Abandoned

It isn’t always pets, places too are abandoned,

Where once people used to flock up and the sounds of laughter and chatter used to drown your voice, you’d now find impenetrable silence.

Broken only by the strayed wisp of wind or a lonely bird’s chirp, a sound that seems to have travelled from another world. In such situations it seems almost impossible to gauge whether you, in this godforsaken place, are out of place or whether it is this lonely bird, perched awkwardly on a pole, that seems queer.

Sometimes you might love this place for the quiet it offers. You might come to love it for the peace and solace it offers you from the humdrum of the world. Or you might love it for another reason altogether. The place, for you, represents how you feel within you; abandoned.

But have you considered that the place itself might be quiet, mourning for how it was forgotten so fast, that the place might be learning to love YOU for the same reasons?

It isn’t always places, people too are abandoned,

A person who was cherished at the time he opened his eyes. Adored when he attempted to utter those half formed words. Cared after and fussed over, each time he fell.
Growing up he struggles to find his identity, he struggles to get some people understand him, be by his side, and at least to a minimum degree, care for him,

Grown up he finds himself at the crossroads of life, choosing how to go on and whether, at all, to go on. He toiled all his life and his hands, in them, have nothing but blisters.

Sometimes you might loathe this person for being so cold or you might bask in his warmth. Stay in his presence for a while, look at how every crease and every smile in his life has marked itself on his face. Stay and observe him, for he has mastered the lessons that no book will ever teach you.

It isn’t always people, feelings too are abandoned,

It is the bursting happiness inside your heart when you see a loved one, or the tears that well up in your eyes but you try to drink them up, the cries that you’ve been bottling up inside all your life, the times when your hands sweat and shake but no matter what, you go on, with a poker face,

You cannot let any of these things show, for fear of being judged. You practice swallowing these feelings from the very beginning of your life, so by the time you’re grown up it just seems to be the autonomous response. Congratulations, you’ve learned the crucial surviving skill,

Sometimes you would appreciate how you grew up to be so strong and how you’ve tempered your feelings. You might even have come to a point where you can no longer tolerate being around sensitive people.

But have you looked within yourself lately? Have you looked and not found within you a longing to genuinely love someone and be loved by someone; do you not, at times, want to lay your head on someone and cry; do you not want to break in someone’s arms and be weak and vulnerable for a while?

It isn’t always feelings, stories too are abandoned,

The stories of people who suffered, people who have drowned within their own lives, people who submerge and later emerge radiating the light that blinds the spectators, people who glow polishing their exterior with a glowing color, people who burn and take down with them the whole world. People who do not burn. People, for whom, fire is only a catalyst,

There are stories that form themselves from the words circling around them, stories that create the cyclones, stories that tempt a wanderer like myself to pick up those words and knit them together into a strange looking muffler, stories that he wears around himself to keep him warm when the world turns chilling. Stories that keep us sane, stories that keep us on the edges of insanity so we know the difference, firsthand, between being sane and insane,

Sometimes these stories are created by a writer, other times by a madman, a lunatic. Both kind of stories are unbelievable, both a figment of fiction but we always choose to believe some at the cost of others. We choose to write some and let the others cross into another dimension of the forgotten land.

Whether these stories are formed by the writer or the writer is formed by them, one cannot tell. When you look at life, know that it is the greatest of the story tellers, greatest of the plot makers and when you observe it, know that we cannot tell whether our life is making up these stories or is it the other way around.