FUGUE
Gggosh!..at last, one more of those painful lucid intervals is over, and here i am back to my original self – unpredictable, unreliable, irrelevant, and irresponsible. Disconnected from family, profession, society, culture, everything – and happy at it!
Lucid intervals are painful. I feel like a square drawn on a spherical surface. Stretched, pulled distorted. Square, ok; but never a normal, respectable square. Always painfully stretched and pulled. Always wondering what would happen to me if the sphere decides to straighten itself. Thankfully, all that’s over now.
My old friend, fugue revisits me. I board the first available train, with ticket to some remote, unheard-of destination. Comfortably lonely in the crowded compartment.
As abruptly as i board, i get down. Some unknown station. Steel and concrete stretching interminably beyond eye-reach. Uncomfortably clean. Mute clocks, frozen in different time-positions. Like people following death-trail in an epidemic. Erie silence ringing in ears, almost stabbing. The dimly lit, deserted structure gives me déjà vu..a somnambulant schizophrenic..wandering all alone in the deserted asylum corridors. Distant dusty, dim fluorescent lamps tingeing the midnight gloom gloomier blue. Cold, clinic-clean corridors stinking of antiseptic. Or is it the preservative that lends immortality to cadavers? Or is it just one of those haunting hallucinations?
‘Uncle, please help me...’ Somebody startles me. I look around. Oh! i have rambled to the street. Equally cold, deserted. Lined with closed, forgotten shops. Eroded, rusty shutters. Air thick with unknown, unnamable fear..and here a ten-year-old tugging at my shirt.
Where did the boy crop up from? Is he real, or an apparition? Dried up tear tracks on muddy emaciated cheeks. Barely clad body shivering with fear. Exhausted voice, hardly audible, punctuated with loud panting.
’I have lost my parents..would you please help me sir..please?’
‘Don’t you worry, boy. We’ll find them out.’
Then an unending stream of queries and refusals. ‘Do you know the boy’s parents.. by any chance?’
‘No’
‘Sir, did you see the boy’s parents..’
,No.’
‘Sir, did you..?’
‘Who the hell is he?’
‘Dunno..’
‘Then why bother yourself..and others?’
The boy is real embarrassed.
‘Uncle..forget it. Leave me alone’
‘No my child.. be patient.’ Say i. Unusual for me to get involved like this in anybody.
There sits a queer fellow in a tin-shade. Lost in morose trance. Rather uncertain, i repeat my question.
‘Yonder find a defunct mill. Ask there. Perhaps..there are many of them..who have lost their way..in life.’, says he with a mournful grin, and lapses in his peaceful morose trance. Queer fellows interest me. Talking to them, I always learn something about me. But now the boy is restless with expectation.
The mill is a huge truncated structure. A massive cadaver, gnawed by ants and rodents, torn apart by beasts and birds of prey. Imposing chimneys, too dead even to emit smoke. The otherwise blaring sirens dumb. Sooty, mourning sky hanging like dirty rag. Colorful oil-whirls floating, twisting in stagnant gutters. Poisonous bubbles erupting and bursting like pustules through the green-black scum. Blood red graffiti clotted over walls. Filthy slogans and slander smeared all over. Abusive impotent rage. Real questions. Vague assurances. All loud, scary, and hollow. Like eunuchs clapping.
Before we reach the mill, there is a sudden frenzied furore of terror and confusion. Thousands of furious men, women, youth storming out of the mill-gate. Gushing stench of tobacco, alcohol, starving and dehydrated breaths. Convulsive inarticulate cries. Hysterically hostile. And then, an unabating shower of stones, bricks, glass, sticks, acid-bulbs.
‘Run..run..angry, jobless laborers running amok..run for shelter..stoop down ya fools..save yourselves..’
By now, the terror tide is already on the street. Swallowing whatever, whoever in its sway.
Everyone for himself. The boy panics. So do I. ‘don’t worry..’ I mutter. Senselessly. Like drowning man bringing out froth. ’Ha..! there’s a police-station there..let’s go..’
The police-station is a single, tall-roofed, huge room. Dull peeling paint. Windows plastered shut. Strangulated. Stuffy. Grotesque giant printing-press-like machines everywhere. A single table-and-chair in a distant corner..some hope. We rush forward. Nobody there.
What next?
Again the sudden gush of angry, hungry swarm. Trampling. Screaming. Shouting. Blindfolded rabid beasts let loose. Barking, growling, clawing, biting at each other. Unguided rage, violent out of senses.
Clueless, sweating and shaking, we hide behind the giant machines. And once again the unabating shower of stones, bricks, glass, sticks, acid-bulbs..
I don’t remember how i escaped. Who brought me here? What happened to the boy? To the mob? To the queer guy with his mournful grin? What were those grotesque machines? Faint images getting fainter. . .Dull nebulous memory lingering like smog. Swaying cobwebs holding on crumbling walls of an abandoned house.
And now. . what..what’s this, dragging me again to that cursed normalcy? Back to that painful square one?
Oh no! Where are my migraine pills?