Idée Fixe
It has been a rather uneventful day, sitting in this empty house on a lazy Sunday. My whole day has passed doing nothing but lying in bed. As the evening drew to an end I looked at the watch which struck seven and wondered of some ways to while away the time. Hoping to get some entertainment, I switched on the television and surfed through the channels to relieve myself off the stress of my mind. But it seems that I had a totally different meaning of the concept “entertainment” because whatever channel I flipped through, it was the same mere showcasing of mindless violence and catastrophe. From the news channel to the soap operas the tumult and turbulence perpetrated in one form or the other stimulating one to commit the same. Unable to take it anymore, I switched it off and laid my hands on the newspaper lying beside me. As I glanced over the new I realized that it was the same case. The so called “news/events” consisted mainly of deaths, accidents, murders and rapes. This is not what I wanted to know about my surrounding happenings. Feeling disgusted I thrust the paper to one side and contemplated. What has the world come to! The range of violence in the present age has increased quite a lot. Chaos has become a part of our everyday lives, and we are so much bombarded by one or the other forms of frenzy that we seem to be unaffected by these turbulence. We have grown cold and hard towards such happenings around us. These violences have become ‘just facts’ which we read about and disregard them after we finish.
Having had enough dose of “entertainment” which was hard for me to digest, I thought I had better go to sleep, and retired to my bed. Hardly had I fallen asleep when my dream plagued me. I dreamt that I was in acute anger and went on punching a beanbag. The anger was so intense that it was hard to dislodge it and I kept on punching. Unable to bear it any more I woke up gasping for breath and found that it was six in the morning. It was impossible to fall asleep after that dream, so I dressed myself and went out for a walk. The environment was quite peaceful and serene with no one around to disrupt the harmony, but still my mind was troubled by an agitation I could not describe. As I pondered over what I was going through, a kid on a bicycle came at me with full speed and hit me. I was not hurt but something inside me itched and I flew into a violent rage and I started beating the kid with all my might. He kept on apologizing but I didn’t stop. Finally he fell on the ground unconscious and bleeding and I stopped and looked at him. I knew it was wrong but still I committed the heinous crime and yet after committing the act I somehow felt a cathartic effect, and the agitation which had persisted upon my mind a while ago seems to have faded. I left the scene silently and thinking to myself, that this event too shall appear as any other “events” in the newspaper tomorrow and everyone will read this with the same feeling of apathy that we all have when we read all “news” today. I did not want to beat the child, but I guess in the present age, when you are bombarded by so many acts of violence around you, the power to restrain it decreases more and more and we find ourselves becoming what we had earlier detested.
Having had enough dose of “entertainment” which was hard for me to digest, I thought I had better go to sleep, and retired to my bed. Hardly had I fallen asleep when my dream plagued me. I dreamt that I was in acute anger and went on punching a beanbag. The anger was so intense that it was hard to dislodge it and I kept on punching. Unable to bear it any more I woke up gasping for breath and found that it was six in the morning. It was impossible to fall asleep after that dream, so I dressed myself and went out for a walk. The environment was quite peaceful and serene with no one around to disrupt the harmony, but still my mind was troubled by an agitation I could not describe. As I pondered over what I was going through, a kid on a bicycle came at me with full speed and hit me. I was not hurt but something inside me itched and I flew into a violent rage and I started beating the kid with all my might. He kept on apologizing but I didn’t stop. Finally he fell on the ground unconscious and bleeding and I stopped and looked at him. I knew it was wrong but still I committed the heinous crime and yet after committing the act I somehow felt a cathartic effect, and the agitation which had persisted upon my mind a while ago seems to have faded. I left the scene silently and thinking to myself, that this event too shall appear as any other “events” in the newspaper tomorrow and everyone will read this with the same feeling of apathy that we all have when we read all “news” today. I did not want to beat the child, but I guess in the present age, when you are bombarded by so many acts of violence around you, the power to restrain it decreases more and more and we find ourselves becoming what we had earlier detested.