Digression

I still remember how, as a student at college, and later at the university, and even later, as a teacher at a school and again, later as a trainer, when I'd come back from work / class, I'd have only two or three things to divest myself of before i could say i was home. There was the hanky, the change in my pocket, my bus pass, and I was done. And now, when I get back home, there are at least ten things I deposit from my person on to the concerned shelf. Suddenly I realize that my life has got much more complicated than it had ever been earlier. I do not know if I am to rue the "development" or to celebrate the additional burden that my pockets get to carry. One thing, however, is for sure: I carry much more weight today, and I am not sure it is a good thing.

Tons of things I carry that I ought not to, or have no need for. I know, and yet I never leave home without 'em. Stuff them in their designated pockets and deposit them in their designated place once home. And then there are things that serve just about the same purpose. My right lower front pocket holds a cell phone that also tells me the time (whatever that means!), and yet, I have a watch. Convenience, I guess, but one organ's convenience is another organ's pain. And so it has ridden.

Ironically, the "guest equipment" in my list is one that once symbolized what I do: write. My pen finds a place either in my right back pocket or in my left shirt pocket if I see it on my shelf when I leave before it is too late to turn away. I almost never use it. Weird.

I am still the same, yet everything around me has changed so drastically that I am very much convinced that I have changed too. My friends no longer discuss music, films, and hair styles; they now discuss cars and home loans and such. Surely, if my peers have changed, and I do not find them staring at me as one would at a complete anachronism, I am positive I have changed too.

And then again, in some respects, I still am the same. I still find the topics for prevalent discussion either boring or completely irrelevant; I still do not like myself, and most of the folk I know, and still, as in the past, I tolerate them, and they are kind to me. Where's this going?

Acquired impediments mar my path in my own house, and slowly, my house has begun to look like a techno-museum, like a nightmare. And I don't use them all that too often either! And yet, there they are, clean, waiting for the power to be switched on so they can ply their trade.

People spot errors in my work, and I spot errors in their work, and together we generate a more advanced set of new errors. I sit on my workstation and correct the typos and solipsisms that mar my own work, fully realizing that notwithstanding all this labor, there'll still be at least a few thousand other errors and solipsisms staring open-mouthedly at me when I glance at the work next.

My bike farts at the world on the way home, and mingles with the thousands of other vehicles that fart their fume at the air. And in the circumambulant gaseous envelope we inhabit, their multifarious farts mingle and rise and cover the stars at night. Over and over and over. Yay baby!!

I wonder what should happen if trees ran. You know, stoop low, collect and clutch all its fruits from the ground into its branches and flee at the sight of a human being.

I ought to I ought to I ought to I ought to I ought.

The human back does not bend of itself; we bend it with the load of memories of thinking what could have been.

Brrrr.