I am trying very hard to imagine a world similar to the one i just read about, the reading being this book, 1984. As i sit in my room right now, the tubelights not working, so my surroundings are covered with the yellow that is emitted by the bulb hiding behind this strange lamp i for some strange reason went all the way to god knows where to purchase. This world, i constantly discuss in my head, or bring up in one of my attempts at socialising, i think. I tell people, or more recently i had told a classmate, as we walked towards a place to eat, that one of my biggest fears as a child used to be this notion, or the imagining of a possibility, that i am surrounded by zombies. That I am the only one who is capable of engaging in the process of thinking. Everybody else is not. But then, as happens often with me, i realised, that this truly was not such a frightening thought. But something just hit me 8-10 seconds back, what scares me is not that everybody else is not capable of thinking, no, it is that everybody else refuses to think. What does this mean? Anyways my class mate responded that he would like such a world, as he would have complete power.
So i am walking towards the bus stop now. Its 745am. The footpath is what it is. Yellow and pink that is. Terribly uneven, covered to a significant extent by things that resemble waste. And i am not refering to the impoverished who occupy it. I am not significant enough to refer to anybody as insignificant. Not even myself. There is that public servant cleaning the roads, super effectively. There is that crowd of tourist vehicle drivers doing their thing. And there is that random other building resident walking around and making it’s presence felt in my line of sight. Which i by the way will pan left and right, so as to gather as much information as i, at that point in time hunger for. There by many entities, even the crows who caw, and try to take fish from the fishermen who crowd taxis. I have reached the first and only crossing on my way towards the bus stop. There may be that random vehicle that i will have to give way to, or i may just walk along, constantly trying to maintain a fairly rapid pace. With a spring in my step, i will re-occupy the higher level that is the footpath. So i’m almost there now. The stationary store is on my left. Two actually. One is a corner xerox shop. The other a bigger, less efficient one. One has more or less everything the bigger one has. The bigger one interestingly has a great communicator as its manager, but a terribly forgetful and inefficient one at that. The presence of these two stores located in the manner that they be, allows for some retail politics. I a frequent visitor, but not necessarily a significant turnover contributor, can engage in this kind of politics. I choose the store to go to, whom to reward, whom to punish with my absence. I am the ultimate decider. I can even ensure a purchase in the line of sight of the one being punished. The power i hold is incredible, and makes itself felt everytime a stationary related need emerges.
Now i am at the bus stop. There are many more personilities, such as the utility store men/man, or the tailor/dhobi man sitting next to the tailor/dhobi man tree, there is the chemist store with its multiple personalities right opposite my bus stop. I look and stare at these personalities, who exist. But are they zombies?
I am surrounded by zombies. And i havent entered the bus even. I look at them, carefully. I wonder how to interact when the time comes to interact with these respective personalities, but over the last few years i have understood their response mechanisms. Each zombie has a specific trigger, consisting of a collection of words. The request for medicine followed by a specific amount of currency, or the request for a tube light, or even the ironing of something, or even a ride to a specific destination, all of these if handled in a consistent manner, will result in consistent outcomes. But if you mangle your part, the result can be disastrous. The zombies will eat you alive. They will. There are certain weapons one may employ at the time of such an emergency, but none of them are really effective. One may try to resort to verbal spells which may protect you for temperory periods of time, and allow for a second chance at interacting with the zombie, but this itself requires considerable skill.
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