You cuddled me and cheered me up. You told me that it's all right, again and again. In your arms, I felt the warmth of your love. I felt safe, as you caressed me. When I cried, you wiped my tears and you cried with me. You spent sleepless nights during my sickness and bad days. You're the method to my madness, the reason why I am so brave. You always managed to sense the desperation beneath my cajolery. You're the reason why I've taken several steps towards events where I knew I was surely to get hurt. Yet, you asked me to take a chance. And you were the only one who did, so I did, I got hurt, but I learnt to lift myself up. You never let me be the burnt child who dreaded the fire. You helped me gain ground. You're a Good Samaritan, you forgive so easily. You extol the person who has hurt you, and it's beyond my realms of understanding how you manage to do that. 

You must have been trying to prepare me for different situations that might present themselves to me in future, and I was benighted at times. Because I could never comprehend what shape they might take in future, and this is where I was really a child to you.

And the times I have turned my face away from yours might be innumerable. A hundred little conflicts, fights and wishes that entailed being born far away from you now seem evil on my part, because it was always you who consoled me. Oh, how I always thought that you picked me to pieces and projected your aspirations on mine. But it's not your fault. Everybody in this world is allowed to have expectations. I do too. And yet you supported me no matter what. 

Your beliefs were never my beliefs, I evolved and changed and yet you accepted me for all that I am. I never believed in your God- his infinite knowledge, his love, his existence-it’s always a big joke to me. Yet we understood each other and existed on the same ground, happily. Our subtle perceptions and abstruse philosophies learnt to intermingle, and it’s still a work in progress. I can only imagine somebody to love me unconditionally, like you have. When did it matter if it were an obligation or not?

But I know now that I'm not a child anymore; I can't crawl back into your arms whenever I feel scared. I can't cry to you every time things went haywire because the number is uncountable. I can't discuss with you the interminable fights I fight with myself. I can't bother you with callow stories of all the whippersnappers I'd to deal with in my life. You don't tell me anymore that I'm too young for love because I'm too old to not know. You don't ask me where I'm headed, because I'm too old to not figure out the directions to a place that's far away from home. You don't ask me whom I'm talking to (not until you see a smile on my face!). 

You know exactly how much pain I can tolerate as I say I can't be hurt. 

And you know one thing best, mother - to mollycoddle me. 

Oh don't I hate being so cliché? 

But take this as a spiritual epiphany. I've always wanted to be myself. And these are my very genuine feelings. Here's to you, before these words get lost in a cobweb at the back of my mind and I'm too dazed to make sense of it all, before I use up all the words to cook up stories that hold no face value, here's to you. 

How old would you be if you didn't know how old you are?

I probably read this question somewhere on the internet some time back and it hasn't left me ever since. I have an uncanny urge to ask this question outright to everyone I know, both young and old. Not that I am a purveyor of moral values or even consider myself to be one, it's probably an inexorable curiosity which seems to be reaching out for the past. Or maybe it's because I can probably guess at what the answers are going to be, so my cognition is abetted by my curiosity. I know grief when I see it; I feel it myself too, it deftly amalgamates into my subconscious, while happiness and love ooze out and rarely need explanation; grief always does.

And I know, every time I ask this question to you, you'd go back to that exact moment where you could've gathered a little more courage to dignify what you had back then, to have it now in all its glory. Mistakes. Regrets. You're always under the haunting shadow of them all. And you'd give anything to get rid of the reminder of it all which is your age. Rewind, pause, rectify and replay or perish. If only it didn't slip away. If only you were...Edward Cullen? Forever young. The mere thought of it is exhilarating, isn't it? But then your life would always be at stake (pun intended). 

We don't realize it often that what's passed is past. Moments come and go; all you can do is reflect upon them and keep on moving forward. And perhaps age is nothing but a number and all you ever do is stop, rewind and reflect. That's how I've always felt about it, age is a disconnection from all that I could be or could've been; a jagged edge to my otherwise unruffled exterior which cuts bits and pieces of me every time I go back. And then I have to hide the bleeding, hide the pain. It's self-annihilation at its best. But some people have the remarkable resilience to embrace age with grace, some whose point of view is anything but awry. 

So I probably can't answer this question astutely. I know I am a child if I claim to know everything but know nothing at all. I know I am mature if I am wise and have a high emotional intelligence to make life-changing decisions. And that's how I can be as old and as young as I want to be.

But still, tell me, I’m intrigued- How old would you be? Would you go back to being 5 and experience watching the rainbow for the first time? Because that’d be breathtaking. 

Almost

Oh, the insolent voice in me cries. The cruelty oozes out and everything I touch miserably dies, turns to dust. A silent wind blows, an implacable evocation proliferates. The eyes they search, for love, in the tumult of lies, in the desolate abode of past lovers. The heart flounders in the ocean of possibilities, the mind remains indignant at the uncertainty. Lies. A Long lost autumnal passion, now an evanescent memory. Now an impudent unreality masks an elusive reality, a reality which is vulnerable to the past, incongruent with the present, with itself. A stagnant confidence crumbles and obliterates at one touch, one touch to the heart. The body slumps and falls numb, easy to break now. A languid cadence fills the space; the cronies recite the poetry on the intransigent woman with a heart of gold, stuck in the labyrinth of her contradicting reality, furiously confused and timid. Lies, again. Indignation grows. The body twists and turns, tears they fall on the floor, enchant the abode with their purity. There’s the reality, in hurt, in tribulations. There’re the cronies, there’s that one person, but not in reality. They welcome you and love you, in the pestilential unreality, in the universe of nostalgia, in corruption and in lies.

But there’s the enchanted reality, beyond the bounds of possibilities and memories, in hurt, in instant happiness, in rain and under the scorching sun. In reality, the trembling confidence tardily grows without ever being pointed out or scolded. It grows, with the truest of souls. And a touch to the face would placate the indignation forever as reality discerns itself from unreality.

But almost, a hand reaches out to the face. Almost. And I’m by myself, in my enchanting reality, forever.