I stepped out into the grey morning and my lethargic footsteps trudged in the muddy puddles. The rain clouds were stubborn and kept lurking like spirits in the sky. I tried to combat my Monday blues by pulling on my warm coat a little tighter round myself and hug myself to shut out the cold. There were so many things I wanted to moan about and so many tears were trapped within my eyes, waiting to spill. Trivial to the world, but magnified to me…the rat race that I am in, complexities in my relationships, unreachable expectations of the wrong people, my vain efforts to please everybody, deceitful appearances, the mess in my room……or shall I say, the mess in my head?

I told myself, time after time that I cant go on living like this….failing miserably to see the silver lining in the clouds that engulf me…. But too many things have happened too fast and I keep making the conscious mistake of brooding and sulking over them.

I continued to move aimlessly, as my thoughts kept bleeding and douse my mind in self pity…And all of a sudden, I heard it….

Metal scraping against metal, a screeching halt of rubber tyres, the shatter of glass, and then, dead silence, eerie silence…..

I turned around in reflex, to see a twisted figure thrown head first outside his car. A crowd trickled in, like little ants inspecting a sugar cube. I staggered and merged with them to catch a glimpse of the fatal claim. The dead boy lay in an unusual angle, bathed in his blood and his unblinking eyes that looked at the sky told a story that only I managed to hear.

Just yesterday, he might have been like any ordinary mortal, probably a typical day in college, a movie or a game, perhaps. If only he knew that death would lash out at him without warning, the next day, he would never ever miss his chance to do so many things, he might have taken for granted…..

Maybe hug his mother tight, or apologise to a friend for an insensitive comment, or one last dance with a childhood sweetheart, or probably fill up gaping spaces on the canvas of his life… But I guess he wasn’t lucky enough…not even as lucky as me…

The ambulance threaded its way through the street, saturated with murmuring onlookers and paramedics shoveled his corpse into the vehicle and rushed away, its siren screaming like a mad banshee. It appeared to happen in slow motion and the sounds were muffled , the scene was hazy. Almost instantly there was a thundering crack of a whip of lightning across the sky and rain broke loose. The crowd scurried towards shelter and left me alone to look at the gory remnants of death as I quickly said a little prayer for the young soul that had just left the world, with dreams unfulfilled and missions incomplete….the young soul I never knew, but who opened my eyes, the day he closed his, forever.

I quickly turned around and ran along the way to my house, pushed opened the door.

And buried my head in my pillows and cried. Freely and aloud….after being angry at myself for being so selfish and ungrateful for all the things I have been blessed with, for the disrespect I showed the life I have with me today….

I drifted off into troubled sleep still in my sodden and damp clothes.

The next day I am surprised to find dollops of golden sunlight had replaced the dull monsoon. I see that even nature is helping me to start afresh. So I stop being a spoilt sport, put away my black coat and wear my flowery, yellow dress and decide that nobody could ruin my day without my permission. There was more to experience and less to groan about. I think its time to learn the art of living and not merely existing.