To Be or Not To Be...

To be or not to be, that is the question,

Whether it’s nobler in the mind,

To suffer the slings & arrows,

Of this outrageous fortune,

Or by taking her arms in yours

Settle down to a commitment…

That certainly didn’t happen with her. It just wrecked like a paper boat, flung into the lanes, marooned by the gushing rain water. The boat is nice, crisp and clean, only until it’s in the hands of its creator but the moment it’s left to prove its efficacy, it realizes, it is just a pawn to the forces much stronger than it. To wreck or to sail, is not the authority or discretion of the boat, no not its creators either, it’s the gushing rain water’s.

I have slammed to the walls, dollop and galloped, drowned and wrecked in a similar gush. It’s been years yet seems just a tale from the last weekend. Weekdays don’t leave me with much thoughts or emotions. The face is familiar, the touch reminiscent, the roads known, and smiles…

A smile can be deceptive too.

I was looking for something in my mailbox, when I stumbled upon an old chat, about 4 years old, which reminded me of the good old days. The days when the boat was still a piece of paper in that notebook, which awaited the graphite to scribble love notes onto it. Rhapsody!!!

It wasn’t evident then, but when I read the chat now, I see that the future was scribbled right in its inception. If only, I wasn’t human enough, I could have seen through it. What was bliss then looks a spoof now. A spoof life played on me. I was someone really special to the puppet master. But with all strings in the hands of someone else, a puppet has nothing but to play to the spoof. And I valiantly did.

I stand dried on a perched top now. The rain water naturally descended. But its lonely being deserted to this corner and awaiting.

The wait is for that second pounding. Yes!!! I await the gushing rain waters again for now I’m prepared, have learnt the maneuvers, have jostled the contours, have known the trajectory and I’m nice, crisp and clean again.

Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!)
Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace…