Fall from heaven

One fine day I found myself teleported to someplace which in fact cannot be called a place as everything including the concept of time and space was so alien that my sudden and complete amnesia left me feeling dead. But then I was not dead and whatever it was, it felt like a place. It looked like a cave or a medieval underground prison. How the hell I ended up here ?  No matter how hard I tried I could remember nothing of my past life except bits and pieces of the basic nature of the world I came from. It was made up of places, things, people and time. And they always influenced each other , changing the world itself .
There were people in my previous world and to my absolute horror there were people here also when I looked around, all equally confused and stoned as me. But they all looked friendly and harmless, maybe because of our mutual bond of common suffering or because from the realization that there was no harm anyone can cause to anyone at this place. After all, there was nothing left to harm.
After the initial horror subsided, we all started to look at each other more freely and attempts were made to socialize like humans tend to do. Some people tried to speak , exchange greetings,  ask names but all of it was such a hilariously futile exercise. There was no language to communicate and we all spoke our different blabbers like new born children or samples of different species. The only language was silence and once we fell silent in desperation, we found our common language. We could read each other’s mind or whatever is left of them. Can a better language exist ? Since the grammar was silence, the message was never distorted, amplified, rarified or crucified by words. And also, since we can talk in telepathy , no one had any secrets. We were even more intimate with each other than passionate lovers in bed can be. This made us become one big soul. The eternal utopia of universal oneness finally realized.    
What now ?  What to do with this newborn awakening or what is left of our old ones. Since there was no way of going back, we have to find our purpose here. Maybe we all had the same purpose or maybe different ones or maybe there was none and we just happened to be here.
But in any case we had to keep on trying. Because frankly, there was nothing else to do. So we wandered off in the cave. Some felt the walls, what kind of bricks they were made of,  looking for some kind of secret inscriptions. Some examined the floor hoping to find some kind of door to some underground passage out of here, while some like me just stared at the ceiling emptily.
We all did whatever we can without doing anything at all.
Then there was a sound which startled us all. Somewhere a door opened and we all looked towards it like open mouthed newborn chicks in a nest who cannot fly and were looking towards their mother to fetch some food.
This man who entered was no man at all. Something was not right about him, something extraordinary , something unmanly. Yet he looked and walked like rest of us did. And he spoke like a prophet. Yes he did speak and we understood.
"Don’t be afraid. It’s not a punishment but a gift. You are in heaven, so be happy about it. "
This calmed us down, made us more peaceful perhaps. But we all were still confused so when he walked out back again without saying anything, we knew we had to follow him.
And we followed.
We didn’t expected the splendors that lay before our eyes once we were out of that gloomy cave. The prophet was right. We were indeed in heaven. There were all kind of trees, flowers, lakes, rivers, even seas and oceans, all kind of mountains, trenches, plateaus, all kinds of suns and moons, making all kinds of sunrises and sunsets, all kind of rains and snowfall. In short there was everything.
And once we saw everything we started to remember everything. How our past lives were, whom we  loved and whom we hated , how our successes and failures tasted like, all those who used us and all those we used. And once we remembered everything , we realized that we have been here before. At least I did.
Oh how I miss all the wines I ever tasted, all the women I slept with, all the places I went to, all the friends I hanged out with, all the work I have done. How I miss my mother who made me feel miserable by always making me believe that I was destined for greatness and my father who always made me miserable by always making me believe that I was destined for gutters. Everyone who loved me made me feel miserable in someway or the other in the end. But anyways it all means nothing now at this place.
And now finally I can happily tell all my miseries to shut the fuck up as I am in heaven and you are not invited here, bitch !
It was such a serene feeling to feel nothing at all finally. We didn’t needed each other anymore, we didn’t needed our guide , we even didn’t  needed ourselves anymore. We finally didn’t needed absolutely anything.
This surely must be either heaven or hell.
So why did we still walked together and followed our guide ?  Why did we still were ourselves ? Why we still needed existence of some form or the other ?
But anyways we followed our guide who never spoke. Maybe he knew every time he speaks some of us will lose faith and stop following him.
To tell the truth, I was completely alone in that dark cave. I was completely alone with all the people, the guide and the heaven around me. Maybe that’s the reason for that need I was talking about. The need of people, the need of our past, the need of a god, the need of a heaven around us. We don’t need all of these .We don’t even need ourselves. All we need is to get away from this loneliness. It’s never about a woman or a man or parents or friends or something we wrote or sang or painted but about this loneliness and this loneliness is itself alone. This loneliness is ours and ours only and no matter who or what we approach to get it away from us it will always remain ours, even without ourselves. No one or nothing can do anything about it. And what’s even worse is this loneliness is itself lonely. That’s why it is called loneliness.
In order to deal with my loneliness I started talking to people. And I started talking very freely. Became completely naked as I thought once I get everything out of my system in the open, empty my house completely and throw all the furniture and things outside till only the walls remained then I would be able to get rid of my loneliness. It was my self-exorcism of some kind to drive the devil away.
"You know I have been here before."
And since the guide remained silent and people listened I continued.
"It’s such a wonderful place. One can get everything here he or she ever wants without even working hard to get it. .One just has to wish for it."
Initially they took me as a lunatic but there are no insane or sane, no winners or losers, no saints or sinners in heaven.
"One can be a rockstar, movie celebrity, sportstar, politician or millionaire only by wishing to be one. One never has to try"
I could have stopped right there and be like everyone else but the guide kept walking silently, though he smiled from time to time. And since people started to pay attention so I continued.
"Not only that, in heaven you can fulfill all the desires you ever had .all the desires you always dismissed as mere fantasies. You can get any women or any number of women to love you, as long as you want and as much as you want them to love you."
Someone interrupted "I want Madonna". And everyone laughed. Now I have got everyone thinking about their celebrity crushes and their unrequited  loves. The girl or boy they always wanted but never had. I was enjoying this. My first victory over the guide. We were following his steps but we surely were all following my words.
"Can I do skydiving in heaven. I always wanted to do that" - someone asked.
"Of course my friend. You can do skydiving, scuba diving, bungee jumping, play ice hockey, climb Mount Everest, you can be any of your childhood heroes you ever wanted to become in heaven."
I surprised myself with my new found knowledge. And all this while I was trying to fire people's imagination, I myself was thinking about  my own unfulfilled desires and fantasies. I always wanted to be an astronaut. Now I can be one , travelling to galaxies farther then any Armstrong on earth can ever dream of doing. And then there was this girl. There always is a girl. She had the most beautiful hair and most charming smile. I used to secretly spy her but I never confessed my love to her. Because she was too beautiful and I was too ugly for her. Yes I was afraid of her refusal.
And finally the guide glanced at me and smiled as if reading my mind. There was definitely something not quite right about him. I can always sense that. I agree he was helping us. He brought us out of that depressing cave, was leading us to the kingdom of heaven, even was allowing me to speak and take all the glory. Still I didn’t liked him.
And all this while I was talking and wandering I didn’t realized that we have walked miles and miles and the scenery have changed. The blue skies, endless oceans and wild but spectacular nature have given way to equally serene but more habituated settings.
There were endless fields of tulips, roses, jasmine, daffodils and all kind of flowers. I can see birds flying in the sky and ducks floating on the patches of lake below. I can see a castle vaguely. We can’t make out how it looked but it surely must be grand and kingly. Everything giving the impression that we were getting closer.
"And it’s not only that. If ever you were dissatisfied with the ugly and imperfect body god has given you, you can look like anything you want to look like. You can wear rough badass bastard one day and charming chocolate hero the other. a slut bombshell one day and cute girl the other. You can even be a tiger or dinosaur if you died as a kid on earth brought up on video games. After all body is just a cover, like cloths we change everyday. It’s the soul that remains. Isn’t that what we have been always told ?
"I want to look like batman" - and everyone laughed again.
The guide could have nodded in agreement or shaken his head in disagreement at least. But he did neither which meant that either I was totally right or totally wrong.
"Can we die in heaven ?". This time it was a girl who asked the question. She was very beautiful and charming but with the emptiest eyes I have ever seen. They were not gloomy as there is no place of gloom in heaven but they surely had hangover of one from her past life..
"No ,you can’t die in heaven. Even if you jump off from a cliff, eat poison or chop your own head off. It’s millions and millions years of uninhibited bliss". And I don’t know why I said the happiest statement one can ever imagine in a slightly unhappy way.
While everyone else was ecstatic with my answer, some even rolling in grass like mad joyous kids, this girl became silent and solemn. She didn’t said it but one look at her and I can tell, she was disappointed with my answer. I can partly tell that she had committed suicide in her past life.
Is it really true ? Can we really die in heaven and if not heaven , is there any place we can actually die, never to wake up again at some other place or time. I thought it out aloud so that the guide can hear me and answer my query.
The bastard still walked silently.
So what is death ? I surely must have died in my past life, that’s why I am here. But if not here I would have been in hell or some other place where one never dies or even if death exist there, it just means teleportation to some other place we don’t know of , only to exist again in some other form. So is death only a made up word just like god. Both gives promises of peace from the constant struggle existence anywhere is. And is it possible that both exists. It can’t be. It’s simply impossible. As if there is a death, there can’t be a god and if there is a god , there can’t be death.
But then the guide stopped. I woke up from my musings and everyone else woke up from their fantasies. The scene that lay before our eyes cannot be described in words, but then any scene can’t. It only has to be seen and felt. I don’t know what to call it but an amphitheatre would be the closest word, the grandest, most intimidating, most unworldly amphitheatre all the roman empires put together cannot build. The walls were so high that they disappeared into the sky before we can see their top. It was not stone, nor wood or any metal. they were made up of some kind of divine material giving us the impression of being stared by a million eyes. Yes, that’s what it was actually. Millions and millions of eyes, maybe the eyes of all the souls ever created, the eyes of the entire universe , piled over one over other giving us the most penetrating stare one can ever imagine. I realized that the arena didn’t  needed any spectators. The wall itself was the grandest gathering of spectators that can be ever imagined.
And once the guide led us inside the amphitheatre ,it was even more captivating and spell bounding. We can’t fully comprehend what it was but what we made out of it, what we were able to comprehend was it was a stadium of some kind, set to hold Olympics of some kind., only that it wasn’t one. There were different playgrounds made to host different sports. some seemed familiar to the ones on earth while about others, we had no idea what they were about.What was even more mindboggling was when we marveled at the arena in general, it became infinite, big enough to engulf the entire universe and when we tried to estimate the size of that infinity, all we realized that we were at just at a point in that infinite circle not being able to see anything beyond our side of the wall. But when we focused on any particular playground the wall narrowed down and it became a small stadium hosting that sport only. For one particular sport which we didn’t recognized what it was, the entire stadium compressed down to a single point, we all being inside that singularity.
While we still were busy marveling at the scene, trying to assimilate what lay before us, the guide finally turned to us and spoke.
" People ! the kingdom of heaven is not for everyone. Only some of you will be able to go beyond this point to enjoy all the riches of heaven. While the rest of you will have to go back"
This crushed some souls. Most definitely did.
We all were so sure that we have gained an entrance into heaven. We were even jubilant thinking about all the good deeds we have done in our past lives, completely ignoring the bad ones. After all, those good acts, those selfless acts we did came to some use and were not so selfless as we thought they were. After all, love exists in this world or another or wherever it exists.

But the guide made all our dreams crumbling down to dust. How many more tests we have to pass. How much more I have to prove myself, in this world or another, to be accepted. I spent all my life on earth passing tests, test against myself, test against the world, test against the god and devil. Now after all that torture, all that agony, all that suffering I finally am in the kingdom of heaven. And there is still one more test to pass.
Come on man, give me a break.!
"There is no need to worry my friends. These games are very easy, just like the daily routines you follow, like taking a shower or riding a bicycle. You all will pass very easily"
Isn’t that what a guide is supposed to do. Give everyone something called hope. Maybe that’s why we always followed him. Maybe that’s why anyone follows anyone. But still something was not quite right about him.
ok enough, let’s get down to business. The first game was very easy. It resembled bowling beside the fact that it was much easier than bowling. All we were supposed to do is to roll a ball much lighter and much smaller to a much smaller distance. Everyone did it quite easily, even the suicidal girl. So when finally my turn came, I walked nonchalantly, picked up the ball in carefree arrogance and rolled it.
I remember once my girl took me to a bowling alley. I must have had one too many drinks that day as after a while I started puking all over the place and made a complete fool of myself. Never went to a bowling alley again. Anyways ,whose bullshit idea it was to make a game out of it. Must be the English. They always comes up with some crazy shit.
What happened ? I tell you what happened. I was being too proud, too confident, too casual. The ball didn’t rolled to the distance it was supposed to do. Nevermind, it won’t be my first failure. what I didn’t  knew that it won’t be my last either.
The next in line was hurdle race, except the fact that it wasn’t  a race and there was hardly any hurdle .All we needed to do was to climb a tiny hurdle, which we do all the time while walking on an uneven road without  realizing it. Yes we do. We cross so many hurdles in our life without realizing it. And when I finally failed to cross that tiny hurdle, failed to do what everyone else did so easily I realized one thing.
There used to be a mango orchid near my school , full of juicy mangoes whose taste  still lingers in my mouth. Ah ! Those were the days when me and my friends used to bunk school and sprint away to the orchid. There was a trench on the way with a wooden plank over it acting as a bridge, which we had to cross. One day the plank was gone. Since all we could think of was mangoes and the trench wasn’t wide enough, it was decided that we will jump across it. After my friends jumped across and  it was my turn , I became a bit skeptical. What if I am not able to jump so far. I will fall right into the muddy waters below and would be the butt of all jokes of my friends for days to come. And that’s exactly what happened.
Self doubt is not a good thing. It crumbles down the mightiest castles, the strongest armies and the bravest warriors. And more greedy and hungry one is about conquering the world, the more one wants to be an Alexander or Genghis khan, the more this devil reveals itself to him in its true powers.
And since this devil of self doubt had clearly crept into me, I had to fight it somehow. And I fought it with plain simple logic. The logic that I am simply the best or am capable of being the best. I hastily patched some self belief over self doubt. That’s the only weapon that works against it.
The third event was a kind of archery but at a point blank range. I can say it was the easiest of all but I won’t. I won’t be over confident this time. I won’t  be in doubt also this time. I won’t give way to any of my devils this time and just focus. Yes I will try to focus the best I can. After all, I badly wanted an entrance into heaven and fuck all those bitches.
Have I ever told you about my time in the army. It was a torrid period. The routines were backbreaking and the training was harsh. All I can say is my unhealthy frame was more suited for sitting in an air conditioned room and sign papers than this hardship. Once in the shooting range when I failed to hit the target repeatedly with the captain shouting obscenities all the time, I completely lost track of the target and the people around me and only wished for this nightmare to end soon. Thankfully those were my last days in the army.
And no one can tell you how a failure feels like. Not of a simple kind one gets any given day when he misses a bus, or loses a job or is dumped by a girl. I am talking about a total, complete and absolute failure .Having not only failed everyone who ever cared, loved or believed in you but also having failed yourself. And knowing that you have to live with it for the rest of your life. Like a scar on your face that can never be treated with surgery. It will haunt you during your days like being ridiculed by everyone around and haunt you like ghosts in your nights in form of nightmares. And even if you can somehow go back in time and given a chance to correct it , you will fail again. Now that’s a failure in its purest form.
There were many more games, all seemed to be custom made to exploit my weaknesses. And the ones I was really good at like the table tennis lookalike arena lying at the center  were completely ignored by the guide. I never had a say in the games I wanted to play. But wasn’t that the way on earth also. We never chose the games we played there, rather the games chose us. Doctors wanted to be engineers, engineers wanted to be actors, actors wanted to be painters, painters wanted to be doctors. It was a funny world which made fishes to climb trees, monkeys to swim in water and elephants to fly.  
After sometime I had given up and was just going through the motions, waiting for it all to end. And when it was over , I looked at the guide for some sympathy as losers always tend to do without knowing or wanting to do so. And strangely he finally gave me some.
It was the last day of my life. Dark decrepit underground passageways of my city were never safe at night. Dark decrepit underground passageways of any big city are never safe at night. I can see the sadistic gun he was pointing at me nice and clear. I realized that he could have ended my sorry existence any time he liked with just a pull of a trigger and all the insanities, merriments, anxieties and above all dreams, dreams of my  past and dreams I hope to dream in future rushed to my head like a herd of panicky civilians dropped in a war, urging me to act, begging me to do something for the sake of the years I have spent with their surreal lives. But all I can give them is condolences. What could I have done anyways ? He was a lowly thug with a gun who got lucky enough to find me walking towards him in the dark. But he wasn’t strong , almost half my size. I could have dashed in a moment of glory to snatch the gun from him and be a god myself. But in that case, he would surely shoot me if I failed to give him the surprise I hoped for. So I decided to play it safe. Not to enrage the man with the gun as I was scared of what he may do. I have failed and it’s a failure that lived with me every day and night but it’s only now, at this hour of judgment that I feel it’s cold and unsympathetic skin. I could have acted and become a hero but instead I decided to live a slow and painful death.
"Do you know why you failed." – the guide said.
As I looked into his smiling face I knew the answer instantly. I also knew why I always felt that something was not quite right about this guy. His face suddenly transformed to that guy with the gun who ended my life.
He smiled his most brutal smile
"You were right when you said you have been here before. You have been here millions of times. You were right about what you said about heaven. heaven is all that and much more. but you were never able to gain entrance into heaven."
"You failed because of me."
It’s because of my fears I always failed and it’s because of my fears I am now kicked out of heaven again.

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once there was a battle.a great one. doesnt matter where and when it happened but the only thing that matters is it was a great battle.as it was between the god and the devil,good and evil,noone knows what they are, even they didnt knew themselves, but still the battle ocurred. they fought for some hours, some days , some years,some centuries or million years perhaps.noone knows. they fought forever without really wanting to kill each other. As they knew they cant exist without the other. they needed each other and still , still they needed to fight each other.

so they fought,they fought for etrenity, neither of them knowing what they will gain out of it. they both wanted everything and nothing at the same time. And then came a girl they both wanted but can never have.They were too arrogant and she was too shy. sometimes they fought in pleasure that they have this girl, sometimes they fought in disappointment of unrequieted love, sometimes they fought in anger.both knowing very well they will get nothing out of this fight,

And the bastards are still fighting.

greatness

Its my hunger that made me mad at the first place and ironically its my hunger that sane people envy most.People including my doctor,nurses,my fellow inmates,some friends,some girlfriends,some strangers have always asked me what is the sourtce of that conviction. After all mad people arent supposed to be confident. more confident than they themselves have ever been. its not justified at all.  its illegal

Its not a new question. its the same question that has been asked again and again to many people throughout history to every person who felt greatness or the illusion of greatness.who have ever tasted that high.alexanders,einsteins,gandhis,dostoevskys and of course countless others who failed.

yes , there are millions of others who failed, like me

but sitting here in my asylum, talking to orthodox doctors and sympathizing nurses i have no hope for myself and there is nothing much i can do to get that hope but what i can do to you, to anyone who ever felt the weight , restlessness or anguish of that greatness, is to tell the secret.

The secret lies in being a child forever, never growing up. being always a kid except for the fact that you are no kid as you already know everything that even adults dont know.

Thats a very very dangerous combination to have .very very dangerous to have for everyone around you and most of all, to yourself.

And thats all greatness is all about

Desire

this anguish has no morals or shame.whatever it is it is akin to some kind of nazi feeling,plagued by an insatiable hunger,driven away by people when they feel like monks and called back again when they are monsters .A relentless beast that can never be satisfied but neither it is looking to be.Its only solace lies in keep engulfing more and more, this life, this world , this universe and beyond if at all there is something beyond it and still it wont stop.what a genious!. what a masterpiece!.descended to earth straight from hell to torment evil souls for the life they had and good ones for the life they never had.the only thing that satiates its hunger is hunger itself.

people who think themselves to be sons of god can and will defame it,crucify it,banish it,burn it but they cannot deny its power.the strongest force as its strength lies in being so basic, natural and animal that it can never be killed but to be fought against every waking second of our lives.Inspite of how god fearing protectors of religen condemn it, they themselves spend their entire lives running from it, always living in doubt. they are scared of its powers, scared of the chaos it can create to the orderly world they spend their lifetime creating

actually there is no story to tell as any story will always be what have been told to storyteller by past people , what all the present people already knows and what all the future people will use to make thier own stories.and yet... .and yet something compels me to tell my story. some kind of hopeless hope that it will actually matter . and that is reason enough to write it.

why people do that ? looking for a god, scientists,artists,philosophers, lovers when they all are only going to tell them what they already know. we all need an audience, a spectator. doesnt matter if we r good or bad but whatever we are we want someone to see it. we all want to be naked.

why ? why do we even talk or speak ? because we always need to be told what we already know.

The Street

Winter Street
Of invisible crowd
Dogs and some dogshit
Naked autumn trees
Somewhere between day and night
A million words
Spoken or silent
A million stolen glances
Squandered or saved for the night
Noone knows noone
But still such a clockwork
Feets never falter
Lips never shout
Minds never think
And eyes never cry
Who control all this ?
A daily parade so predictable
Of noone and everyone
Making a circle everyday
Time circles
Sun and moon circles
Gloom circles
Life circles
And here on the street
Another circle made and erased everyday

But sometimes things happen
Shaking us out of us
Maybe an accident
Or fire or a bomb
Someone has died
Leaving the rest of us
Awake without a past
Alive without our lives
The circle stops

Such a nuisanse
And everyone knows everyone
Feets falter
Lips shout
Minds think
Eyes cry
No control

But then chaos dies too
After the eulogy is done
And the funeral fades
We silently slip back into ourselves
The clock is reset
And the parade starts again.

Chapter 16

forgive my grammatical mistakes, i am too lazy to correct them

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Those were probabily the first days of my fall or maybe the last ones of my pretense to remain sane in a world I partially understood and completely despised.i was getting increasingly frustrated of sonali.her complains about my alcohol breath in the night and my smoking in the morning were getting louder everyday.Its not that i can't part with both of my cherished addictions for her but mine is not a sugar coated fairy tale of a gay looking but pure hearted prince and a nymphomaniac but virgin princess which a grandma tells the kids on christmas nights while it snows outside and the kids get somehow convinced that they will find their nymphomaniac princess one day when they grow up to become gay looking and pure hearted.I needed alcohol in the night in order to sleep with her and a smoke in the morning because i did so. But inspite of her bickering and my indulgences things were fine between us for a while. We both had our moments of bliss and boredom which made us believe that we were very close of being husband and wife.

some nights i returned home with an uncanny jubilation of an unexpected profit so I took her to a seaside chinese restaurant at juhu beach as I knew she loved the sea and chinese food.she talked endlessly about pathetic tales of pathetic writers she met during her day, between her pathetic attempts to eat chopsuey with chop sticks ,which confirmed to me that finally she was really happy.Later on when I walked reluctantly with her on the beach with our footwear in hand and feet in wet sand,she recited to me whatever she had written during her day.And inspite of knowing that I was brought up in a slum and my incapibility to digest abstract thoughts, she was always hopeful that i will find something between her lines that even well dressed,well thinking and overall well rounded convent educated ,opera loving ,morally correct and most eligible bachelor lookalike publishers failed to see in her submissions.

In short she shared her dreams with me and having no dreams of my own , i took them as ours .

I never understood a single word of what she wrote or any writer writes for that matter.For me,they are just a bunch of perverted losers without a girlfriend. I wanted to tell her that it's a crazy dream of becoming a writer she is pregnant with but i never told her that because i never understood a single word of what she wrote or any writer writes for that matter.

At other nights ,while i was watching a cricket match and unlike most indians was praying that tendulkar gets out to mcgrath this over as I have put my 1 lakh bucks on it, the bastard smashed me for a six instead.And to make matters worse, she used to pop up scantily dressed and foolishly cheerful like a blonde jinee of some TV serial I used to watch in my childhood.

' how do i look? '

At those times i gave her a perplexed look which penetrated through her to the wall behind or went even further to the people i owe money and all i could manage was

' what?'

I always found her bedroom door closed on those nights but i didnt care.Slumbering all night over the money i have just lost,i had no taste for alcohol in the night, a smoke in the morning and a fuck in between.

she knew very well that i never loved her and maybe she never loved me either but unlike me,she was very good in hiding her disgust for me.maybe we both belonged to the same breed of loners,always wanting to be loved but never knowing how to return the favour.

One night i had a very bitter fight with her so i got a little bit carried away with my alcohol and when i woke up in the morning i was alone in my apartment so i got a bit carried away with my smoking. It was right at that time, somewhere between my second and third cigarette,i realized that we were actually not married and she was free to leave me anytime she wanted.Halfway through my fourth cigarrete i found a cold goodbye note left by her.My sixth smoke was remorse,seventh was interospection,ninth was freedom and by the time i was smoking my last cigarrete i was walking on street leaving her behind somewhere in my ashtray.

Surprisingly the first few days without her were very good. With the rumours of economic boom floating around, goverment servants who knew nothing about share market , were willing to trust someone as capricious as me with their life savings.With the new pay commission and pension scheme in place, old couples realized that the dream home they fantazied all their life was not out of reach and if they had any doubts i motivated them by showing disputed lands and portraying them as watercoloured hill station huts kids draw in school. With the cricket world cup starting next month the future looked equally promising.The only problem was when i got back home.With her gone i had no use for my satanic addictions and i spent my first few nights staring at the ceiling.But this problem solved sooner than expected.I got addicted to pizza and TV. Every night i ordered a pizza and every night i finished it watching the same soaps she used to watch.I got so addicted that i spent my last waking moments in bed thinking which pizza should order tommorrow and how will the mother in law react when she finds out that her daughter in law is having an affair with an old aged college professor who eventually turns out to be the mother in laws premarital sweetheart.I missed sonali at those times as we could have debated which one of the two adultrous women is more morally currupt and we could have ended the family epic which was running for past 2 years in a matter of few minutes. I also missed my bookie friend as i needed to complain about the sorry state of indian betting industry which was so much limited to a cricket match leaving the countless possibilities a TV soap offered.

But soon my homely obsessions ended and the devil started knocking again.After i have tasted every kind of pizza on earth and have seen every kind of shallow tricks jealous housewives play on each other, i started staring the ceiling again.I could have called sonali on those nights and with my newly aquired knowledge of western cuisine and female phyche i could have lured her back to me but i never did and she never called either.on the third night of my staring contest with the ceiling ,i decided i had enough and in a fit of unjustified and undirected anger,walked to a sleazy bar in a sleazy part of bombay.The doorman greeted me with a smile and i gave him a 100 rupee and when the waiter greeted me with a similar smile i retorted

' whisky,neat'

there was a couple sitting on the table next to me and i hated them from the onset as they seemed hypothetically happy.they shared stupid jokes on which only people blinded with love can laugh and they laughed. Thankfully me and sonali never tortured each other with forced humour. i ordered another whisky and stared out of window only to find equally diaheartening weather.It had started to rain which made the stupid couple to kiss and me to finish my poison in one big gulp.The waiter came to me as a respite and having sensed my constipation asked me

' would you like a flaming shot ,sir'

' yes,please'

Anything flaming sounded good to me.the waiter served the shot with a smile that assured me that the next thing i would see would be gods testicles shinning like a gold plated rollex watch while i pee with my head resting gleefully on the bathroom mirror.

why the fuck she never called me once in last two years?

There were whispers of i love you from somewhere around as i asked the waiter that i want to sit at the counter instead of this pathetic corner of the bar and he agreed. moved by his generosity and my vulnerability i asked the waiter

' are you married?'

both surprised and embarresed he replied with a virgin smile.

'no,sir'

I gulped down some whisky and said

' good'

After giving the false impression to everyone that in fact i was married and the only reason i was getting sloshed alone tonight was that i had a bitter fight with my wife wether to order pizza or go to a seaside chinese restaurant for dinner , i turned to look at the couple who were gone by now leaving behind some wine and a decent tip.

So why didnt i married her beside my general hatred for the melodrama indian ceremonies are. after all, we have been living like a couple for a while now and despite our general unromantic attitute and intolerance for each other ,we have managed to stay together for almost an year .So why cant i go through some cabalistic rituals around the fire to give her the illusion that we were going to have lots of kids and worry about their education for the rest of our lives and give everyone else the illusion that we were in fact not horny prostitutes but tradional god fearing indian youngsters who happen to see lot of karan johar movies together and hence fell in love.

Actually the answer was right in front of my eyes but i didnt want to see it. for the first time in my life which was filled with conscious ignorance and unintentional sins,i faced guilt. And the sight of the monster was so horrific that my entire body shaked till the waiter held my hand strongly and in a serious tone he said to me

' sir, i think you should leave now'

And like love guilt is a very misunderstood feeling.people who are brought up on movies of holocaust consider guilt as a roaring enraged feeling that induces a kind of epilepsy on its victims but in fact its so silent that its almost invisible.It can live inside you for years,decades or even your complete lifetime slowly decomposing you like microbes without you ever realizing the name of your silent killer.

' one last drink'

Suddenly i felt an uncontrollable urge to get married.Even if its not sonali but any decent girl , i dont care.it started with a burning sensation in my neck and moved downwards like a forest fire to choke my lungs.I tried to drown it but it has already spread in all direction in me like a bubonic plague making my eyes to sweat.

' where is the couple that was sitting there ? '

'They left sir, its about closing time'

she loved to tease me with 'lets get married' bullshit as she knew that i hated the idea but i was never suspicious that she was actually serious about it. she was always careful to hide it behind our sex in the night, our coffee in the morning and her writers during the day.

the music stopped and the lights dimed.

' would you like to pay sir, we are closing'

And just like a disease guilt is of many kinds, each having its own symptoms and remedies.Some are born out of a single act of inspired hatred or blind lust and people grasped by them turn to priests for repentence or attend group therapy sessions to sleep sober at night.then there are drug addicts and lousy baby faced guys with white collar jobs who get fired and they either commit suicide or they go on long solitary walks at 5 am in the morning to change whatever they wanted to change in them. My guilt belonged to an entirely different kind. We dont catch the disease along the way like the running nose a white guy gets when he leaves the window of his car open while driving on european highways at 150 miles per hour or the HIV he gets afterwards when he stops at a motel for the night. Rather we are born with it like the kids with six fingers or joined heads who are unable to do anything worthwhile all their lives besides becoming newspaper celebrities on their first birthday.We dont search for any cure,divine or worldly as we already know there isnt any. We just look into your eyes with the emptiest look you will ever see in your life and node our heads to your talk of practical enlightenment like deaf people who are trying to pretend otherwise.

' Can i get more alcohol anywhere'

' there are few bars open on GT road. '

and as i paid the bill he added like a smiling doctor giving prescription

' beside alcohol ,there are other services too on GT road'

When i reached GT road , i smelled the daily carnival of all kind of guilty or not guilty sinners. I was obviously surprised when i took out my phone to call sonali and surprisingly disappointed when she didnt picked it up. after this act of some false self justification , i put the phone back in my pocket and stared at the nocturnal fish market in from of me, when I heard a voice.

' Do you want some quick satisfaction ?'

I turned to look at the source of the question and fell in love at first sight. completely unaware of what philosophers will make out of her question and dressed in a partially open blouse and short skirt, she seemed as shallow as me.

' yes, please'

I say, don´t believe in any god,don´t believe in any religion,don´t believe in anything you have read or heard or you have been made to believe by your vulnerability to temptations or fears.Just ask yourself this. When I am through with this life,is there anyone or anything in any imaginable or unimaginable form having a promise of immortality or peace or anything we all seek but can´t put a name to waiting beyond the only certain event in our lives called death or is death the end of our disillusioned lives spent in building castles to protect us from danger for a thousand years to come and suddenly having an empty realization in our last and only moment of truth that it´s actually the end of story here and we didn´t lived for a thousand years as we planned to do. But whatever may be the case, the conclusion is simple.Whatever we have or will ever have is this life and this life only.Make your own morals and your own decisions instead of believing rumours of some wise guy who lived before time and whose existance is equally debatable as your own most extravagent fantasies.Let yourself be your only god and your life your only religion and if at the end of this all madness, you still have faith then you can die with a realization that you have done a damn good job.

once there was a hawk who explored lands far and wide in all directions for the search of food.But every place he visited left him more hungry and empty. There were ants, fruits and worms everywhere but thats not the kind of food a hawk feasts on.Thats for lesser birds who are not so burdoned by their reputation as a bird of prey.So finally tired and starved , the hawk rested on a well to drink some water in peace.There was a frog who lived in the well and having no concept of the predators living in the world outside his home, the frog came outside the water to treat the alien guest with curosity.The hawk was about to swoop down and finish the fresh meat in front of his eyes when the frog spoke.

" You must be pretty stupid or crazy to leave your well"

The hawk surprised at first, felt a sudden coldness leaving him with no desire to live any longer.He finally flew off defeated but not by the frog but by the well.

Excerpt from my novel -chapter 2

CHAPTER 2

­­­­­­­­­_____________

I woke up in a hospital bed with Dr. Swaminathan smiling at me again but this time a brief linear smile of surety that can only be achieved through countless years of experience in dealing with insanity. I don’t know whether I feel relieved or cheated by this second chance life gave me. I wish I had met my rebirth in a more neutral setting like a blind locked cellar or a lost ship on a horizon less sea or maybe the same hospital bed without the picture of Mother Teresa pasted on the wall and without Dr. Swaminathan smiling at me eternally. Whenever I close my eyes in search of some solace, I find Mother Teresa and a mad doctor smiling at me. Death have abandoned me like my sea and outside it’s life waiting for me to open my eyes, waiting to smile at me.

“Hello M, how are you feeling now ?”

Relieved or cheated ? Relieved or cheated ?..

I glanced at Mother Teresa for help but she seemed to be asking the same question to me. She was also smiling but a smile of empathy which is much worse than the doctor’s smile.

“I am fine ”

And without knowing I gave a short but a little bit curved smile of being fine. Smiles filled the room, good and evil, of surety and confusion, smiles pasted on wall and on faces, smiles bringing promises of pills, injections, pity and hope. Dr. Swaminathan being the most sane of the three of us stopped smiling first to disrupt this symphony of smiles which I was beginning to enjoy.

“Do you know why you are here, M”

No I don’t. People and pills nowadays ordain me to places I never intend of visiting like this room of smiling sympathies. I don’t know how I got here cause I was set for horizon less fields of uninhabited bliss. At least that’s what the bottle of blue pills I found in the storeroom of the institution promised to me when I first laid my eyes on it. It was a pretty cute bottle, let me tell you and what caught my attention initially was not it’s contents but the perfect simplicity of it’s design. It had a dainty neck and a label that was religiously correct to it’s contents , a testimony that it was made by people of good taste.

“methadone-analgesic and antidepressant”

I was neither in pain nor depressed as lunatics rarely are. I had no use for the bottle whatsoever but I was not ready to let go of it either. I stood there like a child who has found a toy but still haven’t figured out how to play with it. But then I thought , maybe I am depressed. Maybe I am in pain but I don’t feel it. Maybe my pain is like a colony of earthworms hidden beneath the dry sand , needing only a shower of monsoon to burst out in the open daylight. I wanted to be depressed just to see how the pill worked. I opened the bottle, took a pill in my hand, engulfed it and hoped for the rain. But the rain never came. Maybe the pill was too bland for me as I am used to much more potent recipes. So I took a second and then a third. Oh, My dear doctor, You don’t need to be so surprised. There is a tradition of audacity which lunatics all over the globe share, who inflict inhuman brutalities on their mind in hope of the numbness they never achieve. I emptied the entire bottle in me and I think I heard rain falling on a tin roof before falling unconscious.

“ That’s the stupidest thing I have ever heard ”

I like it when he looks at me the way he is looking now. A stare of disbelief at the surprises I give him or rather am capable of giving him. He relaxed back on his chair and folded his hands the way people like to do in order to look more intelligent. I derive a spiteful pleasure from his failure in classifying me , in confining me to one of the chapters of the thick books he reads. I can tell he don’t mind it either as he hopes to add a new chapter for me in those books someday if the existing ones fails to explain me.

He repeated my ordeal to me anyway laying special emphasis on the condition in which the staff found me lying on the storeroom floor, on the crusade the doctors went through in pulling me back and the slim chances I had of survival.

“It’s a miracle that you have survived !”

relieved or cheated ? relieved or cheated ?

Dr Swaminathan looks quite different from the kind of person he actually is or rather should be. His face carries no trace of any eccentricities inside and therefore he doesn’t look like a doctor at all. For instance, when he spoke the word ‘miracle’ it neither sounded overwrought nor impassive as either expressions would have entitled him of nominating something as miracle. Rather his ‘miracle’ sounded timid and hence more like an imposter. He doesn’t look like a mad doctor because he doesn’t look mad. His face is bland to the extend that it resembled the pencil faces we made up in school on white paper with our imagination going no further than two eyes, two ears, one nose, one mouth and some hair. It wasn’t a real face but rather a prototype of one with no discernable irregularities near his eyebrows or nose or chin. Everything is too perfect to be human. It’s only when he speaks or grins that some vagaries appear giving the indications of life beneath the surface.

“Why do you want to die, M ”

I realized that he is also scrutinizing my face for cracks and fissures just like I am scrutinizing his. We both are turning out to be enigmatic patients for each other and maybe we both will devote a chapter to each other in our own books someday.

“ I don’t want to die doctor, I simply don’t care ”

“ About what, life ? ”

“ Well, about anything ”

“Is it because of what you did in your life or because you are here, in an asylum ”

“ It’s neither , it’s just the way I feel now ”

I am not going to make it easy for him. I like to be unique, even in my madness. But he is a patient man, he will wait for the day till I crack up, till he can prove to me that I am a fool. That I am no different from the people whose faces I can’t remember. That my misery is in fact no different from the miseries of this world . It is either because of love or hate or guilt or failure or…

And he may be right.

“ Well, I have told the nurse to take good care of you. If you need anything , just let me know .”

I missed him after he left. Not that I can’t strike a conversation with Mother Teresa as with time I have developed an art of talking endlessly to even the most disinterested audience like posters stuck on the walls, hospital beds, lightbulbs, trees standing outside my window and even to myself. I call these conversations as “living my madness to the fullest”. I missed the doctor because I needed to know how long my detention in this room last. But that’s a lie. It doesn’t bother me whether there is a hospital or asylum outside this room. I have no intention of going out. It doesn’t bother me that maybe outside these walls there actually exists things like freedom and happiness. That there exists a world filled with happy families, lovers dancing on the tunes of soft Italian music , insane children dabbling in the mud , everything that gives the impression that god has created a heaven for it’s creations in the first place with tiny blots of hell which actually are loathsome rooms with posters of empathy, made for people who have died but still somehow manages to keep breathing.

But then why I missed the doctor ? I missed the doctor because in fact I missed someone else who don’t miss me nowadays. Does she know by the way ? Has anyone told her about the necromaniacal feat I have achieved by defeating death. I fancied imagining her hastily packing her bags, dispatching for a bus, train or flight to reach me, to see how much better or worse person I have turned out to be in my new life. But then, she never does anything in haste , nor does she visits painful chapters of her past.

A nurse, a young and timid one, came to meet me instead, a few hours later. She had a cowered look on her face as she brought pills for a gluttonous loner who already had one too many. She was not as beautiful as the bottle with the dainty neck but still I decided to take the pills. She placed a tray on the table beside my bed mincingly and was visibly nervous at being left alone with someone as capricious as me. Must have been a new recruit as the old one’s know very well that insane people are harmless most of the time. Her face was virgin and with mildly trembling hands she handed me two pills , a small but yellow one and a large but white one. I engulfed them both without hesitation and showed her my tongue which was unasked for as she was not suspicious of deceit like nurses normally are. Then she brought out an injection , tore it’s plastic and pierced it’s needle in a tiny bottle filled with colorless liquid. She did all this very conscientiously, careful not to leave any air bubbles inside the injection or miscalculate the amount to be administered. I tried to mollify her with my silence, to explain to her that such trifle things don’t matter, that error of any magnitude won’t be enough to kill me. I like the white buttoned dress and weird caps hospitals give to their nurses. It makes them look like chaste catholic nuns but still does not make it blasphemous to undress them with our eyes or hands. If I was what I used to be once, if I haven’t been exhausted by my escapades with death, if I had my sea with me, I would have derived so much pleasure in unbuttoning her starched catholic dress. How complete this hospital bed of mine would have been with a nubile nurse bouncing sacrilegiously on it and mother Teresa giving me an abashed teasing smile instead of an emphatic one. I could have finally put my madness to some use then.

The bovine nurse punished me for my amoral thoughts by piercing a needle in my arm. This way she also reminded me of the austere life that lay in front of me. No nurse, whether amateur or seasoned, would bounce on my hospital bed and the hospital bed won’t allow me to bounce on any nurse either. My new life consisting of hospital beds,asylums and Dr. Swaminathan would certainly deprive me of my most cherished addiction. After she left Mother Teresa, a renowned nurse herself, looked at me with avengeful mockery. But she was also renowned for being a ray of hope for countless needy people. So she gave me some consolation which was in fact no consolation at all. She finally broke her oath of silence to whisper this maxim to me.

“The only thing that can ever bounce on a lunatic’s bed is another lunatic”

No , any kind of smile won’t do this time. Her prophecy send me into a fit of echoing laughter cause the scene that came before my eyes was the most comically nihilistic scene that any era is capable of comprehending in it’s total interpretation.

Two homosexual lunatics taking turns to bounce on each other merrily on a hospital bed and substituting methadone for viagra.

Relieved or cheated ? Relieved or cheated ?

Hotel Rooms

Hotel rooms are depressing. The cigarette butts left behind in the ash tray, stains on the bedsheets, windows that never open or close , broken shelves and outdated TV sets. All silent reminders of the collective gloom they carry. The pain of too much or too little suffering of all those who have stayed in the room before you. You look at the ceiling above you , at the fan defeated by dust and feel the burden of ancient air. The air saturated with sin, lust desires and disgust. And you feel like a stranger. The room obviously doesn’t want you but still it lies naked beside you in your bed like a prostitute. It has no choice. And you feel awkward and unwanted. Like an intruder in someone else’s bedroom or a villager in a university lecture hall. Some people stay only for a night, switching through channels and staring out of the window while others stay long enough to hear all the tales the room has to tell until they become part of it’s story , camouflaged in the furniture with a “do not disturb” sign outside. But they all leave in the end. Like grownup kids who head for far off lands, never to return , leaving behind only a smell of their existence.

The Violinist

It was just another faithless day of his life when he saw her for the
first time. He stood under an old banyan tree ,sharing it’s solitude
over a cigarette , trying to figure out whether he should go to office
today or should he drown himself again in the drunken forgetfulness he
is so used to. There was nothing for him in his office except some
fake smiles, false promises of security and an illusion of a blissful
normal life which he knew very well he is incapable of leading. There
was nothing for him in the bar he frequented except a night of
temporary death and a morning of guilt filled hangover. His burdensome
life was the price he has paying for not believing in a god.

But then he saw her standing beside him smiling at him and he felt
years and years of ice melting inside him and the tree was left again
in it’s solitude. In his slumber he haven’t noticed her walk to him.
What is it that she wanted from him ? What can anyone possibly want
from him ?

“hi”
“hi”
“Are you the guy who plays violin late at night?”
“Well, yes.. sorry if I have disturbed you in any way “

Violin was probably the only thing that survived his brutal onslaught
on all of his passions over the years. He never considered himself as
a violinist as he never had any love , divine or earthly for it. He
just played it every night after getting dead drunk, maybe because of
the lack of a better idea.

“ No, No, it’s not that . I have been hearing you for a long time .
You are good. It’s just….well, it’s very random. There is no
underlying structure to it “

“ Yes, it’s because I am too drunk when I play”

This made her laugh. It wasn’t a laughter of taunt or amusement but
rather of a discovery or maybe of first victory in the game she
started and he is now forced to play. He has seen many girls in his
life and he was too inaccessible to all of them. But this girl is
different. She broke through all his defenses with so much authority
and ease that for the first time in his life he doubted his freedom.

“ Do you play in a band ?”
“ No, I work in an insurance company”
“ Oh.. That’s bad”

Finally it was his turn to smile. He felt no need to ask her why it
was bad for him to work in a company. They both knew the reason and
this first sign of understanding from the world which is so used to
ignore him , filled every vein, flooded every shore inside him and he
felt like a child again willing to share every injustice, every
tyranny the world has done to him with the girl in front of him.

But nothing good lasts forever. He knew it as soon as she looked at her watch.
“well, ok.. I have to leave but I will see you around “
“see ya”

She turned for the last time wearing a smile again “ By the Way, I
live in the apartment below yours and I listen to you every night “

“ Thanks, I am honored”

As soon as she left he realized that the banyan tree wasn’t gloomy
anymore. He touched it’s rough skin and realized that he haven’t asked
for her name . The tree obviously having many more years behind it
smiled at his total immaturity in the matters of love and consoled him
that there would surely be a next time for names, that whatever her
name maybe, he will like it and wherever she belonged to he would like
to go there.

He was in the middle of his candid confessions with the tree when the
bus for his office arrived like a conspiracy. There was no point in
going to office and ruining his new found freedom with some
meaningless work which in reality noone cares about but everyone does.
The bus sounded a horn and gave a last chance to his sanity to
prevail, to warn him that he has already disrespected the bus too many
times, that he has already pushed his luck too far and the bus won’t
be able to stop for him ever again. He replied with mockery and the
bus instantly realized the futility of it’s threats, that he anyways
has no desire to board the bus ever again. The bus left in a hurry,
utterly confused and he lit another cigarette to celebrate his first
victory over this world in a long time.

His normal course of action after this defiance is to take an auto to
the nearest bar which he eventually did after much deliberation and
strong disapproval by the tree. But when he reached there he was too
scared to go inside . “ Oh come on, it’s just another bar. I will have
just few beers today , not the orgy of drinking I do everyday “ . The
cigarette shop outside the bar came as a respite. He bought his usual
pack of cigarettes and lit one looking around for alternatives. There
was a movie theatre nearby playing the usual bollywood crap. He hasn’t
seen a movie in quite a while. There was also a Chinese restaurant on
the next turn. He could try some sushi. And then there was this bar
right behind him. “ Well , what’s the rush ! I can always come back
for a drink or two after the movie “. He lid another smoke and started
walking towards the cinema hall.

---------------------------------------------------

“This isn’t working” , He thought to himself. There is so much damn
boozing in our movies nowadays. He was watching the song in which the
Hero just met his sweetheart and was drunk dancing in a pub. This is
pathetic. I will rather have some whisky myself then watch this
asshole’s buffoonery. He was about to get up to leave when something
in the song caught his attention. It was a lone subdued violin playing
in the background. Hmm, symphony 5 in C minor . Can’t they create
something on their own instead of stealing from Beethoven all the time
? I can do better than these assholes . It’s just that I lack some
structure in my music. But that’s because I am too drunk when I play.
He got up immediately with a smile and left the theatre. He stopped
the first auto that came his way and headed home.


-----------------------------------------------------

He had a dreamy sleep. He was sleeping under an old banyan tree when
suddenly a mob of masked bandits appeared from nowhere and started
cutting the tree down. The tree was crying for help , looking
pleadingly at him from time to time. But he closed his eyes and acted
as if he was sound asleep. He was petrified by the masked bandits who
were cutting the tree ferociously with their sharp hacksaws and
shouting obscenities. He was too scared to stop them. What if they
leave the tree and charge at him instead with their hacksaws. So he
acted dead and opened his eyes only when the mob , after finishing
their job left jubilantly in a bus. He saw the caress of the trunk
less tree lying around him and fell into tears. He was crying like a
child , filled with remorse and guilt. Just then he felt a soft hand
on his shoulder. It was the most beautiful girl he has ever seen in
his life. She smiled at him and gave him a box. “ Don’t worry , you
just use whatever is inside this box and the banyan tree will grow
again in no time “. Then she left , even without telling her name. He
opened the box and found a violin inside it.


----------------------------------------------------------------------

He woke up at midnight and sat idle for a while thinking about the
dream he had. He tried hard to recreate the face of the girl he saw in
the dream but couldn’t go beyond a hazy faceless face with fluid
indications of a nose and eyes. But she certainly had black hair and a
beautiful smile. Yes he is sure of that much.

He flipped through the records for a while till he found what he was
looking for. Etta James at last. Nothing can be more apt for the
moment. He just needed a midnight shower to shake the day off him. To
make things perfect. Perfect for what ? Perfect to use the box a dream
gave him.

After the shower he sat down with his violin. What should he play now
? He was never troubled by that question before and this realization
surprised him. How can he play for so many months with no particular
song in mind. He often started with one song and ended up playing
other with lot of absent-minded unwanted and unpleasant alcohol
induced improvisation in between. He never loved to play nor did he
had any care for the deaftones coming out of his fiddle. No doubt his
music is as random as his life. Not anymore , he thought and picked up
the bow. Vivaldi ’s four seasons . Yes, definitely . That’s a great
one to start with. Summer always made him nostalgic with all it’
desires and latent fury embedded in notes. Surprisingly he remembered
the notes correctly. The quiet beginning bursting out into a
thunderstorm eventually. He remembered the joy he felt the first time
he was able to play the composition without a mistake. He was a kid
then, full of life and spring. Yes he will definitely play spring
after summer is over. As soon as he closed his eyes he found himself
playing in an opera. Soon he discovered he was no longer in command.
The bow moved on it’s own hallucinated by the music it created. He
can’t control his hand. Nothing can stop it now. The symphony needs to
be completed at any cost. What a beauty ! . He felt himself in the
audience marveling at the divinity of music which his body played like
a coup, like a revolution to free itself from his hold. He played
spring, then autumn and winter . It can’t be any better, he thought.
He was giving the performance of his life. He started crying as he
played the Mendelssohn Concerto. His fingers were in pain but he
didn’t felt it. All he could hear was an overwhelmed crowd in tears
clapping like children for the serenity gifted to them by a violinist.
But the crowd didn’t interested the violinist so he kept on playing
ferociously with his eyes searching the theatre like a hungry beast.
His fingers were bleeding and the crowd became stunned, too shocked to
breath, But he kept on playing. Nothing can stop him now till he gets
what he wants. He left the classics behind and started with his own
unwritten notes which slept inside him patiently for so many years
only to come out at his hour of redemption. He looked at the door of
theatre inside him and saw the most beautiful girl he has ever seen
smiling at him with tear filled eyes. She had black hair too. He felt
the massacred banyan tree coming back to life with nascent green
leaflets of tomorrow.

Excerpt from my novel

                                               CHAPTER  1 

I used to be a sea once. I loved my grandeur and the misery of tiny clueless rivers falling into me against their will. Their offerings made me meaner and hungrier . I sank ships and flattened fishing villages when they irritated me and created huge waves to teach a lesson to the audacious surfers and holidaying families who tested my shores with the intention of taking me back as souvenir. I was never really at peace with myself but nor is a real sea. What used to amuse me though, is the fact that in spite of all my fury and fatalism, they loved me, even worshipped me at times and always returned with fresh ships, villages and surfboards as offerings. After all, people need a god even when he does satanic things to them. I must admit this warmth elated me because even a god needs to be loved sometimes.

 

Now I am reduced to a tiny bubble. The sea in it’s entire opulence have abandoned me very slowly and secretly, maybe while I was sleeping. I was both clueless and shocked because I considered it mine. I really believed that it will live in me till my death and only when my body will disintegrate to ashes and it will have no place to live in , it will leave me heavily. But it left much before that and without it I am so tiny that I am allowed to exist unbothered.

 

Oh No no…! It’s not like what it seems. I am not making up a melodramatic plea to get my sea back. I will never do that simply because my years with the sea have taught me one thing – begging will never get you what you want , on the contrary indifference can. Anyways if my sea can live without me , I can also live without it. Every man is a story, with or without sea and so am I.

 

My story began much before I was born because it’s a story of a parasite that I always was whether I had a sea to feed on or not. My mother was the first one of my victims, sheltering my cowered genome in her womb and feeding it with her life and blood through an umbilical chord. When I left the womb, I found the entire world with everyone who was shot, crucified , honored or forgotten carrying a million different umbilical chords to feed me with their tales. I drank blood of Jews in concentration camps and wine of dictators in beer halls. I smoked weed with rock and roll hippies and discussed parables with prophets. I shed tears for the hungry continent of Africa and dreamed for extravagant orgies of Las Vegas. After so much drinking , dreaming and feeding on the world I now imitate it so much that I am unable to differentiate myself from it. After so many mutations I am not me any longer but an encyclopedia of history, a relic of human civilization.

 

“Is he alive ? ”

 

Yes I am so far ….miraculously. But death is just a few minutes away.

 

“Quick ! call someone . ”

 

Leave me alone and I would be fine. I need to talk to my insanity. I need to ask it some questions , the same ones you promised to answer but never actually did. Maybe absurdity fairs better than logic in giving answers. Absurdity , yes the same thing sane people like you are so much scared of but it’s the only occupation I have  nowadays unlike many of my kind who occupy themselves by scratching their skin, counting sparrows for hours or mumbling nursery rhymes they learnt in school. I can make out their tricks also. Behind their childish pretenses they all are constantly thinking. Thinking about unanswerable questions like will I know that I have died after my death, is it a sin to fantasize about your own sister and yes of course, who the hell is god ? Trust me, mad people think much more than you guys do and that’s precisely the reason why they are mad.

 

“Let’s get this bugger upstairs”

 

So you won’t let me die in peace. And why are you moving my body without my consent. Wait! I can’t face you this way as I am naked. First let me wear some lucidity and then maybe we can sit down and talk.

 

“quick ! Someone call Dr. Swaminathan. The patient is coming to senses .”

 

More voices , more panic

 

“how the hell he got here ?  ”

“what was he thinking ?”

Why did he do it ?”

“why Miss Rangan ! don’t you know that he is nuts ”

“somebody check his pulse !”

 

Slow down , slow down please as I am also slowing down with every passing moment. You are talking too fast to be audible and all I can hear is an audio cassette playing at double it’s speed. But I know it’s all my fault. I am in no hurry to decipher the noises, to open my eyes or even to breathe. Is this how death feels like to everyone ? Maybe we never actually die but rather become deaf, dumb, blind and numb simultaneously , too oblivious to breathe and too tired to move. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t want to die and this was not a suicide attempt but the closeness of death with all it’s promises of answers is tempting me into thinking that maybe death is not such a bad idea after all.  I am already dreaming the infinite fields where I can lay down in simple perfection of absolute silence.

 

Somebody has opened my eyes forcibly with his fingers and I can see it is Dr. Swaminathan , the almanac of eccentricities arising out of mental illnesses. He has witnessed too many cracked skulls in his life that now he finds us perfectly normal beings , our bizarre actions justified as response to our desires to hide the cracks.

 

“ hello M ”

 

Did he really said hello ? or is it his smile that conveyed the word for me ?  No one says hello to a dying man but then no one smiles to a dying man either. Maybe I am paranoid because now when I have closed my eyes again I can see the entire world lining up in front of me , all smiling. I can easily make out my father. He seems to be smiling his first serene smile ever as he knows that the melancholy which started with his birth will soon be over with my death. In his pensive mood once, while he was taking me to zoo , he told me –“ son, always remember. Never show your weakness to anyone , even to me. it will destroy you ” . I must have paid more attention to the old man because the moment I was revealed in entirety with all my fears, anxieties, desires and perversions to the world, I was sent to the asylum. I should have hid my madness.

 

I can’t figure out why my mother is smiling as she never smiles on good-byes. Maybe it’s a smile from the past when I used to be a good boy attached to her with an imaginary umbilical chord so that I don’t stray very far from her kitchen. I don’t have many smiles of her in my mind as she was always sad. She never told me the cause of her melancholy, maybe there wasn’t any and this enraged me more than anything in this world. I can never forgive her for her despair and she can never forgive me for what I have done to her in return.

 

There were many more people smiling whom I don’t recognize but there smiles suggest they all know me very well. Mostly friends and enemies, I guess. Overwhelmed by the warmth of this farewell gathering I myself opened my eyes smiling and saw puzzled faces all around me.

 

“Now what the hell is he smiling about ? ”

 

It’s comic how people react when they see a dying man. I caught a glimpse of Miss Rangan , the head nurse of the ward, who is running around frantically to get a machine started and connect it’s wires to me. Dr Swaminathan is violently waving his hand , asking for strange looking metallic objects that would have made perfect toys if they were made of plastic instead. One guy pierced a needle in my arm while another put a mask on my face . They all seemed like a bunch of lunatics to me. 

 

Why I am not making any sense ? What has dragged me to the edge ? why have I died before my death ? Is it the longing for the sea or is it the smiling multitude that came to feast and raise toast to me on my big day ? or could it be her ? I don’t see her today. Maybe she is there but she isn’t smiling.

 

But I still remember the day she smiled at me. She was reading a book while I was busy with my whisky wondering what kind of girl comes alone and reads a book in a bar. She was drunk but not by the filled glass that lay abandoned on her table but by some mystical intoxication that cannot be served in a glass. She raised her head to look at me as if sensing my dilemma and smiled. I have seen many kinds of smiles in my life , inviting smiles, challenging smiles, ridiculing smiles , sensuous smiles, fake smiles , pretty smiles , ugly smiles but it wasn’t any of them. After all these years together she never told me what that smile was about. As I lay now cherishing my last moments of consciousness , I think I know the meaning of that uncanny smile that ruined both our lives.

 

No I am not talking about some girl I was in love with .I never wanted her to love me as love would have been too unnecessary and burdensome for both of us and I am grateful to her that she never actually did. What I wanted was acceptance. The kind of acceptance that strangers who have never seen or heard about each other have for each other. I wanted to be accepted without being analyzed. Yes . That smile was a smile of acceptance and I must admit  that I would have missed her today if I wasn’t so close to death.

 

I have satiated all the desires of my life and in return they have led me to one final desire – the desire to die. These doctors are trying to allure me back to life, back to where I came from. But how can I go back now when I am so close to fulfilling my final desire. I can’t abandon death as it is my victory over my pain and my taunt on my pleasures. Death is our mockery of life.