When the Curtain Falls

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.