• We, us, 'the others' who were born like everyone else but did not grow up like evreryone ideally should, the ones who had to be brave under compulsion to build a coccoon like sphere of their own that comprised of freedom and imagination have a tough job to do. And that is living. You grow up knowing not security, familiarity, understanding or significant others because there is sadly no one to shoulder that reponsibility with commitment. You are not an orphan or you are not born into wilderness or flesh trade or poverty but in normal and seemingly happy homes with generous clothing and bodily nourishment. But, there the buck stops and you grope around with loose change. Now, starts the careful construction of that small little world of your own wheere you can fly through the ground, sit on a volcano, eat monsters and sometimes also watch the moonlit night without the presence of any societal or familial gravity.

    Suddenly, you are living two lives; existing in one that you can touch and breathe in and living in one that you cannot see but what is real to you. You carefully nurture your dreams and flights of fantasy, your could be's and should be's and could have's and should have's and also a lot of times- what if's. You are a son/daughter, a student and a chained gremlin in one while in the other you are free, limitlessly taller than your shadows, proud and confident. You go so far as to create imaginary friends/characters injecting into them your alter egos, your inherent and acquired likes or dislikes and conquer them on your own accord. Your dual existence does not improve your or alter your societal life but many a times humiliates you, embarasses you and hurts you to no end. But, you still cling on to it like its the last drop of rain the hungry earth can soak up because you know that you have created that world. You have nurtured it with the purest and the most innocent part of you and the huge amount of painful steps that you took to detach yourself from the bane of the other side becomes too dear for you to gainsay.

    One day you grow up. You have a different body, the same but a complex mental frame much different than your neighbor's son who you used tp play with. You have responsibilities, the burden of expectations like everyone else but unlike most people you choose to take your own course or at least that is what you think. You constant sense of freedom and the demonic fear of losing it drives you all the way while in the process you lose your innocence, gain distance, lose a sea of faces and maybe gain a few. Now that you are standing there in the corner of a grim prison cell; naked with a job, in chains with a family, cold with loneliness and satiated with a non-singular craving- you break...

    You suddenly realize that the coccoon that you had woven ahs to be torn apart by its creator so that your vulnerability and pain maybe visible to a few people who promise seemingly few candies in return and solemnly swear to take your hand and fly with you along Icarus' route. Your highly treasured and trusted strength of your desire for freedom and your more potent fright of losing it tells you, "Stay... stay for some time. Remember that you were afraid once and it was me you lived through. Remember, you were alone once and it was me you learnt through and don't forget that you were a void once and today your substance is because of me..." True. How can you negate such an interwoven side of who you are when you did not have anything else to feel for- in the truest sense of the word.

    But what people like us more often tend to overlook is that the silky sphere wrapped us within itself when we needed those covert faculties for us to grow into thinking human beings who did so against all such invisible and seemingly non-existent adversities. But why? Our evolved and thinking minds took that huge amount of effort against all odds so that one day banking on this act of mental evolution we become lone standing individuals on our own grounds but at the same time symbiotically growing with and nurturing a few others who are important. It did not shield you and nourish you for so many years so that you become a parasite and never leave the freedom you you think you have and never leave the fear of not having it. For freedom is what you give yourself when no one else is willing to acknowledge you right to do so. Therefore, you had this freedom all along while the coccoon just served to protect you till you become strong enough to defend it.

    But, the more you become a parasite and wrap around it like a climber of sorts the more you will cripple yourself, your life, your potential and those few people who really make you, you. You will just end up negating all of these in such proportions that one day you will not have anything left, not even yourself no matter how much someone extends to reach out to you. Freedom is when you feel that you deserve to be you. It is when you can stand and defend your existence because you love the life that had been given to you. It is not an Excalibur that you sharpen everyday and sleep with and wield out at the drop of a neutral hat. One day when you realize that you did not have anyone to share that freedom with, you will slit your throat with that very sword. And you never had the freedom that you thought you did. You lost it little by little, inch by inch.

    So far you have just imagined the moon on the snowy peaks and dreamt that you lived in a cottage on a rainy day sitting by the window sill. Now, to make that a reality you need to come out of that solitary shell that did well you to prepare you for you to be free and actually be so. Just reach out to the sea because it always returns what it takes. Always...