By: Aalam Singh Batth.
If you have a lucid and vivid imagination: Epilepsy warning, bright lights.
Darkness. Glowing. Darkness. Glowing, light is fading. My eardrums are reverberating, and bunch of crickets are chirping in the background. My eyes, they feel drowsy, yet they don’t fully close. A fly comes near buzzes around, faint sounds of horns give the occasional beat/tempo to this weird cacophony.
A shrill voice asks, “what are you doing, lying alone? Spectacular, the world is spectacular!”
I ask, “what’s there to see anyway?”
The voice says “How would you know what there to see without going out? Just hear the sounds around you.”
The street lights flicker on and off like a flashing light at a disco. My heart beats rhythmically and metronomically, it adds to the music of occasional horns and buzzes, with some bouts of deafening silence. Tinnitus percussions the sound as it reverberates constantly in the background. My legs shake anxiously and hands flicker in tune with the surrounding. That’s life when one is lying alone in a silent disco. It is an internal composition of lyrics originated through one’s psychological state which is supplemented by the noise through the external stimuli.
I tell the voice, “please don’t take more prisoners to make these beats, no need to orchestrate a melody, let them sleep”.
The voice says, “we only come alive at night. If you’re awake we belong together at night, there’s usually no company, today you’re listening.”
Puzzled, I ask, “does ‘we’ include a cat pretending to DJ a silent disco?”
The voice says:
“Yup anything is possible it’s all in your mind, Life would be great, if you could just go out and take a whiff off the good old earthy air. Say hello, to your fellow humans, keep a good face, be confident and be lively. Don’t complicate overthinking, (lalala lalala) mute it out. World around is great, wait, there! See a dog, it’s waving at you with its tail, without any care in the world. There’s so much fun, so many things to do, people to meet and places to go. The world is so bright that even at night lights flare up. Fortune never favours the needy, it’s a random draw of luck, stop thinking you’re lucky or unlucky. If maybe, you could be aware of such things and still be happy, you’d not worry.”
I say, “At times I don’t know what’s real and what’s not. All I know is that there have been moments where I haven’t been good, I have messed up a lot. I keep on beating myself up for my wrongs. I’ve unnecessarily complicated things, overreacted and then tried to come up with reasons to back it up. It’s deceiving for people who listen to me, I only know the truth and it’s not good.”
(Mind spirals out of control)
(“No that was right for me, this is what I have done. But, no, I regret doing that, I shouldn’t have done it.”)
(“I wish I could take some time and correct all my wrongs in life, introduce a new breath of life to it.”)
The voice says
“Time won’t wait for you”
Suddenly, drums and tuneful sitars come out busting. My feet feel elevated, every cell in my body starts moving miles ahead and I feel elevated with a cooling sensation running through and through. Darkness. Glowing. Darkness. Glowing, light is fading. Ear drums reverberating, bunch of crickets chirping in the background. Trees standing, birds flying, scooters running on the sidewalk, a cat still pretending to DJ, cars honking, people screaming, a sense of respite and a sense of nervousness. The rhythm picks up its beat, lights flicker faster than before. But this time eyes don’t feel drowsy, gravity releases its hold on me and my feet don’t touch the ground.
