A fable elucidating the ordeals of an incorrigible procrastinator who seldom adheres to his quotidian activities with the alacrity expected of him.
The alarm buzzes menacingly in the distance as the hunky-dory dream comes to an impetuous conclusion. You scramble within the confines of your sheets to awkwardly grab your cellphone as the cadence of the alarm tone pendulously and with celerity drops between alternate highs and lows. No sooner than the alarm is switched off than it dawns upon you that you’ve overslept: an asperity-marked indictment of your nocturnal cellphone-skittering tendencies. You scramble out of the sheets, muttering incomprehensible bilge bemoaning your incorrigible traits, and rush to complete the quotidian ablution in a slapdash manner, another perennial bone of contention between you and your parents.
You quail with mild pain and shudder as the first drops of the frosty shower water make unremitting fusillades on your naked body. The shampoo is grabbed awkwardly, as are the shower gel and the loofah, as the sloughing process is initiated in a manner that shall put the envious blitzing pace of the erstwhile World War Two era German Army to shame. As you grab hold of your senses and exit the washroom, change your clothes, and hastily make your way to the dining table, you realize that you’re facing an immense paucity of time, and that shall likely result in you skipping your meal, despite the vociferous protestations from your famished stomach. The stomach growls in a minatory manner, while you’re stuck between Scylla and Charybdis: either have a hearty breakfast and risk irking the professor by arriving at his lecture late, or skip the breakfast only to rue the decision later when you writhe on the floor with intense agony and regret. You opt for the former, immensely aware of the fact that your mendacious nature has never let you shy away from furnishing a flimsy and lousy excuse to the professor justifying your characteristic tardiness.
The breakfast is gulped with remarkable ferventness, a manifestation of your peckish temperament, as you baulk over your unflappable callousness towards academic ventures and adherence to a rigid deadline, which results in you seldom incurring the praise and encomium of your surly professors, who have anointed you as an object of ridicule and derision.
No sooner are you done devouring your breakfast like a madman than you’re impetuously jolted out of your somnolence. The backpack is grabbed, and the customary farewells are uttered as you sprint boisterously to the metro station, only to encounter a serpentine queue of commuters at the frisking station bemoaning their doomed fates. You mutter invectives reproaching your obstreperous nature as the queue dawdles ahead. You rush to the platform, hoping to find a train rolling into the station as soon as you enter only to find the station eerily empty. The display board is citing a long wait time. Your blinkered outlook is finally reaping dividends as you repeatedly curse your damned unpropitious nature by hurling a spree of coarse vituperatives directed at yourself.
A deafening honk arouses you out of your self-deprecating tirade yet again as the train rolls into the platform. You scramble to your feet as you take a perfunctory glance at your watch: the lecture must’ve commenced. That shall remain incontrovertible. The professor scrupulously adheres to the stipulated schedule. The doors of the metro open as a torrent of commuters briskly make their way inside, only for you to stumble upon a multitude of commuters already packed into the cloistered confines of the metro. You flail your arms, jostle within the sequestered space, and wedge yourself between a snarky quadragenarian undergoing a mid-life crisis and a sprightly teenager engaged in a telephonic conversation.
As the metro hurtles through, you reminisce over your fait accompli, your diminishing grades, and a chimerical social life, which is in disarray. Before you end up scripting your eventual demise, the metro comes to a screeching halt at your station, and you hastily gather your belongings and disembark.
You hail an erickshaw, and slouch on the seat as it zooms past the oncoming traffic, evoking a shudder or two as it brushes close to some precarious collisions. Even before the erickshaw comes to a complete stop at the college, you jump off and sprint to the college entrance, flash your ID to the pesky guards whose Brobdingnagian hubris might even flummox Narcissus, and dash towards the lecture hall. A few close shaves with stationary souls induce panic as you eventually run out of breath before slumping outside the lecture complex. A languid peek at the watch is taken yet again: you’re thirty minutes late. You mumble the concocted excuse again while opening the gate to only be perplexed by the sight awaiting you: the lecture hall is eerily dark and devoid of any souls, desolate and cold.
You fumble in your pockets and fish out your cellphone to scour for messages on the class group. “Classes have been scrapped,” so goes the message, as your countenance contorts into an amalgam of despair and choleric revulsion.
You concede defeat, trot across to the cafeteria with a despondent disposition, and slump on the nearest chair while cursing your imperiled life.
Image Credits: Being Indian
Adeel Shams
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