He was crossing the street with a mind that ambled far more then his feet did. He knew not why he was walking, to where was he heading or for what was he aiming. He was not even wondering why he was walking like a vagabond; probably it was a deliberate attempt because he wanted to see the beauty that lies in not thinking. The peace of mind is only a concept to most of us, maybe all of us and he wanted to experience this concept first hand. He smiled with a mild satisfaction of achieving the goal he set himself but the worry on his mind was the fact that it was still a “goal” to be “achieved” when he set out to relieve his mind of noise… of goals and their achievements. A paradox, some would say. He called it irony.
The sky hung over his head in the pale gray of his mood. The streetlights painted a dull picture on the empty tarmac, almost as yellow as an aging manuscript lying in a lonely museum cabin. There was a violent crisscross of lights and a riot of sounds all around him that faded as fast as they had made an appearance. He chose not to listen to them but only to hear them and let them pass. As he walked on he wished not to make sense of what he saw, and so he just saw everything without any relation. For a while it seemed like an attempt but then after a few minutes or hours or some such feeble measure of time, he realized it took no effort to detach himself from the goings on.
The people around him seemed to have a reason attached to every move they made. He saw the gamut of reactions that ran from a child crying for a balloon to the couple that stood on the sidewalk and screamed their lungs out at each other. The stranded bus that had suffered an engine failure, the people in the bus and the people outside the bus, they all had a motive. The ice cream seller, the pizza delivery boy, the man who dropped a coin and the lady who could not walk due to overweight, were all cribbing about misfortune… he couldn’t hear the thoughts in their minds but the faces said it all. He was still holding on to his smile, to feel the security of not being a part of this confusion that people like to call life. He proved to himself that he had a different definition of the concept. At one point he even considered it a heinous sin to conceptualize “life”.
Hands in his pockets, he trotted on and jumped pebbles and missed people walking at a pace faster then their legs could handle… only because they were pressed for time. Ipso facto, they chose to be subjugated by the mortal parameters developed to check and guide the self from running astray… the parameter of measuring ones activities in units.
The sea was never ending. The crowds shifted in a wide range of colors. The sky did the same as the evening grew to a close. The streetlights brightened the faces faded into sulky weariness. Some sensing a satisfaction of getting the day’s job done and most others worrying about the next thing they had to do. His quest for peace had broken the barrier of self-contentment and was now entering the zone of pity for the mortals who wasted away their energy to fulfill a never-ending demand, to satiate a desire that would grow on the feed. It was a strong moment of enlightenment, one packed with emotional “whys” which pricked his mind no end. The futility of life was the very essence of its rejuvenation. What a city-dweller on a normal day would call “wasting time” (evidently the act of sitting and doing nothing) was a way to understand that to direction life was never a priority as compared to “moving on”.
His euphoria was groveling in the lowly dust of reality by now. His thought of achieving peace within, simply by observing life was starting to look like a utopia, never to be reached. He glanced and stared on, gained pace and moved with more effort. His senses grew strangely sharper, his mind raced to answer the unanswerable, his body flung out in rage when he realized the quest was a dead end, and he felt his nerves shudder with fear and anxiety. He could not understand the depression that was mixed with the innocence of a child who does not understand something and asks daddy for an explanation, only, here there was no one he could ask. “Why study, what good is money, what is the use of a marriage, what do you mean when you say ‘happy life’”? These and innumerable questions of a similar degree bantered his roots, his foundations that were laid by his education and by his parents and teachers and he realized the insignificance of it all.
Sweat dripped in cold successions from his forehead and he began to run, as if trying to get as far away as he could from these questions. The zombies would not give up. The last scream of help would have been vocalized, if it were not for a strange vibration and a familiar one, which tickled his thighs.
His leg trembled and his hand reached into his pocket for answering the ringing cell phone. It was time for dinner… he had to return home… thank god.
The sky hung over his head in the pale gray of his mood. The streetlights painted a dull picture on the empty tarmac, almost as yellow as an aging manuscript lying in a lonely museum cabin. There was a violent crisscross of lights and a riot of sounds all around him that faded as fast as they had made an appearance. He chose not to listen to them but only to hear them and let them pass. As he walked on he wished not to make sense of what he saw, and so he just saw everything without any relation. For a while it seemed like an attempt but then after a few minutes or hours or some such feeble measure of time, he realized it took no effort to detach himself from the goings on.
The people around him seemed to have a reason attached to every move they made. He saw the gamut of reactions that ran from a child crying for a balloon to the couple that stood on the sidewalk and screamed their lungs out at each other. The stranded bus that had suffered an engine failure, the people in the bus and the people outside the bus, they all had a motive. The ice cream seller, the pizza delivery boy, the man who dropped a coin and the lady who could not walk due to overweight, were all cribbing about misfortune… he couldn’t hear the thoughts in their minds but the faces said it all. He was still holding on to his smile, to feel the security of not being a part of this confusion that people like to call life. He proved to himself that he had a different definition of the concept. At one point he even considered it a heinous sin to conceptualize “life”.
Hands in his pockets, he trotted on and jumped pebbles and missed people walking at a pace faster then their legs could handle… only because they were pressed for time. Ipso facto, they chose to be subjugated by the mortal parameters developed to check and guide the self from running astray… the parameter of measuring ones activities in units.
The sea was never ending. The crowds shifted in a wide range of colors. The sky did the same as the evening grew to a close. The streetlights brightened the faces faded into sulky weariness. Some sensing a satisfaction of getting the day’s job done and most others worrying about the next thing they had to do. His quest for peace had broken the barrier of self-contentment and was now entering the zone of pity for the mortals who wasted away their energy to fulfill a never-ending demand, to satiate a desire that would grow on the feed. It was a strong moment of enlightenment, one packed with emotional “whys” which pricked his mind no end. The futility of life was the very essence of its rejuvenation. What a city-dweller on a normal day would call “wasting time” (evidently the act of sitting and doing nothing) was a way to understand that to direction life was never a priority as compared to “moving on”.
His euphoria was groveling in the lowly dust of reality by now. His thought of achieving peace within, simply by observing life was starting to look like a utopia, never to be reached. He glanced and stared on, gained pace and moved with more effort. His senses grew strangely sharper, his mind raced to answer the unanswerable, his body flung out in rage when he realized the quest was a dead end, and he felt his nerves shudder with fear and anxiety. He could not understand the depression that was mixed with the innocence of a child who does not understand something and asks daddy for an explanation, only, here there was no one he could ask. “Why study, what good is money, what is the use of a marriage, what do you mean when you say ‘happy life’”? These and innumerable questions of a similar degree bantered his roots, his foundations that were laid by his education and by his parents and teachers and he realized the insignificance of it all.
Sweat dripped in cold successions from his forehead and he began to run, as if trying to get as far away as he could from these questions. The zombies would not give up. The last scream of help would have been vocalized, if it were not for a strange vibration and a familiar one, which tickled his thighs.
His leg trembled and his hand reached into his pocket for answering the ringing cell phone. It was time for dinner… he had to return home… thank god.
3 comments:
pair 'o' ducks ho gaya!
having read that last post, ipso facto, i am forced to admit that the boy is not just a pote, but a writer as well!
the meaning of life, as you were so fervently philosophizing about, was actually discovered in 1983 and is basically this. I reveal it to you with no personal prejudice whatsoever, merely stating the facts as presented to me.
'Try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in and try to live in peace and harmony with all people.'
fapso icto, fatso,... you have me at hello.
LOL: thanks for not trying to steal my thunder man.
Khyati: quite a dramatic wow! so even more dramatic... THANGGGUUUUUU!
Garg: pagal ho gaya hai, teri casapity finish ho gayi.... bhondu saala... padhai kar!
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