The Lost Pair
He looked around himself.Central wore a deserted look.The last parting rays of the sun had melted into the night sky and an all blinding darkness had crept over the town.The street lights shone dimly through the fog,forming a kind of hallowed maze around the posts on which they were mounted.Far in the distance,one could see Hydes square,dimly illuminated.A few tea stalls still remained open,and some liquor stores,housed in those old creaking apartments,still received their nocturnal visitors.But for them,all stores had closed down and the town wore a deserted look. The houses that lined Elf street bore their usual look of self of disgust at the mundane everyday ways of the world - those closed window panes in a perennial state of dreamy drowsiness,those saline infested walls in a state of perpetual moulting that tore the paint of their walls,slowly,but surely and those uninviting windowsills,laden with cobwebs forming a protective mesh in the hollow darkness.Few had dared to venture out,in the cold,preferring to retire to the warm confines of their homes.After all,Cirpet rarely had witnessed a winter this cold.
On any other day,Dustin might have felt uneasy in the eerie atmosphere,being alone in the park.But today was different.Darkness provided for him a blanket to hide his own demons.Out in the open,he was exposed to their ever so judgemental stares,their criticizing gazes.Here he was safe.Here,no one knew him,no one would recognize him.Loneliness provided a safe abode to all those who had lost.
Dustin stared at his palm,at the lines that snaked in and out of it.Here,alone,he had time to reflect,reflect on the day he had had.He thought endlessly about his shoes,those lucky pairs,about the den and about the boy.Yes,the boy.He had come into Dustin’s office,ushered in by his secretory,sweating,tired and looking lost.One could tell from a single glance that the world hadn’t been kind to him.He had come in,dressed in blue stripes,torn at places and held together by ill-stitched strings,looking for a job.Dustin had been in this office for ten years now,had got used to the luxury of the air-conditioned room,its pine wood furniture,the hardwood floors,the revolving chairs.T he boy however,did not notice all these,neither did he notice the large laminated paintings,that adorned the walls of the room he had just entered,or the large glass chandelier hanging from the ceiling.He seemed preoccupied,fidgety and nervy.Dustin noticed all these,but did not mind.What he did not like though was the boys shabby appearance.The boy introduced himself as Jimmy,and was asked to sit,upon which,he hesitated,pulled nervously at the loose ends of his shirt before,finally,taking his sit.
Dustin had realized only after a few questions,that the boy was not qualified for the job.The boy had pleaded with him for one single chance,a chance to prove himself,and had gone on endlessly about his present plight,his dead father,his long suffering and bed-ridden mother,and had virtually begged Dustin for the job.Dustin,however,knew better. Dustin’s struggles early on in his life had borne of him,an otherwise worldly discontempt for the those inferior to him.And as he had climbed the rungs of success,perhaps,partly owing to his inept and dysfunctional vision,and partly owing to the giddying heights he had reached,that they today appeared minuscule and insignificant to him,and had been,in his rather contorted vision of the world,relegated to the status of scavanging sewer rats,those slithery grimy indecent rodent forms,whose very existence,to him,was on behalf of an indignant indifference and lazy lousiness on part of Providence.And he had long considered it his duty to do,on part of Providence,the one thing He,probably owing to the hectic schedule of driving the worldly matters of this universe,had left unattended-to make the lives of these miserable miscreants unbearable.And today,as he watched Jimmy’s shaggy and unkempt form,drowsily drag himself into office,he had felt within himself the arousing of the slithering,ever so cunning feline form,ready to uncage itself,ready to play with his pray.
Dustin had narrated to him about his own life,about how he himself had gone from door to door,looking for a job,about the days he had spent on the streets,those unforgiving streets,without food,without shelter,about his lucky pair of shoes and finally,how his life had changed. ‘nobody gives it to you boy,you got to take it.Nobody laid it out on a silver platter before me.’
Jimmy,notwithstanding his present state of desperation,had retained within himself,that last remnant of self respect,which,in such situations,can often prove to be a mans undoing.And he had,quite scornfully,and inintelligently,one might add,exclaimed,as might have once,a rebellious and self-indulgent Porus in the face of an all invading Greek army,that he might not be so lucky as to find such magic shoes.And he might have known better.For Jimmy’s shabbiness,he could forgive,even his ignorance,but not his rude disregard for his achievements.
’Go on now,boy.Remember,we fall only so that we can learn to pick ourselves up again .Make yourself more capable,and your day will come.’He had learned to tell people off,nay,he had mastered it.Experience had taught him that.Experience had taught him many things.
Had he been too harsh on the boy,too cruel.He argued in his mind endlessly but reached no definite conclusion.Was his present plight,the result of his actions earlier in the day.For the rest of the day had gone from bad to worse,one downhill slope.He had walked out of his office room ,only to find his lucky pair of shoes stolen-his lucky shoes,the pair that had made him the man he was today.At least,so he believed.Ever since he had come into possession of those shoes,nothing in his life had ever gone wrong.For his part,he had never lost sight of those pairs,not for a moment,had worn them every single day of his life for the past ten years.And now,they were gone.
Going to the gambling den after work had become a kind of habit with him.And for ten years now,he hadn’t lost,only increasing his greed and addiction.Today,having lost his lucky pair,he persuaded himself to stay away from the den.But then,habits die hard,and they finally got the better of him.And,just as he had feared,he had lost a fortune at the den.And then,on his way to the market,he had been robbed.
So now,he sat in the dark,contemplating his next move.He did not feel like returning home just yet.But it was getting ever so cold.A flash of lightning streaked across the sky,lacerating the dark.Soon it would be raining.It would be impossible to stay out much longer.He looked at his watch.12’0 clock.Midnight.It was time to go.
* * * * * * * * *
The streets wore a deserted look.Only those whose work required the shelter of the night had ventured out in this cold.The street light shone in the distance through the fog like a burning pair of eyes.Women,wearing heavy makeup,stood by the sidewalks,waiting for customers.
Dustin walked along the pavement,carelessly,pondering over the happenings of the day,turning them in his mind over and over again.Had he been less preoccupied,he might have noticed the gathering crowd ahead,slowly increasing,people hastily rushing towards it.Suddenly,he found himself in the middle of that gathering.It was only then that he realised that he had trodden upon an accident site.
Blood.Red.And violent.It trickled out slow,and measured,timed to the ticking clock of his fading life.
Dustin looked at the man,bleeding,his body lying lissome against the pavement.His shirt was drenched in blood,body mutilated,his striped shirt dyed crimson in the pool of blood gushing out.His face was unrecognisable.But for the recent change in the state of his worldly affairs,he might have been tempted to relegate the incident to the desirable,even advisable termination of life of another one of those despicable sewer rodents,but today,his feelings were a lot restrained,one might even say,he felt a slight tinge of sympathy for the now lifeless corpse that lay out infront of him.
Dustin looked on.Something about the man struck him as being very familiar.Those stripes,those trousers-there certainly was something about the man,something that told Dustin,they had met before.He looked up and down,his eyes searching for the slightest clue,slightest hint of recognition.Then,suddenly,he noticed it.Those shoes.
Posts
