Hush now, you don’t want to startle it, do you?
Perched on the lowest branch,
It's magnificent feathers almost touching the ground.
The bark would peel off if we try,
Rich brown, moistened by the season’s first monsoon.
Careful, we mustn’t frighten it!
Deep Blue, as though the azure Delhi sky
Had dripped into it's skin.
Proud, as the lineage of rulers
Who once strutted on this soil.
Hush! Listen to them calling out!

Pursue the sight of this enchanting bird I must,
Sighing, for this is all that remains
Of a once fascinating life
Donne the clothes of a lady I must
But for one passion to legally own,
To scamper into the wild,
For the prize of a token left behind,
In the flight of
The first lady of our nation’s birds.

First, I was blazing with rage. Then I was left simply dumfounded. And now I'm having difficulty arranging my scattered thoughts. I think I've reached one of those points in my life again when I'm letting my parents down again. Come to think of it in personal matters I moved away from the ‘ideal’ image a while ago, and now I’ve let them down professionally as well. “So it's a business magazine you’re writing for, then why don’t you write articles on economic issues as well? When are you going to put the MBA knowledge to use?” My dad despondently attempting at altering my professional course. In my head I recall the time when in 10th grade my marks were good, but not great, and listening to dad’s silence at the other end of the phone had completely broken me down. Responsibility. I have a warped idea that I need to perform well, for my parents, if not for myself. And there that day I felt like a looser who had only one primary responsibility and was not competent enough to fulfil that one role properly. Subsequent years I went on to perform well enough, except this morning the conversation with my dad made me feel like I was back in 10th grade on the other end of that phone. The pace at which I've been running at, did not allow me the luxury to spare a few tears to pamper myself with, and there that comment’s been rotting in my head until this evening’s events.

It's the first time I'm listening to my heart. I'm writing. I'm doing what I dreamt of as a little girl. Except the hitch is of the doubts in my head, afterall I'm not trained to write for magazines. Plus my dad will probably never show my relatives what his girl writes. I write for the back pages of the magazine where my headlines are about dipping cleavage lines and silicon implants. If that was not bad enough, the copy team has added and subtracted seemingly according to the fancy of a nine year old, where meanings are fumbled up, writing style is ravaged and the entire course of the story is severely mutilated! I am scared of reading my article once again, it's an absolute catastrophe!

So I'm this lil girl who knows squat about media or journalism, and from one end am being led to believe I'm good enough to be in the editorial team, and from the other end that perhaps I’m just a blue-eyed girl better fitted in any place but here!

Tabloids. The thought scares me.

No matter how hard you try, you just don’t find a place to belong to. Like a tempest, never to settle down. Raging. Raging.