What if there was a war? A third one now?
What would I do?
Weird, isn’t it? How oil and dollar conversion rates in some
far off country can change your dream, your love and all that you’ve wanted to
do for so long. I hope there’s no war…
There’s so much chaos as it is. Corrupt politics, illogical
customs, money, management, pressure, junk food, cement, so much of it.. that
the very air makes me miserable. Sunsets, like censored adult scenes, golden
light visible at the edges of those clouds, while the sun is swooped by a gray
peeling building.
If I have to stay at home for another year and the year
after without hope, I swear I’ll just pack a bag and run away somewhere alone. I asked a lot
from life, I had asked for both comfort and recklessness, freedom and dominance
but don’t we all have to experience every edge of those emotions to understand
what we truly need?
Approximately about half a dozen years ago, my brother told
me that the only thing constant in life is change. And I had waited for it with
a welcome heart, it never came. All those writers tell me that change is a
matter of perspective, but to gain such a perspective, one still needs to
explore and understand it. I agree that home is a warm place to be… but how can
it ever be enough? Don’t we need to feel the speed, the excitement, and the
pulse scrambling as you pack your bags knowing tomorrow you shall wake up in a
world entirely different. A world that you have waited to touch, with both your
mind and body, for half of your life-time. And it’s so busy in itself, it fails
to notice your needs as always. You go running to it with feverish excitement,
having failed to eat or sleep in the past few days and you end up being brushed
off aside. There is no journey in store, the man takes you nowhere. And
you could not let yourself anywhere away.. in the end you feel sorry for
yourself and go off sulking in a corner. He just couldn’t come along, because
he was too busy fighting in his dreams, lazy and unwilling to even notice your
reality while you just waited for him as the hours flew by in a box hating him
for all that he does, the number of times he stood you up, and yet you can’t
let go, there is no one else to go to, and no place else to exist without him.
You have fallen for him, irrationally, unreasonably and you continue to love
the beauty of his voice when he opens his laughter to you loud. Even the memory
of the echo of it in your heart can fuel your love for a life time.
You’d think he’d come after you, pleading, apologising for
the stupidity and the violence, but he won’t, he’ll go on and you see him, planning
to destroy himself, you know that no protests would make a difference, none of
it. You cannot come in between the greed of a man and the illusions he chooses
to trust in, no matter how hard you try. People stopped counting to him, they
are measured by the worth of their investment. And you’re tired, bone-tired…
and you just want everything he gave you to go back, just a little to the days
you played in the streets, in the warm comfort of certainty believing that all
adventure began with your footstep into adolescence… while the rest remained a
dazzling audience. Why wasn’t it so?
I’m frustrated, why must he fight with himself, over oil,
pipes and power. If only every one within a tangible geographical region like
India just stopped using their cars and bikes, for one day, just one… the
dollar shall fall. He’ll start making
sense. If done over a week, his arrogance might just be reduced to a joke. But
who stops? Who leads? Who understands the pain of all those millions of star
fish dropped over at bank… dead or dying? What sense of judgement could they
appeal to?
Maybe it isn’t just change that is consistent, but apathy
too… whatever the reason where could me and my sea
of books explore hidden? Where would the waves dance and the golden sunsets spread to
the extent of our perception. To drink from that deep blue starry sky to your heart's fill, where
tomorrow once again has the capacity to bring salt spray to your lips, wind
tugs at your pages like a jealous young girl, whispers and clamours in your ear
till resisting no more your mind warms to peace, the lips sigh and the eyes close, and then she takes you.
Fast through the clouds, laughing out loud and yet, you fly just skimming the
sea, the waves assuring you of what is true and the wind filling you up with
what is not. If a man dies, where will his dreams go? Into oblivion, never
noticing the worth of their colours, why would anyone wake such a man, why do
people wake up? Why do they not, sit back by the sea, sip a simple lemonade,
read or listen to things that make them feel good. When the man had not yet
achieved the equilibrium of his destiny why can’t he just continue to find out?
Why must we fight?
