Clutching on to the remains of the day, you sit here unwilling to beckon sleep, even as a familiar bed known to lull looks on. It is not the fear of tomorrow. Nor the remorse for yesterday that holds you here. A moment of reflection stares back at you from the looking glass. This face needs washing. It is jaded. The mirror wants a new face. The face wants a new mirror. But they are what they have. And the possibilities they hold. A needy derision. That heartening despair.
This strange hour of silence reaches for unlikely corners, and so it is that you walk to the most functional part of this alien space that you call home. The bathroom. Never to be invested in for more than its purpose. Books and newspapers have found their way there despite elderly diktats. But tonight, perhaps, an elder will not stop at incredulous looks. Tonight, when you sit on the floor of that damp pit of a room with a book and a cup of coffee. Somehow, that feels like home. The mind goes back to that moment in the past week where you talked of the shadow lines of national and international boundaries, and asks itself – don’t we like to make borders and boundaries for everything? Breaking everything up into neat functions and identities? When the TV shifted to the living room from the sacred bedroom after years of wrecked sleep cycles and newspaper laden bed dinners, there was joy. That is where it ought to be. A place for everything, everything in its place. Respect the purpose, and adhere to it. Wisdom lay in understanding these lines we draw, or which perhaps were drawn long before us. Understanding here meant acceptance and obedience. Don’t cut your nails at night. Lovely adages one has been careful to follow, not to question except in moments of utter necessity, and there too, privately. You haven’t broken the law so long as nobody else knows. Or you could break it and gloat to similar minds that often live their lives vicariously. Like you have, on so many occasions.
To have spent over three hours sitting in the bathroom and reading your second favourite book would be the highlight of the day for you. Which you will secretly smile at. You will realize those three hours were your least lonely. In so many hours that made up your days – days of smiles, people, laughter, dancing and ease. So when you reach that last page, you sigh. Is this it? Time to go back? Should you call it a day? And what a day at that! Leave it on a high? Like things are left very rarely in life. Or shall be it another book that you started ages ago but couldn’t find a space to finish? One more attempt at forging camaraderie? Recovering lost spaces in lost time?
The sudden thought of bathroom libraries makes you chuckle. Perhaps in your own house you would have those. Giant but bare bathrooms and books. Just for that moment, you float in the secret pleasures of things never to be. Like this night stretching to infinity. It will end. Birds will chirp and announce happily the beginning of another day. Many nights have found meaning and solace only in the thought of that twitter. Not this one though. The sun will rise, as it must, as it always has. So shall you, though not as punctually perhaps. And get on with the business of life. Once more the mind will mire itself in purposes and functions. To give it meaning. To give you meaning. You are what you do. This is what you are meant for. They tell you. And you find it rewarding. Tomorrow, groggy eyed, you will curse yourself this indulgence. But for now, stop thinking. Stop writing. Take a book. And go sit with your back against the wall and read stories that make yours seem unimportant. Allow yourself the luxury of not thinking of yourself for once. For a change, obsess about something else. It might be fun. And in any case, you have tomorrow and the day after and the days after to be the centre of your dilapidated worthless world.
This strange hour of silence reaches for unlikely corners, and so it is that you walk to the most functional part of this alien space that you call home. The bathroom. Never to be invested in for more than its purpose. Books and newspapers have found their way there despite elderly diktats. But tonight, perhaps, an elder will not stop at incredulous looks. Tonight, when you sit on the floor of that damp pit of a room with a book and a cup of coffee. Somehow, that feels like home. The mind goes back to that moment in the past week where you talked of the shadow lines of national and international boundaries, and asks itself – don’t we like to make borders and boundaries for everything? Breaking everything up into neat functions and identities? When the TV shifted to the living room from the sacred bedroom after years of wrecked sleep cycles and newspaper laden bed dinners, there was joy. That is where it ought to be. A place for everything, everything in its place. Respect the purpose, and adhere to it. Wisdom lay in understanding these lines we draw, or which perhaps were drawn long before us. Understanding here meant acceptance and obedience. Don’t cut your nails at night. Lovely adages one has been careful to follow, not to question except in moments of utter necessity, and there too, privately. You haven’t broken the law so long as nobody else knows. Or you could break it and gloat to similar minds that often live their lives vicariously. Like you have, on so many occasions.
To have spent over three hours sitting in the bathroom and reading your second favourite book would be the highlight of the day for you. Which you will secretly smile at. You will realize those three hours were your least lonely. In so many hours that made up your days – days of smiles, people, laughter, dancing and ease. So when you reach that last page, you sigh. Is this it? Time to go back? Should you call it a day? And what a day at that! Leave it on a high? Like things are left very rarely in life. Or shall be it another book that you started ages ago but couldn’t find a space to finish? One more attempt at forging camaraderie? Recovering lost spaces in lost time?
The sudden thought of bathroom libraries makes you chuckle. Perhaps in your own house you would have those. Giant but bare bathrooms and books. Just for that moment, you float in the secret pleasures of things never to be. Like this night stretching to infinity. It will end. Birds will chirp and announce happily the beginning of another day. Many nights have found meaning and solace only in the thought of that twitter. Not this one though. The sun will rise, as it must, as it always has. So shall you, though not as punctually perhaps. And get on with the business of life. Once more the mind will mire itself in purposes and functions. To give it meaning. To give you meaning. You are what you do. This is what you are meant for. They tell you. And you find it rewarding. Tomorrow, groggy eyed, you will curse yourself this indulgence. But for now, stop thinking. Stop writing. Take a book. And go sit with your back against the wall and read stories that make yours seem unimportant. Allow yourself the luxury of not thinking of yourself for once. For a change, obsess about something else. It might be fun. And in any case, you have tomorrow and the day after and the days after to be the centre of your dilapidated worthless world.
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