AG🩶

I write because there is a voice within me that will not be still ~Sylvia Plath

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It is easier to lie in a dark alley,with broken wings and in the pool of your own misery when you know that there is no hope of flying again. Then, a sly gust of wind touches your skin and suddenly,your wings are yearning to move again, you start to remember what the sky looked like once. While you are still in the labyrinth of your dreams, the wind is gone and you are back where you belong. The wind was a deceitful villain , hope should have never knocked on your door when it had no intention of helping you.

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The story of Brooks in The Shawshank Redemption is an example of how a bird who has found home in a cage, is always too scared to fly and embrace freedom. Under dire circumstances, the death of hope is the death of life. After remaining caged in walls for decades, won’t freedom be terrifying? The wings were too weak but maybe if you have something to look forward to, you would try flying anyway like Red did.

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My favourite part about fantasy novels and shows is how they help you to find a home in another universe when the real world is too heavy. We become a part of another person's dream, a world that never existed in reality but had managed to teach us lessons and morals in each dialogue and scene. Fiction and fantasy is the sacred thread of life because Imaginations and dreams can never be silly.

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Like Robert Angier in the movie, our obsession often leads us to become clones of who we used to be. In an urge to please the audience, he killed himself every night. How many times have we killed parts of us to appease an audience just to hear the rhythm of their claps and feel the warmth of their adoration? As said by Robert in the movie- “Nobody cares about the man in the box.” In order for them to clap, the loss and the failures must be hidden in the box, while the paragon of success emerges like a beacon on the stage. The man in the box needs to die in order for the show to go on.

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"Our memories of the past can make liars of us all."

Nostalgia is a sweet echo wrapped in deception. Memories become unreliable narrators because they leave behind the parts that were too brutal. We tell tales of the past, tales that they are true in our mind but a lie in reality. Retrospection only makes you remember what you wish to remember while you stand at the dangerous threshold of your past mistakes , debating if you should follow through the same treacherous path again.

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There are verses of poetry on my palm written in last night's smudged ink. I had left the windows open and the familiar pain came in like an invited guest. My hands had reached out to the table in search of a piece of paper but all I found were bills, receipts and a dull ache. My weary palm was all I had as the cobwebs of words were festering like a rotten wound. Today, the words might disappear when I wash the dishes and do my laundry. But tonight I shall write again. A poet needs to be a poet even when the words vanish under survival in the morning like a forgotten dream.

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The walls in my room haven't aged a day but I have. My room is the only place that never makes me realise that. The rest of the world is a large mirror that makes me see that I never realised that I have grown up.That is not even the most scary part. The terrifying epiphany is that I don't even remember it happening. Maybe because I have lived most of it in my head anyway.

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A letter from a book that I might write one day.

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If I must participate and live in this circus of life , I wouldn't want to play the role of a corpse who is alive. I don't want to be a feeble entity who feels all the pain but is too lifeless to move to a better place.

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The crowd will gather in the same cramped spot, running towards the familiar road in the woods. Your feet would be entangled with others and you would be dragged along with them but you must get up with aching feet and run towards the other road even when you are walking it alone. The silence of uncertainty would be scary but not more than the regret of never trying.

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It is easy to villainize the monster while they are still a stranger. Once you get close, they start to look human. Knowledge is the cure to hatred. The monster has a story too, the one the world never likes to hear for they will lose the lamb they have prepared for slaughter. They will lose the scapegoat on whom they can blame their own sins. Their story cannot be learned because the monster should always stay a monster so that greatness can prevail. Heroes cannot be crowned without the existence of evil.

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When you are a child who still has the strength to hope, you think that it will all be better one day. Then, years run faster than you thought it would and time passes by you like the breeze that you never got to feel. On a random morning, you check the calendar and realise that is the "promised day". The day when your world was supposed to get better according to that little child many years ago. But the air is still stale and rotten, the walls of your room have turned darker and you are still in the process of making the future that was promised. That little child deserves an apology.

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When I was seven, pain sank its sharp claws into my skin and made a mark. I fought against it and wriggled free somehow. At twenty one, while leaving the house I saw the same mark on my upper arm, the one I thought had vanished. It stings all the same or maybe more. Was I a fool to think that I got away unscathed? Whichever door I choose, I keep returning to this familiar wound.

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A magician asked two angels for proof of their love which they harbour for him. One was unscarred and whole and another weak and bruised. The unscarred angel flew over mountains and oceans and came back with a raging smile. The injured angel could barely get up from the puddle of her own blood but she still flew for a second until she fell down. The magician chose the former. How can the wounded angel explain that if it was not for her wounds she would have flown higher? That she would have crossed oceans too if only her wings weren't so battered? Why can't the magician see her efforts instead of just the results?

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They cast me aside because I was a failure in the ploys of life. I learned this from a cellmate last week- the right way of life. It is quite simple actually. You should never show anyone all the love you harbour for them. Always keep the major portion of it to yourself because they would think of you as an abundant machine that never runs out of empathy. And then when you are empty , drained and lying in your own pool of blood, they will reprimand you for not being enough. You will see them running to a new machine. One that offers empathy in pieces, in brisk sentences and lousy replies. That is the machine that they would value because they know that they will have to use it with care or it will run out. An epiphany dawned upon me that day. Never be someone who is too accessible.

An excerpt from my essay- What am I on Trial for?

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How does a caged Bird know that it is living inside a prison if those walls are the only ones it has ever known? How can it feel the cruelty of confinement if it has never experienced the ecstasy of freedom? A prison can feel like home sometimes, too compelling and comfortable. You are living inside a hollow pit without realising that it is swallowing you everyday. Fear has mauled its wings, the wide sky feels more like a prison than the familiar cage it has always known.

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"I think we forget things if we have no one to tell them to."

This line from the movie, The lunchbox, captures the most poignant meaning of life. Our life is a journey of experiences, some grandeur and some simple. Most of them blur together and are not worth reminiscing in solitary air. Rather, those moments gain permanence in our minds when it finds an eager listener. That is when those moments which were once so very small, are immortalised and elevated because it finally has company. What is life if not just a desperate plea to be listened to?