Singing You, Maaya

Often when I sit alone in the dark, I try and hum a song. Being blank in my mind and silent at heart, I find that the only option the starlit night leaves me with for expressing myself to myself. Crickets chirp and the night breeze whistles past my ear. And the song doesn’t come out! Tunes overlap and words get disarrayed. The more I concentrate the more lost I become! The amateur tunes emanate – sometimes from my ribs – and waft through the air… they waft away and away from me in all dimensions of space. As though they are carrying away parts of myself that will never be coming back!

Life and death – both – stimulate me. And the channel between the two, which I often get trapped in, excites me as well! I feel like being all lost among the twists of Space and the hidden pockets of Time! Identity is also relative. I happen to be so insignificant! This world is just but another planet in this entire reign of stars and my inability is so petty! The Universe is huge. And has voids so great in it that something once leaving you might never return – even if you run after it all your life. You go on chasing and it goes on running away. And one day when you die and stop running you see it still running away! That is how I always lose myself when I sing. My heart goes on pumping new rhythms everyday. The pulsating rhythms generate tunes of several frequencies. It never tires. Just like the songs that never tire running away!

It’s not that I don’t know how to smile and live! But I find myself quite unworthy of it. This is no sadism. Neither masochism. This is an attempt to see what is there to be seen: The Truth! This is no indifference. Neither is it repentance. Just acceptance. The night air becomes a thick blanket, wrapping me all up and absorbing gently what I have to offer: my songs! The sky, the air, the earth – whose damp scent could be got from a distance after a late night drizzle – gives me company. I don’t find them sympathizing! Nor empathizing. They just welcome my presence silently. Drops of silence whisper secrets, the codes that have made up this Matrix! The feeling is great! As if to be a part of the elite league that drives this Universe. I sing! And the stillborn tunes diffuse into the surroundings and reach the limits of the night sky – where stars reside, where fairies weave magic into stardust! Sometimes to the moon! And it appears they have carried me with them. I feel the sparkles! But then I suddenly realize it’s all a dream I am dreaming; and that, in reality, I am in my room, sitting by the side of the window, all lonely, crying… and trying to sing the song!

I feel You inside me and myself inside that You again. And the recurring equation tunnels fathoms in my heart, to stretch to infinity, as I try and look deeper into myself! I see ourselves getting smaller and smaller. Diminishing in intensity… perhaps to be reduced to a speck before we could get assimilated into Nature forever! Because we are always like this together, I don’t feel the tears I cry! The tunes surround me. Just as they become a part of me. And then, when they go away, it feels that I have become a part of them – still lingering at my present, mortal existence…

I have always wished to be a star! So that I can sing afresh. So that I can sing correctly! I want to be the song itself! So that I can proclaim the power to sing myself! And thus… to sing You, Maaya! I want to sing You, Maaya! That’s what I have always wanted to. And that’s what I have always done! At least in my dreams…