Appetite for Tragedy
Spring was far from his mind. Outside, the merry-go-rounds brimmed over with kids and kites fluttered warmly above rooftops. But inside, the only sound remotely resembling a flutter was the mild letup of loose newspaper ends stirred up by the occasional draught. The walls that blocked the inside of his mind from the spring outside were lined up with damp newspapers. He sat hunched up against one of these walls, recalling the events that had pushed him into depression. He could see no doors or windows in the room – anything that might be a passage to the world outside his mind. There, outside, his friends and family tried desperately to find an inlet. They knocked on the walls of his mind hoping for a trap door so they could reach him and defend the silver linings of his life.
A jumble of recent events floated around in his mind and he was finding it difficult to make much sense of them. Around him, only the dull front pages of newspapers lined the walls. Like a prisoner who carves letters and drawings on the walls of his cell while drifting through time, he had circled every ‘NO’ that occurred anywhere in the newspaper text. Recent times had seemed like a hurtling train of NOs that seemed intent on steamrolling him. It was almost like the world was collectively saying ‘no’ to him, saying, ‘No, you are no good’ and ‘No, you are not welcome.’
The room did have some other ‘decorations’ besides all the newspapers. A table sat in the middle of the room and atop it was a single, flickering candle. It seemed to be in a hurry to embrace the tabletop, with its melted wax spread thin and its stem nearing end. Alongside it lay a box of size just enough to contain a football. Beside him on the floor, a few pieces of broken glass lay strewn around. He had broken the mirror – introspection was painful and feeling angry was much easier.
He sat with his head in his hands, shirt sleeves unrolled. That was an oddity for him since he always liked to have his sleeves rolled up. It seemed that he was too high on despair to care. I say ‘high’ for a reason- ‘highs’ are addictive. On one hand, he was clearly miserable but on the other, it seemed that he himself was the only thing keeping him that way, inside the rotten confines of his mind’s room. This irony made him angry. He felt angry with himself. At times like these, he liked thinking about suicide – it was consoling. Despair and anger formed a labyrinth, which seemed too difficult to escape from. But thinking about suicide told him that there was an escape from all this, from life itself and most of all, from himself.
He became sure that the answer to the big, hanging question that his misery posed for him was inside the box on the table. He became sure that it must be poison. He tried getting up but stumbled. His legs were numb from giving up. But he desperately wanted to put an end to all this, to escape. So he moved toward the box. He moved falteringly, but he moved. The air inside the room was already heavy from being damp and now it carried the added weight of grave anticipation. With trembling hands and a nervous click, he opened the box.
Ting.
Dhishoom.
Straight to his nose. It was a big Jack-in-the-Box. After hitting him in the nose, it went straight over him for the wall behind and made a big hole in it. Sunshine streamed in, dust from the hole dancing in its path. He stood there, shaken up and positively bewildered. Part of his mind had been trying to reach him for quite some time and finally, there had been a breakthrough. “You can climb out now, stupid!” it said to him.
On the glove of the Jack-in-the-Box was written in big, bold letters, ‘LET’S KILL OUR APPETITE FOR TRAGEDY!’
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About the Author: Piyush Goswami
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