I've become 25 years old today. It cannot be considered an achievement since time passes on its own and we keep growing. As I look back, I find my 25 years full of experiences of many kinds. I regret some of my actions. And there are many things I feel happy about. I applaud myself for many of my choices. And there are a few I curse myself for and I guess I will keep doing that all my life, unless memory fails me. I am lucky to have been gifted with some of the best people to share my life with. I am grateful to whoever conceived and created this beautiful setting for my "Life".
I've come a long way since those simple childhood days. And yet, a closer look at myself reveals that it's not really that long a way. In fact, I am still where I have always been. And I will always be right there...right here. But something has changed.
Life is like a game where you have to keep walking. Choose your directions at each step and keep moving. There is no option to stop. At each step, you get a new mask. Wear it over the old ones if you feel like. We grow thick layers of masks as we walk into darkness, under faint spot-lights lighting each one of us. There is no destination, there is no goal. Throughout our lives we try to run away from death, live best hoping that we can manage to evade it by our cleverness and trickery. Though it's ironical that the best is often close to the worst.
There was a time when I was so small that everyone else around me seemed very big. I used to stick my face against the metal frame of the closed iron gate which served as entrance to my house, to look outside. Everyone else in my family was tall enough to see from above the gate. I was allowed a limited view of the world outside. I kept growing, and one day I was also tall enough. The gate ceased to be a barrier. I could see the world without obstructions. I also grew smart with time. I learnt to open the gate. One day, I walked out of it right into the world I was shielded from. The world which I had always wondered about. And as the world unfolds itself to me, I find fewer things in it that tickle my childish mind.
The first of the free airs that I breathed choked my lungs. It had dust, it had dirt, it smelt bad, it burnt my insides. I could see it if I tried hard enough. But its ability to kill was equalled, perhaps outdone, by an amazing ability to keep one alive, and breathing. With time, it made me fall in love with it. I've started enjoying the murkiness it induces to my vision. I cannot see far - the air doesn't allow me to. I want to walk slow, taking small steps, knowing where I am going. But there is a rush. One gets pushed or crushed. I prefer the former, it keeps me alive. We all move fast, carried away in the hungry tide of people. Not to a shore, there is no shore.
I hope, some day, when I can see my feet again, when I can bend down and run my fingers gently on my toe, when I can see the world with all its myriad colors, and wonder - where lies my destination, when I breathe the scent of freshness in the mysterious tranquility of the air, I will be born again, thence to live till eternity.
I've come a long way since those simple childhood days. And yet, a closer look at myself reveals that it's not really that long a way. In fact, I am still where I have always been. And I will always be right there...right here. But something has changed.
Life is like a game where you have to keep walking. Choose your directions at each step and keep moving. There is no option to stop. At each step, you get a new mask. Wear it over the old ones if you feel like. We grow thick layers of masks as we walk into darkness, under faint spot-lights lighting each one of us. There is no destination, there is no goal. Throughout our lives we try to run away from death, live best hoping that we can manage to evade it by our cleverness and trickery. Though it's ironical that the best is often close to the worst.
There was a time when I was so small that everyone else around me seemed very big. I used to stick my face against the metal frame of the closed iron gate which served as entrance to my house, to look outside. Everyone else in my family was tall enough to see from above the gate. I was allowed a limited view of the world outside. I kept growing, and one day I was also tall enough. The gate ceased to be a barrier. I could see the world without obstructions. I also grew smart with time. I learnt to open the gate. One day, I walked out of it right into the world I was shielded from. The world which I had always wondered about. And as the world unfolds itself to me, I find fewer things in it that tickle my childish mind.
The first of the free airs that I breathed choked my lungs. It had dust, it had dirt, it smelt bad, it burnt my insides. I could see it if I tried hard enough. But its ability to kill was equalled, perhaps outdone, by an amazing ability to keep one alive, and breathing. With time, it made me fall in love with it. I've started enjoying the murkiness it induces to my vision. I cannot see far - the air doesn't allow me to. I want to walk slow, taking small steps, knowing where I am going. But there is a rush. One gets pushed or crushed. I prefer the former, it keeps me alive. We all move fast, carried away in the hungry tide of people. Not to a shore, there is no shore.
I hope, some day, when I can see my feet again, when I can bend down and run my fingers gently on my toe, when I can see the world with all its myriad colors, and wonder - where lies my destination, when I breathe the scent of freshness in the mysterious tranquility of the air, I will be born again, thence to live till eternity.
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