Homecoming (I)

 “Time is little more than just that cruel passerby, unfolding as it passes, perhaps a grand canvas, littered with vignettes, colors, emotions, grey and memories, among a thousand other things. In its eternal, dispassionate search for a destination, they say, it barely pauses for a breath – a moment of compassion, a minute of anxiety, seemingly endless passages of desperation and fleeting joy – nothing ever seems to bother. It is in this canvas that life sketches some of its most every day-looking stories, in juxtaposition with some remarkably strange ones.”

“I wish we could step out of that canvas and paint a world of our own…”

This was “the” thing, he thought. Against a mildly chilly October evening, sipping his tea, he sat on the sidewalks of the “busy” street, smiling, sometimes mumbling. “Busy”, to him was not bustling with people, but rather bustling with theatricality. Colors, silence, props, and a busy backdrop. It was one of those days when he thought he would be the next big thing in the local theater scene. Struggling to contain his excitement, and the tea from spilling out of the mug, he would break into a spontaneous celebration, and sometimes, majestically, at least he thought, would let his hands waltz, as if his stage persona had seamlessly mingled with this world.

It had been growing darker, and the quickly fading dusk was given some space by those street lights dotting the horizon. That scant neighborhood somehow seemed to be the perfect canvas – lamp posts jutting into a not so grey sky sprayed all over with dull stars, and an artiste, in a somewhat restrained expression of his art, struggling to disturb the order of things, poking as if to produce ripples in that reflection. Swaying gently, even as darkness encroached over the trees, he picked up a stone and was about to throw it in the vast emptiness, when, a window over the sidewalk opened. Instantly, he slipped the stone in his pocket, wore an awkward smile, greeted the neighbor and walked on, measuring the success of his latest “theatricality”.

He was someone who could be labeled a trier. Yes, he was not a maverick, not someone who could lead a revolution, not someone who could / would / chose to do things differently. Call it the lack of choice, or its abundance, whatever he had chosen for himself since the last spring, was theater, in any capacity. Not that he had an innate talent, not that he was (not) good at any other “profession”. He was the kind that had no choice but to try a hand at everything he could. More than half of his life was spent trying to convince himself that he was a gifted athlete, a talented musician, a bright scholar and a fluid writer. Unbeknownst to the rest of the world, his gifts "developed and reached a prime", till he got bored of whatever he was involved with, and with a “been there, done that” attitude, shrugged off the little recognition he received from humankind.

He was a family man, something which he did not enjoy - may be because of the responsibility that came along with it, or perhaps because he was all too occupied with himself. By his nonchalance, one could have mistaken him of having gotten bored with his family, though was not so. His wife was pregnant with their third child, although his daughters were not particularly fond of him. They were too inquisitive about why he would not get them that candy floss from that shop. Sometimes they insisted on a particular doll in the marketplace. The father tiredly tried to dissuade them, while the mother used to get them substitutes in the form of lozenges. A family dinner every weekend was a given, and was that bit about being a family man that he would not complain. Not because it was some quality time with his family, but because with every outing, he thought he absorbed something of that external world. Of late, he had developed a keen eye for detail. Saturday evenings provided him with ample. Through all his years in toil, all he could manage was to stumble through the labyrinth of his desires, giving up midway in pursuit of something he thought was his higher calling, and yet, he took enormous pride in recounting his days of yore. Saturday evenings were profligacy for him - a new joint every week, and a new story at every joint to keep his daughters interested in Saturdays.

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Until that Saturday, when he would simply disappear.