Scared to death he lived like panthers on his trail; running around bushes through the dim lit woods right from his birth. The fear wasn’t inbuilt but certainly a consequence of the prosaic but subjugating burden of expectations flowing down the hierarchy. Time to time; the rebel rose to fight, but succumbed to the monotone. He was four and was scared of school for the first time. He is twenty-four and is still scared, because the school and the education and the fear haven’t left him yet. The polished high priced education has converted him into a machine to deliver and none to gather, the petals of the flower he calls his own desire. There’s no more a bud. He saw his flower of desires grow but a few vital petals sort of completion.
He remembers the day. It was cloudy, about to rain in an hour or so. The trees seemed like giants with arms raised in sync to cover the windless sky. It didn’t matter much to the kid. He wasn’t interested in the sky. His eyes were set on the basketball on the playground; a vagabond rolling in the restless breeze. It occurred to him; if and only if the ball was made of stone or steel it might not stray away. What seems a rather childish observation makes him think even today. Roll we may in the winds of time, but do we want to. Or do we roll in fear of being dubbed a misnomer. He can never be the stone neither the steel. He began to hate his life, for everything he couldn’t do right.
They say “I live in a world of my own”, but none of them is a Picasso or Keats. All they do is live in a world where they can call things their own. That doesn’t at all make them unique, rather another class of hypocrites who make lies sound real. He couldn’t even be one of them. He isn’t scared of the world, neither the creatures they call humans, but a chill runs down his shaky spine when someone whispers “life” in his ears. He has none left to rejoice. He has found a bucket full of talents in him, but none to shape into reality, for he is scared; that might dub him an outcast.
And all he wanted to do was drive along the country highways, give a damn to the milestones, be blind to roadside directions, crush a few beer cans, fill up forgotten words of CCR with silly hums, be happy with the wet earth pillow and swear to the heavens for giving others a dull “I’m happy, I guess” or a “I’m fine” life. The prisoners locked in their self made cells.
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