Thursday, August 11, 2005

In Search of Meaning

He crossed the street, and the question chased him home. So, what does he mean? What on earth did he want to tell her?

He realises that he had nothing to say to her. Nor was he interested in the content of what he conveyed to her, except to will her to come to the café everyday, every minute. He was never interested in the woman – who she was in her life, which land she came from, who she cared for, who she slept with or who she pined for. The thought, appalling as it might be, disturbed him in a different way. It faced him, for the first time, with the reality that she was a person and not a figment of his imagination – that he had not created her. This left him paranoid – because he subconsciously, but surely, knew that the only thing that could ever destroy his private world of ruminations, his unique world where he was the creator, the GOD - was the knowledge of her as a person, the knowledge that the projection of his imagination actually stood for something else.

For the first time he realised that the world he had built with all his care, all his tenderness, all his imagination, was hurtling towards its own doom, as infallibly as life rushing towards death.

For the first time in a few months, he stayed home in the evening.

That day, the café missed a beat.