Tuesday, January 23, 2007

Boat

You go out and buy some ordinary paper. Very ordinary. Carefully fold it into this perfect little boat. Paint it with bright happy hues, make it look really beautiful. In the mean time you develop this bizarre affection towards it. Yes, pretty bizarre. You look at it as you go to sleep, propped on the window sill. You also see the ‘indifferent’ moon and the black sky in the back drop. For where you can see, you r boat seems to be sailing into the darkness and it makes the moon look better. Ok, not entirely. Proud of yourself and your creation, you go to sleep. Peacefully.

Each day you wake up in the morning and think of different ways to make your precious little boat look prettier. You repeat this whole exercise for five years. You are so proud of it. Your little creation…nothing extraordinary about it, but priceless. Only the ‘indifferent’ moon watches you all this while as you nurture this insanity.

One evening you realize its time for it to sail. You take it to the river and place it beside the reflection of the ‘indifferent’ moon. Hoping it would keep guard. You don’t want to let it go, but you do. It’s wet now. Reluctantly you pull your hand away and instantly regret it.

You start running along the bank – helpless, watching your little boat leave you. You hope some insignificant rock or a worthless twig stops your precious little boat and you’ll take it back home, dry it up, paint it again if required and never let it go. You keep running with the moon. The distance between the moon and your boat seems to increase. The moon let you down. After a while you lose sight of the boat. You stop. Feeling weak at the knees you sit down. The moon isn’t running either. You wonder if your boat would miss you. You ask the moon. Silence.

You come back the next day and start looking for your boat, but to no avail. You wait for the moon to come out. Blessed moon! He sure does know how your boat is doing. You ask him. Silence. You wish were the boat. The End.

One takes refuge in one’s imagination- the safest place to be. A make believe world. Abandoned. Your theories and reasoning always fatigued by innumerable logical iterations. It’s always better to be the boat.