Damn, she’s fast.
I stand there gasping for breath as she runs round the park beneath the star-lit sky, singing to the shadows. The moon is directly overhead now and Mars looks at me with a bright red smile that my paranoid brain decodes as danger. The air has an unnerving chill, or maybe it’s just my spine, for she is racing the wind in a pretty pink frock laced with flowers. What did time use to sculpt me?
I see the mischief in her eyes, the joy, and the wit, as the pink fabric disappears behind the trees. I see me; as if for the very first time. Yet, how? For she is ME; just from when I still knew how to BE, the time I was hardly three. She and me. I and her. Must we not be the same? And yet, she’s chatting with leaves as I curse myself in a loop. It’s well past human hours and we should be in bed; where I toss around with worry as she dreams of mermaids and fairies. How do I get her to come home? What do I even call her?
“Chimni!”, I call, because Dad used to. Translates to ‘sparrow’. Why, I wonder. Maybe because I soared through the sky sans fear, never once letting the risk question my choices. Maybe because I flew through every corner of the world, not giving a fuck if I was alone in the adventures. Maybe because, I didn’t let my size bind me.
So how did I end up trapped in this Golden cage of maturity?
“Chimni!” I yell, breaking through the silence of midnight. I make my way through the trees where I last saw her vanish, half expecting to find her sobbing down a rabbit hole, because Wonderland wasn’t real. Could I be more wrong?
There she is, talking feverishly about Peter Pan to a-
Is that a fucking squirrel? And, HOW is it listening to her nonsense?
“It’s the hour of owls and bats, let’s go home!”
The audacity! Did she just blow a raspberry and run away? For God’s sake!
The cold is biting, and I warm my hands in the pockets of my jeans. My fingers curl around something half molten- a chocolate.
“Hey!” I shout. “Want some chocolate?”
Miss Too-smart-to-be-fooled sweeps the sweet from my hand and runs away, giggling and singing into the night. A small balloon of pride rises inside me as I realize she is ME, and bursts as my thoughts divert towards the screwed-up life.
Wait, if she’s ME, she’d come chasing after a book. I reach for a book inside the baggage of dreams I carry. How is it that we both dare to dream but she doesn’t carry its weight?
“Chimni!”, I call after her desperately, navigating my way round the rugged roots where she played. I left her for two whole minutes, and find her digging the earth for worms, flashing me a mud smeared grin. Does that girl even know how to spell rules? Coz she clearly knows none. And here I am, bound in golden chains of ‘intelligence’, buried in a diamond adorned coffin of maturity, deep inside the earth of mindless obedience. Maybe, I need to start being stupid. Pathetic idea, huh? That’s why it’s brilliant.
I bribe her with the book, but clearly, she’s got her priorities sorted. She isn’t afraid, I am. She isn’t cursing her life, I am. She isn’t chasing time, I am. She’s alive, I’m just- living. We both love, hers is free, mine is measured. We both have nightmares; she conquers them as dreams while I drown them in caffeine and bullshit reels. She paints crooked dragons and vast oceans while I draw endless To-do lists. I wonder, is she really ME? And she must wonder too, IS THAT REALLY ME?
As I surf through the tsunami of thoughts, I spot a branch lying at my feet that would pass as a wand. Dim-witted, but brilliant. My final try-
“Accio Chimni!”
A moment later, she holds my finger as we walk home, throwing spells at each other with the newly found magic. She’s led me to more than one kind of magic.
We share a table in the setting of life, yet choose a different menu. Table for two, coffee for one. Same person, different choices. She chooses cakes and chocolates while I chug the bitter coffee like a survival ritual. Maybe its time to change the order; before time mocks me. Were time watching, it would pity me. With every bitter mouthful of that overpriced coffee, I learn its real price: not money, but the quiet surrender of my wings to a cage that glitters. Only to realise, I had the tools to break out all along. Maybe it was always for me to choose, what tools to be sculpted with.
Inspired from- The trending poem ‘I met my younger self for coffee’ and an Indian Carnatic music composition- Krishna ne begane Baro which encapsulates how Yashoda tries to lure Krishna to her. Literally translating to, “Krishna, come here quickly!” This blog came about as a mixture of both of these. An older me trying to persuade a younger self which ends in enlightenment.
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