Early morning, I wake up
Toaster burnin',
The stove turnin',
My cell-phone ringin'
A hot black coffee
Against the techno beat.
A dusty sunlight filters in
Through the ragged curtains
Gotta go uptown
But the car ain't workin'
An iron monster clogged in the road.
Time, that old fool
Just a crawling corpse now
Gotta go uptown
Another tavern to cross
Another signal to break
Achy, breaky day
Where will you take me?
It was 7:00 a.m. The alarm was ringing in full swing. My mother (as if the alarm wasn’t enough) told me, in a very curt way of course, to show a leg. When I retorted back saying this was Sunday, she in her usual calm way reminded me that my college assignment was pending which I need to submit in a week’s time. Just great! Sometimes I kind of wonder how I’m living a life equivalent of a cheese macaroni gone stale!
Anyway, I woke up and did my daily chores. Just as I was about to sit for my assignment when the phone rang. It was my friend who had called in to wish me for the Friendship’s Day. Its funny how one can get so entangled in his daily humdrum life that days such as this slips from the vortex of one’s mind. After talking about a little bit, my friend invited me for a small reunion of our school mates. But I curtly declined the offer saying I was busy with my assignment. My friend did not coax or cajole me but said that it would have been better if I could join them. For a while I debated my possible options. I knew that this was a rare opportunity to get together with old school mates I had long lost touch with. So after a little contemplation I decided to go for the reunion.
When I reached the venue, I felt as I was standing in the midst of strangers for I could no longer recognize my friends. Some whom I had always known to be of short stature were now suddenly looking tall and full grown. For a minute I felt as if this was some illusion, a mirage perhaps. But no it was something stranger than a mirage. It was Time. We went for a long drive through the city, shouting, yelling and pulling each other’s leg as we used to do when in school. Assignments, project reports and exams shifted to some deep aberration of our minds. Just for a little while we had all lost our maturity and behaved like a child. Some of my friends were now doctors, some engineers and some into other fields. But there was something that bound us all together no matter how different fields we were in – our memories. We knew that in just a little while we would all be dispersed again, lost again in our daily routine. Yet we lived for the present.
Four years after leaving school when I look back at those carefree days, I do get a little nostalgic. Now in the silence of the midday sun, working strenuously on my assignment, I crave desperately for those days when life didn’t mean planning ahead for the future but living in the present.
My dreams begin to fade as I linger listlessly through this deserted town. The streets are all empty and a doleful breeze blows gently singing a dirge for faces long forgotten and memories long lost. The trees seem bent with an eternal grief and I could hear the silent, moaning whisper of the leaves as Beauty slowly dissolves, like sugar in the rain.
Darkness falls and colors begin to fade. A low, faint light illuminates the coffee house, anonymous and unknown in this nameless town where dreams die as soon as they are born. The not-so-hot-not-so-cold coffee slowly brews as I rummage through my worn out copy of Ulysses.
Come up Kinch. Come up you fearful Jesuit
Yes thats better. The half-ajar door opens with a silent creaking sound and a man with a long drawn face slowly enters and occupies a lonely seat in a secluded corner.
In the bright silent instant Stephen saw his own image in cheap dusty mourning between their grey attires....
The man's cell phone suddenly rings.
"Yes honey I'm speaking."
"Yes I know."
"I've signed the papers and you can sign them too. They are in our bedroom drawers.”
“I understand.”
“I’ll hang up now….take care….see you someday soon…bye…"
The man’s long drawn face suddenly turns ashen. He clings closer to his black over-coat, taking refuge in its warmth. Joey comes near him, a notebook in hand.
“What would you like to have sir?”
The man looks up and stares at Joey’s plump face for what seems like an eternity. Barely audible, he replies as if words had died somewhere in his throat:
“Nothing. I was just about to leave.”
He slowly gets up and walks to the door. As he passes by me, the fringe of his black coat gently brushes against my skin, and at what seemed, from a distance, tiny pearls trickling down, I saw tears glistening in his eyes. Outside thin drops of rain falls in the darkness. With a deep sigh I return back to my Ulysses. Yes reading, the only true source of oblivion.
Here I am
A worn out man staring outside a worn out window
At dilapidated houses with dilapidated people.
Above me the spider slowly weaves its nest
And a mosquito sings its lonely strain
Outside, the grimy cars come and go
Dry, droning, despair
A little afar off, a woman cries
A little afar off, a child laughs
Under the afternoon sun, the kids are playing with their hoopla-hoop
And Tommy the dog barking at Gina the maid.
The clouds, gunmetal-grey, gathered around
Rain slowly, steadly falls,
Like wax from candle,
Into the dead man's mound.
The trench muddy and turbulent
He lay therein
Heaving, breathing and panting
Lost amidst the voices around
And a dreary silence within
Amidst those teary eyes
Memories of his homeland rises
The gentle caress of those yellow cornfields thrush
Treading on the grass, green and lush
Under the sky starry and blue to lie
In her arms to die
A cold, sullen wind drew
A bullet piercing his heart through
With eyes wide open
Stared he at everything and nothing around
Lay he in the dead man's mound.
Today the weather station had predicted some quick and early downpour. But I walked out anyway. Outside the remnant rays of the sunlight was slowly fading away and night was gently approaching with her downcast eyes and twinkling anklets. I could feel the susurration of a cold breeze shimmering through the grief-stricken tree tops. Above me the gunmetal-grey clouds was slowly proliferating, expanding and encasing the sky. I walked on.
Today, after what seemed like an age, I received her e-mail. Nothing new. Just the same enquiry about my condition. I could feel a strange silence permeating from her letter. Instead of the earlier warmth I could feel a strange coldness, of love gone awry and a sense of complete resignation. I turn away from the main street and land myself in a dark alley. Here the ground was soft and the air colder. I stopped here, taking refuge in the darkness, wanting nothing but just the desire to pass through life unnoticed. Over the past few months her mails had become irregular. I couldn’t help but think that soon all this would stop. I would move on with my life and she would slowly melt and mingle away in those million faces, becoming a nameless face herself, like a cube of sugar dissolving in water. The breeze had become colder and it had already started to drizzle. I began to feel an overwhelming sense of vacuum and emptiness, a sense of being present in the midst of the crowd and yet feeling lonely. Back at home I sit down with a pen and paper, trying to express this extreme melancholy and despondency in words. Probably, its true after all that writing is the only consolation.
