We Are The Dreamers
Close your eyes. The world disappears. Everything you know. Everyone you love. Every stranger. Disappears. Isn't that what we do? Shut ourselves off? stuff every nook and cranny of our heads with plans to enjoy. To live our lives. To ignore the pain around us. The world is not a fairytale. The books and shows we drown ourselves in are sedatives. We caution our kids. Close their minds to the horrors that surround us. Teach them to not talk about death. Teach them that talking about sex is a taboo. Teach them to ignore the headlines blaring the words rape, terrorism and murder. All hoping that they grow-up away from them. What will you do when someone you know gets raped? Thinking that we are heroes. Thinking that superman will come in 'to the rescue'. Batman will lock that person up. Isn't that what we wish to impart? This false sense of security? While you read this a mother just got raped protecting her daughter. The man got away because the people around were too busy trying to save their skins. What use is that skin? What use are these arms and legs if we blind ourselves to the world? Maybe someone reading this has been through that. 'Rape'. Maybe you're crying right now. Thinking of your pain. Of how much that hurt. Or how helpless you felt. As humans it's only our bodies we have. And our minds. What else do we come to this world with? It is will. Four letters that define society. Four letters that have brought us this far. Four letters that will push someone to give up his life. Four letters that will push another to save someone else. I am a boy. And I have not experienced that despair. I've never seen someone die. I've never seen someone lie on the ground having been violated. I've never felt helpless because I could not protect my child. What do I understand? Indeed. I do not know what it is like to be raped. To feel the bliss and the pain. To feel the helplessness as you feel someone take you and the feeling of your body rebelling. The wrongness. The utter perverse extacy. I can not rid you of that pain. Not can I alleviate the fear we feel as we look at our friends. Never knowing what's in store for them. Never knowing who is going to fall prey to someone's lust. Never knowing who will hold a knife at their own wrists because they cannot feel anymore. You may choose to ignore this. You may shut your eyes. Because this does not affect you. Unless you are one of those who have lost their dignity and pride. Close your eyes. I dare you to. Be a dreamer. Shut your mind. Forget about this. I dare you to. I dare you to forget about the girl who had to run for an hour and then was forced under someone with a knife. I dare you to forget about the fact that any one you know from your mother to your sister can die tomorrow. Dream. Why not? We've been doing that all our lives anyways right. And if you're one of those who have been rudely awakened from your dreams I want you to listen closely. Carefully. We are not our bodies. We are not our minds. We are only will. You've lost your body. Your mind is turning against you. Fighting your shadows. Can you leave that behind? Can you remain standing? Can you feel your willpower turning back the shadows of your past? No you can't. Because you've not tried to. Or maybe you've lost the fight. I'm not going to ask you to get up. I'm not going to ask you to fight. I ask you to find that thread of will in your soul. That thread that will render you invincible. Remember that, at our core. We are only that thread of will. Not a body. Not a mind. Someone with half a body is still human. But someone with a torn thread of will is nothing. A transitory existence. A shape among infinite shapes. What will you be? Accept my dare and be a dreamer? Or find that thread of will that banishes your dreams and slams open the doors of reality?
Story Teller- Subhaditya Mukherjee
