The Genius

Depression

"So what do you want from me?", I asked the Goddess. Personally, I kept her name Choc, because chocolate is way too specific. We had a deal that night. She would let me have my night's slumber, in return for whatever the Zokot world demanded of me, which at present amounted to signing musical autographs for my fans, which included a lot of tables and chairs and fans.

Praise is the one thing no human can resist. Yet it totally saps all your internal energy in non-conservative frictionful work - you take the path of exponentially increasing arrogance and finally drop down to a constantly zero productivity versus effort graph. But take the straight line of hard work versus time and get a hyperbolic success ratio. Its like the one medicine all of us like as kids  and pretend to be sick to have it; turns out you actually become sick after having it.

And so this affection was turning me into an arrogant monster - expecting everybody to serve me. When it did not happen, I would throw tanrums and sarcasm at people. Like the time I got up at 12 in the afternoon and refused to brush till 2, and having my brunch at 4. My mother then looked me straight in the eye and said, " If you are under the impression that this is a hotel, forget about it. I cannot wait on you the whole day. Either stick to human timings, or just learn to serve yourself." To which I replied, "Being waited upon is the right of a princess. Given the amount of work I do, I presume I deserve to get up whenever I choose to."

"In that case, please leave the house."

"Huh?", I choked on my omelette.

"Leave the house. Go to your grandparents house, or your friends house, or wherever you think you shall get the credit befitting you. Live in the real world, and know what it is like to have somebody taking care of all your needs."

Yes, we had a lot of differences in opinion, but this was getting extreme. I really must have struck a chord. I quietly apologised and got back to a regular schedule from the next day.

But it didn't end there. Simply everybody seemed to find faults with me. Rose said I had become an obnoxious lady with no aim in life. We did not communicate after that. I thought her anger might die down and she might call in a week, but she never did.

To top it all, I met another friend of mine - Harsh. Our group in college had named him Malfoy, because of his sadistic nature which could topple even the most stable minds. I chanced to meet him on a street, and he began with his ever so depressing 'there's no hope for us'. He told me that my degree from MIT or IIT might not be enough to secure a good job given the leaking tap of engineers and the overflowing bucket of 'good' companies. That there was no hope for our lot, and that we would pay for our crimes in this purgatory. Didn't know eating in class was a crime.

In this endless sea of depression, I felt like a desperate person - craving for attention which I could not attain by virtue of true merit and potential, but by taking credit without doing anthing worthwhile. There was nobody I could confide in - everyone had deserted me. So I decided that if I could prove my mettle in the Zokot world, maybe I would have some worth which could be polished to lead to the transformation of a coal piece to a diamond. The only proof I needed to give was to myself of my own capacity to store potential. Being a good human did not matter any more. 

Then came the trouble.

The trouble was that when trouble actually came it left me troubled. I was angry. Very angry. And that, as usual, translated into dreams. First, steaming hot tea pouring out of a kettle, burning everything in its path. Then, boiling blood from a shower, reeking of sweat and murder. And finally, the show concluded with butter burning on a pan making a hissing sound. The End.

My eyes opened. Darkness engulfed me. True darkness. The one where you can't see anything, not the city darkness where there are always some lights to be seen in the infinite universe around you. I closed my eyes, rubbed them and opened them again. Maybe I had turned blind. Maybe this was a dream with the 3D effects. Or maybe the not so improbable had occured. I had finally transformed into a 100% lunatic.

In any case, I began laughing hysterically. The sound echoed, rendering a much scarier note than the innocent expression it was meant to be. My hands left my eyes and felt the jet black air. They searched for a surface to rest on, and trained as our minds are, to, on impulse, search for a surface that we must be lying on, I got my palms to land on the cold hard ground.

"Ouch!"

The small pebbles cut my hand. I cursed myself for not having heeded to very sensible advice given to me in my student life. My aerobics teacher always instructed me on how I must not let gravity get the better of me. Like I can do that. His point was that while lifting my body up and bringing it down, if I could control the normal reaction I provided to the floor, I might save myself from a lot of injuries which, otherwise, had high probability of causing damage to me given my exponentially increasing mg. But as it goes, a child must never be blamed. She learns from her mistakes. Even if she thinks that a sufficiently large normal reaction might just break the floor and stop this madness for a few days. 

But one seldom learns.

As I soothed the burning sensation on both my hands with the flab on my arms, I moved my legs around, this time a bit more cautiously. Lots of gravel, could be a construction site. The darkness could be explained if it was underground. Or maybe it was hell. Nah, too boring. Besides, I would have seen a lot of known faces.

My sleep disappeared. I realised that I was in full conciousness. Yet getting up seemed a painful job.

Maybe this was purgatory. I would be left in this inactive state until I had truly regretted all my sins. But no such logic would ever penetrate through my scientific brain.

So where was i?