Glitches: A Monologue

(A bourgeois Indian family is seated at the dining table. It is early afternoon, and the air shimmers with scents full of promises of a lunch yet to be served. There are curtains in peach tones to the north and west of the set, and the light of LEDs mimicking the Indian summer sun filter in through the glass windows embedded in cardboard walls. The table is set with cutlery fit for special occasions, the legs ornately carved. A dresser of fine china adorns the wall to the east. Everyone is speaking, save a child sitting close to the head, head bowed towards the plate. The child / man speaks, and in the background, familial conversation continues without interruption.)

Child/Man: Daydreams at midnight have become so common now. Eyes stinging with each line that my fingers scroll through, rooftop balconies decorated with speakers and empty diaries. Second guesses were never meant to be written down: they are lies trying to slide up these shrivelled cords. Dogs fly in the garden, the weeds now four feet tall and I think about the first time I walked in and laid down. Bugs and ants crawled over me, real fireworks burning me red instead of the phantoms under bed sheets that used to be.

These spectacles of twinkling glass let me see the hills of the sky weave of my blanket. The leaves on the trees, these petals could be slides under a microscope, I see them. Perhaps my eyes were not the only things that blurred without them. These taunting pains of my jaw, this cerebrum ache is there. I can feel it. Just not at the dentist’s or the doctor’s. 

Monsters come in all shapes and sizes. Hiding under beds when it's a little too convenient, don't you think?

(Nobody answers. The child thinks this is all in his head. The man knows better. Sometimes no one wants to listen to the truth. All they wish is to maintain the idea of the person who is lovable, not the reality. The child continues. He refuses to believe anything.)

Child: The smell of my nini blanket is what I used to be like. Childhood mementos are storytellers left behind in scorched storerooms and lizard-shit cupboards. A farm in the middle of nowhere was very healthy for an overactive imagination. I am infantile for hugging my blankie still because the dreams that come without it are too confusing. The fields of washing powder and mom's moisturiser make them easier to bear.

(He stops. He listens. He gets lost in the white noises of inane conversations and mocking laughter. He bows his head. A man raises his head in the child’s stead. A calm anger has overtaken him. He speaks.)

Man: There is no light in this room except what brings my twiddling thumbs into being. That way, I only have to feel my tears and blush and be saved from 'Awesome job. You're crying. Are you happy now?' I don't cry for more than a few breaths. Anymore, and my furniture gets dinner and a show. I regain my avalanche and start again. Unnoticed silences in the kitchen with people who used to care will always come back, and I need to be prepared. I can't have my heart be chipped away, coal by coal; these miners of the mountain know their craft well. Bury me, suffocate me, make all of me weep as a single drop of my lifeblood drips from the stalactites.

That's not what I am. As much as I would pretend otherwise, I am a coward. These masochistic fantasies of listening ears and inquisitive eyes are just that, don't you realise?

I have leather shackles on my wrists and lace chokers circling my song, they are not prisons. Knowing that the salt of my baby eyes and the salt from tonight find their albums in a cotton blanket is . . . 

(He sighs deeply. For the man, It's disappointing, not yet surprising. He smiles, not a sad one. Smirk. He smiles a robotic smile. A little too wide, a little too much teeth. Insane, unnerving, murdery. Embodies it. Becomes it. Speaks a little too politely and mechanically, stuttering and glitching. Mania and rage taint his voice. His voice soon drowns out the inane background conversations.)

Child/Man: Mix dry ingredients and set aside to be a part of the conversation with the right person to make a cake for your thoughts and ideas about how to cook your own story and how you doin today to make your life easier and more important to feed strays and your friends and fun things to do in your own story and your own story and your own story and Y its a great idea for you to come over tonight and enjoy the fun and relaxing fun and relaxing fun and relaxing and relaxing and relaxing as a relaxing time for your family and friends and fun with your family and friends and fun with your family and friends and fun with your family and friends and yayy and your family and friends and family members are welcome to join us for a moment of your life and your family is always a great place to start your family and friends with you and your family and friends and family members and friends and fun with your family and friends and fun with your family and friends and fun with your family and friends and fun. 

(Silent tears carve his cheeks. Nothing will change. The man smiles knowingly. He recedes. The child returns, as if from a dream. For him, the last few minutes are but a distant memory.)

Child: Maybe more. Someday. 

(He rises and departs from the table, ignoring the questioning looks. One day. One day.)

End

The child in the monologue exists as a written form of the perspective that some world leaders hold when it comes to the polity: petulant children who don’t know any better. Yet the child represents student protestors and teenage leaders like Greta Thunberg, and others who fight against oppression. The man, representative of the many adults in the book who have been scarred by their pasts, too beaten down to record themselves and tell their stories. Yet, they would support the children who would continue to fight despite the odds. The child represents hope and the illogical discrediting that student protestors suffer as a result of their age. The man, representing a tired adulthood and maturity that came too soon, shields the children or at least attempts to. He does not want the child to become a refraction of what he is now.