When the drops of venom oozes through every soul it can latch on to, death ceases to be the automatic choice, rather than an option for life. It was not us, who chose to take the road not taken, of darkness and eternal decadence in the post-colonial word of the new millennium. To be very frank, the millennium was never ours. It was and still is of time.

My name is or rather my time is Hrs:17 Min:44 Day:1 Month: April Year:1996.

The dominance of time as a metric for life, was most prominent, when the whole world forgot life for an entire decade, trying to set the clock right, at least on the computers, at the brink of the new millennium.

Irony is it was not only the end of an illustrious millennium, but also the conclusion of a century, a year and a month. It was the century which saw the boom of technology transforming life for worse than good. Be it ravaging two entire cities or engrossing generations in front of a luminescent screen. Individuality was held to ransom, turning majority of the population into herds of sheep, life into a joke. We all turned into psychopathic jokers, only the external manifestations being much more futile than the one of Gotham.

In the rings of a circus, jokers are draped in mirage of colours, but in reality it is either light or dark, white or black. I do not know which end of the spectrum I am on, but I know for sure, I am nothing but a monochrome joker.

I do not have a name. My existence does in the records in the books of an institution which names itself “A Government”. Now, whether this institution is local, hyper local or global in nature, it would take me another quarter of century to understand, after the day I was born.

I did not get to choose my religion on paper, but still it was time, that when I grew up, there was still a conducive environment to follow what I believed in. But situation was heating up more than ever, especially in India. The time, I mentioned so explicitly, is because it was a moment of historical turbulence in the country, starting from the assassination of a prime minister, a scandalous riot in its aftermath, demolition of a religious monument fueled by the hateful sentiments of religious extremism, leading to another bloodbath in the name of religion just at the beginning of the new millennium. On another front, the country was scathing through the impacts of economic liberalization while globally, the western world had encountered one of the worst recessions in decades. In the east there was a monumental change in the political dynamics. The Berlin Wall and the USSR, both had fallen.

With the capitalism and communism both undergoing disasters, another darkness loomed upon in a small middle class salaried family of West Bengal, India. My parents wanted to have a kid. I was born. It is worth mentioning, that communists were still running a government there.Thereafter,a combination of urban and semi-urban values, would go on to lay the foundation to what I am today. A student of Doctor of Philosophy, struggling to co-exist with the philosophy of my life.

The Post-Soviet Ideological Crisis has been the catalyst for instability in my existence, which is still making me go down a never ending spiral  of despair and disdain.

Birth is the second darkest fallacy of humankind. The darkest being the dare to dream. Somewhere between the dream of a new birth and birth of a new dream, reality dies a painful death. With it crumbles the aspirations of the structural foundation, which keeps Maslow and Freud busy in their own jolly backyard.

Hate me, Hate me more for my worth, worthlessness and the words beyond.

I had dreams. I don’t know whether they have turned into a fantasy after all these years.

I wanted to be an actor. I act every day, in every sphere of life.

Love is soaking itself dry to wings of a firefly on a late winter sunset.

Only I live on, through my memories, as a Pre-Millennial Catastrophe.