Teardrop on the fire

It starts with a little zest of enthusiasm, bubbly and ubiquitous. The anxiety makes your head spin while the excitement makes the colors of the world animated. The red is like the seductive pout, luring me in with the beauty of an idea I am not able to encapsulate into a metaphor. The white is like the whimsical dandelion, changing paths with the wind, welcoming the irony that destiny has to offer. The black is as sinful as it was. May be even more; more than I can decipher.

My insanity died too soon.

I liked how the wings of the butterfly were frames of a motion picture; breaking and forming creating an image purely out of the struggle to gain coherency. I liked how I noticed the smile lines on people’s faces. I could guess the age, couldn’t I? It was a good game to play with myself. I play games with myself a lot. Counting the number of liars in the room and pretentiously trying to cleanse the awkward but obvious pretense in people. It worked only in my head.

What were we talking about?

After the euphoria, comes the downfall. There is no peak. No plateau and nowhere to stop to enjoy your success. Success of finally understanding what are you standing here for. Success of finally realizing that the pseudo peak is your downfall into insanity. And maybe I liked it that way. I liked the screeching scratching downfall. Because that’s when I felt most alive.

When the wind kissed my face and the doors flung opened in the face of my restrictions. As I cut through the air it wasn’t fear, but sheer happiness inspired by pure achievement of what I valued most: the feeling of my own presence.

That’s when I realized I was a teardrop falling on the fire. As unmovable and unclaimed for the fire was and I as insignificant as the next, I knew I could still make the wood sizzle. 

~Nikita 

A few words

Very seldom do we discover our pursuits. And very seldom do we keep pushing ourselves to keep in touch with them. This piece was inspired by the idea of feeling really small and insignificant but yet powerful with a hope and drive. That is when you know that its time to go an extra mile and push yourself to do that one extra rep, study an extra hour or ponder over your art, because somewhere your are flicking the string of change.

Hair

The divergence of her hair went unnoticed. Her mane, like a jet black waterfall entered a room before she did. She didn’t like it. Waking up with shorter hair every fortnight, it wouldn’t surprise her that her mother had cut her hair at night. She didn’t like it. Voices were raised every evening over her hair and how her denial towards it was nothing but insolent behavior mixed with a ting of madness.

She liked that.

The wind danced through Meera’s hair. The hands of the air tangled it into knots and the galore of the whistling whisper of the trees only provoked the insanity in her. Resting her hand above her head on the cold steel she swung her leg by a dangerous angle at the water 50 meters below. She giggled as the vapors of cold droplets splashed upwards. The sky blended with the sea separated only by a thin wisp of red clouds. The waves curled and uncurled under the bridge with spurts of white foam that bubbled around the pillars. The crashing of the water, like the beating of drums overwhelmed the silent lull of the bridge.

Meera’s identity lay in her hair. Walking in the hallways people would touch it and pull it without permission. It had even been checked at the airport. “Oh look at that” was heard oh so often she woke up every morning to the echoes of the anthem. She was no Rapunzel. But a freak with hair that were now part of her name and no prince would want to climb up it.

Every day since her 5^th year of life, it was starting to make her angry. Angry enough to break articles and immerse in bouts of anxiety.

But her hair was a part of her. She had learnt to carry it. Caress it and love it like a new born child. But now she had to let it go. Her beautiful black hair that fell in thick ropes of knotted hair resting heavily on her head. That flapped occasionally when she peeked outside her car window to breath in a little of freedom. It was just a part of her madness she loved. But now it was time for her to be truly free.

A shiny pair of scissors would have done the deed, but she chose the easier way. The way that would release the worldly bounds of selfish desire and integrity to please. She had a dream that she could fly. And now she was set to fulfill it. Her insanity was victorious and now it was time to rejoice.

She pulled the hair tie out of her hair and swung it into the water. Meera smiled. The glorious smile of a maniac winner after a victory. The lunatic smile. A crazy grin. A happy smirk. Then a snort of denial. Meera believed that it would end and he would be happier when it wasn’t real.

So she flung herself into the air, hands wavering and legs shaking. Her hair like a fishing net thrown into the sea and a genuine smile on her face radiating with madness. She fell across the dark red horizon, she fell with trust because she believed she could fly.

She couldn’t.

2 am? What keeps you awake at night?

I figured that writing this post at this time (1:30 am) will be the best way of proving my loyalty to the nocturnal behavior. While most of us are right now simply lying in bed in our comfortable soft pajamas thinking about things that a boy, incidence or a wish is just one of the thoughts. While creativity creeps in the late silent hours of night, some of us write :P, draw or simply wonder how you failed the test you worked so hard for or how your first love would have been your last if you tried harder.

Well, let me put it in front of you; with a cute little bow and sparkly wrapping, that yes the dark time is the best time for anyone of us. Yes, we all do love sleep. I would literally choose my bed over any guy in the world. That cozy comfortable place, where you rest your head on the feathers of dreams and wander off into the calm emotion erasing land of comfortable inactivity. Okay nightmares may haunt us occasionally, but then what are dream catchers and warm rooms for?

But come on, agree to it, you are the most motivated and enthusiastic at this queer hour.  While the deepness in our thoughts ventures out and motivates us to take incentive, we actually find answers to questions we never knew existed. Those questions that were present like a cloud; hovering with their negligible weight, but when cleared from the sky allow the warmth of a bright sunny day. And the answers? Ironically create more questions. Those aren’t really ways to self-realization and reflection but just paths and foot stones to other questions that eventually lead us to the ultimate nirvana of understanding.

But some questions just don’t have answers! How much ever frustrating that is, it is actually the most torturous but effective way of realizing that a person, thing or incident is not worth of the rivers of tears that streamed out of your eyes or the minutes of smiles you lost during the day.

It may seem weird, but I usually find myself thinking about the capabilities of the human brain. While this is a more casual type of blog; like me having a conversation with an ice cream buddy, I can shamelessly tell that I do wish to do all the things at night that people are usually scared to do and acknowledge. I am all praise for the thieves that venture out to do something wrong (which is not supported in anyway) but nevertheless go out in the lull of the city just to steal may be a car deck worth a few thousands or jeweler worth a few lakhs. While their work is certainly not appreciated their bravery and ability to not be afraid of the unspecified, unknown happenings of the dark is applauded.

Not only buglers, but guards and policemen who actually roam around as if earth is the safest place to live on. Anyway, I was on human brain capabilities. It would be fun to imagine that you are just a molecule of air. Bouncing around your whole eternal life doing nothing but……..bouncing around. But where have you been? You could have been anywhere. In a medieval palace in Vatican City or a creepy jungle in amazon that know human dared enter. In a haunted house where silence haunts each corner or a beautiful garden with marble fountains and close roses that would bloom in the morning while the dew drops slept on them. The possibilities are unlimited and if that air particle would be your mind? A mind that is now stretched by a new experience and thus can never go back to its old dimensions?

Not all of us might have the same though process. We all are different sure. But we are common in some way. Teenagers teenagers teenagers. What do we always think about staying awake in the late hours of the night?  Our crushes, our friends and how our lives could have been better. And if you are telling me you barely wonder about these, you’re lying.

Most of us have cried about that boy’s or girl’s smile that couldn’t be yours and mourned over the lost best friend who you barely looked at since the past week. Some of us have had forceful sleepless nights because a rude fight where you pretended to be tough actually hit you hard. (Bullies are affected too) or you just couldn’t sleep because you had too much coffee assuming you would pull an all-nighter and study. (Well you didn’t)

Well the most hilarious thing is how one though links to other. One minute you are thinking about how you have to fill groceries tomorrow, then you will think about how the toilet paper is over. Then the thought of how you are wasting toilet paper pops up. You will soon be thinking about deforestation in the world and how it is important to save tries and from there you would be probably thinking about how Switzerland is the cleanest city and how suddenly your eye can randomly pop out and roll out into the snow and sit their camouflaged laughing at you one eyed face.

Do you get it now? You can singlehandedly think about destroying someone’s social networking life to thinking about randomly hoe penguins fall in love. You may suddenly hear an old man giving you advice in your head or hear your mom’s voice asking you to eat vegetables.

If you this is not magic, what is?

If the scientists wouldn’t have had nights without sleep, you would be still switching ships to London. You would be still watching a black and white movie and it would take me months to publish this. While passion ignites at this hour, ideas are born from the strangest thoughts in your mind.

Well the ultimate point of writing this is, what keeps you awake at night? For me night is the time I actually get to do things I like. While on the weekdays of college it is highly disastrous to pull the stunt of staying awake, in the days I am busy playing social roles of a student, daughter, friend and a stranger. But at night I am just a girl staying awake, listening to her favorite rock band while she types on her laptop.  

Night is not associated with sad and emo like thoughts. While darkness and silence can evoke emotions of hopelessness or just sadness, they sometimes don’t. Nights can bring out the peace and creativity in you. Some of us are really motivated at night and enthusiastic to try new stuff but just lazy and tired to actually do it.

Nights are beautiful and silent. While everyone enters a new dream every 3 minutes what keep you awake at 2 am?

PS- I didn’t mention about monsters because it’s extremely late here and I hope to get some sleep too which would be a little difficult thinking about things staring at me, being under my bed or just existing. Err…