Its 0606 hours, 6th February. I inwardly laugh at my own misfortune. I wish I wouldn't be awake. Mornings are such busybodies. Everyone has something to do, somewhere to be. I don't. Well, I don't want to. I can't stay in bed. I am wide awake. I wait... for something to happen. As usual, nothing does.
Its still that kind of cold, where when you have to leave your bathtub-sized hostel room, to go to the bathtub-less loo cubicle to do your business, the chill runs down your spine like a suspicious lover. And it lingers... also like the fierceness of an obsessed rejectee.
I step outside. I wish my mind would stop for a bit. Let me imbibe the unanalyzed morning air. But how can I?
I see blurry figures flurrying to the damp underbelly of hostel life. I see socked feet walking past me, turning back to see, the strange static state of me standing in the corridor staring at the floor, and then turn back around and resume their incidentally important schedules of all-around-the-year mundanity. Everybody is so busy. All the time.
I am waiting. To see, if I too can fit into the incessantly repetitive routines of my faceless nameless neighbors. I am waiting. But I don't think I want to really find out. Someone not so famous once said, questions should be asked when you have the courage to know the answer. Because more often than not, you already know the answers you seek, but sometimes you want it to be something else, and hence the query. However, that renders all questions as rhetorical.
So, if there be no questions that really have answers, why then do we ask them? Is it the everlasting hangover of the forbidden fruit?
A wise man child told me "man needed something to do between the time his stomach was full and when he got hungry again
so he thought
and took the cake
the dogs lay, the lions snored and the elephants went for a wash
but man he thought
and took the cake"
Its still that kind of cold, where when you have to leave your bathtub-sized hostel room, to go to the bathtub-less loo cubicle to do your business, the chill runs down your spine like a suspicious lover. And it lingers... also like the fierceness of an obsessed rejectee.
I step outside. I wish my mind would stop for a bit. Let me imbibe the unanalyzed morning air. But how can I?
I see blurry figures flurrying to the damp underbelly of hostel life. I see socked feet walking past me, turning back to see, the strange static state of me standing in the corridor staring at the floor, and then turn back around and resume their incidentally important schedules of all-around-the-year mundanity. Everybody is so busy. All the time.
I am waiting. To see, if I too can fit into the incessantly repetitive routines of my faceless nameless neighbors. I am waiting. But I don't think I want to really find out. Someone not so famous once said, questions should be asked when you have the courage to know the answer. Because more often than not, you already know the answers you seek, but sometimes you want it to be something else, and hence the query. However, that renders all questions as rhetorical.
So, if there be no questions that really have answers, why then do we ask them? Is it the everlasting hangover of the forbidden fruit?
A wise man child told me "man needed something to do between the time his stomach was full and when he got hungry again
so he thought
and took the cake
the dogs lay, the lions snored and the elephants went for a wash
but man he thought
and took the cake"
What we do with our time is what all matters to each of us. And no one else. Everyone is just pretending. Just to keep you around. For the sake of their own time. At the cost of being labeled an anarchist, or worse, a cynic, I still want to tell you how being selfish is the only way to be truly happy.
They were misleading you when they told you the story about that big lonely giant who lived all by himself and never let the children play in his big lonely garden. How redundant. Watch my Marxist friends, as you grow thinner with philosophy, hornier with the burden of ideological seduction, and angrier with yourself for still wanting to play in the consumerist garden of our capitalist giant/s. I'm sure a plural is required here.
But,
Be Stubborn
Be Strong
Be Faithful
Be Dishonest
Be Passionate
Be Cool
Be Everything,
you probably never even wanted to be.
But,
Don't be a rebel. Don't be different. Just don't be different.
In a world where everyone talks alike, walks alike, wear the same clothes, go to the same shady places to rid themselves of their shame of mediocrity, drinking cheap whisky, wondering if they'd get lucky tonight, while eyeing the only other pair of eyes that may have similar aspirations.
The romantics of dichotomy is dead.
And it took me 12 minutes, outside in the cold, to figure all that out.
Its 0730 hours now, still today. Like everyday. Is ultimately today.
I come back inside my room. Its a mess. I haven't cleaned in days. I haven't wanted to, either. I look at the stealthy sunlight trying to warm my cold bed. My cold bed. My mind races through moments of the otherwise. I hover for a bit, trying to squeeze a trifle ecstasy. ANd I begin to laugh. Laugh at the sheer irony that the thought proposes. I laugh so hard, that I think I might cry.
But we were trained to suppress emotions. Men more than women, obviously. As a woman, I'm still allowed access to more sentiments. Such a shame. Another mere tool to impose more vulnerability. I see it everyday, everywhere. In everyone.
The lizards are back on the curtain. I think there's something to reptiles and sunbathing. Think about the crocodiles, your garden variety snake and of course our beloved yellow wall-friends. Clutching casually onto the curtain, gently flowing in the morning breeze that manages to get in somehow despite the attempts at closing the sole window that I was blessed with, the creatures rest in the golden warmth of a February dawn. Undisturbed. Unworried.
Free.
I wish I was a lizard. Just to be free.
Just so, I could sunbathe through life.
No, instead, I shall now light my first joint of the day. And then perhaps sunbathe a bit, hanging from my curtain. Perhaps I shall say hello to my real neighbors then.
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