Place for my head!

I am wondering why I am writing here when I usually prefer a paper, that too which is kept to myself. But then I looked around and glanced at the clock. 3.10pm. And I realised that this is the second time I am waking up in a day. I cant find a paper and a pen. No one is at home. Brother out for tuitions, mom and dad on work....and me...On this couch where I fell asleep 3 hours ago after having breakfast. Fell asleep again...3 hours ago.

Sometimes what happens, you are sitting in a bus(whatever), and your glance lands on an aged man in the corner of the street busy in his chore. And your mind starts building image of the personality about that person. And you reach on a conclusion about his family, maybe he is living alone etc. You think "He must be around 50-60, with a small house, earning his daily wages..Maybe he is arrogant, and is not in good health.....his wife and kids are living alone some kms away. Maybe he had sacrificed a lot for his family and now is living alone for them to be happy. Maybe he was a kind soul, yet arrogant, and person with values......." ...and what not. You draw out a complete image of his heart and his life. And mind you, all this takes just a split second i.e. as your bus(whatever) turns around that corner.

The other side of the coin is you come across a person, whom you talk to, unlike the old man at that street. Whom you become friends with. Whom you just...just like to talk to. And so you do. For hours and days and months.........And you rest yourself in the comfort that the person is one with whom you can be great friends with! And that you know them! And you quickly, add that person on all the social networking giants on which you spend most of the time of your day. And you are happy. That you found a good friend! And when you talk for a long time, you like talking more. With every passing day, that friend of yours, becomes more special. And adds on to write in your "Life Book" a new chapter. Without you realising it. One fine day you realise it, and its not LOVE that I am talking about here. You just realise the darkness of the ink with which this chapter was written in the book. Its DARK and engraved. Like a kid who writes hard pressed with a dark pencil for the first time in his school notebook. It feels good that it has been written. That someone, is so close that HE can edit YOUR "Life Book".


And one fine day, maybe a decade later, while you amble across that same corner of the street, you remember. That bus ride. You walk up to a nearby store to ask about the old man, and you get to hear this:

"How a good man he was though a bit arrogant. In his mid 50's he succumbed to bad health. Living alone in an old shack, he used to garden here to earn daily wages as he lost his job. And all that because of his cunning wife who lives with their kids at a distance of few kms. Sacrificed a lot for them. A man of values he was."

And it feels like déjà vu. You sit alone sipping your favourite coffee. The past cascades in front of you. Its tough to feel, that your favourite networking site doesnt have that "SPECIAL PERSON" anymore. And you flip through the pages of your "Life Book" to find that chapter. Its still there, written in the darkest of ink. But what you see, is that it has been earmarked, and left in midway...........just because a decade earlier, someday your conscience realised that you never KNEW them.

You still knew that old man on the street.


And you get your stomachs filled with a lump that travels up to your throat, choking your conscience. A stinging realisation strikes you. That maybe you were just ballistic in life. You never stopped. And questioned yourself, "Do I KNOW this person?"

And suddenly the page was left half written, because KNOWING is not easy....