The crocodile isn’t very adept at hunting, but when deer flock in fear, forever ignoring that lonely spot, outside, that could have saved them, what will save them?

 

Once upon a time it did not occur to the Aristotles, the cherries on top of all the intelligentsia, of the horrors of slavery. On the contrary it was deemed to be a necessity. They read more books than me. Wrote more books than me. Thought way more than me. But am I to judge?

 

Buddha, twenty five years after ‘enlightenment’ could only reluctantly allow a woman within his Sangha.

 

The earth used to be flat. The world fashioned into a globe at the expense of a dead body upon which stands the church of science.

 

Once upon a time we fed warriors to lions dragged out of jungles. For Royal entertainment.

What and who has made us less sadistic? Not more books surely. Not the intelligentsia surely. Who are the deer amongst us that drive us towards the spot no crocodile or tiger can reach? Who are these saviors? How do they see what a hundred years of contemplation by a dozen geniuses have missed?

I want to be one. To think what has not been thought of yet.

Nothing but grief can occupy the mind that abhors the idea of adopting roads with footprints, especially the prized ones walked by them. Travels to known shores are simply but vacations that quicken lives and unworthy of being one’s sole consort.

 

I open a book, my truth transforms into a white ball and a game of Billiards begins. Insects safely make nests in my empty mind and a poor memory is no good a pesticide. The more I read, the more movies I watch, the same music I listen to over and over, the duller I become. The more I dance or weep in this monotony, the more I’ll have to forego the ability to see what all of us do not. It is right here staring at us!

 

I can just sit on the sofa for the rest of my life.

What consoled William Golding that his book wasn’t ‘rubbish and dull’? Who would go back in time to tell Edwin A. Abbott that his masterpiece will be loved, after a hundred years from his time?

What forced the first minds to fight and condemn years of intellectually justified crimes?

 

Solid concrete balls appear. I am cornered. Not a glimpse of the hole I want to conquer. I go on stumbling. I make too many mistakes. But at least the mistakes are mine. Show me; what is it that you have owned? All you ever do is quote them like parrots.

 

They, obstruct my path towards my victory whilst I get hit and lost, just because the theys had the privilege to exist, think, and create… before me. The same ideas twisted, colored. The same, same. If one goes hunting for originality, centuries of human creativity has created but a meager amount of novelty.

 

What if the table were empty? They can just stand as ghosts, which they are, to inspire. While we, on the pretence that the latter is true, go on enjoying the pleasures of tripping over, hailing them Gods, forgetting that we are already led to a different road, changing all future thoughts and me’s. Forgetting that we are capable of becoming better Gods. If only we weren’t conditioned to see history the way history books do. If we could let the baby minds stay fresh and let them work out the truths on their own, Like a Ramanuja.

 

How do I become immune to the obvious mistakes of today? What brings forth this blindness? What is the mechanism that keeps us within the circle?

 

More balls appear like mountains separating the river into feeble streams.

 

I can measure how farther behind I am from my destiny, by counting the number of maps and sign posts that I allow to ‘guide’ me.

I wonder if I was truly seeking for directions or to simply stray away.

How will I know if I’m progressing? Nothing in the world right now can help me.

As I go on reading, few veils are torn, and the momentary horror within me abates as I escape into many new ones, gently trapping myself into the new webs, new thems, inheriting beautiful prejudices, brandishing them onto photo frames while I banish away unworthy incipient thoughts that quiver. I am trapped in the author’s paradigms. I lay under the chimera that I have learnt. I merely acknowledge what I wanted to be made known and felt. No amount of musts, reason, fashion, revolution, coercion can awake me. I choose. I am my filter. I’ll always choose my veils.

 

Am I just a group of mad cells living on Oxygen, food and lies?

 

Upon the sunset of hypnogogia, I enter the slumber. The river that could rescue me out is dead. They: ghosts of the mighty greats, icons, celebrities, thinkers together with their parrots, have dried my world.

 

More balls crowd in until there are no more roads to trot into. How can over-walked roads give clues to unknown worlds?

Where is the seventh hole?

You call this knowledge? Is this wisdom or cowardice?

 

I am 22. My table is vacant. I want to reach there with empty hands. I want to know what horrors exist in the name of necessity. You sit and watch idly, never taking a single step, and praise all those around me who have walked miles to the same place. Painting the same excuse “an eagle’s flight to a new land isn’t the same as an explorer’s.” But to explore and survive new voids, ambition is sufficient.

 

What a novel way to remain happily inside the circle and fall into the same holes together. That isn’t victory. Mere imitation.

Sneha Chatterjee is an actress working in Bengali Film and Television Industry, Kolkata, India. She loves to write creative nonfiction, science fiction, haiku and free verse poetry. She has been published previously in Teen ink Magazine, Pesce Luna, The Poetry Zone and local magazines.