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”)

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.

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.

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.

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.
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*a legendary bird, that subsists on rain drops as they fall from the clouds, before they touch the earth.

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."

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.
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*polaa, a festival of rural India, when cattle, particularly bullocks, are worshipped as a gesture of gratefulness for their contribution in agricultural activity.