Life, the mall.

Following one’s destiny is a hugely romanticised notion. It is not easy at all. They say that if you want something really badly, nothing can stop you. There can. Leaving everything behind in search of a so called higher truth, sounds good in all the road novels that one reads, and the films that one sees. Maybe there is no higher truth, no pot of gold, and no epiphany at the end of the journey.

Uprooting is always a painful process, even if the tree is sentient enough to comprehend that it is being taken to a place with more sunshine and water. At the end of the day, the roots are still sticking to familiar ground.

What am I looking for? I wish I knew. Sometimes I feel like I am in a huge shopping mall. I want to get something but I don’t know what. So I go into each shop and look. Life has to be more than one big shopping mall, right? It can’t just be an assortment of boxes where I open each one just to see if it has what I am looking for.

You tell yourself to do what your heart wants you to do. Your heart never wants anything because it can’t. It pumps blood to keep you alive. It’s your brain that does the wanting and the longing. There IS no tussle between the heart and the mind.

It’s just a civil war inside your head and one side wins, maybe.

Maybe, there is no destiny.

Of new tales.

"Button your lip don't let the shield slip"

There is something about good music. Something that fills you with regret. Regret for all the things that you have done and undone. There is something about the melody that makes you want to turn back time and do things all over again.

And when the singer sings, what happens to all your fashionable cynicism? The "shield" that only slips when you are all alone in your tiny room in the evening, staring at the glassy computer screen in front of you.

Emotion is the last child of a bygone age of corny platitudes and melodramatic soaps.

We are all confident and self assured people moving forward. Forever. Yet something happens when your favourite song plays at a time when you are sitting all alone. When there isn't a single person around to scrutinise your facial muscles. That is when you sit back and wish that you were a better person. That you had said things when it was necessary. And not walked away. Held on. Maybe. Been a braver person and faced the firing line.

Sometimes, a tune makes you want to rewrite the entire story. The story that has become you. It makes you want to read the older story, the story that was lost in the lanes and bylanes you left behind.

When the words fade into music, all you want is peace. Or a new story.