“Heavy hearts, like heavy clouds in the sky, are best relieved by letting of a little water.”
                             -Antoine Rivarol
She looked out of her window into the cold world that stretched out in front of her. She couldn’t blame herself for feeling coldness around her; it was the time of winter. The sky was a canvas of grey and black clouds. And the eerie silence filled in the ambience of despair. Her mind was in total chaos; what kind of world did she live in? What kind of people surround her? People who call this world a beautiful place to live in and so on, she wanted to ask them what was so beautiful about the cold world that is abounding in hypocrisy, selfishness, and greediness. She was entering a threshold of a new phase, a new chapter of her life but the excitement was absent in her and all she found within herself a depressingly darkness; that made her afraid of losing her innocence.
She had her dreams like every other person but she lived her life by those dreams. She measured and weighed everything around by those dreams. A very dreamy person, she was! She wanted to change this beautiful world that had lost its beauty, shine and lustre, she wanted to change the system that looked up someone as good or evil, that weighed someone’s actions in the parameters of good and evil and those parameters were insufficient and hypocritical as the system. The world is an ugly place to live in and the odyssey of life runs its course through this ugly place with all its “shine” and “beauty.”
Looking out of her window, she becomes nostalgic of the happy moments of her childhood when she was treated as a delicate porcelain doll, the apple of her parents’ eyes. Alas! How time flew and so had those happy moments vanished into the hollowness of growing up. The snow had begun to fall down in small flakes, and so had her tears that rolled down like precious pearls from her sad, lonely eyes. Snow always was a supernatural phenomenon for her and it had always made her feel a happy, exciting child in some fairytale but today she felt no magic, only despair engulfing her and loneliness opening her arms to envelop her.
She introspected and realized that life was magic but sometimes it was just an illusion. And that magic had vanished for her, shattering her belief in herself and Eternal Hope. Her thoughts tumbled one after the other crippling her of any decision. Life was complex and it was in constant tussle between one’s heart and one’s mind. She was edgy of anything good. Tears rolled down making a lump in her throat grow harder and harder- choking her in the sorrow! She didn’t know what she could do about it now but yes, she did know, in spite of the pessimism around and within her, she would get up in the morning, do her daily chores and get on with her life. But she would always remember this moment in her life- she learnt the lesson of her life that happy moments are like magic, hypnotizing you with them and then like butterflies, every ready  to leave you with lingering memories. And sorrow always makes you more mature and more philosophical!
Snow kept falling. Her thoughts became clearer. She felt disturbed to give way to an emotion that she did not understand at that moment but expected to comprehend it soon… She knew, no matter what, she had to move forward in the odyssey of her life. Hope lingers, but life moves on…

(Syed Javeria is a student of Kashmir University. Feedback at syed_javeria@rediffmail.com)

Lastupdate on : Wed, 5 Jan 2011 21:30:00 Makkah time
Lastupdate on : Wed, 5 Jan 2011 18:30:00 GMT
Lastupdate on : Thu, 6 Jan 2011 00:00:00 IST