Silence, memories and madness

As the winter night darkens, silence falls upon the surroundings. An eerie dark silence; so overpowering, so maddening, that you beg for sleep, but alas sleep is a virtue you have been deprived of. At this point you wish your thoughts might make some noise, but its all blank. All you hear is your own breath, amplified to such high levels that it sends shivers down your spine, heaving and struggling breath. Gasping sometimes, breaking the rhythm as if struggling to keep the process going. And then, that too stops, 

As the winter night prowls ahead for its next prey, and even the distant hum of the refrigerator stops, you feel the grip of the silence tightening over your nerves. 

Absolute silence is maddening.

At this point before tipping over to madness, memories come flowing down, memories of guilt and pleasure.

Memories of pleasure are momentary,ephemeral; its the guilt that lasts long. 

Memories have a way of getting attached to certain seasons and smells. They say your brain remembers people and events in peculiar ways. On this dark night you could smell all those moments from the past. You could distinctively smell those smiles, those promises, those careless winter afternoons. 

Sounds, you may forget; how it sounded, how they sounded, how those moment sounded, but smells, they are so strong they don't let you forget.

Its like a hazy, grainy video, on mute, being played back in your mind. The pictures getting faded by the passing time, the smells getting stronger.

You start breathing heavily, beads of sweat appear on your brow, a howling train passes by on the distant fields, the Rajdhani is late you think in the back of you mind. 

You start hearing sounds, sounds so distant that you never thought it was possible for them to tear past the wintery darkness to reach your ears. Sounds which comfort you, assure you , and bring you back to the sanity of the present. 

The rustle of your clothes, the water dripping from the tap, the humming of the laptop fan which you always forget to switch off. 

That laptop which had a very good memory, which kept all the pictures of those winter afternoons intact within itself, which had started to make strange humming noises, which has a small light which kept blinking every micro second.

The laptop which you wished would shutdown of its own, stop the cacophony of noises, let you sleep in peace.

That laptop which you kicked in rage and is now a pile of junk.

That laptop whose hard-disk is still intact, and it still preserves those pictures of those winter afternoons, from which you always think of getting the data extracted, but never gathered the strength to do so, because , the smells, they never let you forget.