... where I was and where I am

I'm about to take a walk on a road not taken...

Many lips weave many guesses, and those guesses are but a projection of uncertainty. Those lips may feel free to think that either they're conceptually mine or I'm conceptually theirs.

... But, I'm auctioned off to life which is a tangible mist of whims and a whimsical mist of touches and goes. And amid the whims, guesses choose words, and concepts, wordplay.

Let me cast off a word from our everyday life ~ "disappointment". We know that in our life, we often send an appointment letter to disappointment. However, a close look will reveal that we are not well-mixed in the word; we are actually destroyed by its meaning that has its sanctuary in an audacious dictionary. Had we not learnt this meaning before, what would have happened then?... We would have seen nothing beyond the lips from where the word had appeared.

Just say, "You look very disappointed", to a pigeon, she/he may react by choosing any one action or two or more from the ethnic alloy of activities - sitting at a safe distance, flapping wings, flipping her/his big-toe head, craving for food, flying away. Although she/he is offered a blow from human vocabulary, no injury is sunned to her/him through its meaning. The meaning falls flat and the word reduces to the ashes of meaninglessness.

Meaninglessness never hurts anyone. It never goes to battle with any guess.

Where was I? Was I together with myself? Or was I alone with myself? Or was I lost in the mist of whims? As far as remembrance is concerned, I was about to take a walk on a road not taken. So, come, dear reader, let us parallel our shadows.

My mother froze to death in the month of June this year, deserting me amidst a bunch of questions about life. Here, Ruth sought a soft touch from Truth. But, as usual, I sat on the chair of lies, straightened myself on fibs, shook hands with a skein of deceits. With respiratory trouble I remained a forlorn walking shadow on a road where trees are allowed to neither unfurl their cool umbrella nor brush an amount of frisky breeze on a sweltering neck. This way, I've learnt the cynic magic of ruthless truths.

They say, one today is worth two tomorrows. I'm often stone blind to too-much injury, too-much blood, just half-dried today. I'm often stone deaf to the cries of the passengers of the earth. I have just withdrawn myself from today's meetings, and I'm trying to keep far away from tomorrow's silent protest. I avoid fast living. Being a and m, I support the 43-year old word, "edutainment" in 2015. I do not like cloudy evenings, though get soaked in cloudy eyesight. I cry with my stone dry eyes when I auction my life to myself. I fly with my miserably burnt wings. I like supplying oxygen to my insecure pen everyday, every adhesive day, composing and tuning my words. I like breathing today, heaving today, sighing today, as and as, one today is worth, in real, thousand tomorrows.

But, thinking about writing makes me shudder. Writing attracts the eyes of terror. Bloodstained terror from all quarters! Though terror is just a t-distance off from error, today's pre-winter morning was not an error at all. My lips felt dry and pulled. Kriti, our daughter of one and a half years, spread a galaxy of smile to me and pointed to a pair of shoes. Hmm, the little pigeon was in a tottering mood. So, I took her out in the vanishing green of my treeless garden.

One day, she will also come to the grip of a pride of meanings, a dense growth of guesses, understanding and concepts, a board with end game, a bloodstained newspaper, and of course, terror. Won't she ask me that very tomorrow, "Why did you not force me to stay inside then?"