NOISE

(dear whoever who is reading this, do me the following favours:
1. give this your full attention. Please don't read this with your attention all tranched across multiple tabs and windows. Surely the ends of your capabilities don't meet to form such modest girth as can manage within it just a quickie, and that too a distracted one. There are perhaps few things that are really heartfelt. And even in a world where walls seem to be made, brick upon brick, of limited attention spans, such things do deserve attentive reading. Otherwise, why don't you take your limited attention span somewhere else. 
2. kindly buffer the song below and listen to the music while you read. Don't concentrate on the lyrics too much, just listen to the music.) 

Gravity is a bitch, for more reasons than one. This is a lesson you learn repeatedly throughout your life. As you grow in age and see more, you sometimes can't help but  

wonder if you're going around in circles. Perhaps you could look at life as mildly intelligent recursive code. Surrounding and settings change through every recursion  

and you learn more every time, but familiar lessons seem to repeat themselves all too often. Maybe they are miffed that they are never fully learnt. Also, sooner or later, the 

law of unintended consequences comes into play, from the point of view of the code writer that is, and dramatic highs and lows play themselves out.   

Okay, where was I? Yes- Gravity is a bitch, for more reasons than one. This is a lesson you learn repeatedly throughout your life. As a toddler, you are not yet familiar with 

newtonian physics and wonder what might happen if you turn the glass containing your ice-cream shake sideways. As your chocolate ice-cream shake falls to the ground, 

you realize that: gravity is a bitch. As a teenager in school and having recently achieved puberty, you are in love with that senior girl. The feeling of getting knots in your 

stomach every time you see her is unmistakably love. She talks to you sweetly every time and surely she loves you too. If your feet left the ground, you would doubtless fly. 

Life is on a high and nothing can go wrong. And then it happens: she laughs it away. You realize that: gravity, is a bitch. You are passing through adulthood and 

everything is going your way- love, life, career. Your money is doing really  well for you. The equity markets are outperforming themselves. And one day, suddenly, the 

world decides it was all irrational exuberance. Economists call it a market 'adjustment', but you find it difficult to adjust to most of your savings vanishing into thin air- 

like smoky turbulence leaving a cigarette as you watch wistfully. Your girlfriend finds it difficult to adjust too. She can't get around how callous you were with your 

money. Surely, you'll be this callous with her too. She too leaves like the smoky turbulence from a cigarette. You realize that what goes up, comes down too. Life wave 

comes crashing down on your sand castle, and you realize that: gravity.is, a bitch. You are in your forties. You have a beautiful, loving wife and two pretty children. You 

have a lovely house and you couldn't possibly have done better with your career. Of course, dealing with teenage kids is a monumentally difficult task but you and your 

wife laugh about it on the sofa, her head on your shoulder. Then, as the hero on the television shoots a bullet in your direction, existential questions hit you. The nadir 

of mid-life crisis comes like a bolt from the blue and you realize again, painfully, that: gravity.is.a.bitch.       

Gravity being a bitch is one of the reasons why you should desist from trying to smoke a cigarette while in free fall. I was in free fall and I could see these walls closing in 

on me from the sides. The sky, mighty as it is, came down heavily on me from above. The other reason is that the ground is approaching fast and you could hit it any 

moment now. Surely you don't want a cigarette burn-mark on your face when the girl you love sees you later. Thud. I landed face-first onto the sand pit. If you were 

perched atop one of those walls, you would have seen my body sprawled on the ground, scarecrow style, blood oozing out from near my mouth. That is when I woke up.

Light from the bulb across the room shone into the suitcase and onto my eyes. Light came in from where the zipper to the suitcase had gone bad and didn't close in. I 

pulled open the zipper, threw open the suitcase and sat up. Rubbing my eyes, I dropped down from the shelf and onto the floor. I couldn't feel my legs. If you had just

slept inside a suitcase, your legs would go numb too. I walked across the room to the washbasin. There was a mirror above the washbasin and I hadn't shaved in a few  

days. As I washed my face, I saw a rose stem lying atop the washbasin where my toothbrush usually is. I took the rose to my teeth. As I looked in the mirror though, the  

stem drooped and the rose wilted. My eyes grew wide and I hurriedly kept the stem back. 

I was standing with my back to the mirror and I was sure I was bubbling over with love. And then I really was. As I opened my mouth, soap-bubble like bubbles blew out. 

Several of them, one after the other. I smiled, then smile-laughed and then, they hit the roof. Pop. Pop. Pop. One after the other, all of them hit the ceiling. I was aghast. 

What a cruel joke. And for once, gravity didn't seem all that bad. I sat down on the closed-down toilet seat, head hung and anguish visibly evident. I sat there like that for 

a while before my guts felt like they had come alive- like snakes writhing violently. As my insides wrenched, my mouth frothed over. I got up and looked in the mirror. 

Blue froth was escaping the sides of my mouth. Was love like a poison or was this something else? Yann Martel's line from Life of Pi came to mind- 'This story has a 

happy ending.' Does it? I sat down on my knees, opened the lid of the toilet seat and vomited. I vomited doubt. It left my system and I got up a changed person. I rose with 

love and with courage. I went over to my toolkit and picked out the claw hammer. Then, I walked over to the window that had been closed in from the inside with wood-

boards. I removed each one of them using the hammer. Opening the window, I took in a breath of fresh air. As I climbed onto the sill, I realised my legs were no longer 

numb and that I could feel them. Just then, I remembered I had forgotten something. I went back in one last time, picked up the rose from the washbasin and kept it in my 

back-pocket. Again, I climbed onto the window sill. Looking up at the clear sky, I dropped onto the ground outside. I dropped down on firm feet, straightened up and 

walked away.