The Way it Makes Me Feel

It's been a while...

Was going through a strange phase, and had decided to give up writing for an indefinitely long time, but somewhere along the way the experiment failed, and I'm back here to bug all of you to death... :P

I guess there are somethings that matter too much to actually give up, and I realized that the hard way.

Anyways this blog is not about me, so I'll stop ranting about myself (though of course I would love to bore all of you to death about how great I am...:P)

I still remember that last day in Allahabad, I woke up at around 4:30 as I had to meet a friend as soon as my hostel gates opened up (actually I was too sad about leaving to sleep, and at the same time too excited). It felt good being awake to watch the sky lighten, and see birds flying overhead. It is a morning I'll never forget...

Missed the sunrise that morning, all because of my hostel guards who have always felt important as they had the keys to the hostel, were extra difficult to deal with that day about letting me out. Still it was beautiful, sitting there staring at the sun's reflection on the water. There is a tranquility in such things that stays with you for life...

I had a very strange feeling those last few days I was there in Allahabad, especially that morning. Do you ever get a feeling that all you want to do is dissolve into that moment and become one with it? Like nothing in the world matters, but what you feel at that precise moment, and you would give up everything in the world to freeze time for a little while. I hadn't felt that way before, but whatever it was, it felt beautiful.

And sometimes you listen to a song, and you land up closing your eyes, and literally feel the music flowing through your veins, and when the music ends, that moment of silence leaves you dumbstruck. Sometimes it is the music alone, other times it is the lyrics, but it's best when the lyrics and the music both touch something inside of you.

When reading a book, or a poem, sometimes a line or a paragraph/stanza sends shivers down your spine, and you just stop for a moment, as if time came to a standstill, while your mind properly digests the real gist of what you just read. One book I recently read that made me feel this way was Lord of the Flies, just some lines here or there were enough to make me think...whoa...(another such book was To Kill a Mockingbird).

Yet nothing in the world beats writing a single line that leaves you in awe of yourself. After writing for so long, I still do not think I have written that line, but someday I hope to. Someday on this ride called life, I want to be able to write one meaningful sentence, for I feel it would be enough to...

I just want to take the fall, and see where I land...even if it leaves me utterly broken.

Magic

Sitting at home I have started losing my mind (not that I had any to start with), in a bad way. This post is not about that (even though I know that I need to get it out of my system).

A long time ago, in a land far away, there lived a girl. She was an ordinary girl, from a not so ordinary family. She had a childhood of constant conflict, a childhood divided in two. Often in later years she would wish she could unlive the childhood she had, she would wish she could erase all memories of it. Sadly, she had a terribly good memory, a memory most considered a great virtue, but only she knew it was nothing but a vice, a burden. Sometimes it's better to forget, to feel true bliss.

As this girl grew older, and her awkwardness seeped underneath her skin and corrupted her mind, she thought more and more often of hiding, of disappearing into nothingness. Slowly she withdrew into the shadows of her broken world, and shut out all the light. It was there that she realized she had a gift, she knew magic. The petty mortals of the world knew not of such a thing, and she knew they would not understand, she knew that they would shun her away as if she were an alien being. So this gift of her's she hid from all.

The magic she knew, my friends, was not your ordinary stuff of love potions and flying sky high, it involved no wand, nor did it have much to do with spells and magic words. No, her magical powers were beyond it all. She had the ability to go to any place she liked, change her surroundings into anything that pleased her, provided she would go back to the world in which she was born once the magic of the moment wore out. She had the ability to change the world.

At first she only used her gift like a drug, to drift herself away from the pains of everyday life. She would take herself to watch beautiful sunsets, and see majestic waterfalls. She would take herself to mountainsides and riverbeds, she would even take herself to space and roam galaxies never even dreamed of. She created lands of bliss all around her, she created a perfect world, where no pain could be found, no pain could be caused, nothing negative existed. Alas the ecstasy of drugs must soon turn into dark paranoia.

The burden of pain she carried in her heart soon seeped into the wounds and cracks of her world of escape. The pain permeated through her skin, into the air around her and made it heavy, suffocating her. Was her gift to turn into a bane? She could have succumbed to it, like she had given in to every sorrow or happiness that came her way, but for the first time in her life she wanted to put up a fight, even if it meant the death of her. Even death is better than a void, better than emptiness.

So she traveled to worlds of suffering with her magic, she saw the horrors of war first hand, she saw the inhuman conditions of the slums, she saw the hypocrisy of the government, she was an eyewitness of how that which seemed white quickly faded to black, and how not all black things were truly dark. She saw cunning behind the pure, and the naivety behind the corrupt. She saw for the first time human suffering, human bondage, cruelty and true surrender. She watched a suicide, she committed a murder, the turmoils and guilt of the world was now heavy on her back, like burden of the workers who carried bricks for miles to build a lost cause. Only then did she see the naked truth, only then did she cast away the pains of everyday life and learn to smile. She understood her gift, this ability to change the world.

Far in the future, when she had truly mastered her gift, and was busy bettering the world, she heard a voice ringing in the distance. She felt a hand on her shoulder, and turned to see no one. Then she watched her world come crashing down, it was a blur of color, like buckets of falling paint. And then it was darkness. Her pen slipped and fell to the floor, and a familiar hand reached to pick it up for her...