Skipping Stone

It’s been a long time since I wrote down anything of this sort.

The world outside is shifting from light to dark now. Perceptibly. So many little vignettes stretched across one’s vision when one looks out at this poor old Kolkata in the evening.

I listened to the song called Fireflies by Owl City and also watched the video. I don’t know why I liked it a lot.

When you look at the earth from a satellite, say, you see the shadow line tracing itself across the earth, and the lights coming up in the dark side. But in some places , there are no lights coming up. I would like to go to those places. Like Masai Mara or the Sahara Desert or the Pacific Ocean or Antarctica.

The colour of the sky now is called mauve. Then it will change to navy, then a darker navy, and stay that way. Why do we never see green in the sky?

I have a swelling the size of a small seed underneath the skin on my right forearm, near the elbow. If you press it too hard, it hurts. The doc said it’s a tumour from nerve cell sheaths that will grow very slowly. But in one in a million cases, it becomes cancerous.

I know it’s a waste of thought, but if I were told that I have cancer and so-and-so years to live, how would I react? Would I be happy? Has anyone ever been happy with such news? I think I’ll be happy if it’s ten years or so, but a few months or something like that would be bad. But frankly, you never know till you are really given the news.

There’s a difference between knowing the path and walking the path.

Does life become easier or harder for a man doomed to die? The positive part is that everyone sympathizes, everyone helps, everyone is nice, and the girlfriend that was being a bitch stops being a bitch etc. You are rid of a lot of burdens. But the negative part if that you are also rid of your ambitions and dreams and to-do lists.

Ah, life. The ultimate question. What are you? What is not life? Is there a difference? Or are we waiting for a unification, like electricity and magnetism? Maybe life and not life is just a difference of perspective.

Humanity achieves by cumulative advancement. Discoveries and knowledge are accumulated and improved on. If one is suddenly faced with the enormity of the innovations of our technology and science, it would be impossible to believe that such a thing exists. But it’s just like evolution. Gradual and cumulative progress.

I am giving up on people. I frankly don’t get them. Someone said that the worst pain in life is when someone you know turns into someone you knew. That doesn’t necessarily refer to death. I mean, the person stays alive, but the one you knew is not there any more.

This happened to me in 2006. It took me by surprise.

And again now.

I am growing bitter and irritated every day and my words come out lashing at whatever they get hold of. I don’t like this me. It reminds me of someone I know and don’t want to be like.

But I am happy now, because I wrote this. This is my happiness.

Ah, happiness. What are you?

What is colour? What is pain? What is contentment?

A voice told me, crying, at midnight yesterday, that she would call me first thing in the morning.

It’s almost 7 pm now. She hasn’t called.

I wish I could cease to care.

But this is how things are. This is how things just happen and you never get enough time to figure it out or plan or theorize or analyze, and in the middle of all that continuous mess and hullabaloo, time slinks away like a thief, and suddenly you are faced with a life that you have lived away without knowing when you lived it.

But let’s not think about this too much. It will bring me down. I don’t want to bring me down. So I don’t think about anything too much.

This is why you see that I hop from one thought to another.

Just like a skipping stone.

1Life.

Tags: skipping, stones