strange interlude

Posted on | November 23, 2009 | Comments Off

I get down from the carpool car and decide to walk the two kilometres from the expressway to my home. I am feeling difficult and do not want to talk to people. I am even more morose than usual. I think back to the people I talk to and try and remember when it was that I had had any meaningful conversation with any one about anything except work. I cannot remember. Of course. I have always had difficulty talking to people, but this is worse.
I walk by the side of this busy sub-urban road which does not really have a sidewalk, and which is not really suburban anymore, oblivious to honking screeching shouting wheezing horns and the dirty murky sea of red blue green yellow silver-white grey black metal rushing pushing seething in channels and sometimes bursting its boundaries on whose periphery I am tripping along in a daze swigging my thums-up and feeding unlistened-to listless music in my ears from the headphones of my phone doubling up as a music player. I have been walking for almost two kilometres now and been listening to music for that long and I realize that I cannot really remember a single word of a single song played so far- I don’t even know what song is playing currently- the music playing is not really hindi movie music, it might as well be in hulu or swahili or some other never heard of language.

Two years ago you made what was left of my personal life go up in flames. But slowly and slowly I grew up to get out of love, to learn to life by myself, to staying self contained, and all that has left is this- a big void. But I did not mourn your love- after a fashion- I just took it like I would take a bunch of white roses and left it in a vase on the drawing room table- not visible to the world, but seen by the few who gazed inside, and I left it for long, till the roses withered and then dried, the petals curling unnaturally, almost like pieces of half burnt paper- the edges of the rose turning brown- from the from the window, looking like a white handkerchief draped over plastic green sticks, its edges stained with dried blood.

It’s not like other people were not there- they came, and they tried and I went to them and I tried- and it has always been difficult for me to talk, and so it would be like a dance with a palsied partner, and eventually they went away or I went away and so life has gone on, void- empty, null, nothing. I never could make the time for people, and people could never make the time for me. And so l live life like this- a workaholic for five and a quarter days a week; an alcoholic for the rest of it. And sometimes I think I do not need people. After all, more often people are part of the problem than part of the solution. Or maybe I am the problem than the solution. But eventually everyone goes away, you did, I did and they do- reaching out to them is just like seeing the lights of a ship in a distance, one misty night at sea, a floating glimmer of hope in the far silence, that seems to be drifting towards you, and you are sure there is someone on the other deck too, looking at your lights, and then both drift away, leaving just the darkness, the night, the mist and silence between; both a little more lonely than before.

But then, now is a weekend, I have almost reached home. I take a last swig of the thums-up, and with a flick of the fingers, throw the empty bottle away. Somewhere inside the brick and mortar forest, a bottle of something stronger awaits.

P.S. : Just an excerpt from a short story I am writing (OK. Trying to write). Sort of an unplanned diversion.

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