The stranger

He was sitting on the park bench by the side of the tree that was shedding the last of its leaves. He was staring at none in particular. He had this calmness, a saintlike calmness on his body and yet he  seemed agitated. His hands would remain silently rested on either side of him while his eyes showed pressure. His pupils dilated and expanded continuously. He was not drunk. The man with the brown coat was observing him from the bench that was a good five yards away on the opposite  side of the street. Their eyes met. The man in the brown coat came towards him and extended his hands. He reciprocated and asked him to sit next to him. They remained silent for a while.

The man in the brown coat could not hide his curiosity and asked him, "What do you do, sir?"

"I live", came the reply.

He seemed to be giving a reaction of having given a more than satisfactory answer.

"What do you mean you 'live'? So do I and a zillion others.", said the man in the brown coat. And that was the cue for him to start listening and the other guy to start talking.

"I live. By which I meant I live in a world where the zillion others you mentioned merely exist. What do you do everyday? Wake up, brush, have coffee/ breakfast, go to work and come back. You might have a family. A wife and probably a couple of kids. You might get to hug them, everyday. You kiss your wife goodbye on the way to work. So do the zillion others. Occasionally you get to drink, for you don't seem like someone who is an alcoholic. You might smoke  five? ten? may be fifteen cigs a day. May be more. You might get some sex once, twice or may be thrice every fortnight. If you have kids who are infants or toddlers that probability goes down. For all I know you might not be married. You might have a girlfriend. You go on a dinner date may be every couple of days. Probably you have a ring tucked inside your coat pocket for weeks together now. All this could be you. You are one in 13% of the country. The remaining 87% is divided into many such similar groups of similar people doing similar things. And yet you proclaim you live. Life is not a routine. That Darwin guy? What did he say. He said life is an evolution. When you and I evolved from unicellular grime. That was because the world needed change. We have been humans since a million years ago. We will be the same. May be more learned, more sophisticated. Yet the men give into the calls of women. All a man does is breathe, fuck and multiply. You asked me what I did. I'll tell you. I wake up. I take a look out of my window. Everyday I see different people. I sit and study them. They are all similar. Sometimes I wonder how two people have almost the exact same lives. Even our fingerprints are not the same. The music in no two songs are the same. There are 6 strings in a guitar. A billion combinations. There are 60 million cells in our body, yet a handful of people. Stereotypes. You asked me what I did. I dream. I dream of a different life everyday. I break all stereotypes. How many different dreams have you had? Being rich? Marrying the most beautiful woman? Living in the biggest mansion? My dreams are different everyday. I dream about trucks. With eleven wheels, four on top in case it topples. I dream about butterflies which are changing colours depending on the object they touch. I swear I can show you a purple coloured fella. Life is finding the needle in the haystack. The mistake that you commit is you are approaching it by neglecting the wrong areas. I live it differently by approaching the right ones. Equivalent labour, more probability of success. I live"

The guy in the brown coat spots two men at a distance. The other guy asks, "Have they come yet?" 


He asks "Who?"


"The two of them. I can sense it. I'll have to go now. Start living. Search for the needle"

The two men come near, give him his daily dosage of medicine. He hallucinates, faints, lies down without any struggle on the stretcher. The van at the end of the street reads "Central hospital for mental health and allied ailments"