envious

There was this guy trying to chat online. Being a late entrant onto the bandwagon of social networking he seemed rather anachronistic of sorts. It was with much trepidation that he pinged anyone. What if they were working on something very serious and he disturbed them. Mostly his business was transactional in nature, concerned with mundane routine projects, assignments or things he liked to classify as professional.

There was this particularly chatty girl. Showing teeth most of the time. The guy thought he could help or at least work with people to improve some of their skill sets. Pretty over-the-top stuff, he later thought to himself. A highly overrated and always over-the-top buffoon by his own standards.

And he was chatting with her.

Now it happened that their chat veered around somebody else. The chatty girl seemed to smell something fishy. This no-emotions-applied guy was showing concern for somebody. Why was this bastard talking so much about that guy to her? Did he have any hidden agenda? After all this bastard had no business being nice to people. If he is trying to be nice to someone or rather think nice about someone, one has got the right to feel suspicious. But then this guy was going all over places. Going from one crazy idea to another in no time. Causing headaches with his stupid buffoonery.

And the chatty girl dropped a bombshell. She typed on her chat window, “Are you envious?” It seemed a guillotine had just dismembered him. Or rather he had been thrown into a cauldron smoldering in the fire of human blood. He was heavy with emotion. He seemed to be writhing in pain. If anyone has seen a man being guillotined, he can appreciate it far better. Or even the scene of a chicken or goat being hallaled would do. In the case of the guillotine, the head lies on the other side of the body and both of these parts tremble for a moment. And then all of a sudden they are numb. In the case of chicken or goat being hallaled, the pain continues for longer but after a while the animal is dead with fear rather than bleeding.

Writhing in immeasurable pain, he continued typing for quite sometime. He tried presenting a decent face to the girl on the other side of the screen. He tried coming up with analogies to mask his pain. But soon it gave way. His strength seemed to fail him. He rambled around a little and shut the chat window. He was definitely genteel even in times of personal calamity.

He could never admit to himself that buds of love did appear in his garden but he never let them bloom into flowers. Perhaps he was fearful of people like the chatty girl. Perhaps he was fearful of the world. Perhaps he was fearful of proprieties. Perhaps he was fearful of his own self. And that bastard saw himself as a revolutionary. Of all the phoney things in the world, this must take the cake.

We meet rather infrequently now though at one time we were literally tied to each other. He was busy with something by the name of placements. Last night we were waiting for Godot and we tried to hang ourselves to the tree nearby. But we could not decide who should take the lead and in the meantime a strong wind came and uprooted the tree itself. To pacify ourselves now we narrated stories to each other. I told him about the moans of Vagina Monologues and he told me his own story. He said that he was terrified of chat windows. He was not sure if he actually hated them. I asked him, “What about pinging people.” He could not even cry.

Soon he was busy removing his shoes. Gogo and Didi laughed. It sounded hollow to the core.