“Dancing amid a thousand faces, her face glows with life… Never before had she danced with such passion. To any other person, she’d come across as someone who’s celebrating life; who’s ‘living it up’ in style… Did the thought ever cross your mind that she’s dancing away the blues? (No way!) She’s neither the ‘Lady in red’, nor is she ‘the girl next door’… She’s just another victim of the ‘Alice in Wonderland Syndrome’; dreaming her secret dreams, craving her secret life…”Why are we afraid of admitting that we are day-dreamers? Why are we unwilling to accept that there’s a little bit of ‘Alice’ or ‘Walter Mitty’ in each of us? Do we fear what people would think of us; how they would laugh behind our backs; or is it simply the pre-conceived notion that “Nobody would understand”? Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to real world! A world where one feels lost among 6.8 billion faces; and finds solace when he just whiles away hours staring at the ceiling fan, ‘pretending’ to sleep. In the real world, things couldn’t get more ‘realistic’ than this… Or could they?
“Life is a long-long road and we are but travelers.” And like good travelers who are faithful to their voyage, we must journey on; in search of a niche where we would ‘fit in’, a niche that is symbolic of our ‘selves’. Why aren’t we told to enrich our voyage with experiences as enthralling as the adventures of Alice in Wonderland? Perhaps that is the reason why we fade into a world of our own every now and then. Because the outside world has nothing to offer (or so it may seem…), we seek our “Some place far away…” within ourselves… There’s a difference between loneliness and solitude… The strangest thing is that in spite of having encountered both these emotions, none of us have the acumen of explaining the difference between the two. What we do not realize is that in this ‘space’ that we have created, there is no solitude… only loneliness; void and hollow loneliness.
Why is it that people whom we’ve known forever seem like complete strangers; and then someday when we come across a complete stranger, we feel that we’ve known them since forever? In times when all those friendly faces turn into stone, why is there always a ‘mysterious stranger’ ready to befriend you? During those times of trial, we ask ourselves this question… Only to find that there is no logical explanation for such a question; but the answer is this stranger’s ready shoulder on which you can cry your heart out…
In this real world, we’re all alone… Agreed, friends do make life a lot simpler; but in the end, we have to journey ahead, leaving behind all those people who meant the world to us… The truth is that each of us is living in a world of our own, and every time two worlds coincide with each other, a little story is born. These stories are waiting to be told; waiting to be shared with those ‘long-lost’ friends who were a part of them. Don’t ever let these stories die a tragic death. Awaken the story teller in yourself and let the nostalgia wash over your soul. You will move on all by yourself, you might even forget what they were all about… But what you will never forget is how you felt…
“She walks amid the puddles filled with muddy water… Never before had she been so alone, and yet, never before had she felt so alive… Under the immaculate blue sky that rains down tears of joy in this “Some place far away”… There’s nobody to watch this girl who’s ‘celebrating life’; who’s ‘living it up’ in style… And she dances with the freedom of the Arctic terns that journey towards a land where they would find warmth and solace… She’s neither ‘the Angel descended from the heaven above’, nor is she the “Vision in white”… She is Alice; the Alice in you and in me, and she has decided to set herself free…”
