Vyaktitā : a feeling or a state of individuality.
Here, in my eyes, that word is meaningless. Despite every blank face, there was still a feeling. A sober feeling where you look around at everyone, different people with different styles, yet you see yourself without a mirror, because the person standing in front of you, is the same as the million faces around you. Or maybe that's just your brain perceiving everything, everyone, every sight and every sound to be of the same kind, same form and the same way.
I have been writing for four years, though presently I have been unable to express my feelings through words. Maybe it's because of the absence of topics, or maybe the absence of emotions. Staring out of my window, I see a world without light, though the sun is shining brightly. Instead of the sharpness and excellence of God's creation, everything appears hazy to me, with blurry faces carrying the same pain, and faded objects which have lost their lustre. The world outside my window appears unclear, narrow and as silent as a graveyard in the morning after a cremation, though I know that there isn't a deficit in screaming children outside these four walls.
In my residency, there wasn't even a sound of a creaking floor. The silence in this room wasn't able to calm my mind. The many voices in my head carried more weight, unclear as they all seemed to shout at once, their sounds unheard yet unmistakeable. My mind was running at full speed, searching for unwritten answers and unsaid phrases, while my body crept behind, refusing to
move even an inch.
The bed I was sitting on used to feel soft like the petals of a newly bloomed flower and warm like the lap of a grandmother. Well, presently, it feels hard and cold like a place deprived of the feeling of comfort, maybe because of the stillness and the chilling patience of waiting for someone who won't return again, which sucked away the unreal warmth and caused the temperatures to drop inside these four walls. The air around me felt light, deprived of life and freezing. Each breath made my lungs go cold and caused each nerve inside me to scream.
Everyone's life story starts when they are born. My story started after I became a teenager and had decided to fall in love.
My mom was right when she had said, "Ye duniya bohot matlabi hai, beta. Tujhe bachane koi nahi aayega, tujhe khudki raksha khud karni padegi." (This world is very selfish. No one will show up to save you, you will have to save yourself).
It was beyond my imagination to think about a world of lies, crimes and cruelty beyond the fields of peaceful silence. It was beyond my imagination to think about attachment issues, trust issues and a broken feeling caused by someone I loved.
I was lost in my thoughts, though I didn't know what I was thinking about. Looking out of the window, I saw young children playing in the garden nearby. Smiles were plastered onto their faces, their happiness and innocence was surely enough to melt even the hardest hearts. They were like little butterflies playing around in a garden where flowers of each colour of the rainbow were blooming. Oh, the privilege of not knowing how cruel the world can be.
Wait…butterfly?
That word caused a shiver to run down my spine. I turned my head sideways to the bed side table. A bookmark: a withered rose carefully taped to a narrow and thin white cardboard piece. The sight of it made my heart clench painfully. The rose had been given to me by my butterfly.
He was a butterfly which shone like a sun for the sunflower I am.
I was a sunflower, who used to crave for the sun which once shone bright.
I am still a sunflower whose sun has set for an everlasting night.