Gemini

I once read a book by Sidney Sheldon called "The windmills of the gods". Not that I am a great fan of the author, but something in this book caught my attention. There is a character called Angel who is the villain of the story. Until the end, the reader unknowingly assumes that the character is a man. Well, thats justifiable! When one reads accounts of gruesome crimes and cold blooded murders committed by a paid assassin, one naturally assumes that the villain is a man!! The startling finale, revealing the fact that Angel is a woman makes the reader hurriedly turn the pages and reread certain parts of the book to make sure that the author had infact never explicitly ascribed a gender to the character. As a matter of fact, this tactic is going to come in quite handy to me in this article. Well, my aim is not to mislead the reader into making assumptions. What I mean is that I am going to write about someone whose identity, I will take the utmost efforts to conceal! And yet I am going to write about this person elaborately! Henceforth, I shall refer to the protagonist as Gemini for reasons that may become obvious later on.

Gemini puzzled me; not intimidated, confused or overwhelmed like most people felt where gemini was concerned. I was just, well, puzzled. It just didnt make sense. It seems like I have known gemini forever! We have known each other for quite a while, but the time we have spent is not enough for me to substantiate the feeling of forever that i associate with our relationship. I have seen gemini change, grow, mature and wisen. Did I miss something there that I should have seen? I must have been too engrossed in my own tumultuous process of maturing that I didn't notice it at first. But when I did, gemini puzzled me.

Gemini has always been a person to reckon with. Someone more self content, I am yet to meet! Gemini exudes so much of confidence and vitality that i sometimes wonder if Gemini has ever felt out of depth. The ease with which Gemini could peel the layers of irrelevant and redundanct facts off any issue and get to the core is utterly fascinating. It wasn't a surprise that many of our conversations would turn out to be stimulating and enlightening. For a time I thought that perhaps we were two of a kind! No matter how incoherent I sounded, Gemini would understand what I meant and I didnt have to explain myself as I did with others. And yet, when I think about it now, we arent so similar afterall. Well, Gemini just puzzles me!

I am not really sure, when the discordant note first struck. I guess I must have dismissed it in the beginning. Maybe I wasn't astute enough to recognize it. But it must have gotten registered in the recesses of mind somewhere. Gemini and I would have intense quarrels and it would leave me battered and hurt. And I would reconcile myself thinking that since I wasn't as good and capable as Gemini was, it must have been my mistake. Finally, one fine day, when I let my mind wander aimlessly, the situation suddenly presented itself to me. I realized that there were infact two distinct facets to Gemini. One of them was the one I admired, the mature, wise and logical individual that Gemini seemed to be most of the time. The other side to Gemini had all the qualities that I found irksome in people in general, namely, immaturity, irrationality and dogmatic beliefs.

Without really giving it much thought, most people at one point of time or the other, gravely remark that there are two sides to every coin, as if that should satisfactorily explain even the most baffling anomalies. Come to think of it, sometimes a coin, in no way has any similarities with the situations that elicited its reference. But whoever came up with the phrase in the first place must indeed be a wise man. Well, for one thing, if we start questioning the wisdom of such pithy sayings, life would become more complex than it actually is! And yet, I wonder if this is one of the things that the saying explains, this apparent dichotomy in Gemini's nature; these two inexplicable unresolvable facets. Maybe they exist for the sake of being irreconcilable, bringing about an equilibrium in a strange sort of way. Does everyone have these faces then? Do other people identify in me two such facets? Is this what makes Gemini tick? Does Gemini manage to swing as much as possible in one direction, secure in the knowledge that life's forces will balance it out, and swing the opposite way?

Maybe everyone of us has these extremes and I happened to notice Gemini's only because I was uncomfortable with one of them. Perhaps, it makes sense in a wierd sort of way, the way two negatives seem to make a positive or the way opposites seem to attract. Many a time, people accept the most illogical of things without a second thought, convincing themselves that this is the way the world works. I wonder if this is one of those things that I should just accept and save myself all this rigorous analysis. And yet...and yet, no matter what reasons I come up with to explain it, Gemini continues to puzzle me.