The dreams

“Once there was a king .... “ and so starts another of those melodious stories, somewhere in the broken old voice of granny while somewhere in the rhythmic tones of a loving mother. Each moment somewhere a young one is waiting for another story to be told and retold; for what else has ever been more interesting in our lives than the flights of imagination and loving dreams. Isn’t that the reason that whenever we meet someone, we generally ask - “So what else?”, “What is new?”, or “what is the news?” - waiting to hear some other story whether old or new. Our mind is distilled down from school to high school to college but it seems that howsoever far the refinement may take place, there is one thing in us that never dies - “longing to hear another story”. While the memory of trigonometries and geographies goes down in our mind; the image of Krishna driving the chariot grows even clearer. Isn’t Duryodhana as real for us as Akbar is? Whether there is an evidence to prove it or not - does not really matter. For the mankind, story of Asoka is as true as the story of Buddha or for that matter that of Rama and Hanumana. And why not? What difference does it make whether it really happened or not? What matters is not the evidence but that “how pure the story is?”. History gets created by the gods while stories are created by man. They both combine to make a full human life. That is the highest truth of the mankind. Hanumana takes the history to an untold height when he jumps high in the air mistaking the sun as apple. Krishna brings out all the maternal love and tears in eyes when he is caught red-handed with hands full of stolen butter and eyes full of innocent tears.

Looking at children - weaving thousands of dreams in their little shining eyes when she was narrating them fables of kings, I realized how we adults have lost our innocence. How my heart will laugh at the fairy tales; how it will remind me ceaselessly that there is no flying horse waiting for this Prince out there. But look at these pure hearts - this little one who, sitting in the lap of loving elders, is looking out of the window into the still dark starry nights while he is led into the dreamy lands of princes and princesses, of fairies and demons; dreaming aloud as "I am that Prince", "I will save the Princess". He is already the little Prince riding on the back of the flying horse while I am like the Prince who alighted from the horse only to find the cruel heat of the urban land. There is no kingdom and no princesses here; Prince is caught in the petty trivialities and demonic insecurities of life. The Princess has no long tresses; she does not have any distinguished smile or a flowery complexion; she is like any nameless flower; a loveless star, which tries to hide itself in the shadows of moon and crowds of stars.

While I take a deep sigh, the little one rests his chin on his hands and looks out of the window again - at the stars, listening to the melody of events amidst shrills of cricket and an occasional cough of the grandma; and he thinks “I will be that Prince...”. I look at his shining eyes and am filled with a feeling of abundant love.

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