I wake up in the morning with a strangely off-centre feeling. I feel like I no longer recognise myself, my life. All of it feels borrowed. Like it is some other person’s.
A grey, rainy day outside the window. I look around at my ruffled bed. The blankets look soft and fluffy. Aah, the coziness of sleep. I look around at my brown walls. The paintings hanging on them. Of flower vases. My sister’s work. They might seem strange in a man’s apartment, but I feel increasingly asexual these days. They don’t make a difference.
I rush to the whistling coffee pot, with a newspaper in my hand. I grab my last cup of coffee with a slice of toast in my mouth, newspaper in the other and my black office bag hanging from one side of my formally clad shoulders, when I suddenly catch sight of a piece of black flyer fly against my glass wall and remain for a while. That is strange. A flyer flying at this height? I get a glimpse of the message on the flyer – a window cleaning company, with a picture of a distraught man on the run. An incongruous picture for a company specializing in cleaning windows of high-rise buildings. I start to peer closer at the man’s face, as it seems familiar, when the flyer flies away.
I walk to my office, contemplating about the face that seemed so familiar. Trying to crack the code.
Throughout the day, the flyer haunts me. I catch sight of it at several instances. Just as I get closer to it, it’d fly away. A few of us from office had gone for lunch to the nearby deli. We turned the corner to reach our office at Nariman Point, when I suddenly caught sight of the black flyer, whose design was etched in my brain. The flow of conversation we were having suddenly drains out of my head as I’m seized by this urge to follow the flyer. I start running towards the corner of the wide, busy pavement where the flyer is fluttering. I see it circling around people’s busy, official-looking feet. The seemingly innocent black flyer, playing around hurrying office-goers feet, without a care in the world, while a mad man rushes towards it, at break-neck speed. It must have been a funny moment, for a third person objectively observing the situation. Or even for the flyer - if it thought, observed and contemplated. Maybe it was smiling at me. This supercilious smile, knowing very well that I’d never be able to reach it. Enticing me, haunting me. Taunting me.
SCREW YOU!! I curse the flyer in my head. It doesn’t help much, though I try hard to take control of my dangerously loose thoughts. The knowledge of that familiar face leaves me restless and disturbed. I don’t know why it is bothering me so much, but I want one last look at it. Somehow I feel, one more look at the flyer might just be the answer to all the mysterious things that have been happening to me so far.
I go home, in the black night, to a quiet, dark apartment. I’d walked through dark alleyways, with my disheveled hair, loose tie and un-tucked shirt, in the hope that I might be able to see the flyer again. But all of that was to no avail.
* * *
The beat of the music. Pulp fiction. My walk - its pace brisk. I dodge people, in crowded streets, with effortless ease, as the music guides me. A grey day, with grey faces. Or so they seem. A second look brings my “reality” to me again. I watch my actions with my secondary, remote vision, from some distant and clear part of my brain. I see the switch from grey to colour. Double-faced. Or is it double-visioned? The music gets more distant when colour flows back into my view. It gets stronger, and my thoughts feel alien, when I see grey.
I dodge people on the sidewalk as I enter a grey half-constructed building. I see another man in a black overcoat, bald head and headphones plugged to his ears, enter behind me. The beat of the music pulls me through. Automatically turning corners, climbing hidden staircases in the dark. Entering unnoticeable doorways, down narrow passages. The clear part of my head finds it strange that I possess this knowledge. The directions are coming from my head, induced by the music.
I enter a large cavernous hall, quite suddenly. The ceiling lost in black vacillating shadows, as a cold wind blows through some unseen opening. A large mass of people in various shades of black and grey overcoat congregate together. I look down, I see I’m dark grey. It feels familiar, comfortable. We sway to the music. Pulp fiction soundtrack. It feels right.
A man climbs a raised platform in the front of the hall. He is dressed in dark grey, his head is bald. A picture of his face flashes before my eyes all of a sudden. I see his features much clearer in that flash of truth. I realise I’ve been here for long. Don’t know how long. For eons maybe. This part of me, controlled by this massive underground organisation, with an innocuous façade of a window cleaning company. A sudden realization floods my brain, when I come to recognise the familiar man on the black flyer.
Me.
I’ve been their puppet, just like the others. I respond to music. I kill for music. Through it, because of it. A faceless puppet in the sea of humanity. One amongst many. The blinded sheep.
This strange dawning, in that remote and clear part of my mind, leaves me shocked. However much of that emotion I can feel in that independent, un-intoxicated part of my mind.
I look around and observe everyone around me, when Moby’s
I like it.
No, I love this.
* * *
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