The Silver Lining

Lying on my back I looked skywards and kept searching for the little rabbit in the clouds for long. It’s been some days since I last saw it. It was easy locating and talking to it earlier. Couple of years here and there and the sky I used to know has grown up to be a stranger. The eagles that I would see soaring and carrying messages to the clouds on clear winter afternoons have gone missing. Probably they perched somewhere on that big fluffy nest shaped cloud and stayed there.

I guess you are way down the hill when you start reminiscing about when you were last nostalgic looking at the sky. My head’s already started spinning at the very thought of it. The verve of life is no longer a stream but a spurt of erratic and broken trickles. The rise and shine mornings wake up disgruntled and peeved at the sunlight filling the room. The light seeps through my glasses that I forgot to take off before I went to sleep the night before and pricks my lids to force them open. I wake up to another day, another promise, another me and the same life.

Magic, if there is actually anything by that name, invokes awe only for the first time. When the trick is repeated the delight and the enchantment of the unexplained somehow loses its touch, even if the mystery doesn’t die. The first recollection of a magic trick is meant to last till the end of time. I guess the same is true about life as well. You live your time only once and it doesn’t come back. The recollection lasts forever; sometimes the ink makes a mark on a paper; sometimes it hides itself in the head.

I guess it would be impossible to find even a single person on this planet who does not want to relive his life. No matter how wonderful and accomplished it has been the first time around, everyone wants to repeat what was good in it and rectify what went wrong. Needless to say, it never happens, won’t ever happen.

The story and script of life can not change once it has been written. The indelible ink on the fingers gets seeped into the blood and becomes a part of you. The vast sea of loneliness becomes a muscle in your heart and slowly sucks in your life. This black hole continues to grow till you raise your arms and give up.

Soon, in not many days from now, the only remnants of your being would be the raisin skin and dried guts. You can’t find a use of either. The hollow skull sees nothing and the limbs can’t even persuade a canine to gnaw at them. The lump of muscles which inspired sighs once can only invite sinister cries. It is then you realize that the curtains are drawn and the act on stage can now only linger on in blurry eyes and jaded dreams. However, the mist shall take over this as well and the visuals would be lost forever. The faces would lose their features and the names of memories shall vanish as well.

Maybe the only silver lining to this dark cloud is the possibility that when this happens, I shall finally wake up next to you. The sun shall beam its golden rays once again over white cotton sheets and your hair would fill any space between us. My fingers would find your face again and I shall run them over the contours of your lips as I always did in my dreams. Maybe then the light would fill our hearts. Our individual shapes would then merge into a single form and we shall become a part of the eternal light itself….two parts of one soul… united forever.