Sunday, March 24, 2013

The Road To Utopia: The Peaceful One

Suddenly it started raining. Rainfall in a desert is rare, but not unheard of. As the afternoon was fading away slowly, the gas pump owner stretched his legs and yawned in his comfortable armchair. He looked at the wall clock and realized that within an hour or two, he will be surrounded by complete darkness. He knew he was supposed to get up, perform wudu and say his prayers. But for some reason, he decided to spend a bit more time listening to the drizzling rain. 

His assistant Alam did not show up this morning, which forced him to get up from his usual, comfortable seat and to go to the pump to refill the fuel tanks of peaceful and restless voyagers. But after the last restless one left, there hasn't been a vehicle for over an hour, and considering the usual trend, he doubted the arrival of any new cars. 

He closed his eyes, and peace surrounded him in all ways and means possible. To enhance the feel good factor, he extended his long arms and opened the drawer at the back of his seat. The drawer is part of a six storied archive cabinet. The ipod was not supposed to be stored in that cabinet, but he remembered putting it inside hastily when he was dozing off (just like now) yesterday and suddenly a peaceful customer arrived.

"Who am I judge whether a customer is peaceful or enraged?" He thought. 

The sweet sensation of holding the ipod touch and finding the earphones entangled with it compares to few good feelings on earth. He disentangled the entangled wire and instantly put the earphone in his ears. Years of encountering and practicing has made disentangling the entangled wires an easy task for him. He remembered spending difficult times and overusing the F word towards earphone makers during the times when he was younger and life was difficult because one had to carry walkmans and diskmans instead of ipod, zens and zunes. 

 "But then again, life never reached the zenith of difficulty where I was forced to carry a zune" 

 The sweet nylong stringed sound, coupled with the more contemporary steel string guitar playing sound filled his ear with peace, enjoyment and a nice loving feeling engulfed him within minutes. As he kept on listening to Roseland, a great, exhilarating song--he thought he'd drift off to sweet slumber. It was a sweet summer day.

Sweet summer day 
Talking about a sweet summer day
Take your troubles and let them fly away

Suddenly a whistling sound broke the trance. He was in a blissful state, the last minute before falling in peaceful sleep. His whole body jerked while he took out the ear phones and turned off the ipod. His body was mildly shaking, conscience still not clear and he was still in between the land of dreams and reality. As the whistling tune of Wind of Change kept playing, he remembered changing his ring tone last night. 

He hastily picked up the phone, and realized that the call was from Alam. He never calls from his home or his own cellphone. In fact, the gas pump owner doesn't even know whether Alam has a cellphone or not. He never saw him using one during work, and he only remember seeing his land phone number in the curriculum vitae that is stored in Alam's personnel file, which is securely stored in that same six storied cabinet. 

Even before Alam started speaking, he knew that he was going to deliver one of his famous cooked up excuses for leaving work.
"I must start paying him on a daily basis so that he can't take these casual leaves frequently"
Alam kept on speaking about the dead rattlesnake that was found in his bed this morning, and how his wife was traumatized. In his Arab like thick English accent, he kept on apologizing profusely, and let him know that only a dumb Arabian woman would confuse a loin clothe as a rattle snake and freak out. He said he can come now and make it a half day's work or give his wife company and apply for a non-paid leave tomorrow, although the major portion of the day has ended. 

"Now that's surprising", thought the owner. "Alam wants to consume one of his annual leaves. That's news to me"

 He granted his wish, and decided that he, too, should call it a day. After all, daylight will go away soon and leaving the gas pump open during sunless hours is not only pointless, but also scary. With Chris Rea singing in his ears, the pump owner proceeded to reverse the open/close signboard. As soon as he held the sign, he heard a loud, screeching noise....

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