The boy with the machine gun

I was sitting on the bench in the park reading Orwell’s ‘1984’. I see women treading the path which runs around the park. A group of boys stands leaning against the railing on the outward corner of the park, smoking and laughing a laugh which is recognizable as the one typical to gossiping. Some children are playing cricket. Although there is a lot of action happening around, yet I experience a certain monotony in it. It lacks any dynamism probably because of lacking spontaneity while totally conforming to a pattern of the normal activity in a park. I further read about reality control, conditioning of minds and then the internalizing of these conditionings so as they seem to be the absolute truth.

Suddenly I hear a sound of ‘dh dh dh’, or was it ‘dsh dsh dsh’. I look up and see a young boy holding a virtual machine gun, and firing virtual bullets through his mouth. He constantly moves to and fro, firing and more interestingly, even escaping all this while from bullets being fired at him. Probably he’s assumed a romanticized view of thieves after watching the movie ‘Dhoom 2’ or maybe he’s doused in patriotism after watching ‘LoC’ or ‘Border’. The reason fails to draw my curiosity. Whatever it might be, what’s actually more enchanting is his conviction in the act.

The precision with which he seems to hold a gun and fire bullets is nothing less than watching someone actually firing with a real gun. The act reaches its next level, when a bullet hits him. His chest and shoulders shake at two enemy shots. He limps for a while before finally falling onto the ground. Then as if garnering some last remnants of life in him, he lets out a yell of undying valour, and staggers back to his feet to fight the enemy, and this time with greater furiousness than before. He is totally incognizant of his surroundings – a whole world in himself.

The next moment, our eyes meet for an instance. I am afraid that this might make him uncomfortable owing to shyness and cause him to stop. A smile on my lips transpires and appears on his in an unknown form. It’s definitely not that smile of awkwardness in instances when someone catches you doing something eccentric or personal. He confirms this the next moment by stepping back from the brink of his world back into it and losing himself into it once again.

I wish I could make him stand atop a towering pedestal where he could do it in front of the whole world. This strikes to me as an act which could swipe an entire civilization off its feet turning to dust its labyrinthine traditions of a thousand years. This dynamic conviction consisting of spontaneity and self-consciousness seems capable of overthrowing the dominion of several Big Brothers. As for him, it could let him achieve anything just the way he conjured the gun, bullets and wounds out of nowhere, but only if it doesn’t get despised, curbed or maneuvered forcefully in other directions at home and school.  

This reminds me of an article by Osho in which he talks about meditation in his centre where everyone is asked to shed every distraction and just do whatever they have always wanted to do, without any pretensions.

The act reaches its climax when he eventually succumbs to his injuries and dies. An old man, probably his grandfather, lifts him off the grass and takes him home with him.