It’s a sultry summer afternoon. It’s been a long time since I was properly awake. How long? Half a year perhaps. I keep part of me numb, neglected. I don’t let it rise, wake, talk to me, think and make decisions in my life. That part is me, perhaps. Perhaps that part hides the happiness I have been sorely missing for so long, perhaps that part can tell me things and give me directions, take away some of the stagnation and frustration that the rest of I face.

Why have I kept it drugged and don’t want to talk to it, and look away when it tries to look into my eyes?

Because it is also the messenger from The Chamber. It is the home of deep thought, and deep thought will always slowly and inevitably take me there, down that slippery manhole, inch by inch, lighting up the dark universe and life with every inch, taking me farther away from domestic, confined life and my friends with every inch.

It was my birthday yesterday. Me and my four friends (Sushreyo, Sanjana, Bibaswan and Aratrika, also known as Sus or Admiral Mishra, Saniana, Bibs or Erik or DJ and Ratri) went to watch Life in a Metro. It was a very nice movie. When we came out, it was raining. Got a little soaked. We dropped off Sus and went to Ratri’s place. We hung around there for some time, then left. I felt good. I got a pair of shades, a perfume, a photo frame and a music CD I’m listening to right now. Four friends, four presents. Sis gave me a t-shirt that later revealed a lot of little holes in it which the sellers had concealed very craftily with some material that had dissolved away with the first wash. But the thing looks good on me. Actually, I look good in it.

I also got a nice e-mail from Rajyashree also known as Rai who isn’t gonna call because her results haven’t been good. Don’t ask me any more about that policy; it’s not mine.

That she I used to mention a lot earlier in my writing didn’t call. She’s going out with someone. I think she forgot my birthday. Don’t care a pair of fetid dingo’s kidneys.

Today’s hot and sultry again after the rain. I positively hate it.

Oh, the other day I descended on an ascending escalator after I came out of the subway. The ones who made the ascending escalators also kept sensors at the top for some reason, so that it starts to go up even if you approach it from the top.

Well, I’ve been wanting to do something away from normal for sometime because I’ve been feeling I’ve killed my inner child, so I’ve been thinking about going down ascending escalators for some time. That day I decided to take the chance. Everyone crosses the road in the middle of heavy traffic because that’s a shortcut. No one takes the subway that connects the two sides of the road.

I took a look around and approached the thing. It whined to life and started coming up. I stepped, then took back my foot. Then  stepped again and started stepping down very quickly. At the top, it was like a treadmill, with the stairs rising and disappearing into the floor behind me. But then I gradually began to move down slowly. Halfway through I thought it was easy, if only I could imagine that the stairs were stationary. Then I realized that they really weren’t moving any more. I got off at the foot, and just as I was doing so, the sensors at the foot got it moving again.

I later figured out why it had stopped halfway. After a sensor is triggered, the escalator is meant to move for only the time it takes for the step at the bottom t reach the top, or perhaps a bit more than that, because some people may miss a step or two after the thing has started moving.

When I was going down, I had to move against the escalator going up beneath me, so I took a much longer time to go down. The escalator, however, had stopped after its scheduled time, because it wasn’t tuned to understand that a person was actually going down the thing rather than coming up, although in the first place the thing started moving because a sensor was triggered at the top.

Anyway, I enjoyed it a lot and was pretty happy, and if I can remember right, there was this guy coming when I was stepping off at the bottom, and he was a little surprised to see me getting off at the bottom of an escalator that was going up. Yes, he’d seen it was going up at that moment, because I’d triggered the bottom sensors again.

I’ve also designed a blank blue T-shirt with the words who am i? The i? is positioned into the two segments of yin and yang by using their two dots. The two segments have been separated and shifted away from each other a little to induce a swirly look, and the whole thing is in black and white on the background of blue. A little black has faded after the first wash, but it isn’t noticeable. It looks good. I’m very happy with it.

1Life.