When the curtains fell on life at night, the city surrendered itself to a parallel life, with the street dogs ruling the streets, and the employees burning the midnight lamp, giving human kind a minority status for some time. A few souls silently worked at night, some weaving carpets, some guarding houses, letting the solace of the night cave over them and making their bread-earning responsibilities less difficult.
The
guard at the light house was no different. He pointed his big beam of light
from the tall tower outlet he sat in. Accompanied by music regularly over
powered by static disturbances. He let the music play for it beautified the
persistent silence around him as he looked at the sea, endless, infinite and
beautiful, ignited by a full moon. The view, the low music and the caressing
winds were his only company.
A rocky
patch separated the sandy shore from the street. A little tea stall stood at
the corner of the turn on the street. The tea stall facilitated a midnight
routine of carpet weavers, patients and staff of the nearby hospital. Everybody
sipped their tea while taking a stroll on the shore; some breaths everybody would take before going back and plunging into their routines.
Sometime
after three, the light house guard carefully fixes his beam of light and heads
out for his cup of tea. It is routine for him, to head out at this time. A time
carefully selected when there is less expectancy of an approaching guest from
the sea.
The man
at the tea house sees the approaching guard and starts pouring his
tea with just the right amount of cardamom. The guard takes his tea, greets the
stall keeper with a smile and sits on the rock he always prefers sitting on.
His sighting is no different than what he sees every day, the dark
shore, a fixed spot light in the sea, a moon reflecting down on the waters and
the same man, clad in white.
The man
who’s here every day, talking furiously on the phone, stopping only to sigh.
Sometimes he looks at the spectating guard, with the light reflecting on
his numb eyes. The guard always wanted to talk to the old man but he would
never leave his phone.
This
time the old man was quite close to the tower guard. The guard could hear
fragments of the old man’s statements, describing his misery, his loneliness
which added up to his sickness and made him feel like an “Unwanted mass of
flesh”
The old
man kept on speaking on the phone, till something very strange happened. The
old man was interrupted while he was about to say something more. The
phone he held on to his ear rang. The old man looked at the tower guard with
numb eyes and walked away.
The
tower guard saw the old man walking away and decided that from now on, he won’t
hesitate to interrupt the old man’s disguised monologue. He hoped to see him
the next night, when the curtain falls again.
