Letter to Circus

Hello! 

All over the city, walls are glued with posters of you. You evoke the flavour of an old-world entertainment and another of the assertion of winter moments of togetherness. The florescence of your invite stands out against the broken greys of the public walls and the curved steel of the electricity posts. There is a call-for-happiness about you, and yet, each year almost with renewed emotion, your very being makes me sad.

You heard it right, sad. The first memory I have of you is with my friend and her parents, out one evening after school to watch the immortally famed circle of death. Wherein a biker bikes through a spiral, almost impossible dimension of the giant round walled structure. The thought still makes me whizzy. And then the one with my parents where I did not get to shoot the balloons of the fair. Oh, are you both cousins, you and fairs? There is something intrinsically similar about the two of you, though there is a sad smell about you, not stinking but sad. Something to do with loneliness, I believe. I mean you bring us all together, at the cost of your being with the ones you would love to, isn't it? I am not sure if I am knitting stories around you, but I think it is true.

The tent-colours of your garment fade when the animals are dancing to your commercial tune, the magic shows in which the girl gets sliced bears the unbearable stench of exploitation, and the ringmaster? God, he looks bored, like the lion. The trapeze ropes cry out in synchronized aching agony. I remember having once cried at a certain show when the juggler's show was on. I felt that he got to know that his mother passed away in his village earlier that evening, and yet, the rules of the circus made him juggle through the truth with a smile he was tired of wearing. Yeah, I am a bit flighty in the head. I now smile and think how many of my friends would be saying I am a moron to have cried, or, actually how many of us are indeed a part of the circus of life, governed by the rules of the-show-must-go-on.

You are sad, right? Having to put on what you are shown to be as? Attractive, even though tired, and enjoyable, even though bored? I can feel you crying out of being stuck. I know you want to be like the fair, open and embracing rather that closed and consuming. I have had many a promise broken with more than many dear ones in visiting you. Perhaps it is because of the repressed sadness that I associate with you. Look around you, Circus. You travel and spread smiles and are draped in colours of joy, but are they not all just worn out? The severity of sameness is taking a toll on you.

Tell you what, next time I do visit you, I will bring along two of my little companions -- my daughter, and my friend. I think you miss the abundance of a child's amazement and the joy in their surprise. We can't help it, Circus, you have indeed been taken over by malls and virtual games. No child today wants to dwell in the spirit of a real fantasy. Nor do we fan the need. I am sorry. I will return, and return with the children and try and give you a smile, or two. And have buttered popcorn and ice-lollies.

In bringing you back real colours,
K.