Many out there are being tossed around

When darkness descends what does one do? Is life, light and death, darkness? Or, is it the other way around? I have seen people scream out their hallucinations. I have seen them laugh too. I have calmed them down with medicines and wondered if that is right. Should one leave them in their pain? Is it pain they are going through or is it their tired and weary soul, thrashed by social mores, finding solace through their bouts of madness?
I have had many questions. The answers never came easy. Books are too straight for my comfort (and, perhaps, their’s too) because they are written through the eyes of the sane. Am I not sane then, I wonder, as I falter off the beaten path to find my way through the haze and darkness of the unknown. All I have is a dream without a deadline and I chase it.
Darkness envelops me ever more, yet I continue to swim. I am a swimmer, but I was never prepared for this endless swim down a dark river where I cannot see. I continue, hoping to reach the shore one day where I will find my dream and be happy. The shore is yet to be found; the swim, yet to stop; the river, yet to end. But, what I fathom through the ravaging currents that toss me here and there is that I can survive again and again.
Thus, I begin to see through the dark. I am not alone. There are many out there being tossed around. Some giving up and drowning. Some still striving. Some reaching for others to drown them so that they can stand on their shoulders. But, no matter how many pile up underneath, the bottom shall never be reached because the water is way too deep.
And there are those who continue to swim and sing out loud even as they are tossed around. Their vocal cords churn out the most beautiful music even when the waves slap them against the hardest rocks. They must be mad I thought and I was right. They admit to their madness. It is their madness that leads to their happiness of being. They have dreams too, not across the river, but right here in this crazy chaos of our watery grave. They are living their dream in the darkness where they begin to see and feel and smell and touch. They are able to taste the water every time they drown. It is their elixir and it gives them strength. They are in love with life, that torrential and uncontrollable mad river, which swings them around and throws them over the rocks. They worry not about the blood that oozes from their cuts, nor even bitch about the pain of every hurt. They sing through their journey like it is the best thing to have ever happened.
Around them drown many, crying with fear. I begin to cry too for I get scared. I am sad and worry about my dream of those pastures, those beautiful rivers, those trees laden with fruits and that beautiful music I want to hear in the quietness of those imaginary hills and dales. But, all I hear are the cries of the sane and the laughter of the insane - a chaos that drives me crazy. I slow down. My arms begin to feel heavy. I am being sucked in by the water like a tiny plankton inhaled by a whale.
Then someone pulls me out. A madman is saving me even as he is drowning himself. He smiles and says, “This is it, my friend; this is life. Live it, before it leaves you. Your arms are still strong. Give in not to the fears but to the desire to swim and the dream is yours.”
I wake up and head straight to my desk to pen this down.

(The writer is a filmmaker, traveller and doctor)
parvez.imam@mydigitalfc.com