This life, after all, is about waking up with an inflated stomach and stiff legs, not knowing why you are doing what you will do for the rest of the day. Then may be surprise yourself with a greasy noodle you will order in between work. That punctuation between hours of predictable and tedious melancholy of correcting punctuation and grammar would be enough to distract. For many years, as long as you could remember there would not be the feeling of lightness in the body. You will not float as you walk. There will be a pain in your shoulder. Your stomach will behave in embarrassing ways. In the beginning you will still dream. Often as you go on with your daily dealings you would not look at things around you but be transported to a world where you are walking effortlessly because you are successful. There the dream has happened. You will see that you have found love and that love would look pleasant because it will not smell or fight or cry. You will fly from one place to the other before any sorrow could have set in. But then slowly even this dream will not let you sleep as you will realise that this dream will not happen. The morning again will be painful with stiffness in the neck and a burning sensation in the stomach. You would laugh that once people said you had fire in your belly. You will say that perhaps this is that fire which now refuses to leave. You will try to do things to cure that. You will try to flex your muscles. You will go out of our way to be pleasant; at times subservient to beautiful women you would have once laughed about. But then nothing will take you away from the stillness of your life except a ticking clock, with the inevitable signal of a weakening body. It will say that the time has come and you must settle down. You would not know how much more will you settle. You would loathe the fact that you are being readied for a ceremonial copulation. You will fear that you may bring another human to life who would blame you for everything you could not give her because you have blamed your own life. You would decide not to blame your life but to blame yourself for the stiffness of your neck and the stillness of your life as you walk through the dusty road to take the auto the next day. You would try to rationalize life through various means. You will be seduced by the idea of making it art but then through everything you would desperately seek the route to escape. But you will not be able to escape. In fact the more you try to escape, life like an octopus will bind you with its tentacles, suffocating you, making you unable to perform simple duties. You will not be able to cook your breakfast or get your fish from the market. But then it is only then that something from deep within will force you out to do things. It will make you write, it will make you run, it will make you enjoy the minutes under the shower, in the sweltering heat, that make you go breathless. And you will read the newspaper and you will smile at the boy who plays cricket when you go to work. You would learn that there is no escape. That the dreams are here with you. You will begin interactions with the self that asks you to run, that asks you write, that tells you to sing even if you are horrible. You will still be afraid. You will still loathe the future but something will change.
Posted on: Sun, 11 May 2014 19:20:21 +0000