When was the last time you told someone that you loved her and do you remember how that made her feel? I’m pretty sure she must have felt Yellow; if she felt the same way about you. Even if she didn’t, she would have appreciated that you found the courage to say how you felt. But what if you never got the chance? What if some game of fate made you walk away from what you thought was your destiny?

Yellow is the color of hope and happiness; something we all are born to imbibe and experience as we progress through our life. But there’s something special about the Yellow we feel when we are in love. It makes us believe; that we can exist in a world away from the world we know; that we can do things different from what an ordinary mortal can do; that magic exists in the world; and that we are all bits and pieces of a puzzle called the universe.

That the universe has a strange way of functioning is not a new fact. It brings people together and moves people apart but what we sometimes fail to notice is that there’s a harmonized rhythm to it; a poem, a sonnet, a note or a song that brings alive moments if you only care to notice. And it can come to you in the form of her voice or her smile or her laugh or the touch of her hand or the look in her eyes or how her hair dances around her eyes when the wind blows across her face. I say so because I’ve been lucky to experience these moments of magic in my life. I’ve also been on that side of the fence where I’ve lost the one I loved, more than once. But there was magic to be felt being on the other side too and I felt it while I traversed through those times. Even though some journeys were difficult, borderline traumatic, it brought about an understanding on how I perceived the relationship and what I had to experience from it.

Having music as a companion in life can help turn the tears into something precious that you carry with you forever; only if you manage to keep the heart open to delve into that treasure every once in a while.  Music that touches the soul and makes the heart bleed at the thought of someone can be wrenching but it can ignite the shades of yellow, green, blue, purple and many other hues that you can collage into your everyday life. And you notice the change that it brings within when you listen to someone’s thoughts or observe an event from the sidelines.

I’ve been a dreamer and an over-thinker all my life. During the course, which is at least half the life time of an average Indian, I’ve met a few like me who became fellow journeyers. Some I’ve lost to time and circumstances, some I’ve managed to retain and some I’ve found anew. What I have learned from these journeyers is that living your life on your terms is what matters most.

If you love someone, love them on your terms even if that means losing the love that means so much to you. It can be a tough decision to make given that the loss can be unbearable and that you may question the concept of destiny if you believed in it to begin with. I say so not because it works for me, no, honestly, it doesn’t work for me because it also makes me miserable but that misery channels my life; it gives me wings to soar and it allows me to experience something that I cannot express in words or sentences; music then is my only voice.

I began my day listening to ‘Yellow’ and I dedicate it to the women I have loved.

‘Look at the stars,
Look how they shine for you,
And everything you do,
Yeah they were all yellow,

I came along,
I wrote a song for you,
And all the things you do,
And it was called “Yellow’