I dream about her every time I close my eyes. When I walk around with my eyes open, I read her name on plaque cards that only have the first or any letters of her name. Often I see a girl who has hair as straight and shiny as hers and I see her face. My imagination is almost palpable. I can touch her in that moment, feel her presence, and follow her shadows. She is with me, right where I am, in this very moment as I write about her. Maybe she is the one who woke me up from the lucid dream and pushed me out of the bed with her long fingers tapping my shoulders. Demanding subtly to leave the diagonal imprint on the bed covers and write about her.
All fields of my thoughts are invaded by her, by her name, by her being. My stories now begin with her and continue to no end. She is the eternity I never knew existed. I hear her voice like a symphony when everything around me goes into a soundless trance. She becomes my meditation. She talks to me about something but it goes into my head like a sweet melody which is beyond comprehension. I dream to be the hero who rescues her from all the troubles of this world. Once in another dream, she said something to me, looking for something, I helped her but she wouldn’t speak a word to me. It pains me so as to make me numb yet the hope does not die. I hope still, she would talk to me this time. She would embrace me in the wideness of this music that runs through my head all day long. Let me hold her and touch the soft of her skin of her shoulders. She disappears and disorientation seeps in, and I lose my directions. The world spirals around me and swallows me in a whirl hole, transporting me to an alien world. The scents of the place are familiar. They remind me of something that I don’t remember, something vague. I stand motionless, petrified at having lost her sight, nothing to look beyond, no trace of her, not even the back of her hair flying in the heavy air. My surrounding turn arid and she takes away with her the soothing cool evening breeze, which she was.
She makes a grand entrance again, with a look in her eyes that demand answers. She is thinking about something I don’t much understand. I squint my eyes to get a better look at her face so that I can decipher the thoughts in her head. But she holds onto her mysteries. The wind gently brushes through the gauze of her hair, the tangles falling across her eyes. A strand pricks her eye and with the back of her hand she tries to push them away but it lingers on, giving rise to her slight irritation. Pushing first against the soft skin below her eyes and then digging a gap between the black strands she pulls with the tip of the nail of her index finger and tucks it behind her ear.
Her gaze unwavering locks my eyes with hers. My heart begins to pick a pace and a drum roll is set into motion. A thousand questions begin to swoosh past my brain like missiles, wheezing past making so much noise that I am unable to read my own thoughts. They vanish before I knew they existed. However different the thoughts seemed from a far end, they echoed the same voice, asking the same questions of self-guilt but why? Maybe I must have said something terrible to upset her, was it my passivity that she didn’t like? Was that the reason she knows furrowed her brows and looked away in distress? Aghast I avoid looking at her anymore, fearing she would leave and never come back again. The sun behind her looks like a giant ball painted crimson red with sluggish orange splattered across its silhouette. Her hair wavering in the windy breeze blocked the suns complete view and it appeared to be quintessentially broken. Her form slowly diminished into a shadow as the lights from the sun made it difficult for me to see her now. I no longer could see her piercing demeanor. Her arms across her chest she stood motionlessly, her breathing looked more prominent and enlarged now. Mustering all my strength, my heart now on the brink of breaking free from imprisonment, I sucked in as much air I could in a long slow deep breath. With my left foot dangling over the edge of the sidewalk, I take a step towards her, oblivious to her reproach of I diminishing the distance between us. I reaffirm that something is wrong and nod my head as I take the first step in her direction. The look in my eyes appeal to her for a clue, to tell me what is bothering her but she won’t say.
Steadfast I stand my ground at the crossroad; covering the distance and just a few steps away I feel that she is still miles away from me, distant. I wait in hope that she would say something, that she would faint a smile across her lips, that the slightest of her movements would welcome me towards her. I don’t want to be intrusive and so I divert my gaze towards the gravel of the road.
It was just the two of us till now but now I hear voices of people filling up the entire space between us. The merry voices of kids playing and running behind each other, cries of men and women laughing, someone in a short distance playing guitar and calling out to the souls of the people with his voice, the clinking of coins on a hardboard. It must be the sound of the coins collecting at the foot of the singer for his performance I assume. The gush of the water running up on the shore and retracting back with a hiss of the froth bubbles bursting placates my excitement at the sight of all the cheerfulness around me. I imagine looking down at the tip of my shoes which are covered with a dim coating of beach sand, the running surfers, people playfully dashing against the giant waves that came their way, in a quest to fight back and punch and kick the waves persistently, not giving up. It fills me with joy and I want to forsake my leather tanned shoes and run barefoot side by side with this girl standing with her hands clasped around her chest, right in front of me.
From red to orange to gray to black, time freezes and everyone around me disappears like smoke caught in the wind. The people and the voices fade away like a distant memory. Silence prevails and the only sound of her breathing is what reaches my heart. We lock our eyes again on each other. It is pitched dark and the serenity of noiselessness engulfs us both. My heart begins its strange play and takes the center stage, beating the drums in perfect rhythm.
We are not at the beach anymore, the setting changes and everything around us melt away. The path that distanced us, the sidewalks, the ocean and the setting sun, everything diminishes to the size of nothing. I feel like the weight of my body bears no importance anymore. She is still there to my relief but the distance that separates us still not faltering. I grow impatient and long to hear her voice, for her expressions to soften. I raised my brows quizzically asking myself in wonder if she could hear my heartbeats? We were floating in the sky, our bodies weightless. In a state of complete bewilderment, we both in synchronized movements outstretched our arms while our bodies twisted and turned in shapelessness of the oblivious world. The tip of my fingers touched hers and a sense of divine blessing dawned upon my soul. The strong winds that pushed me and her in each other’s direction only appeared to come to a lull in the very small distance that now separated us. Our bodies brought close together, the warmth of her breath, the pearls of sweat from the nervousness now visible on both our faces. I move an inch closer to her, swiftly and hold her for a time that seemed forever. There are so many things that I want to say, I want to hear. To her, I smile and she tips her head on the right. She stares at me a few moments more and the eventual thing happens. Her lips upturn in a somber smile. The vacuum of the space disappears and we come back to our positions, opposite one another, separated by the same path once again. I step down from the sidewalk onto the pavement and begin my journey in resolute spirits. The click of my shoes, resonates through the air and unflinching, I look at her eyes, hazel blue; they shine in the dim moonlight. I step up on the sidewalk to stand next to her. The rhythmic sound of the crashing waves never dies. The wind grows quieter somehow, I don’t know why. Neither I give a thought about it because all I can think about, all that matters to me is right beside me. Hesitantly, I hold her by the elbow and she turns to face me, giving in. Her shoulders drooping a little but the chin held high. Like a snowflake, I melt when I touch her. With more confidence and less quiver in my hands, I help her tuck her hair behind her ear. The wind picks the pace and a sudden gush swept through, making a roar like passing through the cracks of a window pane. Our bodies fly across into the wilderness like grains of sand dissolving into each other, indistinguishable.
Why one Hitler is able to shame an entire nation? One extremist, one terrorist transforms a peace loving religion in the house of terror? One ignorant man is able to ruin the good work his community does for the society? One stray, maddened dog succeeds to scare everyone from the ones like him? One beating is enough to instill fear in the minds of the masses. One weak knee is capable of collapsing a giant. One moment of infidelity traps lifetime of trust in an indent box. One moment of weakness, cripples one for a life time. Often people talk about the mighty phoenix, one who rises from the ashes. Entangled in myth, with shreds of past, future and present running wild – A stallion.
anirudhjain807 