‘Not of this World’- What it takes to Dream?

We are tempted by endless list of things, such materialism encircling our lives each day, with each talk and stroll depending on this pre-determined societal status. In order to be successful, one has to have a good paying job, a multicolored house made of glass and a seventy five inch television set. Well that is quite definite in our societies, isn’t it?

We have been brought up believing and convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that happiness and success in measured in terms of the job in which a person is engaged in or the black bank balance, such red things. Well, as I continue to find myself overwhelmed by such absolute norms- with each day getting much difficult for me to comprehend, I feel like nothing but an imposter living here in such seclusion.

There isn’t a penny to my name or a house or a fancy silk, and all that I have, a few, buried memories of my father who left me at such a tender age. I still have those memories rushing inside my mind like it was just yesterday- and what could be life after that if it weren’t for failure at each minor street- the road is far too difficult to fathom.

Everyone says that I should become a very successful person and that I should bring my family out of this grisly poverty- one which has stayed with us such unswervingly, it feels I would never be able to imagine my life without reminiscing these moments- of walk on a Sunday morning with my unconscious siblings, in search for a grain or water, or to school with no food and sole- there is no empathy, but all that is- a crowd which wants me to be rise and fall at the same time.

Growing up had been an intense moment for me, with each ray such defiant, walls of my hungry stomach and the dripping of grey blood on top of the unloved floor- I’m sick and there is nothing that I can do. The bodies around me, stained with grey gold and unsophisticated platinum, they try to lure me in, saying that I was unworthy for this society.

Perhaps I am, for all that I’m made of, there isn’t a part of me left here, with the mind getting detached each second, what can I do to be me, myself only, for a good day at least. Everyone expects me to be a repetitive, pre-determined page scripted with such perfections-an act which has everyone walking on the same line since the beginning of our species, and my mind- it can no longer conform to such conventional principles.

There is an unopened book on my left, a red paper inside my mind and three glasses of water, waiting for me to touch, and be at ease, but wait a minute, I cannot even see myself here, what of it, now that everyone and everything around me is real and I’m not.

Let me fall, for each gene that I’m made of, such ecstasy and melancholia, what am I even doing here. It’s too late to save the lifeless stars, and if you, ever did want to see that star rule the cosmos, well what can I even say to you. All that the star wanted, was to think for itself, not to be the ruler of the cosmos.

So as the new rays continue to mystify, I have a dream, inside which, there is another, both of which are such unemotional, you toyed with my emotions and now I’m not even here. So let me dream, and all that I have, a piece of beating mind and unblemished, sober skin, whose fragrance has been under question lately, but never was. So let me dream, and please do not wake me up, O human.

-Yogesh Chandra

Image Courtesy: https://pixabay.com/en/delicate-arch-sunset-rock-formation-896885/