A Fork On The Road

You might have thought of taking that particular direction when the sign board read ‘Take a right’. But that ‘something’ made you choose the other lane. You presumed that there was someone waiting there. Well, you hoped that it was your right path and had your heart miserably pierced. And when it was all still like stagnant water… there was this certain kind of feeling that chased you and you found yourself lost because you had walked too long, way too ahead of those haunting of the past that kept following you everywhere. You turned to see the dark and shivered to have reached a place where your own self conscious dreaded to whisper to you because it knew that the truth was too loud for you to withstand. Yet you stayed strong. Strong enough to listen to it murmur in your ears, “It’s gone.” (Inspiration)

As a little kid I always feared (not disliked, FEARED!) to go to school on those days when my dad had to rush to office early. The mere thought of my grandpa dropping me to school sent shivers through my spine. He was someone who would never talk whilst the whole stretch to school and I would walk without even daring to lift my eyes to see the seriousness his face possessed. After he would leave me in a place from where it was alright for me to walk to school, “Don’t you turn back and see.”, would be his words that still echo deep into me. This was how it was every time he dropped me.

“Why shouldn't I turn back? What is going to happen if I do? Did he say so simply because he didn't want me to spot him smoking? Or was there something else?”, I pondered forever.
Will I ever get an answer to these questions? Yes? No?
Or maybe I already have the answer with me.

My grandpa wanted to tell me this:
What you will see behind is what has left you. If only you turned back to see what is walking the other way, you would stare too long to feel for the 'going' or rather the 'gone' and would not realize that where you need to head to now is on the opposite way. Everyone has a past and no one gets to the present without one.

The worst version of agony that captivates you is when you think about how it was ‘then’ and how it is ‘now’. Would you wish to turn back to see? The choice is yours.

I wish it rained! I like the feeling the rain brings along with it that lightens the weight of my heart… 

-Suha

*Image sketched by Manasa C (:

Lost And Found

“I told you to get up early. Why all this rush now?”, my mom debated. I was going to miss my bus to college and I had to find an alternative to get there. To add to this- I had left my cell phone home in the hustle. I was late for the first hour and was left with a choice of having no choice but to attend the next class. I quickly walked towards the notice board to see what class I had next. Eek! The teacher was going to continue taking the next hour as well. What am I going to do now? All my friends were in class and my cell phone… sigh! I deserved it.

I walked into an empty cafeteria and saw the waitress make the basic arrangements. I ordered myself a brownie just to while away 110 minutes of nothing-doing. I already missed my friends. I was not the ones to go somewhere without my friends. “I must hate my very company”, I joked. I glanced outside the window of the café and saw a small kid in uniform playing in a puddle kindled by last night’s rain, an old man skimming the pages of the newspaper, a dad dropping his daughter to school, a woman cleaning her veranda and the world getting busy as every minute ticked off. The brownie was a delight to my taste buds.

“How busy we get with our lives each day that we hardly have time for ourselves?”, I mused. We miss out on all the joys of life, each day, every day. I contemplated all the small and valuable things that get unnoticed and remain hidden behind the veils of our scheduled lives.

The dawn, the morning sunshine, the curtains of mist, the ray of photons that awakens you, the feel of the wind, the dew drops on green leaves, the chirping of the birds, the mellifluous sounds of wind chimes, the rustling of leaves, the morning coffee, the cold floor, the warm touch, the rain, the miraculous rainbow, the magic, the daffodils you wish upon, the drizzle, the rain-drops racing on your window glass, the smell of damp mud, the busy streets, the magic again, the hellos, the good-byes, a different route back home, the 4-o-clock time, the evening, the twilight, the dusk, the smell of books, the echo as I leaf through each page, the sparkling night-sky, the non-luminous moon, the shooting stars, the dreams and the etcetera.

Listen to the silence speak volumes.

It was time for my class and as I made the payment, I grinned “I am not that bad a company as I thought I was.”

The world is like a kaleidoscope. Each time you see through it, it’s a new reflection. An alluring pattern (:

-Suha

*Image sketched by Manasa C (:

Steps To Remember

With my body bent into a stiff curve, legs drawn closer, I hid my face in the hollow formed by my posture. The stoned walls of that hall whose corner I had occupied spoke to each other in the silence about my presence. I stayed like that, until I fell asleep in the woods of those eerie thoughts I had lost my way in.

An acute touch on my shoulder disturbed my idea of remaining there till the end of time. I lifted my head to glare at the cause of it and there was a sudden transition of expression on my face.

He stood there, his face adorned with a smile that had lit up the entire place. He held his hand to pick me up from the pieces I had shattered into. And I heard the walls reverberate into a swirl of melodious music silencing their talk. 

"Dance?", he had me bewitched heart and soul.

Before I could appreciate how my fingers had twined perfectly into the gaps of his hand, we were dancing-to and fro, back and forth, round and about. I tiptoed about him under the spotlight of his radiant glow. How our footworks followed the beats in sync amazed me less than the flair with which he danced. The only thing out of phase being my heart- pounding wild in its own rhythm. Enchanted by the dizziness of his very presence, I whirled as he spun me round him- the focus of my universe.

I was lifted off the ground into the air that had enthralled within it the smell of his perfume, and down I swung into his arm. His hand slid across my waist gripping me from falling off, sending me into jitters.

Magic happened when I fell deep into his eyes which rendered itself to be a night sky of twinkling stars. And just when I found a shooting star to wish upon, he said

"The pain is long gone,

   You have been strong."

When I closed to open my eyes to reality, nothing had changed, except the perfume that lingered in my subconscious and the emotions that surged in my heart.

And the bubble of my imagination had burst.

"Someday", I blushed.

-Suha

*Image sketched by Manasa C (:

Frisson

Yesterday, when I was on a stroll with my friend I was so lost in the conversation that I did not seem to bother where we were heading to. The grave expression on my friend's face compelled me to look front. We had walked up to a cliff! I bent down slack jawed to see a depth I could not estimate.

I didn't know what got into my friend when she grasped my hand to take a leap thrusting both of us into a smash of air I had never felt before. I had no clue of what a few more seconds would bring for me. It was a strange sense of elation. I descended the cliff, not knowing how to feel as in a few seconds I would not exist at all. And thud! I woke to find myself alive right out of that fatal dream.

You know, this wasn't about what could have happened if I had actually fallen. It was actually about the thrill, the adrenaline rush, those last wishes to survive, the true prayer from within and the this-is-the-last-minute-of-life moment.

Why don't we start to live life treating its every single minute as the last-minute-of-life moment?

Chuck the uncertainties.
Grab yourselves and take the plunge!

With this post I begin 'Soliloquy' (:

-Suha

*Image sketched by Manasa C (: