A troubled soul

The road merges into blue, I don't know where. It's already a bluish road, I don't know why. It's a tar road, yet it has more the asphalt than the coke; on both sides is the barren landscape, a wheatishly barren landscape, and it is only I who's whizzing by.
No idea whether I am stationary or I am whizzing by. No idea whether this is the road that I was directed to, when I asked that man, just a while ago. I don't know what's begun happening to my memory - I distinctly remember him as a pock-marked man, with a sly leer on his face, I especially hated his mannerism of wiping his wet lips with his shirt cuff, a cuff bedraggled, open and soiled at the edges, a button loosely dangling. A gold button, that I hated the instant my gaze fell on it - the whole time that man gave me directions so civilly, I felt that I was talking to the button, as if that piece of pretentious gold was ordering me what to do with my life, with my roads, with myself, how to dispose of myself. What right had that button to govern me - after all, wasn't it a lifeless thing? How can I even ask that? It was a lifeless thing, yes, it was - yes, but then, why was it that all the time it was that button, that cuff button, who was talking to me, instead of that man.

Oh, I hate this road going on. Why does it go on? Why does it not end; it doesn't seem to go anywhere - who constructed it? why, I cannot imagine. There's not even a pothole that they have left somewhere - it's always the same. In fact, it has always been the same. I do seem to remember though that there will come some sort of a turn, or some sort of a bridge to cross - there will be then some mud to look over, some relief, when I cross it over. But then, there would be another one like this. It has always been like this.

Sometimes, I have dreams. Yes, since there is no one else, I can afford to dream, without any rashness involved. Yes, I do dream sometimes. Though, I don't always like to. They are always of people like me, who also are on the roads. But they always seem to enjoy it, laugh, and they even stop and urinate and cool their radiators. I don't seem to remember doing this even in a dream - I don't think I have ever stopped. And they are never lonely - but then, they are only dreams. I know very well that it is only I here - there's no one else. I can see to the horizon, and I know that I have covered all the ground to the other pole - there was no one that I met. No, there's no chance that I did miss anyone. No! I don't think that even while dreaming I would have missed anyone. So, it's only me. There is, after all, no one else.

But, you see, I am now weary. Though there is no one, it doesn't matter to me as much. Once upon a time, it used to - I loved to speed up, I used to love the open space, I used to love no forbiddings. But, I now don't want to be myself - I now want to be my dream. I don't want to have this real existence - I would want to become someone's dream, if I could then stop and look at the sunrise, I could look at the metallic shine on the hood, I could urinate and look at the sunshine piercing through the curved bow.

She makes his coffee

Why does she do it? Not for love always, not for desperation always, not for masochistic pleasure certainly, then why? To me, it's the most cruel sight on earth - the flower herself bearing the brunt of routine, chore, drudgery, drill, and contempt.

It's a woman's nature, too often, to bear slights from her man, to worship her man as the highest ideal on this earth even though he might be a drunkard and wifebeater, to run through his bruises and her life with a sigh and not with a complaint (complaint to whom?), to love only once and romanticise everything connected to that man even if he be a blackguard; yet, modern education, exposure to pleasures which only men used to anticipate, greater independent upbringing, a diversity of ideals and idols to follow, and increasing ways of access to that attribute, power, which a woman is so fond of - all that is changing the very nature of a woman. But, is the nature getting only subverted to a certain degree, retaining yet the same elements?

Throughout my life, I have been amazed by the strength required of a woman to perform some of the roles expected of her - wife, mother, prostitute. Even to elope with someone just on his word, or to jilt one for another - so much mental calculations in most cases, or a wanton abandonment to one's instincts in others. Yet, such a mental strength! When you don't care for the world, for anybody's word except what you think is right. There's no room for anyone else in that photoframe. Either the woman is in that frame, or the glass lies shattered. The strength of sacrifice, even! And, herein lies sometimes my thread of thought - though the sight of sacrifice by a woman is somehow very difficult to bear, is that strength itself ebbing away now from women? Is only the physical now the difference between a man and a woman?