This Man Who Cries in A Million Humdrum Worlds
By Mandira Pattnaik
One would cry when one is tired. Or irritable. Or overwhelmed. Crying means they have hope that the situation will improve. That somehow things will be different than it is now. One can’t cry when they have no hope of anything changing. One would then get progressively bitter, even cynical, but one would almost never cry.
So, I imagine he has hope, this man. I imagine him temporarily unhappy because maybe his supervisor yelled at him, and he might have shouted back, though he is not supposed to as an intern, because obedience is expected, and if he did think of shouting back, in fact he hadn’t, and had returned to the desk. Maybe, it is something unrelated to work — bad news, or a heartbreak. Then, maybe he is crying and taking the time to get over his grief. Maybe it is just about the general way of things, how we are bounded to routines, and our scarcity. How we trudge-on on our monotonous lives, until we are done, and then some more.
Lately I have stopped crying. I no longer shed tears either in the privacy of my home or in my office cabin.
I watch him past noon. Past the glass wall. I consider his situation against mine. Hope against hopelessness. We both sweat and blink; we both endure grief.
I feel hungry because I had skipped lunch. I no longer see the man in his place. I look for the chequered blue shirt across the hall, but none of the remaining employees is wearing one. Everyone is busy filing away the last of their assignments.
Maybe everyone is hungry too, maybe they are not—instead, perhaps, looking forward to a delicate bouquet offered at a meeting place later in the evening. Possibly waiting to get home to just sleep off their bad day in an unmade bed.
In whatever case, everyone is definitely eager to get out that door.
Everyone will be in their homes in two hours’ time, accounting for the commute.
I am not eager to go home, I am hungry. And I am tired. I do not want to get home.
I do not want to get home because it’ll be night, then morning again, and I will be back at work again.
Mandira Pattnaik’s latest work appears in IHLR, The Rumpus and The Cincinnati Review miCRo. More mandirapattnaik.com
Rebecca Pyle is an artist whose paintings, photographs, and drawings appear in many journals, including Silk Road Review (forthcoming), The Banyan Review, and MAYDAY. Rebecca is also a writer of fiction and poetry. See rebeccapyleartist.com.