Telling Time

Telling time was what it did best – but it was also an indication of how much darker the patch was getting. But now it was gone, and the philosophy that everything material can be replaced with money, seemed a little skewed. As did my perception of everything else.

I sat there – not knowing what I was to do to find some moments of quality solitude. The noise from the thoroughfare outside, along with the garbled music from the TV and music system in the next room suddenly gave me a glimpse of what an asylum might feel like. And some raised voices and pointless disagreements to complete the orchestra.

Witnessing a profoundly hollow matrimonial obligation all my life has left me with close to no faith in the institution. I’ve been watching them for 28 years now – two completely different people – they couldn’t even be called diametric opposites. They were just two strangers brought together by the social imperative of matrimony. And since that also entails procreation, they did that too, almost, sometimes I feel, without any real thought. Like a divine mandate to take the species forward. Well! Nice excuse.

The cacophony is what receives me when I get home after many hours of intellectually battling the hollowness of a work less corporate job. It’s the cacophony of social convenience and compromises, dependency and dramatics, and a little affection thrown in at times. Many generations and personalities at the threshold of explosion – but not quite there for want of indignation – just not prepared to accept and too scared to confront.

Seen from outside, it makes an ideal case study for social scientists. But the gnashing experience of living through the trauma of a social structure in flux is not exactly the best learning. It’s an unending saga of the trials and trepidations of a middle class family that is always unfairly dependant on some of its members for its survival. It’s unacknowledged, unaccounted subjugation, and mental claustrophobia. And a vacuum of a life – that has no experiences to share, no insights to give, and no perspective to offer.