The confinement….I

The alleys of her mind were darker than the chamber she was locked in. Non  stop moving images running like an
incomprehensible movie, screaming, scattering rays of bizarre colours blinding
her with their sheen and leaving her alone suddenly in the dark  only to reappear. The play of images-- the
images of memories in the deep dark alleys tormenting her over and again,
making her behave in weird ways. She loved hanging with them sometimes and
shoved them off but they were more stubborn than her…she had herself fed them a
part of her own inane stubbornness and they had become like parasites now.

    Her
external chamber was also dark except small fine rays of light peeping through
the broken crevices of the stoned walls and a heavily chained iron door with
minimal light filtering beneath. The dust brushing off from the walls and their
smell and touch talked to her about the changing weather outside the four
walls. The warmth, the chilled brazen cold feel, the muddy dampened smell when
it rained. She talked to them, played with them screamed at them and then tired
fighting, slept off embraced in their support. Helplessly pleading sometimes in
her earlier days of confinement to free her.

    Lately  she had stopped doing that pleading part. She
had fallen in love with the darkness and the solitude which gave her enough
time to converse with the inner voices and the images wandering like vagabonds
in the darker alleys of her mind. It gave her a strange sense of peace and
enlightenment.

Today she got up awakened by the  screeching sound of a
jarred door. She opened her eyes in the dark and paused for a moment, to
accustom her eyes to do the listening moving them in dark. when her ears too
acknowledged the sound which was not a usual illusionary game played by her
mind. The sound was audible again and she realized it was the door of the
adjoining chamber. It was a dead silence after that. No more sounds for a long
while. She laughed at herself may be she was growing old and hard of hearing.
The inner world of her voices had deafened her to the noises outside.

    But this
time this was no illusion or hallucination or any ghost walking out of her
dreams. It was indeed a real sound, sound of life sound of another human being.
She had forgotten long back she was one too. It came as a  gruff croaking cough this time. An
intermittent one. She moved closer to the wall pressing her  ear to the wall till it ached to reinforce on
herself the idea of the sound as real. She could hear heavy breathing or just a
figment of her imagination.

   She wondered
at herself thinking for the first time in so many years out of her own weaved
world and longing to hear that sound again. She felt a small fragmented flame
of hope burning inside, some life was still left. The thought angered her..the
inner voices became predominate once again. She had worked hard to detach
herself, to confine herself to this dark world, but it seemed this one new
sound had made all her efforts go in vain. She dragged herself to the extreme
opposite corner of the chamber indulging her self once again into clearing the
cobwebs she spun off n on. The rest of the day passed uneventful.

    The next
started on almost the same note with the frequency of sounds slightly increased
than the previous one. Her curiosity drove her mad. After such a long time of
confinement this was not welcome. She had lost track of the time..how long? A
new fight had begun inside of her….quite different from her inner voices, a
fight to ignore the sounds from the adjoining room. When it became unbearable
she gathered the courage and knocked at the stoned wall a bit too hard to
imprint marks on her knuckles, with no response. Her frustration emerged from
the source which she wasn’t able to understand, confused, whether the sound
made her really angry or happy or that it had succeeded in distracting her from
her own world of memories. Her curiosity was growing each day with the
increasing clarity of the quality of sound which changed from a hoarse one to a
softer breathing…audible? Yes?..

     Who are
you?..the question came piercing across the wall jerking her out of her
frenzied state as if pulling her into the whirlpool. It striked her ear drums
and she could hear them vibrating. It was a deep enriching male human voice
with a brusque undertone. For Once she felt like responding but immediately
refrained….she wasn’t used to responding to commands other than her own. Again
the days passed uneventful as she was getting accustomed to the swift sounds
from across the wall. She had not answered the question but it seemed as if the
conversations had already started, slowly diffusing the visible walls. …..