Time Turner

Looking back
I wonder now
Could things have been different?
And I wonder how.

There's so much that
I would like to erase
Things that I did
Just in case.

Why was I
So scared to do
Things that I wanted,
Things that were true?

Why did I do
All those things
Things that I shouldn't have,
Things that I did.

But now it's too late,
We're leaving so soon
Never coming back
To this very room.

If I had a time turner
I would go back,
Undo the mistakes,
Put my wrongs in the sack.

If I had a time turner
I would change
Everything that happened
When things went out of range.

If I had a time turner.

But then I see
These memories are mine
I shouldn't want to erase them
In the future, anytime.

Maybe, if I had a time turner
I would go back
And replay the past,
Do everything I did first.

A memory is a memory,
There's no way to change,
We should be happy
Even when things go out of range.

The Memory

It was like time was suddenly standing still. The light breeze that had rippled through her hair just seconds ago vanished. Not a soul was in sight. The salty smell of the sea persisted, saturating the air. But her mind was elsewhere, in a different time, a different place, where she had been a different girl. The surroundings, however, were starkly similar.

She was lost. She let the memory consume every part of her, every molecule of her body. When she breathed, it was no longer just the salty smell of the ocean, but that intermingled with so many other wonderful aromas. When she listened, there was soft, melodious music. Dancing. Joy.

Suddenly, something flickered. The light went out and she could no longer see anything. She groped through the air, as if trying to catch something. The memory was leaving her, and fast - the happiness and laughter fading away. She gasped as she tried to hold on to it, but thread by thread, it disappeared, until she could see the last wisps of it fading into the deep ocean waters; until she realised that it was just that - a memory.

A Dream found,
Eagerly unwrapped
With a passionate vigour.
New hopes
Seep the horizon
Saturating the air around.
Intense
Determination
Drives away clouds of doubt;
Of discomfort;
Of old, impossible,
Lost hopes.

Somehow,
Somewhen,
Somewhere,
The Dream shattered,
Hopes, crushed.
All that is left:
Longing and despair.
Life becomes
An empty shadow,
Shallow and meaningless.

Trapped

The complications of a single clinging emotion; the fear of Death; the abstractness of a world that seems but cannot be. We spend a lifetime breaking things down, making life simple, only to create a complicated little mess of muddled feelings, of lingering thoughts. Of dissatisfaction; of the complete opposite of simple. For simplicity is what this world lacks. What we call 'mundane' is in fact a complicated cluster of abstractness called life. We seem to be in love with the complexities put forward to us. We claim to try to simplify life, but we simply fail. Miserably. So we exist, with no peace of mind, with thoughts and feelings and emotions that weigh us down to this worldly world. And then, we are trapped. Deprived of any trace of freedom that might have once existed within us.

'Life'? Yeah, right.

I guess that, off late, I've been omitting every detail of my all-of-a-sudden terrible, not-the-least-bit fun, so called 'life'.

Well. Twelfth, the most overrated year ever, has come to an official start (*weeps like she's never wept before*), and all of us are at our wits' end, studying for this exam and that test. Yes, life has taken a plunge into what is normally called chaos. Every 12th grader's life has become even crazier than their heads, with twenty or so lovely guides engulfing them day in and day out. Not a pretty sight, no sir.

Proof : I am half asleep right now, with a jumble of Physics formulae in my head and NOTHING on my paper today, mind you.

Things are going well indeed.

Oh, yes, and not to mention, it's the final year of schooling, and we are deprived of even a single second to sit back and think about every nostalgic memory that plagues us and makes us want to take a trip to the past. So.

On the bright side, there's always the immense amount of pampering you receive at home. Food, when you want it, if you want it (*sigh*), as THEY think you're always studying (THEY don't know anything, do they?). Chocolate, at your service, no lectures about losing weight, as every free second must be spent with your temporary love interest - Pradeep's FundaMental Physics (the seventeenth, extensively revised edition).

And, when it's not that, when you actually sit down for a breath or two, hoping upon hope that the hostile situations you face can soon be banished away, the clock strikes, and it's time for your Nth tuition class this week.

And they say miracles happen.

A Million Little Pieces

She couldn't help but feel that the perfection of her life was slowly falling apart. The beauty and serenity of it had shattered into millions of lifeless shards. Before, everything had been sketched out perfectly, with utmost sureness, like the markings on a map. Her past, her present, her future. Everything.

And then, this happened. The best, the worst thing of her life. Everything changed, and she was left stumbling in the dark, caught between choosing happiness and sorrow when she couldn't even see which was which. Oh, the unfairness of it all. If she was given a chance, she might have chosen differently, but she knew that she would have stumbled in the dark either way. For, no matter the choice, she would always be discontent; left with wondering what would have happened if she had chosen the other path.

But soon, she understood. She understood that it is impossible to be content if we are always thinking about the different possibilities of different choices. For there are many futures - many, many futures. But we choose only one, and it is only by accepting this choice of ours, can we remain content in this world of many possibilities, many futures, and many choices.

And so, she decided. She knew that she could go on stumbling in the dark, wondering if she would have been happier if fate had taken a different turn. Or, she could be content, believe that this is the happiest she could get, and accept that given the choice again, she wouldn't choose any other way.

So, she put the shards back together, piece by piece, the millions of lifeless shards. Slowly, patiently, she built back, breathed life into them. And when she was done, she felt stronger than ever before.

The Man and the Tree

'Perhaps the tree is happy this way', thought the old man to himself, 'standing proud and tall, looking upon the world in the most graceful manner.' He knew that time passed slowly for a tree as old as this one. But as he looked closer he realized that the tree glowed with a surprising, unexpected radiance. Its entire being seemed to bathe in true wisdom and enlightenment.

The old man couldn't help but feel that such reminisces were a sign of upcoming senility, but reminiscing he was. Off late, the tree had become an obsession. He had played around the tree as a little boy, sat under it to study and think about the wonders of the world as a young man, and even brought his wife to this very tree, when it was in full bloom, pink and white flowers scattering the ground.

However, in all his years of acquaintance with this tree, he had never bothered to give a second thought to the tree itself. Now, as an old man, he felt as though he was a part of the tree- he felt its- no- her (for the tree seemed to be a she) essence floating around, finding its way into him. Somehow, in the most uncanny and almost literal way, his life had revolved around the tree.

He slowly closed his eyes as he took in the smell of the age-old bark, and grazed his fingers over the trunk. He almost felt like he was in love with the tree, funnily so. But, he couldn't help it; the tree brought back so many nostalgic memories. So many, many, for it was right in front of his childhood home, and he laid eyes on it once every day for the first seventeen years if his life, and once every week for the last sixty.

Love, it was. But it was a different kind of love. A love so complex, he hardly knew what he was feeling. A love attached more to memories, proximity and a strange admiration than to anything else.

A love that seemed to have broken all barriers between the animate and the inanimate.

Love. That's all we need. :)

/fin

Alone

Perhaps
It is too late.
Time, fleetingly, passes on.
Grudgingly
I tread,
Leaving it all behind.
You reach out
Only in vain,
For this journey, I must make alone.
Slivers of happiness
Wisps of memories
Dance around me, in the warm summer air.
Tempted
I touch the tiniest bubble of hope.
It bursts.
Slowly,
Stealthily,
The truth comes crashing down.
And I know
It’s too late to forgive,
I have to forget
For this journey, I must make alone.

And the future is a not-so-distant haze

Every second person I meet seems to gain some sort of sadistic pleasure by simply popping THE question at me- 'so, what do you want to do after 12th?' And I, being the unbelievably confused idiot I am, choose to do nothing more than just sit there, staring and blinking, as though someone has just asked me to name all the presidents in reverse order. Sheesh.

Yes, FYI alert, that is the most commonly asked question in my life. Fascinating, really. I feel like a princess/superstar. Or both. People are paying so much attention to me. All that's missing now is a tiara saying 'Help!' God.

And as if that one question is just not enough to send me into this whirlwind of confusion, this is quickly followed by, 'and which colleges are you planning to consider?' Enough to make me want to scream and say that I'd be honoured if any college considers me. No, the other way around simply does not work here.

Honestly, I've dreamt of being a writer ever since I was six years old. Most people say that as children, they wanted to be different things every day, but for me, this is the one thing that i was always sure of wanting. As I grew older and my horizons expanded, it moved on to 'a journalist who writes novels'. Even when everyone convinced me to do a professional course like engineering at the UG level, I was sure that after I got through with that it would be a straight road to journalism. It even sounded really nice, doing something totally professional and then writing for the rest of my life. I mean, what more could I want really?

I still want all of this, I'm sure it's the path I want to choose. But there's always this tiny thorn of doubt hiding somewhere, stopping me from saying this to anyone because of the secretive, startling unsurity of it all. Perhaps it's because I greatly doubt the credibility of my writing skills. Or perhaps I feel that people will think this sort of path is plain.. mental.

Talk about confusion.

Ten things you are expected to do on reaching 12th grade

1) Gain a brain capacity the size of Jupiter.

2) Magically regain all of the previous years' knowledge, in spite of just scraping through eleventh grade.

3) Make detailed colour-coded timetables with a study plan of 25 hours a day.

4) Complete all your assignments and keep your notebooks up to date.(How?)

5) Draw margins for every notebook and suddenly make your handwriting super neat.(I don't own a ruler...)

6) Not have fun. (But...)

7) Give your phone back to your parents. (*piercing death-like scream*)

8) Set (good) examples for your juniors. (Pah.)

9) Gain impeccable organisations skills and make sure time management is second nature to you.

10) STUDY. (Oh no.)

Paradise Found

He held his hand out to her, palm facing the shadowy sky, prompting her to hold it. Unwillingly, apprehensively, she linked her fingers through his. "Let me show you", he whispered.

And, oh, the beauty of the place. Rays of sunlight bounced back and forth, blinding her eyes in the most comforting manner. Each long stalk of grass glistened where it caught the light, with big, round dew drops peacefully resting on the tips. She looked up at the sky, vast, clear, and panoramic; a boundless blue canvas, seeming to end only where it met the ground, forming a spectacular horizon. A bed of bright red poppies could be seen not far off, embedded between rows of pink tulips, the colours of love and life intertwined, pulsating a feeling unlike any other. She could almost feel the happiness vibrating from each petal, large clusters of joy emanating from the buzzing of the bees, replacing what could have been a melancholy silence.

This was so unlike the war torn world she had left behind. She made no attempt to blink away the tears that brimmed her eyes. To think she had once felt that she would go all her life without seeing this sort of beauty. Now, after taking all of it in, she wondered how she could have possibly stayed so long without viewing the true colours of the world, the vibrancy only heard of, never seen or felt in so many, many years.

This, she realised, was true bliss. Ecstasy. Paradise. The true meaning of life.

On the cliff

She floats by, day and night
Long gown flowing, a magical white
Upon the cliff, in the silver moonlight,
Waiting, waiting, waiting...
Years have passed, since that day,
When the soldiers left, up from the bay,
Lingering on her lips were words she could not say,
Waiting, waiting, waiting...
Aboard that ship, her lover went,
To fight the bloody war, he was sent,
Leaving her behind, all alone,
Waiting, waiting, waiting...
On the cliff, she stays each night,
Long gown flowing, a magical white,
Sparkling eyes wide, in the pale moonlight,
Waiting, waiting, waiting...

Change.

Gandhiji said, "we must be the change we want to see." We all exist for a purpose, but one unanimous thing is how all of us want to see some change, of course, in different magnitudes. Whether it is a seemingly insignificant day-to-day change or a noble change of achieving world peace, we all want it.

What is frustrating is not being able to implement this change. There are things happening around the world, every second of every day, people dying, lying, cheating. And all we do is sit at home and hear about them. We may feel strongly and may want to do something to change the way things are, but circumstances prevent us from doing so. This is probably what is most frustrating. I mean, there's something there, something you feel strongly for, something you want to change to make the world a better place, something you desperately want to do- but- there's a downside- you just can't. It's there, within your grasp, you reach for it. You know catching it will make all the difference. But you just can't. Period.

That's the big question- why can't we? We have the resources, the power, the potential, the creativity, ideas and intellect- and complete willingness as well, the icing on the cake. We have everything but we simply do not put any of these into use. Why don't we? Why don't we cross every hurdle and bring down every barrier to achieve what we want to and implement change and make the world a better place?

No. No one is asking for a fairy tale world with princes who fight off evil dragons and live happily ever after. No. Just a good, sweet, happy place. A world full of trust, love and friendship. Something worth fighting for. Something worth living for.

At least for this, we have to, got to, must, make a change- put in every last molecule of effort to alter the very mindsets of people and make them see the good in everything. Change them. Change the world. For the better.