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| “Isn't it funny how day by day, nothing changes;
but when you look back, everything is different... “ ~C.S. Lewis |
This is the story of how I realized that age is just a number and there is no such thing as being an adult; You only grow older and if you're lucky, maybe a little wiser!
"You've changed", was all she said and Lily didn't think much about it in the beginning.
She only blinked; for a split second; then mastering some witty innuendo she dodged the uncomfortable remark. They were always doing that to each other. Lily snubbed her friend off with a sassy remark and giggled to find her at loss!
Back home, listless and temperamental, she started wondering. What was it about changes that scares us so much? Why was she even thinking about it? It was as if that statement about changes had resonated a hidden bell inside: "She was changing!"
She was changing just like every little thing around her; every inconspicuous detail of her life, that in the last one year, had undergone a mammoth change! The black school bag by the corner of her room was the only link to who she was before: The-schoolgirl-Lily! Beside it lay a box full of felt pens whose refills were now used up and stuck with half hearted colours like the faded remnants of those days lost in dreams. The prick of memories viewed through the rose-tinted spectacles of time made her homesick for a place she could not get to. A wisp of music from a familiar David Bowie track halted the thought-train as it hovered through the chink of her half-shut door:
.....Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes
Turn and face the strange
Ch-ch-changes
.....Just gonna have to be a different man
Time may change me
But I can't trace time
Mmm, yeah I watch the ripples change their size
But never leave the stream
Of warm impermanence
…..”
"Em, turn down the volume!", she yelled at her sister as snippets of symphony came floating down the corridor, from the other room. With the music, Lily found herself slipping into a realm of retrospection; the words poured through her ears dripping into her soul,until before long, she was quietly humming the tune to herself, sitting there clueless and alone on the big divan!
A bright red kite with its sharp, thin thread pierced through the bubbles of thought. Giggles from a kid with beady eyes as the boy with practiced hands handled the string and “latai” with ease, took her back to that happy gloam of ‘99. Like a toddler, the kite held back in fear, stuttered, then swaying with the magic of the noontime breeze, it started flying. It flew farther and farther away as the boy relaxed its string coiled around the latai little by little. The bright red kite fluttered in the wind and soon it had flown so high that it merited a jump of excited claps from the toddler in pink frock, who in her excitement had mistaken it for a little pastel butterfly flying in the distance against the happy velvet of blue.... Sadness sung as the vestiges of that day blurred out through the same ‘beady’ eyes as she found them wet with drops of dream clouds. That kid still breathed in some shady corner of her insides, Lily knew. The clock kept up its perennial ticking, the wall lizard faked an introspective yawn as it crushed a bug in the folds of its tongue and in the other room, the music played on.
Later that night, Lily lay in her bed staring up at the ceiling. The unfaltering tick-tock of the clock and the star stickers pasted on her ceiling the only reminders to where she was; The rest was dark. Her mind floated back to what her friend had as she wondered about what she meant. She was growing up. Deep inside, she knew that things had changed. Only, she was too naive to face it. This last one year had been one of incongruous changes. Hijacked from the security of the four-postered walls of childhood and of the little convent classroom, she had been forced to confront the adult world. Like an alien, a misfit, she had stumbled to survive, to exist, to adapt. She was growing up and the changes lay in her growth; In her adaptation to suit the larger canvas of existence. Chiselled and sharpened in the spark of reality she had evolved as a subtler being, equipped with the finest faculties of self defense and self care.
With the years she had learnt how to maintain a mask of maturity, how to restrain herself from being accelerated with joy at the sight of insignificant commonplace objects, that had she been little, would have merited a rupture of unabashed child-like ecstasy as voices everywhere, crooned: “ Grace and poise, my dear. Grace and poise!” Firm and candid now, she had learned to survive; To trick the grown up world into thinking that she had grown up too. She owed her life to close calls and how every knife in her back had missed her heart by inches; But by adapting, she had learned to shield herself from the dragons outside fairytale books. And while that was a progressive change to some extent, there was also the nagging fear of losing the bliss of childhood innocence at the cost of the evolved sense of the adult. Perhaps the hardest part of growing up, is letting go of who you used to be.
........
Oh darling, don't you ever grow up
Don't you ever grow up, just stay this little
Oh darling, don't you ever grow up
Don't you ever grow up, it could stay this simple
Wasn't it easier in your firefly-catchin' days?
When everything out of reach, someone bigger brought down to you
Wasn't it beautiful runnin' wild 'til you fell asleep
Before the monsters caught up to you?”
The thought clouds drift back as the music fades into the background. A yawn hiccups its way through the gurgle of my sighs. A little girl sulks at the dinner table. Hazy initially, but soon a shadow crops up: Tall, firm and broad shouldered! He stands with his hand raised, facing her, with his fingers pointing at the girl, with disappointed derision.
"...Do you know what your class teacher told us today? 'The most talkative girl in my class!' Have you any idea how much you embarrass your parents with your habit of non stop blabbering in class? Every year, every class: same complaints! Again and again we've heard the same thing and trust me I'm tired! I'm just sick and tired of this whole business!” The last statement echoed through the high walls of that room. The louder voice laid down the emptied glass with a thud on the table as another voice softer, mumbled, hesitated and coaxed incoherent words of harmony as it tried to pacify the first one. Draining the contents of the glass down his throat, the first voice continued: “We had enrolled you into a convent school for a REASON! The most important thing in life is DISCIPLINE. But for that, you need to learn to keep your mouth shut first. Why in the world would you have to talk so much? Why can't you change your self and be more like the other graceful girls in class?”
…..
In the hubbub of a noisy classroom, the quite sophomore in the corner stared, looked, blinked. A horrible recollection! But somehow she had nothing to say. "Anti social " they called her. "Introvert" she preferred. "Arrogant" said the haters. Inside, she was dying with so much to say...like the volcano that bubbles and surges within the heart of the rock, sealed by its own cooling, hardening lava. "Introverting again?'', he chuckled, breaking her chain of thoughts. She really did need to change herself, wondered the sophomore as the little girl of her childhood days ran in giggles past her vision. Sometimes, the things we can't change, end up changing us! Lying in that bed, that night Lily thought of the little girl that was little-girl-no-more! Metamorphosing, perhaps we lose a part of our self in the coocoon of what once was. A medley of childhood memories scuttled about her vision: little habits, stories and silly pranks and games! As the vision grew clearer, Lily lost herself in dreams…. The little girl appeared once more, face smeared with blends of yellow, blue and orange as she poured over a sheet of blank paper, drawing straight lines of rays from the face of the sun in the extreme top corner of the page. She was lost in the happiness of pastel shades; the colorful sticks of crayons with their sweet smell, hard, cool and smooth like pebbles against her skin as she rubbed them on her cheeks, on the page, on the boring walls and everywhere. The pleasant coolness of the crayons took her back to another day; a particularly hot one. The girl in frock stood in front of the refrigerator with its door ajar gazing into its insides like a bizzare sadhu would at his client before he read his stars or showed the future. The cool air emanating from inside the fridge, (at a time when air conditioning was a decade away) made her hold on to the door for just a little longer before she would close it really slowly, just to see when the lights inside the fridge went off…how she would try to balance the light switch between ON and OFF or wash her hands after stepping out of the toilet for full ten minutes because she loved the feel of running water flowing through her fingers…how the first time she saw the picture of a heart in the book of a senior class five student, she was so surprised because she had always thought that the shape of a real heart was like one of those tiny ones at the end of a page of barbie doll stickers…
“......So the days float through my eyes
But still the days seem the same
And these children that you spit on
As they try to change their worlds
Are immune to your consultations
They're quite aware of what they're goin' through
Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes
Turn and face the strange
Ch-ch-changes…..”
Waking up from her dreams Lily wondered: “Metamorphosis eh?!”
When did this happen?!
Another time, heartbroken, she laid her face on a rumpled cushion letting her hurt down in angry, hot teardrops. Beside, a gentle hand stroked her hair crooning words of comfort with each stroke. " You know, you really need to grow up Lily. You need to be strong." Then she told her the story of the tortoise...how the first tortoises on earth were really like rabbits: soft,delicate and harmless! But what was most astounding was the fact that the great great grandfathers (or grandmoms, really!) of today's tortoise generation: the primeval tortoises, didn't have shells!
" Eh?", she blinked, "I'm not a kid anymore mom."
"No, really. I'm not feigning....They didn't!", she assured her.
"..but where did the shells go?!", she asked in wide eyed wonder, the tears now starting to fade from her cheeks in the warmth of a good tale.
"Well, they didn't have any.", replied her mother.
"It was only after the other animals of the planet were born that the tortoises found it difficult to live safely and had to armour shells to protect themselves. With the evolution, there came on earth beasts, predators and other sinister creatures. It was a big bad world and the tortoises were scared of the shadows lurking behind the branches; the shadowy shapes of darkness, that came gliding: black under the clouds....They were fearsome shadows that lay in ambush in the dark and would spring forth on their victims from behind. They were deadly and ominous and the tortoises knew it coming, with life-failing footsteps; Death-doomed! So in order to protect themselves from harm, the delicate creatures hit upon a particularly bright idea: they started building them shells...Beautiful coral shells weaved from sea-swells, foam and emerald greens made strong with the strength of their hearts. Now the shadows couldn't touch them anymore, safe as they were behind the walls of their shells. So each year the mother tortoise would teach her children how to build their shells and the tradition got passed down ever since. None of the tortoises got hurt anymore and they all lived happily ever after. As a last word, (if you don't believe my story), ever wondered why tortoises live that long? -That's happily ever after!"
The little girl giggled, "That's fairytale-talk!" Her mother smiled a rhetoric and continued, "you, my dear, have a heart like the tortoises: soft and vulnerable. You too need to build your own shell and now is the time."
As days passed and the li'l girl grew up, her mother would often tell her more of such stories, "fairytale-talks" and hidden metaphors with real life implications.Growing up she learnt how to build her shell, how to bottle up unnecessary, distracting emotions and put a cork to her feelings. The little girl was little girl no more! She was no more the silly kid lounging with her crayons and candies inside makeshift blanket forts made out of broken umbrellas. She took the world in her stride and faced life bravely...but now that she had grown up and grown strong, when they sometimes called her heartless for keeping a straight face, she'd cry inside!
She hadn't changed enough, had she?
"I've got a jet black heart and there's a hurricane underneath it", the stereo bellowed like a knight in the battle shouting his war cry!
Throughout her life she'd focused on progressing: be it in her career, perspective or person. She'd build new bridges each day and cross them over the next. She was proud of how far she had come but there was this one fear scaling her insides: Did crossing over to new pastures, meant losing the li'l girl living inside? The idea of metamorphosis swam in her mind like a gramophone record stuck in the same lines of the song, going back to the words;repeating;in a circle;and again and again. Gazing into the galaxies that the cream made in her coffee cup, she pondered upon caterpillars and changes. She thought of who she was around this time, the previous year. Back then she was a lot more afraid; but now that she wasn't the same person anymore, she had learned to care less about what people thought about her and more about what she thought of herself. It was like one of those moments when it finally clicks: You realize how far you have come and you remember the times you had thought things were such a mess they'd never recover. And then you smile. You smile because you're truly proud of yourself and the person you've fought to become. But did that mean losing oneself and deserting the little ingenue inside?
With another sip of her coffee as the liquid went bubbling down her throat, relaxing her nerves, the power of the caffeine tingled a little bell inside. She recalled an ubiquitous line she had read somewhere long back:
(Must be in one of the zillion posts of the Berlin art parasites!)
"I don't know exactly when I changed or how, but at some point between cutting my strings, escaping my cage, and building my wings, I set myself free."
....and that, she thought was the perfect way to end the drizzle of her rantings!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR :-
This too is awesome.....
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