A Walk Down The Lane

There are moments in your life when you won’t realize that a walk down the lane can take you to the corners of your brain digging deep into your thoughts to find the pleasant beauties of life. There are also moments in your life when you won’t realize that a walk down the lane that can be a start to a wild chase of something that is humanly not understandable but still you try to.  And now, you are on one such walk down the lane.

Night is up and the sodium vapor lamps are on. The roads are yellow and the rain that poured make the roads reflect the light all over the street and the high grown temperate trees shade the light from the moon.  You start walking down the street after bidding a bye to your friend down the lane that was lit up in yellow.

The moment of Loneliness

When you are alone on the roads, you realize that you are most vulnerable not to the people, but to the bad memories which start taking control of you. You start remembering the moment you went to patch up your broken friendship with the wonderful moments with her in mind and that is when you realized that your friend hasn’t changed much from the last incident that put you off. You feel bad for the loss of a nice friend and that loss makes you feel lonely and the gloomy roads add more to your loneliness. You plug yourself to the earphones connected to the mp3 player. Thinking no one is here with you, you say aloud, “I’m not afraid of miscreants on the road, but to the bad memories that I want to forget. Oh beautiful mind! Why can’t you stop thinking? I’m fine outside, but these memories are hunting and ripping me off.”

The world is watching

From a distance a couple walk pass by you to sit on the bench that is outside the park, they see you, they start getting intimate and adorable.

The moment you see it, you get a satire smile which you want to hide it and gladly the lights help you keep it down. You ask yourself, why do people do that? Do they want picture themselves as someone else? Before answering it, you travel to the moment when you were left by the one whom you want to be with all the time. After a deep breath, a sad smile comes and the unheard voice of yours wishes them best with the thought in mind that nothing is permanent.

The thoughts stop flowing and you ask the same question of why they acted before you. Even if they think I’m somebody to whom they have to act, but why do they do it? The numb legs slow down with the conceived thought, “What if they are longing for recognition of a good couple?”

The Transformation

We always have the feel that the moon travels with us and today it is the time for the crescent shaped moon to walk with you. The friendly cold breeze takes you to a plane of realization on how everyone has had their own small expectations from their peers, friends, office, and parents and how most of them have remained as wishes. And you are no exception and for you only a few have turned into reality and that too at a time when you were little old for it to feel happy. Now, when you look back at it, you feel bad for the lost time and wish, but at the same time you feel happy for how you handled the moments of defeat with the act of defiance and how determined you are for the oaths you took during the days of subjugation. From the inside you realize how strong a human being you became by moving from where you were. You realize how strong you became by not expecting things from others and how you started fulfilling your dreams. Yes, you became strong.

Workers of Society

After a few hundred meters down the lane, you see a Bhai with his “mobile fruit stall” selling Apples, Oranges and Muskmelons. You always had a craving for oranges and you know for a fact that craving doesn’t means buying, so you check your purse to realize that all the money you have is only good for another two days with seven more day to go for next credit of salary. And so you try to fulfill the craving with the dreams of oranges and you decide to walk past the stall, but the previous realization that “you have become strong by fulfilling your wishes” hits you strong and then again you took the two steps backward to get to the stall. “Ah the temptation!” you say yourself.

The Fruit seller Bhai who was looking at your two steps forward – two step backward game that you were playing in dilemma gives that weird condescending smile when you get close to his stall.  You ask for the price a variant of orange and he says “50 bucks”, but you know for a fact that is close to 30 bucks. After minutes of bargain he comes down to 40. You leave the place with the thought, “Bhai, I know you are toiling hard in the sun and rain to earn, but never think I’m not. I have my own types of toiling hard, at the end we are all workers in society, but why do you want to cheat on another worker?”

Dreams of becoming BIG

The thoughts around “earning” starts lingering in your brain to bring in all the pictures of the successful people in your workspace; you then ask, what makes these guys be successful? You know for a fact that it is their hard work all throughout the year, but it will not stop you there, it makes you ask the next question, “What makes them work all throughout the year?” You have been telling this answer to yourself for a very long time and yet again you tell yourself, “They do what they like to do. They do what they want to do”. You aspire to do what you love the most and you want to struggle like how the warriors do in a war. But, even to do what you really want to do, you have to struggle a lot, that’s the current scenario, your parents will oppose, your friends will make you think twice, pessimists will try to break you down, society will stare at you and overcoming all these is a struggle by itself and then only starts the real war. Sometimes, you wonder where this whole life is enough for it!

The connected dots

The roads go turning left and right, your sub-conscious mind knows how you should go because of the training it got in walking through these paths over the days and you are still walking. Off a sudden, you see a snail on the side of the road trying to move slower than what you read in the books.  You admire it; yellow light on the snail makes it adorable too. The feeling of what if a car drives over the snail makes you push the snail off the road into the grasses which have grown after the seasonal rains. You feel happy, but that is when another realization strikes you, there are times when you thought you were on right path, but all of a sudden you saw yourself thrown out of the path because of a few incidents. You smile, you say, what if Gods took the role you took for the snail?  You leave with a thoughtful smile.

What if I’m no one

Though it was little late in the night, you still find people jogging around you with pride all over his face. Even without your prior admission your thoughts start talking to you, “Why should one be a proud person? What if we human-kind are more like a group of cells working in a tissue, a group of tissues working for an organ? What if we are part of bigger organism? What if this whole earth was like a cell working in a tissue called universe? Or what if the whole universe was just the size of a tissue in big organism? What if the whole scientific/technological advancement limited the race in finding that?” You feel amazed. You feel bewildered. You even think twice whether you without your own knowledge got stoned? But the strong feeling what if it was true still amazes you! And that is when you start thinking of how small you and the whole organisms are. You say to yourself, even if the case this world being part of organism is true, I’ll still work for the betterment of my people and the bigger one.

Expectation, Joy and sorrow

After heavy rounds of thinking you realize that you have crossed miles staying in your sub-conscious mind walking down your own path forgetting the road.

In a signal-less junction, a car driver leaves way for you, you say thank you to him courteously without looking at him as you dint really want to check whether he took your courteousness. You say to yourself I’m not expecting anything in return to my courteousness and you keep walking. You walk forward; you tell to yourself that expectations are the biggest lies in your world. But, you know for a fact that expectations give you joys in life which otherwise is not living.

Yes, you are confused. You want small joys in life; you don’t want sadness and heartbreak; but you know joys and sorrows are like Sun and Moon; you can’t get to choose one but get the complete package.  You want to “live” your life, but you don’t know what is “living” other than the contemporary meaning. You want a meaning in life but you don’t know where to find it.  

Save me for I’m a fool

You go the last resort and you ask her, “Dear God, I’m not able to understand anything. I’m lost in this world. I’m a pseudo thinker, a pseudo philosopher, Please educate me or make me ignorant, but this state of lying somewhere in between is taking a toll on me, please help me. Either gives me answers to my questions or atleast please don’t make me ask questions. I’m tired already!”

The walk down the lane has burned some calories physically and mentally it has left you in the middle of nowhere. You say to yourself that you are going to free yourself from the train of thoughts, but still you are conscious of your thoughts and you keep thinking and walking till you reach your place and you say to yourself, “I’m little broken and that’s okay”.

Thanks,

Alagiri Samy.S