...obeying the voices in my head...

Saturday, May 01, 2010

20 seconds

When there’s a gun pointing to your head, you realize how meaning springs into your life. A sense of predefined purpose which was lost in all the cacophony of living the life “they” wanted you to live. Can you still comprehend what the true desire is? Would you know what you and only you wanted to do in this life. Do those things that come purely from your own desires, without any influence from an outside force. Can you feel the individuality of your purpose?
When there’s a gun pointing to your head, do you feel the insides crack? You feel your arachnophobia or the agoraphobia is now invalid. You are embroiled in the totality of fear, ready to defend your own self from any pinprick of unseen circumstances. Fears melt down to one single existence. The perceptions change from a person who took life for granted to a person who feels the extreme importance in those imperceptible things, the ones that do not come within your definition of life. The little things you tend to miss out while compressing your life in a few flashes before your eyes.
When there’s a gun pointing to your head, what difference does it make? Your hollowed existence sticks out to scream at the insufficiency that you led till now. You never tasted life. You kept it on the side so that you can build and keep building more structure to your life, so that at the end of it all when you feel you have earned it…that’s when you indulge. But why wait when the reward is right in front of you? Why toil to earn it? Do we need to be awarded tokens of acknowledgment from what others think of us? Are we that dependent on others in shaping ourselves? We fail at living. Coz we forgot what it means. It’s now a memory beyond recall. Maybe.
When there’s a gun pointing to your head, whom do you think about the most? Do you think about the love that filled your vacuous existence? Do you think about the ones who loved you? But then why would you think of anyone but yourself. Why think about those who are soon going to be memories? To cushion the oncoming blow by the memories that you thought were “unconditional” and “pure”? Is it that hard to not see yourself reflecting on each one of your actions? To verify how unconditional they were and measure the magnitude of purity that was so obvious. It withers away. It’s not the cynicism, but the harsh reality that you can only be the one person. The one and the individual! Only one.
When there’s a gun pointing to your head, how many questions tend to…
“Done thinking?” The gunman smiled.
“I don’t…I….Not quite.” I stutter.
He slowly moves his hand with gun in his firm grip. His hand slides to his left still in the air. His sleeves flay in the violent wind that lashes the empty landscape. His eye twitches and the right corner of his mouth goes up to take the form of a malicious yet benign smile.
“Do you think this was a joke?” He yells. His face calm.
“I didn’t get the time to think about that.” I regain my ability to speak.
He takes a few steps back. The left hand was still in the air, with the gun pointing west.
His index finger touches the trigger. Even though he was far I could sense the pressure that he applied on the trigger. I could feel it as if it was me doing it. The weight of the gun was in my hand. The bullet that was lodged inside the gun was waiting. The pressure builds up. The trigger was not light. He had to bend his hand to add slow pressure to the finger. My elbow twitched. The trigger was suppressed, but only half way through. It was on the threshold of release. A door was to be opened. Freedom.
He clamped his teeth together with a look of intensity. My jaw was taut. There was an instinctive propensity to release the gun, but my hand shivered. He pointed it at me now. My hand was hovering near my head. The threshold was here. He was not. I was.
The pull was not hard. The gun was a trigger now.
Click.
Silent and Black. No vision. No tunnel.
Just a distant hum escalating as it came nearer. The Doppler.
The upsurge. The crescendo. The climax!
I fell. But I felt it. I felt the ground. All was black, but I still felt the ground.
I fell…and my left leg was the only part that was on the bed.

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