Twenty four years is a long time. One doesn’t get born and grow up to be twenty four years old. It takes five stable governments in India, five five year plans, five green revolutions, two hundred and sixty four months. Just think of how much and what could happen during that time. So many people die before getting to that age. So many people fall in and out of love and stop trusting in the magic of love before they get that old. College gets over, even university in some cases, people start to work and fall into a routine that will eat up thirty four precious years of their lives. It is the moment when they are at the door of oldage when they realize that they are not twenty four anymore. How they wish they would have taken life differently, lived everyday except on occassional Sundays, created art and followed the flower of their heart and the butterflies of their stomach. Alas, it is too late for them now, they think.

But not for me and not at all for you too. Last night was really strange. I didn’t sleep, not even for one minute and in the dead silence of the night, the moon talks and the stars talk and the cool air of the AC blowing into the room at 24 degrees talks and they question the purpose of your life. The problem is, when you are twenty four, you have too many and you are not sure which one to follow. It could take another ten years or may be twenty for your true purpose in life to be revealed to you but once it does, it is impossible to sleep, it is impossible to stay awake and sit still, it is impossible to perform at jobs and laugh among friends, it is impossible to do anything else other than your purpose in life because ultimately, it dawns on you, that achieving your purpose in life is going to make you immortal until the humans go extinct on the planet that will happen much earlier than sun growing up to be a red dwarf and finally exploding, destroying atleast four planets in the solar system, but that will not happen in your lifetime, human race has still got to figure out AI yet. We are way behind than calling ourselves a progressive species, what we are at the moment is merely a destructive species.

If there is one true advice any sane person can give you, it would be to not ruin anybody’s day, or night for that matter. Some people live their lives during the nights, they are scared of coming into light. They are haunted by the times when they had nothing while they worked hard during the day to make ends meet but then, one day, they looked into the night and found solace. Night does to artist what days do to businesses. It flourishes them. Making art is a dark business and all dark businesses, like selling drugs, sex and soul, prosper only when they are carried out in the dark of the night. Art fucks with the mind and produces weird things. I have seen people creating art using used keys, used soft drink cans, mobile packaging, sand, pieces of glass, coke bottle caps, paper cups, magazine papers, what else and what not. Artists are like the gods in the world of non living things.

Dawn is a beautiful time, like dusk, both of them are actualy same and co-existing. There is dawn and dusk at the same time in different parts of the world. Do not get confused by my language, language is a very limited tool we humans have developed very recently to share our feelings with the world. If you observe closely, nature uses signs to communicate, doesn’t utter a single word to any other being in order to communicate. We utter thousands of millions of words in our lifetimes and still get misunderstood. What a pity! It is way better to stay quiet because it turns your ears into eyes too. Every part of your body can become an eye, your skin can see through touch, your nose can see through smell, you mouth can see through taste, just consider the possibilities to experience a different dimension of life by only staying quiet. However, if it becomes impossible for you to remain silent, if you are dying to speak and there is nobody to listen to, like I am feeling right now, take up the keyboard and start speaking through your fingers. There is still hope there. I am sure it will bring calmness and solace to you.

If not now, may be twenty four years from now.

जाने कौन चैन की नींद सोता है..

लेकर मन में अजीब सी ये बातें..

तिनका तिनका करके उम्मीद जोड़ी है…

Poetry by Nisha Mishra