The Back Pack of The Didicoi

Yes!, from beneath the torn & clumsy patches of worn out fabric and faded color I find an unspeakable voice.

After a vagrant existence just like my owner and bound by the shallow life that defines my existence, I decide to personify the thoughts of my owner. Make no mistake I share his feelings — his anguish, his betrayal of the society and even his affection. I am mysteriously embedded in his soul and him in mine. Maybe we share common ancestral lineage but what the hell am I ranting about my origins, time grows weary of my dallying as I am reaching the end of my quota of it. My owner is an interesting being, like an extension of the monsieur me and this shall be the second last time I shall speak of him.

I was fabricated in the commonest of places. No different than the million others like me, but you humans who can read can surely connect to that. The microscopic criss-cross threading must have been wired differently because I shared not the dreams of my neighbors or my peers who just wanted to exist. I was captivated by the ‘adjective’ called enrichment. I sternly settled into the notion that if I could not travel I would not exist but I needn't have. I was going to be moved around a lot, protecting crafted contents of my owner, it was my precedence to exist but that wish was not without struggle, suffering and learning the virtue of patience. There I was placed on the windowsill of a simple chap’s place of practiced occupation. I stayed there quite still and frustrated for several years while other backpacks were picked and moved over his counter. ‘Was there something wrong in the foundations of my dreams and desires ?’

Then suddenly, out of the wrecking implosions of my daily routine I was taken out of my foreboding agonizing discomfort, dusted off and exchanged for some kind of ‘Green Printed Paper’. I wondered then if this was the routine of the nice chap behind the counter and if at all this was an exception. It seemed odd to me but it was what was presumed to be inevitable. I looked at the owner for the first time and how much ever I looked at him he didn't imbibe the confidence in me that I sought. A youngling with freckles and newly minted teeth that were visible in his current expression were hardly the characteristics I had anticipated. If I have not been clear, I was just specifically demanded by a disheveled young fourteen year old kid who wanted to own the ‘very bag in the window’ and no other. He observed me with enthusiasm and zeal and I with deep skepticism. Was he really going to be the one I’d journey across this so called planet ? or Was I going to be crayoned upon and put aside on a storage shelf ?, never to have a meaningful existence.

But my fears were dumbfounded and that moment was engulfed in time somewhere so far off that nobody could retrieve it, not even me unless I was the me of now, heading towards non-existence, after experiencing its opposite. The owner rubbed his nose on the front and there I was pretending to be a lovely backpack utility for education. I put aside my larger aspirations and served. I experienced everything and their were some massive journeys along the way. Everyday, he would go somewhere, put me in a locker, take out the books that I carried and repeated the routine for best part of twelve years. There were delightful trips too though — New houses, New cities, New states, New counties. The owner seemed to go places and I was with him. He seemed to understand the language of the energy that I possessed and made me a permanent fixture for the rest of his life.

After the blur that was his higher education he did what he was threatening himself to pursue. Loaded me with an array of essentials and took off to make the man-laid tarmac his own. For years we pursued distant landscapes and open roads. It seemed unreal to me that the unreliable freckly kid was now a thin, pony tailed man and my irreplaceable companion. It was a two way connection, untold in the history of ‘existence’. Soon the land was swapped for the blue of the ocean and patches of foreign cloth were stitched into my fabric. I was on-course to gaining the adaptability of liquids and take an entirely different form, like my surroundings. From inhaling the cold mountain air through our pores to suffering in the desert sand storms, it was all assimilated by the soul.

Before long, his long blond hair started to whiten. We were now unrecognizable from our now distant past. I was longer, heavily patched and unable to resist heavy loads without giving the bottom away. The end neared for the both of us and the solitary lives we led in our own worlds started to feel precious. Enriched and non perfect but without regrets.

Desire and passion held me and him together until the very end. The immense satisfaction of fulfillment was well afforded, and it was a life well led.

The end has not yet arrived but I speak beforehand as I value all the peace I can garner towards the end. Somewhere new & better packs are being woven and atleast one of them shall be wired differently, like me will want to be ‘moved’. I hope they follow the path that I once swayed.

They lay me on the torso of the non-moving man that was my owner and I now know that the time similar to the time at the windowsill of the shop has arrived as I await the end or atleast an end.

“Beyond the free-flowing wind’s youthful beginnings,

Afar from the tips of the glorious mountains,

Where the land remains barren and empty,

I have walked along with the species unlike my own,

The bond we made only grew stronger,

No torn fabric went invain,

for there is a lot that I have gained,

No patches on me look out of place,

for that is my real face,

I now bow to the death,

as I once embraced the life.”