And so it began
The serpent slithered up his arm
And it rained as tears
The rivers were salt
The faithful have begun their wanderings
In the lands of their fathers
The faithless unite in silence
Driving the herd back
Into the safety of inaction.
Three shots straight to the brain.
They say this stuff can knock out one of ‘em hippo-sized canaries that’ve been flying around in my neighbourhood … At least that’s what they said in the news… Oh wait, was that one in my head or on TV???? But that’s not the point… What is the point?? There’s a pencil on the table… no, no, that’s not it… Let’s think shall we??
OVERLOAD! OVERLOAD!
Full System Failure. Shutdown imminent. In 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 and whoop-da-dum-deedle-doo!
Reboot in 10, 15, 36, 3, 56, 9…. No, wait, that’s Windows copying my files… Shall we just start over?
Three shots straight to the brain. (That’s it!!!! That’s the point!!!)
Anyway. Coming back to the point.
Three shots to the brain. (Just how’d they get past my thick skull anyway?)
And they said one of these could knock out a rhino… Ha! Maybe one of them plastic ones that come free with the Cap’n Crunch… ooh, maybe one of them Animal Cracker Rhinos… Three of them, and I’m still up and running!! Or maybe I’m not and this is all in my head. But isn’t it s’posed to kill me or something vaguely dramatic like that? Besides, my ribs hurt, I dunno if that qualifies…
Oh, hang on a sec, Mary-Kate and Ashley on my ‘private line’ (know what I mean?)…
Hey babes!
Ya, sure we can hang! Though, with the two of you around, I won’t be hanging a lot, you know what I mean? Yeah, I’d like ta get Full House on you two…
Hello? Hey babes???? Um… Mer?? Ash??
Hehe… Ôla again li’l peeps… minor technical glitches there…
Do you guys know why I have this headache so bad? It’s like Barbara Streisand meets William Hung (remember the Chinese guy from American Idol two seasons back? Stiff dude singing “she bang she bang she move she move”) ya, that on steroids…
Anyway I gotta split… get it? Headache… Gotta ‘split’…
Aaargh! Never mind…
P.S.
Blame Frankie’s “fickle friend, the summer wind”.
She stands, leaning in the frame of the door.
She looks at me, right then,
That look that says “I’ve got your number…”
The eyes squint, the eyebrows form that look of mock anger.
She starts moving forward slowly.
I feign fear, back away till I'm against the wall,
And she’s getting closer. Closer still. Oh God, so close…
She waves a finger from side to side. I see her lips form the sound,
Tsk tsk tsk… Hear it in my head;
Her hand brushes against mine. I shudder.
Goosebumps run down my arm and a chill down my neck.
I close my eyes and feel her touch inside me.
Then, slowly, suddenly, the touch is gone.
I open my eyes, startled. But she’s right there.
She looks at me, assurance bleeding into me.
With her eyes, she tells me to close mine, that it’s all right.
I do.
Every pore on every inch of skin is alive, alert.
Waiting, expecting her touch.
The hair rise in anticipation, my skin charged, eager.
I wait.
Eventually I open my eyes; she is gone.
Death will support life.
Always.
The madmen will prance in circles.
Always.
The wise will be persecuted.
Always.
Hell will rain down upon the righteous.
Always.
The fools will prosper.
Always.
I thought I was alone,
Abandoned.
I was wrong.
Abandoned, yes, but not alone.
Evil is lurking.
Closer than I had ever imagined.
It stares at me,
Smiles,
Laughs,
Mocks,
Talks,
Argues.
And I play along.
I beg for its mercy,
Though I’m the one that has been wronged.
The evil laughs at me,
And does not forgive.
I am betrayed.
The knife tastes sweet,
Buried deep in my back.
Positioned carefully,
So that I can’t reach at it.
Here is one wound I cannot heal.
My closest stone is no longer mine.
Abandonment beckons me.
Strange faces offer to help me,
But I decline.
How ironic!
I would only have accepted
If the evil would have offered.
Silence is our companion,
Eyes upon us like a watchful mother.
Evil is my friend now.
And he loves me,
Like a brother;
Like a vulture loves a carcass.
I realize now I was right
The first time.
Even with the evil beside me,
I am alone.
I breathe in
But the air escapes
Through the holes in my soul.
I’m gasping,
Struggling to live,
And then you save me.
I breathe you in,
But you are still outside me
Laughing, mocking,
Loving, hating,
I breathe in deeply,
Air suffocates me now.
I stare at the wine glass,
Transfixed.
The wine is rare,
I have never seen anything like it.
I hold it up against the light,
I can see through it
Yet it is solid
And I see nothing else
It pulls me into itself
I touch the glass
Uncertain, unsure
I lift it off the table,
Testily,
Afraid of snapping the stem,
Afraid of mixing blood-red wine
With wine-red blood.
The glass is now in my hand
I lift it towards me
I’ve seen others do this before,
Never done it myself
Thought about it, yes,
But never imagined it would happen
The glass is an inch from my face
I swirl the wine,
Sniffing
The aroma overpowers me
I close my eyes and sniff again
And this time it enters my head
Like it has a vengeance to fulfil
I’m a little heady already
I raise the glass to my lips now,
Anticipating the experience
Wondering, if what I thought
Is indeed how it will taste
I am pleasantly surprised.
I thought as it swirled around in my mouth
That I wouldn’t like it
Thought it might be too bitter
Not something for my palate
I thought I had sensed it all,
Thought I had seen
How it intoxicates a one
And again, I am surprised
As the taste kicks in
It is full bodied
A hint of flavour that eludes,
Yet stares you in the face
Demanding that you tell what it is
That you think you taste.
The flavour hesitates,
Holding back until the last moment
To really show you what it is like
I swallow,
Thinking it is over,
It can’t possibly get any better,
And then it hits me.
I blink in surprise,
The after-taste overpowering me
This is like nothing I had ever anticipated
I want to drink in more,
I want to keep this feeling going,
But the glass is shaking in my hand.
Unsteady, unsure if I can stay on my feet,
I slide back to the table,
Wanting to put it down.
As the glass reaches the table,
My hand shakes violently,
I’m afraid I will spill it all,
Afraid I will lose that flavour
To a stain that will never come off
Slowly, carefully,
The glass inches toward the table.
Delicately, it places itself on the surface
Dancing in the light.
Sunshine bounces of the deep red
Making it seem alive, afire
Almost mocking me,
Daring me to come closer.
Now it is the glass
That’s looking at me,
Sizing me up
Seeing what I almost mismanaged
I am convinced
I am not worthy
The glass is changing
I do not understand
The glass grows
But the wine remains the same
Filling less and less of the glass
Every time I look at it
But still, it seems to overflow.
I stare at the wine glass,
Transfixed.
I stand on a cliff,
I’m ready to plunge,
Though the canyon below
Seems to fade into the dark
I’m unafraid,
Yet terrified
I don’t know if I will reach
The bottom,
Or if I vanish into the nothingness
It almost calls to me
Asking if I will be tempted
So what if the pointed tail
Bothers you,
Ignore it,
There’s so much more to see
I’m on that cliff again
This time I don’t know what happens next
I stand there and wait for a sign,
But the jury seems to be out on my parade
I wonder
Will they ever come back in?
Can the magic hold back?
Will it ever be like this again?
Will the sky still be blue,
The sun yellow?
Can I go back to when
I could look straight at it
And not be burned?
Can I deal with the fact
That sweet might never be sweet?
That breathing might not seem like a privilege
But a sentence,
LIFE… hard labour… the third degree…
So many questions…
So many explanations still to come,
So many cliffs still to climb
So many ledges still to jump off
With nothing more than a blind hope
That my feet will land on clouds.
I’m on a new cliff today,
I’ve seen my share,
Jumped a few too…
Today I’m afraid,
Terrified, petrified,
I look down, and fear escapes me
The cliff that I stand on
Is disappearing
Waning
Crumbling under the weight
I have put on it
Yet I stand there, unafraid.
If not here, then nowhere.
This is my cliff.
Take it away, and you take away my life.
Part One
I’ve been standing in motion
I try to walk but
The door only gets further away
I’m tired of walkin now
I jus wanna sit down and rest
But my feet keep movin
And the walls scream at me
Not to stop till I reach the end
Tell me how do I get there
When life jus goes on and on
And every time u think u got something
Something new comes up
And u gotta get back in the chase
The hunt for that elusive badge
To pin on your chest for the world to see
Wat a brave and wonderful boy you’ve been
But the world doesn’t care wat u did
To get it in the first place
I’ve been standing in motion
I try to walk but
The passage jus gets longer and longer
Im tired of walkin now
So should I jus sit down to rest
The world would b a nicer place
If we all jus sat down
And let time do its thing
But we, the eternal meddlers,
We gotta stick our nose where it don’t belong
We gotta try to take things in our own hands
How long’s this illusion gonna last!
The ragged sound of the city surrounds me,
But I’ve learnt to live with it.
The constant buzz of a cellular insect hounds me,
Chirruping, hooting, screeching, banging, beeping, vibrating,
But I’ve learnt to live with it.
Decomposition extends its filthy tentacles,
Trying to ensnare me, reaching out for me,
Begging for the touch of another human being,
Or just the feel of cold metal or paper,
Stumps reach out and tap my shoulder or grab at my shirt,
But I’ve learnt to live with it.
A modern Hades lives around me,
With inked bodies and pierced minds,
Breathing fire and sniffing for white gold,
But I’ve learnt to live with it.
The open space of a 2 x 4 cell is now all I have to myself,
That too with an elbow or arm or thigh thrown in for free,
I breathe in what you breathe out,
But I’ve learnt to live with it.
Pieces of broken glass stand between
Me and my fun day of play with the ball,
And ’fessing up’s not the answer,
All it’ll get me is a resounding reward,
Lying is now my biggest virtue,
But I’ve learnt to live with it.
I’ll have your cake, you eat mine,
I just forgot I had the bigger half,
Who needs a palace of cards to live in?
I’ve seen them do with plastic sheet walls and an asbestos roof.
The glaring eye of the societal eagle is on me constantly,
But I’ve learnt to live with it.
I’m too afraid to ask the right questions,
I’m too scared to make that call,
I’m terrified of meeting my demons,
But I’ve learnt to live with the rot in me.
The book doesn’t end here, only a chapter.
The music was teasing me inside my mind. The tune was lilting; enticing, yet with a hint of sadness hidden beneath a wave of joy. Light, high notes mocked me, interspersed with deep resonant ones. Around me the first class compartment was empty, dark and lonely.
I closed my eyes, something I do to fully enjoy any music, to get to its depth, its meaning. Immediately an image sprang to mind, a beautiful, white, ornate fountain with a little pool around it. As the music played, I could almost sense the scene unfolding before me. Around the fountain was dancing a little girl, her back to me. She looked young, no older than seven or eight. With the grace that a professional would have been jealous of, she danced around the pool, her curly hair blowing in time with her motion, carefree, innocent. As the music continued, so did her dance.
I wanted to see her, her face – the face that was mocking me so. Finally she spun around, and her sheer beauty took my breath away. She was the vision of peace, an angel, eyes closed, almost as though she were asleep. Her every move seemed to radiate a breath of light, cool, fresh air. I watched, entranced, as she continued to dance, blissfully, unaware of the existence of anything, of the world around her, of sadness, desperation or depression, of poverty, of evil. Lost in the swirling maze of my thoughts, I had not noticed that her beautiful, brown eyes were now open, and that slowly, rhythmically, gracefully, she was heading towards me. Even now, she tormented me, taking one step back for every two that she took forward. Slowly, but surely, she was coming to me. Soon, she was just a few inches away from me, now dancing slowly on the spot. The music was now beginning to fade, as the track reached its end. When the music did stop, so did the little girl. She reached out a hand to touch me, and I did the same.
I was suddenly jolted out of my vision by someone tapping my leg. I opened my eyes in surprise and blinked, caught unawares by the light that was surrounding me. I turned angrily on the intruder, the defiler of my sacred space. I almost died of shock when I saw the beautiful face before me.
She looked up at me with eyes filled with hope. She smiled at me then, the most beautiful smile I had ever seen in my life. I couldn’t help returning it. Seeing me smile, she burst into a giggle; almost as if we shared a secret that no one else knew. It was then that I heard a woman’s voice saying, “Come here, don’t disturb the poor bhaiya.”
Those hopeful eyes filled immediately with disappointment, as the girl went back to the woman. Almost instantly I felt a wave of loneliness and dismay. Hurriedly I shoved my earphones into my bag and said, “No, no it’s fine, let her be.” The woman smiled. “Thank you, it’s the first time I’ve seen her laugh today.” And she let the child go. Her eyes were shining, but it was the little girl’s eyes that I couldn’t help gazing into. Those beautiful brown eyes were lit up, full of happiness and excitement.
She skipped over to me, sat down next to me as if she had known me all her life, and started talking about all sorts of things, from the ‘funny uncle’s moustache’ to the wind, from the window to aeroplanes. After a while, she told me she was sleepy. I told her that she could go and sleep with her mother. She looked up at me with those stunningly brown eyes and an expression that would have melted a rock and said, “Can I sleep with you?” I couldn’t find it in my heart to say no, even though I knew I had to get off only a few stops ahead. She clambered onto my lap, threw her arms around my neck, and soon, dozed off on my shoulder. As I felt her grip loosen and her body relax, I too closed my eyes for a moment or two. I heard the music once again playing inside my head, and knew that I could feel myself being filled with light and energy.
Five minutes later, I got up with her still in my arms, walked over to where the young woman was sitting. Kissing her lightly on the forehead, I handed her over to her mother. She smiled at me, mouthed a soundless ‘Thank You’, and waved me goodbye. As I got off the train, I smiled to myself too, for I knew I had just met innocence herself.
We lose the ones we love everyday. Like a river eroding the bed below, shaping and smoothing the stones that lie under, so too do we, each day, erode a layer of our love, hope and dreams.
Each unspoken word, every feeling hidden away in the depths of our hearts, every emotion we won’t accept takes us one step closer to an emotional death that leaves us cold, hard, or worse, soulless.
The glance to the door when we’re expecting someone, the constant, repetitive checks on your phone to see if you’ve missed that call or message, the thousand curses when they’re late by five minutes, all is wound down to nothing, played down as if it never were. “I wasn’t waiting for you,” we say, when our heart has been burning for hours. We act as though we don’t care, we act like we don’t want them, we hold ourselves in, and lock ourselves in the prisons of our hearts behind walls so high and thick nothing could ever break through.
We do things on purpose that others may find out ‘by accident’. We hide our emotions to save face, to stay safe. Often we don’t say what we want to, hoping that the other will understand, or worse, that they won’t. We drop subtle hints to the fact that we don’t care, but they become glaring suggestions to the fact that we do. Most of us do not notice that those we think hate us the most actually love us and those we hope and think love us may not like us at all.
We hide behind a curtain of lies, a façade, a mask of cold detachment. We hope that we may appear strong, but only we know that we lean upon this wall within us. To others we appear strong, well supported, when actually, we are crumbling within, just like the cracked, plastered paint of the prisons we build for ourselves inside our hearts, hidden from view.
We don’t tell the ones that we appreciate nearly enough that we do. We act as though things that can break us do not matter. We force things to fit into the block shapes of our perceptions simply because we cannot accept that which we cannot understand. Simply put, we only see what we are expecting to see simply because we want to see nothing else.
I say all this today purely because we live in a world with a distorted understanding of the concept of love. Today, love is a rush, a high, not of the mind or heart or indeed, as it should, the soul, but of the flesh. For a moment of glory, which we cannot fully understand, we tie deadweight to our hearts and toss them into the lifeless black hole of momentary existence. What most of us do not understand is that intercourse is different from making love. That pleasure which the flesh gives us is not even a fraction, a glimpse of what love can show us. The carnal pleasures of the flesh would multiply manifold when they become more than just the fusing of two bodies, but the fusing of two minds, two hearts, entwined, combined as two lovers hold hands, fingers intertwined.
We are afraid to cry, afraid of what others will think of our moments of weakness. However, these are not what we think them to be, our lowest, weakest moments, but, in fact, our shining moments of strength. For these brief moments when the heart bleeds, the soul comes up to the surface; for these precious moments, we have lost all fears, all boundaries imposed on us by men weaker and more cowardly than us, all imaginary lines drawn in our minds by those before us. For those few moments, frozen in time, but molten in our hearts, we are not lying to others or ourselves. Indeed, we appear on the outside, for these scant moments, to be who we really are.
It is these moments that open the doors to our hearts, and allow our souls to permeate through the depths, the darkness of the layers, masks, covers, façades and lies that we hide under. It is not unlike the tide, wave after wave of lies coming further and further up the shore, splashing against the rocks, but we ignore the spray. And the waves conquer, moving forward further and further till the sands of our lives, indeed, the very essence of who we are is all but gone, washed away or hidden beneath the breakers. But then the tide recedes, and we are left naked, for all the world to see. Indeed, we are no longer who we thought we were, for a layer of the sands of our lives has been washed out to sea, never to return. Those shells that we had buried in these sands, never to be seen by others, now lie bared, as their protective walls lie crumbling around them, some in ruins, and others completely washed away.
Each tear that runs down our cheek is like a sediment deposited on this beach, a new pebble formed, a new rock by the shore. They add to who we are, and what we make of ourselves. Those of us that are afraid to cry are indeed afraid to live. Afraid, not as we may think, of others, of society, but of ourselves, and that we may actually have the capacity to love. It is sad that that which makes us the most alive, the most strong, the most true, honest and open, a builder of character and life is considered to be our liability, our weakness.
Those who are afraid to cry are indeed afraid to love. Love opens the doors to the soul, just like every tear, allowing our spirit to roam free, to roam the earth around us as it was meant, freeing it from the shackles of our minds, no longer prisoner to our ambitions. Life has taught us that what is good is bad, and what is bad is good. We all continue to live our lives without the proverbial ‘Fountain of Youth’ of the soul, the secret of its immortality, tears.
And we all believe this to be the ‘normal’ way of life, socially acceptable, and therefore, the right path to be taken. We do not for a moment consider if those fools before us might have gotten it wrong. Maybe life isn’t just a race to the finish, but a journey to be enjoyed with each other’s company. Maybe crying is not what posterity has told us it is, but a way to touch The Source. And maybe, just maybe, we should learn to open our hearts and love instead of opening our bodies and slowly killing our souls.
People say that I am, by nature, restless. When it comes to my academic career, I must say that I agree with them… I have done my schooling at Chembur, F.Y.J.C. at Matunga, and my S.Y.J.C from a college at V.T. Whenever I tell someone this they always ask me, “Why did you switch colleges in the 12th?” and then, before I can say a word, give me the answer themselves… “I’m sure you wanted better academics…” (yeah, right) or “Aah… better chicks…” (yeah baby!) The theories are varied… but this one takes the cake, by - no prizes for guessing - my loving mother, “My little baby’s going further and further away from home every year…” (I live in Govandi, and for those who don’t know that’s near Chembur). And here that little baby is now in F.Y.B.M.S. at N.M. College of Commerce and Economics (coincidentally even further away from home!!).
Travelling to school was never a problem (other than waking up at 6), the school bus would pick me up and I would be whisked off. After about 25 minutes of bumping away to glory (they should put some shock absorbers on those buses), I would reach school with a rather sore behind, that is, of course, assuming I found a place to sit in the first place…
Then came college in Matunga… at least 45 minutes, plus traffic. That meant having to endure Mumbai’s roads, coupled with the ‘comfort’ of B.E.S.T. buses (at 9.30 am). Travelling on Mumbai roads at 9.30 am does wonders for your sense of perspective. It is an ideal time to contemplate philosophy, and the meaning of life, the universe, and everything else, what with so much time on your hands… While crossing from under Sion flyover I would always end up thinking, “Man, I could get out and walk faster,” and I would have been right… A snail might have got out and walked faster… what with the bus trundling along at the roaring speed of three inches per minute… If and when the bus (finally!) reached my destination, I would have to push, squeeze and squirm to get out, meekly hearing abuses like, “Eh dekh ke chal na” followed by a hard shove in the small of my back as I step on a rather feisty gentleman’s toes, or “The youth of today… no shame at all…” when I trample an old aunty’s saree… Eventually if I was let out of the bus I would find myself drenched with sweat, and not all of it mine…
The next year I was supposed to get to V.T. Now only a fool like me would attempt such a journey by bus… an hour and a half plus traffic… Buses to this part of town from my area tend to look like buses on a pilgrimage… the only thing missing is the luggage tied to the top of the bus as people manage to find the smallest of places to sink their fingers into and hang onto the bus for dear life (literally).
Finally reason prevailed (or did it?), and I found myself graduating to train travel. Over the span of eighteen months, train travel has given me a few gems of wisdom (the hard way) that I would like to share with you.
i. Not every train goes to your house… especially if you are on the harbour line. I learnt this on my very first day of train travel. I got into a train and fell asleep… when I woke up, I found that I was in an Andheri-bound train at Mahim, instead of in a Vashi-bound train at Kurla. Hastily getting off at Bandra, I caught the ever-faithful crowded bus home.
ii. As long as you don’t step on anyone’s toes, you’re fine. Through months of practice at 9 am, I have discovered that no one minds how you stand, so long as it’s not on them. I remember once having about a square inch of floor space to myself at the door of a particularly crowded train. And although I was extremely uncomfortable, I had to make do simply because my co-passengers were enjoying it. On the other hand, if you do tread on someone, you have to bear them cribbing about it, not to you but to your neighbour, as if you don’t exist. “This is the problem today… nobody cares about anybody else…”
iii. A bag (more specifically a backpack) is probably the worst thing you can carry in a train. It is the equivalent of walking into a cage full of starving man-eating tigers drenched in blood. The number of abuses that you receive per day with the bag may exceed that in the most profane of Limp Bizkit songs.
iv. Crib about the population explosion, blame the government, and you’ll fit right in. People hate the government, so if you say something to the tune of, “The government can’t handle the infrastructure properly. This is all because of the population explosion.” you are, in the eyes of your co-passengers, a seasoned traveller, worthy of their company and deserving of your seat (or square inch).
These past few months I have had to travel the insane distance from Govandi to Vile Parle. By bus this takes close to two hours plus traffic. By train, switching at least once, it takes an hour at least. My first lecture being at 7 am, I have to leave my house at 5.30 to catch a train that will get me here a decent time before the lecture. Project work, Umang work, and a special someone have kept me back in college a long time after my lectures get over. So much so that I have reached home at 10 pm or later, regularly. The result? I have fallen asleep in trains every third or fourth day.
Once I woke up as the train was pulling out of a familiar-looking station. It took another two stations for me to realize that I had not just slept all the way to V.T. but halfway through the return journey as well!! Sleeping on the train has since become a habit… I regularly wake up only at V.T. And they call me restless… ha!
