What we call Reflections

They say that all happy stories are the same but every unhappy story isn’t… it always has a new thing to say… a different point to make….
But don’t all stories begin on an unhappy note and end on a happy one…
Isn’t the unhappiness only to add the element of difference to each story…
Isn’t it in the nature of grief to eventually transcend into joy?…
Many would agree…Many wouldn’t.
For the past few days this is what I have been thinking about but even amidst my deepest thoughts and to my best judgement I cannot come up with anything… or rather something close to satisfactory…

“ Words are meant to express oneself…to bring out the ambiguous world inside of you.. Speak them with clarity, write them with truthfulness and honesty, be humble and believe in their humility…Reema..
Don’t twist and turn them, don’t complicate them unnecessarily….
You hide behind your words my dear….
But a day will come when your seemingly wise words will deceive you instead..
And you will be lost behind them forever…
Don’t be a writer of words Reema…. Be the storyteller you always wanted to be….
A delightful storyteller…. that’s what writing is all about…” said a certain Mrs Canteenwaala who happens to be my lit teacher and my most loved lady… when she read a piece of mine….

What she said was not merely an analysis… it had meant much more to me… it had trickled deep down and triggered a volley of emotions in me…
Her comment given with the events that took place in the past brought out a different kind of realisation in me…a kind I was not aware of….

And I questioned myself…
What has my rationality given me?
Hasn’t it taken away much more?
Isn’t all this articulation mere pretence?
O how conveniently I lie to myself… how nicely and skilfully I pacify and make amends… make compromises pretending to myself that I don’t.
I am indeed a make believer… and my own illustrative and extravagant words have made an unfailing irony out of me….
And this façade of poignancy that I put up…
it is no more than a folly..

And today at the event of a distant some one being ill and going through a lot of pain..
At the sight of a dear one shedding tears of grief and hope for her beloved…
I would say that I am sad…
That this melancholy has taken over me and I am overwhelmed…
It has invoked in me…. my inner disharmony, my inner conflict with the choices that I have to make and my reluctance in making them…..
I am confused with disbelief, my hypocrisy stands right in front of me…. staring at my face accusingly.
From the time I was born…I have been told that whether its virtue or vile…. I need to believe in either one of them… as I grew older I came to realise that it actually didn’t matter much as to what I believed in…as long as I had a belief! That it is all what is required of me….. and in the process have I built this canopy around and over wherein I have made both sorrow and joy impervious to me…wherein I sit silently... calmly sipping my cup of coffee over great loses and telling the rest of the world and myself that “ it doesn’t matter”. Reading out to myself lofty and fervalent poetry to disillusion myself …dissuade myself from acknowledging that fact that I am heart broken..that I have lost out on love.
Yes I do have a belief…and my belief is that I can fix everything, that I shall never let go of my disposition that I will always do what needs to be done…..
But now all I can see in myself is a void….an ill-fated void in the name of belief !…
And this void stretches far beyond me….it reaches to each and every one who is aggrieved tonight….
Probably that is why I see the same plea of helplessness in the eyes of my dear friend as I see in mine…
I hear similar cries of denial from that distant acquaintance as I put mine to silence.
So as I suffer silently
He does too
And she does as well…
Perhaps we all do
Perhaps this is how we are all built…

This grief is heavy, this grief is hard but it is also Healing….. This storm will die down like all others…. And all what is lost shall be found again….
It will bring along with it acceptance and deliverance.
The hatred, the anger and the fear will perish
And eventually everything will fall in its right place, everything will be fine… we will live and we will learn...…

And “ The happy ending” no matter how cliché it becomes with time … will always remain the undying favourite….

Then one day perhaps when I will be able to live as boldly as I laugh…. Love as vividly as I dream….
I shall remind my self…. That it is indeed in the nature of unhappy stories to end on a joyful note…
That unhappiness is momentary and is used to add the element of difference in our stories…..

Love
Reema