The bold print

There was a point of time when I used to have a fantastic memory. Over the years, it grew choosier. It now retains exactly what I don't want it to retain, and discards the rest. And it does seem incorrigible. Somehow, those steps on sand that I took have become etched in granite. Steps that draw my eyes towards them. Inexorably. I can't look away, try as I may.

There's something about occasions. Things seem to happen with me. Lightning strikes the same place twice if I am there, and chooses the most ironical moments (perhaps not always by chance) to disclose the twists. There have been points when all I wanted to do was cry. Tears failed me. I cried plenty as a kid, cried when I was not given chocolates, cried when India lost a match, cried when I couldn't solve a problem. Its been a long time since I cried now. And in between have been any number of moments when I have really, really wanted to.

Strong, strong lights guided my steps. Yet, as every step took me further forward, the lights dimmed, to be replaced by new ones that I had no option but to trust. They showed me new directions, newer territories. I could have been a poet. Only I would have added nothing to anything had I been one. Yet I should have been. For, it might have been the only way I could have hoped to express all of this. But then I would have been a Robert Browning seeking his Elizabeth or Yeats who watched as Maud went farther away than he could hope to go.

I am not strong. Not as strong as I would have liked to think. In certain respects. Not so in others. Whether those respects were more important, I shall never know. There have been things I have done- achieved. I can think of at least two moments for which I would trade them all. But then, nobody gave me the option. I would have traded in anything to have been "completely ordinary". Absolutely anything.

But then, as I have discovered, there's always a 'but'. I can't help but subconsciously find myself hoping for it. That might yet change the world.

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I have not forgotten it's V-day though! Just some stuff I had to get out. Not felt this way for 2 years and 2 months. For all you folks considerably better off- have a gr888 Valentine's day!