In an empty room, I take it upon myself to act. It would end up with a deafening freeze, that critics could probably write off for a character's cerebral turmoil. In five decades of life, repeated attempts at the spotlight, orating to an empty audience, staging myself to me, I had to refill myself everytime. I waned, my speech slurred; trembled to deception.
I could never be a good actor.
With peers who change with money, with them who pedestalise those who treat them like dirt and kick their loyal servants in the gut, with them who seek power and attention, with my shrivelled and devoted wife, with sprightly grandchildren who ask me to try out sneakers for my Chappals (it embarasses them), with friends of my wife I run into at parties that paint themselves with red, violet and black cosmetics, even rouge (sophomore girls in 50-year-old frames of women; sagging breasts can never be hidden, they say), with musicians who conceal their pain to make Adagios, with refugees, with nurses, with my sister who sleeps with someone not her husband, with her desolate husband, with great movies and even greater actors. With Ashame that I am a hypocrite. I shan't.
I suddenly catch some of their laughs, and like them too. I didn't expect this anti-climax.
With this comes the bereavement of my unsure fingers swearing that I could have been more honest and less apocalyptic here at least.
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