FLAGS
As usual, I was walking all alone. Along the farthest possible edge of the road. Happy to be too insignificant to bother anyone.
The great family that is the universe was being torn apart by petty factions with hyper egos. Perhaps the global hatred had permeated down to this lane, as it had every nation, every state, every city, every town, and every village. Rumors, like limbless ghosts, floated silently in nooks and corners of paranoid psyche of people.
The administration had issued a decree making it obligatory for everyone to carry her or his identity card on her or his person. This made it easy for those who wanted to classify, label, and stigmatize human individuals, and then to execute necessary action.
Thus, that day, as usual, I was walking. All alone. Along the farthest possible edge of the road. Happy to be too insignificant to bother anyone. Given the great international scenario as it was, it was natural that everyone would not exactly appreciate a fellow walking alone and quietly like this.. along the farthest possible edge of the mainstream.
So they stopped me.
‘Hey you…who are you?’
‘…’
‘Name? Let’s have a look at your i-card..’
‘I.. don’t have any’
‘What the hell do you mean by ‘don’t have?’ Everyone is supposed to carry one around the neck..don’t you know?’ One of the guys slapped me hard in the face, and dug his weapon onto my chest.
‘Where do you stay?’
‘.. am homeless.’
‘What do you do?’
‘..am jobless.’
‘ours..or outsider?’
‘..a vagabond..how do I tell?’
‘This side of the border..or the other ?’
‘Border? What border? I never had anything to do with borders and territories- political or ethnic. That’s the reason I am here without any i-card, and I land up roaming like a stray animal.. belonging to nowhere.’
I noticed a brilliant spark in the guy’s stare. The weapon pressed a bit lighter now on my chest.
‘Then join us. C’mon, hold this flag. And here is your weapon.’
‘I reject all flags. I refuse all weapons.’
The guy’s stare regained its coldness, and his weapon its sharpness.
‘I guess you don’t refuse to be alive…’
‘Don’t know.’
By this time, others in the gang were pretty bored. ‘Let’s leave the fellow. Seems to be some harmless idiot.’
Having soundly thrashed me, they left. Till the time I was conscious, I could hear the abuses- and the spirited slogans. Something something zindabad..something something murdabad..!
I regained consciousness after a while. Limbs sore. Senses numb. Having nothing else to do, I continued what I was doing..walking all alone. Along the farthest possible edge of the road. Hoping to be too insignificant to bother anyone.
They stopped me again. No, this time the guys were different. Same dialogue. Same querries. Same unanimous verdict. Only the flags and the slogans differed in details. Now this group was zindabad, and the earlier one murdabad. The abuse and the thrashing were same.
Both groups abandoned me as a harmless idiot. But soon the news reached their leaders and made them furious. ‘What? left that fool alone? Alive? Idiot yes, but not harmless! Go.. catch him. Kill him. Finish him. What if everyone stopped caring about ethnic or national or linguistic borders and territories? What then will happen of our asmita card? What the hell we leaders will do then? How will we survive? Go.. kill that bloody idiot!’
Frail and weak though I was, I did regain my consciousness once again. I promptly realized that even after all this, I had no head injury. No damage to my brain. So I did not become wiser. I still continued walking. Again, all alone. Along the farthest possible edge of the road. Praying to be too insignificant to bother anyone further.
Vague voices in distance alerted me. Gradually the scene became clearer. I saw both the groups, earlier shouting slogans against each other, united. Marching as a single body. Warring groups joining hands. Warring flags fluttering in unison. Warring weapons dancing to the same rhythm. Hurt and aching everywhere though I was, I was overwhelmed with ecstasy at this expression of integrity. I fell on my knees and facing the heavens thanked the Almighty, when..
The slogans became clearer.. and it dawned upon me that..well, this time I was the defined, common target of the composite mob. And I ran for my life.
I ran. I ran fast. I ran out of my breath. I panted. I gasped. I collapsed. Face buried in dust.
Next moment two accurately aimed spears struck me in the back. Each carried a flag of the two different groups.
I had refused every name, every label, every stamp, every stigma, every flag throughout my life. And here lay my dead body with two different flags deeply embedded in it. Isn’t it funny!
(Translated by the author from his original Marathi “Pataakaa”)
Thursday, December 31, 2009
GUIDE
Imagine yourself lost in a disorderly crowd of giants, all of them at least thrice as tall as you!
That’s the memory childhood brings to my mind.
Once, i lost myself in a crowd of rough, rugged, hardened adults. i was always a sick child, small and weak for my age, and hardly reached their knees. Men shouted, threatened, abused, and spat vitriol at each other, at some unseen enemy, and at the whole world.
Dust thrown up by the rowdy multitude choked me. My head reeled with air, foul with sweat, tobacco, and alcohol. Fresh air was beyond my reach: i was too short among those giants.
Ruffians trod on my tender feet. Their crudity crushed my childhood naivety. My cries never reached them amidst the pandemonium; even if they did, who cared for an unknown, lost orphan in that vicious squabble?
I stumbled and staggered through shins and shanks, bumping against knees. I was brutally crushed, kicked, trampled and tossed, losing all sense of direction and time. The crowd seemed endless, and so my ordeal.
Then someone stooped down to me, lending me a finger.
It was no abatement of my plight; my guide had his own ways and ideas. The moment i held his finger, he clasped my wrist in his iron grip, and dragged me after him without mercy.
My body ached, my legs pained, my feet were sore, even my wrist sprained at being pulled. At one moment, frustrated and fatigued, i even rebelled, and tried to pull myself from the unknown and unforgiving guide. But he won’t leave me.
I could not see his face. The unrelenting crowd, the dust, and stampede made this impossible.
“Who are you? Where are you taking me?” i shouted with all might. His stoic silence was impenetrable. He simply tugged me after him, without wasting a word, or a glance, as if under some imperative compulsion.
He won’t pause, he won’t rest, nor let me rest. unmindful of my injuries and abrasions, indifferent to my hunger and thirst, he kept me pulling after him day after day, night after night.
I resigned to fate. I continued to stumble and to stagger; to bump and to get bruised; to be crushed and kicked; to be trampled and tossed. Now, i may say, i had a direction, though i didn’t know what. No choice, no volition; it was just being dragged after the unknown, unseen guide.
At last, our endless journey took us to the fringes of the crowd. Gradually the dust around settled down. I lifted my eyes at my guide, my savior, the author of my fate: he was the blind madman of our town.
The hubbub faded in distance, and he left me abruptly.
It was long before i came to myself.
Later, life taught me that people are never bad. Insecurity makes them callous and competitive. Mobs are lost individuals. Wolves are lost lambs.
Whatever that may be, the traumatic memory left an indelible scar on my pliable psyche.
Thankfully, never did i outgrow my abhorrence for the ways of the world; for its notion and necessity of competition; for its fetish for success.
I am grateful to my guide, who was blind to the manners of the mob, and deaf to my puerile protests.
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
GUILTAs usual, the first shift bus takes us back home. It’s 4 in the evening, the most indifferent and ill-defined hour of the day.
We surrender ourselves to the driver’s acumen, and doze off, exhausted from the day-long boredom, the non-happening routine, the inertia, and the ennui. Nothing happens. Nothing excites. Life, whether at home or at work, is a stalemate.
Sudden brakes jerk us violently out of sleep. Still confused, we scan the surroundings, smacking, swallowing, and mumbling incoherently.
Our bus slows down. Onlookers have crowded both sides of the road.
Ha! Something seems to have happened!
Quick observers are the early reporters.
“A horrible accident-!”
“Both of them dead-!”
Hey presto! Gone are the boredom, the inertia, the ennui, and the snooze in a jiffy! We all spring from our seats to have a peep at the scene outside.
A horrible accident indeed it is. A bike – one of those new hi-tech beastly machines- probably speeding in the wrong direction, has dashed against the road divider, throwing off the two poor teenage riders.
Blood flows sluggishly from the broken skull of one of the boys: a bright red pool, sparkling in the slanting sun, slowly thickening and blackening on the rough concrete surface. The lump, that was the brain, still convulses in the dust. The other boy lies spread eagled, still and stiff, without the slightest scratch on his body; probably internal bleeding killed him. The new brand sturdy hi-tech bike is almost unscratched.
With nothing else happening, even the fatal and the morbid is a welcome diversion.
“O God-!”
“O shit-!”
“Both were just kids..”
“Think of the poor parents..”
“This new generation..”
“These modern bikes..”
“These road conditions..”
“These contractors..”
“This corruption..”
“This system..”
By now, our bus has wormed its way through the road block. Freshened up by the lively discussion, we reach home.
The newspaper, the TV, the net, the gossip, the family, the kids, all take me through the rest of the evening, to a dreamless sleep. Never again the accident comes to my mind, except in those deeply reflective moments, in the ultimate solitude of the WC.
But horrible indeed was the accident. Not forgotten easily, it crops up at the coffee table, next morning.
A colleague who worked in the general shift yesterday, joins us.
“Yea, our bus too passed the spot at about six. The two guys were still lying there, still crowded by the onlookers, and no police anywhere as yet.”
“Disgusting!” react i, over a sip, ”two boys lie on the road, dead for hours, and . . .”
“Didn’t you read the newspaper today? In fact, one of the boys was actually alive, when the police took him to the nearby hospital- but it was too late. He had severe brain damage, with more than two hours already lost.”
“We are a nation of idle onlookers”, sighs out somebody.
Everyone of us is silent.
We too had passed the very spot.
We too had seen the accident.
We too had assumed both the boys dead.
We too never bothered so much as to check.
The accident injured the boy. our apathy killed him.
We surrender ourselves to the driver’s acumen, and doze off, exhausted from the day-long boredom, the non-happening routine, the inertia, and the ennui. Nothing happens. Nothing excites. Life, whether at home or at work, is a stalemate.
Sudden brakes jerk us violently out of sleep. Still confused, we scan the surroundings, smacking, swallowing, and mumbling incoherently.
Our bus slows down. Onlookers have crowded both sides of the road.
Ha! Something seems to have happened!
Quick observers are the early reporters.
“A horrible accident-!”
“Both of them dead-!”
Hey presto! Gone are the boredom, the inertia, the ennui, and the snooze in a jiffy! We all spring from our seats to have a peep at the scene outside.
A horrible accident indeed it is. A bike – one of those new hi-tech beastly machines- probably speeding in the wrong direction, has dashed against the road divider, throwing off the two poor teenage riders.
Blood flows sluggishly from the broken skull of one of the boys: a bright red pool, sparkling in the slanting sun, slowly thickening and blackening on the rough concrete surface. The lump, that was the brain, still convulses in the dust. The other boy lies spread eagled, still and stiff, without the slightest scratch on his body; probably internal bleeding killed him. The new brand sturdy hi-tech bike is almost unscratched.
With nothing else happening, even the fatal and the morbid is a welcome diversion.
“O God-!”
“O shit-!”
“Both were just kids..”
“Think of the poor parents..”
“This new generation..”
“These modern bikes..”
“These road conditions..”
“These contractors..”
“This corruption..”
“This system..”
By now, our bus has wormed its way through the road block. Freshened up by the lively discussion, we reach home.
The newspaper, the TV, the net, the gossip, the family, the kids, all take me through the rest of the evening, to a dreamless sleep. Never again the accident comes to my mind, except in those deeply reflective moments, in the ultimate solitude of the WC.
But horrible indeed was the accident. Not forgotten easily, it crops up at the coffee table, next morning.
A colleague who worked in the general shift yesterday, joins us.
“Yea, our bus too passed the spot at about six. The two guys were still lying there, still crowded by the onlookers, and no police anywhere as yet.”
“Disgusting!” react i, over a sip, ”two boys lie on the road, dead for hours, and . . .”
“Didn’t you read the newspaper today? In fact, one of the boys was actually alive, when the police took him to the nearby hospital- but it was too late. He had severe brain damage, with more than two hours already lost.”
“We are a nation of idle onlookers”, sighs out somebody.
Everyone of us is silent.
We too had passed the very spot.
We too had seen the accident.
We too had assumed both the boys dead.
We too never bothered so much as to check.
The accident injured the boy. our apathy killed him.
Saturday, December 26, 2009
SMILE
Yonder, across the grand highway, stands one of the biggest and the best Medical College & Hospitals of the country, run by the government of the people, and for the people.
And here, on this side of the grand highway, lie i, a citizen of the nation, near an ancient pile of garbage; debilitated, starved, and with foul sores all over the body, except on the right leg- which does not exist.
I don’t belong to this metro. No poor man belongs. The metro belongs exclusively to the underworld goons called dons, and the overt-world goons, called builders and politicians. The large humanity teeming around is no more than the maggots teeming in my sores.
It happened last month, when i was asleep on the footpath, as usual drunk and stupefied after twenty hours of bone-breaking labor. Past midnight, i learnt later, some celebrity in high spirits, had driven his limousine onto the footpath, crushing a few luckier guys to immediate death, and leaving us to face life with a limb, or a rib less. We did make headlines and breaking news the next morning; a day later, amnesia took over everyone, and i lay ignored and abandoned.
Unable to move, i blocked the footpath. The beggar, to whom that two-square-foot slot at prime location belonged, dragged me with my remaining leg, to a non-obtrusive corner; he left me there, and proceeded with his business.
Life around me goes on as usual. The metro, always on toes, need not stop for a guy who has lost his leg. Busy people walk around me, look at me with contempt, wince, cover their nose with scented hankies, and then shrug me off. Perhaps, later they write tearful tales about me; or, may be, discuss social justice in air-conditioned auditoria.
Dogs lick the oozing remnant of my amputated leg. My own stink revolts me. Flies bother me continually. Their hairy legs prick my open sores. Their drone irritates me. Bugs crawl over my dry, dehydrated body giving me intense itching. I scratch my body violently, and my overgrown dirty fingernails hurt me further. My lips are parched painfully. My belly burns in its own acid.
The worst pain is in my right leg, which does not exist. It aches, it throbs, it burns; it makes me dig my teeth deep into my parched lips, till they bleed. The agony that the invisible, nonexistent limb gives me, makes me cry my heart out.
Mercifully, i soon lose my senses. I stop smelling. Flies, now well-nourished on my oozing sores, lay multitude of maggots in them. I become as insensible to their presence on my body, as to my body hair. I stop moving my lips, and they pain no longer. Hunger has eaten away itself. How amazingly life adapts to reality!
The best adaption to life is death. It is sure lurking around, i do hear its footsteps, but, perhaps it too enjoys toying with my misery. The waiting drains me more. My consciousness gets nebulous, and is then lost in nescient limbo.
And now..i do hear the footsteps. The footsteps, still tentative, still uncertain, come closer. Hope stirs in me a painful effort to open the eyes, sticky with dried up secretions.
I open my eyes. Bright light from the heavens almost blinds me. Leans over me a face: a tender, childlike face of an angel of pity, sent by the Mother to carry back the damned soul of Her poor, wretched child.
I open my eyes, now adapted to see better. I see someone in a white apron. . .A young medical student, still almost a child in her innocence and sincerity, timidly leans over me, her eyes moist with pity, lips trembling with compassion. She stands at a distance, with shaking legs, uncertain and helpless. I smile at her; the parched lips gave excruciating pain, but i smile at her.
Even the faint smile exhausts me. ”God bless you, my child. Grow up to become a good successful doctor, but never outgrow the timid, tender child within.”
That is the first smile that ever touched my lips, since i left my family- years before- and came to the metro; that is my last too.
Soon i die. Even i do not know, when.
The metro lets me lie there sick, hungry and thirsty; rotting and festering; crying and wailing in agony; licked by dogs, and eaten away by maggots for days; however, it is prompt in disposing off my dead body.
Yonder, across the grand highway, stands one of the biggest and the best Medical College & Hospitals of the country, run by the government of the people, and for the people.
And here, on this side of the grand highway, lie i, a citizen of the nation, near an ancient pile of garbage; debilitated, starved, and with foul sores all over the body, except on the right leg- which does not exist.
I don’t belong to this metro. No poor man belongs. The metro belongs exclusively to the underworld goons called dons, and the overt-world goons, called builders and politicians. The large humanity teeming around is no more than the maggots teeming in my sores.
It happened last month, when i was asleep on the footpath, as usual drunk and stupefied after twenty hours of bone-breaking labor. Past midnight, i learnt later, some celebrity in high spirits, had driven his limousine onto the footpath, crushing a few luckier guys to immediate death, and leaving us to face life with a limb, or a rib less. We did make headlines and breaking news the next morning; a day later, amnesia took over everyone, and i lay ignored and abandoned.
Unable to move, i blocked the footpath. The beggar, to whom that two-square-foot slot at prime location belonged, dragged me with my remaining leg, to a non-obtrusive corner; he left me there, and proceeded with his business.
Life around me goes on as usual. The metro, always on toes, need not stop for a guy who has lost his leg. Busy people walk around me, look at me with contempt, wince, cover their nose with scented hankies, and then shrug me off. Perhaps, later they write tearful tales about me; or, may be, discuss social justice in air-conditioned auditoria.
Dogs lick the oozing remnant of my amputated leg. My own stink revolts me. Flies bother me continually. Their hairy legs prick my open sores. Their drone irritates me. Bugs crawl over my dry, dehydrated body giving me intense itching. I scratch my body violently, and my overgrown dirty fingernails hurt me further. My lips are parched painfully. My belly burns in its own acid.
The worst pain is in my right leg, which does not exist. It aches, it throbs, it burns; it makes me dig my teeth deep into my parched lips, till they bleed. The agony that the invisible, nonexistent limb gives me, makes me cry my heart out.
Mercifully, i soon lose my senses. I stop smelling. Flies, now well-nourished on my oozing sores, lay multitude of maggots in them. I become as insensible to their presence on my body, as to my body hair. I stop moving my lips, and they pain no longer. Hunger has eaten away itself. How amazingly life adapts to reality!
The best adaption to life is death. It is sure lurking around, i do hear its footsteps, but, perhaps it too enjoys toying with my misery. The waiting drains me more. My consciousness gets nebulous, and is then lost in nescient limbo.
And now..i do hear the footsteps. The footsteps, still tentative, still uncertain, come closer. Hope stirs in me a painful effort to open the eyes, sticky with dried up secretions.
I open my eyes. Bright light from the heavens almost blinds me. Leans over me a face: a tender, childlike face of an angel of pity, sent by the Mother to carry back the damned soul of Her poor, wretched child.
I open my eyes, now adapted to see better. I see someone in a white apron. . .A young medical student, still almost a child in her innocence and sincerity, timidly leans over me, her eyes moist with pity, lips trembling with compassion. She stands at a distance, with shaking legs, uncertain and helpless. I smile at her; the parched lips gave excruciating pain, but i smile at her.
Even the faint smile exhausts me. ”God bless you, my child. Grow up to become a good successful doctor, but never outgrow the timid, tender child within.”
That is the first smile that ever touched my lips, since i left my family- years before- and came to the metro; that is my last too.
Soon i die. Even i do not know, when.
The metro lets me lie there sick, hungry and thirsty; rotting and festering; crying and wailing in agony; licked by dogs, and eaten away by maggots for days; however, it is prompt in disposing off my dead body.
SCHIZOPHRENIC
Every year comes the month of sravana with luxuriant green landscapes and overflowing rivers. Luminous rainbows bridge the horizons, lost in the cloudy mist. Heavy clouds hang down all though the mellowed days. Frenzied lightenings send thunderous echoes throuhout the pitch dark nights . The almighty heavens pour fertile promise of plenty, down to the earth. The creative fury of the elements gives birth to tender life.
This year too, it is sravana.And up there, in the broad open, cloudless sky, walks around shamelessly the full-moon in her obscenely bright nudity - and seems to have no qualms about it. Her vitiligous witchcraft lends deathly pallor to the poor fissured earth.
A cadaverous tree stands alone, like a sepulture on the barren expanse. Leafless branches spread out like a begging hand.
Perched on the dried up tree, sits a thirsty chaataka*.
Below the tree, is a huge carcass of a beast, that had perhaps lost its way, looking vainly for a streak of shadow.
We carrion-crows are having a merry time.
The huge glassy eyes of the carcass reflect our gluttonous selves. So the first thing we do is to stab those eyes; this soothes our conscience, and makes things easy.
The carcass is huge enough to give us all indigestion. Still, pecking and clawing each other ruthlessly, we fiercely fight for every bit, as if insecure and uncertain of the morrow. Fierce competition is our second nature.
Truly speaking, these days nobody is as secure, and as certain of the morrow as the carrion-crows. Carrion-crows never have anything to lose: famines bring feasts, and droughts are delightful. A true carrion-crow is never in want.
However, though one of the lot, i am always out of place amongst the clever, competitive, canny, and successful; always a perpetual laggard.
I have a mind torn in two.
Yearn and long as much as i may for the first pristine rain drops, i lack the peace and the patience that makes pain a sublime prayer. Hunger and thirst soon find me picking at rotting flesh and filth.
I am not given to the ravenous revelry over carcasses; nor, unlike a chaataka, can i sacrifice myself on the altar of unanswered love.
A carrion-crow, or a chaataka, i am always out of place.
------------------------------------------------------------
*a legendary bird, that subsists on rain drops as they fall from the clouds, before they touch the earth.
Every year comes the month of sravana with luxuriant green landscapes and overflowing rivers. Luminous rainbows bridge the horizons, lost in the cloudy mist. Heavy clouds hang down all though the mellowed days. Frenzied lightenings send thunderous echoes throuhout the pitch dark nights . The almighty heavens pour fertile promise of plenty, down to the earth. The creative fury of the elements gives birth to tender life.
This year too, it is sravana.And up there, in the broad open, cloudless sky, walks around shamelessly the full-moon in her obscenely bright nudity - and seems to have no qualms about it. Her vitiligous witchcraft lends deathly pallor to the poor fissured earth.
A cadaverous tree stands alone, like a sepulture on the barren expanse. Leafless branches spread out like a begging hand.
Perched on the dried up tree, sits a thirsty chaataka*.
Below the tree, is a huge carcass of a beast, that had perhaps lost its way, looking vainly for a streak of shadow.
We carrion-crows are having a merry time.
The huge glassy eyes of the carcass reflect our gluttonous selves. So the first thing we do is to stab those eyes; this soothes our conscience, and makes things easy.
The carcass is huge enough to give us all indigestion. Still, pecking and clawing each other ruthlessly, we fiercely fight for every bit, as if insecure and uncertain of the morrow. Fierce competition is our second nature.
Truly speaking, these days nobody is as secure, and as certain of the morrow as the carrion-crows. Carrion-crows never have anything to lose: famines bring feasts, and droughts are delightful. A true carrion-crow is never in want.
However, though one of the lot, i am always out of place amongst the clever, competitive, canny, and successful; always a perpetual laggard.
I have a mind torn in two.
Yearn and long as much as i may for the first pristine rain drops, i lack the peace and the patience that makes pain a sublime prayer. Hunger and thirst soon find me picking at rotting flesh and filth.
I am not given to the ravenous revelry over carcasses; nor, unlike a chaataka, can i sacrifice myself on the altar of unanswered love.
A carrion-crow, or a chaataka, i am always out of place.
------------------------------------------------------------
*a legendary bird, that subsists on rain drops as they fall from the clouds, before they touch the earth.
Friday, December 25, 2009
non compos mentis
Great commotion ensued when a man in his sixties collapsed on the railway platform, with sudden chest pain. Confused crowd surrounded him, and worsened the situation.
A stranger rushed in, and took charge of the situation; he revived the old man with chest massage; handed over him to the paramedics who arrived by this time; and simply disappeared, as though to escape notice.
Always fascinated by queer guys, i followed him. There he sat on a bench, a middle-aged pauper in rags, eating bananas with child-like indifference to the surroundings.
“Yes please..?” said he, as he noticed me.
“That gentleman..?”
“Don’t worry. He should be ok..must have been thrombolyzed by now. I know the cardiologist there, she is. . .”
“How do you know? I mean. . .”
“Well, i am a physician by qualifications.’
“But you don’t look like a doc?”
“If you care to know, i had a fairly settled practice, and a family too. Of course now i have given up both.”
“Why, if i may ask?”
“Well, one fine day i walked in my home to find my wife having good time with some god-knows-who. My only reaction was a reflex ‘oops!’, and next, i left our room- I mean their room, the house, and the town for good. People say i lost my mind; actually, i let the poor thing loose from the family, professional, and social bridle. It never belonged to any of these; in fact, it never belonged even to me!”
“Didn’t you practice after that?”
“I didn’t care as much to renew my registration.”
“But why should you punish yourself for somebody else’s infidelity?” I asked, not without some hesitation.
“Let’s leave that fidelity thing alone. Each one walks in her or his own light. She too did so, and set me free. Judgement would have made me a misanthrope, which i hope, I am not.”
“Where do you stay? Would mind, if i visit your place?” I changed the unhappy topic.
“Mind, i won’t; whatever happens is fine with me. But i don’t think you would exactly like to visit my dwelling, though. I stay in one of those abandoned dilapidated structures, you find along the railway track.”
“What?” i exclaimed, ”that’s hardly safe?’
“Right. The place is infested with venomous snakes” he said in a matter-of-factly manner.
“You know, it’s fun living with death lurking around” he continued, “you learn to be grateful for every moment of life! You never know, the next movement, the next step could be the end of it.”
“Are you real, or a fiction?” i asked, almost shuddering.
“All life is fiction, my friend, and we, floating phantoms! Each of us seizes a fiction, and builds his or her illusion of reality around it. Hey, what’s that?’ He pointed at the rail track.
“A dead rat..?”
“What else?”
“Rotting..”
“What else?”
“Stinking..”
“And life teeming there?”
“Life?”
“Subtle, microscopic expressions of life? Death of the gross, and birth of the fine? The rot, the stink, the grief and the loss: all human terms for human perceptions and preferences, aren’t they? Death, then, is just fiction.”
“If death is such fiction, why did you revive that dying man?”
“Herd instinct of self preservation, which, in human terms, we call humanity.”
“Is humanity a fiction too?”
“In absolute terms, yes; at our plane of existence, perhaps no.
“What about human character?”
“Once the bureaucracy required me to procure a character certificate from the local corporator or MLA; that day onwards i got disgusted with the character stuff.”
“And life too is a fiction?”
“Yes, as long as one talks about it. Words are too gross a medium to express something that transcends the subtlest expression.”
“Are you evading the question?”
“Consciously, no; subconsciously, i don’t know.”
“Perhaps, someone in the past has found out better answers?”
“That hardly helps me.”
“Gurus and scriptures?”
“..our best friends initially, but eventually, our worst enemies.”
“Sir, you seem to be a good man, but you sound anarchist, if i may say so.” i ventured to say.
“You may as well call me insane.”
“Well?”
“Sanity is the set of illusions shared by the majority: insanity is just being a bit beyond the commonplace.
“Isn’t insanity something odd, lonely, miserable, sort of?”
“The sane would never know. Once i saw a fellow among beggars near a place of worship. As i roamed around, and beggars cried to me, his carefree voice rang high above the melee- “Hey fools! Why beg of the beggars? All are beggars, begging the deity for petty worldly things! No better than us! Ha! Ha! Ha!” Perhaps, the madman was wiser and merrier than all of us, beggars or otherwise, at his own plane?
“A railway platform is the best place to observe the world around, incognito. Once i saw an elderly emaciated eunuch rummaging for eatables along the dirty rail track. Revolted and moved at once, i offered him a few biscuits i had. And what does the he do? He hails all the stray dogs on the platform, and feeds them one by one- as a mother feeds her little children, caressing their wounds, tenderly removing ticks, – and the rascals too enjoying the pampering! Do i call the fellow miserable?
“And then, there used to be a couple that went begging around the town, where i spent my childhood, Both were short, dark, bloated with dropsy, and blind. One leaned on the other, and the other on a walking stick, groping in the eternal darkness. Every morning i heard their cry:
“Whosoever gives is the God..
For, God’s the only Giver,”
“All these eunuchs, beggars, madmen, paupers lived at the fringes of the sane society, and its laws. They all were the non compos mentis, not sound of mind, as the law puts it. They had no identity. The world could not care less if they lived or died...“I don’t know where i stand in this sanity spectrum, but life has taught me this: never compare, for all ‘standard’ is fiction; never theorize, for all theories are blinkers. And this: whatever is strange to my comprehension is not necessarily nasty or evil. Evil is goodness, feeling insecure; evil is the crust, and goodness is the core."
Great commotion ensued when a man in his sixties collapsed on the railway platform, with sudden chest pain. Confused crowd surrounded him, and worsened the situation.
A stranger rushed in, and took charge of the situation; he revived the old man with chest massage; handed over him to the paramedics who arrived by this time; and simply disappeared, as though to escape notice.
Always fascinated by queer guys, i followed him. There he sat on a bench, a middle-aged pauper in rags, eating bananas with child-like indifference to the surroundings.
“Yes please..?” said he, as he noticed me.
“That gentleman..?”
“Don’t worry. He should be ok..must have been thrombolyzed by now. I know the cardiologist there, she is. . .”
“How do you know? I mean. . .”
“Well, i am a physician by qualifications.’
“But you don’t look like a doc?”
“If you care to know, i had a fairly settled practice, and a family too. Of course now i have given up both.”
“Why, if i may ask?”
“Well, one fine day i walked in my home to find my wife having good time with some god-knows-who. My only reaction was a reflex ‘oops!’, and next, i left our room- I mean their room, the house, and the town for good. People say i lost my mind; actually, i let the poor thing loose from the family, professional, and social bridle. It never belonged to any of these; in fact, it never belonged even to me!”
“Didn’t you practice after that?”
“I didn’t care as much to renew my registration.”
“But why should you punish yourself for somebody else’s infidelity?” I asked, not without some hesitation.
“Let’s leave that fidelity thing alone. Each one walks in her or his own light. She too did so, and set me free. Judgement would have made me a misanthrope, which i hope, I am not.”
“Where do you stay? Would mind, if i visit your place?” I changed the unhappy topic.
“Mind, i won’t; whatever happens is fine with me. But i don’t think you would exactly like to visit my dwelling, though. I stay in one of those abandoned dilapidated structures, you find along the railway track.”
“What?” i exclaimed, ”that’s hardly safe?’
“Right. The place is infested with venomous snakes” he said in a matter-of-factly manner.
“You know, it’s fun living with death lurking around” he continued, “you learn to be grateful for every moment of life! You never know, the next movement, the next step could be the end of it.”
“Are you real, or a fiction?” i asked, almost shuddering.
“All life is fiction, my friend, and we, floating phantoms! Each of us seizes a fiction, and builds his or her illusion of reality around it. Hey, what’s that?’ He pointed at the rail track.
“A dead rat..?”
“What else?”
“Rotting..”
“What else?”
“Stinking..”
“And life teeming there?”
“Life?”
“Subtle, microscopic expressions of life? Death of the gross, and birth of the fine? The rot, the stink, the grief and the loss: all human terms for human perceptions and preferences, aren’t they? Death, then, is just fiction.”
“If death is such fiction, why did you revive that dying man?”
“Herd instinct of self preservation, which, in human terms, we call humanity.”
“Is humanity a fiction too?”
“In absolute terms, yes; at our plane of existence, perhaps no.
“What about human character?”
“Once the bureaucracy required me to procure a character certificate from the local corporator or MLA; that day onwards i got disgusted with the character stuff.”
“And life too is a fiction?”
“Yes, as long as one talks about it. Words are too gross a medium to express something that transcends the subtlest expression.”
“Are you evading the question?”
“Consciously, no; subconsciously, i don’t know.”
“Perhaps, someone in the past has found out better answers?”
“That hardly helps me.”
“Gurus and scriptures?”
“..our best friends initially, but eventually, our worst enemies.”
“Sir, you seem to be a good man, but you sound anarchist, if i may say so.” i ventured to say.
“You may as well call me insane.”
“Well?”
“Sanity is the set of illusions shared by the majority: insanity is just being a bit beyond the commonplace.
“Isn’t insanity something odd, lonely, miserable, sort of?”
“The sane would never know. Once i saw a fellow among beggars near a place of worship. As i roamed around, and beggars cried to me, his carefree voice rang high above the melee- “Hey fools! Why beg of the beggars? All are beggars, begging the deity for petty worldly things! No better than us! Ha! Ha! Ha!” Perhaps, the madman was wiser and merrier than all of us, beggars or otherwise, at his own plane?
“A railway platform is the best place to observe the world around, incognito. Once i saw an elderly emaciated eunuch rummaging for eatables along the dirty rail track. Revolted and moved at once, i offered him a few biscuits i had. And what does the he do? He hails all the stray dogs on the platform, and feeds them one by one- as a mother feeds her little children, caressing their wounds, tenderly removing ticks, – and the rascals too enjoying the pampering! Do i call the fellow miserable?
“And then, there used to be a couple that went begging around the town, where i spent my childhood, Both were short, dark, bloated with dropsy, and blind. One leaned on the other, and the other on a walking stick, groping in the eternal darkness. Every morning i heard their cry:
“Whosoever gives is the God..
For, God’s the only Giver,”
“All these eunuchs, beggars, madmen, paupers lived at the fringes of the sane society, and its laws. They all were the non compos mentis, not sound of mind, as the law puts it. They had no identity. The world could not care less if they lived or died...“I don’t know where i stand in this sanity spectrum, but life has taught me this: never compare, for all ‘standard’ is fiction; never theorize, for all theories are blinkers. And this: whatever is strange to my comprehension is not necessarily nasty or evil. Evil is goodness, feeling insecure; evil is the crust, and goodness is the core."
LOST AND NEVER FOUND
O slumber! the last asylum of the defeated and the dejected, why must even thou torture a timid mind like mine, with all those ghastly dreams, always dripping with gore and grime?
And then, what does a poor fellow, woken up brutally like this, do with his insomnia all night, the gloom weighing down on him heavily, almost suffocating? Insomnia drains him, and sleep scares him. Daybreak seems to be so distant, and when it does come, it comes with the stony practical imperative: “C’mon, you good-for-nothing fellow, no fooling around with life. Get up, and get going. Quick.”
First, it was the ‘Fugue’, then the ‘Tunnel’, and then all those nightmares of the ‘Eunuch’; and now this:
The road is jammed with fuming and fretting traffic. Vehicles creep, crawl, and halt with a screech. Torn between the throttle and the brake, abused engines breathe vitriol. Exhausted, sweating drivers shout and honk at each other. Nothing really moves. Nothing really happens. Everything is static in boredom and inertia.
A long unending silent march dragging across the traffic signal is the cause of the jam. Black flags flutter in mute protest. Hundreds of emaciated, barefooted men, women, and children pull themselves tardily on the scalding, molten tarmac. Each one pushes a hand-cart. The handcarts carry dead cattle, garlanded with yellow, withered flowers.
“What’s the strange march?” asks someone.
“The polaa* procession.”
“Like this?”
“It’s the killer drought this year”
The strange march seems interminable. Apathetic commuters get impatient, and feel impotent.
“What the hell, the vulgar rabble is doing here?” someone cries.
“Somebody please go, call the police, and just shoot the guys.” Someone else cries louder.
The crowd is stunned at the inflammable remark in that volatile atmosphere.
The men, women, and the children in the march, too dazed to react, move on silently like floating ghosts.
The dead cattle, as if provoked, suddenly stir, come about alive, shake themselves out of the carts, grow to monstrous proportions, bellow wildly, and with a demonic outburst of energy charge at all the helpless humanity: the peasantry, and the urban crowd alike.
A few minutes of desperate stampede, trampling, cries and roars, dust and fumes; and all that remains in trail is a wriggling mass of bleeding flesh, broken bones, mutilated bodies, overturned vehicles, blood and oil splashed everywhere.
Their fury vent out, the cattle are now quiet. They stand at the roadside peacefully, unmindful of their own blood-stained heads and horns; large, sad, watery eyes once again full with their natural piety.
I get up with all that sweat, the headache, the nausea, and the palpitation. It’s not even midnight yet.
And now, what do I, woken up brutally like this, do with my insomnia all night, the gloom weighing down on me heavily, almost suffocating? Insomnia drains me; sleep scares me. Daybreak is so distant.
Exhausted, sometime in the wee hours, I doze off.
And then..someone sings me a sweet song, beautiful, fresh lyrics and soft melody, like a mother humming lullaby to her sobbing, fretful, guilty child. The melody takes me gliding effortlessly, in the cool clear skies, crystal sunshine, and pristine clear air, over lush green meadows, serene blue lakes and grave oceans, sunny deserts and sublime snow peaks, to a dream fairyland. The dreamscapes, echoing with melodious refrains, gradually fade in a kaleidoscope of fleeting incoherency, and at long last, I nestle in deep sleep.
For the first time in life, my dreams ring with lyrics and melody. For the first time in life someone sings me to a fairyland; for the first time the sleep was so peaceful. For the first time, I find the morn so fresh.
My nightmares have etched their gory, corrosive details on my wounded psyche, as if with acid; so deep, and so indelible they have been since years. However, try as I may, I recollect not a single note, nor a single word of the precious song. It’s lost, never to be found.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
*polaa, a festival of rural India, when cattle, particularly bullocks, are worshipped as a gesture of gratefulness for their contribution in agricultural activity.
O slumber! the last asylum of the defeated and the dejected, why must even thou torture a timid mind like mine, with all those ghastly dreams, always dripping with gore and grime?
And then, what does a poor fellow, woken up brutally like this, do with his insomnia all night, the gloom weighing down on him heavily, almost suffocating? Insomnia drains him, and sleep scares him. Daybreak seems to be so distant, and when it does come, it comes with the stony practical imperative: “C’mon, you good-for-nothing fellow, no fooling around with life. Get up, and get going. Quick.”
First, it was the ‘Fugue’, then the ‘Tunnel’, and then all those nightmares of the ‘Eunuch’; and now this:
The road is jammed with fuming and fretting traffic. Vehicles creep, crawl, and halt with a screech. Torn between the throttle and the brake, abused engines breathe vitriol. Exhausted, sweating drivers shout and honk at each other. Nothing really moves. Nothing really happens. Everything is static in boredom and inertia.
A long unending silent march dragging across the traffic signal is the cause of the jam. Black flags flutter in mute protest. Hundreds of emaciated, barefooted men, women, and children pull themselves tardily on the scalding, molten tarmac. Each one pushes a hand-cart. The handcarts carry dead cattle, garlanded with yellow, withered flowers.
“What’s the strange march?” asks someone.
“The polaa* procession.”
“Like this?”
“It’s the killer drought this year”
The strange march seems interminable. Apathetic commuters get impatient, and feel impotent.
“What the hell, the vulgar rabble is doing here?” someone cries.
“Somebody please go, call the police, and just shoot the guys.” Someone else cries louder.
The crowd is stunned at the inflammable remark in that volatile atmosphere.
The men, women, and the children in the march, too dazed to react, move on silently like floating ghosts.
The dead cattle, as if provoked, suddenly stir, come about alive, shake themselves out of the carts, grow to monstrous proportions, bellow wildly, and with a demonic outburst of energy charge at all the helpless humanity: the peasantry, and the urban crowd alike.
A few minutes of desperate stampede, trampling, cries and roars, dust and fumes; and all that remains in trail is a wriggling mass of bleeding flesh, broken bones, mutilated bodies, overturned vehicles, blood and oil splashed everywhere.
Their fury vent out, the cattle are now quiet. They stand at the roadside peacefully, unmindful of their own blood-stained heads and horns; large, sad, watery eyes once again full with their natural piety.
I get up with all that sweat, the headache, the nausea, and the palpitation. It’s not even midnight yet.
And now, what do I, woken up brutally like this, do with my insomnia all night, the gloom weighing down on me heavily, almost suffocating? Insomnia drains me; sleep scares me. Daybreak is so distant.
Exhausted, sometime in the wee hours, I doze off.
And then..someone sings me a sweet song, beautiful, fresh lyrics and soft melody, like a mother humming lullaby to her sobbing, fretful, guilty child. The melody takes me gliding effortlessly, in the cool clear skies, crystal sunshine, and pristine clear air, over lush green meadows, serene blue lakes and grave oceans, sunny deserts and sublime snow peaks, to a dream fairyland. The dreamscapes, echoing with melodious refrains, gradually fade in a kaleidoscope of fleeting incoherency, and at long last, I nestle in deep sleep.
For the first time in life, my dreams ring with lyrics and melody. For the first time in life someone sings me to a fairyland; for the first time the sleep was so peaceful. For the first time, I find the morn so fresh.
My nightmares have etched their gory, corrosive details on my wounded psyche, as if with acid; so deep, and so indelible they have been since years. However, try as I may, I recollect not a single note, nor a single word of the precious song. It’s lost, never to be found.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
*polaa, a festival of rural India, when cattle, particularly bullocks, are worshipped as a gesture of gratefulness for their contribution in agricultural activity.
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
RENDEZVOUS
The learned judge solemnly pronounced his ruling:
“..whereas the said accused has been found guilty of attempt to commit suicide, I hereby ..award a punishment with simple imprisonment for a term extending to one year...and whereas the said accused has been found guilty of similar attempts in the past, I hereby direct that the accused..be admitted into a mental hospital..
“Have you anything to say?” he condescended to ask me.
“My lord, may i humbly beg to have my sentence commuted to death-penalty?”
My innocent prayer caused a commotion in the courtroom. The staid judge hammered in order, and declared the case closed.
The staid judge hammering in order, reminded me of my father, my teachers, my doctor, my tax-consultant, the priest, the market, the moral-police - everyone and everything puissant and sacrosanct, and evoked an instinctive hatred in my mind.
My relationship with all authority had been sort of maso-sadistic. I derived great pleasure from offending the authority, and when it retaliated, i avenged by destroying all that expressed the sublime and humane in me- my paintings, my poems, the flowers in my garden; i smoked, got drunk, ate junk, watched porn ad nauseam; i exploited, and i abused.
The law was indifferent when i ruined my art, my health, my kindness, my soul, my real self; it was only when i tried to throw away the mortal frame, that it took any cognizance.
My first attempt was to lie on the rail track, awaiting the first train. The train derailed a couple of miles from where i lay, killing scores of passengers, and left me untouched.
Do you remember the severe earthquake that rocked the western part of the country a few years ago? We in this city also felt mild tremors, didn’t we? Well, that day, at those wee hours, i was busy hanging myself from the ceiling fan. I almost did it; i had climbed up a stool, and was about to put the noose around my neck, precisely when the tremors toppled me from the stool. Hundreds of innocent people were killed by the quake, thousands maimed for life, and all i could manage was a sprained ankle, and a broken collar bone. My family hushed up the matter.
Next, i gulped handful of sleeping pills. Before the poison could act, i developed severe allergy, sending me screaming from intolerable itching. Good Samaritans rushed me to hospital and foiled my rendezvous with my beloved. Better Samaritans reported the matter to the police.
With such a life, no irony is ironical enough. Seeking meaning in it, was like looking for a ten-lettered word, the initial six letters of which i didn’t remember, in a dictionary teeming with typos.
The learned judge sent me to the best mental asylum, under care of a learned doc, who got a bit too much involved in me. He committed suicide a few weeks later. A lot of gossip buzzed around. Most of the inmates were too self-intoxicated to register anything. Others called him mad, coward, or a sinner. I only empathized with him; even docs are human beings, free to fall sick, live, or to die at will. I also envied his successful attempt.
No news ever touched me; however, i couldn’t sleep that night. Past midnight, i unbolted the door.
Walking along the empty ill-lit corridors felt as if floating through fog. My steps echoed in the silent void.
And lo! There, at the far end beheld i my beloved, in his most beautiful and fluid form, shimmering in the misty light.
As i approached him with hastened eager pace, he stood up, as if in greeting, swaying his hood, flickering his forked tongue, his body coiling and uncoiling in a mesmerizing rhythm.
I bent onto him. ”O death, come on. Kiss me, o my beloved!”
Here was the fulfillment of our rendezvous..i felt myself sublimating beyond space and time.
Then appeared an angel in white spotless attire, and touched my shoulder..but why should the angel have an aura of burned tobacco around him? The angel shook me out of my trance, and carried me unceremoniously back to the ward.
Later, the learned, and the about-to-be-learned surrounded me, engaged in serious discussion. That night i learnt two words about myself: somnambulism, and hallucination.
I absconded that night.
Next day i appeared before my family, and shocked them. The prudent folks reported to the police; i too didn’t mean contempt of the court order.
A year later, once again i am a respectable (whatever that may mean) member of the family, the profession, and the society; i walk through all these like a somnambulist. That’s ok as long as i am a useful cog in the utilitarian social machinery.
They also say, i am a creative artist and writer; to me, creativity is all about following your hallucinations faithfully.
Since then, i have not attempted suicide any more..well, so far.
The learned judge solemnly pronounced his ruling:
“..whereas the said accused has been found guilty of attempt to commit suicide, I hereby ..award a punishment with simple imprisonment for a term extending to one year...and whereas the said accused has been found guilty of similar attempts in the past, I hereby direct that the accused..be admitted into a mental hospital..
“Have you anything to say?” he condescended to ask me.
“My lord, may i humbly beg to have my sentence commuted to death-penalty?”
My innocent prayer caused a commotion in the courtroom. The staid judge hammered in order, and declared the case closed.
The staid judge hammering in order, reminded me of my father, my teachers, my doctor, my tax-consultant, the priest, the market, the moral-police - everyone and everything puissant and sacrosanct, and evoked an instinctive hatred in my mind.
My relationship with all authority had been sort of maso-sadistic. I derived great pleasure from offending the authority, and when it retaliated, i avenged by destroying all that expressed the sublime and humane in me- my paintings, my poems, the flowers in my garden; i smoked, got drunk, ate junk, watched porn ad nauseam; i exploited, and i abused.
The law was indifferent when i ruined my art, my health, my kindness, my soul, my real self; it was only when i tried to throw away the mortal frame, that it took any cognizance.
My first attempt was to lie on the rail track, awaiting the first train. The train derailed a couple of miles from where i lay, killing scores of passengers, and left me untouched.
Do you remember the severe earthquake that rocked the western part of the country a few years ago? We in this city also felt mild tremors, didn’t we? Well, that day, at those wee hours, i was busy hanging myself from the ceiling fan. I almost did it; i had climbed up a stool, and was about to put the noose around my neck, precisely when the tremors toppled me from the stool. Hundreds of innocent people were killed by the quake, thousands maimed for life, and all i could manage was a sprained ankle, and a broken collar bone. My family hushed up the matter.
Next, i gulped handful of sleeping pills. Before the poison could act, i developed severe allergy, sending me screaming from intolerable itching. Good Samaritans rushed me to hospital and foiled my rendezvous with my beloved. Better Samaritans reported the matter to the police.
With such a life, no irony is ironical enough. Seeking meaning in it, was like looking for a ten-lettered word, the initial six letters of which i didn’t remember, in a dictionary teeming with typos.
The learned judge sent me to the best mental asylum, under care of a learned doc, who got a bit too much involved in me. He committed suicide a few weeks later. A lot of gossip buzzed around. Most of the inmates were too self-intoxicated to register anything. Others called him mad, coward, or a sinner. I only empathized with him; even docs are human beings, free to fall sick, live, or to die at will. I also envied his successful attempt.
No news ever touched me; however, i couldn’t sleep that night. Past midnight, i unbolted the door.
Walking along the empty ill-lit corridors felt as if floating through fog. My steps echoed in the silent void.
And lo! There, at the far end beheld i my beloved, in his most beautiful and fluid form, shimmering in the misty light.
As i approached him with hastened eager pace, he stood up, as if in greeting, swaying his hood, flickering his forked tongue, his body coiling and uncoiling in a mesmerizing rhythm.
I bent onto him. ”O death, come on. Kiss me, o my beloved!”
Here was the fulfillment of our rendezvous..i felt myself sublimating beyond space and time.
Then appeared an angel in white spotless attire, and touched my shoulder..but why should the angel have an aura of burned tobacco around him? The angel shook me out of my trance, and carried me unceremoniously back to the ward.
Later, the learned, and the about-to-be-learned surrounded me, engaged in serious discussion. That night i learnt two words about myself: somnambulism, and hallucination.
I absconded that night.
Next day i appeared before my family, and shocked them. The prudent folks reported to the police; i too didn’t mean contempt of the court order.
A year later, once again i am a respectable (whatever that may mean) member of the family, the profession, and the society; i walk through all these like a somnambulist. That’s ok as long as i am a useful cog in the utilitarian social machinery.
They also say, i am a creative artist and writer; to me, creativity is all about following your hallucinations faithfully.
Since then, i have not attempted suicide any more..well, so far.
Sunday, December 6, 2009
TUNNEL
It was a one- stroke decision like the drop of guillotine: we leave this place. It has been our native place, OK, but so what?
Treading the scorched wasteland, we reach the railway station, some couple of miles away; and just mob the overcrowded train to the metro. Buying a ticket is simply out of question. We climb onto the roof-tops. The dead don’t care for safety.
The train speeds head on, as if out of control. The roof-tops, slopping both sides, are plain slippery: no hold, no grip. Each one clings desperately to the other, also equally precariously perched. About a half of us on this compartment, the other on the one ahead of us.
The way we travel is illegal. The way if someone falls off the roof-top and dies, would be illegal too. Life itself has been like this: illegal, unauthentic, unaccounted for. Supercilious lights shone brilliantly at distance, but we were eternally condemned to gloom, at the fringes of existence. Nothing more than bare sustenance was ever asked for, but even that was denied.
So here are we, following a blind dream to a strange metro. The metro won’t leave anyone to die; it never lets anyone live, either.
The metro knows no rest. It speeds and screams round the clock, and won’t let anyone sleep, thankfully so. Dreams haunt sleep. Men are scared of dreams. They prefer the speed chasing them to death. No one misses anyone: like a burning bidi butt thrown down the drain.
The roof-top is overcrowded, but not a single word. Everyone is quiet. Words no longer carry meanings. Even curses and abuses have become stale from overuse. The sky has swallowed all questions; the void, all answers.
Strange terrain. Miles after miles disappear beyond the sight. The train gets crazy with speed. Ghat after ghat, planes after planes fall back. Settlements, nameless and faceless, appear from nowhere, and disappear without a trace: like someone suddenly dead. Threatening speed makes us unsteady, all the more precarious.
The journey seems to be never-ending. The hot roof-top burns our bums. The afternoon sun grows vindictive. Horizons steam. Empty bellies, gritty eyes, even the breaths are ablaze.
At long last the day sets: like an exhausted funeral pyre. Burning embers still glow in the west. The evening still smoulders like hot ash.
Night creeps in, spreads like an evil spell. The half moon hangs there - shines bright like a piece of broken skull.
It gets hilly as the train approaches the metro. The huge hills appear like monstrous torsos through the dense fog.
Numerous tunnels truncate the hills, one after the other. Like open jaws of giants, they swallow the train. The rocky interiors of the tunnel are flogged by yellow whips of light throwing a long stream of stroboscpic patterns. Frightened, i shut my eyes. No! - i don't want an epileptic fit here, on this slippery roof-top.
A cyclone of noise quakes the hills as the train crosses a deep tunnel with maddening speed. The tunnel seems to be unending..it feels as if one is passing through the entrails of a tremendous reptile. The train emerges out of the tunnel, and the face next to you shocks you with its chalky, deadly pallor in the sudden moonlight.
Hunger is dead; it no longer gnaws us. The speed stupefies us, makes us drowsy. Slumber overcomes fear for life. We doze off.
“Hey! watch out..stoop down!” someone cries excitedly.
Startled, we look ahead. The speeding train is about to pass through another tunnel. But something is amiss here, like life gone awry. The tunnel is wide enough, but hardly a foot taller than the compartments- just a foot! And here, on the slippery roof-tops, are we, some fifty of us. How low do we stoop down, how much do we shrink to save our life? At more than a hundred kilometers per hour, utterly helpless, we are speeding helplessly towards the inevitable. The low tunnel ahead, the uncontrolled speed, and we..?
Confused out of senses, one of us just flings himself in the dark. The thundering rattle swallows his thin scream.
Even terror has frozen. We stare with unblinking eyes, resigned to the fait accompli.
Next moment, men dash against the deadly tunnel, and fall off the roof-top ahead of us. Skulls break open, blood spurts out, and life ends without a cry. One after the other. Some twenty, in a single moment. Mutilated corpses, line the uncaring train. Just a moment ago, there were a score of them, each with a different world in mind, and now..just a mass of convulsing body parts, scattered all over the bloody roof-top. Shreds of quivering flesh, lining the rail track. We, doomed onlookers, too stunned to react. Just awaiting our turn. . .
Here’s the thud, and here fall i..down the dark abyss. Helpless, gasping, choking under the piling dead, unable to move a limb, unable even to utter a cry..wet and sticky with blood. . .
Somebody calls me aloud. I strain to open my eyes. Dead stillness in the endless tunnel, with not a glimmer of light..the train has passed long ago.. the rattle still echoing in my heart. I am all alone..at 3 in the morning, lying in my bed, drenched in sweat.
Outside, the night has frozen like the dark interminable tunnel. Much time to go before the day-break.
I switch on the lamp. Darkness scares me. Sleep scares me. Dreams scare me. I stay wide awake for the rest of the night. The weak lamp accompanies me. I get up, drink some water.
I forget all my failures, my loneliness, my deprivations, my pain. I am grateful to life that i am alive.
It was a one- stroke decision like the drop of guillotine: we leave this place. It has been our native place, OK, but so what?
Treading the scorched wasteland, we reach the railway station, some couple of miles away; and just mob the overcrowded train to the metro. Buying a ticket is simply out of question. We climb onto the roof-tops. The dead don’t care for safety.
The train speeds head on, as if out of control. The roof-tops, slopping both sides, are plain slippery: no hold, no grip. Each one clings desperately to the other, also equally precariously perched. About a half of us on this compartment, the other on the one ahead of us.
The way we travel is illegal. The way if someone falls off the roof-top and dies, would be illegal too. Life itself has been like this: illegal, unauthentic, unaccounted for. Supercilious lights shone brilliantly at distance, but we were eternally condemned to gloom, at the fringes of existence. Nothing more than bare sustenance was ever asked for, but even that was denied.
So here are we, following a blind dream to a strange metro. The metro won’t leave anyone to die; it never lets anyone live, either.
The metro knows no rest. It speeds and screams round the clock, and won’t let anyone sleep, thankfully so. Dreams haunt sleep. Men are scared of dreams. They prefer the speed chasing them to death. No one misses anyone: like a burning bidi butt thrown down the drain.
The roof-top is overcrowded, but not a single word. Everyone is quiet. Words no longer carry meanings. Even curses and abuses have become stale from overuse. The sky has swallowed all questions; the void, all answers.
Strange terrain. Miles after miles disappear beyond the sight. The train gets crazy with speed. Ghat after ghat, planes after planes fall back. Settlements, nameless and faceless, appear from nowhere, and disappear without a trace: like someone suddenly dead. Threatening speed makes us unsteady, all the more precarious.
The journey seems to be never-ending. The hot roof-top burns our bums. The afternoon sun grows vindictive. Horizons steam. Empty bellies, gritty eyes, even the breaths are ablaze.
At long last the day sets: like an exhausted funeral pyre. Burning embers still glow in the west. The evening still smoulders like hot ash.
Night creeps in, spreads like an evil spell. The half moon hangs there - shines bright like a piece of broken skull.
It gets hilly as the train approaches the metro. The huge hills appear like monstrous torsos through the dense fog.
Numerous tunnels truncate the hills, one after the other. Like open jaws of giants, they swallow the train. The rocky interiors of the tunnel are flogged by yellow whips of light throwing a long stream of stroboscpic patterns. Frightened, i shut my eyes. No! - i don't want an epileptic fit here, on this slippery roof-top.
A cyclone of noise quakes the hills as the train crosses a deep tunnel with maddening speed. The tunnel seems to be unending..it feels as if one is passing through the entrails of a tremendous reptile. The train emerges out of the tunnel, and the face next to you shocks you with its chalky, deadly pallor in the sudden moonlight.
Hunger is dead; it no longer gnaws us. The speed stupefies us, makes us drowsy. Slumber overcomes fear for life. We doze off.
“Hey! watch out..stoop down!” someone cries excitedly.
Startled, we look ahead. The speeding train is about to pass through another tunnel. But something is amiss here, like life gone awry. The tunnel is wide enough, but hardly a foot taller than the compartments- just a foot! And here, on the slippery roof-tops, are we, some fifty of us. How low do we stoop down, how much do we shrink to save our life? At more than a hundred kilometers per hour, utterly helpless, we are speeding helplessly towards the inevitable. The low tunnel ahead, the uncontrolled speed, and we..?
Confused out of senses, one of us just flings himself in the dark. The thundering rattle swallows his thin scream.
Even terror has frozen. We stare with unblinking eyes, resigned to the fait accompli.
Next moment, men dash against the deadly tunnel, and fall off the roof-top ahead of us. Skulls break open, blood spurts out, and life ends without a cry. One after the other. Some twenty, in a single moment. Mutilated corpses, line the uncaring train. Just a moment ago, there were a score of them, each with a different world in mind, and now..just a mass of convulsing body parts, scattered all over the bloody roof-top. Shreds of quivering flesh, lining the rail track. We, doomed onlookers, too stunned to react. Just awaiting our turn. . .
Here’s the thud, and here fall i..down the dark abyss. Helpless, gasping, choking under the piling dead, unable to move a limb, unable even to utter a cry..wet and sticky with blood. . .
Somebody calls me aloud. I strain to open my eyes. Dead stillness in the endless tunnel, with not a glimmer of light..the train has passed long ago.. the rattle still echoing in my heart. I am all alone..at 3 in the morning, lying in my bed, drenched in sweat.
Outside, the night has frozen like the dark interminable tunnel. Much time to go before the day-break.
I switch on the lamp. Darkness scares me. Sleep scares me. Dreams scare me. I stay wide awake for the rest of the night. The weak lamp accompanies me. I get up, drink some water.
I forget all my failures, my loneliness, my deprivations, my pain. I am grateful to life that i am alive.
Saturday, December 5, 2009
DEATH WISH
I am a palmist who doesn’t believe in palmistry. Well, in a bazaar you hardly do what you believe in.
These days you don’t need a palmist to tell about your future; it stares at you with eyes like those of dead fish. With a future like that, you feed on nostalgia. To me, nostalgia is masochism.
Our village was a drought stricken cluster of slovenly shanties. Everyone devoured the available traces of life, like maggots teeming a rotting corpse.
Father would be busy all day smoking, spitting phlegm and blood, in his damp corner – “father’s corner”- and did nothing else. One day “father’s corner” was silent. Silence alarmed us; we were right. He was dead. The smell of tobacco, phlegm, and blood lingered for a few days.
Mother worked as maid servant. I was already a agriculture labor, before i was ten.
Then came the factory. It acquired agriculture land. Local leaders were quick to cash on the opportunity at a premium. The peasant became the unskilled labor; his wife washed dirty utensils and soiled clothes in the factory colony.
A modern factory, it was. No smoke, no noise. It worked silently. Like a predator lying in ambush. Predate, it did. The factory ruined the village, and closed down. We lost our livelihood. The rich, now richer, lost nothing.
All youth migrated to the city. The village became home for the aged and the moribund.
I worked as a garbage-truck helper. The garbage was an assortment of tobacco pouches, beer bottles, rotting vegetables, quivering offal, dead rats, used condoms, soiled sanitary napkins, hospital waste (once i inadvertently touched a macerated body of a new born - and came apart a palm: some divine prophecy, i suppose!)..the integrated stench won’t leave me for days. Within weeks, i could smell nothing in the world.
The garbage-truck driver was a learned man. Had done his masters in economics. We called him “professor” The “professor” was also a man of the world. Managed to stay in place for more than a decade. Shortly, he would be promoted as a water-tank driver- a more lucrative job.
I lost my job after the three months. They gave a “break” to everyone, so that nobody claimed employment rights.
Then I sold pesticide. Dealt in death, sort of. I stood near the railway station, with poison-packs in my bag, displaying the rate-board placard. Cockroaches, rats, bugs: each life had different price-tag.
Death dealing was not that bad. Life depended on that. But i left the job not before long. Of late, i noticed a man staring me for hours from across the road. Daily, for a week now. Never said a word. That silent stare irritated me.
‘Well buddy, what do you think you are doing, staring me like that, eh?’, asked i.
Startled, he mumbled, ‘No..no..I mean..you have some..poison? I need it..badly.’
Oh, that’s all what it was!
‘How much?’
‘May be a dozen.. make it twenty packets..rat poison.’
‘Twenty? Well..’
I never saw him after that.
Next day i heard of a family having committed suicide- could it be his family?
Actually, i was nothing more than an incidental instrument in the entire event. The poor man would have managed something or the other- maybe, strangulated his folks, and hung himself. Anything. But the guilt haunts my dreams even today. I stopped selling poison.
Now i sell dreams to the defeated. I don’t know a shit of palmistry. I practise unadulterated sham. Not sure of my dinner tonight, i claim to tame the stars and the planets!
My office is a mean rag-space under an eternally leafless tree, affording neither shade nor shelter. All my property is a caged parrot with moth-eaten feathers; a worn out pack of taros; and a rickety umbrella - all hand-me-downs.
I hate my lifeless tree. Particularly because right before me, stands an evergreen banyan tree with all its majesty; and “they” occupy that coveted space.
A bunch of idiots. Three deformed humanoids with waxy stunted bodies, hairless, not even eye-brows. Slopping shoulders, pendulant breasts, pot-bellies...Small triangular heads with pointed crowns. Slits for eyes, almost no neck. Open mouths, dribbling saliva. Protruding teeth, hyper-pink gums. All exactly alike. Siblings, triplets or, flotsam-jetsam of life-wreck, brought together by blind chance? They come every morning, smile mutely at each other the whole day, and go away at nightfall.
Their very sight gives me nausea. I can’t help staring them, either.
The job bores me. Life is a 50-odd-year-long yawn, and not a moment of peaceful sleep. Hunger gnaws me by the day; guilt, by night.
Boredom makes me introspective. What would mother be doing in that all-forsaken ditch of a village? Add old age to loneliness. Father could never be tender to her (or to me) - his own life was too abrasive for that...I didn’t quite understand him ever.
Mother never liked my coming to the city. The prosperous city is like a sick dog, licking its own prick, and affecting machismo. Each man, lost in his own void, putting up a steel-and-concrete façade of indifference.
The three idiots sit there smiling at each other, under the majestic banyan tree. Resentment overcomes me again. The afternoon sun scorches me, not a shred of shadow over my head, and those skunks smile like that. Father spits blood, and dies; mother withers away waiting for her only child, and the shameless skunks go on smiling. A family lives and dies like rats in holes, and these buggers can’t stop smiling. I, wholesome, am crucified to this rickety thing, and idiots keep smiling indifferently, under the sacred banyan tree. That’s sacrilegious!
Somebody please go, and slap them, kick their ass, thrash them, cudgel them, and stop them smiling, make them cry. Go, stab their bloody paunch!..would they bleed, or just ooze out some milky, nasty smelling sap?
God!..i shuddered at my own imagery, at my stooping down so low. Sorry, guys. . .
Then comes the tempest. An angry, ravaging crowd, spitting venomous abuse.
‘Close down, close down the shutters..!’
‘Kill them, kill those bastards..!’
‘Long live..!’
‘Hell with..!’
Frantic mob fury runs amok. Shops are ransacked, houses set ablaze. People run, and find nowhere to hide. Drop dead from exhaustion, or lie littered on the road, bleeding to death.
The danse macabre is over. Rigor mortis follows: a dead stiff stillness.
I come to my senses, and find myself sitting perched on the thorny tree, shaking with fear. Scratched, bruised all over, but safe. Clinging for life to the selfsame poor tree, i hated all my life.
Below, the parrot has been thrown out of the broken cage. A scraggy, rabid-looking dog pounces at it. Even threat to life affects no more than a feeble flutter in those wings, paralyzed by years of disuse. An inarticulate cry. .a whirl of lifeless feathers. .and then just a bloody trail.
I look around. The banyan tree stands tall in its grand equanimity. Underneath, lie the three poor idiots, reduced to a gory pulp.
Did they ever know what happened? Or, what was happening even to them, when the wise of the world trampled them to pulp? Something within urged me to go near them. .perhaps some life may be beating somewhere faintly. . .
I dare not climb down the tree. The devil of the dog is still stands there, snarling at me. The fiend has already tasted blood.
I am a palmist who doesn’t believe in palmistry. Well, in a bazaar you hardly do what you believe in.
These days you don’t need a palmist to tell about your future; it stares at you with eyes like those of dead fish. With a future like that, you feed on nostalgia. To me, nostalgia is masochism.
Our village was a drought stricken cluster of slovenly shanties. Everyone devoured the available traces of life, like maggots teeming a rotting corpse.
Father would be busy all day smoking, spitting phlegm and blood, in his damp corner – “father’s corner”- and did nothing else. One day “father’s corner” was silent. Silence alarmed us; we were right. He was dead. The smell of tobacco, phlegm, and blood lingered for a few days.
Mother worked as maid servant. I was already a agriculture labor, before i was ten.
Then came the factory. It acquired agriculture land. Local leaders were quick to cash on the opportunity at a premium. The peasant became the unskilled labor; his wife washed dirty utensils and soiled clothes in the factory colony.
A modern factory, it was. No smoke, no noise. It worked silently. Like a predator lying in ambush. Predate, it did. The factory ruined the village, and closed down. We lost our livelihood. The rich, now richer, lost nothing.
All youth migrated to the city. The village became home for the aged and the moribund.
I worked as a garbage-truck helper. The garbage was an assortment of tobacco pouches, beer bottles, rotting vegetables, quivering offal, dead rats, used condoms, soiled sanitary napkins, hospital waste (once i inadvertently touched a macerated body of a new born - and came apart a palm: some divine prophecy, i suppose!)..the integrated stench won’t leave me for days. Within weeks, i could smell nothing in the world.
The garbage-truck driver was a learned man. Had done his masters in economics. We called him “professor” The “professor” was also a man of the world. Managed to stay in place for more than a decade. Shortly, he would be promoted as a water-tank driver- a more lucrative job.
I lost my job after the three months. They gave a “break” to everyone, so that nobody claimed employment rights.
Then I sold pesticide. Dealt in death, sort of. I stood near the railway station, with poison-packs in my bag, displaying the rate-board placard. Cockroaches, rats, bugs: each life had different price-tag.
Death dealing was not that bad. Life depended on that. But i left the job not before long. Of late, i noticed a man staring me for hours from across the road. Daily, for a week now. Never said a word. That silent stare irritated me.
‘Well buddy, what do you think you are doing, staring me like that, eh?’, asked i.
Startled, he mumbled, ‘No..no..I mean..you have some..poison? I need it..badly.’
Oh, that’s all what it was!
‘How much?’
‘May be a dozen.. make it twenty packets..rat poison.’
‘Twenty? Well..’
I never saw him after that.
Next day i heard of a family having committed suicide- could it be his family?
Actually, i was nothing more than an incidental instrument in the entire event. The poor man would have managed something or the other- maybe, strangulated his folks, and hung himself. Anything. But the guilt haunts my dreams even today. I stopped selling poison.
Now i sell dreams to the defeated. I don’t know a shit of palmistry. I practise unadulterated sham. Not sure of my dinner tonight, i claim to tame the stars and the planets!
My office is a mean rag-space under an eternally leafless tree, affording neither shade nor shelter. All my property is a caged parrot with moth-eaten feathers; a worn out pack of taros; and a rickety umbrella - all hand-me-downs.
I hate my lifeless tree. Particularly because right before me, stands an evergreen banyan tree with all its majesty; and “they” occupy that coveted space.
A bunch of idiots. Three deformed humanoids with waxy stunted bodies, hairless, not even eye-brows. Slopping shoulders, pendulant breasts, pot-bellies...Small triangular heads with pointed crowns. Slits for eyes, almost no neck. Open mouths, dribbling saliva. Protruding teeth, hyper-pink gums. All exactly alike. Siblings, triplets or, flotsam-jetsam of life-wreck, brought together by blind chance? They come every morning, smile mutely at each other the whole day, and go away at nightfall.
Their very sight gives me nausea. I can’t help staring them, either.
The job bores me. Life is a 50-odd-year-long yawn, and not a moment of peaceful sleep. Hunger gnaws me by the day; guilt, by night.
Boredom makes me introspective. What would mother be doing in that all-forsaken ditch of a village? Add old age to loneliness. Father could never be tender to her (or to me) - his own life was too abrasive for that...I didn’t quite understand him ever.
Mother never liked my coming to the city. The prosperous city is like a sick dog, licking its own prick, and affecting machismo. Each man, lost in his own void, putting up a steel-and-concrete façade of indifference.
The three idiots sit there smiling at each other, under the majestic banyan tree. Resentment overcomes me again. The afternoon sun scorches me, not a shred of shadow over my head, and those skunks smile like that. Father spits blood, and dies; mother withers away waiting for her only child, and the shameless skunks go on smiling. A family lives and dies like rats in holes, and these buggers can’t stop smiling. I, wholesome, am crucified to this rickety thing, and idiots keep smiling indifferently, under the sacred banyan tree. That’s sacrilegious!
Somebody please go, and slap them, kick their ass, thrash them, cudgel them, and stop them smiling, make them cry. Go, stab their bloody paunch!..would they bleed, or just ooze out some milky, nasty smelling sap?
God!..i shuddered at my own imagery, at my stooping down so low. Sorry, guys. . .
Then comes the tempest. An angry, ravaging crowd, spitting venomous abuse.
‘Close down, close down the shutters..!’
‘Kill them, kill those bastards..!’
‘Long live..!’
‘Hell with..!’
Frantic mob fury runs amok. Shops are ransacked, houses set ablaze. People run, and find nowhere to hide. Drop dead from exhaustion, or lie littered on the road, bleeding to death.
The danse macabre is over. Rigor mortis follows: a dead stiff stillness.
I come to my senses, and find myself sitting perched on the thorny tree, shaking with fear. Scratched, bruised all over, but safe. Clinging for life to the selfsame poor tree, i hated all my life.
Below, the parrot has been thrown out of the broken cage. A scraggy, rabid-looking dog pounces at it. Even threat to life affects no more than a feeble flutter in those wings, paralyzed by years of disuse. An inarticulate cry. .a whirl of lifeless feathers. .and then just a bloody trail.
I look around. The banyan tree stands tall in its grand equanimity. Underneath, lie the three poor idiots, reduced to a gory pulp.
Did they ever know what happened? Or, what was happening even to them, when the wise of the world trampled them to pulp? Something within urged me to go near them. .perhaps some life may be beating somewhere faintly. . .
I dare not climb down the tree. The devil of the dog is still stands there, snarling at me. The fiend has already tasted blood.
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