Bucket List

"You deserve the best, the very best, because you are one of the few people in this lousy world who are honest to themselves and that, is the only thing that really counts."                                                                                                                            -Frida Kahlo I have often wondered what that one inviolate value is, that is indispensable to the people in my life. I think mine is courage. I don't need to think too much about why this means everything to me, simply because if I lost my courage, I'd lose the strength it takes for me to stand, unyielding, by my integrity. My pride follows my strength to remain rooted to my self fa...

You're above the clouds and the flutter of your wings remind you of this gift you have. It breaks the silence as you float through white and savour the blue and twirl just before you dive into the hues of red and gold, left in the set sun's wake. You're glad to be alive. The yellow of the sunrise is igniting the passion of flight in you all over again the next morning and so you begin your frollicking tumble through the cushion of clouds, your mind fueled by the independence of your choice and the conviction of being true to yourself. So it continues. And then, one day, when the typewriter sounds its last full stop, you are struck by the heavy, impenetrable, once comforting, silence, caught up there and no amount of jumping is pushing the curtain of solitude away. So you look around, in a desperate bid to remember why you chose this life and the memory doesn't serve the purpose of its reminder and you flounder. And you are cruising through the skies, yearning to ...

She nudged the huddled mass of human, indistinguishable from the warmth of the blanket he was wrapped in. "Are you alive?" The blanket didn't budge, even as the muffled voice filled her ears in the silence of the dark room, "Depends on how you mean it." "You're breathing, aren't you?" "If that's how you mean living, you don't really need me to answer, do you?" Her brow furrowed, she knelt on the floor hesitantly. "Whatever happened to you?" The blanket fluttered as a curtain would, when the child hiding behind it tried hardest to not move. "Whatever happens to those who live, unafraid." "I don't understand." "You won't. Run along, now." She plonked herself on to the cold floor, surer of her decision than she had been in a very long time. "Why not?" The sigh that answered her question gave away the exhaustion of a defeated, once indomitable soul. "You...