(This was first published on Hubpages)
When Dreams were Young
There used to be a time, when as they say, spring was in the walk and the dreams were young, when words would float in front of my notebook and land softly as today my toddler walks around in the room in the winters of Delhi..on the tip-toes. Dreams were beautiful and not yet impossible. Truth seemed to be an idea which lived and breathed next door and not a distant idea. Those were the times when an equitable limitation of resources cut across the social position and we all stood in front of each other, devoid of the fig leave of social backgrounds. Calls would be made through the public call booth across the road from the Hostel and with new mobile set was not a status defining instrument but only a flight of fantasy. In all our nakedness we shall be all be judged as friends or not by those around us, simply by the grandness of our dreams, our understanding of our ideals, and more importantly, by our ability to love. Love, I had in my heart in abundance, writing poetry on the back of cigarette packets, which friends claim even today to be of readable kind; reading the material which would transport me into an era of self-belief, and belief in all that is good in life. Everything good in life was possible, and all that was needed was to merely stretch the hands out wide, with a heart full of conviction as The Messiah taught the pilot in the books by Richard Bach. I read it, pretty happy in meeting in thoughts with authors good enough to be published and make a best-seller.
The Now
The words come out on the screen, which replaces the notebook of the past, apologetically. A gloomy mist descends over the world with a minor trace of sunlight in the form of my toddler, who is constantly trying all the time to cope up with my cruel mood-swings, I just hope that her efforts to accommodate my mood swings outlives my ability to grow beyond them. I know, it is cruel, but I know it is true and is almost as cruel as truth can be. I keep on thinking if the world in which I live has changed or have I, as a pesky and demanding inhabitant changed. Was the world always like that, ruthless, competitive and all the time measuring me against the scales which were all tilted against me? and I was living in my own euphoric world of imaginary goals and ideals, that I never noticed the crookedness of all straight-lines which I drew around myself as pointers to what I presumed then to be a life of delirium. The words, enter as a soul wretched with poor self-esteem and poor acting ability thrown on the stage to perform an act of consequence, with conviction of not fitting in deeply placed in the heart. Was it that I was happier then because all the expectations of life I had with myself, which I could control and change and shift, thus the goals closer or farther as I wanted to? I do not know, what I know is that then I could be kinder to myself and to the world around me, and I have somehow, now, pushing people to the walls asking them to play the roles as the play which I have scripted requires them to, become to be the living equivalent to the movie recently released called "Despicable Me". Nothing comforts, this unkindness which I had not seen in my life even in the days when Nietzsche and stoic philosophy literature replaced the lofty, happy world of Erich Segal has now descended so deep down, that now I find myself unbearable and writing, which always came to me as an answer to my disturbing dreams, has eluded me, as a disappointed friend who came to meet me after a long time. I hope, somehow, I can run after my long lost friend, beg him, reason with him and ask him to stay back, for I need this ray of sunlight in my life, to pull me out of the depth of darkness. Writing for me is a way to converse with myself, and as with verbal conversation, in the face of emotion, the lump rises in the throat, the clot rises in the pen or the kepboard mocks me, of what I have become. But I have to write, even if it does not make sense to anyone, including myself, as there is no other cure that I know of.
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