The Start Of An Untitled Story

By Kartik Gupta

Earphones plugged in, The Sound of Silence playing, and the volume turned down to a level that Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel’s voices were barely a whisper, he was all set. Pulling up the wooden chair, he cleared the desk top of all the usual clutter and set out just a scroll pad, carefully positioning it at the center of the table. This was supposedly the perfect setting to finally sit down and write his story. He picked up a pencil and touched the tip to the top left margin of the sheet in front of him.

It was at this moment that it struck him. Until now, he had always been very vague; so much so that even he had trouble deciphering his own obscure

thoughts. And he also knew why. He needed a unifying theme... a motif. And not just for his story. Lucidity was something that had constantly eluded him. It was not that he didn’t have any ideas. But so muddled up they were that giving a pragmatic close to them was inconceivable. And with every single idea, came its posse of doubts, fear and incertitude; those floating nimbus clouds addling the otherwise clear blue skies of his subconscious.

A torrent of thoughts was flooding the streets of his head. He found himself digressing from the task at hand. Maybe it was the words of the song refraining him from focusing. Perhaps Ludwig van would have been a better pick for this setting. He reached for the pause button on his iPod. The music stopped, but he left the earphones where they were. He liked it that way.

The pencil started shaping letters precariously, giving way to words that he hoped would eventually turn into a story.

By Kartik Gupta