Reality Bites. Real Hard.

XI


Mood: Devastated
Colour: Gray
Song: No Woman, No Cry (Bob Marley)




I knew it was the truth.

The undeniable truth.

In fact, it was the reality.
The kind that makes sure that you know when it passes you by.

The tipping point of the scale.
The scale between us and them.
The winners and the also-rans
The haves and the have-nots.
The patricians and the plebeians.

I had known it all along.
I knew it was what made the difference.
It was the great divide.

Yet, it I had never really felt it, or been touched by it.
I had very conveniently pushed it to the back of my mind and daftly hoped that it didn’t matter.
Just because she had never specifically mentioned it.
And so I presumed it did not matter.

But it did matter.
I had known that too.
And that had been pushed into the darkness somewhere with equal convenience.
Ironic that the most trivial of incidences got it out into the open.

It cut like a knife.
Hurt with the force of a million shrapnels tearing through your soul.
And it kept haunting me like a searchlight probing my dilated eyes, as if it was searching for the reason why I chose to ignore it so long.

I had been an idiot.
I was paying for it.
Tearfully, tragically.
Every moment of my waking hour.



Mood: Numb
Colour: Ashen
Song: Cuts Like A Knife (Bryan Adams)

Little Miss Sunshine

X


Mood: Reflective
Colour: Purple
Song: I Saw Her Standing There (The Beatles)




I can never forget the first time she looked at me and smiled.

She was standing there with a furrowed expression on her face pondering over the repercussions of the overcast sky, when suddenly a breath of life seemed to pass through her and she smiled.

It wasn't as if its was a picture perfect moment or anything. Nor was it as beautiful as paradise. It was in fact the most drab and dreary of settings. An overcast sky, two strangers and the hustle-bustle of a city arrogant to its seams.

Yet there was that undefinable something about the way she looked that very unforgettable moment, and more pertinently the exquisite manner in which her sights lingered on me which I shall never be able to set off from even the deepest throes of my remembrance ever in my life.

And then she smiled. And life became so much more worth living. A pure, precious and precocious smile. Tender and gladdening. Soothing and comforting. There was that wholesome angelic glimmer which makes one stop and cherish the experience of being alive and looking. And the innate warmth that comes from the feeling of being at home. Surreal, but nice. Very very nice.

If only it wasn't so momentary. If only there was more from where that came from. If only life wasn't so cruel to take away the immensely joyuous feeling just when it started to sink in. If only...


Mood: Lost
Colour: Black
Song: Afterglow (INXS)

Verbatim

To M...
Edgar Allan Poe, 1830

O! I care not that my earthly lot
Hath little of Earth in it,
That years of love have been forgot
In the fever of a minute:

I heed not that the desolate
Are happier, sweet, than I,
But that you meddle with my fate
Who am a passer by.

It is not that my founts of bliss
Are gushing- strange! with tears-
Or that the thrill of a single kiss
Hath palsied many years-

'Tis not that the flowers of twenty springs
Which have wither'd as they rose
Lie dead on my heart-strings
With the weight of an age of snows.

Not that the grass- O! may it thrive!
On my grave is growing or grown-
But that, while I am dead yet alive
I cannot be, lady, alone

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Dedicated to Ashok - A friend, philosopher and guide, for leading me unto light.