Blank..
Karthi used to say to me, “Blank
da.”, whenever I ask him, “What are you thinking now?”. That comes with a price
tag, sometimes stuck permanently on your face. So, when I saw him with the
symbol of Christ on his forehead, it dawned on me in a few milliseconds on what
could have happened.
“So, what was it this time,
when the blankness engulfed you?” He opened his mouth to say something and
yawned instead. I began to reciprocate as he was stopping. He said, “Didn’t quite catch my eye, but does it matter?” and started walking
away.
I wanted to tease him about
it and started to laugh out loudly behind him…. Then, it engulfed me.
Everything around me screeched to a halt and the time started to move slowly. I
felt as if I was watching the ground from an airplane several thousand feet up.
A frozen vision of a spinning top just when it was about to fall down, did come
to my mind.
When I
was eleven, we got our own place with a backyard. The first spring, I started
following my Grandmother around in burying up plant seeds, offering to dig the
holes. She had this belief that if kids plant the seeds, they will definitely
sprout. It was Mango first, then Bitter and Bottle gourds and then Beans and my
favourite sweet tamarind. It was always planted in the evening. Every following
morning, for the next few days, I would run to the backyard to see the first
signs of the sprouted plant over the surface. I always wanted to witness it
pushing through the covered up and moist soil and show its tiny green bits. I
was never lucky, but would still love to try my luck again.
Slow
moving time or slow the moving time? You might get hit by a bolt of eyelids, a flying
saucepan or you may crash against the wall. But, when you are hit by the blank,
you can move time faster – you could. Imagine being able to write with your
left hand, the very next minute. No, it is about building your sand castle again
the very next moment. Only that, this time, it would know to jump when the
waves came.
No comments:
Post a Comment