Here and There: One

“Don’t you hate that?”

“Yes, I do.”

“What?”

“Incoherent murmurs.”

“They stab the space around.”

“What about coherent blabber?”

“Hate them too. Mundane and overused…….No?”


“So? Will Silence do?”

(Smiles) “It’s a privilege.”

************************************



“Can you read this?”

“Hmm. Yes.”

“And can you read this?”

“Yes.”

“This?”

“No.”

“That?”

“No.”

“I am afraid you need no glasses.”

“But I am unable to read those things.”

“You are unable to read. But you can SEE.”

“Well?”

“Get rid of your paradigms, and your old thick glasses.”


***************************************

Void of the Season.

Splotch.

The dry words on the foolscap sheet got drenched. I moved the tip of my fingers over my eyelids, they were as dry as they were a while ago. I took out a piece of mirror and looked furtively at the face inside. The eyes had failed to shed tears again.

Splotch! Splotch! Splotch! Splotch!

The coherent vocabulary I had purged through my pen began to flow in a stream. But it was not raining now. Well, the leaves were shedding the remnants of the downpour that left behind words, a protracted wait but no tears.

The leaves erased my discreetly penned emotions. It was a blank page again.

Waking up to the day lit illusion.

One moment of idleness and the thoughts start crawling. Several cramps in my abdomen attempt to cease my efforts while my fingers are trying to hold on to the earth for solace. I try to ignore. I need to work.... think and work. If I cease, I will fail the heights I had been loyal to all through my climb. My hero says, “EVERY SECOND COUNTS!” and he means it literally. The thoughts reach atop and start feasting on my grey matter. Act..... I move around hopelessly. ACT!

“Jekyll, it’s ok. Apocalypse is distant. Meanwhile, you can bask as much as you want...Nobody is perfect.”

“Hyde!!! I am not nobody yet!!!! I want velocity.”

My miserably shaking voice reaches him.

“You are the greatest of human fallacies”, hollers Hyde, “You could have been invincible, my friend. Alas! Time is not an ally. Yet, Time should not be feared.

Somewhere nearby ajar gates bring in an unsullied breeze. My fingers clasp my forehead and my body composes itself in a fetal position to feel better.

Hyde and his howling laughter melt away in the zephyr. The thoughts are still gorging, I could feel. There is darkness now - navy blue and chilly. I am lying on the floor. Then darkness turns pitch black.

“Hyde was right about me. But I'll be always here. No mortal has ever been loyal to me. Very few have embraced me. Your thoughts may be the only salvation at the moment”, said a serene voice.

“Please wait, I am coming.” I heard myself uttering desperately and loathed my voice for the cowardice.

“I do not wait, you know. You have only thoughts now. You need to run.”

Whoosh!

And then poured in a golden light, the skyscrapers and the noise. I was lying down comfortably unfeeling as I did at every dawn. The wheels rasped and the engines bellowed.

‘Oh! Just a dream.' I fooled myself.

Yet Again, yet again I was swallowed in by the day's apathy.