We sat at the side of a dirt lane one summer evening. In front of us, paddy fields stretched as far as the eye could see making it seem endless. The sky loomed above us- blue and grey swirling together to form a curious swatch of colours reconciled amongst the clouds. All around us the crops danced with the gentle breeze that sang with the bending branches; you could hear the rows of shallow water trickle and ripple with every breath the sky blew.

I sat beside him that summer evening, as crickets chirped in the backdrop and flies murmured about us, as the sun dipped down the valley until it seemed it would be buried underneath all this green and brown and yellow. My skirt dropped to my ankles, shielding my scabbed, sun tanned knees which I pulled up to my chest and rested my chin on. The thin fabric made it possible for me to feel even the slightest change in the wind. He was clad in nothing but a white singlet and dirtied black trousers which he had wore for the whole day's work. Unlike myself, who had squeezed and compressed my figure together, he laid back on his arms relaxed. His legs stretched out before him, with one leg propped up on his foot and his knee bent. His eyes were closed, though not squeezed shut; no, almost as if somebody had put their fingers on his eyelids and gently closed his eyes. His figure blocked the setting sun until all that was left of it was rays of gold shining out from behind him.

I looked at him for the longest time; I looked at the way the wind ran over his messy hair which had been held stiff with wax at the beginning of the day. I looked at the way his chest rose with every slow breath he took, how his shirt stretched over his rib cage when he inhaled and flowed out loose when he exhaled. I looked at his feet and his shoes which had been abandoned just so they could feel the warmth of a country he's never known; just so his toes could be speckled with the dirt of a nation which wasn't his homeland.

And amidst all this looking, he opened his eyes and I stopped breathing for the second time ever in my life.

I looked at this tall, handsome, young man who sat beside me on this summer evening. It's true that he was a little too skinny still, and a little too lanky, but his arms were strong, and his shoulders broad enough to shelter any young lady from any danger. But if you asked me what probably made him so different from the others, I would say it was his eyes. He had a good nose, and soft pink lips, but his eyes seemed to set him apart. It gave him more depth.When you looked into them, you would swear that oceans and seas and skies combined would never have made you realise the wonder and beauty the colour blue held in them, than when you lifted your eyes and looked straight into his.

I had never seen blue eyes before. How could I? Where would I have seen such eyes? In my little rice farming village, where could you find a foreigner who didn't want to kill you or pillage your home for enough time that you could look into his face and his eyes. In my little rice farming village, where time was relative to the roosters who lived among us in our wooden huts on stilts- how could you discover something as out of the ordinary as eyes which looked like water trapped behind marbles.

I have only stopped breathing twice in my life- the first was when my house was burned to ashes and the second time was when I looked into his very eyes.

SIDENOTE: In writing this, I am not attempting to romanticise war or the horrifics of war; it is about love for sure, and the rest is all up to your interpretation :)

“If I could dream,” he says. “If only I could dream!”

His muted laugh tumbles out his throat like rubble- small pebbles of sarcastic joy. I suppose he has not realised yet, but he is crying. Silver pearls of tears forming at the brim of his eyes, threatening to spill at any given moment. Sitting quietly on that rocking boat, as glittering, salty currents danced among us, I finally realised that it was actually me who was the unfortunate one.

“If only I could dream,” he repeats. “I would dream of seeing.”

“Why can’t you dream?” I ask in a voice above a whisper. “What’s stopping you?”

His milky blue eyes gaze out at the magnificent expanse of water, though there was no

question that he could not actually see it, could not marvel at its beauty. I always imagined that he was silently creating an image of what he expected the sea to be, conjuring up a whole spectrum of colours, weaving his own world.

“What is the colour of the sea?”

Had it been a few days ago I would’ve been left dumbfounded by his sudden, nonsensical

question. It seems like a lifetime since I first met him, but in just three days I’ve grown

accustomed to his random questions, I’ve gotten used to the fact that he is blind, and has

always been blind, and will always be blind. I’ve come to know him as the beautiful tragedy he is.

“I cannot tell you the colour of the sea,” I say to him honestly. “What a struggle that would be for me.”

His eyebrows furrow, and knit together in confusion. “Why not?” He asks. “You can see,

can’t you?”

“Yes, I can, and that is often the problem.”

Laughing almost bitterly, he turns to face me at such an approximate angle that it would’ve baffled me to know he was blind. “How can seeing be a problem of any kind?”

I look out at the sea, and for the first time in my whole life as a fisherman, I tried to really

look at it, to understand it, to interpret its song. “Well,” I begin. “The sea is often a master of deception. In the morning, with the sunrise reflected on it, it appears to be a velvety shade of pink and blue and purple. In the afternoon, under the blazing heat, it looks a glimmering aquamarine. Come sundown, the sea seems to soak up the colour of the sky above- it is a lush red, spilling like thick, hot blood. But at night, it is a pitch black, an enemy to sailors, the colour of death.”

I pause and look over at him, who seems to be deep in thought.

“So you see,” I say. “I cannot tell you the colour of the sea. I can never truly believe what I am seeing.”

He says nothing still, but I know he’s listening. Digesting whatever it is I told him, trying to figure out himself the true shade of the waters surrounding us.

“What did you think was the colour of the sea?”

He looks up abruptly, again directly at me, although he could not actually see me. “Well,” he begins. “I’m not so much an expert on colours, but I always thought the sea to be yellow.”

“Yellow?” I repeat. “But why?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” says he. “Perhaps just because of the way it sounds- yellow. Doesn’t just saying the word give you a certain feeling? Like having squelching sand feel warm in

between your toes. Doesn’t the word help you imagine the rustle of water against the sea

bed? Doesn’t the whole sea just feel yellow to you?”

He pauses a bit and waits, and stares off again into the horizon. Nothing could be heard

except the ‘rustle’ of the water, the sea birds squawking in the distance, and the mumbles

of the fishing village we called home.

“I wonder,” he murmurs. “I wonder if seeing colours are just as good as feeling them. Or

maybe better?”

There in that little boat, I hold my peace- never before have I been rendered speechless as I am now. For some reason, I feel my words could not hold the weight of him. Somehow,

though never before, sitting beside a person who felt colours made me feel inadequate and small; as if I was but a child again and I didn’t know anything about the world.

I pick up the oars and begin rowing us back to shore, the sun was beginning to set and it

painted the whole world in a golden film. I tell him, “Wouldn’t I like to live in a world where I could feel yellow. It’s my favourite colour, you know.”

The boy smiles, it’s the first time I’ve ever seen him smile so genuinely. It starts small but

stretches out wider and wider, like a crescent moon. What a smile.

“Well,” he says in return. “Nothing would please me more than to let you have a feel of my colours in exchange for a glimpse at your fickle sea.”

He smiles against the orange, evening sun as the wind blows strong torrents against his

sculpted face. “Wow,” he breathes. “What wouldn’t I give to be deceived by the sea.”

The first time I saw her we were at some low grade bar.

Between whispers of smokes and silouhettes, the humidity bore down on us and clung to our shirt sleeves and collars. A large window captured the patchwork sky outside almost like a painting. I stood at the side with my hands in my pockets and watched as couples slow danced to the jazz band. Their hands moulded together and heads resting on each other, men’s noses in their partners’ silky hair and accordion smiles etched on their faces.

And in the midst of it all, there she was. She certainly hadn’t been the prettiest creature on the dance floor with her almond eyes and protruding collarbones. Her hair was cropped short into a bob that framed her face in an unflattering manner. I’m sure some other fella thought she was pretty. A fella who might’ve likened her almond eyes to that of some exotic actress and her collarbones as the perfect vessel to house his lips. Some fella might’ve taken one look at her black bob and declared her to be so different from the faces of Monroe or Hepburn that she was unparalleled in that sense. No, she was not pretty to me but she was something to look at.

Not a moment later she met my eyes. I suspect she had been watching me watching her for too long. She made her way towards me, slipping past the people who were still dancing to a tune that everybody seemed to know except for me. My fingers curled and uncurled inside the pockets of my trousers and if I hadn’t been so nervous for what was to come I would’ve scoffed at her confidence.

She stopped when she was close enough and took out a box of Marlboro from her tattered purse which hung limply at her side. ‘Got a light?’ she asked. I restrained myself from raising an eyebrow and pulled out a lighter as she requested. Her eyes held mine as she lit it up and breathed it in and maybe it was because she was closer now than before but only then had I felt as if I was actually looking at her. Pink lips wrapped around a cigarette- probably cheap lipstick. Black strands of hair that framed her too pale face and a pastel silk dress that hung off her too thin frame. Her shoulders and elbows stuck out in a way that told me she wasn’t eating enough. Her eyes were smudged with some cheap mascara and she had sprayed some kind of cheap perfume all over herself. And yet I looked at her.

I looked at the way she fingered her necklace and saw how it was probably given to her by some relative that was endeared to her. I looked at the way her hair seemed uneven at the ends and saw her fiddling with some silver scissors in front of a bathroom mirror because she couldn’t be bothered to go to a salon. I looked at the way her fingers were fragile and her eyes were deep set and saw her putting aside her share of bread for her younger brother or sister. I looked at the cheap cosmetics she had applied for tonight’s escapade and saw how she was just another girl wanting to have fun, wanting to find love and be loved and love as much as she can. Just another girl who wanted to beautiful so much so she could look in the mirror and glitter with pride or have some random man warm her cold hands with his lips. A man who would tip his hat to her, who would call her beautiful and hold open doors for her.

All of a sudden I regretted doing what I did; judging her from afar and even up close. When I watched her sway awkwardly on the dance floor, shouldn’t I have been the gentleman who would grab her around her waist and spin her gently the way she wanted to be spun. When I saw her grab a drink from the bar, shouldn’t I have been the gentleman who would’ve gone to sit next to her and say ‘This drinks on me.’ Shouldn’t I have toasted to her beauty, to her courage, to her desire to be loved, to her eyes which glimmered against a velvet sky, to her arms which were as able to wrap around the waist of any man as anyone, to her heart which longed to know love.

And in that moment I knew. If there was anybody who had ever taken my breath away at the first sight, it would be her. Cheap perfume, too thin body, and pink lips and all. At that very moment in my life, love was captured in the form of this girl in some dimly lit, smoke filled bar in New York, 1950.

A writer’s wish often would be to write something that would astound the world. We want to leave them awe-struck, speechless, hanging on to our every sentence, breathless.

We want to change them, we want to shape them, we want to build a legacy out of words.

Is that selfish?

We write about things that seize you by the neck of your shirt, pulling you closer and closer like a bully in a dark alleyway. We write about things that make you feel vulnerable,

stripping you naked of your defences- the walls you put up to protect yourself. We write

about things that keep you gasping, running on ragged breaths like when you take a shower under icy water at 5 a.m.

Is that selfish?

We write about death- although most of us have never known death; never felt the gravity

of it closing in on us, bearing down on our eyelids. We write about war as if we think it is

poetic- but is it? How would we know? How can we justify being poetic about a death we

have never known? How can we justify feeling feelings we have never felt, but write up as if we had?

We taint you with our imaginations; stain you with a world that we have woven out of

words. We paint ourselves up to be the Moses of literature- leading you out of your

comfort zone, into a sweltering desert of the unknown, promising a Promise Land which

even we have not yet seen with our own eyes but we believe to be true.

And yet you drop into our brittle arms, squeezing your eyes tightly, heart beating rapidly,

erratically; hoping that we will catch you. Hoping to find your home in the severing

foundation of our scripted thoughts.

Is that selfish?

Is asking for some form of trust selfish? Is pushing you beyond your boundaries, pushing you ahead of the safety line selfish?

Is the core of life to feel? To imagine? Or to be rooted in what you already know- in what is already deemed safe?

Is asking for some form of belief, some form of recognition, selfish? We do not have the

right to try to manipulate what you feel but we’ve done it. Aren’t your feelings yours? Who are we to try to make you feel things you don’t have to feel.

We stir you- hoping that through it you will remember a part of us. Be it a name, a sentence, or half a quote; we want you to know who we are. And we’ve attacked you through your senses, through your heart and spirit, piercing deep till we’ve left some sort of scar that will suffice as memory.

Is that selfish?