Toothpaste

Nobody knows that yesterday I killed a man. The exhilaration is similar to winning a lottery and not confiding to anyone, the discreet awareness of wellbeing that the monetary security insures as one is made immune, by a single act of fate, to the everyday misery that hordes of people go about their wretched life, it is like being instantly made aware of what riches can, and later as thought settle in, cannot buy. An overwhelming desire that is ample even before it is attained. The nagging awareness of impossible before it is even possible. It is same with death, in a way, whether as a witness or a perpetrator, the aftermath, the realisation of futility at the sight of lifeless. The impossibility of what violence set to achieve on another.  He was out there in the park eating an enormous watermelon. The watermelon was rotten and sticky mess like his brain turned out to be. Not that I disliked him. It’s just that the rotten watermelon would have anyway done it to him, or maybe not. The man didn’t die after all. The moment I approached him he deciphered my intention and ran off. So now the question is did the tragic incident happen or was it an imagination? If it is an imagination then I have no reason to worry and I can very well go ahead with the late night show at the nearest talkie as planned. My concern was a decisive inclination towards it being authentic; therefore I took out the torch, replayed the incident in my mind to locate any clue and proceeded to the nearest park. Not that any park would do but this one was the nearest. Hence began my search for evidence, I focused my attention on the shadier and bushy side where any passerby is likely to toss his unwants. I knew that any criminal worth his intelligence would hide the evidence in places least plausible, trivial being commonly taken as least likely. I located pieces of half eaten watermelon, nothing else that arouse suspicious, so I surveyed minutely to find lots of melon seeds suckled by fiery looking red ants which scurried with their dear life on being disturbed while some contemplated to defend. So there, I got the watermelon but nothing more to suggest of some recent unsavoury happening. I stood there pensive and recalibrated my thoughts for hints of fabrication and try reason with the imagination that insistently pointed something sinister.

Time is a linear thing, and it’s always been like that unless you mess with it by probing for profound. Then a fissure start to appear between what has been to what is now and what will be. When I was a kid I spent sleepless night over next day’s school assessment tests that I was sure to mess up despite my best effort. The questions were always better than the answers and it remained that way making the effort to answer almost always futile, sometimes so embarrassing that I was showcased as the reason for better punishments. This anticipation of impending disaster was the reason I thought of moving to the future and transport myself to the day after the ordeal. This linear reality of time was something that could be influenced at will. When I got up in the morning I had to have the evidence of the day having skipped the linear frame, shuttled altogether or pushed into some remote past. If it didn’t happen then I would feign some illness and avoided the school, or tried to push it to the day earlier and work out once again tricks to circumvent the day. It surely was tiring and the effort always left me drowsy. It is in the sleep that the dreams created and thrust the imagination that was moulded during the day. Nevertheless it wasn’t real and the next day was always there waiting. Time was not able to imprint the nature of experience, frayed at the corners and peeled in layers. Memory then became the struggle of remembering and experiencing, this fracture could be mend with any fiction that suits was an immediate realisation. The random events could easily be scattered and rearranged with a consistent memory and the meaning attached to each. Now that I understand world better I realise the answer lie in the profoundness of life. The deeper truth that creates an ever expanding realm of timelessness and strips of the meanings from what we attribute. Even that which is opposite to the reality may infact be complementing to something holistic in a seminally defining way. Hence timelessness in all its charm is stagnant; it is perishable fragility of life that imparts value to it. If there is a beginning then there is an end, it’s the tenacity and the transitory nature that adds dignity to mortality.   

If a man is slayed with these very hands then it has to register somewhere in the recess of this throbbing mind. I am living much closer to death than I ever care to know life. It is this persistence of reality in all its brutal certainty that negates even the concept of time, making it altogether irrelevant and gives insight to richer living. I am on the verge of giving up my search and look up at the sky. Billions of stars shine and glitter in the humid night. The stillness in the chaos hooks the undulating emptiness in an all-encompassing serenity, to immortality. I cry for the imagined man and ask for forgiveness. Life is ongoing, with every moment stacking up the memory it is important to forget what one wants to forget, relinquish it gently it’s an immense responsibility.

Tailpiece: Some of the reader will appreciate the story but look up from the screen and ask “Hmm good attempt but why this banal title?” Well its a valid grouse and I agree its a cringe worthy title. It’s like this I am finished with my toothpaste and forget to buy it everytime I go shopping hence left scraping the tube every morning. Next time I go out I am bound to bump onto someone and that someone is bound to ask “So haven’t been seeing you for sometime what are you upto? Started working? You must it will keep you occupied…and money that is important too” Through this monologue a part of me detaches “Oh yes I am writing something and guess what it is titled?...” Mine I have to buy that toothpaste if you may please excuse me.