The Couch

Last weekend, I had an epiphany. This usually happens to me when I spend unhealthy amount of time with myself. Further, such an epiphany is almost impossible to avoid when the time spent with myself consists of staring blankly into the void. It is true that I have had so many revelations that I would rather go through the rest of my life without having to worry about whether I have a unique and meaningful role in the Cosmos. Here are some of the more important epiphanies that have occurred previously in my life and some semblance of the thought process behind them:

My back is aching. So is my neck. I can’t feel my left leg either –> Its about time that I changed my lying down position.

I feel too lethargic to get up. My stomach is growling. But I did have a hearty lunch –> Oh My God. Is it dinner time already?

It’s quite easy to find an empty cubicle today. Where is everybody? Great. Even the corner office is empty; let me make it my office today. Where is everybody? –> Is it a Sunday? CRAP.

No position is more receptive to epiphanies than the lying down position. Yes. It is that position in which you sleep. Except when you don’t sleep then realizations from higher dimensions descend upon you. Sometimes, they rain upon you like a torrential downpour while at other times, they simply drizzle. If you are lucky, you will be able to duck from them but mostly, let’s accept it, you get wet. Evading epiphanies, especially when it is staring you in the face, is quite an art and I must write about that some other day but let me not digress.

The epiphany I recently had was something else altogether. It happened when I was hit by a series of minor realizations in quick succession over the whole of last weekend. None of those minor realizations were really important in the larger scheme. (Author Note: Though, I think, at one point of time, I did get a clear vision of how life conspired to create the universe to accommodate itself, how all life forms were connected with each other through an underlying thread of common consciousness flowing even through inanimate objects, how human race is just a sensorial manifestation of that infinitely more intelligent and omnipresent consciousness and is an experiment gone horribly wrong and how you can understand all this with the help of a screw-driver and basic algebra but more on that some other day). Anyway, I was smart enough to ignore all those epiphanies and instead searched for the underlying catalyst that triggered the waves of those realizations. Because, all facts considered, discovering a gold mine is not nearly as important as discovering how to find a gold mine. All this, you know, so as to not accidentally fall into one. After all, one has to take care of one’s health.

The underlying catalyst, I discovered, was The Couch. As it happened, I spent about 25 hours of that curious weekend on that couch. Now, this couch is nothing much to speak of. It is a comfortable two-seater that is deliberately positioned right in front of the TV. If a midget were to lay down on it and extend himself to his entire length then his legs will surely be dangling. But it does have a cozy feeling so universally associated with all kinds of couches, irrespective of their shapes or sizes. Now, if you throw in some cushions, a quilt, a large cappuccino, a book, and a wonderful foggy view through an open balcony, you do get that distinct feeling of having arrived fashionably late to a party thrown in your honor. And when one is so relaxed, so on top of the world, so content, that is exactly when those darned epiphanies sneak up onto you. You don’t like it when they do that especially when your own sub-conscious distracts you with inane conversations so you don’t see their approach. As an example:

Me: What a life. I can be here for ever.
Sub-conscious: Yeah. This way you are not going to get anywhere, anyway.
Me: What do you mean? Where else would I wanna be anyway?
Sub-conscious: Ask yourself. You should know.
Me: Even allowing for the ironical stupidity that I could ask myself a question when I don’t really know the answer, where are you going with this rhetoric?
Sub-conscious: The answers lie within.
Me: Are you for real? Or straight out of an Alcoholic Anonymous meeting? Besides, aren’t you supposed to be THAT within?
Sub-conscious: Who am I? I am just a resident garbage collection unit. The question is Who are YOU?
Me (With vacant expression): Who am I?
Sub-conscious: Bingo. (Smuggles in a few revelations)

Score line – Me – 0; Sub-conscious – 1.

Well, I guess, nothing in life is for free. Not even a lazy afternoon on The Couch. Bollocks.

Did you leave your limb behind?

She trudges back into the living room dragging her mutilated body behind. She does it in slow measured steps almost hoping that I wouldn’t notice. I think she is still under the wrong impression that she is welcome here. She also seems to be suffering from a curious case of amnesia in the sense that she obviously cant remember that I have just chased her away with my boot in my hand but she does remember this to be her home. Or she has a very low sense of self esteem. Or both. I do feel for her. But I don’t want to have anything to do with her any more. I am tired of chasing her away. I let her slip in.

I vividly remember the first time I met her. She just couldn’t stop staring at me through her glazed eyes. It became so obvious that every now and then I would glance through the corner of my eyes to check if she was still looking at me. And when I couldn’t find her at her usual place, I would be wondering where she might have gone. To be honest, she is not exactly a pretty sight but then I don’t get so much attention from many quarters in general anyway.

Then it happened. One fine day, I found her in my bed. I must have been drunk enough to allow that. But as soon as I regained my senses to register her presence, I was filled with disgust. I had to ask her to leave but she wouldn’t budge. I resorted to throwing her out of the bed. She promptly fell on the floor with a plop, was likely outraged and so assumed an inflexible stand. She got rooted to the spot, unyielding as a rock. She wouldn’t listen to what I was saying. In fact, she even refused to look at me, preferring a vague blank spot in front of her to my good looks. It took me a good half an hour and quite a few violent threats to get her out of the apartment. I immediately threw the bed sheets, the pillow covers and the quilt into the washing machine and decided to sleep on the couch instead to get over my trauma. It wasn’t till after the bedroom was completely disinfected that I took to sleeping in my own bed.

You would have thought that that was the last I would see of her. But no sir, she still graces me with her visits every now and then. These days, she restricts herself to only the living room. We still have our fights and just about fifteen minutes ago, I ran after her with my boot in my hand. I haven’t done anything remotely like that ever but today I was having one of those moments. And something curious happened. She left one of her many limbs behind as she exited.

As I write this, I am still transfixed by her tail which is thrashing around on the floor even as she quietly reenters. I want to ask her if she even remembers having left her limb behind on her previous visit. But I am unlikely to get an answer. She is clearly delusional but I do admire her tenacity. I think she is here to stay. I will have to make room. May be give her a name. I just hope she stays out of my bed.