SHADOW-S

Loose baggy pants, yellowish white shirt, unkempt receding hair, head stooped down, dull eyes that looked over the spectacles, a bag on the shoulders - a shadow of depression, of unknown hatred and of uncertain confusion.

The shadow cycled the roads, everyday. The house to the school and back, to tuition centers, to special classes, to church, to Sunday school, to hospital … the shadow was diseased. Tied and fettered. It thought nothing was free; that everything had an investment, an amount to be paid – one liked it or not. Actually, it never thought. It was made to think. It was always shown an ideal to look up to. Whatever it did was practiced. It had lost its ability to create and think for itself. The shadow literally lost its source of existence and creativity. It became what it was projected – a shadow.

But the shadow had a dream, a hope. The more it was subjected unto, the more it dreamt of freeing itself from the projection. One day the shadow unfettered itself. It moved away, without any reason it escaped. It went in search of its identity – its self but it had lost it, forever.

The shadow had dreamt of fleeing free into the skies. Now it is captured in the maze of words inside four walls, stuck between a chair and a desk, in front of a screen – glued, its fingers danced according to many tunes. And it thought it dreamt freely.

The shadow now thinks it has realized its dream. It has actually learnt how to transform into many shadows. Shadows for different surroundings, for very many reasons. It had lost its source forever. Perhaps, the source itself was just a shadow!

The shadow became what it is.