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The night is gathering up from all directions making the outside world darker; the sun has long been set and the redness it left has also scattered away. Little white clouds are receding into the corners of a dusky sky. Birds, both small and big, are flying back to their off springs, if any, or to nests which are just made to live in. I am pretty sure that birds do make nests just to live in and not for laying eggs only. Do they? I don’t know really. I always wonder that why are birds supposed to be going only to their hatchlings when the night falls? Why can’t they go to their nests to just live in by themselves? Alone. Just a thought.  Why are we always supposed to be working for our children? Why not live for ourselves? The outside is getting darker. I should turn on the lights.

Windows are beautiful when you look at them but they can send creeps inside you once you try to see through them. In my early years of teenage I had a habit of lurking into houses through windows while walking on the street. Like most of the houses in my city have their backsides towards the streets and most of them have windows on the backside at the eye level of a normally tall teenager. So while walking back to home after school I used to slow down my pace and tried to see what is happening inside houses. The windows, which were mostly open to let the fine summer afternoon air in, worked as portals into the otherwise oblivious worlds of my far off neighbours. Most of the times though it was a disappointment, as the rooms were usually dark in summer days and also there was no one inside. Still, after getting nothing most of the times, I used to look inside the houses to maybe catch a glimpse or two of something interesting. What was interesting and what not? I never thought about defining any boundaries to it. Whatever there was on the other side was interesting to me. Peeping inside windows is fun actually but gross and scary at times too. Let’s just say it; people are weird, superweird when they get some privacy. Privacy reveals the darker you. The backside rooms were very much private in summer afternoons (or people in those houses thought so). So those people (mostly in their late teens) in the houses did a lot of gross and secret things in their privacy, which I very much intruded. While lurking inside those windows i saw guys jerking off to some cheap porn while trying to conceal it from their parents and obviously never enjoying the way they want to because they are on a lookout for their patents. i’ve seen people having sex, taking drugs, girls talking to their boyfriends secretly, and a more weird stuff and when i say weird i totally mean it. After seeing someone i used to build stories in my head about them, about their lives, the circumstances they are in and yeah also i tried to contemplate the adv advantages and the disadvantages of privacy as a teenager. The results? Yeah you guessed it right. Advantages were more than disadvantages and privacy lured me because whatever I say, I can’t deny the fact that back then I was a teenager too.

You must be thinking why’s my head filled with thoughts of windows? Well because right now i am sitting in a window but nobody can see me, why? Well i am on the fifth floor in a ten storey building and we’re not walking on air yet. I should get up now and switch on the lights; it’s both dark and creepy.

The window panes, though made of clear glass, still reflect some of the light and hence act as a mirror in which I can see my face, the image is very faded but is visible enough to distinguish features.

My face is soft and pale with big eyes and small mouth, lips smeared in lipstick. My face is beautiful, they say, I like to better call it deceptive; Never showing what’s inside, never letting others’ eyes to pierce in. Never being a window. It’s getting darker outside and inside and inside my head too.

2

Beauty! It’s what surrounds me. The place where I am is serene, beautiful and calm. I don’t know exactly where I am but I am happy here. I can feel the calmness inside me. There are trees but they are distant, a stream flows by, I am sitting on one of its pebbled shores, midst dirt, leaves some grass but mostly pebbles, the air is fresh and warm lie a fine summer evening, I feel like I am back on the terrace of my parents’ house. We used to sit on the terrace in summer evenings, savouring some homemade snack with tea. Back in my childhood I was a simple, sweet, little girl short for her age but still adorable. The sun is bright and warm. The heat is rising as I can feel it, irritating my skin. The sun is getting brighter as I am coming close to me, the brightness seems to blind me. As the sun burns me up I feel like those comic book villains who die when exposed to sunlight, but I didn’t die, instead I woke up. I woke up to find myself in a very awkward position half-sitting, half lying on the window sill broad enough to keep me from falling. It’s bright and shiny outside. The sun is entering my room through the glass panes lighting it up.

“Good Morning” I say out loud. As I open my mouth the air around me gets stale and smell of dead and rot. My mouth tastes bitter and stale too. I snap it shut and dare not open it again. I should get up and get a wash. 7:50 (almost), the two hands of my leather strapped wrist watch suggest. I should get up, I can’t sit here whole day, I need to get into routine, weekend is over.

3

 

“Oh, God! What a mess have I created” I am thinking loudly. Alone in the room I rent. My carry bag is lying on the floor with its straps all tangled together and is now dirty with dust from the floor. To its left are my broad heeled sandals thrown in a, manner. My wrist watch, the only one I posses, lies on the bed, beside the bangles, red coloured glass loops. My sari, of colour dark blue, lies fully spread half on bed and half on the floor, wrinkled, by its side are other pieces of clothing I wore today, a blouse and undergarments. All thrown in such a manner that the onlooker might think some child was playing with those objects. But there’s no child, I am the one who messed it all up. I think it’s been two hours since I came back from work. It’s getting darker, the sun has long gone. Yes it’s been more than two hours. I should already be preparing dinner. The last proper meal I had was yesterday evening at a cafe, so I am very hungry. I had a tea with toasts for breakfast but that too in such a hurry that it doesn’t even counts. I’ve to eat something soon to avoid fainting, again. The bed is a mess too, all strewn with things. The sheets are dangling from one side, half spread on the floor.

I am lying near the bed on the floor naked except for a towel spread over me. The cemented floor is cold, soothing. The cold tickles my pores, sensations of it, I feel, travel all over my body, it feels good, I feel liberated. I should get up, it’s dark outside.  A diode bulb is dangling from a fixture on the wall, glowing bright, white, cool and soothing. As I get up, the towel falls off. Thanks to god we’re not walking on air yet. I put on a gown and prepare a good dinner for myself.

4

Back at the window, I love the night sky. The stars are going bright and dull, bright and dull in a rhythmic manner, I am sure there’s music in the universe, though we can’t listen to it. This world is full of  beautiful and wierd things and we are ignorant to most of them. Sometimes we are unable to see and hear the things which are happening around us, sometimes we don’t want to listen and see. We humans can give a tough competition to pigeons in the race of ignorance. Pigeons too have to close their eyes to ignore the approaching cat; we humans can unsee things with our eyes wide open.

I was 11 when I first noticed the colour of my eyes, black with a tinge of brown. The iris in both my eyes is black at the outer rim while the area around the pupil is brown. The part where the black and brown colours meet is hazel. I think I have chimera eyes though I never asked a doctor. I used to sit in front of a mirror for hours looking into the reflections of my own eyes. Eyes are, they say, a path to the insides of a person. I wanted to see inside me.

When I got my first period, I was 13. “You are at a very raw and dangerous age” my mother used to say. I was advised to keep things a secret and not to talk about my menstruation in front of men of the house. It’s a dirty act to be a woman, but it’s a bigger sin if you try to talk about it. The pain, the bleeding and all of the mess should be kept hidden from people, especially from the male ones. I was not allowed to enter the kitchen on my special days and my mother observed the same rules herself in her special days. Sanitary napkins were not a thing in our household or that too of others for that matter. Women generally used cotton rags for the purposes of menstruation. Everybody knew that sanitary napkins are safe and must be used but everyone, from my mother to the shopkeepers, were playing pigeons. Eyes wide open pigeons.

 

5

 

The lift feels so crowded, though I am alone in here. I want to get out of here as soon as possible. The screen above the illuminated buttons is counting the floors. 1 2 3 4 5 6.......10. The steel doors finally parted. The figure in the mirror looks like me but paler and thinner. I look at my face but not into the eyes. There’s no need to look into them now, I know what’s inside me. As I step out of the lift I run straight to the washroom. Opening the door I run towards a cubicle and throw up in a toilet. My throat tastes of stale food and acids from my gut. My throat is sore from puking; tears are flowing down my eyes, smearing my face with blackness of the eyeliner. I shouldn’t have stepped in the lift. Lifts are not safe, lifts are not home, and lifts are not windows either. Lifts are cages, they lock you inside and your voices too, and I learned it all the darker way.

I was a fool to think that I can overcome my fears, I can’t. I stand up; my knees dirty with mud from the tiled floor. I look around, there’s a lot of dirt and water on the floor. The basins are clogged with paper soap residues. A dustbin is lying on its side, mouth wide open, garbage all spilled. I see a cloth piece smeared with blood, It reminded me of my very first periods; bile rises in my throat, and I feel like I’ll choke on my own vomit, I taste bile. I throw up again, this time in a basin. I look up, a mirror is in front of me, and my eyes are piercing inside me. I hate mirrors; I wish I could smash it, like I smashed the one in hospital that day.

6

 The day I first opened my eyes to look at beauteous miracles of this world, was not the day I was born, instead it was the day on which my best friend abandoned me to seek some other miracles. That was the day I found out, the more you care about people the more they use you. That day I decided that what so ever happens, from now on I am going to live my Life my way. I'll do whatever I would like to. But the hard part was not to make a decision, the hard part was to know that what were the things I want to do. And as I thought on and on I realised that there was nothing I wanted to do, inside my head there were a lot of ideas but either they were about others or involved others. Not even a single one was mine. No doubt I am an individual and I do exist on my own but still the ideas which I called mine actually. As I delved further into my own self , I found a void like a black hole; all vacuum, and no light. I was going deep and deep inside myself, and as I fell into the pit I was. I realised that I was empty, that the humours were gone from me, I had no Ideas, no ways, no specificities, no talent. I was devoid of every single feeling a human being is ought to have. I knew that if I had feelings, I must have found some inside me evolving into ideas. That day I didn’t sleep. I joust thought on and on. Out of the thinking process there was only one thought that was recurring. One single thought that was very powerful and instructed me to do something in order to right all the wrongs. The thought was, kill yourself. The thought promised me that once I commit suicide everything will be alright. It was not the first time I was getting these suicidal thoughts. These thoughts are what I’ve lived my life with.
All of us know schools suck but for me school tossed, punched, kicked, slapped and killed every single day. I was on target every single day. I used to think that there was some problem in me, there has to be some problem in me. I used to talk to myself for hours as a loner usually does. I talked to walls, to plants, to dolls and what not. I talked to everyone except human beings. Human beings suck at being human. Even my parents didn’t know about my true feelings. I don’t know why but I was very good at concealing my feelings. I was bullied at school, tossed around, called names but I never told my parents because I liked to conceal my true self.

7

 People should keep their eyes closed and their faces veiled when I am around them. It will be good if they keep their mouths shut too though it's too much to ask for. Each and every person I meet is rotting inside, hollow and fake and through their eyes I can see inside them, I don't know if it is a superpower or a curse. May be I am myself so dark deep down that people have fears sketched over their faces when they see me and in those fears I can read their truths and lies as clear as black and white. Their faces are as transparent as water. I can see through them, I can see the heart which is charred, I can see the soul which is wrenched. 

Their words are hollow and fake too, they don't mean what they say and I know precisely what they mean amd what they want to say. That's where the problem actually starts. I meet people, look at them and suddenly i know things about them which they don't know even. Then I get connected and empathise with them and slowly and slowly I start to fall for them. 

And suddenly out of nowhere we are in love. A love so beautiful and deep that I don't want to loose it. not now not ever. I start to believe in the person and I feel that each and every thing they say is the only truth in this world. They want me to be vulnerable and transparent, reassuring me that they can recieve me the way I truly am, that they can handle the crude me. 

I won't lie but somewhere deep inside my heart I also want to do this. I also want to be vulnerable like others, I also want to be transparent like others. So slowly and slowly I open myself up for them, removing all the fortifications and shields I have built around me. I drop down all the shiny armors of mine and then suddenly I am stark naked. Pure and true. But people are afraid of truth. They don't like you to be vulnerable, they want you to be strong always while they cry their hearts out, while they pour all out to you. 

They are afraid of facing you when you're pure, they can't take you as you're, though they say that they can. No, they can't. 

Noone wants to see your swordsmanship, what they admire is the shiny armour you wear.

Impressum

Texte: August Nexus
Tag der Veröffentlichung: 29.10.2017

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