THE MASQUERADER

Once while taking a stroll along a wide elegant boulevard, with parades full of long arching palm trees, and rattling footsteps, I came across a pair of shiny little feet scurrying past me. Seeing my eyes following his, he stopped, reckoning me with an ethereal smile.

A bright young lad he was, with roseate lips, chubby cheeks and sparkling eyes. Yet something was amiss. I drew him closer, only to see a mask that had firmly clung to his face. Intrigued as I was, I politely asked him, “Why have you put on this mask, dear?”

And as if annoyed by the question, the boy ran away, irritated, wild and confused. The only response I could think of then was to chase him. As I drew closer to him, I pulled him by his arms and unmasked him by force. And there, standing in front of me, was an innocent boy, with eyes deep red, cheeks drooped, as if burdened, lips dry and stiff, as if they have missed a smile for too long. Desperately trying to fight back his tears, his sublime face struggled for a smile, though fake. He turned his head back and eventually failed to control his sob.

Tears trickled down his cheeks making me more impatient. The boy refused to say anything until my persistence wedged him to blurt out only a few, but important, words…“I lost my Éclairs Chocolate”.

Just a chocolate! I stood astound. Such hue and cry for a toffee not worth even a rupee! Immediately I drew out the Cadbury’s, that I had packed for office, from my bag and offered it to him. Like a stinging snake, the boy retaliated at my offer for the replacement and ran away, crying louder and stranger. “This is why I wear the mask”, he screamed and vanished.

I spent the whole day pondering over what had happened to the boy. What was with that mask, anyway? Why wouldn’t the boy be happy when he got a whole Cadbury’s for his lost plain Éclairs? Of course he wouldn’t, not if what he lost was much more than just a piece of cocoa and caramel. I felt the chocolate wasn’t something he just liked, he loved it.

May be he had gone through a great deal to get the chocolate that fascinated him so much. Maybe that was the only thing he felt bonded to. Maybe he was too attached to it to let it go; in a way that mature and practical senses like ours often overlook. And with its loss, the boy lost his desires, passion, self-confidence, and trust on his close-ones and others; even his heart and soul, that longed so much for the trivial chocolate, seem to weep at the loss. It now left within him a void, a vacuum such that no replacement was voluminous enough to fill in.

It did seem a little weird to me at first. But isn’t it true? Looking from the boy’s perspective, yes, it is. I feel that it is pretty natural. Each one of us has such a kid in us. Every living being- be it a human or an animal, craves for something that might look trivial to others, but holds utmost importance with respect to one’s desire and passion; that one’s heart yearns to get at any cost; that if lost, creates a turmoil of emotions within oneself. It’s not the object that matters, but the essence of it in one’s life that changes the meaning of its mere existence.

It’s true that if I were the little boy, my chocolate would be just something as relevant to my desires and my needs as was the chocolate to the young boy. And just like the casual sympathy, that passers-by, like me, showered upon him made him feel more sorrow-full, sad and resilient, it would have made me react too, in a more violent manner or otherwise.

It makes perfect sense now. Probably he wore that mask so that no one must know he was weeping inside. He felt more comfortable being lonely and sad than being sympathized by others who have least idea of what he is going through.

All on a sudden, my eyes opened with a screeching noise. Oh! The desk-phone was ringing. It brought me back to the same old boring dingy room where papers had been piled up for rework and the computer system glared at me like I was some extra-terrestrial object. “It must be my boss”. As I answered it, the ‘HELLO’ echoed from everywhere. Suddenly I was transformed into a speckle tumbling down through what seemed like a long vertical tunnel, and everything passing by me lightening fast. As the tunnel ended, a strong bang on my head jolted me awake, or half-awake, I must say. I scurried to stop the screaming alarm clock. Oh! I had been dreaming all this time. It was time for work, so I shut the impatient alarm, got into my flip-flop, and moved towards the restroom to freshen up, picking up the ‘Smiling Mask’ on the way that lay on the bed, smirking silently at me, and hid myself behind its fake smile.