FRESH AIR

You may all be wondering what the hell happened to me and where did I disappear? No? At least some of you, I hope! Well, if you are flummoxed and are thinking what the hell is he talking about… then never mind… I will fill you in either ways! About 3 months ago, I had stopped writing! Why? I wish there is an easy answer to it. Well… I wish there there is even an answer to it!

Has this ever happened to you? You have a favorite pen which you are mighty fond of.Not a day goes by for you without writing something with it; no matter how poetic or meaningless it is that you write. But then one day you stop writing and leave the pen alone. You no longer feel like opening your heart to it and sharing your life with it. You ingore it and soon enough you are caught in a quagmire of your own worries and issues that you forget its existence. But then, as all good things that come to an end do, they haunt you! They remind you of what you had once which has ceased to be yours now and suddenly fill your heart with a desperate longing to revert time and go back to them once more. In a mad rush, you run with complete abandon! There it is... where you left it ages ago. Your pulse is high and your heart is racing. You feel it... caress it... a momentary bliss! But wait a minute... something is wrong! The pen is not reciprocating. It is so cold. You can’t feel its pulse. Its ink has dried up. It can’t feel your blood any more. You had left it to die!

This pen could be anything. A thought, an idea, a friend, a hobby, a passion, a loved one! It may even be cocaine but that would be something I am not advising you to go back to! But the point is once you stop something… you will be startled to see how remarkably fast we move on (well... this wouldn’t apply to cocaine either)… how quickly the passion dies… but subconsciously there is an unknown pain and sorrow that keeps haunting you! But you never feel like rekindling that spark. It is a very difficult space to be and it seems so tough to come out of that coma. We start getting comfortable in this new normal only to realize much later that it is not the normal but the ordinary. But in reality, getting out of this vaccuum is pretty easy; all you need is a tiny flash spurred by a touch of madness. That is the conundrum of the paradox but once you realize it, the air around you will feel so fresh and full of life.

The word “memory” when used in “singular” has a mechanical (even robotic) tone to it. You immediately think of a storage device, the computer and so on and so forth. Make it plural, “memories”, everything changes and the word takes on a completely different meaning. There is a human element and a personal touch that get ingrained into it. Your mind screens a little movie of all the beautiful moments that have defined your life and lightened up your time on this earth and you relive those memories with a faint smile in your heart and a bright twinkle in your eyes. Strange isn’t it… how these two words are almost the same but invoke reactions that are light years apart from each other. Now if you are wondering what I am trying to say here, please don’t strain yourself. I myself haven’t a clue! I am writing after a while, so consider it “ring rust”!

 Before you decide that you have had enough, let me try to put some clarity to my random thoughts. At the end of the day… every day… when I look around me… when I look out… when I look in… I see so many things… a million feelings race through my heart…  a  zillion thoughts fill my mind…  so much beauty around… so much pain underneath… I don’t want all of this to just fade away when the sun sets. I don’t want them to be locked in some never to be accessed again “memory” either. These are memories I want to experience again and again, share with all of you, come back to them and laugh and cry and think. So while my pen is still fresh, I have decided to open myself again to its magic! My apologies it took so long!