Faces in a Crowd
Nayantika Chaudary
The sky is a canvas of dark solitude, charcoal grey clouds camouflaged in a charcoal grey sky embedded in a charcoal grey world. There is no gentle tranquil breeze here, no lush green tufts of emerald grass, no wise old knowing trees swaying, no smiling sun in an azure sky. There never will be.
Hidden beneath the endless blanket of smog, there are the ones that move, the blurred faces, that meander through the infinite steel towers that ascend into the ashen skyline, they march to the same old song ,trapped in a concrete black and white world, so hopelessly, helplessly, so utterly mercilessly imprisoned in their meaningless lives until the grave, but even then, they will forever be chained to the same old rhythm, they will forever be the puppets on a string, forever the pawns of politics, starved of sunlight, turned into bitter heatless machines by a cruel society, unable to break free, to cry out or spread their clipped wings, all of them will only ever be just another face in another crowd of a million stony faces that mask a million voices.
They wander aimlessly, so uselessly engrossed in living in their comfortable mundane little bubble, lost in their mindless slumber unable to listen to the pulsing heart of this mechanical world, to listen to the engines that cough and splutter in agony behind a perpetual trail of suffocating gasses, ignorant of the chocking chemical fumes that engulf their home, so deaf and blind to their dying planet’s desperate plea for help.
They drift through the land manufactured for them, the same feet dragging dragging on, the same poignant cloud of misery hanging above the same dreary face with the same old dreary eyes with no lustre for life. All that remains is a fallen army, left abandoned, in ruins, for all of them will only ever be faces in a crowd.