Blank

The white page stared back at him. Replying to his silence with the same. A loud deafening silence. As he stared into the blank page intently it reflected his current state of mind. The emptiness he felt inside of him seemed to engulf him on the outside too. It was a rainy September evening, as he stared out his studio apartment, seeing washed up cars move along the drenched streets.

It had been over a month since he had stepped out of his place. And a couple of months more since he had last written something worthwhile. From time to time he’d get the urge to pen his thoughts down, but the moment he’d sit down to write, the ink from his pen, like the words from his head, refused to flow. Each and every time he drew a blank. And couple more sheets found their way into the bin by his writing table.

He read more in these last few months than he had in a long time that he could remember. From Kerouac to Hughes, Yeats to Larkin, he devoured them with a hunger he didn’t know he still had inside of him. Every time he picked up a book he thought he’d be stirred up to write something. But the end result was still the same. Different blank pages of his exercise book stared back at him with monotonous regularity.

He got up from his chair and walked towards the window, pressing his face on the glass pane staring aimlessly into the rain. He remembered a time when he loved them. He romanticised the rains like most people. He felt a sense of love and longing each time it rained. Now it seemed like a drag to him. He decided to step out for his cigarettes, bread and jam. Damn the rain he said to himself, still pressed against the weeping window pane. He wanted to go but something didn’t let him move.

He laughed out loud as she pressed his head against the wall. He could have used his strength to overpower her and push her against the wall but he loved being bullied by her. Each time he heard that laugh of hers, his heart skipped a beat. He felt joyous and ecstatic all over. He didn’t know whether the adrenalin rush he felt at such times was love or not but he loved whatever that feeling was.

He suddenly felt light again as he moved his face away from the pane. Sometimes her thoughts felt so real to him it was almost as if she was there. He looked around the sparse room. His pile of books lay on one corner right next to his vinyl player. A few jazz records were strewn around making the place look more untidy than it ought to have, given the minimal things there were. Almost like a robot he headed towards his pile of books and picked up Emma by Jane Austen. It was the only Austen book he possessed. Gifted to him by her. He leafed through the book and found a tattered note along with a stained and discoloured photograph of two young people in love. He stared at the part of the picture where they held hands. Clasped tight, that picture spoke so much more than he could feel. He stared blankly at the picture before turning it over to read the washed up ink that almost obliterated the writing. Keep yourself thoughts happy, he read aloud. He shut the book almost instantly.

He didn’t know how long he sat in his writing table that night. The cigarette pack remained unopened, the jam jar untouched, the bread likewise. As he felt the morning rays of the sun kiss his face through the still wet panes, he realised he had filled up quite a few pages of his exercise book. After ages. He didn’t even remember what he had written. But he felt lighter that morning. His wrists hurt, perhaps with the constant writing. He kept his pen on the side of the table and shut his exercise book.

An old Hoagy Carmichael tune waifed through the room as he moved his tired wrists to spread raspberry jam on his white bread that September morning. He felt hungry after a long time. Strangely he also felt an equal measure of satisfaction.

The pages in his exercise book were blank no more.