Thoughts.

I play around with my thoughts, sometimes. Wonder what it would be like if I held different ideas; chanced upon a different understanding of the world. In the dimly lit, fogged-up windows of lecture halls, instead of dozing off, I dream.

–Hello old friend

Its easier said than done, this practice. Even the path through which I walk new roads is familiar, and therefore, safe. I know how to get back, and how not to get lost. Its beautiful nonetheless.

–Plot twist: Hansel and Gretal ate the bread instead.

I should be able to imagine what it would be like to be different, because I am. Its not a far stretch, I once assumed. Except, being different can be a tunnel in itself, facing light only from two directions. You acknowledge the possibility that there is more, while keeping both feet firmly planted behind the protection the tunnel provides. Like a child clinging on to its parent, comforted by standing in this shadow of security.

–Can I let go now?

The night sky is never black. The onyx that twinkles before dawn, the periwinkle dashes, or the sombre grey. The matte, or the glossy, or the dappled, no two night falls look the same. Black is never just black. Periwinkle, indigo, sapphire, teal, baby, so many different ways to describe blue. Has the day ever overshadowed the night in its brilliance?

–Goodnight, sun. Goodmorning, moon.

Its a hole, really. Once you channel your thoughts in the direction others might. Once you abandon the usual way home, and take a detour. In the darkness, there is an alarming recognition that you might not like what you are faced with. Every horror movie refers to change as the problem; history would suggest patterns make it easier to become prey.

–I think I’ll take a left today

My health-and-wellness obsessed sister once planted an onion in our home. It bothered me, the sight of a pot, with its earthy contents–alive. Such a sight brought into our homely modernity was almost laughable. Nature belonged outside to me, in its rightful place of wonder and mystery. Nurturing a plant in a four wall prison was artifice, it was not sustainable. Yet, it grew. It fed. And three months later, it yearned for more than four ivory-coloured walls of sameness. To me, it was a home, to the onion, it was a poison that took a while to encroach, but at long last, was inescapable. Three months, and a few meals enabled by fresh onions was all it took for me to believe it was possible. A bigger pot, a bigger cage, and it would have worked. That must be how the zookeepers think.

–To the orangutan that went to sleep and never came back

I arrive, at dawn, back from where I came, and where I began. I am not the same person, nor am I necessarily different. An ocean that supports more life, is not altered radically. It is refined, and there is a novelty which undeniably excites. The interactions within, amongst the various forms of aquatic living, shift. It is this shift that widens the tunnels of this dream.

–Bigger is not better, wider is.

I have not left the classroom, nor have I dozed off. I am simply riding the waves of thought, hidden underneath the information being dictated. The water is deep, and welcoming, and the dark abyss holds treasures for everyone. Life at the surface holds a singular experience. Today, that is too meagre for my wandering mind.

-Extend the arms of your mind and grasp what you find, if only to know you once found it.