My Thought and I

The rain and the dark clouds make for a gloomy day for everyone but writers it seems. Writers are a lot like earthworms – they function only on these gloomy days, churning the earth of their minds to make it a fertile place for the crop of thoughts to grow on it.

The clouds seemed to be getting darker and darker with each passing moment. The weather is a great excuse for people in India not to work. I guess it’s the gloominess of the dark clouds that play on our mind. That perhaps explains why people in certain parts of the country don’t work at all; it can be traced back to the incessant amounts of rainfall that they witness.

I sat there, staring at the window outside. There were thoughts making circumambulations outside the periphery of the conscious mind. All that resonated in the mind was a song, which I kept humming along. It is a fairly popular song, though what stood out for me were the lyrics. Being a man of the word, that is what attracts my attention all the time. The rhythm of words, the fluidity of language – that is what captures my attention nowadays.

I don’t drink tea or coffee. Not that I don’t like it; my body does not allow me to. However, the tune in the mind more than made up for it. The weather kept me humming. The strange thing about humming is that people keep staring at you as if there is something wrong with you. But I don’t mind. In a bunch of fools, one who stands out does not become a bigger one. And so the hum kept on. Even as I moved around at work, and with a distracted mind as mine, the song persisted. It was just one of those pleasant moments that do not offer anything exceptional, anything exciting. One however does not mind them; it is a good state of mind, one that helps to deal with several circumstances and situations at work that are not necessarily great and do not inspire confidence.

All of a sudden, I spot a figure moving around me. I spot it as a shadow falling over my shoulders, flitting around. Puzzled, I look around to see who it is, and I am shocked.

A figure is standing, looking down at me. This figure looks exactly like me, though he perhaps decided to wear glasses to look distinct from me. There is a smirk on his face, though it is impossible for me to guess the reason for this contemptuous look. Have I done something wrong? Who is he? Questions swirl around in my mind even as I begin to notice a strange thing – everything around me is standing still. By everything, I mean everyone around me stands frozen in time. Nature though trails it own course as usual. The rain falls with its usual rhythm, humming away gently. Wisps of vapour continue to rise from the mugs of coffee that endless people held frozen as they were.  He keeps staring at me, and then starts walking. I know he wants to follow me, though the visible motion is absent. Somehow, it is a connection of our minds – no, our souls – that resonates and communicates signals, that makes up for the absence of words or any human sound that could have existed, but which got frozen in time.

We walk out of the building being guarded by a frozen body with a stoic expression. I wonder what the guard must have been thinking at that moment, since the face revealed nothing but a sense of deep thought. I wish this moment would enable me to also read the frozen thoughts like reading parchments of paper. Our thoughts, I think, are like those old time parchments that roll up, which used to carry messages for people of yore. No, they are rather like framed photos on a long shelf; we have a look at them, and then put them back to where they belong.

The raindrops wet me, and yet there is a kind of warmth in them I never experienced.  The tingling sensation that the drops cause on trickling down the various contours of the body is conspicuous by its absence; rather, the rain seems to have hugged me, taken me into its fold like a long lost kin meeting after a long time. This sense of comfort is hard to come by amongst humans today. Perhaps I was missing it, as he kept staring at me with a faint smile, the glasses hiding the true intent of the smile by covering his eyes.

“Who are you?” I wanted to sincerely ask the question, and yet the warmth of the sheets of rain comforted me, as if substituting for the answer, trying to satiate my curiosity in ways that I could not have known till then. The question seemed to hang in mid-air, reverberating with the rhythm of the weather. The eyes had a strange depth to them, and yet they had a warning flashing in them. It felt as if they wanted to say – do not go any further; you are in for a terrible shock. The silhouette of the rain was invisible on him. And yet, yet he exuded an expression that felt familiar, comforting.

“I am Thought,” said the guy, as if reading my mind. 

I woke up with groggy eyes, only to see my boss staring at me with a stern look. How did he get to know what I was up to? I scrambled, only to spill reams of paper all over the floor.

He walked away, staring at me, leaving a horde of guffawing people. Soon, they were back at their desks. But the sensation was still there. It refused to go away. Is this what thought is like? I thought, even as I realized that my hair was wet, which is strange, because I did not recall going out.

Or was the dream another dimension of reality?