Proleptic Meditations

[The year is 2035, and the Transparent Ironist returns to browse through the blog of his forgotten youth.]

For a few agonising moments, there was an uneasy silence between us, perhaps the noisy silence between two bursts of thunder in the middle of a monsoon shower.

'So do you still go around in your fast cars?'

'Fast cars?'

'Yes? You used to drive in and out of town in one of those Toyotas?'

'Ah, fast cars, fast cars, fast cars. You see, my mind does not work as fast as it used to during those days. No, I don't go around in fast cars.'

'And all those dead horses? Plato, Aquinas, Kant, Mill, Hegel, Heidegger, Russell, Sartre, Nagel, Putnam, Dummett, Churchland, and Searle? Do you still read all these people?'

'Well, yes, now and then. After all, we must all pay our homage to the dead. Each of us, in our own way.'

'And what about your theories?'

'Theories? I never had any!'

'Of course you did! All those arguments over babies that we had until the sun came down. And sometimes, even until it rose above us again the next morning.'

'Yes? Like what?'

'This one, for example. Like how every pattern of education, at home or at school, is an implicit or explicit form of violence, and if we do not wish to commit violence on children, we should not have babies in the first place.'

'Ah, yes. In the first place. I used to love that phrase in those days.'

'And then how you used to smile sadly at all those teenagers shouting at the top of their voices in front of the American Embassy that global poverty must come to an end. And how you told me that poverty and hunger would never become history as long as human beings kept on producing babies. And also how some of these teenagers would go on to have babies whom they would then shower with medicines from Glaxo, diapers from Candida, and milk from Nestle, the very MNCs that they had been fighting against just a few months ago!'

'Yes, but those were different days. I am an old man now, the fire is lost from my words, from my voice, and from anything I could write today. Indeed, I think I was old, very old, even in my youth. Perhaps, when I was young, I missed my youth.'

'But why didn't you ever tell others about these theories that you kept to yourself?'

'I didn't? Why do you think I started that blog a long time back you used to comment on every now and then?'

'Well, yes. But why not speak in a direct and clear first-person voice?'

'Because I did not want to get entangled in pointless disputes over the meaning of words.'

'What do you mean?'

'Misanthropy, for example. Some would say that I am a misanthropist, that because I am indifferent towards babies, I hate the Human Race. Others would say that because I would rather be around women who share my indifference towards babies and carefully avoid those who do not, I am a misogynist. Yet others would say that because I have no plans, no visions, and no goals for how to make the world a better place, I am a status quoist. Finally, some would say that because the gradual disappearance of the Human Race from the face of this earth does not bother me in the least, I am a pessimist. And instead of debating the fundamental question, Should or should we not have babies?, we would get embroiled in endless debates over the meaning of words such as 'misanthropy', 'misogynist', 'status quoist', and 'pessimist''.

'Is that why you hid yourself behind the thick cloak of your irony?'

'Perhaps.'

A little yellow bird flew down from the grey skies and sat down on the wet ground in between us.

'You know, he often asked about you during his last days.'

'Yes, I know. I tried to reach his house the other evening. I was told he had died in the morning.'

'Yes.'

'But perhaps that is the way things are. Those who are alive always reach home a bit too late. It is only the dead who arrive bang on time.'

The yellow flapped its wings twice, struggled to rise into the air, and flew away.

I walked away from the benches, with a few dry branches crackling under my feet. I looked back at her. She was still as beautiful as always : ever so ancient, ever so new.

I reached my old Toyota, slumped into the front seat, and banged the partly-damaged door shut. In front of me, I could hear the Sunday choir singing from the cathedral. I looked up at the sooty Mediaeval spire.

Yes, the little yellow bird was now sitting right at the top of it. And behind it, the faint glimmerings of a rainbow in the horizon.