“I really must be going now”, the Tunnel Runner said. “I can’t continue sitting like this with you and that too purposelessly.” He attacked my earlier invitation to him to stay beside me with a renewed enthusiasm. He continued in a raised voice, “I am supposed to do something. I can’t expect myself to just sit on my haunches or stand on my legs while time passes by. This is not what I am meant for. I am meant to race towards light; towards happiness. I have to really make a run for the light at the end of the tunnel. It is not waiting for no one. I have to run towards it before it is too late.” He finished off his trail of uninterrupted statements with a whiff of breath as if he was preparing himself for the impending run.
I smiled in the darkness, unsure of where to look at as it was pitch-black all around like the deepest recess of my eye’s pupil. I only spoke to darkness, “I never asked you to wait,” I replied. The runner responded with astonishment, “You only had told me to fucking wait here beside you and wait for the damned light to come to me. I was on my way, before you out of nowhere interrupted me in my life's pursuit.” I could start sensing the anguished impatience in his inconsistent tone of utterance.
“I merely asked you to stand beside me. Never did I tell you to wait.” I replied betraying my sense of arrogant relaxation. The runner grew agitated at this and broke free of his hermetic stance. I lighted up my cigarette and exhaled white clouds of smoke, which in their wispery glow embossed upon the folds of the runner’s forehead. I could sense his rising tension as I continued smoking. “What will you do after you run long enough to reach at the end of the tunnel?" I questioned him.
The runner allowed himself another piece of time to respond to my query. “I am in search of happiness. The light is the key to it. I am running through this tunnel and I don’t know why but what I know is that the light holds the answer to it. I don’t know what that answer is or could be, but that answer atleast will be the reason for me to not run any longer in search of light.” “Aah, so it is the achievement of that answer you are running for really, not the light,” I interrupted him. I continued speaking, “For, the end of any search results in a veritable state of achievement, however empty or fulfilling it may be. It is this sense of achievement that you are running for and not really light,” I added. “Perhaps! said the runner as his voice started doubting its own source of creation as if it had turned into a verbal Frankenstein.
“Enough of your arrogant jocularity. You are a purposeless entity who has condemned himself to a meaningless pleasure in the dark underbelly of nowhere, even as you slowly stub your life out over each stick. I have something to live for and I shall,” said the runner triumphantly with a wave of excitement after an initial state of confusion so as to assure him of his life’s bearings once again and to again regale his existence with the fruits of personal capabilities.
“So long, then!” said I as I dismissed his presence with
the stubbing out of my cigarette. It threw our surroundings into utter darkness once again. Both of us were rendered invisible to each other, yet again. All that the runner could guide himself with was the light at the end of the tunnel, as he turned towards it to make a hopeful dash. I started hearing the sounds of his feet hitting the floor as he resumed his pursuit of light. The sounds reverberated with purposefulness even as they cheered him on towards the light at the end of the tunnel.
Read The Tunnel Runner Pt. 3 here.
Image from here
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