Last night I was visited by the Sheep Man, yes the Sheep
Man. He came in my dreams, but it was so real. It was actually far more real
than the rays of the sun the next morning and the caffeine in my morning
coffee. I can vividly remember the Sheep Man sitting across me, in his worn and
tattered costume which was reeking of some smell which quickly filled the entire
room, and in moments became part of the atmosphere. He was around 70 kgs and
five feet ten, with ounces of fat hanging at different places, clearly
suggesting the Sheep Man was not running on the treadmill for a long time. He
asked me for a cigarette, and looking at the Goldflake condescendingly frowned
that he only preferred Milds, but smoked it nevertheless.
I was speechless
looking at the apparition who had suddenly appeared out of nowhere. For the
sake of a conversation, I asked him, whether he had heard the latest Bob Dylan
album.
He answered, “Idon’tlistenEnglishmusic.”
I had missed, and then a long stench of silence pervaded us.
He stared at me with a blank, motionless expression of void, a kind of look,
which makes you question whether you really exist or not. After the bout of
silence, which I cannot say lasted for how long, but would have been really
long, like one of those moments when hours and minutes cannot define time but
the experience of it running very slowly, and one does not need to look at a
watch for its validation.
He stood up and said; “Thewaterofthefourriversacrossthemazeispolluted.”
I did not understand a word of the Sheep Man, what did he
mean?
Before I could ask him anything….
I was lost in the darkness of my sleep once again.
Next morning, I was a
different man, one who had seen a religious revelation of sorts. I made coffee
for myself, read the newspaper in the balcony and on investigation of the room
found some fibre like substances on the floor of my house.
It was indeed sheep wool.
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