Nights of the Living Dead!

Back again in this wretched shift!

For the past 2 months I have been asked to work in night shift for every alternate fortnight and I have come to know that my life is being lived by 2 persons – one, the original ME and the other, zombie ME.

Thanks to these creepy night shifts, I have gotten a complete understanding of my ana/kata/meta/ bolism of my body which has carried me so far without claiming any pompous credit for its own. And now does it talk to me..nah..it he-slaps me every frickin moment am awake. Not long ago, my body used to pretend to be the trained lion and me as the ring-master in the role-play we used to play. Now I can only see both of us being a bare-boned lion being whipped by some invisible, dark ring-master holding whips equaling a porcupine’s bristles.

Many weird things you start doing once night shifts begin and when you catch yourself doing them, you stare at yourself in confused amusement. Like when you suck and swallow a lollipop only to see it back unlicked (is there a word – unlicked?!) back in your grasp. I have been brushing thrice a day, as it seems every time I wake up it was a day before I brushed, only to forget that it was an hour before. You look at your room mate's startled eyes staring at you in total horror when you come back in the morning and fall asleep over him - on his bed. You try to write a blog and you catch yourself singing a lullaby and drawing micky mouse and fishes in impossible shapes, all over the paper. You start looking for methu vada in the thali served to you and make things worse by arguing about it to the Gujarati guy who sits in the counter who thinks methu vada is some kind of swear word and starts to bare his teeth angrily at you, waving at his family photo hanging on the wall.

Then there are your fellow zombies who at the sight of you entering the canteen will start to mumble about how crappy this whole idea of night shift is. I personally do not like to complain ( I’ve my blog to crib about anything..lol) and make it a point to keep the complainers ‘at bay’ but at night shifts I practically entertain them. You sit along with them and eat stuff which you would not have imagined to be edible in some other time in some other days. You take a walk in the dead-cold wishing you were left alone when with people who like to annoy you by annoying themselves. Rarely, you get to meet people who you would like to talk to and you open up like a just-erupt-volcano that scares the hell outta them.

This is when I decided to hire only insomniacs for night shift when and if I start my own organization and if night shifts are needed. Still, the only rosy/romantic part about these gruesome nights was the fact that I get to see all the sunrises – Mon to Fri. Awesome! Just like today, when am just back witnessing another rise of the day from the dark dead and continuing my blog with new hope. I get reminded of Brad Pitt in ‘The Curious Case of Benjamin Button’. At some point In the movie, the wannabe-ballet dancer -lead actress loses hope over life and everything after a painful accident and Pitt drives her all the way to a secluded spot near a shore at dawn and makes her sit on a bench, offers her steaming tea and they together watch the rising sun in all its glory. Glistening tears, reflecting the first rays of sunlight roll down her cheeks when she knows what she knows at that moment. The tears of hers were not alone when I was watching the movie and even now as I write I salute the mind which produced such a thought, with warm tears of my own.

Life takes everyone up and down a roller-coaster of its own at a thought’s speed and I know my night shifts are no big deal in reality. This blog and the nights behind had been that of an insomniac in his delirium but for all that I am made up of, I know I will look for the early morning bird flapping its wings across the rising sun in the distant horizon, when I am driven back home in the morning.