The Shadow Within

Shyam woke up around 12 pm in the afternoon and gazed at his table. His laptop, a capsized half read “Communist Manifesto” and George Orwell’s “1984” lay on the table in his room. He had spent the previous night musing in these writings. As a matter of fact, it had been weeks. He also wrote few verses and thought to write some mysterious and yet pervasive prose. Writing was not a problematic affair for him, but the actual time which he was spending on writing was problematic. He was spending a lot of time on it. His friends only chatted or called him on his mobile. He had vanished from every open nooks and corners of the streets in his hometown. He only talked with his family members by going in their room frequently, but he wanted his room all to himself. When his little niece would visit his room to watch cartoon in TV he would feel disturbed. His screen time on laptop was more important to him than the excuse of a child to watch the cartoon.

In the morning Shyam’s father would blast the news on TV in his room. Shyam would miss that, utterly. He wanted to be aware of the world, but his timings did not match. The loudspeaker noise from a distant mosque made him open his eyes, this afternoon. In the night he wasn’t sleeping, he was thinking and reading and therefore, in the afternoon he was awaking. He was being nocturnal; an owl was his nightingale and he wanted to write like Keats but appreciate the night owl. It seemed appreciation of an owl in the daylight was not possible.

“These are only day to day issues, and nothing else.”

“I have to gain clarity in life, and for that my words have to be clear – I should be focusing on that.”

“Every other thing is just an illusion.”

Friends would pester him and they would want to know his thoughts on getting married and living a double life. With an empty head he would reply them with a negative nod in gesture and a formal “No” in speech; just to be precise. His friends believed he was becoming only a shadow of the night, and when confronted he would say:

“Shadows at night should never be misunderstood.”

“Am I a shadow within me?”

“Isn’t shadow something which emerges from within and casts itself outside the body, making a detachment?”

“Well, in the daylight shadows seem to be casted outside, but in the evening they seem to be following us from behind and within.”

“There is no escape from the shadow unless we put up the light, and the only thing external than the body is the light.”

“Light kills the shadow.”

The musings about the shadow had begun to drive him towards light. His friends triggered answers to these questions in his mind. There still was a problem about being visible in the society.

“Being visible in the society only means more light.”

He remembered he had read somewhere that “work is freedom.”

He felt he knew the insights to gateway of freedom; he was ready for this new chaos within and around him.

The shadow within his self would still be casted, but it would also cast his society along with his dark self.

“That would be the best guidance for me.”

“The journey of shadow from inner within to the world outside filled with darkness or light.”

By Sushant Thapa

From: Nepal

Website: https://litsushant.blogspot.com/

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