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The Nuance of a Story

Sometimes, late awake, staring out of the window, sitting at the study table, in a relatively quiet universe I think about the different times. Curls of wisps of smoke slowly float ahead and then up and finally vanish into some other form. The cigarette runs out. I light another. I wish to write, but my muse is silent. I know there are a million stories out there. I know a hundred stay with me. The difficulty is to tell those exactly as they deserve to be told. Most often we all fail to.


Stories exist because hope exists. We look back in time to bring to our present a perspective. Without it, it is impossible to see why we would want to laugh amid the all-pervasive banality or go crazy with passion about quite simple things and deem them beautiful. Stories deconstruct the absurd and demystify the conscience.


Some stories are like a flickering flame, about to die any moment, waiting to be acknowledged, wanting to be received by those who know what it is like to be born a story. Each time a story arrives by your side and I or you hold the pen but the hand shakes under sheer contemplation, unable to find out where it all begins, fighting to notice the correct nuance, its end comes just closer. Unfortunately, there is no easy way to telling  the story the right way. It demands attention, time, and patience.


Soon, the morning would break in and waves of routine would wash away every little detail of this moment. The texture of this thought would lose its grains and the fragments of this night would linger on, probably for months or years, until I sit again at the window someday and build from whatever yet remains.

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