Isolation

      In a faraway place, a nightingale cooes a melancholy under the moonlight. The moon and it are face to face, alone. With an aching heart, the nightingale weeps for the eggs that broke before hatching. Both the nightingale and the moon stare at each other, one in immediate solitude and one in solitude that existed before time.

In another place, stands a woman in her early thirties by a window made of wood. A pigeon settles on the window sill and cooes but the woman takes no notice. Her eyes seem to look far on the road that lays ahead. The road that disappears into the city and into the forests. But never had she thought that getting married to a soldier would make her look at an actual road, for days, sometimes patiently, sometimes impatiently waiting for an answer, if she's still a wife or now a widow, a yes or a no. Sometimes, not knowing whether to move on or hold back is more painful than doing either of these.

In the same house, locked in a bedroom is a little girl. A girl who's wondering why there was never a father around her. She looks out of the window, at the road that lays ahead of her, the road that disappears into the city and into the forests. 'What if I get lost one day?' she asks, her eyes unwillingly settling on the dense jungle. Pushing her thoughts away, she turns left, to the lanes. She sees children her age, walking with parents on either side. She turns further left to look at the park. She sees the children playing, couples sitting together and most of all, father's running in circles with their little ones on their shoulders. Shivers run up her spine. She always knew she missed something or someone. But mom never told her. She figured it out. Those dusty pictures of a man with sharp features beside her mom, those neighbours telling around that she had 'his' face structure and so many pieces of information that she had to string together telling her that she had a father. But in that room she stays locked, secluded, grieving to meet the man she never met.

Somewhere near, the pigeon cooes on that wooden window sill with an inanimate lady by the window. The pigeon walks to and fro now making its usual sound, the sound humans despise but the lady takes no notice. May be she's just a statue. The pigeon is neither shooed away now given a bowl of water. There is no one to listen to it.

Back in that faraway place, the nightingale cooes sadly, disturbed by the soldiers act of overthrowing it's nest. But it doesn't know. It doesn't know what broke the egg, the moon is its only comfort, it's melancholy echoing and absorbing into lonely atmosphere. 

Back in a timezone where it's still evening, the woman awaits, wondering if her husband is alive or dead thinking that no one can understand the pain of losing a lover more than her. The four year old girl still hides herself away from the world in assumption that the worst of all pains is not being able to see her father. The pigeon cooes but gets no attention, thinking if life could be any worse.

Four disturbed beings, not realising that their own sadness is not the sadness of the world. The pigeon does not know that the nightingale cooes in notes of solitude, the little girl does not see that her mom misses her father much more than the girl herself and the nightingale does not know that one of the soldiers who overthrew its nest never got to see his four year old daughter himself.

They're all too engulfed with the pain they bear that crushes them with all its might and they allow it to, too oblivious of the world around not contemplating that grief, separation and loneliness are more ordinary than they think.

And the moon, the moon only shimmers upon all these, one and the same. Smiling away the pain for no one would know loneliness the way she did. And so, she looks on her earthlings with love as if they had put up a play for her, a special kind of play, where only the audience knew the entire plot.

All isolated, yet connected.