Good Night

It has been so long, I actually have to wonder where I should start writing from. So I find myself beginning from putting down the instinct to hint what I am going to write about and instead write it down like a story unfolding itself in my head.

The night has always been a place of solace for me, sometimes warm and welcoming, and a silent partner otherwise. I actually wonder whether nights were always like these. In the times gone by, which seem like from another life, my own, night was a time to rest. Then suddenly either times changed or life, and night became as much of a time window as any other hour during the day. What one couldn’t accomplish during day, he undertook at night. Maybe it was the proliferation of options, and lack of interesting ones during day, that this became so far-fetchingly a part of one’s day, that ‘night-life’ seemed more important than it’s sunny counterpart on so many days.

And now I wonder where I am amidst the darkness of night, softly caressed by moon’s charms. What I reminisce seems like a day gone by rather than years and months, and now I am standing in the still of the night, alone, and waiting for the next day to begin. The day will be like any other in this picture of time, demanding hard-work, relying on faith, teased by dreams and down-trodden by failures. But still it will be a new day. How will I know about it? I won’t have the luxury to rest.

In one of the many stories I have seen, read and heard, there was an episode in which a person, accomplished well beyond his age, questions on what made him feel like a man rather than a boy- when he finally made love to the girl he loved, or when he held the hand of a dying lonely woman through the night. Becoming a man from a boy for me was always to let go of what I wanted and choose what was right. But is that it? Even as a child I did what was right most of the time. So what differentiates a man from a boy? Now I think it’s accepting the fact that becoming a man is a never-ending process. There will always be a child in me. Sometimes more stubborn and unrelenting because he thinks he is a man, but the moment he stops learning and growing, he is a child again. And such is the circle of life- when a boy has finally realized the man he is, the child in him is ready to come back again, mostly accompanied by senility.

So why I slog through the day when what I eventually await is the night to rest? A story! A journey which has enriched one’s life by testing the waters of the world and time! And the hope that in the end my memories will be more of achievements than regrets! What I write so briefly probably describes years of my life. Yet the beauty of past and future is that years of them can span a brief moment in my mind, while the present is just a moment, but a special moment in which I live. And live it I shall.