Feline Musings

 The Loss

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I sighed. I was unaware of how long I had been sitting there. A message had been dropped at home by a client who wanted me work on his new project, but I was too drained to start work anew. The creative juices had been sapped out, the strength depleted; a part of me it seemed had followed her to another world, across the astral plane. I would look at the stars at night and wistfully whisper her name, imagining she was one of the million stars, and I could coax her to come back to me. The glimpse of a shooting star in the dark horizon had filled me with hope, but as the stars disappeared into the fold of dawn, I knew my entreaties were futile.

He came to meet me on the insistence of a friend. He had initially believed that it was a manifestation of grief and hoped that I would soon recover. Everyone hoped I would recover, except for me. I didn’t want recovery, I wanted an escape. An escape into the arms of my beloved, who had so treacherously stolen me of the pleasure of holding her hand, and sharing the weirdest of my dreams and imagination. When I lost her, I stopped articulating my thoughts and my imagination was lost in the absence of rendition. Gloom was replaced by blankness, and loneliness engulfed me with strong talons when I was in a crowd. I was secluded from people and work but not from her memories. My room became my refuge – if Death had to find me, He wouldn’t have to look around much.

The Revelation

He looked uneasy standing in the doorway. It surprised me each time to see how he had still not got used to the constant curtain of gloom, despair and grievance, which hung around him by virtue of his profession. Maybe he was too sensitive to be a doctor, but here he was in the same capacity wanting to drive the ghosts away from me with a magic pill. I looked in his direction, and nearly told him that I was not haunted by ghosts of the past, but under the spell of love and longing. His eyes met mine and he cleared his throat.

“I hear you have not been keeping well.” He said, as he sat down.

“A man is not allowed his share of silence. If I am silent, does it mean I am unwell?” I retorted.

“You need some fresh air.” He prescribed, as he checked my pulse and blood pressure, and thrust a thermometer in my mouth.

I rolled up my eyes in exasperation but I did not resent the probing. Sometimes, it’s amusing to see another human being take the trouble of knowing you better, when you have lost yourself in the maze of your thoughts.

The doctor was murmuring something about taking a blood test for I had a fever. I was looking at the electric kettle in the corner of the room, oblivious to the arrangements that the doctor made to draw a sample of my blood. I had switched on the electric kettle minutes before, and a steady line of vapor rose in the air. As the syringe pricked a vein, I could almost feel the pain of the water as it smoldered and was transformed into steam. Transformation from one form to another was instantaneous but not without complex occurrences.

The steam became a mist, rose further up and spread across the room. I stood in the morning mist, unaware of my surroundings, when a vision quickly flitted before my eyes. The rustle of the leaves, sounded like the rustle of her gown, a strange tinkling seemed to be the sound from the tiny ornaments in her bracelet, while the call of the nesting birds beckoned me to follow her.

The rustling and the whispering were replaced by the shuffle of feet and a self-conscious monotone. I only heard the doctor say he was leaving but would be back tomorrow with the report. I got up to close the door behind him and switched off the kettle before the mist engulfed me again.

The Transformation

“The treatment you took two years back has failed. The infection has set in again, and your neglect has accentuated the festering. It’s irreversible. You have invited Death to your doorstep.” The doctor admonished me as the unopened envelope containing my blood reports, lay unattended on my lap.

I let his words sink in. A brief glow illuminated my face and my eyes glimmered with the light of a madman. I could have hugged the doctor but I displayed restraint. Some thoughts are best left to be caressed and relished in the realm of solitude. My lips expressed gratitude for his efforts; my heart uttered gratitude to the powers above, for cutting short my pained existence. I was filled with elation – the thought of union with my beloved predominated any other idea. What did the doctor say – “a couple of months, maybe a quarter of a year, not more than that.”

“How will this time pass,” I mulled. “Maybe I will take up the editing job that was offered to me. It wasn’t a long project anyway.” I decided.

The smell of the first showers intoxicated me. A gust of wind sprayed my face with icy rain drops, as I reached to close the window. I took a deep breath. The showers were heavy and had caught unaware many passers-by. A tiny puddle was created and a small child splashed in the water gleefully. I could almost feel the pleasure of the child, and in my mind I protested more vehemently than him when his mother pulled him away with a slap on the bottom. The child in me wanted to enjoy the rain and the mud. I felt light-hearted and child-like.

Somebody had sent me flowers – pink roses. I touched the petals, and they felt baby soft. Or was a baby’s skin soft like a rose petal, I thought. In my mind’s eye I almost touched a baby swaddled in pink cloth. I sighed at the miracle of life; I was almost amazed by the thought of life. A movement caught my eye. A tiny insect was scrambling within the folds of a pink rose. Each time it tried to get to the further end of the petal, from where it could escape, it slid down into the deeper recesses. I felt sorry for the little insect. I felt compelled to assist it in its escape. Without even my realizing it, the call of Death and obliteration were becoming alien to me.

My editing chair creaked as I looked at the speckles in the corner of the still. I had to remove them and I stared leisurely into the computer screen. I was enjoying this task and was putting deep thought into each frame. I will replace the speckles of dust with silver flakes as if the ground she walks upon becomes precious with each step that she takes. I liked the idea; I closed my eyes and relished the thought. I bent down the scooped the silver flakes, and felt the sand run down the gaps in my closed palm. I suddenly, panicked. Time was running out on me, like the silver sand! I looked up at the girl in the frame. She was looking at me with a question in her eyes. “I want to live.” I told her. She smiled at me and moved on, leaving a deep trail in the sands of time.

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