LIVING TO THE POINT OF BREATHLESSNESS!

Its true that when u live a certain way, you’re used to that life, you see it differently, you peep in and see that the water is blue and the waves are thunderous... but when you’re flown away while you were sleeping, into a different world, a different space and when your eyes open you realize This is your world. To adjust your eyes to your new self, even your reflection in the mirror doesn’t look the same anymore. But then you look at the same blue green water and suddenly you can see a zillion living forms that breathe under that water, their entire world that thronged right below your feet, something you never noticed before. Perhaps because you could never see it. Now you do.

Its true. What a change of place, just a literal shift of location can really change the way you look at things. Your perspective on yourself, redefine what you want from life. Sitting on a flight, have you ever peeped outside the windows, seen those humungous clouds and asked yourself, what lies ahead? If this journey was etched in those lines of my palm? Hell no, we never go this philosophical on a simple flight well do we?

But as we step down the flight steps exiting the airport of a completely new place, leaving your folks behind, your room…your bed that you so made it your own with all those funny looking pillows and hair bands tied to different corners...your pals...hell, your life. Settled life. With 1.5 hours of some manmade machine that flies on air, you’ve been torn away from all that you called ‘Yours’ to a new place you’re yet to shake hands with and introduce yourself to, let alone make friends with. I step into a barren flat. Walls that stare back at me every time I call out to my own self... no one was around anyway. The room that I pick will be my new room. Bed...yes there will be my bed; I’ll try and recreate the magic that will make me want to dream before I close my eyes on this one. I move about ferociously setting a few objects that I carried from my earlier home into this one...trying to make it seem ‘my own’. Mum dad sister... god… everything was settled in place. My pillows…those hair bands… I managed to get them all. But did it still feel ‘home’? You got it. It got dirty on busy days, but there were no motherly shrieks that demanded an instant clean up accompanied with predictions of my doomed married life…there were no thrown chocolate wrappers that reminded me of my dad who’d just produce them out of nowhere any given time of the day…here was my god, but no bells ringing early morning… yes every day I missed ‘home’ in my home. But we have what they show in those K serials… death in family, back to red saree and red earrings the next morning at the breakfast table. Resilience. Adaptability.

As months passed, I adapted. Chocolates were bought, by me. Wrappers were thrown. My roomie did shriek when I messed it all up…Seemed like my home but characters had changed, dialogues were different and the script too was totally different. I was slogging day and night…and funny but I realize as I sit typing this, that its only when you’re in complete shit of things, busy, helter-skelter and hotchpotch when you hatch the prettiest of dreams, the strongest of goals, the softest of fantasies…and so as I slogged day in and day out, my aching legs made me dream. And I dreamt of all those things that almost always came easy to me when I stayed with family. And now as I lay staring at the sky from my room window I realize, miles and miles away, this is what I’ve probably been sent to do. To dream. Dream the unreal…and make it true.

Funny is it not, a reality check in every sense is just making me dream…bigger, larger, sweeter.
A change of place and lifestyle has changed the way I look at myself today. I stand alone yes I do, but I stand holding my positivity, my beliefs, and my dreams close to me…right where my family stood just months back. The scene’s changed…I think this is a new phase of my life - When the sparrow flies away from its nest. But I’m going to fly back, with a zillion more grains of cereal in my beak than my father sparrow ever fed me.

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“Life is full of beauty. Notice it. Notice the bumble bee, the small child, and the smiling faces. Smell the rain, and feel the wind. Live your life to the fullest potential, and fight for your dreams.”