The News Craving
Fiction Desk
On a humid evening, I walked along the bridge. It was filled with people as the electricity had remained cut off at homes. On days when the light will go off people would walk on the bridge that ran across the river to cool themselves off. Some would sit in the shade of trees that lined the banks of the bridge. I purchased a maize cob and sat on the pavement of the bridge that ran on one of its sides. It was a sad day for me. I had failed in my University exam and I sat wallowing on the bridge. I was so full of pathos that I felt every aspect of my being giving me sadness. I felt so distraught that even my presence made me feel bad. I sat on the bridge watching people pass by. I felt deeply terrified. Can a mere failure in a class exam make a man feel so much defeated ? Slowly the people began to leave and I was the only person still on the bridge as the evening approached. I got up and walked and saw my shadows on the bridge under the light of the lamppost. I felt so hallucinated that it appeared to me that my shadows traveled faster than me. It was as if my shadows wept to reflect my condition. They wept as I had wept too. I couldn’t understand how was it that even when I had wiped off my tears, my shadows shed tears. Perturbed, I took the hand to my face and couldn’t find any tears. Now my attention to my shadows increased and they appeared to be walking in the untrodden areas. The shadows moved in pitch darkness and the scant light of lamp posts made them walk. Were the shadows longing for light ? Like I was longing for happiness. After all, it was an interplay of light and darkness for the existence of shadows.
As I walked along, I found that from some distance where my shadow was, the road was flooded with light. Sometimes I felt that my shadows were chasing down that light. But when I was flooded by the light there were no shadows. I lost my shadow which made me sadder. On the desolate road on which I couldn’t find even dogs howling, my shadows were my only companion.
I thought I could ask my shadows to return. Can my shadow hear me? Or they only ditched me and left me alone on the dark road to fend off for myself.
But I couldn’t understand that if my mind and shadows traveled faster why were not my steps keeping a pace ? Later I went to sleep without food after having climbed the wall to enter my house as the family had bolted the front door to punish me for my failure. As soon as I fell asleep I witnessed a dream. I found myself in paradise chasing my shadows. When on the door of the paradise I tried to knock, my shadow had already made a knock. My mind and my shadow have been reaching those places I couldn’t. Outside the paradise, I didn’t know who do I ask for ? A voice, an image, a face. I began to weep terribly and my shadows wept too. After a while, I consoled myself. Again I lifted the hand to my face, but there were no tears. Who is feeding my shadows, how does it shed tears without my knowledge ? Why is it shedding tears and what is it longing for? “A truth,” I heard a voice reply back. “What I have to do with that truth then?” I asked. ” Everything,” the voice continued. I bowed down in awe and prayed that I may be guided on the right path. In the dream I was still outside the paradise and was not being allowed in. My body never obeyed my mind. When I again made a knock on the door of paradise, I found that I had changed altogether. When I woke up in the morning, my mother came and scolded me for rising up late.
But that day I had changed . I forgot my failure and was happy that I was let inside the paradise at least in my dream.
