MALAISE

“Malaise”: a word that truly lives up to its meaning. Words like these make the language a tad more beautiful and make it a lot more easier to relate, to the several complicated states of mind one can find himself/herself (just in case I were to be branded a Male Chauvinist Pig) in. It’s a state of temporal decrepitude of the mind, which is characterized by a lethargic relation between the lightning fast neurotic messages and the rebellious motor system. Every now and then I become an unwilling guest to this despicable stupor. The reasons, several in number, are not subject to exploration in this piece of writing (As a VTU student, I guess Out OF Syllabus, would be more like it). As I struggle to urge every muscle in the body to bridge the gap between the message and the service, I find myself invariably moving towards the Idiot Box of the new Era, the Personal Computer.

Like a well rehearsed snippet from a Shakespearean play, my fingers string together a set of actions on the mouse and the keyboard, that miraculously lead me to one of the more frequently visited folders in my computer. My eyes do a surprisingly quick scan of the LCD screen before coming to rest upon the fairly successful cure to this ailment of the mind, affiliated to the body. A double click and the treatment begins.

The ensemble of signals that course through my auditory passages, triggers off chemical reactions in my nervous system that faithfully relays the message “Comfortably Numb” to my unwitting brain, just as Roger Waters begins to mouth out the words, “Hello, Is There anybody in THERE?”, belonging to one of the most psychedelic compositions of music ever. A sense of detachment dominates as the song moves smoothly from the first stanza to the chorus. Every time I try to make sense out of it, I end up being more confused than ever. The sound of an overdriven guitar pierces the air in between the hypnotizing verses, as Gilmour paints a contradictory picture of an isolated, serene shore with restless, troubled waves receding into the horizon, with effortless ease and thorough expertise. A feeling of equilibrium eases into the mind, towards the final stages of the song. A segment marked by a high-pitched, flanging solo, leads to an overwhelming overture, before the song fades into the steady tick of a seconds needle.

The feeling of malaise melts, the hand matches the mind. Serviced and cured, the patient walks out to face the world again…….