Page 106 - Musings 2021

8

Asleep
Megha Meghna
2017A5TS1121P

I’m running, like there’s no resistance-almost like gliding. There’s a crowd cheering me on. I
look down and see wheels instead of feet. That doesn’t make any sense. I try to stop but for
some reason I can’t. I can’t control my feet. There is a cliff up ahead. I’m going to fall off if I
don’t stop. It’s the edge of the world. I have to stop, why I - AAAARGHHHH can’t. I look
around my bare room. I wait for my breathing to go back to normal and I look at my feet. It’s
been a long time since I’ve been able to walk, let alone run. My once toned and muscular
calves now lie shrivelled up from the ravages of time and the last 10 years of disuse. The
physique doesn’t help much anymore. I try to go back to sleep. It’s been a long time since I
thought about the old glory days. I worked hard to forget them and yet, here I am. A 55 year
old miserable misanthrope. People used to say that my accident turned me bitter. Truth is -
the accident revealed absolutely nothing that I didn’t already know. People are selfish. When
the guy who crashed into me drove away, I felt nothing. People serve their own self-interests.
Whatever they claim as selflessness is an attempt to make themselves feel better, nothing
else. Before the accident, I was successful and I was doing what I knew I was meant to do - I
was running. They say that no-one’s life is perfect. Mine was. I was at the top of my career. I
had one goal in life and I was so close to achieving it. And then, just like that, I had nothing. I
get up, drag myself into the wheelchair and get on with my day. For as long as I can
remember, it’s been the same way. I wheel myself to the balcony to water the plants my
therapist obsessively insists that I care for. I glare at the dog sitting on the balcony. This is the
only thing that seems to change. Sometimes he barks at me, a girl comes out, apologises to
me and drags him inside, sometimes he just stares outside at the trains going by, sometimes
the girl comes and brushes him and most unsanitary of all, she sometimes comes and showers
with hugs and kisses. Why do females think that the baby voice is adorable? Why? Can they
not tell the people around them are getting cluster headaches? And why does she like kissing

his nose? Is she not aware of all the disgusting places that nose has been? It is a miracle that

she has not been taken to the emergency room yet. I hear the doorbell ring. I wheel myself to
open the door for Nikhil. He’s been working for me for a while. It took him a while to get
hold of the fact that I was not a big fan of the idle chit chat, but now he usually keeps it to a
bare minimum. Bare for him, that is. I would be perfectly content not knowing about the
apartment gossip. “I need to leave a bit early, I promised Shikha ma’am I’d help move in the
furniture.” I snapped out of my reverie, “Who?” “The lady who just moved in.” “Oh. Okay.
I’ll see you tomorrow.” The day seems wrought with coincidences. First, that cursed dream
and now this. Shikha and I were together for 4 years. We might have been married by now, if
we were still together. Probably with one or two kids. Even though I wasn’t all that
enthusiastic about being a father, she would have undoubtedly talked me into it. She could be
very persuasive. Nothing dampens a day more than falling into the spiraling thoughts of what
ifs. I need to snap out of it.
Shikha is a common name. There are probably 3 other women named Shikha living in the
same apartment. I take a nap. I wheel myself out of the apartment and roam around
downstairs, I read and by the end of the week have completed reading my book, fought with
my physiotherapist about my exercising and have put all thoughts of Shikha to rest. The girl
next door has been spending more and more time on the balcony lately. She sits there with

106