THE UNMASKING

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In the words of George Bernard Shaw, "Two percent of the people think, three percent of the people think they think; and ninety-five percent of the people would rather die than think."
Now, I can't positively say which category I belong to, but isn't it such a wonderful activity- to think?
Wonderful, albeit under-appreciated, underrated and underutilized.
In the meager nineteen years of my life, I've come across my fair share of people, a number of whom I noticed to have a 'Sheep Herd' mentality.( Not being judgmental here though,we've all been there and done that.)
Some people see the world through the superficial glasses of  "Is it what is 'in' at the moment? Am I displaying my non-mainstream-ness to its full glory?" Maybe subconsciously, maybe not. ( Like people and their fixation with branded things. A 2 lakhs worth of Rolex is still just a watch, and at the end of the day its sole purpose is to show you the correct time.)
Sometimes its more layered- "Won't I stand out as weird if I don't do this?" (Like a guy who likes writing and reading poetry more than playing football, but he couldn't possibly confess that to his friends lest they think lesser of him because of it. Because he is a 'man', and men do not participate in delicate activities such as these- just as men never feel pain and men never cry. But of-course, that goes without saying.) 
More often than not, it's forced; the famous "Log kya kahenge?"- a phrase that has haunted us all at some point in our lives. ( Like a girl who says she wants to cut off her long hair for a short pixie cut and the reaction she gets is, " Are you crazy? Do you want to look like a boy? What will people think? Lambe Baal to ek ladki ka gehna hota he pagal". As if the shortening the length of her hair has anything to do with her femininity. Like cutting it would make her any less a woman than she is now.)
And it's more common that you'd think. Nobody teaches anybody how it's done directly. Kids probably watch their friends and elders do it and adapt to it. I mean, that's probably how we learnt it too.
Our society, friends, relatives, our own insecurities, vanities, or our need to please others, to be a part of this society (similar enough to fit in but different enough to be edgy )- these and many more factors result in us hiding our true selves behind a mask of sorts. We've developed a different mask for each person, each situation. We are basically several different people and personalities, all in one.
And that leaves us frighteningly little time to actually be ourselves.
One might wonder, in all the different persons we choose/ are forced to play, which one is really us?
If we can be different people in different situations, does that make us just a jumbled messy nobody?
Kind of like negative cancels negative and the answer gets rounded off to a zero ( That doesn't really makes much sense; I'm horrible at maths.)
And isn't that a frightening prospect- that we are so busy being a perfect version of ourselves for other people that we have no time to be the real version of us.
This is where George Bernard Shaw's quote comes in. So now, if I may, I'd like you to ask yourselves this one question. Does any one of you ever find yourself in this situation? If yes, then ask yourselves this: Are you happy, in-spite of it all? Are you content and happy ? If its a yes again, then.. well and good . But if not, then its time you did something to change that.
'Cause at the end, it all boils down to this one thing- being HAPPY. 
At the end of it all, the happy moments of your life will amount to a lot more than the magnitude of your wealth and success combined.
And the people who accept you for who you are will matter indefinitely more than any number of people you tried to please or impress into liking you by being someone else.
Do not let your personality be distorted to fit someone else's image of you, 'cause in that case you'd be being untrue to both, that person and yourself.
As the lovely quote goes "Don't change so people will like you. Be YOURSELF, and the right people will love the real you."
So go on, be crazy, be a nerd, be loud, be an introvert, be weird, be whatever you wish to be. You live this life only once, don't let anyone define it for you. 
Be the artist of your own life's masterpiece. And it doesn't even have to be a masterpiece, really- that's the beauty of it all. It can be whatever the hell you want it to be :)

The Story Of A Peculiar Girl: Chapter 7

                                               ~Chapter 7~       
                                         MYSTERY UNVEILED

Jay watched the Girl, transfixed, as she knelt at the foot of the grave, her unblinking gaze staring at the headstone.
The moonlight bleached her completely; her red lips the only hint of color on her otherwise shockingly pale face.
A sudden gust of wind blew through the graveyard, causing her hair to blow behind her eerily, like a cape. Her unmoving figure made for such an unearthly sight that Jay was half sure she'd disappear if he allowed himself to blink.
The trance was broken as the girl reached for something behind her. A bag. So that's what had given her the semblance of a hunched figure when draped in a stole, Jay thought.
The Girl pulled out what seemed like a piece of paper in the limited moonlight.
Jay waited for uncountable minutes, hardly moving a muscle, as the girl scribbled something on the paper, pausing every few minutes to think. Once, he thought he saw her shoulders quake and with a jolt wondered whether she was crying.
Finally,she stopped writing and reached inside her bag again.
A cloud moved to block the moon just then, engulfing the cemetery in darkness.
Jay didn't see the object she pulled out of the bag until the Girl started digging at the grave.

        

The Story Of A Peculiar Girl: Chapter 6

                                              ~Chapter 6~
                                         THE GRAVEYARD

Jay followed the hunched figure for what seemed like a very long time. As they proceeded through the trail, a sense of foreboding dawned upon him. Jay knew where this trail ended.
And it was quite literally the last place he wanted to be at midnight.
He weighed his options - to barge into a graveyard, following a potential serial killer; or to turn back and forget this mess. Some sane corner of his mind told him to flee before it was too late; whatever was going on wasn't any of his business.
But predictably, his curiosity won over sanity.
As the heavily bolted and rusted iron gates of the cemetery came into view, Jay felt a shiver run up his spine. Behind the door, the crooked head stones seemed to glow in the moonlight through the thick blanket of fog.
The hooded figure noiselessly unbolted the cemetery gates and , to Jay's relief, left them ajar as it proceeded to move in.
Jay followed the figure deep into the graveyard until he no longer could because of the lack of cover.
Finally, the figure came to a stop beside an ancient looking headstone, some 14 feet away from where Jay hid.
Kneeling at the foot of the grave, the figure removed the slole that covered him in a swift motion.
Jay did not realise he had been holding his breath till it was knocked out of him in a gasp as the mystery person's face came into view.
It was her - the Girl.

The Story Of A Peculiar Girl: Chapter 5

                                             ~Chapter 5~
                                       MYSTERY PERSON

Jay, in his shock, was left with just enough presence of mind to run behind the overgrown bushes and hide himself. He saw the running figure slow its pace , and as it approached closer, Jay recognized that it was beyond a doubt the same mystery person he had been spying on for 2 weeks now.
The eerie magnified shadow stretched out just in front of Jay. His heart was beating frantically, and every other sound was drowned beneath the loud thumping in his ears.
The figure that passed by Jay was not nearly as tall as he had imagined. Its back was hunched and draped in a black knitted stole. Jay couldn't discern the figure's face as it was covered in shadows, but his wild imagination produced many a gruesome faces to fit the bill.
As the figure vanished into the woods, Jay ran after him , without giving himself a chance to think about it.
Following the hunched figure was easy enough, as it seemed to be following a trail.
The difficult part, however, was trying to be discreet about it.
He had to walk slowly so as to avoid stepping onto any twigs or dry leaves and attracting any attention to himself. For all he knew, the mystery person was some kind of a crazy axe serial killer on his way to his bloody hideout.
Jay gulped at that thought nervously and tried to concentrate on walking silently.

POEM: AS FAST AS HE CAN

-MS

“And in the end, we were all just humans.. drunk on the idea that love, only love, could heal our brokenness.”

― Christopher Poindexter

The Story Of A Peculiar Girl: Chapter 4

                                         ~Chapter 4~
                                          IN A LOOP

A week and a half later, Jay found himself unable to concentrate on the daily routine of his life.
The second day he had witnessed the figure retreating into the woods at midnight, he dismissed the incident as a coincidence; or at least tried to.
But night after night as he saw the incident reoccur through his window, Jay found his curiosity growing up to dangerous levels.
One night, a few days later, as he waited for the mysterious hunched figure, no one came. The clock struck one and yet nothing changed. No eerie shadow fell upon the road.
On an impulse, Jay found himself sneaking out of his house. He ran to the road that seperated his house from the woods and came to a stop beside the crooked street lamp.
Aside from his labored panting breaths and the constant humming of insects, all was quite.
He was starting to feel silly and cursing himself for his impulsiveness. Yet he stood on.
It was a gut feeling, something sharp and blunt at the same time, something he knew not how to phrase into words. Something was going to happen tonight.
He was shaken out of his reverie when he heard footsteps. 
Someone was running. And he was heading straight towards Jay.

The Story Of A Peculiar Girl: Chapter 3

                                          Chapter 3                                                                                                 MIDNIGHT STROLLER

Jay glanced at the time on his cell phone and stood up, feeling apprehensive. He pressed the headphones harder over his ears, hoping the loud beats would drown the throbbing at the back of his head.
For some reason he found himself walking to the window at his bedside. 
The curtain had been drawn off of it, and bright moonlight filtered through the glass and into his room.
With each passing second he felt more and more silly standing there aimlessly, shuffling his feet.
At 12.10 am, his sanity returned. Just as he was about to turn away, an elongated shadow appeared on the road, followed by a mysterious hunched figure. He had been waiting for this, Jay realized now that it was actually happening, and wondered whom it could be. In front of his disbelieving eyes, the hunched figure once again vanished into the woods..
That night as he went to his bed, his sleep was restless by the vague nightmares that plagued him.