You

I haven’t written for a long while. Obviously, I have put down words on some form of paper, but rest assured, that was not writing. What I mean by writing is the spontaneous effervescence of ideas and a gushing, uncontrolled stream of emotions all but neatly smacked onto paper.

Maybe it is that I haven’t had anything to write about, or that I haven’t had the necessity to breathe over paper. Earlier, bleeding out at my typewriter was the only way I was able to fly, far out above the constraints that real life places on us, splicing emotions and watching the various tones in life dance, all while absorbed in some figment of my imagination.

Realizing reality in virtual experiences does sound strange doesn’t it?

But ever since you came along, I’ve realized this need not be the only writing that I could do that I don’t write to emote or push out metaphors only. Yes, you there. Reading this, as I write, somewhere in some corner of the world that I, if I am lucky, may be able to experience someday.

Let me tell you a story.

A night with skies the colour of coal; perfectly ordinary coal, no flames and no fumes. The heavens are pitch, inky black with no streaks of light or any indications of the worlds up above them. And I am standing on the ground beside a river, devoid of any movement, fishes. That night, the river looked like a dark hole in the ground that would swallow anything, man or otherwise, who would make the mistake of coming too close.

This is where I was when I started writing.

Suddenly, blinding white light pierces through the darkness and the eruption of sound makes my ears ring. The heat follows suit, and there is an enormous, brilliant streak of blue racing from the sky towards the earth. As I turn my eyes towards the sky, I see countless behemoths of water and air span the entirety of the coal-black canvas. The Rain has arrived.

This is when you came in.

And then, in the fraction of a second, it all happened. My soul, having been in the perennial darkness for far too long, met fire. And, oh what a sight it was to see the demons within writhe and roll to escape the scalding heat of you. If I had been the barren, seedless tree on the banks of this motionless river, you were the spark that had torn down my crumbling edifices and decimated my rotten, redundant facades.

This is what you did.

And now, I see oh so much more. The subtle tinges of colours in the sunset every day that I had been blind to earlier. The way the wisps of smoke curl over the incense sticks, as my mother prays beside me, with an almost effortless aura of divine reception. The blood, ice and fire in someone’s tone. The music in someone’s voice. The fragrances in the air. The white static of crowds. You have turned my falsely complete world into what it should be. Broken, fractal, and perfect in its imperfections.

And this is why I’m writing. To freeze all of what I see, hear and feel for all of eternity. After all, where better to hide a Time Machine than in the pages of books?