Zoo

8:00 AM, on any weekday among many people, you’ll find me in a zoo.

Standing, with a bag on my shoulders, earphones plugged deep enough for sounds to occupy my cranium.

In this world, and in another. And many different, as the playlist moves.

There’s only as much noticeable about me as is about everyone else in the moving compartment.

Dragging us from the mediocre perception of home and happiness to the inconsequential mechanics of work.

To and fro, from day to day, next day and again.

And, yet the zoo goes.

And, yet it works.

It works almost as if it couldn’t or rather shouldn’t be any other way.

As if our whole collective existence and accumulation of all evolution found in this, the best plausible function.

For us to be in a zoo, unaware of it.

For no one knows that they are a part of the zoo.

Or maybe it just works because of the earphones or the weekends - a few fleeting moments on a vast canvas of insignificance - when it’s not what it is like on weekdays.

Then, it’s 11:00 AM on the weekend, in a car, with crying or at least shouting kids, driving 30 miles.

To see a chimp in a zoo. A zoo that charges you the money that you earned while being in your zoo.

The crying kids get amused looking at the chimp.

I find in the chimp’s eyes a reflection of what brings us together - being in a zoo.

It’s okay to share it with him, for he can’t speak.

I no longer share that glance with people in my zoo.

Otherwise, I may break the secret.

Then there might be no one at 8:00 AM, on any weekday, in our zoo.