I am a child of a sweet nature that was brought up in a society that wished for us to live and let live. Today I look at that society as an imaginary and utopian image of my screenshots of life. I look at the dogs who fight for their trritory, I look at countries that fight for their oil, I watch bureaucrats fight for their seats and then I watch my colleagues, turn into number-crunching maniacs of the 21st century. Where strengths and weaknesses are more important than Simon and Garfunkel. Pay Packages are more influential than Item Packages. The hopes of a parent hangs above like a pendulum of knives, where a simple internet connection tends to act as a portal of who is the president of what under whose reign in which country established in which century under what circumstances.
I look at my beligerent predecessors and tsk at their accomplishments for the youth that they lost in the colours of festivals are now strewn in the mud of today. Where black and white of the rain clouds are more prominent than the seven colours of the rainbow. Or are they the colours of the LGBT ? Who knows, they just might ask us in the interview.
It is the line of control that is crossed in my war with my own youth. Where innocence is lost and confidence is the unanimous winner. Who wondered about the bottles of beer as long as you know the amount of consumption that takes place in each city, based on how many can afford it, steal it, racket it, hoard it or even sell it at showrooms. Distribute, add, subtract, divide and then make the percentage of a fraction.
Will I be ever selling a washing machine wearing a tie who sails his words through the tunel of doubt and comes out on the other side with a fake smile but an incentive to the bonus ? Or will I revolt to the society and continue being the sloth of the middle class riding a scooty and chasing after electricity bills ?
I will never know, maybe Gurus can predict it for me, maybe they can even choose my wardrobe, maybe they can sow my careers and give me the blessings as i raise my family of 4. They will frown upon my divorce and grant me my first grandson... Or will the balloon just pop and I shall be back on my cradle, playing with my He-Man and living a life devoid of any sort of worry or disdain. Maybe I'll just close my eyes and head for a slumber in the blind light of my future and dream of a perfect world.
Showing posts with label book. Show all posts
Showing posts with label book. Show all posts
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Sunday, April 8, 2007
Today
Through the curtains came the golden rays and formed a column above my eyes.
The dreams were over and so were the nightmares, it was the time for me to rise.
It was an early summer’s day and my exams were about to begin the next early summer’s day. I got up with a mind to do everything that I had planned out, but first a routine check on Orkut to see if my scraps or number of fans has increased or not. While I was there I thought I should make hay while the sun shone and decided to put a Beatles album for download as well. It had been months since I had seen a Sunday morning, Sundays always began with an afternoon nowadays, wondering what had been for breakfast although knowing it would be the same, stale paranthas that would make even the ones at a jail look sumptuous. It never changed. How I envy those criminals, they get to loot banks, ransack houses, kill people and have good food ! The world truly is a cruel place. With no scraps to write and no more friends to make, I put to play "Wish You Were Here" by Pink Floyd. My laptop has a unique tendency of hiccoughing every time a song is put to play, something that would make anyone grit his teeth in anger. As for me, chucking the laptop was never an initiative, I thought selling the laptop as a time machine in a village would be a good option. But I was now used to it and I let the melody dig its way through the wax and into my eardrums. Singing along to Roger Water’s melancholy strain, I always mistook "Blue Skies from Pain" with "Blue Skies from Grey". I believed that Grey would have been a better word.
It was still two hours to go for lunch and I had to make every second count, I propped open my Notebook and put out my hand to fetch my textbook when it struck me that my book wasn’t there. This was a very common sight in the hostel, missing something and then testing the levels of your memory in trying to figure out who had taken it and when. So I went in search of the book all over the hostel, never aware of the fact that it was lying peacefully in my neighbor’s room, crackling its pages away in the sands of time.
All that searching made me hungry, it was still half an hour to go for lunch. I opened up the laptop again and did something that proved to be the biggest and effective time killer. I began to chat. It didn’t matter whether I was chatting with the guy in the next room or a cousin whose name I had forgotten, I needed to kill time and this was going to be my weapon. And so began the usual, " Wasups and How u doins". Before I knew it, Lunch time was here and then began the " Gtgs and Tcs"… Three dots, that was how short the communication gap had come to. My download was almost complete and decided to listen to a song or two before going down for my ‘feast’. My eyes grew wide as the window showed "99%" completed, and then the unthinkable (actually quite predictable) happened, as if happening in slow motion, the tube light flickered once, twice and then flickered no more. The fan lost its momentum slowly and steadily came to a halt and then as I looked at the tiny computer in my screen, there suddenly came a red cross on it. The message was clear, I was doomed. Consequently, my download went Phoof ! God had stabbed me in the back with a Swiss Army Knife and there was nothing I could do. God wasn’t much of a Beatles lover, I should’ve known. With a disgusted face I left my room in a fury, hoping against hope that the food might cheer me up.
Fifteen minutes hadn’t passed and I was back in my room. Sometimes, when a person is eating, the taste seems to remind him of something that tasted or smelt quite like what he was eating right now. It was one of those times and my food reminded me of only one thing, Dried Glue. What was worse, the aftereffects of eating that sloppy sewage serving were still happening as I sat in my room, reminding me of my toddler days when I used to play a lot with glue during my art and craft class and eventually end up in a ‘sticky’ situation. How could my life have become like this? There were times I remember,in a previous life, maybe when I used to come to the kitchen where my mother would be cooking and imitate hurling all over the dish when I used to have a look at it. My mother would say, "There are millions of children like you who are hungry and would do anything to have food like this" and my usual reply would be, "So, why don’t you go and give this to them?" Now when I think about it, I feel I have become one of those children, wishing for somebody’s mother to come through that door of mine and feed me till I burst.
My exam was still going to be held tomorrow but I was still in no mood to study. Choosing not to fight my urges, I picked up a book I had borrowed only yesterday, the entire collection of Ruskin Bond. As I began to read the first short story, which was "Woman on Platform No.8", I was again sent back to my school days when this chapter was included in our English course. Back then I used to read it to remember every point and every line in it. But now, I was reading it out of pure pleasure, and somehow this time, it was pleasing. Soon i forgot the tomorrow's exam, i forgot the The Beatles, I forgot the Glue-like lunch, it was only the book and I. I don't know what it was in that book, but somehow, it struck my heart and I got that feeling which I hadn't had for quite some time. It had been years since I had cried.
Tears formed at the corners of my eyes and I began to weep.
The day was over and so was my life, all I wanted, was to sleep.
The dreams were over and so were the nightmares, it was the time for me to rise.
It was an early summer’s day and my exams were about to begin the next early summer’s day. I got up with a mind to do everything that I had planned out, but first a routine check on Orkut to see if my scraps or number of fans has increased or not. While I was there I thought I should make hay while the sun shone and decided to put a Beatles album for download as well. It had been months since I had seen a Sunday morning, Sundays always began with an afternoon nowadays, wondering what had been for breakfast although knowing it would be the same, stale paranthas that would make even the ones at a jail look sumptuous. It never changed. How I envy those criminals, they get to loot banks, ransack houses, kill people and have good food ! The world truly is a cruel place. With no scraps to write and no more friends to make, I put to play "Wish You Were Here" by Pink Floyd. My laptop has a unique tendency of hiccoughing every time a song is put to play, something that would make anyone grit his teeth in anger. As for me, chucking the laptop was never an initiative, I thought selling the laptop as a time machine in a village would be a good option. But I was now used to it and I let the melody dig its way through the wax and into my eardrums. Singing along to Roger Water’s melancholy strain, I always mistook "Blue Skies from Pain" with "Blue Skies from Grey". I believed that Grey would have been a better word.
It was still two hours to go for lunch and I had to make every second count, I propped open my Notebook and put out my hand to fetch my textbook when it struck me that my book wasn’t there. This was a very common sight in the hostel, missing something and then testing the levels of your memory in trying to figure out who had taken it and when. So I went in search of the book all over the hostel, never aware of the fact that it was lying peacefully in my neighbor’s room, crackling its pages away in the sands of time.
All that searching made me hungry, it was still half an hour to go for lunch. I opened up the laptop again and did something that proved to be the biggest and effective time killer. I began to chat. It didn’t matter whether I was chatting with the guy in the next room or a cousin whose name I had forgotten, I needed to kill time and this was going to be my weapon. And so began the usual, " Wasups and How u doins". Before I knew it, Lunch time was here and then began the " Gtgs and Tcs"… Three dots, that was how short the communication gap had come to. My download was almost complete and decided to listen to a song or two before going down for my ‘feast’. My eyes grew wide as the window showed "99%" completed, and then the unthinkable (actually quite predictable) happened, as if happening in slow motion, the tube light flickered once, twice and then flickered no more. The fan lost its momentum slowly and steadily came to a halt and then as I looked at the tiny computer in my screen, there suddenly came a red cross on it. The message was clear, I was doomed. Consequently, my download went Phoof ! God had stabbed me in the back with a Swiss Army Knife and there was nothing I could do. God wasn’t much of a Beatles lover, I should’ve known. With a disgusted face I left my room in a fury, hoping against hope that the food might cheer me up.
Fifteen minutes hadn’t passed and I was back in my room. Sometimes, when a person is eating, the taste seems to remind him of something that tasted or smelt quite like what he was eating right now. It was one of those times and my food reminded me of only one thing, Dried Glue. What was worse, the aftereffects of eating that sloppy sewage serving were still happening as I sat in my room, reminding me of my toddler days when I used to play a lot with glue during my art and craft class and eventually end up in a ‘sticky’ situation. How could my life have become like this? There were times I remember,in a previous life, maybe when I used to come to the kitchen where my mother would be cooking and imitate hurling all over the dish when I used to have a look at it. My mother would say, "There are millions of children like you who are hungry and would do anything to have food like this" and my usual reply would be, "So, why don’t you go and give this to them?" Now when I think about it, I feel I have become one of those children, wishing for somebody’s mother to come through that door of mine and feed me till I burst.
My exam was still going to be held tomorrow but I was still in no mood to study. Choosing not to fight my urges, I picked up a book I had borrowed only yesterday, the entire collection of Ruskin Bond. As I began to read the first short story, which was "Woman on Platform No.8", I was again sent back to my school days when this chapter was included in our English course. Back then I used to read it to remember every point and every line in it. But now, I was reading it out of pure pleasure, and somehow this time, it was pleasing. Soon i forgot the tomorrow's exam, i forgot the The Beatles, I forgot the Glue-like lunch, it was only the book and I. I don't know what it was in that book, but somehow, it struck my heart and I got that feeling which I hadn't had for quite some time. It had been years since I had cried.
Tears formed at the corners of my eyes and I began to weep.
The day was over and so was my life, all I wanted, was to sleep.
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