Chapter 4

I’m such a cynical observer of many things around that sometimes I doubt whether I’m hopeful of anything at all. How passive an attitude I carry. And even after realizing its shortcomings and trying hard to overcome them, I am yet to convalesce from it. My pathetic attitude is sturdy enough to wrestle with my conscience this long……and thus the recognition of the weakness did not made it shrivel like vampires in the light of day. Truly, Old habits die hard. I still remember the day I instigated this attitude recuperation expedition of mine. It was a day later, after the shame was inflicted and the subsequent wisdom was injected …….. I’m glad my time keeping disability hadn’t blurred this remembrance.

That day was the last working day for St. Xavier’s Academy before winter vacations. I could have bunked and evaded the blaming eyes, for one full fortnight, long enough for their ephemeral memory to be drained vague of my crime. And I would have surely pursued that, only if not for the transformation I felt within ….. the transformation which reduced my so thought crime to a mere peccadillo, in my psyche. An impulsive transformation which had such an influence that once it entered the subject it changed the subject entirely.

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The success of the new attitude thrilled me and strengthened my faith in the newly espoused ideology and infected me with the weakness (or disease..?) of optimism. That was the time I was least cynical of anything and everything. I was intoxicated by my optimistic hallucination …….but as like all drugs it’s effect was time bounded and unfortunately I was destined to be sober soon. Mark my words: Devotion can either render you victorious or destroy you……… be it commitment to God, principles, things or the most precarious of all – a person. But let’s talk of things only as they come. Let’s stay intoxicated for the time being and not worry about the imminent hangover grievance.

An inebriated I returned home that triumphant day eagerly expecting the return of my unyielding admirer from her sudden unexpected disappearance, to tell her the details of my triumph and no more to slap her alone for our joint carelessness. I found her gates still locked together which meant that even on a triumphant day I have to live admirer-less. Since I have to wait for her arrival to take the story ahead let me make use of this standby time to draw the cloak of anonymity from my steadfast, unyielding admirer who had at a triumphant day made me admirer-less, Isha-less.