Living in the cities, blighted by the glitters and twinkling sky scrappers can make one blind, drowning in cacophony of the traffic as everyday you go to office can make one deaf. They say even the lallabys of the concrete cities keeps you wake all night. Living such a life and then suddenly giving it all away in a moment can be stupid idea for some, while for someone else it can be the best thing to have happened in years.

I remember hallucinating in the wee hours of my sleep and waking up to a dimly lit room whose walls have not seen light for ages. The windows which only stares at the ACs and coolers of the adjacent buildings , the fan moving tirelessly for centuries overlooking you from the ceiling, every night soothing you to sleep and expecting to carress you out of your slumber. Waking up to mornings, which all look and feel the same in a room which are helplessly adored with inhouse plants to sometimes bring that touch of life and sometimes feeling in the role of a companion.

I remember slipping into sleep every night after a long conversation with the plants – three of them –after being high on weeds. I remember staring at the blank pages of Microsoft words, waiting for ganja to trigger that creative streak in me and complete that master piece which never happened. I remember looking at the empty gold flake packets which lay strewn in my room and the newspapers which pile up everyday at a corner of my existence, only to mock at a life which never changes even though the Timesofindia suggest it is a new day. I remember listening to the rustling sound of the newspapers as they move around my room, fanned by the air from the ceiling.

I remember sometimes leaning against the wall and hallucinating about a ray of sunlight which infiltrate my existence and fall on my face. I see my whole existence plunged into a bright hue that smells like my childhood colours. I see myself in my 14-year-old self running like Forest Gump would run in my by lanes even as the sun sinks at the horizon. I remember climbing the mango and guava trees at my silchar residence and lying on the branches for hours looking at the sun which played hide and seek amidst their leaves.

But all that soon used to get vaporized in the smoke of ganja and all I was left with was darkness of my existence once again. So when I decided to leave the city of concrete and find refuge in my childhood days for redemption, I know I would not be disappointed. Nature has never disappointed anybody ever.

It had been nine years since I had left my skinny bylanes for the streetlights lit alleys which looked so bright in the Tv screens. I left the vacant fields which used to be my playground only to be trapped in the four walls of my so-called successful existence. I left the guava and mango trees which had been my friends only to long every moment to go back to their arms. In fine, I had left my humble existence for a better and successful life which was always a myth.

Now that I trace my way back to the roads which taught me how to walk, I feel a sense of satisfaction to get back my old self which I had lost in the years that commenced in my life. But then in the silent gaze and the conversation of my long lost friends whom I hadnot met for years, I also feel the change that had crept in slowly in me and I realized if I have to get back my innocent days, I will have to shrug off some of the dust that has accumulated in my soul in the last few years.

      (To be continued... )