Day of Liberation
A tiny creature like me doesn’t need much room to move. Perhaps!
So, this space, surrounded on all sides by bars, seems ‘enough’ to me.
How long I’ve been dwelling in this space, I don’t know.
Why I am confined to these metal bars, I don’t know.
I don’t know much.
But, one thing I know for sure—I’m just an adorable being on display,
put in a place where people can look at.
They keep me alive. They feed me. They love to hear me sing.
What they fail to see is I sing in pure agony.
What they fail to understand is the deep anguish, the utter loneliness.
Life seems ‘easy’ and ‘comfortable’ in this cage,
so comfortable, that the degree of comfort is sometimes unbearable.
Every time I stare out of the cage with unseeing eyes, I suffer in silence;
Time stands still, and I begin to think if there were a world beyond my surroundings,
where I could escape into.
Few strangers often come to me from an unknown world, and start moving around my cage.
Though they are complete stranger to me, yet interestingly, they look exactly like me.
They hardly sit, and they seem to float in the air.
They are crazy, they always sing and shout.
They tell many fascinating stories of a different world.
Yes, they say there is a world beyond the metal bars of the cage.
They say these metal bars are not ordinary as they have the power to separate the two worlds,
One is mine, and the other is theirs.
Crazy Talks that I never heard of …
They talk about quickly moving air which they call wind,
and they talk about plunging into the air, and bathing in the sunlight.
They talk of a vast blue space that has no limits or no walls, which they call sky.
They talk of a white mass that floats in the sky, which they call cloud.
They also talk of a place where the sky seems to meet the land, which they call horizon.
They talk about parts of the body which they call wings,
and they explain to me how they use them for flying.
Those strangers once pointed out my own wings, and refused to call them adornment.
They said I do belong to their world, and they called me a ‘bird’.
They uttered a word, ‘freedom’ … yes, this is what they said.
It was quite astonishing to hear all this.
I asked them how I could be part of their world,
Is there a way out?
There was no response.
They swiftly flapped their wings and flew off.
They never came back.
Again I was all alone in my cage, within strong metal bars,
Again I was alone with my thoughts …
I knew why they left me and never came back.
I knew the answer … There was no way out.
Well, God works in mysterious ways, and we never know about his plan.
I do hope, one day I’ll take a flight in the sunny skies of that secret world …
I hope, one day there will be no metal bars, no confined space, no restrictions, no boundaries …
And, I believe that beautiful day will certainly come.
I dream there will be a Day of Liberation …
I dream that I’ll fly high in the sky, if not in this life, then maybe in another.
Shubhra Atreya
Content Writer
IT Department
SVSU, Meerut
