Saturday, November 1, 2008

An eye for an eye..

The Bhadralokes of the city have switched off their bed-room lights long back. This is no decent hour for a well-bred woman to stay up but there she was. She was floating in the cyber-space talking to strangers just to alleviate the loneliness gnawing the silence of the night. The quintessential television was playing business news as a back-ground score talking the soothing language of money. A few books lay scattered at an arm’s reach, just in case she got lonely in the virtual world too, she would dive into fiction before the pain of solitude hits her.
She has stripped down her life into simple straight lines and simpler necessities. Office; work; food; movies on TV or DVD player; books and an online existence on Gtalk and Facebook. At times she wondered if she was to die this moment, how many cyber hours later her social network would realize that she has left forever. Friends she has barely interacted with in the physical world, would they ever feel the loss? Dark thoughts! Of late the followers of her poetry blog have started wondering if she dopes before writing. If anybody would understand the intensity of pain, misery and struggle she has experienced, because if they did they would know her poetry is a result of extreme agony not the ecstasy of weed.
Her family does call her almost every day. She is not sure if she feels anything for them except patient boredom. It is the same with people around her. Everyone expects to get something from her, advice on how to cope up with their miseries; what to do with a relationship going nowhere; an occasional financial help; her ears- ever ready to listen to them siphoning off the mess inside; career advice; help with the household chores when they fall ill; plain strength that they would just draw from her very existence. She is a prize fighter of life, an example of strength everybody can look up to. Don’t they realize it takes all her strength to stay mute and not cry out for help! She cannot. Partly because she is too headstrong to admit defeat, partly because she knows it would not help. One cannot expect a blood transfusion from an anemic. She has seen disappointment in their demeanor if she gave even a hint of weakness. She has to be rock solid allowing no fissures or else their world would start crumbling around them. Even as she is thinking, she starts surfing for channel that would be distracting enough to keep these dangerous thoughts at bay. They threaten her existence in the human form. The basics of anthropology define man as a social animal, she would not know where to go if these last ties are cut off owing to that brooding sense of betrayal that hovers at the edge of her consciousness, the one she ignores and keeps a wary eye on, simultaneously.
Ah! Better. The music channel is showing some brain-dead numbers, enough for spreading an artificial lightheartedness.
Her phone beeps.
An SMS at Two in the morning! Surely, no one misses her enough to need her at this hour. Unless it is another catastrophe that she can help them sort out. Who is it this time? Priyanka, an old college mate needs her because she feels depressed with life, that is, if she is awake at this hour. Without a second thought she starts dialing, abruptly stopping midway.
Wait! How many times did Priyanka call her up to figure out how she was coping with life, last year? Remember, how busy she was to even reply to her ‘Hellos’ on Gtalk. The last talk she had with her was months ago that she initiated to inform her that she is moving to a different city. All Priyanka did was give a perfunctory Good Bye and All the Best adding an accolade about her strength.
After a while she switches off the TV, shuts down the laptop and immerses into the book leaving her friend to sort out the mess all by herself. The sense of betrayal is slowly severing her ties. She feels at peace.