Perhaps, my pride has fallen to such appalling levels, that I'm no longer able to camouflage my sorrow with practiced laughter!

It shows on the face, and thats exactly what i hate.

Friday evening, the dean told me,"It was an extraordinary experience to have a student like you."

I listened. I liked. And, I felt flattered, too.

Only for a while.

The next moment, it felt as though I had been on top and at the bottom, all at the same time.

Life's little ironies.
Or, perhaps, a little bigger.
That the good should slog and suffer, and bear indignities of life.

A rule seldom relaxed.

While I was coming out of college last afternoon, I chanced to see those two local girls. There in the lane. Running in the road in gay abandon. Flinging mud at each other. The older one at the younger girl. Then the younger one at the older. And then together. Forgetting their manners, which, anyway, is irrelevant to one at their place. Not needing to worry about their dress, already shabby and torn. And, least bothered by the presence of a world, which watched them like amused spectator.

I thought what a comfort it is to be born humble.
I desired the same for me.
A prosaic life, where you have nothing to lose.
A mundane existence, where the sinister force called "ambition" does not pursue you, and then betray you.

It's not by rewards alone that i judge my merit. I know it will remain in me, so long as i persevere. But then, that is what i cannot anymore.
I believed writing was an enduring gift to me. And, whether i bask in the merry ambiance of good times, or perish with disillusion, i would still be able to write.

None of that.

I'm losing my craft. I'm losing my inspiration to work. And, more than anything else, I'm losing that unflagging faith that had escorted me in life.