The city has a history. Embellished with tales of glory and conquests. But now it is almost a dead city. There are people,houses... traces of settlement here and there,but a lonely traveler who is walking through looks around and feels that somehow, the city has ceased to exist. Maybe, he is wrong because a few steps ahead of him, an old man is singing with a guitar which is pretty old and probably broken...the cracked voice of the old man along with the notes he is playing gives one a sense of rhythm which is analogous to life somehow...as they say music and death are like counterpoints.But the dilapidated architectures which tries to tell the tales of glory compels the observer to re-affirm his faith about the decadent nature of the city. It is as if, the city with all it's sumptousness and glory has gradually been swamped by the sands of time. It's inhabitants hardly care as they have to deal with their regular economic problems but a stranger often feels that the city has long stopped to experience what we call 'progress'.People living there hardly care about the political problems rocking the world currently or the events which have drawn world wide attention. It seems that they are livng in some kind of social and to some extent intellectual confinement which is self-created.Coming from a metropolitan city characterized with cultural synthesis and cosmopolitanism, this uncanny trait of the city hits the stranger hard. The inhabitants though ethnically heterogeneous appears to naked eye as homogeneous in terms of their ignorance and voluntary intellectual confinements.
He goes out at night, to explore the city in order to check if his first impressions were superficial. But as he stands infront of the mammoth architectures his mind rolls back to those time when the city was densely poplulated with an expanding trading network, beautifully centralized administration and with all the necessary traits that would make it's inhabitants proud. The quietness of the night gives his mind a kind of space for imagination just like the silence between two notes provide an experienced listener to form a musical sound of his own.He can literally see the great historical events of the place passing in front of his eyes like the sequence of a film.He could see the bloody battles and upon listening carefully he could hear the intricate conspiracies among the traitors to dethrone the king.
In the morning as he returns, he discovers that his impression of the city has changed. Though nothing has changed around him. The streets have remained dusty and the farmer like everyday is out with his ploughing instruements to begin his tiresome day's work. But these do not catch the traveler's eyes any more. He has begun to live in history. Something has changed his perception. Was it the night? Or the architectures which suddenly cast collective spells on him? Is the whole thing an illusion? Or is this whole account a fiction? Some questions remain unanswered. Like some songs, which are perhaps better, left unsung.
