Banana plantations after plantations wherever the sight could reach, patches after patches arranged in horizontal stacks. All the eyes could witness were green landscapes intermingled with more green landscapes. The plants looked exactly like we were taught in the concrete jungle, inside one of the boxes made up of cement and bricks, with the help of pictures and a bunch of dead plant material. I could now see the live ones, one bunch of bananas protruding out of a single plant, as nature had decided it to be like. All these bananas were the part of a single pod, all stacked in an asymmetric arrangement at the initial time of their development. The pod we studied all this from seemed like a mortuary van now, carrying dead foetuses inside. I kept all the other prancing thoughts aside and got lost in the sight and an insight.
Cotton plantations did accompany the bananas but they were of some other heretic use. They were there just as fillers in the gaps, just because the land needed something to drain off of its nutrients. The land was selfless, and cotton was something too much demanding. It consumed every bit and percentage of the nutrient laden soil. It was blacker than the blackest heart. It couldn’t be any black than this.
There were droplets of water kissing my already dead and dry skin, as I peeped out into the fast moving world around the train. It felt like a gush of dry moronic air, but the intermittent moisture felt good. It was probably coming out from the engine, a certain coolant was being discharged may be, or from the coaches packed in between ours and the engine. All the water they were excreting out of their bodies, perhaps. But I was least concerned about its source. It kissed my skin too subtly to be disliked. It was fun.
I’m a very boring person to have fun with. It’s of no use to hang around with me. The things that I enjoy, most of the people of my age are either unaware of, or they feel bored by mingling into such activities, or it’s a taboo for them. May be due to the fact that they know too less about it, or they’re just way too superior than me, about their taste in life. Boredom prevails in my life just like air, and it’s contagious to the people around me, like yawns. Either they learn to deal with it by ignoring, or just move out; usually the latter. Even I prefer the latter.
I sat down at the gate of the train. It was moving as furiously as it could, and I was as usual an unafraid one. Umm, yeah not before I came to Bangalore. Before that I was a dumb and dull creature. This place changed me. Like the inevitable change occurred and recurred and recurred just to make me more stable and sustainable towards life’s realities most of the people still are unaware of. It’s a lovely feeling to know that you can survive on your own. So, yeah, I sat down at the gate, now there were no hands holding any bars. It was just me and the wind talking to my hair in its own raging ways. If anyone would have planned my murder, this was the perfect time to make it look like an accident. Just a push was required – a slight push. What would have been the worst case scenario? They would have found my body after a few hours, may be eaten by bald vultures and scarred rats and ravenous crows and other animals, and probably a few humans. They would have reported me as another dead person in the society. Well, talking about my family, my father would have broken down into pieces that my already half-broken mother wouldn’t have been able to fix. Just that much, right? There’s nobody else to give a damn anyways. Nobody thinks about anyone. There will come a time when they’ll finally get over your absence. It’s a very cruel world, and you have to be as cruel to survive your way through it. The day you realise that the one you trusted the most has already stabbed you enough that you cannot build that trust on anyone else, it’s too late. You’re already way too dead inside to be reincarnated. We all have faced it, or are about to face it. We have to, there’s no other choice. We’ve already made the choice. We all love the hard way around. It’s just another reality of life people tend to neglect because they love the other person. Love, ah the devil’s best weapon.
The picturesque banana plantations and cotton balls started to fade away in a distance, and newly built cement constructions were taking up the whole picture. It was a dull scene now. It reminded me of what I was a few years back. Yes, that dull. Human civilization had degraded the nature of its happiness long time back, and they were doing the same even now, at an exponential rate. Although it was a barren land, it was still nature, and these humans were doing what they were best known for all throughout the globe – killing. Divide the land among themselves and grab every bit of it from the nature. It was a sight to sigh, and to feel remorseful about. But we’re all a part of it, directly or indirectly. We can’t help. Not a single one of us. Not even thousands of millions of us. It’s just there, malignant.
I looked up into the sky, bored. Moon was evident enough at this hour. As I opened the other door, I could see the settling Sun. Or as the scientists would say, the earth was rotating about its axis at its own speed, and now it was time for our side of the world to the face the bright side of the moon. It was our time to face the cold light, the cold darkness, the cold which prevails in our souls. But at that very instant, looking at both the skies, one could see the Sun being discharged of its powers. It was radiating away as much as it could, and the moon was absorbing, leaching out its energy on the other side, in the other sky. It was reflecting some of the power it derived from the Sun in the form of light just to prove its existence to the universe. Sun was the other selfless God.
As I started to gobble around in my thoughts, my dear migraine started to set in. Slowly, it was trying to slither in my mind, in my head like a few hours ago. I think it wanted to make my head its permanent residence, but I wouldn’t let it do so. I know it was time to get back inside, in the artificially cooled environment that kept on throwing its lucid coolness on my back as I looked outside, standing at the door, taking the warmth on my face and chest. I guess it was because of this allusive chill, that I was getting the voices inside my head to speak and howl and sing and dance and stomp at the same time. It was time I had to retort back. I had to retreat. Bananas were to be eaten now while wearing the cotton mended clothes, while travelling in a train that moved along in its own speed on the face of this rotating planet. It was time to sleep. Thank goodness we were moving longitudinally, or else I was afraid that we might not reach anywhere. Ah, the bananas were sweet.
