All my bags are packed

It rained tonight. It rained with all its glory. I was expecting it somehow. Still for others this November rain seemed odd. I always say the hints are all around us. We just need to see them with open hearts. And hints are what I saw. I knew it would rain. But that knowledge did not take away the astonishment when it ‘did’ rain. I watched it on the window glass and thought of all the innumerable times a poet or a writer wrote about the serene beauty of these tiny sprinkles of life on the window pane. I wondered, did anyone ever write about the chill that accompanies it. Did anyone speak about the frightening thundering that it brings? Did anyone talk about how a sleepless night it is? I guess not. But as they say, why destroy beauty...

So I stood there looking outside my window, seeing something... The reflection of my baggage strew all across my room. Isn’t it amazing I needed to look outside to see the huge pile of my belongings lying inside? Looking inside, there were my belongings, looking through the window it was just my baggage. A single entity without any attachment, without any substance. Looking inside, each bag, each fluttering paper, each clothing and each household item had a story to it. Each had ‘my’ story to it. Each story that I had lived, each story I wished I had lived again, I sat there listening.

Time flew and so did my soaring imagination. I saw the days that had gone by fused them with the days to come. I created a perfect symphony of dreams and reality and imagination. Tonight I could be anything I wished, I could do anything I wanted. Tonight I lived my past and the future I wanted.

The musical rain got me on my feet. The symphony in my mind and the raindrops outside created the tango of fantasy... I danced tonight. Danced for the possibilities and danced for the regrets... I danced.

Suddenly I realised I wasn’t alone. There was someone else outside the window that was dancing too. My reflection drenched in the raindrops on the window pane. It smiled at me when I gaped at it. It smiled at my pile of baggage. In its eyes I saw my belongings transforming to a meaningless crowd of useless and heavy carry-ons. I wanted to stop the transformation. I wanted these belongings to remain the way that they were. Untouched, haphazard and full of past as they seemed to me. But it suddenly struck me that in a couple of hours morning will come and if this baggage is not cleared by then someone else will pack them up for me anyways. Pack up all those memories, those moments and those broken pieces of life I once had. It was then just a matter of time.

I decided to look outside my window for some time. The raindrops crashed on it like little miracles. I saw myself outside the window looking inside. Unchained and free. The proposition interested me more. I wondered then... Are memories slaves of some unarranged baggage? Is my life only what it was uptil this night? The beauty of past is that we can choose to remember the wonderful parts and forget the dark parts. And anyways the view outside my window was beautiful even with the chill and the thundering. Now I just wanted to stand by the window and keep looking outside. Look at all the things there and feel them. Tomorrow I will stand there in the garden and God only knows how beautiful it will look in the morning light. I wanted to be there and imagine what morning would bring... the good with the bad and the ugly.

But some things needed to be taken care of. I sat next to my baggage and started packing them up one by one with utmost care. They still sang the stories that I loved. I cried, I laughed, I got angry and happy with every tale narrated again and again. But this time around they couldn’t drown out the sound of the pouring rain, the thunder and the blowing wind. I don’t know if the weather strengthened or the stories faded but there came a time when all I could remember was just how hastily I packed my bags tonight...