yasp 9

At school, I used to have this class from 12:30 to 2:00. I was in that class, staring at the clock, watching the hands of it chasing each other, but not fast enough and I was so losing my patience. I made a pact with myself not to look at it in less than five minutes, but that wouldn't be. I was getting so bored to death. I had this notebook open on my table, some of the ink had spilt on the sheet, white. One corner of it had random designs, that never ended up beautiful. At some other random patches, I had tiny poems scribbled, in illegible italics. There were a few names, written in uncrackable codes and messages to people who owned those names within inverted commas. Some random words heard within the four walls, were noted down too. Anything to kill time. Whispers in the air. Heartbeats heard, all waiting. I was cursing the prof for asking us to down the laptops, how on earth was time supposed to pass? It would skid, slip and fall and come back to where it was, but not move. I would scribble some more on that notebook, I remember the neat spiral binding of it, the ends of which I had twisted, impatience. I had a tonne of things on my mind, a couple of assignments, reports, some competitions to be done away with, presentations ah, the lack of life in life. Normally I wouldn't waste my time thinking about the people around me back then, they wouldn't change anyway, you hate them, you love them, do not consider them to be a participant in your life, they will anyway be. But when locked in a room with them, I would generously spare a thought, some of them I would hate more, some I would love less. And so, it would strike 1:30. The longest half hour of our lives. The hands of the clock would go off to sleep. The prof wouldn't stop, no mercy, incessant she would be. People would laugh, people would understand the big jokes. I would be locked in my own senses, trying to decipher a language none of these had an idea of. Away, scribbling things, spilling more ink, on white sheets, filling life. 


The worries of life look so small in afterthought, funny and silly, funny because silly. Years down the lane, bigger sorrows confront me, bigger failures come my way. Strange how the enormity of life is inflated with time. The past sometimes looks so tiny, insignificant when put beside the present which totally engulfs us. Yeah.


But you know what the good news is? I am still in that class, and that was not a long time ago, it is now. The moments haven't moved. Time is stuck at 1:45, somewhere in the longest half hour of our lives. And I am busy doing silly things, scribbling names, thinking of people, with another thousand things on my mind, away from the commotion of the class, lost, but still in there, in that moment. Feeling every one pulse of time.

11 comments:

aria said...

hmm in almost every class from school to university I used to be in my own world though my face did not reflect that I never heeded to what was being taught .. am not a class-room room person.. I consider myself an autodidact..

that aside the last para had a lovely parallel of life and the class.. you write beautifully.. I can never get tired of saying that..
I could picture you .. :)

Blasphemous Aesthete said...

Sometimes, no, most of the time, the lectures lull us into sleep. And we can't do anything.

What you thought in that little moment, it was profane and true.

Surya Prakash V said...

Hmmm.

What ticks on my wall is not a clock, but madness centered to a dot. And I ask what alignment is right to set my time free?

A I hear a humdrum of an answer that always says: now, now, now ...

Anonymous said...

:)so true

Anirudh 'Lallan' Choudhry said...

wow...amazingly wow..!!

Boobesh said...

Just loved it ... beautiful post.

arvind said...

"some of them I would hate more, some I would love less"

ho.. why?
its reminding my days at classes..
seeing all the time watches..
why? everyone knows..

$uch! said...

super like :)

wildflower said...

aria
autodidact! hmm & thanx..I can never get tired of gettin this from you either :)

BA
Things profane and true rarely leave me except on some special occasions when I need them the most!

V
!!! should be related..

Anonymous
Girl.. :D

wildflower said...

rudh
thanks..long time i met you here..

Boobesh
appreciate it :D thnks!!

S
:))

Surya Prakash V said...

Lol. It's just a different level of abstraction. Perhaps lost in translation.

Let me try again one layer for now: what sets the pace of my life - the clock is madness - two hands centered to a dot, running the same course hour after hour - yet assigning a different meaning each hour - none that is my own. And I travel back and forth, in time - I visit the past, then drag it to future, now drag again to the meanings of the now.

Between, the time travel, a idea strikes me, like the dripping of a leaking faucet - life is happening, right now, outside the clock and it's meanings.

Unrelated, perhaps. Then again, maybe lost in translation.

Or perhaps I should say you write well. You do. Bye.