Walking on Newspaper lines (short story)

I read in todays newspaper that yesterday it had rained heavily in my city, Delhi; thats an unxepected shower to come at the outset of the hot Indian summer, and had filled most of the pebbled roads, causing heavy traffic jams. I didnt knew it -- that it rained yesterday. I didnt notice it. Though the paper read so, I doubted it; and scrampered towards the window, opposite to the wall against which my study table rests.

As I slid aside the cotton green window drapes of my rectangular room, I could only see the bright yellow sunlight on the green tree tops; though, the ground near brown tree trunks were damp, dark, possibly from yesterdays rain. Maybe it rained yesterday! It was unquestionable that its not todays paper, as I had lifted it just minutes ago from the bottom of my room door.

I have been confined to my room for past two days. The lights and the air too. And the only thing that crossed the concrete 3D envelope of my room is the newspaper, which, the newspaper guy slid under the door. As I read, the next article tells in detail of the bomb blast that took place at the railway station thats just across the road to my room, few hundred meters away. I did hear a thud yesterday afternoon, but that was it. I felt that I have started imagining things, and tried to forget it.

Well, whatever the paper reads, it all happened in a different world. A world that has become alien to me in these past two days.

The world has frozen, except, that it still flows in the black printed lines of the newspaper.

I have been trying hard to listen, with my ears pressed against the brick walls of my room, but there is not a single hint of the movement of the world, and the only sound that i can hear through the thick walls is the cowing of ducks in the backyard garden pond.

Now, it feels like those split seconds which appears to be oblivion; when you look for the first time into the eyes of your lover and everything comes to a stop, and it feels like you are dead; like, when you fall from an aeroplane which has just crashed, and you know for sure that you are going to die after hitting the ground, and still you look down as death stares into your eyes. I felt like that. The rope with a noose hung from ceiling fan. There was a letter under the paperweight with circular post stamps, and it took ten days to reach me. There rests a chair under the ceiling fan.

Still something was missing.

I tried hard to find that out. The smiling rope hung, inviting with its wide open mouth, and I wanted to greet it with a similar smile, with a free mind. But something was missing....and it's becoming hard for me to stop myself from fusion with noose. Is it the music? Music that accompanies every ceremony. Music that gives every event a ceremonial touch, and makes that event a history thats remembered.

There was no music! There was no ticking of clock!

The table clock. Yes that is it! The ticking of the watch that ticks louder in such moments was missing.

The battery died down weeks ago. And so did time. I should listen to the music of watch, its ticking, which it plays in these last seconds, when u know for sure that u r going to die.

I must go and buy a pair of new batteries today evening. And I will. Let me step out of the room and walk into the directions of the newspaper lines. The way the newspaper lines flows.. wherever it goes.

The End.

------
Comments and Suggestions invited..