The 'I' In Thee

There it was, as rigid as ever. Stalking the reality of her present being since the moment she decided to tread the path laid down for her by others. Loud deep shrieks would cut through the still darkness of the place in which that silhouetted figure would be seen with a gagged mouth, curled brows and teary eyes, signaling some strange actions which had a language of their own.

Kalpana would often wake up with such dreary starts on each morning. And that morning was among such ones. Seeing herself convulsed, she wiped the tiny drops of sweat that trickled down from the corner of her temples. She would still feel the memories of that dream pressing hard upon her conscience. She, however, had never been able to gauge the cause of such grotesque dreams which encumbered her thoughts, thereby making her terribly covert. She, nonetheless, drew a deep breath and left her bed with a staggered resolution to shun the grotesque images of her dreams via some means but little did she know what destiny had in store for her. She had a reluctant breakfast, after which she went headlong to get her routine tasks in place.

Kalpana often struggled within herself, caught in the maze of irresolvable queries which kept on impinging her mind every now and then. Much like every other girl, she too had mundane desires of her own; one of which was writing. Writing..ha!one could see a wicked smile crossing her face, a gleam of repugnance which usually is seen on the face of those who are wrongly persecuted for the guilt of others. Here, flashes of bitter childhood memories would begin to motion before her eyes. The letter...the innocent love and... THE PEN. She recalled how on writing a few adorable lines on a piece of paper for her younger cousin, she had become a prey to some heart wreaking allegations. How she still bore the scars of those poisonous arrows which had not only wounded her innocent mind but pricked her soul with their perversity. Somewhere it still pained her, somewhere it bled profusely, clenching her from within and leaving her unshielded at the mercy of the things she had always been prey to.

These thoughts had passed her life as a nihilistic affair, evolving from a child to a young girl, stringed and patronized by the others. A numbness which had long been etched in her actions and had become a part of her revolt-less conditioning, began to overwhelm her present. Whenever she would mull over the state of things and resolve to break free from these clutches, she would find her inner goddess frowning at her in dismissal. How could she even think of any transgression? Wasn't she getting more than what she deserved as a member of her sex? she would shrink at the very sight of Pen but felt an irrepressible urge to write her own destiny. And that day soon came.

It's remarkably said that, "Fortune smiles upon the brave and frowns upon the coward." She went beyond her providence to taste the lives of all those women that had cleverly been choked in the pages of history. She, however, gradually developed an inclination towards reading the distinct reality of each life that somehow mirrored her own. She began to realize how they had been never apart, how their lives too have been scribbled with the same pen whose ink dried long back leaving a rugged surface to scratch on. The mysteries of destiny, however, unfold before us in an eccentric manner, altering our thoughts and reforming the selves in us so much so that when we turn to take a look at ourselves, we find a stranger who's completely oblivious to our present being.

She began to keep a column of her secret writings. She would pursue her love relentlessly, detaching herself from the conditioning of her sex. One day, she decides to snap the tenuous ties that had only strangled her individuality and effaced the self in her from getting recognized. She defies the norms, repudiates her inner goddess and pushes beyond the limits of her sex to turn herself into a writer. The words that had tarnished her childhood and blotted the innocence of her being, now became her life. She would now be at daggers drawn with her conditioned self that so far stifled her to death. After so long she felt she would get a complacent sleep and so she retires to drift into the land of unhitched desires. She again sees the figure which had been daunting her dreams for a long time. But this time, the scene was quite pristine. kalpana finds herself walking close to the figure that had up to now cloaked her identity. With trembling hands n shaking toes, she reaches out to that figure and puts a hand on its shoulder that had its back drawn to her, only to see her own former self in it. SHE WAS KALPANA herself swathed in societal dictates and smudged because of her "self" lost in oblivion. The figure passes a content smile at her for releasing it out of the long imprisonment of servitude that had become her destiny. The ambience which was always dreary and despondent became resplendent all at once. That day Kalpana realised why she was hounded by such dreams. They triggered her move into the present. After that, she led her life freely and individually, never submitting the self in her for anything.

I believe there is a Kalpana in each one of us, who needs to be jolted out of oblivion before its too late...life is too short to live according to other's dictates; forsaking the self in us amidst the clatter of world and its strangulating demands won't be a good idea...so, go and seek your true self before you too get daunted by your dreary conscience.