Tempus

The worst is parking yourself on your cushiony rear which is getting even more coagulated by the day because you keep it parked for endless lengths of time waiting for an inopportune moment when you would be called upon for something that would require you to mobilize your inert bottom. It’s the wait that is killing. The comfort of being relinquished, of staying in the dark corner where no one’s razor sharp eyes zero in on you, doesn’t last long. Someone somewhere up the ladder takes a quick peek down below…notices you wasting yourself and decides to entrust you with a responsibility which is entirely inconsequential according to you…and ‘pop goes the weasel’.

Now this phrase has been used after much deliberation. This obscure slang has a cryptic reference. Without getting into too much detail let me just make a passing mention that it is a darkly humorous chronicle of the cycle of poverty among the underbelly of East London.

The weasel particularly in my case is 'time'. Pop it goes without warning. I see it sitting straight backed…waiting patiently for the underground. The express train stops… the automatic doors slide open…time of my life demurely lifts one shapely leg snug in pointed red high heels…then the other…tantalizing creamy skin playing havoc with my senses…I know now that it was only to stall me that it had clad itself such…before I know it, the door shuts. It sees me standing stunned in silence…it gives me a delectable smile and has the nerve to wave covertly. I stand on the platform in the underground tunnel with big posters splashed with obscenely bright colors. They are frozen in time…mocking me. A throng of people mill around me…they push and shove…I know I was the only one who saw it leave.

‘This too shall pass’. And it does. Even when you wish it wouldn’t. Time plays such juvenile games. It hides like a child, it steals like a thief, it returns like a lover, it haunts like a ghost, it runs like a deer, it flows like a stream, it lies like beauty...