A 3-week-long nightmare

Reading the title, you may say that a nightmare lasts a single night, at the most. Or, if you're more scientifically oriented, you would say that, in the human brain, dreams and nightmares are never stored in the active memory, and hence the average man would be right in considering himself lucky at having remembered his dreams of the previous night. But no. I'm not talking about your average nightmare. I'm talking massive here. Have you ever been in a house that's being repainted?

No. That last sentence must have misled you. You may ask if that was all the fuss was about, and dismiss me with a carefree wave of your hand. Normally, I would have tried to make you see my point of view. But these situations are the ones that make us sit up in our chairs and wonder, "Is this mine brother's pain?", for I, too, was a skeptic of the pains involved in the mammoth task of getting one's house repainted.

First, you have to get used to people running in and out of your house, because the painters seem to have engaged a couple of guys just to rush into the house, pant a little, run back outside and repeat the process. Then there's the problem of dust. You can't enter or leave a room without ingesting a few billion particles of miscellaneous substances, ranging from dust from places you didn't know existed in your house to particles of old paint to particles of new paint emanating from under the bed, from the walls and from new paint cans respectively.

These are but side issues. The main problem is when they're finished with your house. You know what the problem is? It may seem simple, but not quite. The problem is that they do such a wonderful job with your walls and doors and what not, that you don't feel like touching them, drilling holes in them, covering them with wall hangings or doing anything else to them other than looking at them for prolonged periods of time with a glazed look in your eyes.

Yes, that's my big problem. My nightmare. And it'll probably last a lifetime, for that's what these paints say on the advertisements. If they last a lifetime without chipping, flaking or getting dirtied, my life is well and truly going to be one, great, big Charles Dickens story, without the happy ending, of course. In the end, the title seems to be a hopeful one. 3 weeks is not a big deal when you look at an entire life, minus 14 and a half years, ruined because of Rs. 80k worth of paints, polishes and other related accessories.

Every time I see those walls, I am filled with a strange mix of awe and hatred. Here's the villain of the house, I think, the one thing that'll single handedly destroy the spirit of this house. Then my eyes take over from my brain, and say in one final, strangled cry "But they're so beautiful !"

And in a final twist of fate, with an irony reminiscent of William Sydney Porter, whom you would know better as O. Henry, my brain replies, "Ah, but for their beauty we would have vanquished them!".

Finis

bala