Ill-effects of dehydration

It has become very common of late: to get bored easily. There is nothing worthwhile about watching the endless cavalcade of automobiles that honk and whiz past the streets outside; there is nothing worthwhile either about reading the countless lines in the tomes that lay on my bed. Habermas made sense because I began with him early in the morning but as the hours passed, my grasp over the text became increasingly tenuous; I could still vaguely comprehend Foucault’s authorship function and epistemes but Derrida’s Deconstruction made no sense at all. It was 2 in the afternoon and I was ashamed of my blunted power of comprehension but actually, I was too exhausted to be so. I wondered if I had failed to make sense of Derrida because the singeing heat outside has rendered my brain a mass of melting wax-utterly useless and a sordid sight.(It is a small mercy that no one can fortunately see it!) Or was I actually too much of a nincompoop to be able to understand Deconstruction? The fan overhead spun clumsily, and I felt a benumbing pain at the back of my head. Maybe, I did not sweat sufficiently because of which I was feeling so uncomfortable. I picked up Bolano’s Nazi Literature of the Americas presently but after reading in it for half an hour about plagiarizing poetasters, hooligan wits and psychopathic science fiction writers, I shut the book and put it away, in horror. Do people write for mere fame or worse, to satiate their tendencies of self aggranisement? Was I likely to become like these writers of Bolano’s imagination ever? Maybe I would if I tried writing, without first trying to understand Derrida or Levi Strauss.
I felt nervous and decided to eat, though I was not feeling hungry remotely. I began eating a paratha but with every bite of it, I felt nauseous. Was there nothing to allay my discomfiture, this engulfing sense of wastefulness? I wished I could sleep but it was too hot to fall asleep. I began watching Charulata and the scene of a rising storm early in movie when Charu first meets Amal, acutely made me conscious of the dry, hot afternoon hour. It was 4 o’ clock and the sun still scorched the surroundings mercilessly. I suddenly wished I could cry myself to sleep and dream of rains at home! But I knew I could not and therefore, continued to watch the classic. Mabhabi-the actress who played Charu in the film-reminded me of Audrey Hepburn while the actor who played her husband-I donot know his name-with his calm deportment, his impeccable English accent and his fervour for reforms, reminded me of my chotomesho. I again found myself yearning to be at home, something that could not be fulfilled and hence, I attempted to focus on the architecture of the house in which Charu lived and its furniture. How beautiful, I thought, were the four-poster beds, the bureaus, the grandfather clocks and the high ceilings and the broad pillars that were to be found in the houses of this land in the 19th century. I now simultaneously wished that I was born in that era and that I could live in a house like that in 2011, even if it was derelict state…Towards the end of the movie, Charu and her husband visit some sea-shore and the sight of the waves suddenly made me realize that I had drank very little water this afternoon. I drank an entire bottle of water in a few gulps and sensed a moist coolness spreading down my throat towards the abdomen. I felt less nauseous and even yawned once! Maybe, I could try sleeping now and who knows, maybe I will dream of myself sitting at my desk by the window in my room back at home and watching a torrential downpour…Ah!