My Superpower

Initially when the ‘effects’ kicked in, I was not able to hear anything; a pin-drop silence surrounded me, a silence that teachers dream of in their classrooms. After a couple of minutes (could be less!), my hearing started to come back, but it was different. I could hear from the quietest to the loudest sounds and able to differentiate between them at the same time, an occurrence that was novel to me. In fact, I could switch from hearing one thing to another in a split of a second. I could blur a sound and focus on one, similar to the way images are clicked in a digital camera. I was alone and was somewhere peaceful in the outskirts of my city, I thought. But reality kicked in faster than the ‘effects’ when my friend patted me on the back. I was standing in the middle of a road, thankfully, on a divider. Have you lost it? my friend reacted. I thought I heard something, I replied lamely. He escorted me back to the side of the road where our ride was parked. For me, crossing the road was nothing less than doing crazy stunts in a Jackie Chan movie. The relief when I crossed the road was unmatched. I tried to concentrate on the sounds again, worried that I had lost my superpower among all this unnecessary travelling (crossing a road was like travelling to some other place). I could still differentiate between the sounds and blur them to my requirements. Yes!, I cried.

I was eager to decipher other powers that I might have gained. Once I found myself sitting in my friend’s car (the ride!), my thoughts drifted towards music.  I wanted to listen to music the moment I discovered my superpower, the reason being that I wanted to know what would happen if I was exposed to coordinated sounds (a song maybe) instead of uncoordinated ones (such as that on the middle of the road). A known bollywood song blasted through the speakers once I switched on the car’s music system. Result of exposure to that song was overwhelming. I could imagine each and every instrument playing simultaneously.  Such was the level of my involvement that I could imagine how the singer would have sung that song by placing myself in his shoes. I was not in the car anymore, I transported to a recording studio with musicians playing their piece and me singing my heart out. I looked through the glass of the studio to see the reaction of my music director but instead of him nodding to my flawless singing, I saw a cow crossing the road while our car stood still. I was transported back to reality and the glass I looked through was of the car’s front and not of the recording studio. I switched off the music out of the fear that I might never return to reality if exposed again. I narrated this incident to my friend who was on the driver’s seat. Instead of finding my story frivolous he listened intently and after I had completed my narration, he told me his own version of how he believed that the car was flying.We laughed, thinking how stupid we might sound to anyone else.

Suddenly out of nowhere I had the strongest urge to eat. I conveyed my feelings of hunger to my friend who reciprocated with the same feeling. We rushed to the nearest dhaba and ate like the world was going to end. The effects were decreasing, I could sense that. After we finished eating my superpower was gone. I was no longer a mutant.

Let me rewind back a little. What did I take in the beginning?