Eyes

I could not find it in me to post anything for today. So I thought of posting a fragment I wrote on the spur of the moment. The effort was to portray the vacuum inside the protagonist, being thrown back at him by the external and internal environment. Tall words, I know! Hardly justifiable by the effort, yet, here it is, for better or for worse.

“ ……so it was an ordinary evening, Quite lame, quite dull, without any purpose whatsoever, an evening patented by the listless, the tired and the bored, an evening full of non-events, where everything looks dreary and copied.

He too had no special intentions. Just walk on until he was tired-out, until it gets dark and the lights come on.

In spite of his resolution to do so, there was a change of plans.

Now he sat on a bench in the Marine drive. The sea seemed distant, not immediate, though very near. The roar of the waves was muted by the noises from the city. With some amount of expectation he had looked at the horizon to see the play of colours. However, the sky appeared bleak, displaying some grey and brown brush strokes distributed thickly at the edges.

He was not disappointed, for such things are to be expected on such a day. As he turned away from the sea, he felt slightly disturbed. As if some thing was intruding into his consciousness, something alien, and antagonistic. He searched the neighborhood to locate the cause. Usually these originate from the human element, eyes being the most obvious irritant, nevertheless, all who were around seemed wholly engaged in their own activities, none paying any attention to others.

However, he soon regained composure. I am being neurotic; there are no spying eyes around. Even if there is, it should be natural. People are inquisitive, curious to learn some thing from their surroundings. They would look, listen and murmur. There is nothing strange or mysterious in it.

In his turn, he now began to look at the people around him, searching for something amusing, interesting, in them. Once again, he was not disappointed, for he only found a mass of faces, which were blank and emotionless, just as the evening was. He hoped some of them would smile at least, to one another. Perhaps there is nothing to be happy about in such an evening.

Feeling fed up, he now stood up, undecided which way to move. …….”