Maskman! The finale..

                                 SECOND PART                FIRST PART

The biggest problem with this mask-man theory is that it stops you from trusting the people around you. It almost forces you to believe that people are not being real to you. They have been secretive, hiding their other side, the real them from you.

“I don’t want to reveal my weakness to all the people, people whom I don’t trust. They might use it against me.” She said.

“Neither do I!” I said.

“If I’m not sharing something with someone, it doesn’t mean I’m masked. It means I’m just being cautious.”

The thing which I had always liked about her was her practicality. I may not be practical all the time. I love to live in my own world. I don’t always take decision based on practicality. On the other hand she always looks at the practical feasibility of the things. One corner of my brain was occupied by these thoughts when she was discussing with me about the masquerades. It was like she read my mind. She knew what I was thinking, about her and about myself.

“Why makes you so surreal?” She asked.

Surreal? I had to think. Was I being unreal? May be I was. But it was not the real me. May be the mask that I was flaking made her think that I was unreal.

“May be the negativity around me makes me unreal.”

I meet many people daily, in my office, at my home, on the road and invariably almost all of them carry a wave of negative energy around them. The air around me was full of negativity. At times I felt I was inhaling more negativity than the oxygen. It had left me frustrated and devoid of calmness. May be it was the reason I was shedding a mask and was being unreal. I was in need of oxygen, the positivity. I wanted to come out of the web of negativity.

Her constant probing made me realise that I was masked too. But I wanted her to look beneath it, on the surface and pull me out of it.

“Look at the outside of  this moving train- rain, clouds, the mountains.. nature is not wearing a mask or is it? You would never know. But you like the nature, don’t you? It doesn’t matter whether a person is masked or not. What matter’s is how you perceive people and how do people perceive you.” She responded.

A person plays a different role at different junctions. An employee who acts sheepishly in front of his boss is the same person who is ready to take on the world for his kid. He doesn’t want to be a coward in front of his kid because a kid learns from his parents. Does the man is a maskman? He probably is. But when was he wearing the mask? In the office or in front of his kid? Perhaps there is no correct answer to the questions and it probably doesn’t matter.

Shall I trust people with masks? Was I wearing a mask too? Or was this the real me?  By now, it was apparent that people do wear masks, almost all the time. I was no exception.  Dichotomy of being real and unreal is how you perceive other people.

I looked at her and smile. With her I never had to think twice before expressing myself. She was that positive energy that I needed. Sometime we are so fazed by the happenings around ourselves that we fail to identify the real things that we want.