Friday, September 12, 2008
Ugly Ducklings
*
Their faces that of anticipation and gaiety. Their steps in the form of a lighthearted skip. They advance inexorably downwards, make a turning and move even faster, footsteps quickening with their pulses.
The oblivious foreign guests continue their tete-a-tetes with their local counterparts who incline their heads towards the sudden intrusion, scowling in disapproval. But the interlopers pay no heed to them, and saunter towards their long-awaited prize. One at a time they seemingly disappear behind a delicate scarlet contraption, lost in their own worlds of ectasy or anguish while the queue behind laments impatiently behind the feeble obstruction.
Bliss and disappointment fills the hearts of many as the queue slowly dissipates. Smiles and frowns both evident as each individual walks out of the now hallowed office. Others wait in their classes. As each valiant knight returns with a medal from their regents, the unworthy break into smiles, fully aware of their own positions and limits, spontaneously giving exclamations of felicitation with an occasional compliment saturated with sardonicism. A joyous celebration of merriment commences as hysteria gets the better of the chevaliers.
And yet a bitter staleness pervades the air. The forsaken have been forsaken yet again. No one notices these gray victims. They speak, voices dripping with venom, willing everything before them to burn. The world through their eyes transmogrifies into a loathsome sight. They wear a perpetually sullen expression, snapping at all that come within a certain radius. They have been neglected. Those that exist on neither end of the spectrum, those that possess the capability to slay the dragon, but wasn't chosen by the king. It is a tragedy. A mocking travesty of justice. What could have been theirs was snatched away by that grain of a distraction or most minuscule of miscalculations.
But without a complaint, they accept their unjust fate, resolute on living through it all the same. They grit their teeth and clench their fists but still, they make it. Enduring their own emotional afflictions and the hardships of the antediluvian way. They disregard what higher nirvana they could have achieved before and focus solely on what lies ahead, never looking back. Trial by trial, tribulation by tribulation, they battle their way through, to emerge in glory and splendour. Their efforts culminate in achievements so great, they can even put some of the erstwhile medalists to shame.
They are not the fallen ones. They are the resilient ones. Gray they may be, but that is the dissenting and unique trait. One that conditions and prepares them for the journey of adversity. One that makes them stand out. One that defines them as the swans they are.
*
This goes out to the people without exemptions. Although I have one for English, it's my first. And that means I've lived without it for two years. It isn't quite fun to stand amidst the ocean of peers waving their exemption papers happily but you'll get through it all the same. What does an exemption mean really? Think about it.
P.S.: You have all the right to despise and kill those who got more than 4 exemptions.
Dark Memories[10:15 PM]
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