The Worst Form of Banality

Last Sunday, I woke up to the shrill ringing of my telephone, which by the way does not happen to be placed by the bedside. I was disgusted but more worryingly I was frightened because just as the phone was ringing and I was hoping that the bloody thing would shut itself up someone said to me, "Your phone is ringing". I had to get up and answer the phone only to realize that the voice that had made me conscious of the fact that my phone was incessantly ring was the same that had telephoned me. Even the ferocity of a European winter could not help me not breaking a cold sweat. "Super-natural" or "psychic-connections" or "ethereal-linkings" or "telepathic-bullshits"...I believe in none of them, at least until a month ago. The second time I freaked out was during a dinner. As the host was trying to come to grips with a bottle of wine, it just occurred to me that I know what was going to happen and I had already passed through this whole situation. I did not tell anybody for fear of being branded a loony but he did exactly what I knew he would do by dropping the bottle and smashing it on his foot while trying to uncork it.

That kind of thing had already happened two years ago. My mother was cooking and I was standing by her side in the kitchen. She was pouring some water into the cooking-pot using a glass. I knew at that instant that the glass would break, I just couldn’t put my finger on the "how" thing. During the last trip, from the tap to the stove, the glass slipped from her hand, hit the corner of the pot and broke, ruining of course whatever she was cooking. I just ignored at as a one-off thing but since the past six months or so I have been having these experiences with a frequency that is horrifying me. Being a firm non-believer in any kind of spirituality this is all the more , how should I put it, vomit-inducing for me to experience a thing , a behaviour that is inexplicable in terms of scientific interpretation.

But then I started to analyse it. Endowed with an excellent memory, envied by many, I just tried to reconstruct all these scenarios. More a form of hallucination now that I reconsider them critically. It so happens that each and every one of has a reservoir of emotional energy in us. This emotional energy is the driving force of the life. It compels us to use the physical energy stored in our bodies using the tool that we have, namely our bodies. Lack of a thorough objective in life, sense of being in a hapless situation and personal lows leading to depression result in a spiritual dysfunctioning that leads to a gradual decrease in the rate of conversion of emotional energy into physical work. Commonly this phenomenon is attributed to as "Frustration".

Frustration marks a sharp decline in the physical-work output of a human being (since the valves that connected the emotional energy reservoir to the emotional-to-physical converter are clogged now). It also results in enhancing the sensitivity of a person to certain stimuli such as audio-visual media namely movies and music and prompts agitated responses during hitherto perfectly natural conversations.

I knew of this blockade of the arteries of my emotional-to-physical transducer. I am not going to discuss how I knew of it, but I knew and this is what explains these hallucinations. Incapable of transforming itself into useful physical work the emotion vents itself in other forms: Unknown and hence inexplicable. The terrifying aspect of this phenomenon is that this energy was meant to be converted to physical work and hence it is un-natural that it finds a way out, bypassing the conventional conduits. This surely does mark the presence of cracks in my soul for the emotional energy reservoir is commonly known as "soul".

What I did not know was that such huge amounts of emotional energy trapped inside me , longing to burst out in any form (since the normal physical form of expression was not possible anymore) would lead to these devilish vibes in which I’d have hallucinations and visions and anticipations of the future. It can be, and it is perfectly logical to me, that I was waiting for that phone call when I went to bed the previous night and when the phone rang, although a part of me wanted to go back to sleep a part of me that had hitherto been dormant but that had then become dominant due to that welling of emotional energy, conjured up that trick, just to make me leave the bed and attend the phone. It is just like when once after taking an exam, I was not sure of the answers of one of the questions. I had proved it to be correct during the exam but I was not sure of its veracity. That very night I dreamt and saw the correct proof, that satisfied me, in the dream. I had solved my problem while sleeping. It might sound unbelievable but it appeared so natural to me. I was so stressed that even during my sleep I couldn’t relax and couldn’t let my conscious release this problem. So both the conscious and the un-conscious mess got together and solved it for me while I was sleeping.

But that phone call problem has put things into another perspective. It only marks one of the high points of a series of events that can loosely be termed as déjà vu and in itself is of no greater significance. The real problem that this "emotional artery clogging" thing has given me is this pseudo-clairvoyant feeling that renders each and everything utterly banal, lacking in novelty, perceptible...I would soon run out of objectives. I do not smoke or do drugs. I do not take tea or coffee. No very high sugar contents that would lead to hyper-activity. What baffles me is the sudden low that I have hit emotionally from which nothing seems to lift me out, not my friends or colleagues or my family. Is this some kind of neo-urban monotony??? Is this a bizarre spin-off from "American Beauty"??? Is it that I must search for a change so radical in my life that it would jettison me out of this pathetic trough of my emotional being??

The journey on which Lester Burnham embarked did bring him out of his misery but it also did end his life.