Late evening, after a casual autumn day.
Somewhere in a casual living room with a weekend mood.
Some space filled with a lot of suspended enthusiasm of a forthcoming commotion.
A gentle aroma of spices and uncooked food hangs in the air.
A few hush hush voices reverberate around, just adding to the tension.
A lull before the gentle storm, rather a fresh gush of wind.
Tomorrow is a holiday, and with a sigh of hope, if it only could have been an eternal truth.
Work and the pressure of it continue to pile up with each passing moment.
Recreation now is also with a pressure to perform.
The door bell rings to announce the arrival of the first batch of friends, rather colleagues and faint acquaintances.
Tonight is a bonfire night, a throw back to the primal times, when we literally had to hunt for food.
Don’t we still do?
The briquettes are dropped into the pyre with a loud crank.
No smoke, only heat is the message they give. Loud and clear.
The matchbox is called in for a constant duty.
Sparks fly, and crash-lands into a number of unsuccessful missions.
The droplets of fuel splash into the black pool.
Too many cooks perhaps.
And just before losing patience, we have fire.
Violent, roaring and symbolic.
The background score is of the tinkling of glasses, one can even hear the slight splash of the liquid it holds.
With each splash of fuel the flame rises again and again, like a phoenix out of a dead soul.
Yet the heat is so cold.
As the night creeps in unnoticeably, the black briquettes turn red like a chameleon.
The sound gradually becomes noise, loud bursts of laughter, and clueless thoughts are woven into disillusioned sentences.
Somehow, it was all very distant and unreal.
Yet you get scarred and charred by the burn.
As time blows by, you can hear the passage of each and every second.
The night grows older, and the time becomes wilder.
Memories start to roll in ashore from the depths of the ocean.
Each wave seems to slash harder and harder at you.
Till you become numb.
You can hardly feel the presence of the present.
The masks fall off as the blue heat from the red charcoal creates the haze.
Voices become more jumbled up and muffled.
And the mind floats across so far away form the maddening crowd.
Far away from the present, far away from the past and future.
Into a different dimension
A place and time all different from the ones we know.
You don’t want to come back to the numbness of social clatter.
As time gets charred by the midnight heat, you get the scar of it as well.
After being disillusioned and senseless of time and timings.
And with a little blabber here and there,
The hunting gets over as silently as it had started.
And even when you wonder whether you were the game or the hunter.
The game is over.
Tomorrow is another normal day.
1 comment:
To me it sounds like the gibberish of a barbecued mind. :)
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