A Blind Date

 

“People are taught that pain is evil and dangerous...Pain is meant to wake us up ...You feel your strength in the experience of pain…Pain is a feeling. Your feelings are a part of you. Your own reality. If you feel ashamed of them, and hide them, you’re letting society destroy your reality. You should stand up for your right to feel your pain.”

-Jim Morrison

 

I sat with him at the coffee shop. It was one of those ambient places with irritatingly low-lit interiors and pseudointellectuals with too much money on them. The waitress had come in expectantly into our smoking booth, but was sent back rather curtly by my company. I would have fancied a cappuccino for myself, but the thinness of my handbag protested in support of the contrary. He, being all cool and ‘modern’, did not ask me twice; life sucks when you’re a broke girl in 21^st century urban India.

 

After downing about two flasks full of sneaked-in vodka, both he and I were loosening up, desperate to make our interaction meaningful.

 

“You know what,” he started, trying to spark off a conversation. “I’ll tell you something which is completely true, but you will never believe me.”

Flogging a dead horse, man.

 

“Try me.”

 

“You sure? You won’t be allowed to go back on the challenge.” His tone was condescending, which made me all the more determined.

 

“Go on,” I spoke with nonchalance.

 

“I am…not of this sys…I mean, this place.” His hesitance was not one borne of inebriation; that much was evident. I remained silent, waiting for him to resume.

 

“I am a visitor in humaniform. I came here to complete my research on the many types of human peoples. It requires me to stay anonymous.”

 

I sipped at the flask stealthily, keeping a subconscious eye out for the waitress. I sported a deadpan expression, and I did not have to force it.

 

“Of course, of course,” I spoke absentmindedly, rethinking whether he was actually sober as he appeared to be. I’ve seen many drunkards in my life, and I could bet my life’s meagre savings if this guy was under the influence at the moment. No quiver in the voice, no droopiness of the eyes and no slurred, fumbled words. He was dry as ever.

 

“You don’t, do you?” he asked, resignedly.

 

“I..well, yes, I don’t.” The truth.

 

He gave a wry smile and continued to beam at me. There was something in his gaze that captivated me; nothing remotely romantic but nonetheless appealing. He was talking without a word being spoken.

“Ok, go on, I’ll believe you,” I said with acquiescence, adding a small “…for now” under my breath.

 

“You won’t remember any of this conversation tomorrow, anyway,” he said, “so I’ll tell you.”

 

“I come from what my race calls the –“ he made a guttural sound quite unlike anything I’d thought possible to come out of a human voice box.

 

“The what?”

 

“The *guttural sound*, my native place! You may call it anything you want. It’s yet undiscovered by your scientists. We have been on expeditions all over the universe, and we’re also recruiting our…volunteers, so to say, in various worlds.”

Too much science fiction for a first date, dude.

 

“Okay okay, enough I guess. Joke’s over, you win, I lose; you’re from *cough twice*.”

 

I had already dismissed his proposition at the offset. Despite his coolness, his disappointment was perceptible. He sighed twice, still looking directly at me with that piercing glance. Mildly drunk, I wished for him to speak. His voice was just the right pitch and tone; not displeasing to the ears.

 

“So, continue?” I offered.

 

“No point. You don’t want to believe.” In an instant, his voice had turned to almost a plea, a complaint. He wanted to be heard. I sipped at the vodka once and smiled at him. It seemed as if chance favoured me. I leaned forward and pulled his cheek playfully.

 

“You’re a sweet kid,” I said with a genuine smile of understanding. “Go on, you have all my attention.”

Not to mention willing suspension of disbelief.

 

He did not smile back, but spoke nevertheless.

 

“See, this is the fucking problem with you lot,” he spoke with reenergised aggression, waving his cigarette butt around. “You have it all ass-backward. You begin with questioning and distrust. You are critical first and faithful second. It’s a first, you know; I’ve never seen a race as stubborn and held up with the process of things than the nature of things. You get me?”

 

He paused for my reply, his eyes penetrating mine with intent and fixation.

 

A thought took seed in my brain: who is this guy? A nutcase? A rogue sociologist, scientist, who? This was our first date, and even though his words made sense, I could not help being curious of his origins.

 

“Partly, I think. I’d love to hear you elaborate.” The truth, again.

 

“I know all of this sounds creepy, but I’ve been marooned on this wretched place for more than 2 years now. It’s sort of like a rite of passage where I come from, like a dissertation or a thesis you have to submit to gain a degree. This is my thesis.” He formed a puff of smoke around himself.

 

[Note to self: cigarette smoking is injurious to health but looks fucking cool on sexy men.]

 

“What’s the subject?” I asked, genuinely inquisitive.

 

“The Social and Interpersonal Idiosyncrasies of the Peoples of Planet 685. Earth, that is,” he said casually.

I was impressed by the thoroughness of his made-up yarn.

 

“Basically, human nature,” I filled in.

 

“Yes. Like a roundup of what you people call sociology, just from a third person’s perspective.”

 

“But tell me: if you’re an alien race so advanced that you can shift shapes and appearances and physical attributes, why don’t you simply invade us and control our resources?”  I was just checking how meticulously he had planned his whole cock-and-bull story.

 

He laughed rousingly.

 

“I swear I’d seen that one coming!” He continued to laugh with uproar, until he coughed a few times and let out a heavy sigh.

“This is another of your, what to say, novelties. You guys don’t see victory beyond the obvious and petty conquests of land, water, resources, women, etc. We have studied your debauch history for years, and have seen resonance of your ignoble actions over the ages in that of our savage ancestors. We have moved over that phase in our social conduct. We realized that conquest of knowledge is paramount; everything else is secondary.”

He paused for a sip of vodka.

 

“But how do you conquer knowledge?”

 

“Exactly; we don’t. We gain it from everyone. That’s all we need from all the races, everywhere. We are explorers, not raiders. We explore worlds, pick up ideas and borrow philosophies, all to possess greater knowledge of the world. Which brings us back to the purpose of my exile: my research.”

 

It all did add up, but I still felt pretty certain it was a first date trick that he employed to impress scientifically-inclined chicks (like me). We had met in a chat room on science fiction writing (as old fashioned and 90s as it sounds) and realized, much to our delight and surprise, that we resided quite close by. One thing led to another and here we were.

 

“Hmm. I daresay you make sense,” I conceded. I paused, waiting for him to continue with his fantastic tale. He had me gripped.

 

As if reading my mind, he resumed, “I am a youngster in my world, too. I am still learning and gaining information. So I have this social theory about your world, something I think I came up with before any of my natives. It’s not cast in stone, for now, but I am much convinced of its veracity.”

 

“Umm hmm.”

 

“See, your greatest invention is also your greatest undoing: science. It enlightens you, gives you a window to see and gain insights into the natural world. It is the best possible way for the leading men of your time to make sense of the mysteries of life. But, as I see it, it also inhibits you and impediments your larger understanding. It stymies open-mindedness, because for men of science, open-mindedness minus any sort of observable or testable input amounts to nothing.”

 

I, being a ‘woman’ of science myself, took instant offense at this last sentence.

 

“I don’t agree with you. Science unlocks our thinking, our larger perspective. It stops us from the recesses of convenient but false solutions, like religion and superstition. Were it not for a scientific temper, we’d still be living and dying, believing that the earth is flat and has a geographical ‘end’. We need to shun all unobservable and improvable assumptions in favour of concrete truths; that is how we will reach the ultimate truth, one day. ”

As I stopped for another gulp of vodka, I was proud of having so eloquently defended the spirit of science to my date.

 

“You’re right,” he said, “but there are things which can never be fully established. They will always ever fall under the shadow of possibility and improbability. For instance, millions of people claim to have been visited by God or a supernatural entity. There are hundreds of explanations that science offers to these accounts, but what if they’re all wrong and it is indeed a god speaking to mortals? How can you ever tell? I bet if god itself descended to the ground and revealed its true nature, scientists won’t believe him and take him for a madman. Exactly the same way you totally disregard my claims of otherworldliness.”

 

We smiled at each other, having come a full circle in our argument. His words rang true in my mind, but they were nothing I had never heard before.

 

“Of course, you can say that. But then, what do we believe, and what do we not believe?”

 

“Don’t ask me, I’m no older than you.”

 

His cigarette all but finished, he flung the doused butt into the garbage bin at the corner of the coffee table. The vodka flask was also emptied, its contents making me feel light-headed and funny. Somehow, his heavily loaded theory never took a toll on my credulity; I believed his every word, yet knew in my heart that he was faking it. My eyes half shut and my head resting on my palm, I edged closer to him. His face was perfectly etched: a right-sized nose, cavernous, brown eyes and tiny, pursed lips. His smile was intelligent and disarming.

 

Under the influence, I grew audacious and rested my slender hand on his cheek. I kept it there. He took out another cigarette and lit it up.

 

“Why do you smoke so much? It kills!” I implored half-heartedly, the other half already anticipating the cloud of strong-smelled smoke around his face, giving him the appearance of a gangster of yore.

 

“It doesn’t affect me: I have detachable lung-saps. I clean them every once a while; like you bathe daily.”

 

“I don’t,” I said, and held him in a long, intense, savage lip-lock.

THE END

 

lullaby

she drops the bomb on me one night while i am munching popcorns midway through my favorite neo-noir.

'how much do you love me,' she asks in what i perceive as a mock love tone.

i munch the popcorns, trying in vain to make it appear that it drowned out her words. she notices me not noticing and switches off the tv, plunging the room in abject darkness.

'i asked you something'. her tone is now mock angry.

i put my popcorn down and don my thinking cap, and speak in a voice quite unlike mine:

' i love you like the world loves the sun, or the birds the sky,
i love you like a man his wife, and a wife her lover.
i love you, like the mountains, snow, and the stars, their glow.
i love you for who you are, not for what you were or will be.
i love you not only in spirit, but in body,
i love you like a rapist his victim, but also a victim, her savior.
i love, but i also lust: i want your soul but also your guts.
i want you, not forever, but fully; i yearn love, not permanence.
i love the shape of your feet and the make of your breast, and also the hair on your upper lip and fat under your belly.
i love you so much i could lay down my life, but also as much as to kill you if i must.
i care for your dreams and your life and your fears,
just as i do care for your shallow exterior.
i believe in your virtue, your truth and your clarity.
i hail it all but i condemn, too, your vanity, your plastic emotions, your pithy deceptions.
i love you like the lord does lucifer; and baali, sugreev,
i want not to be with you, but be you indeed.'

she is asleep now, the lullaby is complete.

popcorns, tv, neo-noir, repeat.

The Conversation: A Short Story

Something had changed since morning. The dresses were neatly stacked in a corner, her shoes, paired and straightened, lay primly by the wall. The bare room appeared all the more spacious without the clutter of clothes, bed sheets and electronic equipment sprawled all over it; the way she had left it in the morning.

The faint smell of phenyl persisted in the air, emanating from the shining floor which she had left with considerable dirt and loose hair droppings. The cramped toilet space, small as ever, was fairly clean and smelled pleasantly with the introduction of an air freshener. She remembered shortening her stay in it that morning so that she didn’t have to keep up with the miserable stench for long. The commode was minus any tenacious spots of excrement that had dissuaded her from opening her eyes while she showered in the single bathing and shitting area. The fan in the living room swung at full speed as cleaned clothes were hung to dry on an indoor hanger.

She was baffled. She clearly remembered having locked the door securely when she had hastened to college that morning, yet someone had come in and tidied up her room. She exited her room and climbed downstairs to the warden of the girls’ hostel.

“Was there someone in my room this morning?” she inquired.

The middle aged warden, a Mr. Tirkey, replied with confusion, “Who? No; no one apart from the cleaning boy!”

That satiated her query. She nodded with realization and slowly made her way back to the room, thinking no more about it.

The next day, she found the same touch-ups made in her room. Her cupboard had been cleaned and neatened too, along with her toiletries, which had formerly languished in an exceeding state of disuse and disarray. The intimacy of the after touches made her feel violated and exposed. How dare anyone open her cupboard and move things around? How dare a mere serf mess with her personal effects (regardless of the fact that he had made them tidier)? She wanted to go down to the warden and tell him not to allow any cleaner to trespass her room, but she felt it would be too unbecoming of her to make an issue about a very trivial matter. She let it go, but she put a different lock on her cupboard the next morning, making sure the servant did not have the duplicate key to open the same. Just to be sure, she messed up her neatly arranged stack of clothes, in a way challenging him to clean it.

She returned from college, tired and wasted, but eager still to walk with a quickened pace towards the cupboard. The room had a similar cleanliness about it, but to her marginal delight, the insides of the cupboard had been untouched. Proud of her menial victory, she switched on the TV just in time to catch her favourite TV show. After watching it for a quarter of an hour, she fell on her bed and swiftly fell asleep under the weight of the day’s travails and forethoughts of the following day’s tasks.

She came home the next day to find her room similarly dressed up and cleaned. She found a trace of a smile on her face, happy to have been welcomed by the now-familiar smell of phenyl and the sense of tidiness that was so uncommon for her all her life. She had her dinner and sat down to catch the night’s episode of her favourite TV show.

When she switched the TV on, she was surprised to find the channel changed to Discovery Channel, which was featuring an hour long documentary on the evolution of primates. Annoyed, she realized it must have been the doing of the cleaning boy. It had been bad enough to have her cupboard violated; now her TV was also being used in her absence! She was almost about to get up and complain to the warden when the documentary caught her attention: the engagin visuals recreated how man had evolved from various ‘lower’ animals and come to be what it was today. Interested, she let the matter rest and forgot all about the audacity of the janitor by bedtime.

The next evening, she found the TV tuned on to a movie channel which was showing the film, ‘127 Hours’. Having fleetingly heard of it, she got down to watch it and by the end, had her heart in high spirits. She thanked her cleaner silently for involuntary making her enjoy her night after a stressful day. Sleep came easily to her.

The brief periods she spent in her room were brought alive by the cleaner’s adjustments to her personal items. Sometimes her slippers would be positioned exactly where she would sit and remove her footwear after her college day, sometimes her snack box would have been gently rearranged to make her favourite munching item be kept at the top.

It was then that it struck her: the janitor was doing it deliberately. Thinking on this line, she connected the links: the ‘most watched’ feature on her TV made it easy for anyone to go through the list of programs she liked the most; easier still, to locate a similar program in advance and keep that channel on for her to see. The most common place for her changing her footwear was easy to guess: near the drawing room couch, where she left her slippers after departing for college in a hurry. As for the arrangement of snacks, it was a fairly simple deduction: the snack whose quantity had diminished with the most speed was voluntarily kept at the top. Various other minor adjustments, like the angle of the shower she preferred and the way she loved to have her curtains drawn, everything had been purposely altered to perfection, each day, every day.

It spooked her out; like having a conversation with a total stranger. Deciding that the situation had come to a head, she went downstairs and asked the warden the name and address of the janitor who cleaned the rooms in her floor. Extracting what she desired out of him, she decided to wait for Sunday, when she would be free of all academic bindings to give her generous cleaner an untimely visit.

Sunday came, and she decidedly ventured out of her room, her bag slung around her shoulder and her gait oozing with reproach. She walked up to the slums where the cleaner resided, hoping to catch hold of him and tell him to stop playing around with her private stuff. She reached the chawl which was supposed to comprise his house and climbed the stairs. She walked past many crammed rooms which smelled of suffocating stenches, overflowing with people of all sorts: wailing toddlers, their indifferent mothers shrieking at each other, men who spat ungainly on the walls and squatted shamelessly, ogling every girl who happened to cross the street.

She came across the tenement that was the boy’s, and peered inside through the open doors. Seeing no one, she stepped inside, curious and overcome by a sense of adventure. The room was exceptionally dirty and cluttered with all sorts of muck and filth. Flies buzzed around the dustbin, which smelled of rotting biodegradable refuse. She could smell, among other uncomfortable inputs, the singularly tantalizing fragrance of cooked chicken curry. Realizing that there might be someone inside, she backtracked and knocked on the door. A sound of footsteps emerged from the inner rooms and an old woman appeared, a formal smile on her face.

“Who are you, madam?” she asked in a servile voice, accustomed to inferiority. “What work do you have?”

“I am here to meet Asgar,” she replied. “He works as a janitor in the girls’ hostel back there?”

“Oh yes, I am Asgar’s landlady. He is out for work today, will return only by night. Quite a hardworking lad, he is…works hard and long to eke a living. Has no one in life to call his own, y’know?”

“Is that it?” she said. “So he is always away at day?”

“Yes madam, always working. Never seen him have a conversation with anyone, ever. Diligent lad, I pity his circumstances, y’know…” her voice trailed off as she gazed knowingly at her.

“Okay, I’m sorry for bothering you. Can I please go see his room?” she requested.

“But of course, by all means ma’am!”

She led her to his room. It was the very picture of untidiness and disarray. There were arbitrary heaps of dirty clothes spread across the bed and the floor, smelling repulsively of vomit and sweat. One side of the room was dedicated only to books: dusty, yellowing, disorderly and missing pages. The bed was unmade; a pair of despicably tattered sandals lay carelessly, one under the bed and in the centre of the room.

“Always in a hurry, he is.  Never has time to clear up, y’know,” the landlady mumbled away in the background.

“Thank you for showing me in, mam. You can go back to your cooking now, if you will,” she said with an air of resolve.

The landlady, eyeing her visitor with surprise and confusion, left the room to her and returned to her chicken curry, whistling and humming unmindfully. The girl, having the room to herself, got down to cleaning its every nook and cranny with the broom she found under the cupboard.

She cleaned away in peace, with a sense of duty, replying to the conversation the cleaner had started.

It Very Well Is..

“Generations to come, it may well be, will scarce believe that such a man as this one ever in flesh and blood walked upon this Earth.”

-Albert Einstein, on M.K. Gandhi

Nothing much remains to be said after the words quoted above, but I still want to give voice to my thoughts on the Father of my nation and his image in modern, mainstream social media as I’ve experienced it. My inhibitions with the absolute lionization or desecration of a public figure whose life predates even that of my parents (possibly my grandparents, too) is that we simply do not know them close enough to pass on a judgement on their character.

When we talk of Gandhi ji with the epithet of ‘Mahatma’ prefixed to his first name, we give him the status of a ‘great soul’ (literal translation). We accept that he belonged to a different category of humans; a class beyond the reach of normal mortals. We in India have pantheons of gods and demigods to worship and hold sacred in our hearts: Sachin Tendulkar, the God of Cricket; Mother Teresa, the Goddess of Kindness; Rajinikanth, the God of Gods and so on and so forth.  We love to make messiahs of men (and slaves of women, but that’s for another day). In the thirst to create a greater figure, an exalted being, a superhuman, we do not take into account the erosive power of time. We focus so blindly on the virtues of an individual that the subsequent, more discerning and less readily impressionable generations have no option but to be cynical of our claims of these great personalities.

Similar is, according to me, the case with Gandhiji. So passionately coloured are our teachers’ (and their teachers’) accounts of his life and actions, that it is impossible for us (the current generation, that is) to relate to a greatness so untarnished and unquestioned. We instinctively rummage through the concise biographies of the great man we find with a quick google search and pick up the negatives from the positives. In our obsessive quest for relatable ‘mortality’, we contort the meaning of words to suit our fancies. We drag his character ‘down to our level’, so to speak. We pull him down from his special status of assigned greatness and try to associate as many vices and carnal traits to his person as words would allow. For it is, after all, words that connect him to us and nothing else. Neither have we heard him speak, nor have we seen him in action, except in grainy, comically sped up archival footage of the Dandi march or the spinning of a charkha.

Many (http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/thrill-of-the-chaste-the-truth-about-gandhis-sex-life-1937411.html) in the contemporary world see Gandhi as a sex maniac, especially infamous for the part in his autobiography where he ‘confesses’ to having made ‘boys and girls bathe and sleep together’ in his ashram. We see his ‘experiments’ in sexual ‘deviance’ as somehow taking away the sheen of his other achievements, one of which includes almost completely uniting an entire country and rousing the varied sects and religious factions of the nation to stand up as a unit against a formidable common enemy. What is forgotten in the sea of criticism is the resonation of the ideals of non-violence and the struggle for truth (‘satyagraha’) which make up the fabric of our nation even today, more than 6 decades after religious fundamentalists pumped three bullets into the bare chested, hunchbacked crusader for freedom and unity whom we know as the Father of Modern India.

We forget, quite conveniently, the crookedness of our own character when judging that of the Mahatma. The easiest thing in the world is to criticize the life of an individual. The best way to censure a particular aspect of life around you or the status quo is to make ‘your life your message’ (derivative of the Gandhi quote, “My life is my message.”) Shut up and own up to bribing the neighbourhood traffic cop after jumping the signal. Take action to set right the evil around you, and we will see a day when we won’t need to commemorate a Gandhi or a Bhagat Singh at all: we’ll be our own ideals.

“The evil that men do lives after them;

The good is oft interred with their bones.”

-William Shakespeare, ‘Julius Caesar’. 

A patch of land

It was a harsh winter day and Shriya knew she had wandered too far. Her little feet had it in them to carry her to places far beyond what her parents would allow, but her heart had never been self-assured, until now. She had run off when she noticed papa taking off ma’s clothes in the car, roundabout the secluded hairpin turn. Fearing no reprimand and seeing that they had private work, she had fled to the woods.

She walked in rapid steps, her white shoes making crunching sounds on the snow. The trees were thick enough to blot out the sunlight, but that attracted Shriya even more. It infused a heightened sense of adventure into her little escapade. She knew she had about 15 minutes with her before ma and pa would notice her gone, so she took her sweet time exploring the woods. Crows were cawing in clusters, mynahs were singing in their melodious voices, and the constant hum of crickets rang in her ears sedately. Wild brambles grew in narrow areas between trees and white lilies were in full bloom despite the crippling cold. Everything was peaceful and bolstered her to venture further on.

Suddenly, as if by providence, she chanced upon a fairly large clearing in the woods. Sunlight filtered in through the gap in the canopy, illuminating a patch of the pale snow. The opening revealed colours more vividly: the green of the coniferous trees was deeper, the blueness of the sky was more marked and her own hands seemed to be flushed with a dash of crimson. She looked around, stopping in her tracks, and expected to find company. She beheld the scene with wondrous awe, breathed in the fresh morning air and thanked herself for her audacity to slip away from the car.

She looked around and noticed a slab of stone jutting out from a heap of snow in the centre of the clearing. Curious, she walked over to it and tried to wipe off the snow with her gloved hands, one handful at a time. Gradually, she had cleared almost all the snow covering the stone slab, and could make out the words inscribed upon it:

‘Kaizad Mirra

1978-2008

Son, Lover, Gentleman.

“All men and women, merely players,

They have their entrances and exits…”

You are missed.’

She stared at it for the longest time. Then she pondered, looking blankly at the forgotten patch of land with its quaint tombstone, sheltering the forgotten, most-definitely decayed corpse of a young man who died ‘young’. She sat down, resting her back on the stone, wishing she had picked one of the vibrant white flowers on the way and put them beside the grave.

She felt like scratching her chin, but her trimmed nails did not fully cure the itch. She bent down and rubbed her rosy chin against the rugged edge of the tombstone. The birds chirped, the trees swayed in the cold breeze, and the highway seemed forgotten in the serenity of the woods. She continued to gaze into nothingness for a long time, and then some more, until desperate cries of her ma and papa began to resonate among the firs and deodars, like mynahs’ for a mate.  

The Parting

Like insects drawn to the lethal flame,
and a compulsive man to the gambler's game.
Words, meaningless, trudging to an abrupt end,
and boats rudderless, to a shore distant.

Two bodies breathed in close contact,
Impulsive, naïve fools; no plan, no tact.
What was at first, borne of lust and trial,
metamorphosed into actualized desire.

They kissed and slept, and fought and wept,
their born, stretched taut, but passed the test
of times and trifles, hurdles and tribulations,
they braved all with their singular passion.

When the going was tough and path unsure,
separation imminent, closeness endangered,
they vowed of love to be unharmed,
for, of this ill, exists no cure.

Contrary to all logical conjectures,
and the very many words of disparagers,
of cynical world, oh colourless world!
the lovesicks, unfazed, tightened their embrace.

Came many a winter, many a fall,
to ruffle their faith, blew many a gail.
But they clung on, not to mere cellphones,
but the untrammeled trust acquired over years.

And so went on, year after year,
the fabric of intimacy, but showed no wear.
Until, at last, reality caught up,
and the cosmos extinguished what human error could not.

Tears were, yes, spilt, and hearts were bared,
on this very day, the crossroads emerged.
And in 'good sense' died the promising bud,
and the girl turned woman; a man, the boy.

The Teachings of Darkness

As oncoming headlights peep in for fleeting glances,
and the shroud of darkness envelopes His sinning masses;
when the rest of the world turns a turn in sleep,
and thousands of horses gallop across on wheels.

When the comfort of azure skies has all but vanished,
and the floor of the bus rocks in lullabic rhythms;
when the night-crawlers are, for a sleepy day, famished,
and birds all nestling, safe in their dwellings.

As the lights go dim for the longest hour,
and weary commuters snore away their care;
when guards are lowered, swords are sheathed;
when no laws function, and all is fair.

 When eyes are heavy with un-shed tears,
of pain and pity, longing and fear;
when the breast is burdened with worldly bother,
and the countenance withered like an autumned flower.

As the skin is reddened, courtesy winged parasites,
and bowels churn with hunger and dysfunction;
as diffident ideas take shape and crumble,
gutted in the raging fires of reason.

When hopes are watered with the essence of reality,
and the imminence of solitary life all but realized;
when the night engulfs and greets as an equal,
and the tremulous journey equates the tranquil end.

When miles pass by and the heart cares no more,
no qualms with the past, no losses to bemoan;
It is then, past midnight, that it dawns on me,
that I am a man, all on my own.
 

Chapter 3: Twice Shy

[Continued from here.]

Abject darkness, a violent jerk, and a cold riveting slap on her left cheek awoke her.

Déjà vu.

She knew where she was an instant before she opened her eyes; she could smell the perfumed air of the room. Her head throbbed like the last time.

Yes, the same mahogany wall, the same portraits of a man on a crucifix, the same angelic smiles, the same ‘Sherlocked’ t-shirt gracing her body. She stood up with great effort, hoisting her body up. Her head wheeled, both from the physical blow and mental befuddlement.

ये हो क्या रहा है!? कैसी जगह है ये?

She looked around herself, being doubly cautious of any sight of the woman and the man she had encountered the last time. Behind her stood the same contraption she had entered only a few seconds ago, to escape from her company. She entered the machine and examined it. It had what seemed like a metallic control panel, with wire endings, knobs and keys all over the surface. It was all very raw and unfinished; it lacked the general polish and completeness of the room. The ‘go’ button seemed to make the most sense to her, although she was apprehensive to the idea of pressing it again, in fear of falling to the floor once over.

She got out of the ‘cupboard’ and went over to the doorway, walking on tiptoe, making the least sound possible. She sneaked from the edge of the opening, trying to hear anything. A very faint conversation could be made out, with frequent interjections of laughter. It seemed to be a fairly one-sided conversation, made between a rather taciturn man (growling disinterested ‘hmm’s for the most of the part) and a rather too loquacious female with a high-pitched voice.

Judging the source of the voices to be distant enough for her to brave the hallway, she walked out of the room surreptitiously. Having walked only a few paces, to her immediate right there appeared another bedroom, a vacant and unfurnished one, apparently unoccupied. Two windows in the room opened into a dark outside view, darkened by the house’s shadow being cast across a large, secluded country road. It was, as the last time, an evening.

Suddenly, she heard the sounds of movement and footsteps from the end of the hallway. She swore under her breath and nimbly dived into the vacant room. She hid herself by placing her back to the bedroom wall, pressing her ear against it. The footsteps, marked with feminine fastidiousness, came closer. She pressed herself as far away from view of the hallway as possible, and dreaded her discovery like the last time. Holding her breath, she became as clandestine as a living human could hope to be.

The sound passed through the hallway, and into the room she had come out of. The footsteps paused at a spot, shuffled around and a sudden, stifled gasp was heard. The woman with the extremely high-pitched voice she had met only minutes ago, shouted again, “Onkel Elois! Komm hier doch, es ist etwas im Schlafzimmer!”

Once more, she couldn’t make out the language she spoke, but it did not sound Indian in origin. The ‘kh’s and ‘g’s were guttural and deep-throated.

मुझे कैसे मालुम की यह भाषा Indian नहीं? शायद मुझे partial memory loss है...

A masculine grunt responded to the woman’s callings from the other side of the house. A movement was heard, a chair creaked and the man audibly got up on his feet. There was another brief exchange between the two, after which the man started to make his way to the bedroom.

Listening to the conversation, she could not pick out the meanings of the words, but could grasp the sway of the dialogue by its tone. She could figure out that the woman had not taken well to the contraption kept in the room. Her mind began racing; for the second time that evening, she had an incomprehensible urge to stop them from inspecting the machine up close. Added to the perpetual feeling of being utterly lost in a foreign world and being caught up in a recurring time-warp nightmare, her state of mind was chaotic and numb. To top it all, she had no memory whatsoever…

दो options:

1. खिड़की से बाहर निकलूँ, अपने आस-पास की surroundings को जानूँ-परखूँ।

2. Room में जाऊं, उन लोगों से बात करूँ, समझने की कोशिश करूँ कि मैं हूँ कहाँ।

She had to act fast, for the man’s footsteps drew nearer to the room, slimming the window of time she had before she could act on the first option. Doing it any time after he had passed the room would mean risking discovery, since the overlooking window was in partial sight of the bedroom.She thought over it for the few seconds she had with her.

मैं जो भी हूँ, जहां भी हूँ, human हूँ। ये लोग भले ही मुझे पहचाने नहीं, मगर मेरी life के लिए कोई ख़तरा नहीं हैं। बेहतर यही होगा की मैं शान्तिपूर्वक अन्दर जाऊं, इनसे reason out करूँ, और अपनी इस गुमनामी की आवस्था से बाहर आऊँ…

The man was now in the corridor, and there was no going back. She waited him to pass and be with the woman, and stood up with intent. She paced into the room decidedly, and both its occupants turned around in utter surprise. It was the same young and short woman she had met before, accompanied by a burly, thick-bearded man who was scowling disapprovingly at her. They looked equally surprised like the last time, gaping wordlessly at her person, surveying her from head to toe. In contrast to her casual and ill-fitting tee and faded jeans, the couple wore elaborate overalls; the man sported a black tuxedo and a white shirt with winged collars and the woman, like last time, a simple evening gown of faint pink hue.

The man, having looked at her long enough to pass all limits of propriety, finally lowered his gaze and addressed her in his faltering yet robust voice.

“Wie heißen Sie, Fraulein? Woher kommen Sie? Dies ist privates Eigentum, wie haben Sie Ihren Weg in?”

“I don’t understand you, sir,” she said, trying to get across to the man in English, her second language. The man tried to make out her words, wrinkling his nose.

“Sie, English?” He asked, stammering.

“Yes! Yes, I speak English,” she said in delight.

“Gut, sehr gut! Ich – entschuldigung - I mean, I also understand English,” he replied, making a laborious effort to enunciate in English. “How you come in? Who is you,” he asked.

She gulped, unsure of what to say. She did not want to appear to be a tramp or a vagrant stumbling in on a happy household. She did not want to seem alien. She couldn’t possibly tell them she had no recollection whatsoever about how she had landed up in the house, falling out of the same machine, twice.

“I know not, sir,” she said in very small voice. “I fell out of that machine there,” she said, pointing to the box kept in the corner.

The man looked towards it, and asked, “You come from that? How?”

मुझे क्या घंटा मालूम होगा!

“I don’t know, sir. I just landed here, out of thin air,” she gestured at the carpeted floor.

The man looked perplexed, and growingly agitated. He exchanged a word with the woman, who seemed petrified and repulsed by the prospect of dealing with the strange woman.

The man said, “So you not knowing how you come…” He seemed to be engaged in deep thought, contemplating his next move.

गलत हो गया यहाँ आना, मुझे बाहर ही निकल लेना चाहिए था.

"I think you lie, Fraulein,” said the man at once, rising from his state of thought. “I think you black magic woman!”

She panicked at the accusation. The man walked a few paces away from her, holding the woman closer to himself. She implored, “No, I’m not a witch! I do not remember who I am or how I came here! Please, help me.” Her pleas, however, seemed to fall on deaf ears, as the man and woman exchanged hushed monosyllables to each other, never letting her out of side, constantly edging back.

The man whispered something like an order to the woman, to which she nodded nervously. The man man left the woman’s side, made a neat arc around where the stranger stood, and tried to get out of the room.

Despite her protests, the couple would hear none of what she had to say. The last resort, she thought, was to jump into the machine again and hope against hope that she won’t re-spawn again in the twisted timewarp. A strange fear gripped her as the man exited the room, and she turned around and dashed to the contraption. She heard the woman gasp shrilly at the sudden movement, but there was no stopping her now. She had made a bad decision and now was the time to rectify it.

She jumped inside the enclosure, and for the second time that evening, pressed the big red ‘go’ button with all her hope.

काश इस बार सब ठीक हो जाए, और मैं किसी normal सी दुनिया में किसी बुरे सपने से जागूँ…

*

Guruji’s slightly smug expression wore off, as the unfaltering lines of code dictating his upright character vetoed those constituting his ‘natural’ instincts. He turned around to face the back end of the stage, looking expectantly at the left wing, awaiting the guest of the day to arrive in all her glory. The entire school assembly followed his sight, awaiting the spectacle.

Sounds of approaching footsteps emanated from the backstage area; they were taut and evenly-paced. Many amongst the younger lot were baffled about how a person so long departed could join them to celebrate her own birthday, but the slightly older ones, who were acquainted with the miraculously infinite possibilities of virtual immersive simulation, had coolly suppressed any outward display of their initial shock. Of course, some of them murmured to their neighbors, it could be a personality emulation of the great scientist that would address them. Or, even better, it could be a grade-Z certified case of time travel, allowing her to come forth into her future and kick off her own birthday celebration, in the institution named after her.

It was Amrita Jamwal, after all, who had invented time travel; or, so to say, chalked out the intricacies and minute laws that governed the transportation of matter through space and time.

The woman, putting to end the fanciful chains of thoughts the students had conjectured, appeared nonchalantly on the left wing of the stage, beaming with amicability and what seemed to be genuine humility. Her appearance made certain, at once, the medium she had taken to be present in the midst on her 110^th birthday, despite her very obvious lack of physical existence: virtual personality reconstruction.

She was beautiful beyond human measure; a hyper-aestheticized caricature of what might once have been a human. Her rosy lips gleamed in the stage lights, her impeccably lined teeth shone uniformly, and a pallid, perfectly symmetrical face commanded gazes from all around. She wore a gold-bordered red sari with the élan of a 20^th Century Bollywood* heroine, topping it with unbridled hair and just about a dash of kohl around her eyes. Her ethereal looks had given many an adolescent sitting closer to the stage a resilient boner, making them hold their organs down with their hands, trying with all their effort to pass it off as a normal sitting position. A wave of mutual understanding ran off between the students, and their collective embarrassment became a motif for solidarity.

The fact remained that she was only a hyper-bloated vision of the real Amrita Jamwal. Her real-life personality had been minutely monitored, fed into and replicated by the labyrinthine pathways of the biggest and most powerful AI softwares in the world. As a crowning genius of the world’s greatest recreationists, her personality had been ‘time-tuned’ to perfection. It meant that additional information, in keeping with the subsequent technological advances of man had been fed to her personality and socialized accordingly. To top it off, she had been given a specially reserved appearance, that of the most beautiful and in-demand physical figures of the female gender. And hence, her reconstruction was ready to greet the world as if she had never been gone.

She walked in confident strides towards the microphone, and, tapping it superfluously in a jestful gesture of old-worldly re-enactment, started to speak in an impeccably smooth and uninhibited dainty voice.

“सुप्रभात, मेरे प्यारे छात्रों! मैं हूँ अमृता जमवाल, और आज मैं आपको, इस पाक सालगिरह के अवसर पर, अवगत कराऊंगी जीवन के एक अपरिहार्य सत्य से, जिसे हम कहते हैं…”

The students waited with bated breath for her to finish her sentence, as she radiated a smile, taking a long pause to up the anticipation.

“'असफ़लता' |"

(*Bollywood: An era of motion pictures, starting in the second half of 20^th Century and lasting till the mid-21^st Century, best remembered for its gaudy and garish aesthetic sensibilities, largely incoherent narrative and unoriginal, insipid craftsmanship. Came to an end with the decline of the motion pictures as an economic activity, and the inevitable rise of Cinema Gratis, or the ‘नि:शुल्क चित्रपट’.)

[To be continued…]

तरक्की

मिट्टी जिसमें कभी थे लिपटे,

आज हो गई है मैली;

हो गए सब गलतियों के परे,

सयाने हो गए हैं सब।

Bat-ball जो खेला करते,

गलती करते, फिर सम्भलते;

छिले घुटने, रूखे केश,

बीते कल के बचे-कुचे अवशेष।

होली का मदमस्त हड़कंप,

गाली देते पक्के यार;

वो रात-रात का गुम हो जाना,

वो छुप-छुप के पहला प्यार।

कड़ाकेचूर दिल्ली की सर्दी,

ठिठुरते बदन पे रजाई की सेंक;

सुबह से पहले झट-पट जगना,

Bus के छूटने का रोमांच।

Bus के हिचकोलों के संग,

नींद का आखिरी पल तक आभास;

स्कूल दूर से आते देख,

मन का स्वयं ही बुझ-सा जाना।

सत्रह-अठारह के पहाड़े रटना,

साथ-साथ साईं का जाप;

पार लगे अपनी ये नैय्या,

मन में हो बस यही अलाप।

आज कहाँ कोई है निर्भर,

किसी और के साथ को;

पाठ पढ़ लिए, चपत पड़ चुके 

अब काहे का बचपन मोह।

लोगबाग सब बदल गए हैं,

या शायद हूँ बदला मैं;

चलो, रुको मत, आगे बढ़ो,

खूब बनो सयाने सब।