A Few Words…

He sat still on his sepia chair staring the blank face of MS word on his ‘Acer laptop’. His eyes kept on pondering through the layers of his upcoming story and meeting unborn characters. After almost half an hour of gazing and thinking he pushed his chair with his back, making some space for his long legs which were literally stuck between the chair and the table. 

    

He picked up a pen from the table, a Reynolds’s bold pen with a very familiar white body and a blue cap. It was hard to understand why he was so fond of pen, even though, he had nothing to do with pen now. It was all on the laptop.  He gradually, almost in slow motion, took the pen to his mouth. The upper part of the cap was chewed, suggesting that it was not the first time when the cap had become the victim of his writer’s block. He started chewing the hapless cap again, perhaps wishing he could extract some potion of creativity from the cap. With a determination and focus, he kept on chewing the cap for almost 15 minutes…the page was still blank.

All of a sudden he threw the pen on the table and sighed. Indicating, the story inside him was yet not uniform and hence could not take shape of words…at least for now. He could feel the strong currents of the story inside him as if it was a high-tide in the ocean of an unknown fable.    

He rubbed his eyes with both of his hand and fixed it on a painting clinging to the front wall. It was hanged a bit low on the wall than usual. It was a painting of a ‘cheetah’ hunting a ‘chinkara’. Studded with vibrant colors and realistic expressions, it was no less than a masterpiece. He probably remembered the place where he purchased this from. It was swarming with pedestrians and slowly crawling vehicles. He scratched his head in frustration of not remembering the name of that place. It was ‘Sheena’ or ‘Fancy’ market or probably something else…situated in the heart of Kolkata.  It was a very hot day when he saw this painting searching a place amongst many other paintings in a shop. It was a co-incident that he saw it and purchased it, was a hard bargain though. He smiled. On the course of enjoying the colors of the painting, he remembered something. He shook his head and wondered whether it was true that one should not keep a painting symbolizing violence in the house, it brings negativity. He kept on observing the violent yet beautiful painting for almost 40 minutes.

His eyes roamed back to the white and wordless page of MS word. He wobbled his head in disgust. He required tranquility to keep his ideas flowing like a stream.

He stood and flipped the painting so that he could no longer be distracted due to that. He moved to the kitchen and put some coffee, sugar and hot milk in a designer cup. After a gradual shake, he returned to the sepia chair.

He closed his inquisitive eyes and took a sip of the coffee. It tasted like a bitter cough syrup prescribed by his family doctor…he hated him. But it was still ok to bring turbulence among the thoughts. He looked at the rather complex menu of MS word. It was office edition 2010. He rolled his lower lips outwards; indicating his inability to understand the menu and its relevance…word 2003 was much easier for sure. And who could forget the office assistant in the earlier versions of MS office.

‘It used to be fun.’ He thought and smiled. He took a few sips of the coffee. Now he was feeling better. He moved back in his chair, adjusted himself comfortably against the ochre cushion and looks up at the wall again. The painting was flipped now. The brown color back of the painting was emitting a rather pale feeling which was good repellant. He clinched his head and focused again on the blank sheet of MS word. It was a murder mystery he wanted to write, a story of a serial killer. He had done all the research. He had the plot and the characters. All he required to do was the arrangement. It had been hours now that he was trying to write a word and somehow he had started to feel that it wasn’t the day.

‘The red, thick blood dripped from her veins and spread on the white floor, giving it a red essence.’  

He stopped for a while and read the line again. It was good, he thought. He stretched his fingers and adjusted himself on the chair. A smile of satisfaction was still on his lips; alas the story had started. He started thinking about the story again, but this time more he thought about the story, more sounds of appreciation he heard in his conscious. A murder mystery of its own kind written by him; he imagined himself sitting in a book signing event. How jealous his friends would be?

Suddenly he remembered something. He quickly minimized the page of the word file and opened the browser. He entered the ‘URL’ of Facebook, he was already logged in. He surfed through the different pages and pictures. He couldn’t remember when he had a long conversation with any of his friends. A quick call or mostly ‘Whatsapp’ was all his social interaction with them these days.

‘Wrote something intriguing today, going strong…hell ya’

He tweeted. He had 500+ followers on twitter but he didn’t know most of them. These followers never tweeted or re-tweeted anything. They were just numbers…but who cares…number is all what people see. He remembered how he was criticized when he shared a line from his story. His friends said that there was too much gore and blood in that.

He restored the word page again. All he could read was ‘blood’ in bold. He closed his eyes and allowed a big sigh out of his mouth. He shook his head and deleted the first line of his story which he thought could win a ‘booker’s award’ for him someday. The page was blank again.

He bumped his fist on the table in frustration. The laptop jumped and settled down again on the same place. Could his thoughts reach out to him across layers of skepticism, shards of cynicism and fog of unreal friends?

He stood and walked towards the storeroom. A foul smell filled his nostrils. He opened the door and entered the room. The whole room was chilled like a cold storage. He stepped forward and switched on the lights. The whole room was divided in little compartments. He moved ahead slowly and observed every compartment keenly. His palate was in writing, some real writing. He stretched his hand and started stroking something. It was a dead body of a girl. A thin line of blood was still visible on her white face. He kissed the body on its forehead. Once, she was his girlfriend…now she was his research.

Every compartment of that room was occupied by a dead body. He slowly walked by every dead body with a grin on his face. Every one of them had a familiar face. They were his friends, the friends who never appreciated his writing. They thought his research was an utter insanity. His dedication towards his writing was nothing but a faux. They made fun of his writing and laughed their heart out on his dreams. He heard everyone until his birthday. They had decided to ruin his birthday party by asking him to quit writing and do something more fruitful. And his girlfriend, who once claimed to be his number one fan, also supported the nuisance of his friend. Nobody cherished his dreams and nobody noticed the tears falling seamlessly from his eyes that day. He poisoned them all. It had been 3 days and nobody knew that where are they? He had made that store a sanctuary of ACs to save the bodies from decaying. Now, all of these bodies were serving as an inspiration for his new murder story.

He went back to the laptop and started typing flawlessly.