Cause.......

Combatants are invigorated,

Audacities are in place,

Virilities are acquired,

Lives have been presumed trivial,

The Journey is embarked,

All they need is a..................... “CAUSE”.

'Rain Rain Go Away'

“Rain Rain Go Away” she said.

She took a peek outside the window and curled herself inside the curtain...... A fallible, tenaciously stained, artistically repulsive piece of cloth was her secret sanctuary, her sacred alter ego, a companion older than her in age. The flowers on the curtain were the only ones who had heard all her stories. She particularly trusted Jonathan, the one with the five petals. Her sporadic tears had made the nectar of the flowers, salty.................

She felt unaligned with the world. Abnormal was her normal. She could hear the chronic cacophony of routine around her. Her dad might be surrendering himself to yet another bleak course of 24 hours, her mom would still be complacently oblivios of anything abstract, her brother was fortuitous to be just 4, and her friends……well she never really cared about Hide n Seek, so she didn’t have any friends. She could never dispose herself to hide from nothing and seek nothing……

Then she looked at the bottom of the wall on which she had scraped her initials. That’s the only way she knew to claim a territory. Well, it was either that or jumping and touching the cloud at the top of the curtain……….. She was hardboiled on establishing her authority. She was physically not tall enough (yet), but she was oddly proud of her rough nails. ..............She pulled a thread from the edge and tightly twisted it around her index finger. Crimson was her favorite color…..

At age 8 she figured out that one can not die by naturally holding the breath………….

She waited for a while and then abruptly ran down to a big chest which was the repository of her treasures. She asserted it off-limits to everyone, or so she liked to think because no one cared enough to open it. She took out her school book and opened a chapter titled ‘Season’. She carefully investigated the contents and looked back at the pouring nature. She smiled. She always knew discipline was overrated. It was mid January.

Her parents would not let her go to the school when its cats and dogs outside. But all she wanted was to go to school. She felt strangely emancipated there. It was her province of disguise. She mastered being an 8 year old for her teachers, and yet she had enough time to nurture her contrivances. It was a world of perfect harmony………

She never understood the use of the word 'rain' twice, when there were several other words to fit the rhyming meter. She was a child, only she could not think like one. But she really believed that God gives priority to the prayers that are coming from people who are less than 4 feet tall. ...........

So she knelt down and prayed again “Rain Rain Go Away................................Rain Rain Go Away"