TO HELL AND BACK

Have you ever seen hell? I certainly have. It does not have grotesque men and sultry, half naked women that make you feel hard pressed to keep your testosterone count in check. It is in a small room. One which I call my 'living space'. It has cigarette butts lying all over the floor, a solitary notebook that the sole resident uses to give vent to the zillion thoughts that lie dormant, rise up sensing some activity and again go back to sleep in the mazelike constitution of his brain. And of course, it contains the resident himself.

How much of an actor could this resident be? Let's see. Well, for the record, this resident walks twenty minutes from home at night to sample the best food on offer and makes small talk about a couple of girls with two others who share his 'living space' with him. Didn't I say he was the sole resident of his 'room'? The thought is probably an apt reflection of his suitably demented mind. Nonetheless, solitary confinement reeks, especially when it is mental , not physical.

The next morning , our devil incarnate wears ironed clothes, polished shoes and a particular label(whether it is to help him maintain a separate identity of his own or to help his kind flock together as proud members of the same family, is beyond my comprehension) and goes to work.The card , in some crazy manner, exemplifies the duality of existence - of all things, tangible and intangible. He forgets all about Che Guevara and Greenpeace movements. He realises that even Greenpeace is fuelled by greenbucks. Oblivious to what he often dreams about, he plays the actor. Torn between His world and the real one, he chooses reality. It seems to him to be the only logical way out of this quagmire. Isn't software development all about this one word - 'LOGIC'? He learns not to mock at the desultory lives of lesser mortals( their life is all about getting involved in holy matrimony and procreating more androids in their own mould). He makes up his mind, and chooses not to spend his life in a wild goose chase in search of his real self. And all in the matter of a few light years. And he gets aboard the bus to his workplace ( the driver is honking the horn and signalling him to step into it). Once seated, he lapses into a state of sleep (I prefer to call it contented decay).