a sea beach. The much I gather from pictures and videos, I love the sand dunes and the sand castles that people make by themselves. The pleasure is perhaps in making it rather than having a castle as a magical gift from a fairy who was turned some frog centuries ago. I would not like to see, one fine morning there is a castle made for me. But everytime I have tried to imagine me making a sand castle, I have also imagined it crumbling down, unconsciously. I have even imagined crying for that. But today it didn't matter. In my head I saw the sea waves taking away the castle. Within a minute I saw the entire thing reducing just to sands, dusts that people play upon.  I didn't cry.  I don't know if imagining it everyday has made me stronger or time really heals pain. Except the difference is, today it also happened in front of my eyes. Some castles become a question of survival. They crumble down with our hopes. Whether in head or in reality.

 We oft'en miss people who are far from us. Do we also miss people whom we have never seen and met? People whom we have always have known to be a part of us. People whose absence make a greater part of ourselves, the deeper part, the darker part. We are unsure if they have existed, we are unsure if they exist or will exist in physical form. We are unsure we have met or if we will meet them, transgressing the physical form perhaps.  As a child, I believed they existed. I believed we will meet. As a comparatively grown up individual, I know they don't. It was only yesterday someone told me the acceptance of this fact probably now makes ther greaterer part of "myself". 

Many years later we are sitting under the same roof. I made two cups of coffee so that conversations don't get awkward. We are at two ends of the room, I am on a couch beside the window, she is preparing for her competitive exams with scattered blank papers, an overburdened, cute, old bear pencil pouch, her favourite pens that she'd eventually use after trying out some of the new ones that she had bought, piles of blank notebooks and so many books. The favourites never change. Whether stationery sets or people, even from far apart.  I very consciously sip my coffee, so that I don't make any unnecessary sounds, and look at the moon. We had the best of days together and today after many years and we are sitting under the same roof. "Are you still looking for jobs?", she says.  The silence had to break, or else the awkwardness would have gotten on our nerves. "No. I'm taking a year off from everything. And writing of course." "Oh yes, the year you