text: By the time I was through my high school, yet still a teenager but still within myself I was proud to have got my shit braced to the coming important years.... You know those years, which can make your life or break your life. And I was so certain that I would do good from now. I along with my best friend sunny was in a fresher year and within our eyes there was just the light of glory which seemed we may soon accomplish. Let’s suppose and give a metaphor to the age from 14 to 19 years as a tunnel. And as you enter it coz its easy to enter any place where there’s light and even at the end we were certain about the light where the tunnel ended... it’s just in between the middle of the tunnel we may experience darkness but before entering we could see the tunnel emitting a youthful light. But I guess we really underestimated the darkness which we had to endure to pass through the middle to reach the other end only to get ourselves out. But I guess we certainly entered the wrong tunnel as initially it was so full of light that we dint see the darkness surrounding us and at every moment we could clearly see the outlet of the tunnel which was shining bright but which we later found out that it was a false mirage of the light at the end, nothing else... I wish when we were teenagers, we’d knew that there’s no shortcut to success and all that glitters is not gold and bright. But anyhow moving inside this tunnel was an amazing experience altogether or maybe I can put it this way that all the glitter of entering this tunnel never actually gave me time to comprehend the darkness which may surround us and it would be that hard for us to get out of this darkness. So, without any second thoughts we dived in the mouth of this bright tunnel. This tunnel of youth and teenage in which we indulged was for sure full of glitter but offered only vice. Nevertheless, we were young, all good to explore and more than willing to indulge in the vices which provided us a light, a light of self-confidence, a light of hope, a light of physical wellbeing, a light of sexual fantasies etc. etc. you name the vice it was there and what does a vice do when you experience such stuff for the first time in your life? It gives you the light, of all the above things. A light which makes an illusion to make you feel so bright within. Sadly the moment we started indulging in all such vices in order to always stay under the light , we dint realize that we were living just in the moment under the glitter and bright light. For since the time we entered ourselves in this tunnel of drugs, women, party ; sure we were under the bright light of joy but at that time we dint realized this that we were becoming slow and hollow from inside, we didn’t realized the more we stayed under the shade of this light, the more it was making us dark. But amid all this glitter of bright light and wild nights, we never let the dark confront us. Coz we stalled in the best places of the tunnel and never wanted to tread our way forward to the exit. I guess Actually I was stuck badly in that artificial bright light zone. For after a lot of time spent under the lime light of drugs, sex and all the wild crazy stuff which I believe in the darkness don’t give permission; I really wanted to tread towards the end of the tunnel where I was able to see a ray of hope. So, in my unusual high spirits and confidence I tried to shed the lime light so that I can tread towards the end of the tunnel. But hardly I knew the moment I shed the baggage of my substances which used to give me artificial bright light, I was not able to step up my foot to walk more than 3 steps. And at this moment I realized that all this while the light I was carrying, after I started walking through the tunnel was only artificial light which sourced my body to think, move and act only if I abused the drugs and indulged in other vices. And this time it was not like before, it was some serious stuff. I happen to realize that Its a fake lime light, and it has somehow managed me to become an addict. Soon I realized in my quest of light I have actually destroyed my life by falling in this deep dark pit of addiction. Where no amount of light can pull you out from the darkness and it will sink my life into an ocean of sorrows. And coming out of it felt hopeless and also seemed impossible. It felt I am again standing at the starting point from where I started. Another thing I realized was that all these drugs play with your mind in such a way that it hallucinated me into believing that the light at the end of the tunnel was not the natural light of joy, the end was just a mirage. Or perhaps there’s only one end to this tunnel and that is the dark pit which seeps you inside itself. I guess since beginning there was no end to this tunnel, all the vices in which we indulge in life are just the mirage to a joyful light; which ends only in the dark. Infact I lead myself from the vanity of the light into well of this darkness, where my own shadow , which danced around with me under the shade of light, had left me just alone and all by myself. And now I wish some alchemy which, either makes me embrace this strange darkness or it guides me back to the light. PS: I don’t want to leave darkness either! PS: And my pet name is GREY.