I am sad. . . .I lay on my back on my bed in my room in Hostel 6, IIT Powai, and I am sad, bored, dejected and depressed. . I am also hot. . .Unbearably so. . Covered in sweat, I lie there,staring at the ceiling of the tiny room that I share with another. . He is speaking, but I do not hear him. My mind is buzzing my aural sense into disrepair. . I look at the cobwebs, on my ceiling, and see past them. The ceiling fades away and is replaced by the great black sky. . Stars. . . billions of them. . I look at them and am catapulted into space, rushing forwards at a speed so fast, I fear that i may fall. . i keep going on and on, and all I see are bright stars, all around me stretching for , dare i say, miles ??!!
A jerk later, I am back on my bed, sweaty and panting, but exhilarated. . . I have seen worlds, beautiful worlds, terrible worlds. . rather, i have seen, with my own two eyes, the possibility of their existence, and i will never again be content with what I have. Is it true then that ignorance is bliss ?? Or is an unexamined life,not worth living ?. . .The universe, of which we are but a microscopic fraction, stretches on and on, till what ? An end ? Itself ? Nothingness ? What then is nothingness ? Can one even comprehend such a state. Time zero. . . Space zero . . .The inevitable question pops up in our mind. . . But, what was before that, behind that, after that, ahead of it. . . ? What indeed . .
There are days when such thoughts fill oneself with a tremendous feeling of hope and ecstasy. . our mind is bright with the rich images of a journey yet to be made, of a future, and indeed a past, yet to be discovered.Of a logic yet to be understood, and of an outside, something beyond everything, to be seen.
And then there are other days, when these same thoughts fill your mind with confusion and frustration. They make you want to fall to your knees, your hands pointed heavanward, as the camera slowly zooms out inflationarily( there should be a word like that ) and your observable universe becomes a speck in the distance as the exponential function flexes its muscle........
As I recall, I was sad....I cannot imagine why, but at some point very close in time to this one, I was sad, depressed, dejected and worst of all: bored.....And i was hot...As i get up, suddenly, jerkily, the buzzing in my ears stops.I suddenly have a very heightened sense of awareness,a feeling i vaguely associate with the bullet time action sequences i used to execute in 'Max Payne: the Game'. I get off my bed, put on a pair of slippers and walk out of my room, The corridor seems to stretch on forever. I look both ways and turn right, walking briskly past several other doors. There is a light on in some, music in others, while yet others are cold and silent, inhabitants, either asleep or not in attendance.Other doors are open and I see people inside, with their normal lives, eating sleeping , playing....
I turn right again, then again, then left. I am now going down a flight of stairs: dark, yet inviting. They seem to stretch on endlessly, much like the corridor that i have just traversed. The more i walk, the more lost and confused i seem to get. I walk faster, but the the flight of stairs is just as unending and my mind just as confused....
Finally, i hit the bottom. Where there should be an open corridor, there is an enclosed passage, dark alcoves and turnoffs every few metres, left and right. I raise my eyes, looking for some light, a window or a door that will lead me out, but all i see are more passages.All the passages in this building seem to share a lighting pattern.The light is dim, but comfortable. It seems normal, almost natural in a way. The air in here seems ordinary and entirely normal, but conditioned, fabricated,treated in a way, not natural.
I jerk back to consciousness, realising that all this while i have been walking.I must've taken some random and arbitrary turns, for I no longer know where i am. I am now in a high arched room, flooded with a more beatific hue of the same ochre light. In front of me I see a window, with stars sparkling and twinkling outside.I run to the window and breathless, throw myself on it, feeling a draught of cold air, fresh air.As i bask in that freedom, a horrible thought comes into that mind..The darkness, the stars, the air, are all horrifyingly reminiscent of the planetarium I remember visiting recently......
I wake up......
We live, in a system. A system, that forms the entirety of our existence. We follow it, adhere to it, almost as if it were right and perfect, innately so. Even our rebellions, our revolutions, our protests, are but mechanations of this system. We live in a big castle, full of amusement arcades. An all spanning, colossus of a castle. Wherever we run,seeking windows, doors, we only find more brick and stone.It is comfortable and ordinary, yet false and synthetic. We know nothing of anything. What it means, why it means what it does and who ordained that it be so. Just the mores and norms of the system, the brick and stone of the castle.
Our universe seems to be, by definition, infinite and endless. Our world is less so. Prohibitively vast perhaps, but finite in time and space, at least by our present knowledge. As of now , we live, not in a tiny planet, among 10(odd) revolving around a small star, that is one of billions in a galaxy, that again, is one among trillions, but yet in a system, one of infinitely many possibilities, on the tiny planet. We dream, hope and 'plan' to conquer the stars, to go where no man has ever gone, but in this small world of ours we are blinkered and bound by the ropes that mark our lane in the race. A race, the purpose of which we do not know, of which we do not wonder......
PS: I didn't mean to sound quite so 'armageddon'y, but i have this daydream often. . Cages within cages, systems within systems, all built on a base, a very long time ago, by God knows who...
PPS: Seriously, there is no wonder left in the world anymore...
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