I had literally given everything. Every secret. Every connection. Every font in my thought maker.

But it was never enough. Never complete in one Oxford full-stop.

My looks of agony went subtler with every promises you gave and axed. Your deceptive gestures and commitments have defeated me in Red. I tried to cheat myself in your wishful, unsettling eyes only to lose myself in the process. You wanted to be a part of this affluent society where you could so easily trade your heart for convenience and fantasy. You knew less, valued less but I still loved you. After all these years of separation, tell me if you have found your true convenience? Look around in your inanimate flat. Tell me where is it? In your lockers? Under the sheet? Hidden inside the liquor cabinet? Or behind the wheel of your pensive Porsche? Or in the hands of your admirers?

Consider the irony!

In this world of compulsive sellers masquerading as Adam Smith’s invisible hand, there are many who shamelessly play god without prior understanding of the subtext to their ego-centric words. One such said to me -“Amit, this is a fantastic chance to prove yourself, see it as an opportunity. You could become the bla bleh in the next dixie years.” A compassionate schemer, sure.

Are you trying to sell my self-worth to me? Or do you believe that everything in life comes with a cost?

I was offered to live this life. Offered not sold. Offered to live the luxuries of my mortal complacency and inadequacy with love and compassion. To live a life within me, caressing and looking after it. And you ask me to prove myself? My who? We are all mothers and fathers to the one ball of fire living and igniting each one of us with love and yellow. Otherwise, how would we be any different to the ones who are dead and still living somewhere?

We have been trying to prove ourselves in this made-believe existence and what have we got in general? Might I ask? —

A transactional life decked with buyout and anxiety. Nobody will tell you what comes after it – Less days to life? or Less life to days? Nobody. Misguided is the word, where only the greed profits. The world that lacks imagination in the centre of one’s mind – is a world in molds.

For years on, I have felt a weird sense of power, travelling through me across space-time without any motive or emotion. To be truly loved is a miracle and I wasn’t fortunate to that after my mother left my sister and I to be unified with the makers. All I have is one memory, which surfaces every time I find myself locked up in the vicious circle of paranoia and mind implosion. Dragging my mother’s young hand and running unsteadily towards the setting sun, like it was the only time I lived free. The enormous brightness causes my senses to explode catastrophically – and I was only a boy. With my eyes open wide at this enchanting host I remain enraptured. It was love, indeed. The first taste. The true touch. By this time my mother has totally slipped out of my memory. And I am standing there and inheriting the glowing womb of fire. It was only then when a small leaf of paper came flying by and rested on my walking shoe. I pick it up and turn it around to the scribbled side. There is a small graphiti. A pencil sketch of what I was seeing – a sun with white eyes behind the hills with straight beams demarking the star’s profoundness. Like somebody wanted me to keep it as a token of memory.

Thirty years fast forward and the charm of those white eyes has still not worn off. Thinking again –

We are dark silhouettes pressed against the luminous space. Holes punched in the form of faces. Aren’t we?

Rest aside, our imaginations fill in the blanks. But for most, it’s empty.