Close your eyes.

Close your eyes. Close your eyes, and count to ten. Slowly --

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten.

And when you open them again, don't blink, open them even wider, like a camera lens zooming in. You'd have crossed into a world so vastly different and yet so vexatiously unchanged. It's as if some one has swapped everything-- the broken pocket mirror, the half filled bottle of water, the blunt pencil, the untidy coils of wire, for an exact replica of itself, blemish and all.

And yet the same wall calender flaps rhythmically, unconcernedly, as the ceiling fan cuts the air, spinning round and round and round. Your bare legs rubs against the same coarse cloth that is the bed sheet. And yet something, something's off.