Written by Harsahej Mann.

Are you you or them? Am I me or you? What am I, but the experiences I had through you? Am I just another extension cord, leading to you? Is there a me at all? Am I “I” or am I just an artificially induced you?
We do not often realise it, even as it happens. Every second, the edges of our “ self” are grated off by the abrasive gaze of the other . Even as I write this, the grated edges of my “self” may be falling like snowflakes , on the cold hard marble flooring of my room . Whether they are actually falling, I cannot say for as I said we often do not realise it, even while our self is disintegrating into mere dust.

The marble floor may be covered with tattered coils of translucent glitter – the remains of my “self”, invisible to my own naked eye. I cannot yet see the glitter, so, for now I think my “self” is intact. The fragility of my assertion is something that I don’t as yet believe in or rather choose not to believe in.
My “self” is adept at the game of hide and seek. I haven’t yet found it, even as I embark on a journey to finally collude with it, as it is me and I it , so there is no reason why “we” should not unite in perfect harmony . Many of us have not yet found ourselves. I wish for me to say peekaboo to my lost self and finally tempt it to withdraw from the obscurity of its hiding place , but I never am quite able to spot it , for It consistently evades me – my “self” hiding from itself , even so I wish to finally coalesce my “self” into me .
Perhaps, I haven’t yet put my arms into the depths of my being, and felt about the dark void, to grapple and hold the form of my original self, buried deep under multiple visions , perspectives and constructs Visions, perspectives and constructs which are not products of “me”.

As I look into the mirror my mirror seems to baulk at me. It seems to want to say something. I gaze at myself. My “ self” gazes back at me . Finally my “mirrored” self speaks . It tells me I’m not it.
You are not you. You are an apocalyptic form of an alien’s gaze. You lost yourself to them. You let yourself become an extended projection of their selves, annihilating the original you. You killed yourself. The slaughtered remains of the murder you committed are stored within the depths of your unconscious self. At times , you feel like diving into your own deep sea to reclaim your lost parts , but you don’t take the sacramental plunge because the sea is black , wild and deep dotted with Medusa-like seaweeds embedded onto its floor, You’d rather let your corpse be tossed about by the black waves inside you . You’d rather carry on the way you are – a murderer and a charlatan. The words “ deep” and “ black” are immensely repellent to you .You also don’t like diving and splashing about . Peace and tranquility are more your things.
So, you let the corpse that was you float upon the surface of your own deep, Black Sea.
Your actual self is trapped under the sordid glass of the mirror in your wardrobe. You cannot rescue it because the sea was too black and deep.
All this my mirror in my wardrobe tells me.
The projection of their “selves” were projected and thrust upon your nimble shoulders , but you did not realise it while it was happening ,Even as you doubled under the weight of their vision , shuddering under its weight , struggling to hold your own – but failing miserably and not realising that you lost your “self” to constructs that you played absolutely no hand in constructing . The mirror does not stop speaking.
Slowly, their tendrils wound around you, slowly, they tightened their grip like elastic nooses around your neck and before you could make an attempt to rescue yourself , the air had been wrangled out of you leaving you gasping , spluttering and choking , Blocked , stunted ,Restricted , inhibited , Caved in , boxed in , “mirrored in” .You were trapped in the mirror of your wardrobe .You are actually me , but you didn’t know that till now . Your clipped wings are now a nebulous mixture of mangled veins embroiled in a thin veneer of shimmering gossamer, quivering violently as the last traces of life escape from within their purple walls.
I shudder at my reflection in the mirror. I want to smash it into pieces. The mirror does not stop to pause, it continues to talk ..
Only you did not realise it, while it was happening.
You don’t realise it, now that it has happened, now that the free thinking YOU has been placed in a coffin that you did not build. Things happen slowly, overtly, like evolution. Your today is a result of millions of milliseconds that made up your past. History is not our past, it is our present.
Before you knew it, you became so many things – an amalgamation of multiple people. Right now, so many people are settled down, huddled and nestled in the dark, musty corners of the precincts of your soul. So many people made you their home and made you inevitably forget your own address.
Everything is somebody else’s .
Nothing is yours.
The names on the title deeds are not yours.
You are not your own property, anymore.
Like an army of soldiers they pursued their imperialistic agenda, they became the colonisers, you became the colonised. But you did not realise it, while it was happening.
Now that it has happened, you think it is the new normal. That’s what we do, to reconcile with our predicament, We annul it’s incongruity by calling it a “new normal” , whereas in fact what’s happening is anything but normal .

Bit by bit, they built the fortress of their will around you. Your self shrank and shrank and shrank, until it was nothing but a speck of your former self upon the new you – the new, novel , normal you .
A you that is not you but them.
The mirror minces no words.
On the outset, it was “ nice” to be a part of the whole , a cog in the wheel , a clone that fit neatly into everybody’s plan . It was “simple, sweet and convenient” , falling thus into everybody’s scheme of things .What you did not know was that you fit into nobody’s plan in particular , least of all your own . Before you knew it, you became the ripe apple of everybody’s eye – to be plucked and devoured.
In retrospect, you were just a withered apple core.
Only, you did not realise it, when your red luscious self-transgressed into a golden fibrous skeleton.
Your own scheme of things was a myth.
Your own line was a broken, fading segment that faded into the pale whiteness of the paper on which it was drawn.
Which fool said that complete democracies exist?
Who said dictatorships cannot co- exist with democracies?
Who said democracies do not harbour mini apocryphal dictatorships within their liberal folds?
We are all little autocratic dictatorships,
Each of us is each other’s Hitler,
Each of us is the others gulag,
The precincts of the constructs built by our industrial units are the renegade’s / lunatic’s tickets to our Auschwitz ..
Whoever does not fit into our binaries is banished and tarnished – he is either a lunatic, a renegade or an anarchist: all doomed to suffer the same fate.

Every act of lunacy is a precursor of a new normal.
This we do not know, or even if we do know, we do not say it explicitly, for fear that we might become “that precursor.”
Believe me, we do not realise it as it happens – the murder, the annihilation, the negation and the elimination.
Even as I type these letters, I try to overcome the urge to press the backspace button because the fear of the blade of your guillotine culling my neck looms like an ugly shadow upon the screen of my phone. What you might think makes me think “ twice” about what I’m thinking .
But for now I will push you and your version of me off the cliff and into the abyss below and venture to tell you to preserve yourself, irrespective of what anybody might think
I will also proceed to tell you to BUILD, to build a fortress around your souls, construct it immaculately, Leave no crevice or crack, collect the dismembered patches of your tremulous soul, patch them together and preserve them in a jar . Let nobody steal that jar from you.
think as per what you think you should be thinking, irrespective of what they might think about you thinking about what you might want to think. In other words let your thoughts be free thinking individuals who could not care less about what other “ thoughts” think about them .
Your free soul was god’s greatest gift to you. You entered the world with it and by all means it should be yours when you leave the world. Don’t let somebody else’s vision, shape yours. Your perceptions and visions are the only things that are yours .
Preserve them. Do not sell yourselves to the harbingers of an artificially induced homogeneity ,for if you sell your soul you will not be paid for selling it ,
rather you will pay for selling it.

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Raw Whispers Magazine, edition 3.

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