I had a green plastic frog once.
It was very realistic, with warts and green bumpy skin and a smooth
white underbelly among other things.
I used to squeeze it hard and it would go 'RIBBIT!'
(and not bud-weis-er)
It was my favourite toy because I could throw it on girls and make
them pee in their undies.
I used to do that a lot.
I don't have that frog anymore.Mom gave it away after an
over-caffienated spring cleaning binge session that lasted for nearly
two weeks.
I was distraught for a few days, and mom got me a new frog.
The new one was no where as good as the old one.Suddenly no one was
scared of my frog attacks.They all smelled a cheap imitation a mile
away.
I missed my old frog.
I missed it so much that soon I began using the image of my lost frog
in a self-referential manner.
In essence I became a frog to compensate for my loss.
But it was my little secret that I had become an amphibian.
I was also a frog because it took a princess to change me.
I am no prince charming, but no longer a frog either.
We both were in the process of transformation- a gradual metamorphosis
and in the process of changing ourselves, we changed each other in
more ways than anyone could have ever imagined.
I was a frog because it took a princess to change who I was.
But that's where the story ended.
But I wish I would be a prince charming some day.
Come closer children, and listen to me very carefully.
None of my fairy tales will ever end with 'and they lived happily ever after'.
I do not want to purport a myth or plant lies in your tender unripened
minds about everlasting happiness.Sad as it is, for most mere mortals
happiness is a fleeting sensation.
Take Grief and sorrow...now those can last, but happiness itself has a
curious way in which it evaporates.
Happiness-fleeting happiness
In it's essence
is effervescent evanescence
Kiddies,write that down somewhere.
I was a frog because it took a princess to change who I was.But that's
where the story ended.
No the story did not end.
The story teller decided to call the quits, and took a very long coffee break.
I hate to admit it but sometimes I have visions.
As a rational minded sceptic, I always dismiss them as Hallucinations.
Years ago, I knew about my future.
I would be a storyteller.
I saw myself, old and wrinkled, and telling stories that healed
people.That was my mission.
Thats what I was supposed to do in my Busman's vacation.
But I always dismissed these visions for what they were.
Hallucinations.
I knew I'd disappoint my parents when I woke up one night with a
strange dream of me chasing an owl which was wearing hornrimmed
glasses.It was injured and could not fly.But try as I may to catch it,
it would hop away and flop at some distance. Eventually I crushed it
to death by mistake.
To me that dream meant I would be an academic failure, and a major
disappointment to all the dreams and aspirations of my father.
I would not become what he had meant for me to become.I would never
become an engineer like him.
Another dream, a waking dream nonetheless, told me of my first love.In
that dream, I saw that when she had to choose between me and her
ambitions, she chose the latter.
Strangely , I also know about the girl I was going to marry, or how
many children I'd have.(see how I've already put the future in the
past tense)
Bloody hallucinations.
Sorry.
They can be so tantalisingly detailed.
When I met her for the first time,there was no surprise, there was no
recognition, there was no love...but there was acceptance.
It was as if we both knew even before we met.
It came as a surprize to no one else either.For everybody,our marriage
was the most natural thing that could have happened.
It was as if everybody knew even before they knew.
Hallucinations...I've deeply studied altered states of mind and
methods of inducing them , so that I could understand my own
visions,my hallucinations.
But I did not believe in them.They were only hallucinations.And as
such , carried no merit, but then realised their potency when I saw
again what I had seen before.
They were all coming true.
I was tempted to call it deja-vu.
Yes , I did call it Deja-vu and hallucinations and other things,
because I was a rational man and rational men did not have visions of
the future.
And I was a frog because it took a princess to change who I was.But
that's where the story ended.
No the story did not end.
It diverged.
Just as it happened before, and I was seeing again all that I had seen before.
It was inevitable.
The wheels creaked and events aligned themselves underneath and paved
the way for the Juggernaut.That was how the Juggernaut Universe rolled
forward.
Once the wheels were upon these events, the sheer weight of the
universe would imprint these events on the fabric of space and time.
The imprinting of events was permanent and irreversible.
The only things that could be changed were inference and illation, for
they were made of the very same stuff that dreams and nightmares were
made of and thus were wispy and malleable.
Kiddies,little children, I see some sleepy eyes amongst you, so let me finish.
Let me tell my story before the sandman claims you.
Occasionally you might hear people talk about my strangeness, of how I
could talk to animals or hold my breath for a long time or how in the
past I have narrowly missed death from all strange things not limited
to falling coconuts and/or speeding trucks.
There is also that idiot who keeps telling people that I had once left
my body and traveled outside to meet him.
Disregard all of them.
Especially that idiot.
I'm just a man.
An ordinary man.
I'm just a storyteller, because that was what I was meant to be.
I'm no superman,rockstar or a godman/guru.
People will try to mythologize me, but reject all myths.
I'm just an ordinary man.
Someday, people might tell you that I was a frog before.
That's true.
I was a frog because it took a princess to change me.
I'll be forever indebted to her for doing so.
I'll be always in love with her for doing so.
But that's where the story ended.
At least for now.
The future is still ahead of us.
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