Ink Drift - July

Backing Out of Uncertainity
Issue 12 - Fear
job to make him satisfied. She was in
customer service. Surely there would
be some way of backing out of his travel
arrangements. And so he try to use
some form of strategy. He told her that
it was perfectly OK. He would be fine.
However, in the event that he was going
to change his mind. In the event that he
was going to decide to go to somewhere
else. What is there anywhere else he
could go that would be similar but not
actually Uncertainty? He felt like this
was a perfectly valid question.
She decided to humor him. She might
not have wanted to. It was actually
part of the standard procedure for this
sort of thing. It was like so much else
that come in from corporate. It was
like so much also been a part of what
was required of her. There is a flowchart.
There was very specific reason
why everything had to go in a certain
order. This conversation really wasn’t
any different from so many that you’ve
had and so many different circumstances
over the years and the job that she
had come to so lovingly tolerate. In a
way that was perfectly in line with what
corporate had told her to tell people
who wanted to back out. People had so
often wanted to back out of this particular
vacation package. She had told
him that there were a variety of other
places in frames of mind in moods and
things that he could go to. And so she
asked him. She asked him where else he
would like to go.
He paused to think about it. The really
couldn’t come up with anywhere in
particular. It was all a blank to him. All
very vague. So she asked him if that’s
where he would like to go. Ambiguity.
Lots of people at vacation there whether
they realize it or not. He didn’t want
to go there. He client knew that my for
certain. He also was very certain that
he didn’t want to be in Uncertainty. But
then, it was entirely possible that given
his current state of mind it was almost
i’m sure that he actually ended up there.
And perhaps he was actually on vacation
and merely calling his travel agent was
simply part of the whole experience.
He didn’t want to be embarrassed by
asking her whether or not he was actually
taking a vacation at that moment.
(0r at all.) He didn’t know whether or
not he was on it at that moment. He
didn’t know whether or not he may have
detoured from it already. Whatever the
case. It was pretty clear that something
was going on. He was either there or
on his way. More he could not say. One
way or another he just didn’t know. He
sighed. I was visiting a quaint village on
the riverbanks near Midnapore, in the
month of July last year. It is one of the
oldest localities in the area; only one
road of crumbling concrete leading in &
out of the community of three hundred
souls, whose primary occupation, even to
this day, remains handicrafts and agriculture.
I had undertaken the task of shooting a
short film and the specific requirement of
the plot was a banyan-tree. In Deuli, the
village we were staying in, some hundred
feet from the gurgling waters of the river
stands a gargantuan banyan, claimed to
be more than four-hundred years old.
It stands surrounded by dense wilderness
on all sides, its trunk and branches
shielded perpetually from the view by the
foliage.
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