My passion

COURAGE.

There is this girl I know. She is always a bit lost. She is a child at heart. But, sometimes the big-bad world can get too much for her. She wakes up everyday, and smiles because she tries… she really tries… to see the world in a new light, each day…hoping that yesterday’s dark shadows won’t follow her but life is not fair. She learnt this the hard way but she never gave up on life. 

She forces a smile, it seems lop-sided on the mirror…but she is determined to get along the day with as much as strength as she could conjure up. Nobody knows how she feels…who she is…because she hides her pain beautifully, just the way she conceals her physical imperfectness with make-up. By the end of the day, nobody knows that she wipes off all of the make-up and when she is lying down on her bed all alone… the world shuts out. Silence. No noise. Nothing. Only her wild heart beats. Everybody misunderstands her because they do not understand what it means to be ‘different’ or to embrace diversity. People are mostly so self-satisfied and self-absorbed that they forget that other people, who actually do have souls and their stories, exist. 

Many years it took for her to watch her wounds heal and they turn into scars as the seasons changed. Even while she was hurting, she never gave up. There were times when all she could do was scream at her empty walls and the only sound that comforted her were the screeching of  her finger-nails on those empty, blank walls. It was suffocating for her…but she never gave up. She never gave up even at a time, the sun refused to shine upon her and all she had for company were the dark clouds outside the only window she had from that damned, cold room. She was born to fly but was held captive, repeatedly -her wings broken and hammered so that she could not fly away. Excruciating pain, she went through each day…teary eyed, she would watch out that window everyday. But, nobody came to save her. She tried everything. At first, she tried to make good use of the room since she thought that she could not help it. Days and months passed and she began to lose her charm, her vision became more dull day by day… she was dying inside… wounded, wings broken… but she felt that she was trapped in the room forever. She even failed to notice that there would be a white dove who would visit her by the window but all saw were the dark clouds…. then one day, she decided that there was no point of living like that. She would try and end her life. But the evil ruler of the Hell had jinxed the tower she was kept in. He was so evil that he would not even let her die and free her of that unbearable mortal life. The evil ruler of the Hell had discovered who she really was and every time he went close to her, he could not touch her even though he could torture her from afar. There was a certain charm within her that made him reluctant to go close proximity to her. Somehow, she even tried to tell him that he was better than that and that there was really no point in capturing her. What he wanted was that charm she had. The charm that made her smile everyday and look at the world in such a different light than the evil ruler of the hell saw. All he felt was wrath and so much of hate that he could not contain it within himself, he had to inflict that unto everything-and it was contagious like a disease. Captivated in that room in the enchanted tower, she started losing her charm until one day she was nearly dead. And a miracle happens to her. She was so thirsty… she could not even get up to get water from anywhere and as always, the door was forever locked. The white dove came in the room holding a fig leaf in between its beak and what contained on the fig leaf were dew-drops. it looked like water. The dove poured the elixir into the girl’s mouth and the next thing that happens is history. She goes through this transition as she she were a moth and that day was her day to transform herself into a butterfly. And, did she transform ! Her wings spread so wide across the room that with its strength, they shattered the enchanted walls. She wanted to break free so bad and so willingly now that those walls did not even try to hold her back in their defence . She flew away.... so far away from Hell that the evil ruler of the Hell could never find her again. 

Till date, she keeps this a secret. She always kept the white dove who saved her life. It became her friend at a time she could not even trust herself and had lost zeal in life. The problems and troubles did not stop there. Bad things always bound to happen but she never repeated her mistake of ever forgetting that she had a choice of breaking away if she wanted to because her charm was already so powerful but when it was dying, the only trick was to make a choice in her mind and not accept the ill fate as 'destiny'. Destiny is what we make of our lives. 

Nobody knows that she has wings that could make her fly. If she told this secret to anybody, they would burn her alive at the stake or marginalise her or at the least worst, they would call her names and laugh at her because she would be 'weird', 'strange'..not the same with everybody. She saw magic everywhere and the magic was the very feeling that made her feel invincible like anything was possible. Magic had been intact with her soul ever since her escape from Hell. And that magic is also called 'courage'-courage to dream, to believe in what she feels is good for her soul, courage to love again and again and again because she was made of love...that was her core, courage to see beauty in a grotesque world, courage to be able to appreciate pleasure because she had felt pain all her life , courage to be kinder because the world lacked that immensely, courage to never stop believing in 'magic'. Not everybody can embrace what is different. She did. She understood and it changed everything. All she had was love within her, and that's all she had to offer. It did not matter how many more times she would be hurt but she never gave her.

Yes, I know a girl... who nobody understood because she was different , who was born to fly and that's what she did, she flew all over the world as much as she desired because she had the courage to make a choice, to break free. That was only possible because she had love in her heart.