Love, Life and Uncertainities

The Struggle: Another Summer Noon

If someone would have asked me , in that particular moment, at what stage in life I was, I would have replied in one word 'struggle'.

My life was nothing more than the struggle going inside me, within me and without me. Everything I did was a struggle, everything I felt was a struggle; struggle to accomplish something, to make somebody of myself from nobody, struggle to feel something and also to not feel 'something'.

Apparently everything was same after coming back from Sam's engagement; my dorm, friends, campus, classmates, teachers and everything else was same. Nothing had changed yet I was seeing it all from a different lense; a darker, negative, grey-shade lense. Everything was gloomy, against me, it felt like even wind was opposing me.

I didn't want to indulge in the self-pity so I tried to refocus my energies. I began thinking of the pending assignments, deadlines or anything else that needed to be done, something or anything that could take my mind off the past events.

It was Monday, 4 in the noon, Nati was having nap after coming back from campus. Momo and Amy had gone to their dorms to rest. It seemed like everyone at hostel was resting. It was too quite. Dead quite. Sitting at my bed I looked to the window, half parted curtains showed the sky outside. It was raining, soundlessly. Even rain was quite that noon.

I started working on Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, as this submission was due by the end of the month. Mr. Hart was looking forward to it.

Nothing was capturing my interest, my all efforts went in vain yet I continued working half heartedly. Soon it was time for Nati to wake up, so she did.

"What are you doing Sari? Didn't you rest?" Nati asked in her sleepy voice.

"No, I didn't", I deadpanned.

She came onto me and began yanking my laptop away.

"Nati, stop it!, what are you doing ? I really need to finish this assignment, please leave me alone for tonight", I nearly screamed at her.

So she did that as well, she did leave me alone that night and didn't come back, " Fine, be that way, I am going to Momo and Amy's dorm". She left shutting the door with a "thud" after her.

The room was all the more quite after she left. I kept working nevertheless and the evening turned into night, early hours of darkness turned into even darker, intentense and more solemn ones, I kept going, regardless. Somewhere in the middle of night I remembered about the "crappy" draft, according to Zain, I had to submit to editor's office.

It was three in the morning, it was still dark, no flick of morning hue, no light of twilight outside. I tried to redraft it once again, yet it felt like I didn't want it, I wasn't into it, the paper infront of me was oblivious to the world inside me. How could I relate to it then ? When it didn't convey my 'struggles'; what I went through, how it changed me, it knew nothing. It spoke of nothing ! It was nothing more than a combination of few words on a white surface, that said nothing, expressed nothing and satisfied no one. Yet I couldn't do better, I had made it technically perfect, but the key word is "technically".I couldn't be more wrong in that moment.

I didn't realize my mistake; writing should be everything else but "technical", you shouldn't be "politically right" while writing. Its not " true writing", if it doesn't reach one's soul or comes from it.

After my relentless, steady and un-feeling strokes of fingers, that typed repeatedly in a mechanical fashion, I realized it was not night anymore, atleast outside, if not in me.

I stepped off the bed, walked to the window and breathed in the near-chilly morning wind. It was still damp and windy yet when it came through my throat down, felt like some rough wound and my heart was pumping hard through them. My soul was bare and exposed: vulnerable to be thrashed. Redness of the skyline was much similar to the one in my eyes: both emerge after pulling an all nighter, after 'struggling' through the dark.