Breaking of the fellowship

I have tried doing it once. But you know, gossamer wing and iridescent dust is all that remains of a butterfly you try to grab in your hand.

I behold this story apathetically, with a retrospective equanimity. This is my epic. The one closest to me. I have been in and out of the frame. Someday, we all have to sit before our own monuments. We all run that reel in reverse – the ethical dilemmas, anxieties, the abysmal fear, the relief, euphoria, excitement-all become our own. Our labours. Our vicissitudes. Our epic.

The fellowship shall not just break in the days to come, it will be lost forever. You will find strangers flitting past you now and then, faint shadows of what they had been. Next time you meet them, you won't be you they seek and them won't be them you looked for.

Today, I sit alone on the banks of a river of light, its visions changing ceaselessly. The older, guiding lights of my childhood slowly flicker away and diverge from the field of view. A few have kept me company- thin strands between present and past. I should have reversed that flow, if I had the power to.

Maybe it would be so great to re-enter, its bitterness enjoyable even, for I am cognizant of this play’s ultimate destiny. Can reliving your life be as painfully joyous as the nostalgia that grows with each passing day?

But then, it has been ‘my’ monument, ‘my’ perspective. The story of my life as I like to remember it. Time wouldn’t be as lenient with facts. Would not those scars hidden assiduously behind the layers of nostalgic paint be revealed? Events so traumatic that they kill a part of your brain ; debilitate its capacity to recapitulate.

I shall remain a spectator by these banks, with the wisdom that departure is the final denouement. The lights before me will grow fainter and merge when the final darkness comes. Time effaces those scars, and slowly the vision of those days when it all began grows brighter and flawless. History, as always, is changing into legend.

Shailesh.

P.s. : The author plans to regularize this blog . Look for a post every Wednesday.