Digging Deep-1
When she met him last, he was into politics. He talked knowingly of economic policies, poverty, village upliftment and cross subsidies. He held her spellbound with mind numbing eloquence from across the coffee table. He wore a black t shirt which riffed on the theme of 60s British Rock bands- Cream and The Kinks Live, it proclaimed. Hair on his head mostly askew, nostril hair untrimmed, stubbled face, thick black framed spectacles through which his eyes looked larger than they were, unwashed blue denim trousers and a pair of dirty brown floaters- all of twenty two years old with that remarkable disdain for the present and the future that only the young are allowed to have. And she was falling in love with him.
Her heart filled up with this strange cross wiring of motherly affection and a lust driven inability to speak. She pictured herself sitting there, looking like a tongue tied, smiling cow, losing control of all self respect and maybe even the will to move facial muscles into any other emotive shade or shape.
"You look tired", he said, pouring himself his fifth coffee of the last forty minutes. He would let it cool down into a dull tepid brown before he took his first sip. He was not even looking at her when he had said that . She seized remarks that had personal relevance, far and few though they were, to turn them away from rants on the macro economy or rock and roll.
"It's been a long week", she sighed.
He wasn't listening. He had two thumbs and an index finger on to his mobile device, furiously typing out replies to perhaps another fifty more like him, who were sitting uninterested in their surroundings, agonizingly enraptured by comments and jokes that were not funny.
She looked at him blankly all the while trying to understand where her life was heading. She was spending time with a boy eight years younger, whom she had met in a night club, both parties drunk. It was obvious that her life was meaningless. If she thought hard, the lack of meaning seemed to be a vital component of life on earth- a reason to exist, a catalysing necessity. The trouble seemed to be that the other necessity for life was this heroic effort required minute after minute from the living, to imbue life with some meaning so as to counter the obvious void.
Animals and children had it nailed that way, she thought. They could endlessly obsess over the daily routines of survival or stare fascinated at the common place, though if they went as far as to fix meaning to signifiers, she could not be sure of. Perhaps, that was why she was attracted forever to these younger men- hoping that they would share with her their secret of escaping knots and traps by just not being there. She must have known it too once, like every on who was young once, but the curse of life seemed to lie in the forgetting.
She wondered where they got the time to read if their lives were filled with an endless stream of meaningless minutiae. Perhaps it was all a farce. If she actually listened to his discourse on anything and pushed him a bit, he would spout internet garbage. She had tried it once. He sulked, became vociferous and reiterated a hopeless point, with greater force every time.
"Dee is such a funny guy", he laughed, looking up at her, eager to share some fascinating trivia from his life. She signalled earnest interest by leaning in towards him a bit. The movement seemed to distract him away from the story and incited dreamy eyed staring at her chest. She leaned back and asked him about Dee. He had lost interest in the topic already and gave her a dull and bland summary.
"Deep -we call him Dee...Dee's sis pinged her friend, who likes Dee and asked her to join them at the party that evening. So Dee went "yay" and posted some pics on his page with him and his sis and all in this wild party saying "cool sis" and he looks so funny in it" The thought seemed to give him much merriment.
She forced herself to smile like she was in the joke, leaned forward a bit and let the staring continue. She couldn't care about it any more now. She couldn't care if the world ended that way, either.
He wasn't listening. He had two thumbs and an index finger on to his mobile device, furiously typing out replies to perhaps another fifty more like him, who were sitting uninterested in their surroundings, agonizingly enraptured by comments and jokes that were not funny.
She looked at him blankly all the while trying to understand where her life was heading. She was spending time with a boy eight years younger, whom she had met in a night club, both parties drunk. It was obvious that her life was meaningless. If she thought hard, the lack of meaning seemed to be a vital component of life on earth- a reason to exist, a catalysing necessity. The trouble seemed to be that the other necessity for life was this heroic effort required minute after minute from the living, to imbue life with some meaning so as to counter the obvious void.
Animals and children had it nailed that way, she thought. They could endlessly obsess over the daily routines of survival or stare fascinated at the common place, though if they went as far as to fix meaning to signifiers, she could not be sure of. Perhaps, that was why she was attracted forever to these younger men- hoping that they would share with her their secret of escaping knots and traps by just not being there. She must have known it too once, like every on who was young once, but the curse of life seemed to lie in the forgetting.
She wondered where they got the time to read if their lives were filled with an endless stream of meaningless minutiae. Perhaps it was all a farce. If she actually listened to his discourse on anything and pushed him a bit, he would spout internet garbage. She had tried it once. He sulked, became vociferous and reiterated a hopeless point, with greater force every time.
"Dee is such a funny guy", he laughed, looking up at her, eager to share some fascinating trivia from his life. She signalled earnest interest by leaning in towards him a bit. The movement seemed to distract him away from the story and incited dreamy eyed staring at her chest. She leaned back and asked him about Dee. He had lost interest in the topic already and gave her a dull and bland summary.
"Deep -we call him Dee...Dee's sis pinged her friend, who likes Dee and asked her to join them at the party that evening. So Dee went "yay" and posted some pics on his page with him and his sis and all in this wild party saying "cool sis" and he looks so funny in it" The thought seemed to give him much merriment.
She forced herself to smile like she was in the joke, leaned forward a bit and let the staring continue. She couldn't care about it any more now. She couldn't care if the world ended that way, either.
