I spilled the cup of coffee on my desk at home last night. The dark river broke free from the china cup and let out its tentacles in multiple directions to reach out to all it could. I hurried on to salvage the paraphernalia on my desk, picking up things and rescuing papers and my phones and chits of papers, odd bills, CDs and other stuff which had been living on my desk from times immemorial.
My tactics in war with the caffeine yielded results and truce was declared few minutes later. A soak wipe allied with me and together we could contain the insurgency of the espresso with minimal damage. Once the battlefield was clean, I looked at my refugees - the bills and papers and other things that had been uprooted from their positions on the desk and which now looked with pleading eyes at me.
They had been living in peace on different corners of my desk with more or less a similar story of life. They had been piling up there as I had been too lazy to either scan through them and filter out those who were still breathing from those who had outlived their purpose of existence and could be exterminated.
The papers constituted parts of technical documentation that was once considered too important to be printed and taken home from work and which I never bothered to revisit (much less read), paid bills for the newspaper, cable connection, mobile usage, grocery and garment stores and take-aways, chits of papers with phone numbers of people I had not bothered to put names for, scribbled notes, my grocery lists, stickers from a burger joint, coupons from a pizza delivery store and couple of odd menus from nearby restaurants with claims of excellent, on-time home deliveries.
I still did not have the inclination to browse through them closely and discard all what was unnecessary and just stapled the pile and placed it in the drawer of the desk,to be looked and analyzed at a more 'appropriate' time.
Once I did that and resumed my position and posture on the chair, it occurred to me that each of these bits of papers were an episode or a facet of my life. The bill for the newspaper marked what my mornings were made of, the amount on the phone bills reflected my degree of social acceptance and how many people including my friends and family I was close to or considered sane enough to hold a conversation with. The electricity bill told me that I was watching more of TV and spent more time indoors these days. I was surprised at the number of food bills that had piled up. It might have been a couple of days since I had a normal plain meal at home. There were articles I had never read, phone numbers of people I had no intentions to ever call up and things that mainly reflected my disarrayed scattered life.
What started off as a routine hour suddenly seemed a sad and depressing moment in the life. I had lived off all those days with little or no memories. Every weekend I remembered from the dates on the bills had been very much the same. I had indulged in mall hopping, carting shopping bags and spending money on things I did not need. Every weekday too had the same morbid tale to tell. I was toiling 10-12 hours a day starting up early and getting back late only to look and await eagerly for the weekend. There was this endless loop of weekdays and weekends which was looking back at me from the face of these chits of papers and I realized that it had devoured on my weeks, months and years bit by bit, bill by bill.
I stood my ground for many a passing moments, unmoving stupefied. The gray strands on my scalp suddenly seemed to shine brighter and multiplied. I looked at my hands, they seemed so different from the last time I remembered. I breathed out. Suddenly tired, amazingly disinterested in the life and its day to day chores.
I had to do something about it. I could not just cave in like this and succumb to my end someday like a dog in the alley. Sure there was some purpose attached to my living than what I could see at that moment. Just what it was I didn't know at this point in time.
Probably I should make changes to my lifestyle, get up earlier, go out for a walk, enjoy nature. I loved to click pictures, maybe I should do that more often. I enjoyed reading, maybe I should get me some books and read them on a daily basis. Maybe I should lose some weight that I had put on lately or I should take up some music lessons, I could learn to play drums which was something I had always wanted, Maybe I should resume my painting and do some canvases for the living room, thought which I had been nurturing ever since we had moved into this apartment five years ago, maybe I should....
My chain of thoughts got broken with a call from my wife. She wanted to know if I was going to sleep tonight or not. She reminded me that It was late and that the light from my room was disturbing her (I knew that wasn't true actually as the door was closed).
All the same, the trance had been broken. I was back from where I had started. I did not disturb the stapled pile of bills that I had mercilessly squashed in the drawer. I picked up the empty cup, left it at the kitchen table and went to bed.
Another day ended.
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