Monkeys

In the beginning, God created Heaven and Earth. Fuck that shit. God created everything except fairness. Except justice. You would have heard wise people saying life is unfair. Seriously?

Life is indeed unfair. Heroes do die first. The good guy suffers and burns to the end, while the most evil are the most successful. Those are the ones remembered in history. How about the rest of us plodding through each day without any expectations? How about the rest of us, who do what society wants us to do daily: work, eat, sleep, repeat? Those are the monkeys. Earth have too many of them. Not only do they rot each day till they die, but they won't do anything to stop the rot around them.

You may ask why I have so much anger about society. Why this hate on ordinary people?

I am a music composer. At seventeen, I learned proper music, listened to great composers of our time, and always created my own music. Underline the words — own music.

The issue was that no one listened to them. Not my mom, not my sis, not my wife, not my son. None. As all aspiring music composers do, I posted them online, hoping for the best. The most views on one of my tracks had four thousand listens. That's it. And it took three years to reach that number. Is my music that bad? I wondered. My music teachers have always lauded my music and called it Avant-Garde. But no, no one knows this composer. No one knows I exist. My life cannot be a lie.

Took my ten-year-old son out one day. We boarded the train together, and while on the journey, I asked my son what he thought of my latest music composition. Never heard of it was the reply. I took out my phone and earpieces to give to him and asked if he wanted to try listening. He gave the 'boring' look and said, "Pa, please. I'm not in the mood".

Do you know Hans Zimmer? I asked. Of course, was the reply. I asked him, do you think Hans Zimmer would have been famous and successful if his family had never heard his music? My son could only say, who knows? The conversation ended there. It's not my son's fault. Perhaps I'm just salty. All I wanted was their support and someone who would listen to me. All I wanted was for people to know that I exist. However, not only my son but if I had asked anyone the same question, the answer would have been the same.

I looked around the train cabin. Everyone in the cabin was facing down. Eyes fixated on their handphones. Some were smiling to themselves. Some are just dead scrolling. Monkeys. All of them. They do not care about the person next to or around them but are hooked to the screens of their phones for eternity. In a world where everyone is obsessively looking down, the person who looks up straight and sees the world would thrive. What a thought! I was turning into a philosopher on that train.

A feeling of hate crept into me slowly that day. Hate for this society. These monkeys don't even bother existing or know who does and who does not. These monkeys deserved to die, but who am I to say that? I don't have the right or power to decide who lives and who doesn't. Only powerful and wealthy nations can determine that. I need a break, I thought. Somewhere far away, where there are no humans in sight. I need to reset my mind. So I packed my bag and left to go to a location in the Himalayan range.

After many hours of flight, jeep drives, bus rides and horse rides, I ended up in a chilly and desolate part of the Himalayas. The nearest town was called Kedarnath, India, another hundred miles away. I could not see any human around me — just a white snow cover and the sound of silence. I began hiking in the snow to find a place to rest for the night. I found a small ruined Hindu temple with a single tower. It was an incredible sight. The temple was the only building around the place, and behind the temple was a snow-capped mountain. The temple had some coloured flags tied around it, but other than that, the temple was not maintained at all. Behind the temple tower was a hall protected by four thick stone pillars and a snow-covered roof.