Second Innings!

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SECOND INNINGS!

When she was in her early twenties, as a young woman then, she realized to her utter secret mirth that she was in love…and not just any other love…it was the typical head-over-heels love! Like any other love-struck mortal, she thought then that her whole life was finally all laid out in a scintillating optical platter, right in front of her.  In all honesty, she liked or rather loved what was mirroring in front of her. And for a decade, she just could not wait for Life to usher her there…that someday…to her little wispy dream of a “a house with white picket fences and a rose garden”…for an eon…for the longest decade.

She thought that she had the secret ladder to reach her seemingly difficult dream. It was everything that she had dreamt as a lil’ girl; the times when she had play- acted with her friends and cousins of her Prince Charming and her “happily ever-after”.  Like an obstinate fool, arming herself with an uncompromising commitment, she compromised with everything in her own life to chase that elusive dream that would beckon to her ever oh-so tantalizingly. For her (that naive ol’ her)…for an entire decade…that dream meant her ultimate happiness…mirrored to her that ultimate utopia after which all of the human race run after. And she did everything in her power, everything in her crumbling grasp to reach it…to hold it captive so that her fragile dream could never escape her….

And just months into her new “happily ever after life” when an almost smug- her was just starting to believe that everything…everything she had dreamt of was finally a reality and was trying to bask in its glow; Life, the cruel prankster that it is, suddenly decided to play one of its famous tricks on her…the Destiny trick. The funniest part of it was that Life made sure that she could actually live out her dream for a little while, experience it for the smallest eon of time. And then ever so stealthily and suddenly, He smacked her right in her face shattering everything she had held so closely and dearly to her turbulent heart. When it had happened, “Destiny”, people uttered to pacify her and she just could not believe it. Hadn’t she struggled against destiny all this while, all these years? She just could not believe what had actually happened…how could someone?…

Well! Everything she had believed in was suddenly shattered. From a vantage point, she could see all her dreams, broken and in shards, scattered all over. Everything happened so quickly and suddenly it was all over and there she was, left all alone, trying to pick up the broken pieces of her life!

Two years passed in a daze…dawn broke and sunset came and she had no idea how those hazy , murky days, in a quick succession,  passed by her. She just could not accept the new “twist” in her now very much broken life. Everything seemed like an unending nightmare and all she could do then was try not to break down. That much she knew, that she had to stand tall…strong or not, that the turn of days decided for her. She did everything she could do to bear the pain. Sometimes she won and sometimes the wretched pain got the better of her. She then turned to praying, like never before, begging for some respite from the numbness of not feeling anything else. But Pain, her ever-present companion did not leave her alone… she was his favourite child, it seemed. She did not feel like herself…she felt like a complete stranger; as if her doppelganger had somehow manifested itself and had taken over her whole being… “I was me and yet not me”, she would muse…and sadly she did not know how to find herself… she did not know then whether she was  lost forever.

Not too way back in time, she, all of a sudden, took the decision of relocating to a different city, a completely new place in the hope of finding her own self. Strange it did sound to her and futile too, trying to “find” herself in a place where there are no lingering memories walking by…where try as she might, she had had no chance of bumping into the ghostly image of a younger, happier, foolish herself. But that was exactly what she did.  She did not know what this sudden relocation would usher in but she somehow knew that she had to do it, go through it. She tried to steady her already frayed nerves and made the big move anyway. Let me tell you, why this was such a big deal for her. You see, till then, she never ever had lived alone, the very thought of it was itself a nightmare for her. And always having led a very sheltered life and practically knowing nothing of life and the manifestations of it, the startling idea of the gamut of the entirely new experience scared her…jolted and pulled her out of her old cocoon and her old life just like that.

She moved into the new place but she discovered that she was still lost in her old memories…everywhere she went, they accompanied her too…whatever she did, they too followed suit.  But then she waited…for what, she hadn’t had it all figured out but she did just that, biding her time…just waited. She now moved in a new circle of people who made her unlearn and then learn new facets of everything…about routine work…about transient life…about herself. But she still stood there, waiting for the release…for her freedom from her parasitic past. But she herself was not letting it go…she was not ready for her memories to be exorcised out of her being. All she wanted was to wake up and realise that she had only been dreaming…all she wanted was to look over and look at…

And as days turned over, she went about her new found routine… you know, commuting daily and making her way back home just as dusk sets in…trying to make herself disappear in the milieu.

And one fine day…

One day, a normal ordinary day, like usual, she sat in a dingy cab making her way back home. But all of a sudden, she realised…she knew that something was different. She was almost giddy as a new, unknown emotion washed over her. “What was happening?” she almost cried out aloud. Suddenly she caught herself feeling something ,which long back, had almost become a stranger to her; she was feeling happy for no reason at all. “Happy?” she was taken aback by her own turbulent thoughts. ” How could she ever be happy again?”she had mulled over and had raised the same question, as if on a loop, over and over again for the past two years and there she was, sitting in a cab, feeling happy…Really?!

As she now struggled with her strange, up- swelling emotion, she felt as if suddenly her entwined past was trying to bid adieu to her, at least a part of it…if not in entirety. And she knew then that she had to let it go. She suddenly un-clenched her tightly closed fists and she let it go…all of her broken dreams, embedded as blanket of thick shrapnel throughout these two years, deep in her body and in her soul. And it hurt, like a searing, almost blinding pain,  as  she let them go but she was opening her deep hidden wounds for the last time…giving them a much deserved chance to heal and fade away…in hope…and forever. She cried out for her lost dreams but she knew she had to let them go…It was over and she was bowing her acceptance.

She knew then that she was ready…for her second innings. Hope, a lost friend whispered softly, “I am here…I am here…” And just like that she found herself again…not her old ol’ herself but a new herself…a long –lost, but happier herself.