Wednesday, September 30, 2009

half sleeping flamingos

It had been sometime since I had been sleeping or shall I say in trance. The virtual connect between ‘me’ and ‘myself’ was beginning to wear off. It is like living a split life: the life in your dreams and the 'real' life; both equally exhaustive. I tend to wonder at times that why the word ‘misery’ even exists in the English language. What is misery but emotional exhaustion and time is only a proxy emotion: a slow, brutal and incomplete assassin; a true Devil's instrument along with, how could I forget, money!!

I tightened my semi relaxed muscles while I was informed that we are ready for another round of tranquilizers. It was a hot sunny day, ten hours past midnight, and a still sleeping accomplice, 'D'.

“Beer? " I asked D, in the calm tone of a lullaby.

"Of course", D replied promptly, as if he had been feigning the sleep like a baby waiting for his mother's milk. D is not the lazy bum, he is more the hyperactive-hibernating kind, a typical procrastinator. Both of his states tend to have an unsettling social effect. Not that I had known him for ages, but he found a mark in my two dimensional plane of existence.

We rushed to the door of the train bogie and opened it. It was scorching hot outside and the train had taken a halt. I generally tend to find a similarity between the state of my mind and the sound of the fizz. It is funny at times to hear the fermented serum full of anti air almost gasping for breath: Slightly suffocating. We started the proceedings by colliding our cans.

"Cheers" I spoke, wondering inside how absolutely it rhymes with 'fears'.

My first gulp told me that I need to light up my smoke. Fire and water actually have a lot in common. The two vehicles of life yet one coveted and the other despised. I filled my lungs with smoke letting it out from my flaring nostrils: a raging bull meets a silent sage. I look out of the door, saw trees passing by; such a usual and unexciting sight. Just about then, I saw violent clouds. A highly fragmented cirrus, curiously in the shape of a fleet of bomber jets, it seemed the most masterful recreation of the world war in an abstract artistic way. D who was busy taking large gulps from his drink, for a change did not find my wild flights of fantasy amusing. Yet, I moved ahead in time......

It is amazing how we tend to value destruction. The entire civilization is fed with war stories even in the curricular education. Stories of how Alexander the great conquered the world, the story of revolutions, of how brutal could emperors be. And even the smallest kid is fascinated by the sense of destruction. Sounds of cannons, of bullets fired in the air and of blood falling on the ground. The sense of victory is so deeply engraved in our hearts that no one is willing to lose how so ever strong or deserving the opponent may be. Man has given birth to irrationality, generally called hope, so the concept of civilization itself is flawed and this is the harsh reality.

I tried to gather my shredding thoughts, and said:
“The beer has a soothing effect today”, absolutely contrary to how I was feeling.

“Absolutely”, D replied, a blatant lie. We both have an awkward sense of mutual understanding and respect. We both know who is lying when.

I realised then that the journey was about to end soon, some hours left to go. I told D that it had been a long night and we should catch up with some sleep. We both go back to the compartment and lie down in our respective births, like lovers who have made love all night. I am sure we were truly the ‘spent lovers’ who had romanced their thoughts and figments and the pleasure, rather, the joy was inexplicable; yet came close to ‘the orgasm’ but we had to leave in six hours.

It is really tough to tell when time passes slowly and when it passes fast. It truly is the perfect assassin a slow poison that flows through our entire lives: killing us second by second, minute by minute and hour by hour. We had just passed twenty and two hours of our life and ironically speaking, had a lot of fun.

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