Of Love and Tales

Hello.

Yes.

Hello you.

Past few months have been glorious, haven’t they?

Difficult? you say? I chose to disagree but let us not start poles apart.

So… hello…

It has been madness out there hasn’t it?

But you have held on, you beautiful thing. Some haven’t, I know, I have lost someone close too… but that is a story for another day.

Back to us and the present. Every day we see a counter of human souls ticking, like god’s own gambling machine as we peep from within our closed windows, with withered eyelids, waiting for the sun to set, and the new dawn to bring tides of good news.

Strings of lives getting cut, and the strands floating in the air somewhere. Nameless, just numbers for you and I… nameless.

But you and I aren’t nameless. We don’t want to be… numbers… We are trying hard to say hellos and goodbyes to moving figures on a small screen. We sing, cry and send kisses through an invisible tunnel, ever so frequently asking “can you hear me?”.

Our hearts fall to a sullen pit when we hear nothing back, panic sets in, we scamper and fiddle with machinery like toddlers behind a car wheel… till we hear “yes, I can hear you”.

Our hearts rest, it is a good feeling to know you are heard, to know that someone somewhere wants to listen to you, see you, be a part of your story.

They say “to love is to be vulnerable” and we have never been so vulnerable, thus… we have never been so much in love… and to truly love is to truly, unflinchingly, undeniably let everything else fall, clear the cloud of clutter that has cramped our muscles and stunted our hearts.

To love is to rend the shackles of our own hubris, vainglory, and pomp. To fall, in hope to get caught. And if not, then to fall in hope to get hurt, and in hope to heal and fall again. To fall, in hope to be vulnerable in love and invulnerable to everything else. To love… is to hope…

Sometimes the sweetest joys in life pass us by in the blink of an eye, and the best thing we can do is to make sure we do not miss the next one.

Life is like a raucous train station sometimes, everyone is in a hurry, everyone’s journey is more important than the other, you drop things, you lose things, there’s a cacophony, a tremor underneath, a storm above, and amidst all that we can sometimes miss our train. And it is alright, there are hundreds around us who have missed their trains too, find a companion, find what you have lost, find your train.

Soon. Our bones will become dust, our memories consumed by history and our kids will tell tales of naught. Soon, our kids will turn to skeletons, like their children thereafter… and your story? Disappeared, forgotten.

Only love lives on, and what are we but tales of love.

Everything ends, and there is beauty in death and decay, to take your last breath holding someone you love. To remember the days spent, the stories, the will to never give up and go on, till death and beyond. And to finally reach the beyond, is beautiful, its where love becomes immortal and our stories become fables, fairy tales and songs for our children to sing and dance to around a night fire… our stories find home… our stories become someone else’s dreams.

And through every invisible white hair of wisdom that I claim to have, I tell you this. From every warm and bleeding corner of my heart I invite you to be part of my tale…

“If tomorrow starts without me, and my bones do turn to dust,

I wish to kiss the meadows, and not taint away in rust

I wish to fly amongst the birds, and look upon my love

Send her gentle rain and the fairest winds from above

I’ll tell her that I miss her, so terribly I do mourn

Ask her to remember me by, and never feel forlorn

That lucky night, those simple words, that strung us bound together

How we swore to hold our hands, through fair or foul weather

How our story thus continued, with friends and kins alike

Stories that made me forget often; what grief feels like

I lived a hundred years or more, but still it feels so less

But I pass in mirth and smiling content, in death’s humble caress

If tomorrow starts without me, my life wasn’t spent in naught

I thank you, one who reads this verse, for playing a role my plot

For what is life, but tales and fables, of love and all its glory

Waste not a single second, to love the characters in your story

Life is full of blanks and dots, fill it up with tales

Waste not a single second, this boat eternally sails…”