Strolling by the beach that idle sunday evening...I felt a sense of hollowness within...my feet were squeezing the sand beneath and the sand seemed to embrace them...I felt the sand kept a part of me with itself everytime I left an impression...maybe to remind me where I came from...and where I would eventually end up...to bring me back to reality...seems like a crazy analogy...dont even know if i could call it that...funny how something so ghoulish could be so humorous...it brought a smile to my face nonetheless...
I turned back to see the trail of footprints I had left behind...what if...nah...I banished the thought from my mind and moved ahead...it came back...but what if...hmmm...what if each of those footprints stood for some memory or milestone...what would all those prints denote...where would I start...lets start somewhere...perhaps some introspection will help...
...the day I was born and my dad gifted my mom a pressure cooker, a luxury at that time, especially with the resources they had...the first time I tripped over and fell in an effort to walk...the second time I tripped and hit my mouth to a pillar of our bed, bleeded profusely, sent my parents into a tizzy...the day i got lost in the city of mumbai, at age 3, spent the day with a nice policeman before my distressed father was contacted and I was taken home, they thought they had lost their first born but i thought it was rather fun, ironical i know...the day I decided that the girl down the lane was the one I wanted to marry, quite decisive at 7...when I understood what jealously was and cried like a cub...the first time I stole 500 rupees from my mother's purse so that our tenant's daughters could buy some books for school...the day I cried and howled coz my parents were taking me away
from my grandmother, it took a long time to forgive them...the night my dad disciplined me, I looked at that bruise all night long thinking to myself, had I done something so heinous to deserve it...the time I fell in love with Betty, i
wondered what Archie saw in Veronica anyways...the moment I ran away from home, free like a bird, like I had been trapped in foresome prison for so long...the disappointment I felt when I was brought back home...the tears trailing down my mother's cheeks when she hugged me that day, the first time I felt there was something real between us, not just a social bond...the joy my father felt when he found out I had passed my High School Board exams with distinction...the dejection he felt when I failed in my Senior year...the first time I felt I had the strength to fight the odds stacked against me...also the same time I realised that nothing in life would come easy to me, I would have to sweat blood to achieve my aims, but I would achieve them, even if I died trying...
...how many more thoughts came to my mind...like an instant flashback...reminded me of the last lines that Kevin Spacey spoke in American Beauty...funny how things unrelated can feel so relative...the thoughts and memories kept pouring in...the day I fell in love for the first time, the dress she wore, the way her lips moved, the feeling it left inside me,like summer rain and I was happy to be soaked in the moment...the dampness would remain forever, i knew...the day her father took her away from me...the day I retaliated and went to meet her...the journeys i made to the middle of the desert, just to catch a glimpse of her smile...the pain and sacrifice of each moment of partition and the euphoric joy of being together...the night I saw her one final time...that last phonecall to say that final goodbye...the days and nights didnt matter after that...but the strength inside me refused to die...the girl I kissed on new years eve...the other, whose heart I broke unforgivingly...the one I let go when nothing could be...the one I tried to convince to stand by me...when I wanted something it never happened...and when I least expected...It came and stood next to me...like it had been there all along...
...funny...there were just so many things...my heart would burst...so i closed my ears and screamed out loud...the sound of the waves hushed my cries...they brought me back to the beach, the sea and the sand...why was life like this??...would no one tell me the answer...the emptiness inside would consume me...and then after the adrenalin rush of that moment...my mind calmed down, it had a similar influence on my body...I felt relaxed...take me away from here I told myself...if only I could start all over again...
...i picked up myself again...some more memories...i turned back to see those memories...but this time...the foot prints behind me had gone...what did it mean...I looked up the sky, the stars and the moon...I hadnt noticed the lighthouse on the hill...giving distressed ships the hope of finding the coast...maybe I just needed to find the lighthouse...I could start life all over again..the footprints were gone, washed away...i felt sedated and pacified...it was not the end...it was only the beginning...
