Onward


The bunch of papers in his hands just gave in. He was getting used to the incessant traveling. Though it didn't seem a bit like what he had imagined. Mostly he would discard the fatigue of it by saying it was boredom and not the biting solitude. It wasn't may be. Some people can just flourish on themselves. Each trip he would find something fun to do or just unwind his overworked muscles and sleep. There was never the need to go out or wait or seek. 

The bunch of papers in his hands almost gave in. He walked about with an ease. A confidence known only to his kind. It was 2 in the morning, the cab booked to the airport had come on time. There was no one to see him off. He had insisted they didn't come. His mother was the stronger one and her eyes never moistened when she saw him leave. But he always saw this meekness on the father's face, a kind of forced silence that just wouldn't let him leave in peace. So he insisted on being left alone. For convenience' sake.

Taking the last few steps onward, to the land of unforgiving winter. He made the customary calls. Assuring he would text them his whereabouts each time he changed location and made a note himself that he would.

His face grew pale for a second with a pang of homesickness. He had run out of noticing the weird people at the airport, people in waiting. There was this childish urge to suddenly return home just to spend the night on his familiar bed, without being answerable to anyone.

So he called her. And asked if she was asleep and if he woke her up. Without waiting long enough for her to answer that, he told her that he was looking at a bunch of hot chicks. We don't know if they were fictitious or real. She asked him to talk to them and not her instead.

Minutes later, they were laughing at one of his cranky jokes. Laughing together, in an unexpected convergence. Sitting hundreds of miles away, waiting to be separated by light years. 

For the lackluster repulsion of distance to erode their affection. For a beautiful Chinese woman to be on the seat next to him. On the plane. 

Abruptly pausing her midway he said, ' That's my announcement. Gotta go!' And then he rose closer to the skies never to return again.

2 comments:

Blasphemous Aesthete said...

Oops, wouldn't we want to believe we'll all be stars when we depart. Is that true?

Anonymous said...

Sometimes u write; so tightly, that its not possible to take away or replace a single word without changing the entire context.

I love those.

This is not one of those; but it struck my emotions for the sheer number of doors it opens without looking for anything outside (or inside or other side) of the doors.

This guy could have died in accident; he could be in army; or this could be a sci fi story, where eternal flight awaits this love; it could be a metaphorical flight; it could all have been a flight of fancy; of pessimism; of strangeness of relationships in reality of their uncertainty; the illusion of certainty -

So many more!

The beauty of what you wrote is in the number of places you can fit a description into;

It's at once, both intimate and distant; exactly what allows me to indulge myself into my life and mind; and you become a device rather than the an end in itself even though its a slice of your own life or Imagination.

At once a bridge is built between two islands; though it serves different purposes on either side.

Thank you.