FOR ONCE, LET ME JUST CLOSE THE DOORS

For once in life, today I want to close the doors. I just want to sit here besides this window. This wooden window that is painted the sane white with the curtains shields me from the world I do not wish to see for a while. I want to lock the door to my room. I want nobody to come in and nobody to go out. I want to stay here still in my thoughts that I have allowed to wander in the room in different directions because today, for once I have let them loose. I want to lie down for as long as I like. I want no calls for food or calls to greet people. I want to be here STILL besides this window. I want to put the communication away. I want to communicate with myself and nobody else. I have not spoken to myself for long. I have been opening my ears to what the world said but I have closed them to what I was enunciating inside. The voice is weak; I have shunned it within myself. I want to listen to it again. I have forgotten how it spoke and what it spoke. I want to sit here for long. I do not want to run my mind in the usual chores of life. I have closed the doors of life for a while. I feel drained, I am tired but I still do not want to sleep and do not want to be awake. I want to get lost today somewhere far in my own thoughts which I have not and will not stop from pouring in. I want to think of everything and nothing, everything that matters and nothing that matters. I look out from this window- I see a commotion below, the usual honking of cars, the same old lady fighting for a 5 rupee bargain with the cycle rickshaw puller, neither of them withdraw from their own bargains, I see the same old beggar begging just that today he is wearing a new shirt, still dirty and torn but its different from the usual one he wears and I see the traffic police directing the traffic. I see the same world that I see everyday but today I have different eyes to see. It all suddenly has started to matter unlike the previous days where it looked like a common scene of a monotonous struggling life where these things are too small for attention. Have any of these people I see everyday ever stopped to think what were they doing everyday, have they ever felt like me-sitting behind a plain window looking out doing nothing. Am I sane or are those people insane? Why have I closed the doors today? Why have I felt the urge to listen to my voice so bad that i have closed on life for a while? Have these people shun their voices too? Is anybody happy in this world? Did God made world when he was upset? I sit here today thinking of all absurd questions that tomorrow would be mere futile self-questioning that I would laugh at within myself, each time it will strike my memory. I look up at the sky and wonder is sky very different from earth that we live on. Do the clouds fight among themselves like the humans on ground? When there is thunder, is it the angry cloud yelling? When it rains, is the sky crying because it has been separated from something it loved? Is it upset because the clouds took away the sun, and it loved sun too much?

I am still here STILL behind the window only that I am moving within the crowd of thoughts that have occupied my minds and brought me somewhere between ground and sky. I have paused my life but yet this life moves on. There is no breeze coming in from the open window. Everything is still inside yet life is moving. I still want to sit here behind these doors that are the outlets to the complex world.

The doors have been closed for a while. I want to stay in silence because the commotion that is there in my mind and heart is tremendous. An upheaval of thoughts that are bifurcated between the hearts and mind’s desires. I do not know which thought belongs where but today I have let them choose their host to decide where they will reside. I am too weighed down today to allot them the hosts. I want to let them loose too to see which feeling creeps back slyly and slowly. I want to lie here STILL for as long as I want to and be lost in thoughts that have been let loose today.      

-ISHANI KADEL