days of colds

Today was slow. Sometimes I become slow. Everything gets blocked with mucus and the air beats me as it does every other object. Amidst the discussions, the laughter, the zeal to do something, amidst it all there are moments when I feel the earth has become a map. I wonder if I were to say this to anyone, would I be looked at as if I'm crazy? But it does feel so. The finger moves to trace the Arctic Circumpolar and in a moment all the people struggling with identities, love, recognition, the meaning of life, a great sorrow, a sharp event, a prolonged circumstance, the people elated after winning applause, having scored well, something to look forward to, the people busy in spinning stories, teaching new mysteries, researching new methods of saving lives, trying to solve an obscure village's very real problems, and those people who roam about in guises but do nothing, who want to do so much but cannot be true, who will even destroy life rather than create even a mere clay statue: in prairies and meadows, in mountains where snow falls for the whole winter, sitting and watching from windows of havelis where the road marches by every day but their lives don't move on, in aeroplanes where live moves on so fast that it has become again stationary, and in thoughts that fly faster, that connect and spring from books and music, that immortalise because they cross the time. But then this is the world that my heart beats for, the world of good and bad, true and false, of reason and unreason, of rationality and irrationality, of kiss and slap, of procreation and murder. And the world becomes a map, a sheet of paper on which I dream, my elbows dream.

What's tangible? Whom to believe? Where to rest? What to achieve? Then I remember the hound that roamed the moors. Then I recall how sharply etched in my mind are the silent smoke curls going up in the air of the unseen silhouette of the thief prowling on the roof. I remember how people not just fight for honour and ethics, but rather there is more to life: I remember there is love. I remember there is the instinct of love and goodness, like when the man tries to save a little dog just when the firing practice is to take place and he loses his sight as a result. He does save the dog. I also remember that modern science will try to explain away his action as if it's something not otherwise acceptable at all; I of course know humanity doesn't save dogs and lose eye sights and hence it's a thing worth investigation. I remember the lakes that shimmer in glinting winter sunlight and give joy to a child's heart. I remember belief and the childlike joy in it and how the grasshopper sits on blank white walls every night and the child looks on with wonder and fear and fascination, as if the grasshopper is the god. He's still to learn the god by name, because that is the role of the world to teach him that and to then make him obey a thousand things (or to disobey); but he's already known God for once, the green lanky insect with an antenna like a fisherman's rod to someone who has not seen fishing.

I am slow today. I can't even remember what's spit in French. Outside there is a world that is debating vehemently about unemployment figures and for hours they are debating and for hours they are. They look at me; either they want another wise opinion or they want me to make myself scarce. I want neither; I don't want them. But, there is my map spread out on the table, and there are these people also in it. Some make music, draw paintings, write books, and play a new part; but mostly all they do is just make noises, noises. Noises tire me; I love silences. Or dialogues. Sometimes when I fold the paper, it crackles: everyone has a world, so rich a world. Why do they have to make noises, I realise? I don't know, probably will never. It doesn't always matter, not when I am not slow. I have loved, and I may live. Sometimes remembering the shiver that that hound sent down my spine; isn't that the thrill of life and the love I have loved with?