ले देख तमाशा!

सुन रे सुन बेलिया
दिल ने धोखा दिया 
आँखें मिली तुमसे नाज़नी 
मेरे होश-ओ-हवास खो गए 

Have you ever felt that your heart cheats on you? Have you known that your heart is fickle? Are you aware that you've never really loved someone truly? What do you do when you know? Do you stop loving? 

You don't.

You search for faces. You search for faces to confide in. You search because you want to hide from the world the frailties that are a part of your being. You want to acquire power; power over someone else's being, their face, their pain, and their flesh. 

So you make a decision. You decide to fall. You fall from your own self-built castle of impunity and land into a pit you call love. Love, for all those who have felt it, is nothing more than an intoxication. It's just that the meaning of intoxication is subjective.

दिल ने रो रो कहा

ये आँखें हैं दिल की ज़ुबान

ख्वाब रोज़ रोज़ देखे नए।

You fall from impunity and land on a minefield. You look skywards towards the castle. You look towards the doors you'd barged through and you look at the mess that remains. 

And then, you look at yourself. You know that the mess up there is repairable. The mess down here- in your gut - isn't. You know  that there's no stairway to take you back there. And there's no highway down here either.

So you dream. You dream to find a grain of wheat to separate from the chaff. You dream of finding a silver lining, knowing very well that there's no cloud to find it in. But you dream, because you are a prisoner of your heart.

हो दिल का भंवर बोले सुन साथिया
छुप ना दुपट्टे में तू ओ छलिया 
प्रेम पुजारी के 
दिल का बयां 
होता रहा, 
रोता रहा प्रिये...

There are rules of the prison, though. Prisoners aren't allowed to die in peace. Death is a tricky taker. It takes those who love life the most. Death was cheated by its heart too. But for someone who walks down a minefield, life is only that valuable. So you tread. 

You get hurt, you get bombed, but you tread. You tread until your feet hurt and then tread some more. You meet other travellers. You crib to them about how you were tricked. You cry holding one of them hoping that they'd send you back. But they don't. Because they cannot. 

And that's how the world's been turning. We've all fallen into the pit we never knew existed. And we're too scared to end it all. So we walk. We walk down the boulevard, not just of broken dreams, but of broken hearts; or should I say, broken beings, tricked by the heart. 

In the midst of the chaos, you find stories similar to yours. You find scars and wounds that match the ones on your body. Once you find them, you hold on to them. You hold on to them until you realize that even they can't send you back. So you let go, and search for another one or two. You search for another face. You search for another story.

The heart tricks you again. But you couldn't care less. Because you know that all of life is a Tamasha, and we're here to build our stories. Only so that we can tell them.