Chp-1
The Sight that Spoke
This story is based on the life of (0) or rather, a particular event in his long life. (0) is a character who is supposed to portray a part of all of us. He claims being virtuous despite voluntarily indulging in avoidable vices, he aspires something great, and for that he needs a final ‘push’ of either idea or company, someone’s help.
Walking the town streets at night was a normal thing for (0), It had started off as way for (0) to finally express his thoughts more vividly and spend some time acting not disconcerted. Spending his day as an artisan and an inquisitive person took an exorbitant toll on his mind and he found it hard to convey his thoughts to others. It wasn’t because he was afraid of being judged that he did not share the topics that furiously irked the surface of his mind, but rather that he found it difficult to explain to them, what concerns really had him consumed, either that or he didn’t know if they truly understood him when he shared his vexatious dilemma.
So just another stroll in the town it was, where he would ponder for a while, figure something out which he would eventually deem useless and return to his life, trying to imitate his best behaviours.
Tonight- he was greeted by a rather peculiar sight, the situation was queer, or for him it was the least of his worries and the only reason he noticed it was due to the tumultuous ruffling, but he came across a pigeon. This, pigeon was stuck in mid-air, levitating in the same position under a tree, high above the ground. The tree was as tall as a Sitka spruce (which grew upto a height of 100 metres), there was not much light at the moment to tell how, but this sight at first, perplexed (0) and later kicked his sympathetic system, a bird hanging like that in the middle of the night, making no motion, was probably an eerie sight at that time. Though it didn’t scare (0), some part of him wanted to be, and thus in a frenzy, hurried his way each step faster than the last.
HE was a simple man and had always preferred to keep his behaviours straight, he wasn’t used to complexities and was not also much of a fan of introducing difficulties in tasks which required none. So today morning, he walked the same path he did last night on his stroll, and made way to his office notwithstanding the incident from last night. It was a clear day, that road had never been used much by travellers as it had basically no access point to places, but was just a simple road that lead to only one destination and so, was rarely congested. In the daylight he came across the spot of the incident from last night and was much surprised to see the pigeon still there, but except, it was now moving in a desperate manner. From the scene (0) could now tell that the bird was stuck by its wing, which was trapped in some string, and had managed to fasten itself around it and now held tightly to the poor bird, (0) was not a cruel man, neither was his heart filled to the brim with empathy, but he still decided that it would be human-like of him to at least try and help the poor creature. So he called the local fire station and explained to them the entire situation, to which the officers replied with a ‘hm’ and a ‘help will be on it’s way, be assured’. And with that, he continued his way to the office, where he’d have to work on meaningless things he couldn’t concern himself with, or bring himself to complain about. He carried on with his work not complaining to his superior how inefficient and lazy his subordinates were who left him all alone to deal with the project that was supposed to be their top-most priority, despite the fact that they had all agreed upon it being of the essence. But now when he was here working all alone in his corner of the office, they were at the coffee machine notwithstanding their previous statements of gravitas. He decided to ignore all that and focused on finishing his work, regardless of the fact that he won’t be receiving any help, he knew that a task was needed to be done and it had to be done soon. So without further internal dialogues he engrossed himself in his work and secretly waited for the clock to tick faster than his pre-school teacher marking all the assignments, grading their physical iteration of the alphabets on a paper.
It was 4 past 5 on the clock when he decided that he would finally clock out early today. Working on the newly appointed project was tiring and he had decided to reward himself some self-made dinner. He wasn’t a bad cook by any means but being a bachelor ,alone in the town, away from any family, he preferred getting his meals from restaurants to avoid creating a mess in the kitchen. But today was different, he had decided that he would cook his meal by himself so that he can have more time for himself and his thoughts in this manner. He would excuse himself from his friends by saying he is preoccupied with the preparations for dinner and skip out on the daily dawdling they would normally indulge in. He was by no means anti-social but not much interested in sharing his day with a bunch of men, complaining about how hard their life is, or how they are happy for what they have right now when they could’ve had more, and that it could’ve been worse for them, because from his perspective, it already is the worst for them, his reason for such a conclusion? He didn’t know. He walked the same way back home, the one which he uses every day. But now he was again greeted with a queer sight at a familiar spot on the road. Yes, there it was, the bird, still flapping, still struggling, still hanging, stagnant, struck. It had been a day (or more) since the bird had been stuck in that same position, it seems that the firemen didn’t deem the creature’s life worthy of their attention or forces, not like it was everyday when they had to rush to places extinguishing fire or saving cats, that they now couldn’t have bothered themselves with a pigeon. (0) searched for ways in which it could help, but the tree was too tall for him to climb and he was not the most athletic person that he had ever met. He looked around and sighed at the sight of the miserable feathered biped. He could try throwing objects to somehow hope to loosen the thread which had coiled itself around the bird’s wing but even then he had to have excellent aim to hit the thin string and there had to be enough tension in the string for it to break and the rock, the must pierce it correctly, otherwise, he would end up hurting the poor creature. He tried for another thirty minutes, his best to free the bird till he finally gave up. The string hadn’t budged neither had the branch which held steadfast. After trying his best, (0) gave up and decided to head home where he would continue with the rest of his day, cook dinner, spend his last hours before heading to bed reading, and then continue with his day tomorrow.
The next morning,(0) woke up and proceeded with his schedule ,thinking little about what he was going to do next. On his way to the office, on the same road, in the same path, he found the pigeon again. It was stuck, still, it almost looked like the bird had given up all hopes of freeing itself and it made no movements except when the wind pushed it and played with it’s helpless form. (0) noticed many other birds flying past the same, but what surprised him was that none bothered trying to help their own kin. (0) was sure that if empathy existed, humans had long lost it, but for birds to abandon it too, was it an act of abandoning morals, he let out a cynical sigh and decided to follow the examples given to him by the creature’s own kin and chose to ignore the bird. He reached his office, where he followed his routine of yesterday and continued working on the same thing again, wishing that he was somewhere else, working on reading something interesting and writing his judgement for the same than slaving over the assignment from yesterday, but he could think of nothing that would get his co-workers to cooperate and help him complete the project early and he wasn’t willing to intrude their daily gossip or even worse, become it’s subject. Long after he realised it, the day ended and the office was winding up. He left last, excusing himself from his group of co-workers who had proposed going to the bar to celebrate their completion of the new assignment, and started tracing his way back home. On the way back, at the same spot with which he had now become familiar due to the peculiar incident, he was now met with quietness and emptiness, there was no ruffling of feathers to be heard, nor a bird hanging to be sympathised for. It appears that the bird had managed to free himself, how? That question could not be answered by him since he didn’t have the ability of clairvoyance, but from the way the thread was missing, he could only conclude that the bird had found a way to free itself and the string, from the unwavering grip of the branch…that or maybe some entity came along and freed the bird and the string from the tree’s branch. That night when (0) went to bed recollecting the events of the past week, which he usually liked to do using a journal (he was a fan of journaling his days), some queer thought must’ve struck his mind, because from the next morning onwards, he would proceed to go through his day, rather smiling but stoic, rather cheery but not disconcerted by it. He would now indulge in conversations more often and would make his thoughts known to those who he was concerned with or about. He would share his worries equally with those who he thought could help him and would be a reliable shoulder for others who wanted to seek his help. And in the evening he would instead spend time alone at home writing and studying where he would usually be found at the bar with his ‘friends’ or on meaningless walks pondering his actions. And he would continue in his life with a similar resilient attitude….and maybe one day he will die and his spirit would return to the same spot, but that day has not yet arrived, and so it’s not worth questioning what happens next.
The reason behind this change in attitude of (0) was that queer incident, almost if, you, my reader, couldn’t have guessed that. But there was much to decode, much to infer and even more to understand and to think.
For most his life,(0) had spent it thinking about how he could do great things, always planning it out and waiting for the correct opportunity, he would do this every day during his strolls and then he would wake up the next morning, go to his office to work a job he didn’t like but had to put up with due to his lavish expenses (which were not all necessities), he would then come home, spend some time complaining about his life with his ‘dearest friends’ and then walk alone on the road thinking about why he was not getting anywhere, about how everything that he had planned would eventually work out and how he would do great if only somebody would come along and help him achieve his dreams, how he thought that his current status was better than it could’ve been and that being stagnant did not mean he was a failure, not realising that he had failed his dreams by being what he thought was a ‘better than the ordinary’ man. But it was the bird that had brought about this change in his attitude towards everything, or rather the bird’s situation because he doubted whether the bird was intelligent enough to know how to influence a man to pursue greatness, and he wasn’t a firm believer in receiving mails from the universe either. Upon much thinking, (0) could see a part of himself in the bird, just like, you, my reader could’ve noticed some parts of yourself in (0). (0) realised that he was stuck in a precarious situation, and he had been stagnant for long, even when he was displacing, much like the bird which was stagnant on the second day being pushed by only the wind, he thought of it as movement in the wrong direction of pursuing his goals, and thought of it as movement brought about by the constant changing of times. He realised that nobody was going to bother themselves with saving him, not even his own kin, much like in the bird’s case where even his own kind wouldn’t come help him. Nobody would bother themselves with the creature tangled in a knot, because it would mean that they would have to risk their own lives in trying to help untie the creature from the string, and none were brave or foolish enough to do that. Even the firemen in the bird’s case, or his friends in (0) ’s case did not care enough to help untie the knot in his mind, and none were to be blamed for not knowing better, he now knew that he had to do this himself, all by himself, with maybe some assistance from those who could have helped him, and maybe it was selfish of him to do so, but I had not met a man, who had conversed with him, who found him selfish or arrogant. And eventually like the bird who escaped from the string and flew high in the sky until its timely death, (0) now lived his life more aware of himself and his state, than he was aware about gossips (despite claiming to have found it boring).
