Nikhil and the Sign

Nikhil Casse was a man on a hunt.

A poor man in his early 30s, with shaky hands, an ulcer on his left ankle, and a generally poor demeanor was dreadfully lost in a city he lived in but did not know. Estranged from his family and any source of support, Nikhil lived in the sub-level of a studio apartment building in Center Square, New York City, paying for rent and food with a full-time dishwashing job. For the past decade he had been doing the same thing, eating the same food, seeing the same drab cityscape and walking the same walk; back and forth, back and forth from apartment to dishwasher. There was no time to notice or do anything about the world shaping all around him, and he didn’t really want to anyway. What business, after all, was the world to him?

His alarm clock buzzed incessantly, and Nikhil slowly stretched out of his bed, which was little more than a cot on the ground. Concrete walls surrounded him, reminding him endlessly of the cold that was both outside and in. Despite the nature of Center Square and the apartment that he lived in, he couldn’t help but envy those that lived above him. At least they had different walls, something to block off the outside of the same city. His room was made up of a tube TV, his bed, a bathroom with a shower that worked if you hit the wall a few times, an armchair he dragged home after finding it beside a dumpster on his way from work, a microwave, a few dishes, and a mini refrigerator. There were no windows, just the concrete walls. On the floor next to his bed was a suitcase with two pairs of jeans, a jacket, and a few shirts. He kept his work uniform in a locker at the skeezy restaurant at which he worked. 

The air of Nikhil’s life was that of apathy and pent up aggression from a perspective of being wronged by the universe, although his own insecurities kept him from ever admitting that to himself or anyone that might bother to listen to him. 

Usually, the walk to work is a crowded sigh of angry, bored, and other apathetic people on their way to their lives, all walking on the same sidewalk, beside the same asphalt, next to the same concrete walls the Nikhil had grown to both deal with and despise. He would often see someone glancing at him, perhaps accidentally, and he would wonder if that was it, the thing he had been waiting for all these years. Someone that would look at him, and take him away from this world somehow, this grey jungle. Maybe asking him why he looks so grim would be all that it takes to finally break the chains surrounding him. But that day did not come, often it was just another person incidentally turning towards him for the briefest of moments before turning away and never being seen again. Nikhil would wonder what secrets these people had, what kind of lives. After all, it couldn’t be possible that everyone was suffering internally as much as him, could it? It couldn’t be that this is what the world had to offer to everyone, right?

Today, however, the walk was very different. Nikhil wasn’t crowded into a mass of people moving in the same direction; he shared the sidewalk with less than a dozen people at any given moment. The street was similarly empty, with significantly fewer cars to gridlock the city as it normally was. He saw no glances from anyone, except from a funny looking banner on the restaurant he worked at, a red smiley face grinning at him from the employee door. Nikhil eyed the banner with some curiosity, but nothing that really resembled interest. He carried on, getting to work.

When his shift was over, Nikhil was asked if he had seen the news the night before from his boss. His boss had always been a hard man, but relatively friendly. It was not abnormal of him to try to make conversation out of whatever was happening. Nikhil smiled and nodded, but largely dismissed it as soon as he was out the door. It was a rude thing to do, but it didn’t hurt anyone. Besides...this had been happening for years now. What are the odds that what Nikhil was looking for would come to him in the form of his boss talking about television news? 

The alarm clock buzzed annoyingly, and Nikhil lazily rose to a sitting position on his bed. He stretched his leg, and a sharp pain rushed up his thigh. He stopped moving after groaning, and examined his left ankle. His ulcer had flared up, and was red all over. He closed his eyes tightly, the anger rising in him like water boiling over in a pot. He had been silently asking -- no, pleading -- for something, anything...and what he got was an inflamed ulcer. Perfect for walking to work with, he thought grimly. At least maybe there won’t be many people on the street again today.

He was correct in his assumption; the streets were again largely empty, as were the roads. However, as he was reaching a few blocks away from the restaurant, Nikhil heard shouting and crying sounds coming from a road he was crossing. He offered a glance towards the noise, and saw men dressed in riot gear beating a black man, probably his age, in the middle of the street. The riot gear was decorated with smiling face arm bands, and in looking -- actually seeing -- the city in this direction, he saw multiple people, taking pictures and cheering for the riot police, and he saw multiple smiley face banners decorating the city. His mouth fell open, and he asked someone walking past him:

“Excuse me...sir? What’s going on?”

The man he asked turned towards him, and then towards the riot police beating the man, who had now fallen silent. 

“Oh, another one? Yeah, I don’t get why people cheer for it, it isn’t that entertaining.”

With that, the man Nikhil had stopped carried on to wherever his destination was. 

Nikhil stared off after him, and then decided not to ponder on it for too long. The older question floated across his mind, what business was the world to him? He wasn’t the one being beaten.  

It is now that the narration of this anecdotal story fades out, and minimizes on the situation. In looking for signs out of his world, Nikhil Casse has done nothing to avoid what has happened to the world around him. In his anger and apathy towards everyone around him, Nikhil has allowed his mind to drift along with whatever the world dictated. He will never find his sign, because he’s choosing to ignore all of them. As his world plunges into darkness, take this warning and live free with it.