“Once upon a time, there was a king. And he had a son.”
That’s how it all started for me. Not from being a prince, not from being a father, it all started with me being ‘the listener‘.
Stories for me weren’t just bed time lullaby, they were a pass to a world that was far from my imagination. With father at my side, the sheets over and tucked under me, closed eyes and open mind, I used to listen to him weave his own world in front of me. And every time, I was ravished with all that he made me wonder.
“The son didn’t search for a princess, nor did he run behind glory!”
A twist; every time some familiar stance of the world played through his words, it was succeeded with his own twist. If it was a frog and a princess, the frog never went to the princess; he went behind the girl who loved his singing. When Gulliver did his travel, he reached an island of giants. Gulliver never got the upper hand, not even the popularity that would have made him the lead.
“He desired freedom, freedom from the responsibilities he was born into, freedom from everything that chained him to the throne. Did he not want the throne? Did he wish to betray his subjects?”
With every variation, came along simplified questions. But the questions were vital. Father didn’t want me to just listen. It wasn’t just his world, it was ‘ours’. He pushed me to build my own segment, to form my own base-line from where the entire frame would be produced. And I was part of that production. With the threads that he provided, I was to make my own web and cast my lead into it.
“No. It’s because he wanted freedom from being the only father to the nation. Responsibilities were his medals, and he wanted to wear them only when his subjects were wearing them along.”
The questions lead to a moral, to something new that he desired to instigate in me. And every time, I was too occupied in the story and the cast that rarely I gave the other parts any heed. But it all stacked up in my mind, in some corner of my memories.
“Do you know why that is?”
A question had come and I didn’t know what to reply to that. I only listened.
“It’s because he wanted to free every one of his subjects from the chain of birthright and the prison of blindly following one single self-appointed self-declared ‘pure bloodline’.”
And that too had gone over my head. But every one of those threads remain within me, nurturing and growing within the shadows and the preaches of time.
“Don’t ever forget Aayan; time is flowing, but even we aren’t standing still.”
And that was the end.
And that became the beginning of all the memories that came spooling down on me as I stand here, weeping over my loss.
“Once upon a time, there was a father who loved his son.” It began finally. “The son didn’t want the crown, for that was his turn.”
Stories doesn’t always start with a heart-break, or with love. But it always begins with the loss of love.
·love