A PARADIGM OF BEAUTY[]
By Andleeb Shadani[]
Published in StoryStar 2014
A man is a very sophisticated creature of God. So was Ruhul Quds, a farmer in Tehran. His cogitations are like fire. A fire which is constantly burning in the cold frame of the mind. The worms who earlier used to play with the wires of the mind have now become ashes. He was always there watching me, lambasting my every move. He used to say, life is tough and it is too tough when your moves are ludicrous. To me I find him as a naked mortal. I considered him as a soul who has hurled away everything in the pursuit of pure love. A trice of affection that is all he needs. Sometimes it makes me to reckon as though I am his broken heart, or the vengeance that he never got the chance to take, or as always it is my own pipe dream. That night asphyxiated in the darkness of my thoughts I made a betrothal that by the end of the year he will definitely see the paradigm of beauty. But I have never thought how erroneous the next would be. The intensity of that made me feel as an orphan. He was there going down the road and my house was set on fire. He went on saying 'every man has to carry the burden of his own soul'. He slapped me with his obnoxious sarcasm. It is very hard to breathe in fear. I thought I could never understand him. Then I went towards the sea trying to curb my emotion. I sat down on a rock and started to realize the intensity of the predicament in which I was caught. It is hard to say what a man is looking for? Is it the sophisticated beauty, a moment of intense love or a piece of fire that can sublime his soul. To me I am a just a man looking for a drop of rain, a bubble that can besiege my soul. I am a man who is sometimes enchanted by the pulchritude of an ocean. The way her secrets are camouflaged deep in the belly. And how much elbow grease the tides of life bring into play, they never vanquished. It is the very Davy Jone's locker which makes me to think that, what is a paradigm of beauty, is it nothing but a sheer facade? Sometimes quite abstruse to understand. The way Ruhul laughed at me made me feel abashed. He made me wonder that the sky is nothing but a desert of water and the ground on which we are fixed is a blue sky along with clouds. It was the fall of September when I began to re-construct my house, or better to say started rehabilitating my dreams. The house had the bricks made of water from the desert of Sahara and doors from the sands of sky. The house had veins in which I made my cold claret to flow. Then at the crowning moment I put a saddle on the door and sat on it and went higher and higher in the pursuit of A PARADIGM OF BEAUTY.