Fear of the Dark...

And it would soon be dark...

The alleys would put on long dark shadows and the trees which till a little while ago were glistening in the evening sun’s farewell embrace would suddenly become black hazy creatures ominously swaying in the cold breeze. The hills faraway which were so comforting in their bluish green attire suddenly transformed into pitch black monsters looming large on the horizon. The nice cosy corner beneath the tall trees that one had made clearing the bushes which till an hour ago was a safe abode and a den ...all mine...suddenly felt alien and scary. An apprehension...an unknown fear... and then we would rush out in panic towards where father would be taking a stroll.

And a place which was so comforting...so familiar...so endearing... would become an unknown realm inhabited by unknown entities from an unknown world. A fertile imagination would create shadows which would lurk behind the bushes just where the ball had gone and was still lying. Was it also scared? At night lying besides an elder brother or sister who specialised in weaving the spookiest of stories located in the immediate surroundings the mind would recreate horrors beyond imagination plunging into the scariest of adventures.

And yet as the sun would reappear and bathe everything in a joyous light the mind would lock up all the ghosts and the creatures from the unknown lands in some corner of our little brain and we would comfortably return to the cosy corner and feel at home.

Yes, all of us have, at one time or the other in our childhood days, been through such experiences.

And later as we grew up we rationalised the fear of the dark as the fear of the unknown. We argued that it was common for any living creature. For we appreciated unpredictability as long as it did not wrench control out of our hands.

And as we grew up those sweet litte ‘fears’ gave way to bigger ‘worries’. For we hardly had time. With tensions as big as career, job and postings, projects, deadlines and presentations one hardly had time for the little monsters that were patiently waiting...locked up in some little forgotten corner of our, now big and often bloated brains. The days and the nights, the sun and the hills, the trees and the shadows...all waited patiently as we lost ourselves in this blinding maze called ‘life’.

So when on answering the bell, I found aash (a close friend of mine) standing outside and asking me if she could be with me because her room was scary and haunted and because after dark it felt really ominous...that the stairs besides her room was locked, dark and unused... the ‘grown-up me’ just brushed aside her apprehensions and made a joke out of it and coaxed her to be accompanied by me to her room. And to make her more comfortable as I neared the room I declared that I would go beyond the huge cooler at the end and descend the ‘locked, dark and unused’ stairs.

As we neared her room which was the corner-most the ‘grown-up me’ took confident steps and I crossed the cooler and was hidden from view. Before me lay a row of steps, dark and hazy, with a thousand different shadows, as if winding down to an unknown world. Suddenly I felt a strange sensation and goose-bumps erupted.

I came back and triumphantly declared that there was absolutely nothing to be scared of and also put in a few intelligent sentences about how humans feared the unknown and how we were control freaks. Maybe aash was convinced or maybe not...

Walking back to my room I reflected on the experience. A smile came to my lips. After all these years I had again liberated those little monsters that had till now been locked up in some distant corner of my mind. And once again I was ready to plunge into another adventure...