Moments

I walk through the byways frantically to find a space that I can call my own. My sumptuous territory can’t sedate my frenzy mind and body. My flesh and blood take flight. The cacophony that patent my existence is repressed by my silence. All I can hear is my own heartbeat.

I wonder why I can’t spend hours looking at the twinkling stars? Why I can’t stand under the pouring rain and play in the puddle without bothering about my dress and shoes getting soiled? Why I can’t cherish every moment of my vacation with my acumen emancipated from mere deadlines and buzzing ringtones? My perception of time distorted. Why can’t the blooms of the horizon playing hide and seek to rub out the dreams from my dozy eyes creating a tattoo of the warmest hues of the rainbow all over my body? Why the genesis falls prey to the hands of the timepiece screeching like a zombie?

I head a voice whispering 

“ Because you have grown up."

I run through the egress that leads to my psyche and halts in front of a building crumbled with age. I peep through the window, the rooms as it is. I take a walk through the noisy corridor that causes a mellow in my ears like a thousand strums of the guitar.

I peep inside the room, where once my principal ma’am used to sit. I pass the auditorium and reach my classroom. The sunlight peeping through the window sizzles my vitality that turned into a cold fire. The wind doodles my routed mind into a gazing soul. I sit on the bench and put my hand inside the desk looking for my lost pencil box

I try to conquer the dark with fairy lights. Make friendship over a cup of coffee. Relationships have turned into compromise and adjustments succumbs in the hands of ego. I see each one around me taking a different path towards the journey of life. Breakups no more synonymous to heartache, my tears get unnoticed. I have mastered the art of being alone with loneliness as my best friend.

I sink in the darkness as I try to clasp the infinite sky above, my body twirled and jerked with the existence of void.

I close my eyes. 

I see my classmates wearing red and white check tunic, stretching their hands towards me pulling me out in a milieu of exuberance. We share secrets, giggle, run, get wet in the rain. We walk together holding hands. Without saying a word we take a pledge for a lifelong friendship. I cover my face and sob because I know there are hands to wipe my tears.

 Running after money numbs my feet. I find myself alone crumbled inside a hut in the mountain of success trying to reach out for the sky. Monday blues squeeze the last chunk of happiness out of my life. I try to distance myself from the buzz of the metropolis, fend off from everyone and everything, but in vain. The darkness swirl around me with its tendrils of solitude. I burn in the anguish of grief.

I see some young girls with two ponytails and a few with plaits. They hand me a small piece of paper containing pickle we used to buy from the vendor standing outside our school, which cost only a few paise. It sparkles like the most expensive jewel on my palm. We fly against the wind, my angst turned into a salve.

Time flies. Life ends.

I am still alive as I can see the halo of the sun through the eclipse. I carefully hang my school uniform beside my school bag and walk towards the light at the end of the tunnel with my childhood embedded deep in my heart.