Another Day..

I type in the first line of this post, fully aware of the fact that the title of this post is so only because Mr.Petrucci and co. are playing a song bearing the same name for my royal highness at this very moment. I must warn you though, that I have absolutely no idea what I am writing about (and you thought I never had..imbecile)..I must also confess (and for this, I would not blame you if I draw at least a pained grimace from you) that the name Petrucci always reminds me of Miss Belluci, and her rather infamous scene that I have never had the privilege of being able to watch, but had had the rather discomfiting experience of sitting in a lecture sandwiched between two people hellbent on resolving arguments regarding the subtle nuances of the same, and that too on more than one occasion.

.

Anyway.Another day I think. Life seems to be stationary at every point. They say when you are about to die,everything slows down to an infinitismal speed. Life moves on in slow motion as if to make a statement, that it does not accept the so called inevitability of death. The only other place that i have encountered "Bullet time" is in Max Payne and movies. My life seems to hang in a very similar position in the eternal abyss of time, frozen in some fantastic pose, neither moving forward, nor backward, just making blank statements and staring dead ahead, but never moving ahead into the kill (the existence of which I am postulating at this moment, for truely I have never seen it). Maybe I am dead, Maybe everyone I share my world with is.

.

An old hunchback once told me that there is no kill . He told me that we are marrionettes in the hands of time. They say that a man shrivels up as he gets older, and when he dies, he is the same size as when he was five. My family has seen more drastic reductions in size. My legendary great great great great great grandmother's aunt, had undergone such a shrinkage, both laterally and longitudinally, that when she died ( at the most solemn age opf 156) they had trouble finding her body. But she kept getting louder, and when she finally died by tripping over a pile of books, her last cry could be heard across the village, and it is said that people came in from the next village to pay homage to the great departed soul. That is precisely what emboldened the British to renew atrocities on the villagers(which they had suspended indefinitely, fearing that the old lady would misconstrue their intentions, and might subject them to her wrath. But the my great great great great great grandmother ( who herself was 129 at that time, and with a ubquity to match), took up the lead, and finally started the movement that finally drove the British out of India. Its a little known fact that the British had to leave India maddened by the sudden emergence of befuddling tendency of the natives to shout at them in unison when they passed by in the streets.

.

But , with the modern advances in medicine, I am very sure that I will be able to enjoy a comfortable death when I am seventy(or eighty). So its highly unlikely that I will display the circularity of life, and the moribundity of time when I am dead. But if one chooses, one can in fact. Just do not let medicine interfere in your life .

.

But that takes nothing away from the fact that life is in fact still. Any timescale you take, life will inevitably seem to be static in that timscale, and yet paradoxically, you will always see huge waves rolling and thrashing in larger timescales, and myriads of eddies glistening like quicksilver in shorter timescales. And yet , in the timescale which is our typical timescale of registering any manner of change, there never seems to be any change. Life seems to be circular, and yet paradoxically, you cannot figure out where exactly it is changing direction at every moment that is so paramount for life to be circular.

.

So maybe life is not like the long circular tunnel its often been likened to, where you eventually come back exactly where you started, and then you drop dead. Maybe life is like an island hanging in some abstract corridor, where you are given a gun when you are born. You stand in the very place where you were originally placed,and the tapestry on the wall never changes, while people, places, perceptions, histories speed by you. You have been instructed by God to shoot at whatever you can. And one sunny day, you shoot a handsome chap in faded jeans, and when you turn him over to see who you got, you stare into your own face. sixty years younger. Your judgement, clouded by all those medicines clears. But alas it is too late.

.

You are dead