It was just another evening in that city. A city that scared me with its size, scale and its styles. I used to take comfort in the limited knowledge of its roads and in the approving nods of cigarette sellers and breakfast vendors by roadside I had come to meet regularly.
That evening, I was feeling low, unsurprisingly. Everything seemed unpromising & every passerby seemed like a gawker - staring in my eye while oblivious to her presence who was walking beside me.
I was told it was unusual for a March evening's sky to be obscured with dark clouds. I wondered if it was the city's pollution that had balled up in the air to trick me into thinking it was cloudy after all. All such wondering was being timely intervened by a stare here and a gawk there. That only slid me further down the pipette of gloom.
I tried to breath deeply and I ended up filling my lungs with a tangy smell of oil that enriched the street food's flavor to people's liking. It further depressed me.
I lit a cigarette and it only caused distaste on my tongue. I extinguished it in its midlife like every film hero does when he sees his love interest coming his way.
The gloom only proliferated as the evening deepened. I remember having a few pints of beer in the fridge, left from previous day. That's usually a thought of relief. This time the gloom was so prominent that the idea of a few pints sitting in the fridge didn't do any good to my mood.
Just before I started to feel claustrophobic by the gloom that was closing in on me like a monster in our nightmares, I saw that scene. A bunch of 8-9 year old boys, each holding one of their cricketing paraphernalia ( read an old bat with its stickers coming off, stumps that were half white and half attacked, gloves that could hold two palms of each kid in either of them and etc.) were passing by me. Oblivious to the man's gloom who just passed by them, ignorant of what awaits them in few years and laughing away at their heavy bats & loose runs that came off the bats.
They didn't know that they just lit up the evening of a man who passed by them.
For all of it, I managed a smile, adding to the ones that interspersed the impending blots of gloom.
That evening, I was feeling low, unsurprisingly. Everything seemed unpromising & every passerby seemed like a gawker - staring in my eye while oblivious to her presence who was walking beside me.
I was told it was unusual for a March evening's sky to be obscured with dark clouds. I wondered if it was the city's pollution that had balled up in the air to trick me into thinking it was cloudy after all. All such wondering was being timely intervened by a stare here and a gawk there. That only slid me further down the pipette of gloom.
I tried to breath deeply and I ended up filling my lungs with a tangy smell of oil that enriched the street food's flavor to people's liking. It further depressed me.
I lit a cigarette and it only caused distaste on my tongue. I extinguished it in its midlife like every film hero does when he sees his love interest coming his way.
The gloom only proliferated as the evening deepened. I remember having a few pints of beer in the fridge, left from previous day. That's usually a thought of relief. This time the gloom was so prominent that the idea of a few pints sitting in the fridge didn't do any good to my mood.
Just before I started to feel claustrophobic by the gloom that was closing in on me like a monster in our nightmares, I saw that scene. A bunch of 8-9 year old boys, each holding one of their cricketing paraphernalia ( read an old bat with its stickers coming off, stumps that were half white and half attacked, gloves that could hold two palms of each kid in either of them and etc.) were passing by me. Oblivious to the man's gloom who just passed by them, ignorant of what awaits them in few years and laughing away at their heavy bats & loose runs that came off the bats.
They didn't know that they just lit up the evening of a man who passed by them.
For all of it, I managed a smile, adding to the ones that interspersed the impending blots of gloom.
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