To Routine

           I refrained from getting a daily metro pass, though I am a regular. There is something about daily passes which scare me; it is as if I get sucked into the irretrievable routine of existence, becoming another nameless head amongst millions of daily commuters, an entity sans identity, 'petals in a wet, black bough'. That is the problem with people like me who strongly wish to prove their difference to the world, their need to stand aside from the mundane and from the throng, to prevent themselves from becoming mechanical creatures blindly following the line. Routine petrifies me, but there is no way I can escape it. And I am thankful for that. I am thankful for routine because although I desperately wish to shed all the monotony piling up every day bit by bit on my soul, I realize that I need it more than it needs me. Have you ever been blinded by a very bright light? A light that took away your vision for a few moments, and engulfed you so entirely that the other things around you became non-existent? You must have. It is when you instinctively put the back of your forearm before your eyes to protect them from the existence-denying light that hurt your eyes so horribly that you forgot who you were, for a few moments. Well, I have realized that life often comes at us like a speeding truck with flashing headlights, and however much you try to protect yourself from the blinding pain that is inflicted on you, you fail. The pain then gradually becomes a dull throbbing ache in the lump of your throat, in the pit of your stomach, and the tips of your toes. 

                This is when routine comes to the rescue. Routine is like that forearm with which you try to protect yourself. The very sucking nature of routine helps you to mechanically make your feet fall back into rythm, your hands work automatically of what is expected from them, and though that thud in your innards recurs every other second, you slowly forget, for a few moments, that you had faced that blinding light. You forget, momentarily, what that light had taken away from you, how it has rendered your existence meaningless in an instance. You go out of your home, walk to the auto stand, take an auto, get off, take the metro, reach work, do your work, take the metro, get off, take an auto, get off, walk back to home. The same thing, again, again, again. Till one day suddenly you notice how your soul, mangled and maimed though it was, has been perfunctorily patched up and covered by the everyday. It isn't the same, it can never be, the red of the blood is still visible, but it has now blackened and formed a defensive crust that can open only after incessant scratching. And you don't want to do that. You do not want to scratch the messy layers on top of your soul, although the injury has left a certain part irreparable. Here is where routine helps. It fools you into believing that you have escaped the pain, that you have healed. But alas! The mundane is not as powerful as life, It covers your dismembered soul only to expose it later to even more blinding flashes of light. Till then, follow the line.