Not Seeing
September 28th 2006 03:35
What do you want to do when you are caught in the middle of violent riots and can’t get out of your house? You want to watch the TV, of course.
Outside I could hear jarring noises from time to time: tires screeching, people shouting and an occasional thud of a bomb going off somewhere. They had already broken the streetlights, the neon signs, the glass windows, basically everything that’s there to be broken in my street. Probably, they were tired because there’s nothing left here to break and so stopped coming. But I don’t think it was still safe to go out. Who knows the crowds marauding in other streets may return to this one again.
When I had come home two days before, the street was already gutted. I hastily opened the lock of my door and slipped inside. For a few minutes, my heart was heavy with apprehension but after two hours in darkness it was pretty clear that they were not going to return whoever they were.
I didn’t venture to go out the next day of course. I kept hearing the noises. Though I am pretty sure, it could also be my imagination. Once, I heard a particularly loud scream; I stayed put for a while and went later checked it out from behind my blinds. There was no one in the street.
I could not bear the oppression of silence any more. I had to see the mayhem that was occurring in the other streets. I had to hear what others were saying about us. I had to know. I had to tell.
I switched on the TV and to my astonishment there was that cookery show in which people cooked exotic dishes in less than ten minutes. I used to catch it whenever I was at home in the afternoons, confident that I’d never make any of those dishes myself. It was still going on like everyday, like nothing had happened.
I told myself to calm down. Maybe they’d shown this stuff in middle of the bigger news. Maybe they are catching their breath too.
But after the cookery show came the soap where the old lady who thought her young boarder was in love with her just finds out that he was using her after all. Any other day, I’d loved to have watched the show myself. Today I tore my hair and started pacing. It was followed by an American program which showed Paris Hilton talking about her new brand of knickers. Apparently it’s the new craze in Hollywood to wear knickers instead of panties. It was like every other day.
Then, suddenly the music blared out. It was the news. I watched it avidly, the entire show. There was nothing on it! It was then the fever stuck me. I started pacing around the room, cursing everything I could think of. I watched TV all through that evening and everything was the same as usual, the regular and the normal.
It was then I decided to take thing on my own. I opened my computer and started browsing
internet and stared searching famous websites for some new, any news of the riots that were happening just outside my house, in my city. But, not one of the great international sites even hinted anything was wrong with the world. I admit my part of the world is very small compared to the whole wide world out there but it still must mean something.
Desperately then more and more desolately I kept searching for the information. Nothing turned up. Then I wrote to my favourite newspaper columnist. “Dear Mr. N, I would like to bring your usually observant eyes, something you might wish to know.”
But of course, I could not post the letter. Then, much as I hated it I had to use the internet. I scrounged the internet again for any news about what was happening outside. I and searched as much as I could. It had fantastic stuff, internet everything from temple prostitution in ancient Ephesus to Neanderthal bone structures but nobody was discussing or was even remotely interested in the warfare outside. I thought I’d open the eyes of the world myself and started typing and then my browser stalled saying, “ILLEGAL.”
Outside I could hear jarring noises from time to time: tires screeching, people shouting and an occasional thud of a bomb going off somewhere. They had already broken the streetlights, the neon signs, the glass windows, basically everything that’s there to be broken in my street. Probably, they were tired because there’s nothing left here to break and so stopped coming. But I don’t think it was still safe to go out. Who knows the crowds marauding in other streets may return to this one again.
When I had come home two days before, the street was already gutted. I hastily opened the lock of my door and slipped inside. For a few minutes, my heart was heavy with apprehension but after two hours in darkness it was pretty clear that they were not going to return whoever they were.
I didn’t venture to go out the next day of course. I kept hearing the noises. Though I am pretty sure, it could also be my imagination. Once, I heard a particularly loud scream; I stayed put for a while and went later checked it out from behind my blinds. There was no one in the street.
I could not bear the oppression of silence any more. I had to see the mayhem that was occurring in the other streets. I had to hear what others were saying about us. I had to know. I had to tell.
I switched on the TV and to my astonishment there was that cookery show in which people cooked exotic dishes in less than ten minutes. I used to catch it whenever I was at home in the afternoons, confident that I’d never make any of those dishes myself. It was still going on like everyday, like nothing had happened.
I told myself to calm down. Maybe they’d shown this stuff in middle of the bigger news. Maybe they are catching their breath too.
But after the cookery show came the soap where the old lady who thought her young boarder was in love with her just finds out that he was using her after all. Any other day, I’d loved to have watched the show myself. Today I tore my hair and started pacing. It was followed by an American program which showed Paris Hilton talking about her new brand of knickers. Apparently it’s the new craze in Hollywood to wear knickers instead of panties. It was like every other day.
Then, suddenly the music blared out. It was the news. I watched it avidly, the entire show. There was nothing on it! It was then the fever stuck me. I started pacing around the room, cursing everything I could think of. I watched TV all through that evening and everything was the same as usual, the regular and the normal.
It was then I decided to take thing on my own. I opened my computer and started browsing
Scream by Edvard Munch, Source:maths.ucd.ie
Desperately then more and more desolately I kept searching for the information. Nothing turned up. Then I wrote to my favourite newspaper columnist. “Dear Mr. N, I would like to bring your usually observant eyes, something you might wish to know.”
But of course, I could not post the letter. Then, much as I hated it I had to use the internet. I scrounged the internet again for any news about what was happening outside. I and searched as much as I could. It had fantastic stuff, internet everything from temple prostitution in ancient Ephesus to Neanderthal bone structures but nobody was discussing or was even remotely interested in the warfare outside. I thought I’d open the eyes of the world myself and started typing and then my browser stalled saying, “ILLEGAL.”
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