Balance...

No thought. Absolutely none.



Everything around you warps into bullet time. No voices, no wind on your face, nothing.Everything around you turns into a picture that you probably got in some old album in the drawer. Colours; they, for once get brighter. You see everything around you in a sort of seeming psychedelic reality. There is this buzz in your ears like you have at the end of a loud pop. Oh, almost forgot. There is this breathing sound, loud and clear. Like that bustling stream that you sometimes come across on channels like National Geograpic or something.



With a gun pointing right between his eyes, he felt exactly like this.

You go to a movie, watch it, eat popcorn and come out wishing you were like that great bod guy on the screen who beats the hell out of those nasties, or you were that swell looking girl who walks down costly carpets pretending money was being made in some free cola plant; but no! This guy upstairs, he got plans. And they dont stick to this script you thought of in your tupenny brain.

"Dont shoot me", he managed to utter after the longest two seconds of his life.

Or you have this day when the signals are all green. Or you find that fifty buck lying under the creaking bench at the park near your house. Or some guy says he is gonna take you for dinner and you know in your head that you saved a neat buck, addin' it up for your rent that you can hardly pay anymore. Hell, your company pays you after two months.

The guy with the gun felt like he was in power. Like all real and everything. Like this was the stuff he had been waiting for all his life. The final destination. Zenith. Stars and Earth.

Say. Say something!

"No last words", he said, and pulled the trigger.

"CUT!!" , the Director's voice cut through the air. " That guy is supposed to die! He is supposed to look scared! Why does he look like he does not give a shit! You think I am rich? Get these guys out of here! Pack up people! We are done for today!"

The man on his knees got up and dusted himself. He glanced at the director and walked away slowly towards the empty tent. The guy with the gun threw it on the ground, and walked away almost tearfully. No pal of his was saving him a buck tonight.

He reached the tent and lighted a cigerette."There's gotta be a better way to earn a buck than this!", he thought and kicked a stone. His phone, as if on a cue, started jangling. It was his boss. After two months.

The voice sounded cold."You have a new assignment. American guy, name is William Mason. He is up at room 15 at The Orient. Do it tonight. Money tommorow."There was a chuckle and he added, "Hope your gun's not rusted".

"Not yet", he said and hung up. He threw the cigerette and walked towards the highway, his beloved bag by his side. He was smiling now. As he looked up, the moon sniggered back, symbolising perfect natural harmony in his private universe. A final thought escaped him, as he walked back in to his life,

"I wish I could act..."

Talk 'bout it!

There are times in your life when you are it. This it, mostly believed to be a phase, often tends to stick along longer than a normal phase would; like maybe a moon cycle or a temporary phase of pseudo-depression. Trust me, this goes a lot farther. A real lot.

Before you come to the conclusion that I have flipped my lid or gone cuckoo in the head, let me tell you a bit more, a bit more about it. The feeling probably comes closest to a feeling that was described around the 15th century as melancholy, but not quite . When you are overpowered by melancholy, you are sad, you are slumped; you are right off the rack. Not when you are inflicted with it. Stephen King immortalized the word by creating the perfect piece of fear in the form of one’s darkest nightmare, in a novel of the same name. You use it when you don’t have a gender for the object, or want to give a more objective view of the given situation. How do you find out that you are being bothered by it? Let me give you some indicators.

I am being bothered by it for a while now. I can comfortably blame my ‘not writing’ on this simple comprehensible two-letter piece of English Language symphony. The strangest and probably the scariest part is that it doesn’t make you realize that you are inflicted in any way. It just draws you away, from work, from pastimes, from anything that previously occupied your current train of thought. What it puts in place is, something, which you would not have possibly expected to be there. Take me for example (considering that we don’t have any volunteers here). I have always loved writing and was almost on the verge of shutting off this blog. Not because I got bored. Not because I have a block. Not because I wanted to give up writing. Not because I hate hip-hop. Not because of any reason that I could think up of in my rather infertile imagination.

Rather because, it struck.

I have switched to watching movies. I have seen close to ten flicks in the past week alone. I watch a movie everyday. I have been seeing movies ranging from Trainspotting to Madagascar 2 to Wall E to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I saw trash when I saw Burn After Reading. I watched three plays, one of them presented by a company called the Mad Cow Company. I don’t know what I am upto.
Maybe I should get back to horror. Maybe I should pick up something different. Maybe I shouldn’t pick my teeth. Pick up the broken China pieces of my strange life and glue them back. Maybe…
Maybe ask it…

[P.S.- a little cuckoo I know; but I shall return in all splendor...shortly.]