Nocturnal

The clouds in the sky begin to take on mysterious forms as night approaches. I love watching them with my head leaning against the cold steel of the jaali in my bedroom window. Not a soul is in sight, and the only sounds that reach my ears are the whirring of the ceiling fan, the occasional car smoothly negotiating the road outside, the unrestrained howling of the wind, and the soft whispering of the trees in the garden. The trees are eerie enough to prompt me to glance furtively around my room at the slightest sound or movement, for their crooked branches and broad leaves silhouetted against the silver gleam of the moon cast bizarre shadows on the walls.


The night air and the silence do wonders for the headaches I suffer from on a regular basis. The shadows of the jaali paint dark patterns on my skin, contrasting with the pallor of the moonlight. I pause to puzzle over what the shadowy figure walking past the gate could possibly be doing at 2 AM. I could sit here forever, but my eyes and brain eventually succumb to the tempting allure of sleep, and I drift away, not with a basket full of worries and a bevy of worthless thoughts cluttering my head with their unnecessary static, but with a delightful sense of peace and tranquility.


Never mind that I stayed up half the night to do this, and I will probably grumble my way through school the next day. At any rate, neend eludes me these days, unless I stay awake until the clock strikes an ungodly hour.

The calm before the storm

Contentment is a wonderful emotion.

That being said, emotions themselves are definitely among the most evil things that roam the planet. Although a world devoid of these strange forces would seem abhorrent, absence of emotion would definitely bathe our restless minds in serenity and bliss. Emotions control us, and that's a fact, let's face it. They dictate nearly every action we perform, every word we speak, every thought that crawls through the corridors of our colossal minds...

They walk, they run, they slide up and down, left and right, and in every possible direction. They trace straight lines, twists, loops, zigzags; or simply an endless, shapeless, winding path...infinite and tempestuous. They exchange places with each other, and seem to enjoy the prospect of tormenting us with their vacillation; happy becomes sad, and sad becomes angry, and suddenly, in the blink of an eye, everything metamorphoses into one giant, unexplainable feeling that painfully clogs the regular thought processes that keep us functioning normally.

But right now? This is different. Somehow, contentment is beautiful. Strangely, though, I cannot comprehend why I'm feeling a sudden, inexplicable burst of happiness. I don't have anything to be happy about, it's way past midnight and my sleep-deprived self is trying to get some studying done, so that my grades turn out half-decent at the very least.

They started out as isolated bubbles of emotion suspended somewhere in my being, and slowly morphed into a breezy exuberance that, somehow, forced my brain to believe that everything around me was perfect, just as I wanted it to be, whereas the truth was quite the opposite. Somehow, even the prospect of countless tests, exams, submission deadlines and whatnot couldn't frighten the happiness out of me. I've stopped caring.  Today, I feel calm. Serene. At peace. Like I'm standing on the beach, watching in awe as the massive crests of water race up to the shoreline and break majestically on the sharp, jagged rocks. The endless chatter of fleeting thoughts that normally ensues in my head is gone; instead, the corridors are empty, and all I can see in them are the tall, imposing pillars of gleaming stone that hold them up.

How I wish that this wasn't just a transient phase. It's probably the fabled 'calm before the storm'.