the matador

I have a bit of a temper. It has all the eccentricities of a paper napkin and the violence of a red brick. It gathers speed in my head till I lose all sense of direction and end up smearing everything with a thick layer of disgust. Much like a disgruntled village headman spewing tobacco all around him. Bitter and textured.

I am also incapable of doing any justice to my anger. I can never express it well. Especially when directing it to the object of my fury. Everyone else will get a taste of this emotional indigestion, but the one solely responsible for it all shall receive the confused mutterings of an adolescent. Which further aggravates my state of being.

Falling in line with such a mixed head becomes very difficult and edgy. Its like living with a constant fear of getting your hair caught in the ruthless blades of a table fan. The whirr of daily drudgery apart, this petty piece of hate ends up consuming me and more.

Fingering through the particles of dismay, I have managed to dig out three ounces of reason. All of which leans on the fact that I am incapable of the great Indian rope trick. I cannot balance one world upon another. And yet it is the sole concern that I almost always end up thrusting upon myself. Gulping down bottles of regular brew leaves little space or capacity for potboilers. Hence while all the time I am browsing through magic potions in my head, my outer self gets bullied into the rubber band patter of money and concrete. While my hands like to think they are stirring a shiny brass bowl of moon dust, they actually end up staining themselves with the abusive ink of a ball point pen. My feet pretend to trip over puddles of 6^th century rain, when all they are doing is strapping on arrogant sandals and walking over arrogant streets.

Life is not poetry. I know. I am fully aware of the fact that my incandescent rage stems from a completely collapsible thought, one which most are capable of folding and keeping away. But I am not. I cannot transcend into reality day in and day out and pretend like this pendulum existence actually has any meaning. Like the thousands of windows I see everyday have no tales to tell. The millions of faces behind crisp newspapers have no secrets to reveal. As if one single touch cannot transport you to a nonchalant riverside. They do, it can. And I spend every waking hour trying to tell myself this. Assure the bully inside my head that there is no need to be scared, no need to be insecure. Nothing will break, no one will leave. But everything does come stumbling down, and almost everyone leaves. And life becomes an expressionless brown paper parcel.

Blank sheets of paper look at me invitingly, I stare back at them. Till they get disappointed and join the huge trunk on the loft. I lose that one divorced earring in the multiple chasms of a handbag, all I hear is the jingle of loose change. Intertwined with headphones which perform the daily thankless duty of plugging my ears with radio jabber all the way to work and back. Newspapers drift in and out like passing traffic. The seductive vapors of tea bounce back and forth in my mind, while I look away and pretend to think.

I cant even afford to tell myself that this is just a youthful clash with ideology. Its not. It’s a battle between everyday and me. Heaps and heaps of registration forms, emails, plastic wrapping paper, chocolate biscuit packets, identity cards, steel utensils, drying clothes, maneuvering cars…they don’t make any sense to me. I am supposed to write my name on hundreds of documents with varying levels of importance. They will make sure I stay connected, balanced, rich. They will tell this blessed nation that I exist. Like the local goon, these papers roll up their sleeves and take on my cluttered, untidy, disorganized world with great enthusiasm. They will map out pointers in my life and hand me a laminated copy.

And I try. Relentlessly, angrily, breathlessly, obstinately I try to dig myself out of this paradox. I try and crawl back into my regular world of worms, potholes and erasers, of dal and rice, of logic, prayers and abyssmal PDF files. But I fail. I inevitably fail and the walls of my castle start quivering again. And I have to wait till the next knock, for it to stand still.

For someone to come and break all this cowardly silence.