The Atlas of Soul

It's a philosophical piece—ego vs soul.

Ask the soul what anger looks like, and it shows you a pitch-dark well, a shadow crimping into itself like smoke in a moonless room. Ask what hope sounds like, and it bursts like shattered sunlight over ocean tides, soul birds trilling in riotous jubilation, rain drumming on tin roofs, a sun split in half—half wind, half molten gold. Ask what joy tastes like, and it drips divine plums, perfume, black currants, cinnamon-spiced earth, wet soil, sweet sharbat, nectar of impossible mornings. Ask what sadness smells like, and it lingers in motels and chemical breath of hospitals, rickety bus stands, tar and smoke, morgues at midnight, the faint scent of wilted lilies and wet ash. Ask what surprise feels like, and it bubbles, rising to kiss the water’s skin, fireflies pirouetting around ancient trees, lovers drenched in rain, their laughter squirting in glinting arcs.

Grief has a texture coarse and honeyed, abandoned by lanes, dust-heavy roads, unkempt walls shot with betel stains. Desperation drapes itself in dull green of unripe papaya, tastes of bitter medicine, chipped-glass whiskey. Relief sings in wind chimes, prayer bells, rushing water, soft, benign wind, the euphony of night, grasshoppers chirping, stars trembling like silver dust. Shock reeks of urine, blood, and flame, of tar and fireworks, cow dung, petrol blooming.

And yet, all of this—the anger, the hope, the joy, the grief—folds back into you. You are an unbaptized well of love, an echo threading through time, an amoeba-shaped archipelago of selves afloat where clocks forget to tick. Some days you are crystal—still, luminous, translucent; others molten, formless, undone, a river of liquid light. You live in the folds of the in-between, where theater of happenings stirs a nostalgia too delicate to name, a remembering of memory and possibility.

Cool breezes slip through hidden seams, half a smile riding on their heel. Wind hums through your veins; joy arrives in slices of light; sunlight folded into gold dust. Tears depart quietly, like house guests who know their welcome is done. No leap-jumps remain—only the steady, breathless bond that refuses folding or definition. Ballooning lies spun by the loose-mouthed crowd disintegrate into the quiet. And the soul whispers: there is more than one way to live many lives.

No more hibernating. No more tiptoeing. Spring crowns herself with flowers, butterflies, and sifted sunlight. She sings in full bloom, celebrating yet another ellipse, a season swathed in pale yellow haze, shedding purple glitter into the wind, petals spinning like slow fire.

The ego, a velvet temptress, wraps you in bouquets of adjectives, its falsetto singing gospel. It tells you cannot be thin in heart and small in bones. It binds you to names, to scaffolding, to the shape of self. But the soul says: drop the skin three sizes too big. Set your dial to gratitude—for your wagon of give and take. Take the idea. Loop it. Dance it. Tear it. Shake it upside down. Taste it. Feel it. Sense it. Fold it until tender life gushes like a hidden fountain. Ferry building is no duck soup, and there is no shame in orchestrating your pace.

Even then, when the echo softens, the ego still tempts with its champagne promises. But the soul unfolds the map—not to somewhere new, but to the home you never truly left, a place woven from light, shadow, perfume, and laughter, where every fragment of yourself drifts into belonging.