Let me tell you a story. This story means a lot to me, why it is so, that is beyond me.

Andrew trudged along the pavement one night, just like all other nights. It was the same pavement he took every single time he walked home from his workplace. Although his eyes were set on the pavement, he would not have altered his course even if a six-foot boulder were to materialize before him. His mind was somewhere else. Andrew swore that he could traverse this same path in a blindfold. But every time he walked, he paid no attention to his surroundings.

Before he knew it, what he had dreaded had come true. He had arrived at the end of the path, and before him stood his house. Sighing in defeat, Andrew unlocked the door and went in slowly. Sometimes he wished that the path he enjoyed taking so much would never end, and that he could just keep walking and walking. To him, walking was purposeful. You went somewhere. But when he arrived home, there was nothing left for him to walk towards.

He would then have to find an excuse of a pastime and then go to bed, hoping that his sleep would be endless. Andrew would wake up disappointed the next day. Daytimes were the most stifling for Andrew, because his job was a mere few hours at night. He used to have a passion for his job, but recently, that, like his life, had gotten mechanical too. Sometimes Andrew wondered why some people could enjoy life, and he could not.

He was always the quiet kind, with not many friends. The few he had kept from high school had either moved overseas or had lost contact with him altogether. Life strangled Andrew, and its monotony choked him. He drowned in its stuffiness and sometimes wished it over. His only spark of interest left was his job, where he would be the centre of attention for a mere few hours, and those hours felt like heaven on earth. But sometimes, he felt that what people were looking at were not Andrew, but what he was putting up as.

Andrew decided that he should go see a psychiatrist to sort out his problem –he was more than sure he had somehow acquired the poisonous disease of ‘depression’. When he had related his story of those past few meaningless years of his life to the psychiatrist, the man smiled.

He was a man in his mid thirties, and held a smile that suggested he knew more than what was simply to the question. Andrew had thought psychiatrists and their like to be a manipulative bunch, but the man before him was nothing short of pleasant.

“I know just what you need. You need to unwind, man. Let me recommend this to you. There is a comedian who holds shows in the National Theatre, and his shows are downright hilarious. When I’m miffed, I go there and enjoy the show. Makes me forget my worries every time. You should go try.”

Upon hearing the psychiatrist’s words, Andrew burst into bitter tears.

“I am the comedian.”