Heavens Long, Short

Heavens Long, Short

There are times you run on mad, perspiring, glistening unruly hair, thinning horizon, emerging roads and more beyond, pushing, pumping blood full of fresh air, rushing forward – your mind utterly blank. And then you stop. You look around – over the rugged extend of sandstones looming large over you like your cenotaph. You look back in the direction you thought you came from and you cannot make out. You turn back again to try understanding where your intent lies and you know your present has passed into eternity in that blink – your intent has simply vanished into thin, hot air on which the dissolving mirage on the horizon seethes.

You look around, tired for a rock to sit upon. Few yard away a boulder. Slowly the legs drag onwards to the rock which bears an uncanny appearance of an out-of-proportion throne with armrests. You stop awhile and smile upon the satire of time and even then proceed onwards to be a part of it. A relenting sigh and you drop on the throne in the middle of nothing, which no one gave to you, which was never meant for you or anyone, which needed not succession, no reign, no eras, no countries nor empires. Whatever was is the throne. Whatever you are now is the ‘master of what you survey’ – barren fields of eroded sandstone.

When you sit what do you see? A vast desert stretched out or a vast ocean, have you traveled through water or sea or your emotions. What are you - an ocean of thought or a desert of ideas? Winds blow around whirling thoughts and churning the ocean and forming dunes. The rock doesn’t move and do you? Do you take refuge in the rock from your ideas or do you let your tired self trudge again towards that unknown? Is it your victory or is it your defeat?
You part the parched, dry lips of yours in thirst of life – or answers?

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