Monday, August 30, 2010

Untitled

I could have lived a better life thinking I was going to die tomorrow. But I have a long life to live. Isolation has made me forget many words and emotions, made my life as meaningless as the words I have created in this prison cell. My reality is a dying reality. It's just another nightmare. Hope springs and fades like a wet-dream; I try to run, but it always stays by my side. Pain will gradually creep in soft-footed, carrying the lantern of remembrance: the darkness is immersed in recollections, and the heart is burdened by long-forgotten sorrows.
I was a washed-up film-maker on a comeback trail, with loneliness by my side. I had tried my hand at many odd jobs, but nothing really worked. Every girl I loved would leave me within a month: film-making was my only hope, everything else seemed so meaningless. I made forty films within a couple of years, all in my head. And now I wanted to direct a movie in real life. Real life. It had lost all it's significance: there was nothing called 'reality' in my life. The indifference of producers, the snobbery of reputed directors and the ignominions mockery of aspiring colleagues were dreams which would soon disappear. But nothing changed: I was trapped in my dreams by my reality.
It's a funny thing about life: no matter how desperate you are, there's always a right or wrong to choose: conscience is the most paradoxical realm in the human mind. I used to walk in the rain, but still returned with blood-stains on my shirt. My semi-automatic had the power to change my reality, and made me feel like a king in the lonely city-streets where beggars and criminals shared equal space during the night. The rich folks were the only victims. We were responsilble for our lives for a few hours in the dark; we always slept during the day, and committed crime during the most silent hours of night. It was a compulsion initially, but slowly became an addiction. Violence is the greatest addiction in life; we ruled the streets of violence for almost a year before getting caught. Everything that followed was merely an epilogue to a violent film.
This prison cell has protected me from alienation, but the violent impulses still remain: the mortifications on my body testify the fact. Anger billows up, and gushes out from the veins: sometimes I feel the urge of slashing them. But I have a long life to live.

Rajdeep Pal

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