1: The Realization

My thought raced like a wild hog chasing a rabbit, it’s been some time since sleep eludes me. I look at her lying beside me, her face shone with the moon light from the window while I bask in its dark side, or maybe it’s just the street light. A dog barked distantly, the sound distracts her; she turns in her sleep to wrap her hands around me. It feels heavy, like my head from few nights of regressing sleeplessness. I fiddle with my smartphone for some notification, I read news about a little girl raped by 25 men over a period, it took her quite some time before she could confide in her neighbor. It brings tears to my eyes, I think about it for a while, my thought races, I see another article about a girl sacrificed by a tantric to find some lost mobile phone. I don’t know what was lost that day. I might lose my sanity soon. Another notification pops up, I remove the news article with a wave of my finger, the vicissitudes of smartphone notification. I notice the tear has dried up, I see print of a jeep I saw in today’s paper, a jeep climbing a virtually vertical cliff on red soil, I notice a black mark of rubber. It says “Only a jeep can do this”. I spend some more time reading about red soil and rubber harvesting…. sleep still eludes me while the dog barks at some distance. I remove her hands from my chest and sit down for a while, my head rest against the wall, my thought still races night after night, day after day, I think about manic depression, I think about that lump in my back and pain in my neck. She says I think too much, I think I know, I think it’s getting worse…. I think is all I do… from one thought to another and to another and so on. I get up to slide the window.

It’s raining now, I watch it for a while. It is raining well this year. I think about the farmers, maybe some of them won’t hang themselves up this year, maybe it’s just not enough. I slide the window some more, bring my face close to the rain and took my tongue out. The rain feels like dirt, or perhaps it’s the dirt washed from the leaves, I spit it out. “Can’t sleep again?”, She asked. Her voice brings me out of my reverie, I just make an affirmative sound, she offers a lullaby and I smile faintly and ask her to sleep. She is too tired to argue, she gulps some water and goes back to sleep. I go back to my thoughts. I think about the picture of human infested with maggots I saw; I couple of ill formed query on a search engine can ruin your appetite and sleep. I couldn’t sleep anyways. I walked for a while it before picking the unfinished book; I am reading it since a year, I think about ‘Yossarian’ and his German nemesis. I start reading about Germans, Poles, USSR, Chernobyl and Fukushima, The thought keeps racing, like the wheels of time. I sneeze out loud, I shouldn’t have tasted the rain. I shouldn’t have been lost in my thoughts, I shouldn’t have many things. I rub my neck and look at the ceiling fan, its circular movement brings some calm, some calm before it is replaced by the images of molten earth from ‘Mount Etna’. Perhaps it was Mount Etna where the hobbit destroyed the ring, ‘One ring to rule them all’, who now has the proverbial ring to rule them all now, is it someone in Asia, or Europe, Africa, or maybe from America. Who was the greatest king to rule India? I started reading about the ‘Nanda Empire’, this Chandragupta fellow looks interesting, did he personally cause mutiny in alexander’s army, or did he had some good writers with obligation towards him. Speaking of Alexander, did he slice the Gordian knot? Was there even a Gordian knot, or did he had writers with obligation towards him as well. Or maybe it was just a knot; 2000 years can really change the narrative. 

The dog stands below the street light, I can see him, he is still, he isn’t barking anymore, I think it’s a she. Can she not sleep either, does her thoughts races as well? I wonder what she is thinking about. Can she think like we do? She slowly walks in rain and curls up behind the automobile, under the shade. I think she shivers, I shiver too. The rain brings the cold, the cold chills.

I look back at her sleeping, I love her, I love her to a fault, I love her so much that its almost diabolical. I look outside, the dog is gone, the garbage truck is gone, the rain is gone. The floor seems cold suddenly; the rod I held on to seems cold as well. Wait a minute, ‘The Iron bar’, I had a glass covered slide away pane. I turn around, it’s too dark. Where is the moon light or the street light gone? Its pitch black, maybe it’s a power cut. I call out to her, she doesn’t say anything. Where is she? Wait, where am I? I look out again, where is the dog? I Can see a watch tower but no dog, I turn around, there is a blanket on the floor, she is not here. Where did she go? Oh! I close my eyes; some tears roll on my cheeks. It’s not raining, it’s not cold, and there is no phone. There are some dogs barking in distance. I can hear the guard clanking his baton on the iron bars. I remember it now, my thoughts stop, my heart goes on, I cry my heart out. The sun will come up soon… Or it might not, not anytime soon...To be continued.