When I Saw A Rainbow For The First Time

When I Saw A Rainbow For The First Time
I can never be sure if it was her sight or the sound of her voice that pulled all breaths of air out of my lungs. I stopped breathing for a while. Without knowing it myself, I christened those moments as the best moments of my life, although I’m sure several better ones are to come my way. I’m not sure if this moment has been the best ever for there have been hundreds of such moments over the past several years. All said and done, I wish it was possible to  extend the moment to an infinity.

I became conscious of the rush my heart was in to absorb every bit of these moments within itself even as it insisted on galloping ahead faster than anyone ever can. It had to  slacken its speed to maintain a harmony with myself. Gradually, it did paced itself down to tune itself with the incumbent emergency. I heaved a sigh of relief, but soon, I realised she had pulled out all signs of life out of all my organs in a jiffy. I had been through a similar experience in my past, but each time the experience has been absorbed within me with a typical freshness. It has always seemed to be like the first time. There has always been a sense of novelty associated with it, and it has made it all the more exciting and special.

It was the first time once again, and it made all the world around me being born again. I was a part of the genesis. I felt like the first man on earth. I can understand the wonder and awe that were in his eyes when he beheld a rainbow in the sky for the first time. A rain had washed away all signs of posterity from everything around me, and whatever was left behind was new. Everything attracted me by virtue of it being new and it was not in my powers to change anything. I didn’t want to change anything. I didn’t want life to change. I only wanted to live my entire life in these moments.

She was before me, and I was looking at her with the wonder in a baby’s eyes when it sees an angel and hears the flutter of its wings too in its dream. The baby was sleeping quite a sound sleep. I hope it doesn’t get up soon. There are many more dreams to be dreamt. Had it been volitional, I would certainly have stopped all my  body functions to syphon all my energy to my eyes and ears. They had to be the most attentive at that time.

I was struck speechless when I heard the sound of her voice. A head-mistress was admonishing a school-boy for being late for school. I was very late, I know. Being in time for school had not been in my control, I wish I could tell her, but she wasn’t prepared to give an ear to any explanations. Like  a typical reserved and grumpy headmistress, she only wanted her students to be on time. I didn’t have a choice but to give an ear to whatever she said.

The truth is I wanted to hear her voice again and again. Even her words of admonition rang some loud and vociferous cymbals of love within me. I guess there are to be similar sounds when I knock on the doors of paradise pleading for an entry. A confidence of being admitted in without any of the alleged accounting being done entered me because she was with me. I felt like I was already in paradise while she was scolding me.

I wanted to be an audience to these sounds for my lifetime. I became conscious of some new dreams lurking in my eyes while I looked at her. She looked at me for a   fraction of a second, and I felt really honoured by the attention she bestowed upon me. I wish I could ask her if she had a similar set of dreams in her eyes. Her eyes were focussed on my presence; realisation of this fact sent me to heaven instantly. I came down to earth in a few moments because she was on earth, not in heaven.

Her presence before me breathed a fresh life into everything around me. The world had become so beautiful at that time that I wanted to look at it again and again. I wish I had a couple of more eyes if only to drink the elixir before me with. She was still scolding me for being late. The session was to go on forever, but I kissed her lips the very next moment. She paused for a while, and I kissed her lips once again.

They were moments when I wanted only my ears and eyes to be functional. I wanted to hear her words aimed at pushing me down into a deep abyss of embarrassment and shame. They actually pushed me to a higher heaven than any promised to man.  I blessed Allah for the sweet face my eyes beheld. Her sight pushed to discover greater joy than what was experienced by Wordsworth when he looked at a rainbow for the first time. This was when I didn’t care about the functionality of any of my organs. It was going to spell death for me, I know, but I was prepared to die again and again if only to enjoy the novelty of looking at her and listening to her voice.

My eyes and ears were getting the treat of their lifetime.  There had been a regular flow of blood through my body till I saw her. My blood turned around another way the moment my ears became an audience to her voice and my eyes became a witness to a mesmerising beauty in her. They needed more energy than any other part of my body. I felt quite like what Ghalib must have felt when he claimed his hands to have lost all powers and potency, but there being wine before him. He was going to drink wine from goblets with his eyes because they had acquired mystical powers. I was witnessing the  couplet being enacted in real life.

I wish this would happen again and again.

Learning Lessons Of Life

Learning Lessons Of Life
Dazzled with conflicting dreams of hope and dread revolving around my conscious and subconscious self for a long time, I looked at her for an explanation for the variety I was before. Apparently, she wasn’t going through a similar dilemma. I’m sure she didn’t have to deal with contentions I had to put up with. She had her own typical share of them. She wasn’t going to complain, she didn’t have any words to say all of it to me; I’ll have to guess a lot of words on their way to expression along with their meaning.

I can never be sure of the  veracity of any of my guesses as her facial expressions refused to reveal any secrets. Her eyes had witnessed several secrets, there can be no doubts about it. None of them needed the support of words for expression. I was going to have to dig deep into her eyes to bring them out. Her black eyes signified the presence of a lot of hard rocks which had to be dealt with before any of them came to the fore.

It wasn’t going to be easy, but it wasn’t going to be tough either. Anyway, I saw a lot of secrets prowling around her eyes in the hope of seeing the light of the day when I looked at her. She had managed to keep all of them behind her eyes while she kept them closed, but she did open them once in a while. I looked for an opportunity in the fraction of second for which they opened, but I didn’t find these windows large enough to be leapt through. Her secrets were going to be some of the world’s best kept ones.

The truth is she was stronger than me. She concealed her feelings skilfully and artfully in a room I couldn’t even peep into. Her room’s window is shaded by quite a strong and dark umbrella. I wish I had a similar umbrella to hide my feelings in a room too. All my feelings are open to criticism and inspection by the cruel world around me. moreover, I’m not strong enough to bear the tides of time. I break down into pieces when a similar situation is put before me. a typically loud jingle is created within me when all these pieces scatter on the ground. My closed eyes are opened because of the shattering noise. It is a long time before they can be closed again.

All my secrets come out with a loud noise quite like a sound made when a tight cork leaves a bottle’s company while my eyes remain open. The sound is often strong enough to be heard by many people around me. I myself can’t help crying out in pain. I am not a bit modest about expressing my feelings. Unlike me, she desired to remain quiet, and feeling it to be her natural inclination to do so at such a time, I did not attempt to break her silence.

It was more sonorous than the loudest cymbals I have ever lent an ear to. I was confident of an avid conversation being conducted between us at a metaphysical level simultaneously. Our rendezvous in the middle of nowhere reminded me of the fact that there were several layers of secrets of our lives burning to come out to the open.  we had managed to conceal them from the world, but all of them couldn’t possibly be kept in hiding forever.

We simply had to share all our secrets with each other now. There was no point in maintaining a mystery about them any longer. There wasn’t an option before us. All of them were coming to the surface like logs of wood pushed into a river. An entire list of secrets waiting to be shared announced their presence, but only a few of them drifted to the top.

Our hearts beat faster than ever as some of them peeped out like a couple of kids playing a game of hide-and-seek. They had spied some of the thieves hiding in the woods. For the time being, we had to be content with the miniscule amount of secrets present before us. Several more were to be discovered in the many days to come. All said and done, both of us had to win the game of hide-and-seek. Incidentally, we were allowed to open our eyes to search for secrets. Right now, she was trying to explain what she experienced when she was put up before a wish to love someone.

It is an emotional and psychological need to love someone, she said. A whole lot of the definition of happiness banks on this theorem. This way, there is a huge big pot within all of us that needs to be filled in with another person’s love. The other person is going to contribute his or her share to filling the pot with love only when he or she is loved in a proportionate manner. Filling in the pot of love within oneself with greater amount of love simply means giving more and more love to the person you love. I made a firm mind to love he more than anything else in this world. The pot of love I had within me was going to be filled to the brim everyday: I was going to love her madly every single day.

Love is quite a selfish feeling this way. You end up filling your heart with with more and more of love when you actually love someone else. You quench your own thirst for love when you give your love to someone. The more love you give someone, the more love you get for yourself. This is a beautiful reality of life, and it is actually true. Both of us had to realise this beauty of life, and we were going to appreciate it in our own typical way. Life was going to teach its lessons to us in its own typical manner.

I only hope these lessons are not too tough.

We Create History

We Create History
I was a part of a never-ending saga while I held her hand that day. I didn’t have the faintest idea of it being able to pull itself for what seemed to be an eternity, but somehow, there doesn’t seem to be an end to the story. The story is going to be replayed by other characters and protagonists in the years to come, I know. I wonder if their story will go through all intricacies our story did. They may find a different end to their story. All the same, we were on our way to create what seemed to be a new history as each track we walked over seemed to be woven over some completely new points.

 Practically, each point added some amount of mirth and happiness to our kitty, though it did bring with itself its typical share of woes. A lot more waited us as we ran across the track before us. The only element of consolation in all this is that right now, she was holding my hands tightly as if she clutched on to her life; both of us were running as fast as our legs could move. There wasn’t an end to the ground we could run over, and thankfully, we had immense amount of energy to do it. We could maintain our run for an eternity.

We had been waiting for this moment for a long time, and it was finally here. It was like we had been waiting for a train on a platform. We knew it was to arrive shortly and take us to our destination. The train didn’t pause at our platform for a long time, but we were welcomed aboard by all other passengers on board with open arms. It was a huge consolation for us to realise we were not alone in the ordeal.

 We were happy when we realised we had finally boarded the train. We were finally on our way to a definite destination. It had been a long and arduous journey till that point. It wasn’t going to be any easier from now on, but what made everything appear to be easy was the  fact that we held each other’s hands. I thought of kissing the back of her hand as it held on tightly to mine; it wasn’t going to be difficult, it was to be a final kiss to my past, but what I badly wanted to kiss was the fore of her palms: I could see my future engraved on it.

For a while, I looked behind me, I was a bit wary of someone behind us, but there wasn’t anyone chasing us. We were all alone in our run. Practically, we were running away from ourselves. We were running away from our past, we were running away to a future that was quite different from our past and even our present. None of us had a better idea of the ideal world before us, but we were running madly towards it all the same.

It is to be an entirely different world we  are going to find ourselves in when we alight from a train we had hopped on to in our haste. We were ticketless passengers, there was certainly a fright of a rowdy ticket-collector who was going to push us off the train, but our company pushed away all our fears into a bottomless pit. We stood firmly holding each other’s hand in the coach. We were going to find ourselves on an unknown platform whenever the disgruntled official did his deed, but we were to be in it together.

I wonder if it is really going to be better than what we have left behind. It   was a  world thriving with people and happiness we were leaving behind in the hope of finding some more happiness. Basically, we were leaving behind all those opposed to our being together. Our run was a revolt against all of them. We were leaving behind a host of relations with many different people. A lot of them were going to be completely negated now.

None of them were going to be back in any form, I know, a huge sense of relief passed through me. I thought of slackening our speed, but she was bent on making a dash as if there was a finishing-line round the corner waited to be touched. I wanted to respect all her decisions now, I readily joined her in the mad rush.

There wasn’t a finishing-line to  be touched after all, nor was there a reason for the rush she seemed to be in. her haste signified her dissonance with all she had left behind her; a similar reason pushed me ahead too. We were never going to come back to the world we were madly running away from, this was certain.

I felt her grip loosen itself as she lost a bit of confidence in me. I clutched her hand a bit more tightly to equate the equations. She looked at me for a while. I found myself unable to answer any of the queries posed by her eyes as she turned to look at me.  I had to pace myself up a bit as we went round  a bend the next moment, I found myself out of breath in a short while, but I was going to be with her through all bends, twists and turns despite all my shortcomings.

I carried a huge amount of my past with me till that time, it had the potential to create havoc in our lives if it was carried any further, but none of our past was going to figure in our lives ever again. I threw it away with all my might. Our sprint was a cumulative declaration of our triumph over all that was gone. We wanted to welcome a novelty in our lives, albeit our consciousness of it having a lot of what we were running away from.

I hope we are able to extend a warm welcome to it.

A Final Farewell

A Final Farewell
It was a final goodbye, a last utterance before departing. It made the  day  quite important as we prepared ourselves for the final parting. Yes, it was to be the last time any of us saw each other. It was the toughest time of my life, I don’t think it was easy for her too, but the moment was to go away as soon as it was here; it was to be history in a short while, but it was to take with itself a whole lot of each of us wrapped in a miniscule moment and  none of us could do anything positive about it. I wasn’t sure of what I should be saying to her at this moment. It had to be something special, after all, it was to be the last one, which made it special in its own typical manner.

A lot of words remained unarticulated deep within our glottises, some  were banged-up against our lips, and even more remained unborn in our minds. They were never to see the light of the day. A lot remained to be recorded in history books, but our history was never going to complete itself. There were to be a hundred-and-one meeting-points in the city where we could have met without attracting anyone’s attention, there were a lot more such places to be discovered by us, but we were to part ways now. We were not going to meet again, probably never. It was raining cats and dogs that day; I was sure the sky joined me in mourning our parting.

In a short while, our faces were going to be the most sought after entities in the world. There is a typical joy  ingrained within one’s face that is encashed when one looks at one’s beloved. The phenomenon has such intoxicating effects that one is prepared to go to all ends only for a mere look at the other’s face. We were going to yearn for even a glimpse of each other’s faces for a long time to come, if not forever. We had looked at each other at least a million times, and yet, it wasn’t enough. We had not had our fills of each other’s faces; we never could. We wanted to drink more and more of the elixir we discovered in each other’s eyes while we looked into them.

A mystical beauty was delineated in our faces; we were headed to discover it before anyone else could even get a hint of it. Before this beauty could fade into ignominy, another typical beauty was discovered by us. Holding each other’s hands was enough to propel tons and tons of happiness and satisfaction through us. We discovered a lot more definitions of beauty, there seemed a lot more to be discovered, but all of a sudden, she decided to part ways. I often wish I had set out on my explorations within her at an appropriate time, but somehow, it didn’t coincide with the appointed time.

 There was so much to be discovered, and a lot more to be found while our fingers dug into each other’s palms. I wonder if she would have discovered all those secrets I was bent on concealing in my fist. She wouldn’t have liked it had she come to know of them. There were a whole lot of secrets buried in her palms too. I’m not sure if they would have gone down my throat smoothly. Anyway, there wasn’t going to be any such chance.

Our faces had all adventures of our lifetimes inscribed on them at present, this was where all the years we had spent together were going to be highlighted quite prominently. While those around us may never notice anything amiss in our faces from tomorrow, but we were sure to observe quite a few lines missing. The missing element robs us of its ultimate beauty. It was going to be a beautiful sketch painted, but I wonder if it is going to be worth any of the pathos we were going to experience at parting.

 A whole lot of adventures were going to shine brightly on our faces, and they were going to reflect themselves whenever we looked at each other like an image reflects itself in a mirror. There were going to be several instances when this was to happen. We still had to   come to terms with the reality that we were never going to be together ever again. There was an abyss of depression to be leaped over, and it was to  be a deep and dark one. I held her hand a bit more tightly as if it was a lifeboat for someone sinking in a deep ocean.

 I don’t know how I shall manage to pull myself out of the ocean of misery and depression. It was time to give her a final kiss. We hugged each other; there was a kiss. It was the last and final hug before the last and final kiss; I realised that we had been playing a game of cricket, and she had been declared ‘out’. She was never going to be back in the same form again. Never.

I felt quite bad as if a train’s engine was hooting as it declared its preparation for a departure. She was on board the train, I was going to be left standing on the platform, and there wasn’t anyone to pull the train’s chain. I wish I had the courage to pull the chain and keep pulling it for a long time. I didn’t want the train to leave. I didn’t want her to leave.

At the end of the day, I shook myself awake from the delirium I was a part of. Promises I had made to myself  stand out taller than any I ever made to her. Ours wasn’t going to be a love-story like Romeo-Juliet where they killed themselves in the end: we were not going to kill ourselves. Many more adventures await to be discovered by us, but we shall not be able to discover them. May someone else discover them.

I Don’t Have A Choice

I Don’t Have A Choice
I looked quietly at the symbols of silence and retirement before me with awe and wonder in my eyes. There was exhaustion screaming at the top of its voice within me as my feet lay on the ground. I wanted to lift them up to the bed, but somehow, I couldn’t. there was a fiery flow of blood through my body as my feet began to shout out for their share of oxygen; blood rushed to my feet to supply what was the need of the hour. I had a lot of books to read albeit the pain in my feet. In a small way, I found the typical pain a help to my understanding of what was before me on the table. Blood was pounding through my body too with the speed of an express train, and so it ran through my brain. The fresh supply of oxygen to my brain cells brought through blood brought a surplus amount of energy in my brain.

They were days when I was a student in my hostel. Several years have passed by since that time. Weeks, months, seasons, pass along. They seem little more than a summer day and a winter evening now they are gone. I sometimes wish I could go back to these days, but on second thoughts, I shall move on in quest of a brighter future. My juvenile experiences matter very little or almost nothing to me now. My past is as hazy as a bed of roses is on a foggy and dim morning. The roses are still there, they will always be there, their fragrance shall always be as refreshing, but their freshness faded off long ago.  

I still regard those days as some of the best days of my life, but what I have to bear in mind is that better days shall certainly be here. I only have to wait for better days to be here. All of us live through days, weeks, months and years, we bear through all kinds of hardships and misfortunes life inflicts on us every single day without a grim facial expression in the hope that tomorrow shall certainly be better than today.

 Life has now become a great and long fairy-tale, and somehow, I feel the most important part of it is about to begin to unfurl itself now. There are a lot of fairies and goblins to figure in the several years to come, and the plot is to unfurl itself in all its paraphernalia of hopes and miseries. I often wonder if the fairy besides me has stronger powers than any of these figures.

She was sitting next to me!! I was so honoured!! I couldn’t help jumping into the air when I realised her presence beside me. She was Hope personified. all my life became meaningful in the single moment I realised her presence. I could see a bright future before me with her in it. Till a few moments ago, there was a future before me of which I knew nothing about.

A distinct fear of the unknown raged in me louder than a lion. It created a furore within me while it walked around with its typical majesty. She held my hand like she would hold her child’s  hand before a lion’s cate while in a zoo. I don’t think I can ever find any words to describe all she stands for me. She said a lot to me while I held her hand, but she condensed them in a few words. How special I felt in one short minute, having her by my side!

Her presence made the patrolling of the lion less distressing. I can now see a way out. I only have to take a woodman’s axe in my hand, and clear my own way through the forest before me by cutting down each tree till I came to my destination. It is going to be a long time before I touch the finishing-line, I know, because there is a comprehensive jungle of  trees before me, and each tree demands individual attention. On second thoughts, if I chop down all these trees, I shall only liberate the lion of all riddles before itself; it is waiting to dig its fangs into me. I wish there was a way to run away from this picture of life, but  I simply can’t. For once, there isn’t the proverbial way despite there being a wish.

All said and done, If I managed to squeeze all my past, present and future in a single day, it was quite fine in the morning; life was to begin then. Quite a bit of the day was before me at that time, quite a lot was to be discovered, and a lot more to be found. A sinister enchanter stepped into the morning of my life and drew a magic-circle round the epicentre  of my life, and cast a spell too. I’ve been doing my best to walk out of this circle, but I can’t.

The magic is going to have long-lasting effects, I wish I knew this at that time. I couldn’t have done anything concrete about it even had I known about it in advance, and I think I did have a bit of prior intimation of a grim future before me, but changing its course was never my strength. Rather, it capitalised in on my weaknesses, accentuated them, and made life all the more difficult for me. these difficult times ultimately reached a zenith, and the magic ultimately began to loosen its hold on me.

My days became fresher and finer as life goes on. A new dawn heralds itself while I feel blood surging into my feet. As life begins to move ahead and it begins to acquire  legs of its own, most of its freshness and novelty faded off into the ether quite like the pain in my legs. It will be here again, but in another form. I shall be prepared for it.