Part 1

The storm expended it's spate of fury in a burst of rain.

Marion clung to the tree, her cheek pressed against the wood waiting for the rain to cease. As she waited she fell to her favorite past time of 'pretending'. She pretended that every now and again, time would cease and everyone assumed their true form and fulfilled their true purpose. She liked to think that she was really a dryad, tending graceful birch trees in the day and dancing on some mysterious heath on Midsummer nights. Life was really just an interlude between flights of fancy.

The rain ceased and Marion slipped away between the trees back home. Home was a small apartment in Mumbai.

Though her body anchored her to the city, her heart was usually always to be found on Prince Edward Island in Canada. Ever since she has read 'Anne of Green Gables' at the age of 8, she had dreamed of living on P.E.I with it's Violet Vale and Dryad's Bubble and Lake of Shining Waters.

All this talk of dreaming, must have given you the impression that Marion is a child. But, no, Marion is really 21; though she'd been a little girl too long to have grown out of the habit completely. All this speaks volumes about her soul, but I can hear my reader wonder what she looks like!

No, she does not have auburn hair and dreamy green eyes with a rosebud mouth, but fluffy, untidy brown hair and dark brown eyes with a tiny beauty spot next to her mouth. You might walk past her without knowing who she was. Marion possesses no exceptional talents except one; and that is the power to love. Be it, her family, her friends, her pet birds, the tree outside her window, Marion loved them all with an intensity which always caused her heart to break every time change crept into her little world.

And that is where dreams fit in. Everything in Life is ephemeral; change alone is permanent. Dreams on the other hand belong to one and one only and hence, one must guard them jealously and keep them close. They are the only things that lie between hurt, despair and ultimately cynicism and eternal beauty. Marion lives on dreams, lives for turning them into reality. That is why her world is a thing of beauty and a joy forever.

In the next few posts I hope to make you better acquainted with Marion.

Moonlit Dreams

It's 10:00 pm and I've given up trying to coax sleep to sprinkle sand in my eyes. I've rather philosophically gotten up to stand by my window and dream.

I can hear the muted sounds of traffic as they filter through the leaves of the tree outside my window. The wing is quiet. The hostel dogs have finished their routine raid and have left the world to darkness and to me.

The moon is a young moon tonight. She seems to quiver full of expectancy. I can understand why people says that moonlight is dangerous. Nothing seems impossible or stupid when it's bathed in moonshine.

Is this the same moon that looks down on the Mens Wimbledon Finals Match, albeit unseen? Is it she that looks down on hunger in Africa, at war and bloodshed in Pakistan at despair and terror in Afghanistan? Is it she who has looked down on generations of lovers?

In a world of change it is so wonderful to have something that is constant, that will always walk in beauty through the night. For I've come to realize everything changes. Not just people and places, but ideals! Ideals change too! And I'm not sure I like that!

I've always wondered what Anne of Green Gables would make of today's world. A world so much more complicated and multidimensional than the one she lived in, in Avonlea. Would she retain that starry eyed romanticism? Could she hold on to her Dreams and Ideals? Well she must! Otherwise she wouldn't be 'Anne'.

I can feel sleep creep up over me as I write. It is such a lovely, delicious, cosy feeling! Good Night World and Good night Moon!