Melancholy of a City

         I was walking down the road on a lovely evening in a deserted road in the middle of my mid-life crisis. I was walking along the deserted footpath & only few cars braved the roads with their headlights on. The city seemed quite gloomy & was unprepared for a night like this. For once it seemed to me, that the city has been rejected, cheated by those happy singles who call it their home & suddenly she was left to die when they became engaged & started making arrangements for the better parts of their life. They forgot that they weren't just living in a city, but it was like a living tree which sheltered the little men like her overgrown roots. She not only cared for them but made sure they find what they were looking for.

               At that time they weren't looking for anything materialistic but something undefined. The city picked up the leftover trails of their abstract senses & fabricated into something special which had its effervescence so seducing & charming the little hapless singles shambled & tried to wrap all around it. Until now they were living in a state of trance in the illusion of beauty & rosy dreams. Then a strong one from the bunch tried to break away from all of these & experienced the otherworldly. He told everyone & anyone he could find. Soon the plague rusted the overgrown roots. The ants began to disperse from the sweet. They no longer tried to hold on to their dreams because by then all had been disfigured, broken & shattered into pieces. The tree witnessed all of these but remained silent & calm as before. She processed everything but she resisted nothing because a time comes into every mother's life when they have to let go of their kids. To let the kids go break out of the womb when they realise they have a life to develop, dreams to achieve, hopes to pin & make all of them into reality.

                             

               The men soon followed their own individual paths. They started to get dispersed & move away the same way they came here in the first place with same intentions. They became fragile once & all over again. It's like a very bad hangover which you only wish will never get out of. They once again pinned all their hopes & went on to their journey & set a path of their own in the promise of a greater false sense of security.

              

               So I saw the city lost its vigor, clad in grey shadows of her past & left in vain. I asked her - why she promised them a future but let go of the past. Why she played hide & seek with their emotions. She remained silent in her usual humour, but this time there was a depth in that silence & it felt that I heard a breath of relief like a sense of bereavement. It was hard to define her emotions because she was not exactly happy nor sad. The sigh had a meaning but I only calculated invalid probabilities. I once again resumed my walking & left the city in the same way her children did but in this case I was a total stranger with whom she felt quite unrelated & a feeling of discomfort. But I never quite truly left from my mind & I worked on it in just finding the main cause. I did found it at last & I am quite unsure if I am shocked, happy or just sad by the result. For once the answer laid bare in front of me & in front of everyone like an overpriced female escort. The result started with V but not vain & ended with Y which sounded like the question I had in my mind all the time. Then, it became quite clear why they left because it made quite sense then.