Midnight 27th May: The morning after

It's my struggle to become an individual,sitting all alone in my balcony in midnight.... I'm all alone in the wing, most of the people have gone on the weekend. I am sitting all alone in the balcony with none to give me company, in the idyllic summer night looking at the heavens above, the full moon and the deserted campus. I see a faint light appearing far away on the eastern horizon and soon hear a dull moaning sound. It's one of the international flights heading for routine landing at nearby international airport. It flies overhead and soon disappears. Very soon the next one will appear on the same plotted path and then the next and next.... Does not matter to me nor to the world as long as there is no void created and anything passing off is replaced. This routine rhythm brings monotony to life.

I feel a strong gust of wind and the trees swaying wildly in it. Beautiful nature! Wordsworth saw London from a bridge and wrote a poem or may be it was somebody else! I try to recollect the poem which I had read in school, but in vain. But it was about a bridge, the river and city coming to life. I too think of doing the same, with city going to sleep (blame it on my pessimistic vision). But when I sit down with pen and paper, do I realise that this city is not London nor am I Wordsworth. Put down pen and paper and curse at my inadequate phoneme for poetry.

As usual in the moments of predicament and perplexity,hands automatically move to the pocket to look for something. Take out a packet of Wills. Sometimes.somewhere,I had heard someone rhyming "Boost is the secret of my energy" with "Wills is the cigarette of my energy". Light a cigerette and again recollect someone quoting Ayn Rand "I like the sight of fire between my fingers.......greatest force of nature tamed between the fingers of mankind". It gives such a strong sense of power though self deceptive.

I read on the packet"Statutory Warning -Cigarette smoking is injurious to health" Then why do I smoke ?Somebody asked me or was it myself? How do I explain this? Do I feel myself on cloud no nine or floating in air? I don't know but I feel time dilated and space transcending, though for a fleeting second. What if it reduces five minutes of my life? Why not sojourn in my own visualization of ecstatic trance, far far away from the reality, though for a brief moment.

You need to be intoxicated in life sometimes. Presumably each of us have our own conception of hallucination. You need to drown yourself into something, something out of the hassels of academics, grades, attendence, affairs, breakups...... to flee from the reality. For some it may be nicotine,for some it may be 'Cocaine' (might be hit number by Clapton,I mean music),or just a whiff or cool breeze. Depends on what turns you on.

But soon the paradise is lost and grim realities take solid shape out of the plume of smoke. I hear the Paraclete saying to me "quit this habit. It carries a bad impression on others"

How does it matter what people think about me? Ha! Ha! Ha!...No! That is what we all are living for .All human endeavours are governed by desire to be great. My life is out of my hands, its rein is controlled by the people around me. All of us trying eternally to present our very best to the world and so am I. Presenting a good image to the world. This image would kill the object,myself.

People see me as a gentleman,so I ought not shout and hoot though I ardently long to. People know me as very generous and coperative so I have to give my prac. report though I don't wish to share it. This world importunes definite behaviour out of us, in keeping with our past behaviour pattern. Where do my instincts go? Yah! for sure this image is built up by people and myself alike based on my past. But I am not a programmed machine but a human being and human nature is capricious like mother nature. I long to be different at times. But Alas! it's so difficult. Only those who have the prerogative of having been dubbed 'Unpredictable' by the people around can be so.

But why am I bound by these chains? Why don't I repudiate these social norms?It's not the people binding me but myself.It's me who is treating my shadow as my image.Why do I think what people think of me? I have more right upon myself than any one else. I just need to be my natural self and live my life according to my whim.'Damn this world'.I will live for myself.

The loneliness has transformed into peace. I remember reading Tagore in HU324 class" I wake up the next morning to find that I am more dear to myself than I ever was". I sleep waiting for the morning.