Book 3: Learning to Fly
Epistle 41: Running Through the Wilderness
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21st March, 2004:
Today is my day of escape.
A day where I do not belong to the world and it does not belong to me. It was my day off, a day I'd rightfully earned after having such a hard month. So at four in the morning without telling Baba, I slipped on my running shoes and a sling bag with you in it and left home. Running away... running away as far as my legs could take me; running away as hard as I could until my surroundings were nothing more than a blur, the noises around me insignificant.
What mattered were the beats of my heart I could hear ringing in my ears; what mattered was that I was alive and human.
This isn't the first time I've done this but this is the first time I'm telling you about it. This is something that nobody knows about, not even Ishaani. This day is my own; nobody knows where I go and what I do. And that's how I prefer keeping it. This is my solace, my day. I cannot share its whereabouts with anyone because it is my world of peace, my world of oblivion.
It's a tough world out there. And as day after day passes where my transition from being a boy into an adult only gets more pronounced, I realize how on edge I am exactly from falling into a world I neither like nor want to be a part of. I'm tired and tired and tired of being judged for the background I come from. For who the world sees me as.
A servant.
When I lost the ability of walk four years ago, I realized that my world had changed forever in that minute. I had changed forever in that moment. The fruit of life seemed so much more precious in that moment, so much more blissful that it took me to be on the tenterhooks of death to realize what life held for me. It was a gift whose value I realized in those moments when I felt everything slipping away from my grasp, everything except pain. That was the only thing I could hold on to that made me feel alive, that helped me maintain a foothold in a world that suffocated me.
I lost my hope to live. I just wanted it all to end. The pain, the suffering... everything. I was tired of clinging on to the pain, tired of making pain my companion. It wasn't a good companion at all... it made me want to rip my heart out and shred it. Even till this date I don't know what happened that night... why Love died in my dream and how she took it all away and gave me a new birth in the arms of Ishaani.
Is that why she saw me die that night?
But she's seen me die the same way even after that night... I wonder why she dreams of it or how true it is. It may be partly true, maybe wholly. Who knows? Dreams are a mystery no man can solve because it has never been fully understood. For the sanity of the two of us, I hope it isn't true. But can we ever run away from our destiny? Can we ever change it? Is there any reality in the fact that there are those moments where what we speak comes true... that our destiny can change in that one fateful moment?
How much more are we meant to run until we have to come to a stop?
And since four years, I've been running. Running hard enough so that I can finally catch the moon. So that the horizon can meet me somewhere. So that I can chase my ambitions and dreams; so that I can become the man my parents and Mota Babuji want me to become. So that I can finally be an equal. I can never forget that day when Mota Babuji had come over to my room to take my advice on the Reliance Petroleum shares. I was so sure that I'd blown up my chance with my risky and rash ideas.
I did not know that it would be the first step to achieving what I truly want to become in life.
I remember how Mota Babuji had managed to sell off all of his shares in high profits before the prices crashed at the stock markets, and Mota Babuji began the cycle again on yet another advice from me. And he managed to buy up to 40,000 shares at their lowest price before the upward trend began yet again, until Reliance Petroleum made a breakthrough with the much-hyped about hit at the gas reserve the next year.
It was announced India's biggest gas discovery at the Krishna-Godavari basin in nearly three decades and one of the largest gas discoveries in the world during 2002, also being the first ever discovery by an Indian private sector company. Mota Babuji were amongst the few who managed to make an overnight jackpot of a fortune out of the whole affair and since then, I've been Mota Babuji's official advisor on several of the share portfolios handled by the Parekh Broking Solutions.
It's been four years and I've never disappointed him till date.
Since then, there has been no stopping me. This is where I see myself, this is who I am - a natural at stocks and shares. A natural at predicting, planning and strategizing. A calculative risk-taker. And ever since I've known, I've been running towards my goals with a passion that I've never felt before. A passion that might only be lesser than the one I feel for Ishaani. I want to become someone who my parents and my Mota Babuji can be proud of, but more importantly, who Ishaani can be proud of.
She's always been by the my side, her hand in my own every time anyone calls me a servant, assuring me that as long as she saw me for who I was, it was alright. She always was the medicine to my wounds every time I took the scolding for her, saving her from Baa's wrath and venomous words. She was the one person who I've truly ever cared about, the one person who is my Universe.
She is the one who gave me a new life. The least I could do is give her my heart... my soul. My existence.
She's been beside me through thick and through thin, supporting me through my dreams that are too big for my tiny mind. She's been there to hold me every time the world's atrocities are too much to bear, whenever the title of being a driver's son and a servant become too much to live with. It isn't a pretty existence, but it's something that I'm learning to live it.
So just like every time when things get too much to bear, I simply go for a run. A long, never-ending run where there is no destination, no world, no pain, no society... nothing. Just me and my heartbeats, just me and the feeling of being alive. It's too often when I forget what it feels like to be thankful of what God has given me, what so many people are deprived of. Sometimes, I forget that it took me two years to get back on my feet where I could run without the slightest trace of a limp, without the slightest trace of the fact that I had ever been this close to being a vegetable.
So it's my feet carrying me away as far as it can, the warm, sweet winds hitting my face with the same force that my heart pound against my ribs, nature's green blanket sufficient for my buzzing brain to find a relief that the world often stripped me of. And like always, I ended up running through the forests, my feet halting as I crossed the bridge between the Earth and Paradise, the crest cradling the soft flowing river always captivating my fancy where I sat for hours, collecting my thoughts and my emotions.
There was a long way to go. There was a lot to be done.
There was no place for defeat in my book, there was no place for being weak. I was a shield, I was made that way. I was a warrior not just by name, but by what life threw against me as well. When I'd lost the ability to walk, I had nearly given up until life gave me another chance. Another chance to fight and to build way for what I wanted to become, for what I desired to become.
That incident changed my life forever, not just because it was the five most grueling and challenging months that I'd had to live through - physically, mentally and emotionally. But because when I walked out of it, it had changed me as a person as well. I did not know what it was to give up any more, I did not know what it was to wait for miracles. I was my own miracle, my survival a talisman against what I'd just lived through.
There was to be no stopping me now, there was nothing to hold me back. I'd broken through the bonds of my own pessimism, I'd broken through the pain that I'd made my refuge. But I still have a long way to go. I refuse to go down without a fight; I would fight life head on. If I am a servant to the world, so be it. The world doesn't matter to me.
What matters is what the people who I love think about me. What Ishaani thinks about me.
But that still doesn't make the constant judging easy. Oh, I know what it takes to painfully smile every time a snide comment is made upon your ancestors, I know what it takes to gulp away the angry retort that is so close to escaping my lips when someone talks rudely to my father. I know the restraint it takes me to not cry when I must suffer Baa's wrath when I'm trying to save Ishaani, I know the way I pull myself up every time someone raises a finger over my loyalty for my Mota Babuji when they think I'm some kind of gold-digger who's done voodoo over my mentor.
I know what it takes to live every day with the fact that at the end of the day, you are only ever seen as a driver's son.
But that's what makes me stronger every day. That's what reminds me every day that there is no margin for error, no margin for distractions, and no margin for emotions to overtake practicality. There is no place to succumb to the cruelties of the world, not when there was so much to achieve, so much to be won over. That's what keeps me going. That's my secret to my thick-skinned exterior.
Nobody is allowed to penetrate it (maybe except Ishaani), and that's why running helps so much. It is leaving behind the resentment and anger that rose into my chest every single time at the injustice. It makes me weak and it has to be done away with. It makes me question whether I have the right to a normal life, to a life of equality. If life couldn't offer it, I'd make sure to pave way for it. I owed it to my parents and to Mota Babuji and Falguni Maa atleast.
All just so that I can become an equal to Ishaani one day. So that I can think of her without the fear of thinking that I am overstepping my boundaries, that I am betraying the trust of my Mota Babuji and his loyalty.
Keep running - my mind screamt at me as I ran blindly through the trees - don't stop. And I ran as fast as I culd until my lungs felt like they are on fire, my legs no longer able to carry me any further. I could feel myself drenched to the core. The doctors had advised me to take up healthy running once the recovery in my legs had become more and more pronounced, but what I do is obsessive running, which is undoubtedly unhealthy. It helps, no doubt, and the doctors say that I've got excellent health and vitals now. But at times it did more harm than good.
I felt my knees wobble as I finally fell to my feet after a stretch of mindless running for goodness knows how much time, my body heaving with sharp intakes of breath, the stitches at my sides now getting pulled. I covered my face in my palms as I sat upon the rocks at the bank of the river, screaming as loudly as my voice would carry across the encompassed forest, the birds instantly flying away from their nests at the sudden disruption of their peace. I felt my heart beat irregularly as my heaving turns into dry sobs, my mind simply wanting the solace.
I breathed in deeply, trying to collect my emotions and thoughts while I stemmed the overwhelming sensation of wanting to fly into the highest of winds or the deepest of oceans to get away from my own vulnerability. I couldn't entrust everything to Ishaani... I love her too much to do that. Besides, she has her own share of problems to face in this cruel world. So my solace has to be from loneliness, it has to be the one companion who I can trust my guilty secrets to. And who better than the natural bubble that God has made us? Mother Earth, I shall be at your mercy.
The rivers make their assurance known to me with the soft splashing of their foamy water against the rocks while the rustling of the winds against the cheerful leave and trees let me know that everything would become alright eventually. The sunlight now streams through the thicket of greenery to promise me that there would be a destination to my aimless running... that I would reach where I wanted one day, beating all odds and evens. The winds caress my cheeks with the vow that I was human at the end of the day, and God made no difference for all were his children. The twittering of God's several other creations let me know of their approval and disapproval about whatever I let them know.
Oh, it is a tranquil escape into a magnificently beautiful realm. An escape into a world where I am human, an equal worthy of the same amount of respect and dignity. An escape where there is no judgment, only salvation. I wash my face with the cold, supple water from the river, a new source of energy building within me to bear what is to come.
It would be alright. The world is strong, but I am stronger. Nothing could keep me away from what I want to achieve, and nothing could break me. Every man was allowed his moments of weakness, every man was allowed to have his moment of imperfection. Imperfection was not a flaw, it was a virtue that reminded one every day that they were human. And I was done with my share for now.
I am a boy with a dream, an ambition, and a destination. And there's no stopping me, not when I have the people I love having my back. And Ishaani's hand in my own. As long as I have her, I have no fear. As long as I have her, she is my world. And that's a world I love and want to remain a part of. As long as she sees me for who I truly am, nothing was difficult to achieve.
All I have to do is run back to her through the wilderness.
Constructive criticism will be more than welcome and sorry for any typos! :D :D
Next chapter:
Epistle 42
Edited by LadyMeringue - 8 years ago
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