She enters the room and settles down in one corner of her bed. The laptop flickers to life and her universe shrinks to the size of her laptop screen.
She starts rummaging the bottomless pit of information for
the irrelevant, unproductive bits – the ones she finds interesting. She finds a
page on a theory binding the characters of a movie studio, a list of books and
a video on swords. She makes a mental note to share all of these. She moves on
to the bits that make her real life more interesting for her – movies, books, plays,
concerts – anything that charms her for a few hours. She shortlists a few of
them and starts planning for these months ahead.
She finds a list of exotic destinations and picks out the
ones that she will add to her bucket list. She selects one to plan her next
trip and looks up flights & hotels. She appraises her bank balance and
sobers up.
She moves on to YouTube and streams the videos for the first
5 songs that come to her head. She continues to stream songs in batches of
5 and stumbles upon one she hasn’t heard in years. The initial euphoria of rediscovering
the song quickly gives way to a mild pang of loss. How did she lose the song in
the first place? She wants to carry her music with her, all of it, everywhere.
The hours pass by as the night weaves a spell around her –
of a life which awkwardly and abruptly blends in with the one she lives by day.
It paints her universe in myriad colours that stand out against the inky
blackness in which the world sleeps around her. She finds the songs have more
soul and the books more wisdom. And so she clings on to the stillness of the
night and tries to stretch the inky blackness a little wider.
But it slips out of her hands to give way to the dull
bustle of the morning.
The myriad colours dissolve in the sunlight and the spell
wears off.
