THE BOOK OF DARKNESS AND LIGHT
It was two days before the exam.
Crowding silence filled the library with cohesive groups of first year
undergrads wrestling with time, breaking boredom through reticent discussions,
rummaging through endless pages and of course, interminably romancing between
the lines.
At the far end of the desk, she
sat. A loner, drowned in lethargy. Her weary eyes navigated every corner of the
room for company. She needed someone badly. Someone who could break the ice of
loneliness and monotony; someone to rake off the unsavoury stress; someone to
talk to; someone to study with.
Sitting at quite a distance from
her, almost the other end of the room, she quickly recognized him. His dark
glasses and walking stick were the unfortunate synonyms of his identity. He
usually occupied the first bench in class while she sat on the last. The book
in front of him read the same title as hers but differed in size. While she
scratched its insipid pages out of sheer irritation, he seemed to romance with
it. His tender fingers trickling those minute bumps on his page. It surely felt
awkward approaching him, but, at this point, she didn’t mind anything even
remotely human.
Even those stealthy footsteps did
not deter him from sensing an intrusion. He quickly inclined himself towards
it. Standing right beside his chair, she waited while her mind gathered the
right words. Biting her lips, she exclaimed, “Hey, it’s me, Roshni. We’re in
the same philosophy class. We’ve never met before, have we?”
“Oh! Hi, no we haven’t. I’m Viaan,” he said.
“Um… My solitary self was killing
me. I was wondering if we could work on Thomas Hobbes’ theory together. Share
inputs and combine criticisms. After all, together is better, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, sure we can, please take a
seat”
To Viaan, studying was a delayed
process. But with Roshni by his side, he gladly shut his book, totally relying
on her swift verbal cues. She read; he replied; she heard; he spoke and they
both understood Thomas Hobbes.
It was a good twenty minutes or
maybe less when the inevitable happened. It was the sudden power-cut that
discharged a wave of clamour and disturbance across the room. ‘Curses’ and
‘Abuses’ zapped the oblivious corners of the library. While the looming
untimely eclipse bailed out the helpless souls, some still struggled with
intense flashlights. It was almost an hour later when Roshni gave up all signs
of hope and was ready to leave that Viaan held her hand, retrieved his version
of the same book and placed it in front of them. It was his world now. Running
his fingers over the mystifying odd letters he reminded himself, “Despite
darkness, life does go on.”
