..and the night is still bright !

    25th November 2011,

    Arun,Aravind and Myself sat on the brink of the water tank, the time was 2.35 AM. The cool November breeze hit us hard and so did our thoughts. It was the phase moving from childhood to Manhood, our interests were changing from watching Cartoons to watching Porn. We three sat cross legged and kept looking at the sky. It was dark, there weren’t any star, it has been raining till then. There was absolute silence except for some late flights that went to US or Dubai that sparkled in the dark sky making a huge buzz noise. There were hundreds of things that we wanted to speak that night and share our hearts out but words fell short of our thoughts. There wasn’t a movie which made us to connect and changed us, but ‘Mayakkam Enna’ was different, it made us think.

   Swamynathan kept running into the jungle just as a three year old runs looking at a ice cream shop. The entire jungle seemed waiting for him to take a picture of her. He takes random photos of trees, birds, insects and whatever he would take a picture of. A bird stood in a branch spread its wings waiting for someone to capture. It felt odd for us, the bird seemed to be an opportunity and if we are the right place doing right things like Swamynathan having his camera and then we can seize the moment. He adjusted his lenses, white balance and bingo, he clicked what seemed to be divine. The world seems to be stopped for Swamynathan and so did for us. Swamynathan sat under the tress and kept looking at the picture without a word and there wasn’t any background score, tears roll down his eyes and from us as well, Swamynathan looks up, there a huge tree that he is siting beside, the world seems so big that he is tiny to be compared with. Tears drop by steadily and the background score starts with few piano keys played gently. Those huge tress begins to dance to the wind, the rustling sound from the dried leaves on the ground, the thunder just sums up how Swamynathan is feeling. He keeps looking up and in awe to the world’s mighty attire, he understands that he stands no way in capturing the the mighty world and its beauty, a leafs twirling falls into his face. Maybe, the world is mighty and so are we.

‘I want to be a writer yaar’ I broke the silence. I kept my hand to my heart and said those. I had always wanted to be a writer, I wanted to tell stories, stories that have the impact to change, to think, to feel happy about, to let the world know that there are people who still love pure. The words that I write and try to fit them into my story, the sentences that I frame, those endless hours I spent trying to find the right word and maybe end up sleeping on the floor without getting a catch of one particular word , tearing up papers that I wrote when those words really don’t make sense of my imagination, those endless ‘to-do list’ that I skip to to make sure that I end up writing what I love; maybe this is what I really want to do with my life. Arun said that he wanted to be a musician and Aravind said that he wanted to be a traveller; explore different places and different cultures and meet new people and to understand life in better perspective. We spoke until the sun rose, the orange rays filled the entire darkness, we were finally in light.

    05th June 2020,

        Do we really live the life that we wanted to live? All these years I have dreamt of being the person that I wanted to be, those little dreams burn to ashes. Arun, Aravind and myself work in a IT firm from morning till late evening facing our computers and working for someone whom we haven’t seen in life. The money that we get at the end of the month is the excuse that we give to forget our dreams. Every single time I wanted to ask them what had happened to their dream, I insisted thinking what would I say if the same questions was thrown at me. We three worked all our asses out and reached greater height within a short span, but were we happy? Maybe not, at least I wasn’t happy exactly as my life didn’t turn up the way I wanted and I bet Arun and Aravind felt the same too.  

 I had been trying all these years but to no avail, I sit at night while everyone is asleep and being to create my own world, I show people the world that I have created but no one bats an eye, isn’t my world great or at least good to take a look into? Every single day nights give me hope and days turn those hope to despair. Some where down the line I made a mockery of myself. People who posts videos doing stupid stuff gets followers, they seems to be inspiration to thousands of youngsters and while I sit in a dark room with my computer on and few notepads scribbled all my thoughts.

       I wonder what I really am? Somewhere I have never lost the confidence in myself. People succeed too fast, those who have started past me have gone too far ahead while I am still stuck at the place where I have started 10 years back. Am I not capable? Are they really worth the praise and the attention that they get? Do I have less talent than people who claims themselves to be celebrities? Are my words not powerful than those stupid 30 seconds videos imitating some fucking bastards? I sit late at night and begin to type but words fell short, my mind controls over my heart. It says ‘Stop it Abhi’, this is not going the way it has to go, all these years of turmoil to nothing, maybe its time to shift the roads we are on.    

        Maybe my mind was in the right place unless my heart. I always thought stories are immortal and stories should be given to the generations. My generation were fed at the night by telling tales of Ramayan and Mahabharat but these kids are being fed with their mobile in hands, maybe I live in the wrong time frame. Books have been replaced with mobiles and stories are being replaced by Instagram feeds. I drop the laptop and shut my head down.

        'Chintu’ my neighbor called my name out, I lunged my head through window, he gestured me to walk down. I obliged. As I was stepping into the walk way, he whistled past me in his bicycle. I had been teaching him for over a month. His dream was always to ride a bicycle, maybe this was his day. He took his hands off the handle bar and began to ride, he was all smiles while I shouted ‘careful. He was happy and I was happy for him.

    26th November 2011,

        It was raining but we wanted to be with each other, we sat on the cliff of the water tank. Arun showed us a picture of his room, a photo of Illayaraja and a guitar hanging on his wall. Aravind told us about he life of a fish vendor. He had traveled to the coast which is about 14 kms from where we live, he spoke about how they lived and he told us that he had spent the entire afternoon with them and also had lunch with those people. I showed them a paper, I had written ‘My first step as writer’ and had written what we had spoken yesterday. We three were the most happiest in the world. 

     05th June 2020,

        Chintu came to me and hugged, He told that he had lived his dream to ride a bicycle and thanked me for helping him ride one. There was genuine happiness in his eyes, maybe that’s how people will be to live a dream. On the other side, here I was standing without knowing where I was going with my life.

        I shut myself down in my room and being to think, where have I gone wrong? Have I even gone wrong? Maybe not, I still live my dream. When I told I wanted to be a writer I never included success and fame in -between, success and fame creeped in from no where without my knowledge. All I wanted in my life was to become a writer and I write, that ends the story; people like it people don’t like it, successful or not was never in my dream. Chintu’s dream was to ride a bicycle and if he wins a tour de France or not, his dream still remains riding a bicycle. Even if Swamynathan never won the best photographer in National geographic channel at the end, it wouldn’t have made a difference, I would have still liked him and the movie. Success and fame was never an objective in my Dream. People trade in their Dreams to success and fame makes us to forget why we all started at the first step.

I logged into YouTube and searched for Aravind’s channel. There were 247 Videos in total, he had traveled to every part of India across various terrains and met different cultured people and has interacted with them. He had a total of 152 subscribers and there were 100 to 200 views to each video, Maybe he was after all living his dream. I searched for a site in Google which Arun gave me couple of years back, Arun had his own website, he played his own songs and recorded them, he also provided sheet music for old classical Illayaraja songs. The website had every thing related to music, chord progression techniques, arpeggio techniques for beginners and various scale patters, it had almost everything that I could even think of.

        I opened my laptop and began to type, maybe this is what I always dreamt of; to be a WRITER ! I called both Arun and Aravind and planned to stay up at my place this night. Maybe we three will sit on the water tank at 2.00 Am and speak about …