Roshan Nair

Abstract Drama

4.5  

Roshan Nair

Abstract Drama

Sweet Liberation

Sweet Liberation

4 mins
428


An easy, seemingly normal life. That’s all I had asked for. All I had ever wanted. And all I’ve ever had till now.

As the years flew by, I started feeling emptier and emptier. The lakes of purpose had begun to dry out, slowly depleting their resource — meaning.


What for? What more? Or rather, why at all?


Tired of my world, I doze off into a deep slumber. To escape from the hustle and bustle and climb to higher ground to look at the vast horizon. I search for meaning from up there.

I look dubiously at my home town, and then curiously. The blank innocence of a child showing on my face. 


Up here, I can see that the moon is shy, hiding behind the clouds, while the playful stars twinkle about, cheerfully.


The town down below is winding up the day. Cars on the highway returning home to their waiting families. Rain gently sprinkling down to soothe the tired town.

It feels exhilarating to stand up here and swallow the sight. The wind beats hard on my face, but I stand my ground, seeking what is missing.

And then I see something weird happen.


Little lights flicker about random spots in fields. 

The wind blows harder on my face from that direction, as though noticing my awareness of the source of the lights and trying to restrain me from getting there.


The fields. I must go there.


I climb down recklessly and run to the fields. The lights seem to glow bright and then die out and then glow again, like fireflies, but much bigger.

I run towards the nearest one and notice the steadily fluctuating lights.

I see it now…but what is this?


A glowing speck of dust, trapped inside an overturned jar. The luminescent speck now dims out and it’s once again, dark around it…

I spot another light a little away. And walk towards it, finding another speck of glowing dust, in an overturned jar.


What are these?

These tiny specks of dust. They seem to be bouncing off the inside of the jar, wanting to get out, it seems.

I stare at it and feel a longing to free them. I place my hands around the jar and pull…


My whole being is engulfed by a sense of freedom as I lift the jar, freeing it.


It feels as though I had just released a dam of water inside my chest. I feel slightly lighter. 

I see the speck of dust fly up, up and up.

I quickly run to another light and free it too. This time, I stare bemusedly as the light barges right into me, filling with an inexplicably, nostalgic feeling.

I liberate another. And another. And another.


And each time I free a light, each time one merges into me, or leaves me altogether, I feel lighter. What exactly they are, I am yet to learn. 


A desire, a yearning, maybe a childhood dream or fantasy?

Maybe none of these, but emotions? Have I just liberated my hooded mind and let myself free?

Maybe I’m wrong, and these are memories, trapped in me for too long? Waiting for me to move on and waiting for themselves to be forgotten?


But then, the ones that flew away…they might have been memories of unpleasant times, waiting to be forgotten…but…why would they glow so?

As I release the last light and watch the sky above me filled with the ones that had chosen to fly away, the answer comes to me.


Because, whatever they were, they were part of me.

Maybe a desire or a dream, a memory good or bad, or maybe an emotion I’ve been carrying along for too long?

Whatever they were, they helped shape me all the way. To what I've become today.


They taught me. They schooled me. Strengthened me. But after their lesson, I had to let go of them. The overturned jars were nothing but my own resistance to letting go of the past. I didn't know what to let go of. And so, I never bothered to.

I neither let go of them nor learned from them.

Maybe that's why I felt free after lifting the jars.

I let go of the ones that needed to be forgotten. And the ones that merged into me, have yet to show me.


An inexpressible emotion takes form inside me. A sort of reluctance to let go. Even though they might have belonged to an unpleasant past. But if I didn’t, I would be preventing them from their very intent. 

To truly, truly liberate me.


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