Saturday, October 15, 2005

Doomsday, overheard

“It’s coming.” He could see the fear in the old man’s eyes as he said this to him.

“What’s coming?” He enquired.

“It. Is. Coming. IT.” The old man gritted his teeth and stressed on every word so that he would get it.

“Huh?” But he didn’t.

“This, this!” The old man said pointing to the sign he was carrying with him.

It read “Doomsday is HERE!”

He smiled, “Oh that.” And carried on.

As he walked away, he could hear the old man trying to call him back and tell him again and again about it. But he was spinning away. Back towards her with the coffee he was carrying for their usual weekend rendezvous.

She immediately started telling him, “This is the world’s way of warning us. The earth is angry with us.”

He looked at the newspaper article that she was pointing out. He shrugged and said, “They just cover more of this stuff in a more spectacular way than before, that’s all.”

“No, more of this has been happening of late.”

“Come on. It always used to happen. Read your history books.”

“I am telling you more of it has been happening in the last few years, months. More than I have seen before.”

“You have not seen it. You are only reading it. They are just writing more about it.”

“That is what you think. But more of it is happening. Here see this article.”

Curious, he looked at it. It outlined just that. How more of it was happening lately.

“Is this their idea of interesting weekend reading?”

He smiled. And picked up his coffee.


32 comments:

gulnaz said...

this one reads strongly familiar with respect to the recent natural calamities. i like the conversational aspect of this.
the reporting has got faster, wider and more intensive to feed the round-the-clock channels...not to take away from the enormous, heartrending tragedy of these calamities but well...even if doomsday is near all we can do is pull our act together and be good.

gulnaz said...

...and yes enjoy our time on earth.

Russell Ragsdale said...

I think reality has a covering over it and that covering is about the fears and anxieties we have that make our conversations urgent. Thoes conversations become that covering. Was this what you were trying to tell us with this piece?

Casablanca said...

Yes we prefer to ignore things that dont happen to us directly... and thats human nature. Can we change it? I'm not sure...

livinghigh said...

the only thing we need more here is the theme song from Jaws! ;-)

and how are ya doing these days, rahul-bose lookalike? ;-)

G Shrivastava said...

Yeah dommsday sure is approaching - hell it's hurtling towards us at a crazy crazy speed. And it's not like we can't do anything about it - we could start by respecting the environment that we inhabit, instead of abusing it perpetually.

But paranoia and discussions and anxiety about the future won't get us anywhere...as Gulnaz says, we can just enjoy every moment we have :-)

tussand said...

Enjoy every moment we have here, or do we embrace God? :p

Anonymous said...

Every thing that has happened reacently, will happen again. very soon. and how can it not be interesting weekend reading i ask you? it's food for thought - what have we done that everything's going so wrong? Why is it going so wrong? why are tehre no rainforests? and why can't i walk into a jungle and see a tiger as i would have had i been born fifty years ago?

and why do i and all those like i really not care about the fact that we can't see the tiger?

Armageddon. Very soon. Perhaps aliens too.

-Phal

Anonymous said...

life is short and we have to enjoy everything now.!

Li'l Jinx said...

well, at least my mom's not the ony one out there prophesying doomsday...

Anonymous said...

So Doomsday is comin....wonder how different it wd be from today.....I kinda thought that we were living in one....

Anonymous said...

Rahul Bose lookalike !!! No...you cdnt be....I found out that he doesnt do any photography !

Anonymous said...

Rahul Bose lookalike !!! No...you cdnt be....I found out that he doesnt do any photography !

Subhrajyoti Mukhopadhyay said...

nice !

Anonymous Poet said...

Let's hope not. At least not today, anyway.

Shubhodeep said...

eerie, yet somehow real!
nice one!
cheers!!!
[http://shubhodeep.blogspot.com]

Skye Powers said...

Fantastic, you truely have skill. I can see your scene unfold in my minds eye. Brilliant. Would you check out my writing? http://naked-superstar-sapphire-ninja.blogspot.com/

jaded said...

strangely familiar yet scary.....this amazing capability of 'he' is freaky. but it's too true.

{illyria} said...

wow. your recollection of the conversation is outstanding.

Phoenix said...

Autobiographical, is it?

Delphic Oracle said...

u have no idea what effect the word IT had in ur post...it's terrifying....revolting...it refers to a she-man in our class...and has a group we call BOB, equally revolting.....anyway, not the nicest of ur writings I must say............

Brood Mode said...

something eerie about this scene

Prerona said...

ur scaring me! all my life my little sister spooked my by this chant (D D is coming) ... she's sit in a corner crosslegged and rock on her stupid bck side and chant and i'd really get scared an scream :)

and she's a decade younger than me!!!

Rahul said...

Exactly the thought which came to my mind during the weekend.

Debatable though.

Anonymous said...

A death is a creation.

Armageddon is a birth.

(Depending on your perspective.)

mermaid said...

Your "couple" is always a pleasure to discover, the humorous, easy-going male, and the tense, frightened female.

Signs. They are all over, everywhere, all the time. The Doomsday one is not new. If only we saw our own dooms by our actions everyday, instead of signs.

Paul said...

If it weren't serious, I could actually get a kick out of people standing around looking at the wilder swings in weather patterns and passively saying, "It's doomsday. The second coming is at hand."

Like overpopulation and global warming couldn't possibly factor into it... Like this planet is not a finite sphere, and our species can multiply indefinitely without degrading the habitat.

chaos said...

i think it's doomsday for the Media... seems like they have ran out of News... and to sell themselves they are creating mountains over molehill...

however, the frequecy of ocurances of these natural calamities have increase to an extent... something like a cycle coming to an end... for a new begining...

Aradhita said...

fab! This si probably the way a non-affected person reacts to his non-immediate surrounding...

very nicely put.

. : A : . said...

gulnaz - Agree. We need to enjoy, responsibly.

Russell Ragsdale, Casablanca, Geetanjali, Aristocrat, Phal, eden, jaded, DelphicOracle, Prerona, Rahul, jason evans, mermaid, Paul, yvaine, chaos - Thanks for sharing your perspective and thoughts.

livinghigh - Doing good. Why Jaws? :-)

sheetal, Sapphire - Thanks for dropping by and commenting. Do visit again.

rusty - That's disappointing! :-)

EUPHORIC DREAMZ, Shubhodeep Pal, Aradhita - Thanks.

Anonymous Poet - Yes, lets hope not.

transience - :-)

Phoenix - Not.

Brood Mode - What in it makes it eerie?

Brood Mode said...

it's how i picture the scene in my mind. primarily what i imagine to be the mood and orientation of the characters at that moment when they declare their prophecies

. : A : . said...

Brood Mode - Got it now.