Will O' the Wisp

 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 ...

 Five, six, seven, eight ... forty four, forty five, forty six, forty seven ... I keep counting.  I count the seconds by listening to the wall clock, sometimes I lose myself in other noises, the fan, the cricket, the breaths but I come back and I count, again and again and again not remembering exactly from where to restart.  Numbers are so cruel and so fascinating. They never stop. You can count, count and count. The steps, the seconds, the bugs, the bees, the fallen leaves and those that are on the trees, and definitely the days. The numbers never stop, nor does the counting.  You are amidst a pandemic, you suffer for you don't know whom and all you do is you count, you don't know where's the end, and if there's an end at all ... Maybe there is, maybe there is not. So you count, I count too. We all count, for different reasons, for different purposes and for different days.

 I have been a part of many events in school and college. But for obvious reasons I always worked with teachers and professors, so wasn't much aware of all the different kinds difficulties, responsibilities and the small extra efforts of joining the wires in times of need. For the first time, I got an opportunity to arrange something without any help of a teacher or professor.  And it was amazing! But what is the most special part of it, why does it still stay? It's not the after credits, it's not the compliments which you receive, it's the bond we grow while working together. I don't know if I'll ever get another opportunity to work with such people or people who would be as nice as them, but this stays, stays for long, stays at the times when I feel not very good or very monotonous with everything. This stays ...  Also, not always you arrange something for the people who have impacted your life the most!  It was the teachers day event btw :)

 I just came accross a writing on Facebook by one of my friends titled 'Independence now".  Independence now and Independence then... I have very less knowledge to talk about these. All I have fathomed till this age is like every perception, every beauty, every ugliness, independence is personal.  You and I have our different individual independent ideas of independence. And we all have our struggles to aquire it.  So if we are independent today, in our own way, let's celebrate it. Independence is an everyday celebration and what is a better time to realize this than today, when we are locked and are longing for freedom the most? Happy Individual Independence Day to you and me and all of us. Let this independence never slip off ...