(LIFE) / 20 April 2012
Dear fellow human being,
I have been meaning to write to you since long, but never got down to doing it. Oh well, it seemed such a task trying to find your co ordinates and track you down. Where have you been? We haven’t touched base in a long time. Is it because we didn’t have much use for each other since some time that we didn’t quite bother to reach out? That’s what our relationship has now come to be, isn’t it – selfish and need based?
While I was caught up in my existential angst, you were busy too, I presume, in your allied pursuits. It seems like a long time since we sat down for a coffee and chatted up. Seems like it was eons ago that we were friends, when we shared and cared selflessly, when we opened our doors to each other even in the dead of night; when we didn’t have to take appointments to see each other, when there was always an extra serving of meal at home should you drop by unannounced. Times when we had no secrets to keep, when we saw through each other and reflected like mirrors, when we held hands and walked long distances. Pray, when did the clasp break? When did we lose sight of each other? When did we drift away? When did we turn strangers?
When did I grow so wary of you that I peep through the door hole, size up the human figure outside and think a dozen times before deciding to not open? Even when my heart said that it was just a fellow human being selling a ware to make a living, the mind said it could be an intruder. When did I grow so frosty that I made my smiles overly pricey and my social manners so picky? When and why did trust become a commodity in short supply? I panicked when someone showed more than a fair share of friendliness towards me. Watch out, there is a sinister design behind it, my head hollered and I recoiled with fright. I missed you so sorely in those moments of panic. I wished I had your hand in mine, reassuring me, “Chill, it’s only me, your fellow human being and old buddy in disguise. “
I wonder when we grew so estranged that my children and your children ceased to be our combined bundles of joy and became barometers of individual recognition, pitting us against each other to decide grades of superiority. From being parts of a whole, when did we fracture and fall apart?
I think of you with longing when I see your namesake somewhere on the way. I look for traces of the old companion in the faces on the street, but most are mere imitations of you, and bear no resemblance to you in spirit; just imposters, now attributed with all that you once weren’t. I sometimes see flashing glimpses of you here and there, and realize that the real you are somewhere out there, alive and kicking, and hopefully looking for your old mate in the crowd. I want to find you, but my myopic eyes and timorous heart make the search doubly arduous.
I know that you are only missing and not dead. I desperately need you back in my life for you are my soul. I want those days of love, trust and camaraderie back. I refuse to buy into the story that you have become a myth. I know you are somewhere out there, lurking in the dark shadows of the new times, just as apprehensive and unsure as me.
I don’t have a postal address to which I can send this letter. I shall just let it fly to find its destination. Someday, it will reach your door step and you will call me. Won’t you?
Eagerly waiting,
Your fellow human being.
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