The Real Prison

 

You know what, institutions are the mammoth whirlpools, which suck individuals into their all powerful innards. By institutions, I mean the systematized, soulless machinery to achieve dark, power-hungry, ambitious motives—even though a lot many of them pass off as the needs to run the world. Such institutions come in the form of despots, dictators, mafia, corporate cartels, business magnates, hidden heavyweights pulling the strings, the intelligence and spy agencies, politicians, NGOs, and many more. These are the black holes that absorb their own light, hence keeping them hidden.

Those who operate there lose their souls, their sense of right and wrong, as a strange sense of ennui grips them, making them sleepwalking jombies. The institutional juggernaut reaps its crop, while the individual clogs, levers, pullies, nuts and bolts just perform their duties mechanically. Institutions have strange hypnotic powers to put vibrant hearts and independent minds on the chopping block to turn these into suitable mincemeat. The constituents operate like lifeless bottles on the conveyer belt in an assembly line in a factory.

Even the stones change, slowly though, to the cooing calls of varying seasons over decades. The institutions do not. They adapt though to the changing circumstances. However, the core philosophy stays the same. And long after the cog is retired, and regains a fraction of his soul, and sees the grease on his hands, only then he realizes what he has been through. Now he can listen to his heart. His mind now can help him see beyond the factory wall. It does not, but, change anything in the world. Nor it can even if the retired cog tries. All it gives is a guilty bruise to an ageing heart and a sad feeling that life could have been spent better beyond the walls of the institution.