Towards a brighter tommorrow

If I were to look back now I would be caught in the lure of the comfort I live in. The warmth and the easy life, the innumerable excuses to do nothing. I've been evading my calling in life, smothering it with cushions of love, duty and helplessness. Not realizing I was creating a crater within myself. A void which needs to be filled if I have to know what satisfaction is.

Now that I see myself in a better light, I can also see the immense possibilities that lie hidden within me. I see the smiles I can spread around and the glow it brings to me. I am ready to step out into the world and make a difference. For every heart I warm I get a friend for life. Every child I hug is a love for life. What a lovely barter ! As I step into this new uncharted territory of my life I carry your love deep within me, a flame that will light my path and a firm hand to hold when my steps falter.

There is beauty in everything I behold and the beauty comes from within me.

I still think of you.

How could I forget his name? How many times in life's quiet evenings of solitude and sometimes in my noisy clatter of thoughts his memory has come floating to me ! Age is catching up with me.

That summer holidays we were in Kerala as usual. I was all of eight and he was the tailor who worked in the tiny tailoring shop close to my house. He must have been eighteen give and take a year or two. A thin dark boy in a green shirt.

Every morning in between his work, he would rush to me with a small pouch of savouries from Kumarettans tea stall. Bondas and dal-vadas, banana fritters and chocolates. I still see him laughing at my happiness on seeing the pouch. He would place it in my tiny hands and repeat the same words day after day, molu please call me 'nice uncle' like you call that other uncle of yours. I would promptly oblige and he would pick me in his arms and kiss my cheeks.

Days sped by and it was soon time for us to get back. He came that morning too, with a packet of warm goodies, hugged me and told me, "I will be in Bombay for this onam, you better practise calling me 'nice uncle' "...I remember climbing on the table and counting the days to onam once I got back home. Every day I would count the days. Months passed by, onam was around the corner when one evening I heard amma reading a letter out aloud to my grandma. It was from my aunt in Kerala. After she finished the letter she paused a minute at the N.B. and read ' that tailor boy Sudhan, he passed away last night, was found hanging in his room...

Now I remember his name . My nice Sudhan uncle.

Every night in my dreams.......

I must have dropped off to sleep somewhere between the pages of the new novel I was reading . From the mundane life story of a young American girl to the world of some voodoo land in the depths of Africa. Why else was I walking around with a needle pierced through my tongue !!

My night life has been very adventurous and spine-chillingly exciting so far. Before your imagination runs wild :D - sometimes, its wild animals chasing me through the city roads, other times its people falling down from high hanging bridges. Some of them are too discomfitting to be mentioned here. They have become so much of a regular feature of my sleep that I have lost my fear of them. Most of them I laugh it off, some of them make me uneasy. Sometimes my dreams are wierdly funny, like the snow leopards, with blue polka dots on them, kissing each other. Gawwddd...am I finally losing it?

On a few occasions I have managed to give goose-bumps to my hubby . I've dreamt of long lost folks who decide to spook us out by calling that very afternoon . Hubby dear almost dropped the phone. He has always been patient to my morning ritual of dream recitals , though I spare him the details of the gory ones. Once I was describing this slimy beauty that visited me last night when his mom calls up to say they had a snake scare in the house yesterday.

There have been other cases too. I have no explanations for these things. In all probabilities they are simple coincidences. I did read somewhere people with such experiences are acutely sensitive and tuned in to their senses.

I dont appreciate this sensitivity and I dont need it. I really wouldnt want one of my tiger chasing me dreams coming true. That is to put it lightly.

Maybe putting it down on paper will drive my demons away.

Happy dreams to you friends !