The death rattle of an original voice

Everything feels different, I wake up one morning and it feels like I am living someone else’s life in someone else’s body. The memories of this person, I seem to be possessing, are like hills hiding behind a veil of mist, hazy yet solid. Solid because you believe that hills are solid. The routines this body is used to, feel alien and comfortable; it wakes up at six in the morning and occupies the next twenty minutes cleaning its teeth and washing its face, it gets dressed and goes out to meet another body they exchange greetings and both bodies run.

Its cold but I know this because I imagine it must be cold, not because I feel cold.

Breakfast conversation, the crinkling sound of the newspaper, dropping my brother to his school, the rickshaw driver who gets us there, the ten kilometre ride to the office, crossing the street and entering the gates, being asked to display an identity card, that’s always in the left pocket because the right hand carries a backpack, the thirty meter walk to the building I work in, the familiar electronic beep the precedes the door opening, the cool blast of recycled air, the bare cubicle, a lone, random quote by Carl Sagan adorning the bare cubicle walls. The body heaves, sighs and hurls itself into the blue chair and proceeds to set up a laptop sourced from the back pack its been carrying. The body feels somnolent and sighs again.

I feel sad.

Who is this person? Why does all of this feel so familiar and comfortable? Why do I feel like I am indulging a voyeuristic fantasy I once had? How does this end? Is there an ending?

I know the life I see is not mine, but that’s all I know.

It’s been three days….