On an ordinary day i.e. a weekday, I would be standing in line for the loo holding the previous day’s news paper for diversion but today, since it is Saturday, it’s 8 in the morning and I am still in bed, deep in my early morning slumber. I am clinging to my pillow, my lifebuoy on the sea of dreams, but not only to prevent myself from sinking in it but also because I have slipped the key to my under-the-bed cupboard into its cover. And since even in dreams I am too aware of the fact that the forty-four roomies know too well that I have a laptop, locked in somewhere, and their fascination for it is as much for it as their contempt for any form of exercise (except to the famous eye work out that is done in front of the television), I hold on to the pillow even tighter.
I resent the fact that, I don’t dream in pictures these days, it’s almost as if some dream merchant has bought my eyes’ images without informing me and sold them to a person who used to dream away his decline everyday, possessing the currency of an ignited imagination, which if lacked anything was a confident vision. I am happy to know that my dream vision is helping someone, somewhere dream in pictures while I still cling on to mere ideas, adrift on the dryness that comes with the lack of a picturesque rendering. It’s almost like donating a heart simply because someone can use it better than you. But even without a heart, life goes on. After all it’s not the heart that learns to be ‘in love with the idea of…’
If it’s alright to put it this way and still not come across as harsh, I have established that my dreams, so to say, ‘lack an imagination’, it takes a huge stimulus to actually put it’s imaginative machinery into motion. And I don’t think it is merely restricted to the realm of dreams. Even when I am not sleeping (strictly in the technical sense), I still need highly impressionable stimulus for it to even register. To illustrate this I would resort to a recent pleasure trip when I was strolling down the road near Ship Hotel and, I was shocked to observe the kind of landmarks my mind remembers. Generally, when in doubt about the way I am going, I freeze and look around. And this is precisely what I did on this instance. I looked around for something that I would identify my way with. And promptly I saw the drug addict on the corner, engaged in burning almost anything and going about it in a sniffing manner. So I redirected myself. I moved on and when another freeze occurred, I looked around and promptly spotted the three legged dog sleeping on his trademark mat. I redirected myself. On the instance of another freeze, I looked around and on finding nothing recognizable, I looked down and duly found the squashed rat that I had seen near the pavement, and I instantly knew that I was close to Ship. It’s confounding how my mind refuses to register billboards, directional signs, building facades, shops etc. but rather chooses to remember things that are completely inconsequential and what is even more stupid is that these landmarks are mobile (except for the squashed rat which has little chance to be carried about by the yellow, gray, brown, white cat that lives in Ship’s attic, which I have come to call ‘Flame’). What happens if these things change their bases tomorrow? I would be lost. But then I am comforted by the fact that these landmarks’ lives have stopped like the body-clock of an insomniac.
Now, after proving the incompetence of my imagination, I can narrate to you what happened on this morning which did not see me standing in the ‘queue for the loo’.
One of my forty four roomies is my merchant navy friend Akhil. He is a marine engineer who mostly hangs out in and around the seas surrounding Japan, but here to do some seaman courses which will make him ‘The Secure Seaman’, at least for the time being. Now, he mostly keeps to himself unless being talked to first, when of course he becomes an amiable, chatty version of himself, but today something stimulated him to talk to me first. It appeared that he needed my laptop for some weird reason and nudged me in my sleep to inform me that he needed the favor.
I could hear him in my sleep, ‘Namit wakeup! I need your laptop. I need your laptop for a few hours.’ I duly clutched my pillow tighter, the key in it withstanding the pressure building around the pillow.
‘What, whha-aaat?’ I came to life. ‘You need mmmmmmmy LAPTOP?’ I said it as if he was asking from me my life.
Of course this fear was not baseless. I have a few reasons to believe that I and my laptop and the relationship we share can me harmed. The reasons being:
1. One mugging
2. One lost cell phone
3. ‘Dr, Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’ roomies at Yadgar, Grant Road
4. Forty four roomies of the ‘Nami-baba and Forty-four’ roomies fame and their inquisitive eyes.
5. The Sahara marketing head warning me that the merchant navy guys were ‘SMART’ (compared to his more conventional split personality disorder, resonating between a corporate head and a lecher) and would show their interest in my laptop in which case I shouldn’t let them even lay a finger on it.
I was up from my slumber by now, and my brain having registered some imaginary activity in the form of the above listed, I asked again in mild disbelief, ‘You…you…you want my lappy?’ and I heard Akhil’s voice say in a straight forward way, ‘Hey who’s asking for your laptop? I just want your black shoes. Can I borrow them? I’ll be back by twelve.’
I was not awake enough to be embarrassed. But now I am awake enough to be, and so I am writing about the episode but without being embarrassed about it. I don’t know why but I am not embarrassed about showing my insecurity. This is some more new emotional territory for me. I seem to be shouting from the dome of VT, ‘Yes I am insecure, and will be for days to come and will be in love with the idea of love for sometime too. This is what I have on ‘share’ for now and I am not promising any progress in the near future either, though I do try. Take it or leave it.’
Actually, Akhil just came back, and is sitting on his bed talking to his friend that has come along with him. He has returned my shoes without showing the slightest desire to see embers of embarrassment on my face. Even if he looks for them, he won’t find any because I am in the ring, fighting a bout with my imagination, asking it to yield to my desires, and I can vaguely begin to see my image atop VT, sharing the done with the with the elusive lady, white with insecurity about the city she is looking over, or overlooking?
‘Dear lady atop VT you mind if I shift my attention form you for a while and make you crave for it in bewilderment, and give it to another lady, equally magnificent?’- it’s time to watch Aeon Flux at Sterling with Akhil and his friend Aditya.’ Needless to say, the experience will be on ‘share’.
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