NEVER LEARNT TO SEE GREY

“Why?”, they ask me
“Why?”, they blame me
Every time I falter
Every time I stumble
But I don’t have an answer to their questions
What should I tell them
Every time they scream at me for being an open book
For blurting out something that was not meant to be said out loud

Should I tell them
That black and white are all I see?
That there’s no in-between for me
That it’s always an either-or, yes-no, true-false world for me?
But then they would retort “Life is all shades of grey”!

Perhaps they on their part are not wrong
Because in a world of screens and masks,
Christian Grey wasn’t just “Grey”
He was “Fifty shades of Grey”,
Went on to becoming “Fifty shades Darker”
Before he finally became “Fifty shades Freed”!
And here’s me, who can’t decipher anything between black and white
Not even a single shade of grey, let alone a hundred and fifty!

It’s not that I never tried
Yes, I did try, so many times, to peer through masks
But each time my conscience stopped me, telling me that there was no mask there
But there were masks all along, layers and layers of them
And as you get to know people better,
Their masks start peeling off
And that’s when you realize you are the odd one out in the room
For you never even had a single mask, not even once in your entire lifetime!

At night I snuggle close to my Orange octopus, hoping for some comfort
But he too glares at me with big reproachful eyes, questioning
“Why can’t you see grey?”
And even then my lips tremble, tears running down my cheeks, as I manage to mumble
“Because I never learnt to see grey – I just couldn’t do it!”
And then I wonder, did they teach us to see grey at school?
I doubt, because our moral science classes always spoke about truth and lies, good and bad
And for two and a half decades I have lived between these binaries.

Mom reprimands me at a party if I suddenly jut in to tell the facts
“But why Mom?”
“Because all that’s true shouldn’t be spoken out loud”
My best friend complains that I am an open book, that I can’t pretend, that I can’t keep words to myself
How do I explain that I can’t pretend
I simply can’t stand hearing lies being glorified, while I have know the truth all along
Because those shades of Grey don’t exist for me
I am blind to them!

Perhaps this world is not meant for people like me
I feel imprisoned amongst pretensions and masks
And I am suffocating
Here I come to a definite conclusion
Either accept me just the way I am
Or go your own way, letting go of my hand,
Never to look back again
For once you leave you have no more rights over me
And you can no longer question me…

Go, please go, if you think I am unfit for your world,
Or better still, kill the odd one out
My soul would at least be freed from these earthly manacles
And I believe Heaven would accept me with open arms…

I don’t know
But the voices in my ears are driving me crazy
Hammering me with just one question,
“Why can’t you see shades of grey, Girl?”
I don’t have any answers to those voices
And all I can say is “ease release me”
I am a misfit in your world with its shades of Grey
But I have never learnt to see grey and I can’t ever do that
So I guess, before I turn from an insomniac to a complete maniac
Let me pack my bags and depart
To some far away place where there’s just black and white – no Grey!

Copyright Samrudhi Dash (Inara)

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