My Child is my most precious Creation

The day we returned from Har ki Doon, I had this day dream; although everything in it actually happened with me, it felt like a reminder of my father's lost Battle of life. And it brought me to tears, yet again.

Someone like Debo or Jith has been looming around my studio for a while, maybe a few days - asking me to leave, or close the studio. I didn't know why. So I have not been paying attention and I have been ignoring him although I knew that he was dangerously looming around and fuming like a demon.

One day I was inside with my sister, Khushi. She was sitting on the sofa and I was standing and talking to her. Suddenly he gushes the glass door open and enters like a storm. I am still standing facing him while he charged at me like a bull, or a mad elephant. I felt completely powerless, helpless, numb, so much so that I could not move an inch to dodge him. It was as if I was hypnotized to a trance, possessed by something like a demon reducing my physical powers to null; numbing my mind and my strength completely. He comes straight ahead and rams me to the ground. My head cracks. Before I realize he lends a heavy cracking blow to my right cheek bone with his knee. I hear my skull crack right open. In an instant he cracks open my left jaw with his elbow and I could feel blood oozing inside my Skull and gushing out through all the openings of my face. Keeps slamming me left, right and center until I almost lose my consciousness. In my half dead state I could dreamily see my sister also getting hurt, and then he left like a storm through the door before I blacked out completely.

Next time I open my eyes, I am shivering with excruciating pain and incomparable fear trembling to regain my posture. I take sometime to sit up and see my face in the mirror totally disfigured and decapitated. I struggle to stand up still shaking, my hands and legs trembling to find the keys quickly. I manage to get my hands on them, switch off all the lights, come out and lock the glass door and leave immediately in my decapitated state, body reduced to a rubble.

After I return home, I see my sister quietly lying down, head resting on the lap of my father and I could also sense the presence of my mother sitting beside. My father is stroking my sister's head staring blankly into the white wall in front and no one is saying a word. My mom utters, " you have the same script as your dad". I turned my gaze from them and isolate myself into a closed room.

My eyes open and I wake up stretching my jaws as if I could still feel the blows on my face. First quote that comes to me is, " let the world grow into you and you can grow into the world" - a slight aberration from Jith's tattoo quote, " let the world change you, and you can change the world." I switch on the dim bed-light and sit quietly staring blankly into my blanket.

Thoughts start streaming in as I try to figure out the meaning of this dream that I had. The only thing that I could sense was my mother's words which meant my life was almost totally the replica of my father's life. Till recently I have not been able to look into his eyes and speak. Every time I do look into his eyes now, I can see pain, tremendous amount of heart wrenching, excruciating and unexpressed pain, forcibly held inside for years so that no one else can see it.

He had tried to do everything in his life in the best possible way with the best possible intentions, never wanting to hurt or harm anyone in the process, always trying to protect and provide for his family and close ones. First the biggest blow he got was from his own Blood Brother, then he was forced to start his own venture which was forcibly shut down by the laborers. Then he tried again and again. And again he tried but failed every time. Eventually he got ousted from his own house where he had grown up spending almost 40 years of his life. After that, at almost 60 he could not recover from his Haunting past and left all hopes of making it big ever again. In this while both his son and daughter had grown up taking up their own career path and that was his biggest achievement in his whole life, all that he could really be proud of.

I felt a strange pang in my heart while all these thoughts were streaming through me. Questions started clouding my head. Will I also fail in my career like him? What did my mother mean by her words? Will my son also have to see the same sad eyes burdened with a lifetime of pain like I do in my father? Will I also end up so lonely, isolated, unheard, not cared for? All the virtues I have built, will that all go in vain? All the things I could do, will that all wither in vain? All the things I could give the world and its people, will all of it rot away in vain?

Yes, the dream could only make that much sense to me. They won't let you, they won't let you, they won't let you. You could lose the whole world but make sure you never let yourself lose your family.

Of all my Creations, my child is my most precious creation.

An Ugly Face

Some good things in life come to us with a distorted and ugly face. How much ever we despise it at first, the goodness in it reveals itself much later. We as mere mortals often fail to realize that the point of utmost fear is the same point beyond which lies absolute bliss. Most of us don’t have the courage to cross that point, and that is why all our doubts and miseries never dwindle. It is only them who have patience enough to wait and watch gets to see and live the bliss beyond that point. It is only them who have the courage to withstand all the fears gets to see the goodness beyond that point.

I am not worthy of you. I have not been. I know that by now. Time and again I have failed you according to your values and principles. I am aware of it by now. I will not try to preach you my values and principles anymore because I have understood that how much ever we try, oil and water can never mix. But I still believe there must be a way where they can coexist.

For the first few years of our life together till now, I have come across to you with a distorted and ugly face. I have not been able to fit in your definitions completely, breaking you into pieces over and over again. I have terrified you with this horrifying mask all this while. But you must know this and you should, that the goodness in me still lies intact within the folds of this terrible mask. It is only but recently that I have realized the presence of this ugly mask covering my real self. Now the time has come for me to slowly open it. You may have seen glimpses of the real me inside but very seldom, not quite often. So seldom that you didn’t even believe that it was me. So seldom that you thought it’s just your imagination and whisked it aside.

The mask is now at my feet. Muscled with dirt and dust and sand from the dry scorching earth beneath. I stand here with my valor showing the world what i am here for. Believe it. It is happening.

Adventures in a jungle

Samik, Sayan, Kalyan and I have met after a long time and decided to go for an adventure in a Jungle resort. A lot of our friends and family are also staying there. We take a walk towards the forest and come across a big entrance going down towards a tunneled basement having a mysterious staircase. We enter the orifice and start following the staircase. Like in a normal building the staircase kept winding back and forth as we change the floors. After a couple of floors there are openings on either sides like an open staircase. Through them the forest slowly reveals itself. Right in front there is a water body, kind of a pond. And looking at that I have a dejavu. I have been here before. I have been to this forest before with Krishna and it is a dangerous forest with a lot of ferocious animals. I had just started remembering all the past incidences and before I could speak it out to them, I see Samik has already gone ahead, in a matter of seconds straightaway head on, he slides himself down into the pool.

I give out a shriek of fear and start telling the others that a massive ferocious crocodile stays in that pond. Gasping for more breath I say, " once you are in there, there is no chance you can come back alive". All of us start panicking and the next moment I spot some movement in the water. I see thorny dark scales shining in the obscured sunlight through the thick cover of the forest, moving in the water. I bring their attention to the movement and instantly all of us realize it is the massive crocodile I was talking about. We cry and call out his name aloud but he is nowhere to be seen. We saw him slide into the pond but no sign of him after that.

We are out in the open Jungle now and suddenly there is a foreigner with us looking to explore more. I start walking with her telling her stories I had gone through the previous time I was here. We were being chased by animals we have never seen before. Ferocious mythical creatures which come in a herd and just want to kill you in a stampede. Baboons, elephants, rhinos, dinosaurs, lions - none of them and as much we know about in this Real world. All of them look different, more ferocious than normal, like from a mythical world. I was narrating how we were constantly running to escape from each of these attacks, how we maneuvered to get away from the stampedes. Suddenly the earth starts shaking. We See The Rocks, water and trees vibrating in thunder and I knew they have come again. I hold the foreigner's hand and show him from far away a huge cloud of dust rumbling towards us. And before we could gather any sense to react, in the whirlpool of the dust we could see a herd of massive mammoths running towards us.

In seconds all of us are already scattered and I end up in the Tunnel through which we had entered the jungle. I start climbing up, running and gasping for breath. After a couple of floors I end up in another entrance of the forest. I retract and start climbing down to the next floor and I land up in yet another instance of the forest. I quickly realize that it is a maze. No matter how many steps I go up or down I will end up in another entrance of the forest. Apparently there is no way out of here. Still I keep panting and I keep climbing up and down searching for a new opening for hours to come. I don't remember how many hours passed by before I lose my consciousness out of fatigue one one of the floors.

Next time I open my eyes, I am lying down on one of the Midway staircase landings, my eyes fixed on a half opening through the Midway landing leading into a new flight of stairs which I couldn't notice before because it is hidden from normal eyesight. I manage to crawl through that small opening into the new staircase which leads me to the exit where I finally see people happy with their families, smiling heavily after a brief visit to the forest. In contrast I I'm terribly distressed losing all my friends and having wanted to save their lives I start running towards the resort where our friends and family were staying. On my way running I meet Gautam mesho and ask him if he has seen my father. He says no. I keep running and straight away enter a room where I see my mother and sister safe relaxing. I tell them what just happened but no one believed me and kept quiet. Now that they were at least safe I left them and locked myself in a room with Eyes full of Tears exploding with helplessness and guilt.

After several months I happen to meet Samik again and was shocked. I catch hold of him and shake him and ask him, " what happened that day?"

He said, " I got lucky and escaped through a hidden tunnel inside the pond."

One big sigh of relief and I finally felt that I have never been happier before.