Drone On

TRIGGER WARNING: Some gore, anxiety

From the start of the day, droning on, you didn’t really realize when and where the time went. Before you know it, it’s time to head back. You haven’t bathed in two days because the water wasn’t there, now your hair’s itchy.

Bombay is crowded. And sticky. It sticks to you.

At first you thought it was all inviting, with warm beaches, hands that clasped gently to ease you into this fast-paced lifestyle. Now, you see what has actually happened. The city is a Venus flytrap: it’s red and ripe, and you eye it and rush to it. Then, when you’re not looking, it closes in on you. Better, actually, because the Venus flytrap is not as subtle as the city. The very air, humid and coarse, sticks to you, and you shake your shoulders trying to get the clinging sensation off but it won’t leave you. It will never leave you.

You have been bingeing on rap songs by Eminem, trying to break them down and analyse their rhyming patterns. And now you can’t think in anything except rhymes. At first it’s nice, but after so many times, it’s annoying.

It’s a slowly increasing noise, you don’t even know you’re feeling disturbed. Just like the city’s cling, you don’t know how fucked you are in your head, until you open your stupid smart-phone and check your Instagram.

Photos. Of the lady you love. On the beach.

Of course, now, you get irrational thoughts. Maybe she’s cheating on you (even though you agreed to an open relationship, it’s biting you in the back now). Maybe she hates you and that’s why she’s out having fun without you. Maybe.

You’re staring into the distance, you look worried as fuck, partly because you’re in the first class when you have a pass for the second class. A ticket-checker sees you and asks you if you have a pass or a ticket. You reply with ‘pass’. You know he was asking if you had a first class pass, but you have a pass so technically you didn’t lie, and he looks at you, judges you from bottom to top. You try to stop shivering, and look confident, and he lets you go without checking the pass, confident in his own assessment, which you know is wrong.

Something is going to go wrong, you just know it.

You decide at the next station you’re changing compartments, and going back to the second class where you really belong, and can then breathe a sigh of relief.

Now you change tracks, and you’re near Dadar, which is where everyone gets out and there’s empty space inside to hide away. The cramped feeling was what you were trying to get away from anyway, but as soon as no one else is there, leaving you alone with your thoughts, you wish they’d come back and suffocate the hell out of you, so you didn’t have time to think about things you wish wouldn’t happen but still will somehow happen.

That’s when things start to derail, you’d much sooner the real train derailed than this train of thought of yours keep going on its path. You’re wondering about the pictures of the girl you love you saw a while back, and wondering who she must be with right now. It’s just been two or three texts since the morning, and she’s been out on the beach all day. You know she’s cheating on you with someone, you know she is. You wish she were, just so you are proved right, so you can stop feeling the grief of wondering, and start feeling the grief of being right.

Between two griefs, one’s better than the other. This one is anguish, that one certain. Although it’s another bother.

Then you remember your station is about to come, and this one is a ‘fast’ train, meaning that it stops at very few stations. As such, when the last station comes, the crowd rushes in before the train has even stopped, and fight like animals for seats for the long journey. You have to shake yourself to stop shaking, and blink two or three times to stop from zoning out and detaching yourself completely. You can’t wait to get home to write about all this so that you can bleed through words, and avoid bleeding out by cutting your veins out. That would be a nice way to go.

The city is cramped. It is cramped, and you can’t breathe.

You get off two stations before your station so that you don’t have to encounter the horde of clamouring passengers ready to tear your limbs off for a seat. You remember that time you nearly died when you were pushed off of your feet by people looking for a seat, when you were trying to get out of a Virar Fast at Churchgate.

Why is she where is she who are you to her?

On the way back, you remember there’s no shower at home, and you’ll have to shiver through a cold bucket of water through your head just to jerk yourself awake enough to keep going.

In the distance, you hear ambulances, and wonder if some lucky soul died and ended right there, descended into the depth of what can only be warmer, yet more crowded, than this haven above. You see smoke, and you hope something’s on fire but it’s just some roadside roasted-chana seller’s coal-stove. There’s no scope.

You know something’s going to go wrong today, you just know it.

You don’t want to end the day. There’s the thin streak of red at the horizon. You can’t see the horizon, you have to imagine it. Repress your tears. Why are you even thinking about crying? So random. Everything’s random; everything’s gone to hell.

You can feel it in your bones. Beyond your bones, really. Something will go wrong today.

Sure enough, this one man walking opposite you, collides into you, and the signal is red for the walkers, but green for the cars, and you can’t see a single star, because of course you can’t, it’s Bombay, don’t forget, everyone comes here to pursue their dreams, and so did you, what dreams, all day you feel like screaming, and then this man now collides into you, and there’s a truck that’s coming your way, and you don’t even lift your hands up to save yourself because what’s the point, what’s the point in anything really, and the sentence keeps going on and on because you were studying filmmaking and learnt of this concept of the long-take that keeps the audience invested and keeps the tension rising but you don’t factor into account that writing is different from filming and it’s too late because the truck’s headlights are onto you like spotlights on a ballerina and all the worms digging around in your brains making your eyes zone out are thrown around in a clatter as your body meets steel, and now it all feels much better. It’s a lot more slippery and red, but it feels much better.

Much better…

Much better…

Much better.