I Can Feel

                                                                                                     

My  face is twisted and I have sharp pointed teeth. In fact,too pointed. I wonder" Do they look at those teeth first, or at my face ?"

I look in the mirror and I think," I look so different from them".

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Some of them suggest corrective surgery while all the while they must be thinking that I look like a little devil incarnated as a human. Some of them feel pity at me and lament about how hard it must be for my parents to bring me up like that. Some of them think that my body can be fixed with the latest developments in medical science. Some just break down in tears after meeting me.

And some others might think to themselves that oh how lucky they are that at least they don't have to deal with anything like me in their lives.

Sometimes, even my parents get frustrated with me. They get angry if I go into a repeat mode and ask them the same question again and again. But I understand their anger. After all, they are human beings too. They also have a certain level of tolerance.

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 Yes, I can feel all these ...and I can see too...

I can look outside my window with my blurred vision..although I wear a high powered spectacle.

I can see that tree and those green leaves. Oh! I love that tree so much. I love greenery, the outdoors! And inside my body, I feel that feeling that everyone must be feeling everyday...the feeling of unexplained desires, of love and lust..

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Some people simply avoid me. Some keep wondering how to deal with me, what to talk with me...some are so kind to me. Among these people, I get attracted to some but they must be feeling pity for me all the time.

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I can feel the silence in your hearts,

I can feel the strong winds blowing outside my window,

I can feel what you feel towards me even if you don't speak up...

The meanings that lie subdued in my heart, I cannot express by words because when I try to say something, it seems that it will take a lifetime for me to compose a perfect sentence through my twisted face and my pointed teeth...finally what comes up is a cluster of jumbled up words that my mother tries so hard to understand but can't.

So, I held myself back.

Yet, I can feel..

The roaring sea waves crashing in the shore,

The love that is in the eyes of a couple falling for each other,

The hurt that cuts through my barren chest...

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I am often afraid. Without my mother and the support of my family, would I be able to survive ?Why do God make people who "need" others to survive ? I want to able to do things on my own.

I have read somewhere in a medical journal that people like me don't survive for too long anyway. Sometimes, I just wish that it comes true. But sometimes, I just want to enjoy an ice cream and look outside my window for hours. I love to look at trees. They are so beautiful. And I like the rains.

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All by myself, and all alone, perhaps, I am nothing.

But then, I wonder, this beautiful world is also like me.

All by itself, this beautiful world, the trees and the seas, the wind and the water...is nothing, nothing at all.

This world needs a certain entity called "me" to transmit and convey  all that it wants to convey. Everything that I see and I do, I feel and I write, comes through "me" and goes to me.  I am there for you as much as you are there for me...this world would be a morbid place if not for me and my feelings...Without "me" and without "myself", would those thoughts and feelings about this beautiful world be there in the first place ?

But then, why not ?

Who can prove that trees cannot feel ?

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{ This is the second short story that I have published in this blog. You can read my first short story here }

In this short story, I have raised some questions that often comes to my mind : "Can the 'observed' exist or have any value without the 'observer' ? Can a person be enough all by herself ? Does she needs the society to feel valued?

The answer to all these questions is subject to our perception and according to my perception, a person can indeed have an independent existence.

Here, in this story, the (differently abled) woman in question is both the observer and the observed.

Towards the end, she tries to make sense of her "being" by trying to understand her relationship with this beautiful world where the beautiful world itself becomes the observed and she herself, the observer. Although she mistakenly thinks that this "observed" entity {beautiful world) has no independent existence of its own, and that it gets a meaning only when someone /the observer defines it, she also gets increasingly aware of the power of her feelings and emotions which she uses to define herself and her relationships.}