Book 3: The Majestic Noon of Flights

Epistle 41: Running Through the Wilderness


A/N: Hey there everyone! :D :D Here is the next update! :D :D

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21st March, 2004:

Today is my day of escape.

A day where I do not belong to the world and it does not belong to me. It's my day off, a day I've rightfully earned after having such a hard month.

So at four in the morning without telling Baba, I slipped on my running shoes and a sling bag with you in it and left home. Running away… running away as far as my legs could take me; running away as hard as I could until my surroundings were nothing more than a blur, the noises around me insignificant. What mattered were the beats of my heart I could hear ringing in my ears.

What mattered was that I was alive and human.

This isn't the first time that I've done this but this is the first time that I'm telling you about it. This is something that nobody knows about, not even Ishaani. This day is my own; nobody knows where I go and what I do. And that's how I prefer keeping it. This is my solace, my go-to. I cannot share its whereabouts with anyone because it's my world of peace, my world of oblivion.

It's a tough world out there. And as day after day passes by with my transition from being a boy to an adult only getting more and more pronounced, I realize how on edge I exactly am from falling into a world I neither like nor want to be a part of. I'm tired and tired and tired of being judged for the background I come from. For who the world sees me as.

A servant.

When I lost the ability to walk four years ago, I realized that my world had changed forever. I had changed forever. The fruit of life seemed so much more precious in that moment, so much more blissful that it took me to be on the tenterhooks of death to realize what life held for me. It was a gift whose value I realized in those moments when I felt everything slipping away from my grasp, everything except pain. That was the only thing I could hold on to because it made me feel alive.

It helped me maintain a foothold in the world that suffocated me.

I'd lost my hope to live. I just wanted it all to end. The pain, the suffering... everything. I was tired of clinging on to pain, tired of making it my companion. It wasn't a good companion at all... it made me want to rip my heart out and shred it. Even till this date I don't know what happened that night - why Love died in my dream and how she took it all away and gave me a new birth in the arms of Ishaani.

Is that why she saw me die that night?

But she's seen me die the same way even after that night... I wonder why she dreams of it or how true is it. It may be partly true, maybe wholly. Who knows? Dreams are a mystery no man can solve because it has never been fully understood.

For both of our sanities, I hope it isn't true.

But can we ever run away from our destiny? Can we ever change it? Is there any reality in the fact that there are moments when what we speak comes true... that our destiny can change in that one, fateful moment?

How much more are we meant to run until we have to come to a stop?

And since four years, I've been running. Running hard enough so that I can finally catch the moon. So that the horizon can meet me somewhere. So that I can chase my ambitions and dreams. So that I can become the man my parents and my Mota Babuji want me to become. So that I can finally be an equal.

I can never forget that day when Mota Babuji had come over to my room to take my advice on the Reliance Petroleum shares. I was so sure that I'd blown up my chance with my risky and rash ideas. I did not know that it would be the first step to achieving what I truly want to become in life.

I remember how Mota Babuji had managed to sell off all of his shares at high profits before the prices crashed at the markets. He'd began the cycle again on yet another advice from me. And he managed to buy almost 4,00,000 shares at their lowest price before the upward trend began until Reliance Petroleum made a breakthrough with the much-hyped about hit at the gas reserve the next year.

It was announced as India's biggest gas discovery at the Krishna-Godavari basin in nearly three decades and one of the largest gas discoveries in the world during 2002, also being the first ever discovery by an Indian private sector company. Mota Babuji was amongst the few who managed to make an overnight jackpot of a fortune out of the whole affair and since then, I've been his official advisor on several of the portfolios handled by the Parekh Broking Solutions.

It's been four years and I've never disappointed him till date.

From that point forth, there has been no stopping me. This is where I see myself and this is who I am - a natural at stocks and shares. A natural at predicting, planning and strategizing. A calculative risk-taker. And ever since I've known, I've been running towards my goals with a passion that I've never felt before. A passion that might only be lesser than the one I feel for Ishaani. I want to become someone who my parents and my Mota Babuji can be proud of.

But more importantly, who Ishaani can be proud of.

She's always been by my side with her hand in my own every time anyone calls me a servant, assuring me that as long as she saw me for who I was, it was alright. She's always the medicine to my wounds every time I take scoldings for her, saving her from Baa's wrath and venomous words.

She's the one person who I've truly ever cared about, the one person who is my Universe. She's the one who gave me a new life. The least I could do is give her my heart... my soul.

My existence.

She's been beside me through thick and thin, supporting my dreams that are too big for my tiny mind. She's been there to hold me every time the world's atrocities are too much to bear, whenever the title of being a driver's son and a servant become too much to live with.

It isn't a pretty existence, but it's something that I'm learning to live it.

So just like every time when things get too much to bear, I simply go for a run. A long, never-ending run where there is no destination, no world, no pain, no society... nothing. Just me and my heartbeats, just me and the feeling of being alive.

It's too often when I forget what it feels like to be thankful of what God has given me, what so many people are deprived of. Sometimes, I forget that it took me two years to get back on my feet before I could run without the slightest trace of a limp.

Without the slightest trace of the fact that I was this close to being a vegetable.

So it's my feet carrying me away as far as they can, the warm, sweet winds hitting my face with the same force that my heart pounds against my ribs with. Nature's green blanket is sufficient for my buzzing brain to find a relief that the world often strips me of.

And like always, I ended up running through the forests, my feet halting once I crossed the bridge between the Earth and Paradise, the crest cradling the soft flowing river that always captivates my fancy. It's where I sit for hours, collecting my thoughts and my emotions.

There is a long way to go. There is a lot to be done.

There is neither any place for defeat in my book nor any place for being weak. I am a shield; I was made that way. I am a warrior not just by name, but by what life has thrown against me as well. When I lost the ability to walk, I'd nearly given up until life gave me another chance. Another chance to fight and to build way for what I wanted to become, for what I desired to become.

That incident changed my life forever, and not just because it was the five most grueling and challenging months that I've had to live through - physically, mentally and emotionally. But because when I walked out of it, it had changed me as a person as well. I don't know what it is to give up any more, I don't know what it is to wait for miracles.

I am my own miracle, my survival a talisman against what I'd just lived through.

There is to be no stopping me now because there is nothing to hold me back. I've broken through the bonds of my own pessimism; I've broken through the pain that I'd made my refuge. But I still have a long way to go. I refuse to go down without a fight! I will fight life head on! If I am a servant to the world, so be it. The world doesn't matter to me. What matters is what the people who I love think about me.

What Ishaani thinks about me.

But that still doesn't make the constant judging easy. Oh, I know what it takes to painfully smile every time a snide comment is made upon your ancestors. I know what it takes to gulp away the angry retort that is so close to escaping my lips when someone talks rudely to my father. I know the restraint it takes me to not cry when I must suffer Baa's wrath while trying to save Ishaani. I know the way I pull myself up every time someone raises a finger over my loyalty to Mota Babuji because they think I'm some kind of gold-digger who's done voodoo over my mentor.

I know what it takes to live with the fact that at the end of the day, no matter what you do, you are always going to be seen as a driver's son.

But that's what makes me stronger every day. That's what reminds me every day that there is no margin for errors, distractions or emotions to overtake practicality. There is no place to succumb to the cruelties of the world, not when there was so much to be achieved and to be won over.

That's what keeps me going. That's my secret to my thick-skinned exterior.

Nobody is allowed to penetrate it (maybe except Ishaani), and that's why running helps so much. It's leaving behind the resentment and anger that rises in my chest every single time at the injustice. It makes me weak and it has to be done away with. It makes me question whether I have the right to a normal life, to a life of equality. If life can't offer it, I'll make sure to pave way for it.

I owe it to my parents and to Mota Babuji and Falguni Maa at least. And all of this is just so that I can become an equal to Ishaani one day. So that I can think of her without the fear of overstepping my boundaries, that I am betraying the trust of my Mota Babuji and his loyalty.

Keep running - my mind screams at me as I run blindly through the trees - don't stop. And I run as fast as I can until I'm drenched to my skin with my lungs on fire and my legs un able to carry me any further. The doctors had advised me to take up healthy running once the recovery in my legs had become more and more pronounced, but what I do is obsessive running, which is undoubtedly unhealthy. It helps though, and the doctors say that I've got excellent vitals now.

But at times it does more harm than good.

Like always, even today my knees wobbled before I finally fell to my feet after a stretch of mindless running for goodness knows how much time, my body heaving with sharp intakes of breath while I felt the stitches at my sides get pulled. I covered my face in my palms as I sat on the rocks at the bank of the river and screamed as loudly as my voice could carry across the encompassed forest, the birds instantly flying away from their nests at the sudden disruption of their peace.

I felt my heart beat irregularly while my heaves turns into dry sobs, wanting only solace.

I breathed in deeply, trying to collect my emotions and thoughts while I stemmed the overwhelming sensation of wanting to fly into the highest of winds or dive into the deepest of oceans to get away from my own vulnerabilities. I couldn't entrust everything to Ishaani... I love her too much to do that.

Besides, she has her own share of problems to face in this cruel world. So my solace has to be from elsewhere. It has to be the one companion who I can trust my guilty secrets to. And who better than the Nature that God has made us? Mother Earth, I shall be at your mercy.

The rivers make their assurance known to me with the soft splashing of their foamy water against the rocks while the rustling of the winds against the cheerful leaves and trees let me know that everything would become alright eventually. The sunlight now streams through the thicket of greenery to promise me that there would be a destination to my aimless running… that I would reach where I wanted to one day, beating all odds and evens.

The winds caress my cheeks with the vow that I am human at the end of the day, and God makes no difference for all are his children. The twittering of God's several other creations let me know of their approval and disapproval about whatever I let them know.

Oh, it is a tranquil escape into a magnificently beautiful realm. An escape into a world where I am worthy of the same amount of respect and dignity. An escape where there is no judgment, only salvation. And as I wash my face with the cold, supple water from the river, a new source of energy builds within me to bear what's to come.

It would be alright. The world is strong, but I am stronger. Nothing can keep me away from what I want to achieve, and nothing can break me. Every man is allowed his moments of weakness, his moments of imperfection. Imperfection is not a flaw, it is a virtue that reminds one every day that they are human.

And I am done with my share for now.

I am a boy with a dream, an ambition, and a destination. And there's no stopping me, not when the people I love have my back and I have Ishaani's hand in my own. As long as I have her, I have no fear because she is my world. A world I love and want to remain a part of. So as long as she sees me for who I truly am, nothing is difficult to achieve.

All I have to do now is run back to her through the wilderness.


Constructive criticism will be more than welcome and sorry for any typos. :D :D