Cry yourself to sleep. It will wake you up...

I woke up to the notification tones of my mobile phone today, the sleek device barraged on the morning of 26th January, 2017 by endless patriotic quotes, GIFs, videos, songs, and wishes, with the exception of one particular message and got me thinking, for real: 'Tears are words that need to be written' - Paulo Coelho.
So, what are tears? When life was testing me for real, I remember writing this verse, sometime between looking at a tear-washed image of me on the mirror, thinking of life's battles, and travelling back to my tear-less days of reciting The Charge of the Light Brigade as an adolescent, the effect of which clearly echoes in the following verse I ended up composing, quite unable to explain to myself why I did so, and later realizing that I just had to do it! So, here goes:

My cheeks have tasted the salt of my eyes.
When an infant, I had familiar fingers to wipe them.
Now, it is for them, those that raised me 
That I shed these drops,
Whose salt has seasoned my scorched heart.
No sooner has the flood receded
Than another salty tide is on its way
To inundate my wet epithelium.
Tears for my own mistakes,
Tears for their mistakes,
Tears everywhere...
Charge forth from my insomniac eyes,
Like steely needles pricking my skin.
Call them dew, call them pearl,
Call them diamonds, the best friend of a girl,
Call them flakes of snow; to me,
They are trickles of fire that glow,
Tearing and exfoliating my skin.

That was nearly a decade ago. Indeed, my tears became words that needed to be written.They could have been better and deeper, but it was a start, after all. With time, the oozings of my eyes triggered those of my heart, ultimately filtering through my pen, carefully, yet spontaneously, until my sorrow changed to joy, my weakness to strength. Thus,
T - Therapeutic
E - Evanescent
A - Anguish-filled
R - Rage-empowered
S - Spontaneous
Tears are just like words : when they flow, they make a difference - to me, to those around me. Not that indifference and criticism is not elicited. Katherine Mansfield once illustrated the simple impossibility of planned tear-shedding, when she said in her short story 'The Fly', how Woodifield's  boss had planned to cry, but couldn't, after all. I hope I write like I cry, never planning to, but ending up doing so, clawing the depths of my caves and mines , getting dazzled by what lies shrouded in that mysterious darkness, unearthing it each time, until the eyes and ears and hearts and mouths around me are stirred and rattled, to praise or debase, but react nevertheless.
I hereby lay down the constitution of my blog, on the day when the Constitution of India came into being, 68 years ago. Since then, she has staggered and marched, fallen and risen, cried and smiled, but nothing could break her. This is what I wish to say to my country : Let your tears take away your weakness, and make you strong! Long Live, India.

P.S: Hope you send me a quote every now and then. It's my food for thought.
       - to THE ONE who sent me my inaugural quote,                                                           and to everybody else.

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