THE BOMB - PART TWO

I stood for three-quarters of the journey on my way home today, losing three opportunities to sit down in the process, pretending that they didn’t slip away without me letting them to, although there was no need to pretend, the world can’t care. I was frustrated, though. Painted a grin on my face to cover-up the fact that I was freaked out by this really oily-haired boy who was determinedly bumping his head against my pants, falling asleep. I tried to not think of the act as deliberate, but I couldn’t bring myself to try to try. I rescued my backpack a couple of times from a couple of people who almost stepped on it as I listened to ‘Draw the Line’ by David Gray, because I couldn’t afford that, it had my laptop in it. And I can’t afford my laptop, it’s a fact.

Crowd cleared a little at the CMBT, but it’s always the place that never makes a difference, for they get in as they step out, it’s a real life scenario of John Mayer’s ‘Wheel’, and one can’t help but eat when force-fed, because spitting out only makes the world dirtier. I counted five: five men, five suitcases, four made of wood and one made of leather. And I’m talking about the suitcases, and they were fairly big, so they occupied about half the length of the bus; half the place that’s there for standing. I’m not being the stickler over here, and I wasn’t, either. I was too busy watching the men and studying them, to be one. Beards. Paan. Safaris, slacks and Kurtas too. Exotic. ‘Same old, same old’.

I wished the bus weren’t speeding. I wished I could get down.

I started to ponder about who would survive. I wondered if I’d make it, I wondered if it could be the turning point of my life, where they get to find that I’m like David Dunn (from ‘Unbreakable’) and that I can’t be broken, and that a list of people who didn’t make it through would never have me on it, unless it’s a list of those who drowned, because I know for a fact that I can’t swim. I thought about Matt Damon’s emphatic monologue from ‘Good Will Hunting’, the multiple references of ‘shrapnel in the ass’ (weird, because there was a box right behind me), I thought about comic imitations of a blast, where the victims stand in rags, covered in soot, blowing smoke which they inhaled just a second ago, I wondered if I could get away with nothing more than a puff of smoke, except that I don’t smoke and the world’s no stage either. I thought of how the heat could scald my skin, how I’ve never felt anything more than ‘tolerable’ before, wondered how it could feel to be pounded by nails and bolts and bits and pieces of metal, and I thought again if I would die or if I’d survive and I remembered how I’ve never died before, and that it’s always dilemmatic as to whether one could wish for what he hasn’t felt already, but then again, there’s no one around who can tell me not to, and get away with it convincingly. A kind man then put my face at risk than my behind, by asking me to take the seat beside his, for he had seen me stand for too long. And then, as I sat, I secretly resolved that if I don’t get down by the time this song (‘Jackdaw’, David Gray) ends, I might possibly not get down again. Consciously alive, that is.

I got down before the bridge of the song, having replayed it twice on my way. I guess I can’t do much about metropolitan traffic.

xxxxxxxxxx

I’m not John Carpenter, for heaven’s sake. I’m not for cheap thrills, especially if I’m involved in one (I doubt if he’d be, either, if the thrill’s on him). I don’t fear blood, I just don’t like to see it flow out of me in amounts that I wouldn’t appreciate. Cuts are nasty, bruises last for weeks, broken bones stray out of control, and death is too permanent for me to desire it.

But I swear that both of the times that I got down, I wished, that on its way down the road, the bomb would burst just to prove me right. And I don’t know what that makes me.