4. Awakening

(first three parts are prologue, city: initial verses, dream skeletons)

Bus kept traveling smoothly and he slept for a while as if he is living kind of swift and smooth life he always looked for. life with constancy of motion, life without doubts of if and should, just a life. but it was just for a while. soon dreams came back, resembling the memories he had, like old skeletons in brand new clothes.
'But why you did that?' somebody was asking.
the voice was hurt, pains filled in it beyond any estimation of depth. he tried answering with sort of poetic reality he has assumed for himself and that voice. In poems, reader resides in words unwritten and one's ownership over that unexpressed content and twin relationship with expressed poem make one reader, a true reader. But poet often forgets that such a reader is assumption to express poem, not hard reality on which poem can grow. he too has forgotten. he changed his poems and so reality which kept shaping his poems.
He lured words to fit in the stage he had set for them and to lure them he camouflaged. now he has forgotten his original color or colorlessness.
'Enough of this webs of yours. you cannot balance emotions on threads of your momentary colors.'
That voice was sharp, wounded and stroked him like a whip.
He started fumbling. He tried erecting some temporary clouds of words to cover the unbearable light which was penetrating him.
'you got to answer questions'. voice said, as if it was of stranger.
he knew this point, he had escaped it before.
he uttered 'I answer but my answers are not what you expect or will fit in image you have about my answers.'
voice laughed, a sarcastic laugh. 'you cannot fool me. Answer!'
'I am not fooling. Nobody accepts something as answer until it fits into our image of that answer. We seek answers because there is space in us which needs something. There is space inside us because whatever person, event we enter inside us cannot fit the experience of that person or event. Experiences are bigger than our encounters with them.'
He expected voice to turn sympathetic, showing some congratulating softness. A strange silence followed, silence which has germs of self destruction, silence which deepens chaotic interpretations, silence which let words form shape which is farthest away from their birthplace.
'Is this your answer? Answers are in plain facts which cannot be excavated further. answer me who am I for you? Answer me who are those for you? answer me. '
'You? Those? and how can I tell it in facts. I know no facts except few like my name. And they too are very shallow'.
'You are weaving one illusion again, but not this time.'
'But I do not have defined me and any of my references.'
'But references are what we have about anybody else. We comprehend by references, not by what it is actually'.
'But that actual exists. Reference is one limited dimension of our perception of that real. Real is incomprehensible.'
'So what do you mean? You are multi-dimensional, much more than what your references can tell about you. Aren't you lying? Fooling yourself?'
Voice didn't say last lines, but it was there unsaid, but almost felt.
He kept looking towards fingers of his feet, aimlessly scratching digs, his body was trembling inside, he felt like jumping from a very very tall cliff or crying, tears rolled to his eyes. he controlled them and kept watching fingers of his feet.
'So be with your incomprehension.' Voice marked these words without saying and faded.
Even with disappearance of that voice he was not at peace. Loss of pain is a loss only. Having nothing is not exactly happy.
He woke up. He was alone in the bus. He felt sea-breeze and salty smell of air. He was soaked with sweat. Few drops were lingering on his eyebrows. They were about to fall and light, entering though their dense media was splitting in droplets of brightness and illuminated his eyes. He removed those drops, dried his forehead and got down from the bus.
Sea was in front of him. He knew this places, lot many poems this sea has in it and he has taken few of them. All those poems then formed a collective appearance, took some name and co-ordinates along space-time and dragged his life till here. He looked at sea, he looked at shores which are too distant to be perceived clearly, he looked at sky, where light was making incomplete attempt to define age old darkness. He felt all moments he lived or thought of living collapsing into the one where he was now. He felt every corner was getting folded into the place beneath his feet. It is just now and here and I.