I am a chapter in my life. The reader doesn’t love reading me and the writer doesn’t love writing me, yet I’m here like ennui of an insomniac on a dull and cold early morning of a winter day. I don’t have any juicy bits in me, nor I move my story any forward and for all I know, I don’t even have an idea where my story is and where it has to go. All I know is that I’m here today and I have to make my presence felt, though no one in the world is particularly thankful for my existence.

I have been waiting with dread for the writer to approach me, for the reader to skip me and for the person to live me. Knowing that none of them would love me for company does not make the wait any sweeter, as I ponder on what I have on offer to each of them. As I prepare myself to unleash the vast nothingness I have in me on to them, I dread the time and energy they have to spend upon me. It is not that I want them to go through what all I have to give them, but it is just so inevitable that I even find the irony painful.

I can’t give any disclaimers. It is not my job to do so and I don’t have any real pieces of advice to throw either. Anyway a disclaimer at the middle of everything makes little sense. Whatever way they chose to come to me was their choice and I had no role to play in it. When it comes to me, however, I think they should have avoided certain choices so that they could have avoided me. It all comes to nothing in the end and I find myself in their way and unfortunately I could not show them the way out. Sure, I can provide them with possibilities and alternatives but to be frank I don’t think any of them are any good. Given a chance, I would not take any of them and prefer to stay numb forever in this oblivion. Thankfully I don’t have to decide.

Dear Reader! I empathize with you when you tell me what I should have done and how I should have been shaped. Honestly, I have gone through that path a number of times before you and weighed out all the options that you thought of. None of them gave me any joy or life. It is easy for you to admonish me with your reason and logic, but the enormous weights I had to carry on to have come to this place are nothing but plot devices for you. I won’t blame you for it. I have read so many of those plots and gave my own twists and turns to the pages to be read out to me. It is all fun when it is not I who has to write it, when it is not I who has to read it, when it is not I who has to live it.

Oh poor writer! I pity you, for you had no idea of the wretch you have created and to think of all the great lengths you went into envisioning each chapter. Now do you think all the efforts that you put in were worth it? Do you find me intriguing, beautiful, charming and seductive? Can you spend some time with me? Can you wait for me? Can you write me? I’m also one of your chapters. Did I see the sneer in your face? Have you run out of steam? Am I a good outcome of your energy, sweat and determination? Did I justify your passion? Have you made peace with yourself for creating me? Have you understood me? Do you want to? Can you lie? You don’t have to answer me if you can’t lie and I can understand it. For I’m in a position where lies can’t hurt me and the truth can’t matter to me. Did you ever think it would all come to this?

As a chapter, my only responsibility is not towards my readers or to the writer. My responsibility is towards my story. I’m duty-bound to complete it. My presence is required to make sense of the life I was a symbol of till now and to carry a beacon to guide it further, however dim the rays emerging from it may be. Someday, when the next chapters are written, lived and read I might feel a sense of achievement of my purpose but today I’m not sure I have any. In fact I’m sure I don’t have any, but that does not depress me. I can’t depress myself. It is too much of an exercise anyway.