Another face in the opaque crowd searching for some translucence to diffuse and project his myriad thoughts through this utterly abhorrent state of lame rigidity.

Sunday, February 6, 2011

Ashes

"The rendition of intuition, intuition being an abstract personification of sublime simultaneous symphonies playing incoherently and incessantly in our neurons, can be catastrophic; especially because of its vivid and varied inconsistencies, mis-interpretations. But, I can bravely embody it or them, before you. When I write to you, I don't need to be politically correct, I just need to be grammatically correct. When I do something, I don't need to be politically correct, I just need to be conscientiously correct. I don't have to, or I won't say, you complete me. You don't, because I am a nonentity. How can you complete something that doesn't exist? But, my physical absence is the testament for my esoteric and intangible presence in you." - wrote Sean to Penny.

   You are the rock,
Resolute, intrepid;
Yes, maybe.
I am the water,
Irresolute, trepid;
Yes, maybe
You can shield yourself from me; contest, will you,
You can withstand me, you think?
I’ll not flow over you, but I’ll get inside you;
Not your body I’ll devour but your soul I will drink.
You must be wondering, why this thirst.
Oh, for me...No, I am thirst.
You envisage, what’s the body and the soul, severed
They are mute, dysfunctional debris, when not allied.
Ah, I am hysterical, euphoric, ecstatic, enraptured-
After I am done with your soul, I’ll break you from the inside.
You are no god, then why deicide?
I am the one, I decide.
Had you mistaken me for a friend?
Know me better, I am a fiend.

That old house I long for,
Not house, that was home.
The garden, the greenhouse and the orchids.
This new house I do not abhor,
This house too, is home.
No garden, no greenhouse and no orchid.

And the dark blue walls that surround me, seem a tad turbid.
Or maybe they are not, maybe I am beseeching a mirage,
My mind is dis-painting the walls, to make a new collage.

Penny sauntered in the garden, with an air of nonchalance and uninhibited carelessness; cloaked in pleasant perspiration, which was being unhurriedly unveiled and consumed by the calm, cool and erotic breeze. Her face, so beautiful, so immaculately white – some of the veins around her forehead were partly visible; the veins carried a colour of dull green – portraying congruence with the green but contrast with the bright green that was all around. She walked towards the greenhouse, where the orchids resided.

The grass blades danced a little;
To the air?
The earth was the drumhead,
And her feet were the drumsticks.
And it seemed that the grass moved,
With the vibration-
When she played the drum,
Paradisaically.

Penny struggled with the pile of obtrusive materials she was carrying all at once, with an obvious intention of incarcerating them, or better incinerating them. Those were reprehensible, jejune and gratuitous entities emulsified in vitriolic flavours of obscure reminiscence that served as tools for strident infliction of affliction. They better be obliterated than ominously perpetuated. Penny dragged her feet on the cold floor. She reached the barren backyard of her house, where she dumped the junk in the waste bin.

Penny went back into the house, and walked towards the kitchen. Maybe she had forgotten something.

“You know, Penny, we could probably travel in time if we could travel at the speed of light. It’s hypothetical though, but the thought itself amuses me. I envy the quantum particles; they can travel at speeds comparable to the speed of light. Maybe, they can time travel”, conjectured Sean.

The officinal stench of the place hit Penny’s nostrils. After, a brief shake of neurotic nausea, followed by a rapid recuperation triggered by a defense mechanism of adroitly evading any manifestation of or any proclivity for an autocratic impotence of the perceptive or cognitive faculties, she entered the blood donation camp. People, on beds, squeezing sponge balls; needles stuck to their arms, drawing blood from the median cubital veins; the blood bags getting filled gradually – her sight revealed. She was just accompanying her friends, she could not donate blood; she was anaemic.

Sean : “Time when reversed spells Emit. Nice coincidence, right? If you can reverse time you can probably emit quantum particles. Hah! How lame is that?”
Penny : “Sean, I’ve been thinking, maybe, I had a twin. She doesn’t exist physically, maybe; but metaphysically, within me; like I am two people, two things at once, I am the water and she is the rock and vice versa. Sometimes it brings me to an atrocious edge of impending turmoil. We switch our places so quickly that it’s really hard to distinguish, who’s who.”
Sean : “Oh Penny, do you mean to say you have an evil twin and that she’s no one else but you? Have you been watching those darned movies which endorse those stupid ideas? Our discussion about time travel was a lot more interesting.”
Penny : “Shut up! Will you? I don’t buy that evil twin theory. Oh, about your obsessive travelling- in-time thing, I had time travelled to the future and I saw that we were not together. I showed you the finger, for being a segregated superficial shmuck.”
Sean : “Okay, I shut up!”
Penny : “Do you know about vanishing twins? It’s not very uncommon. One of the twins die very early in the mother’s womb. The dead foetus is absorbed by the mother or the other twin. It becomes nonexistent. Maybe I absorbed my twin sister, maybe she is within me.”
Sean : “Okay! Even if I believe that you had absorbed your twin sister; the time when this happened, your sister or the dead foetus had not developed a brain. So, even if she is present in you, theoretically; she can’t do anything on her own, or she can’t make you do anything.”
Penny : “You’re not getting it Sean. How do I make you understand what I am trying to say…”

Penny returned from the kitchen, holding a porcelain mug and a match box. It was the same mug from which she had coffee everyday. It was given to her by Sean.

Maybe she had time travelled into the future. Sean and her were not together, for reasons - aplenty.

Penny dropped the mug on the concrete. It was shattered into pieces.

Probably, the mug would not have broken had it been her old house, the old garden with a cushion of grass.

She lit a matchstick and dropped it in the trash bin.

Apparently, old paper catches fire easily.

She sat down.

Penny took up a piece of the broken porcelain mug and pressed it against her wrist. Slitting her writs? Oh! That was not her. But, she had always wanted to donate blood…

Sean’s last letter, in a sealed envelope burned in the trash bin –

“I know, we’re not together anymore and I know that you might not be interested in reading anything I write; but hoping that you’ve read till here, I shall continue my jabber hence and hope against hope that you shall bear with me. Do you remember our discussion about the vanishing twins? I do. Well, I don’t know which of you were prevailing then, when we broke apart (and not broke up), but I think I have an alternate theory for that. I was reading about the Tachyon the other day, a hypothetical sub-atomic particle which could travel faster than light. Maybe, you were something like that. I couldn’t see you; understand you when you were approaching me (read with me), but when you passed me (read left me), I could actually see you, understand you, both of you. You were clearly divided into two images, moving in opposite directions, one red and one blue, personified and transmogrified into the rock and the water. But, I can’t travel at the speed of light, let alone faster than that, so I could not catch you, neither of you.”

Penny longed for the orchids, the white ones, the blue ones, especially the red ones… There is a myth that Blood Orchids can resurrect people. She could use them, now.

It was (is) the sixth of February.

“Happy Birthday Penny”, Sean’s voice crackled over the telephone.

Maybe it was past, maybe it is future; or maybe in some other dimension, Penny was in her old home, and it was midnight.

Penny got engulfed in the smoke…

All that remained in the trash bin were ashes, but there were a couple of invisible remnants which could not even escape with the smoke – the vanishing twins and the tachyon.

Black pastel on 6"x4" white paper.

p.s. - The sketch was made upon a whim. I am not an artist.




Sequel - Fumes



21 comments:

  1. It's a sketch. Will read the post tomorrow.

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  2. Vanishing twin concept was very interesting.
    And now if what you said really did happen!!!!
    (about different personalities bcz of vanishing twin) That would be Amazing!

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  3. The different personalities of womb twin survivors are quite amazingly different, and this is especially marked when there has been a multiple conception. It is said that this may be the prenatal origin of multiple personality disorder.

    Your dialogue is just what I encounter in my work with womb twin survivors...., the thing about the fetus not having a brain etc. They should read the research papers I have seen! Twin are seen interacting at the age of about 9 weeks. They are aware all right!! Great blog, keep it up.

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  4. I read it too late, already.
    Why it's late for me, I shall not tell you or anyone.
    But it's still the 6th of February.
    Happy Birthday, Penny.
    She seems more like a concept to Sean, than a person, or a memory.
    It's getting better, I see.
    ;)

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  5. With no-one wearing their real face
    It's a whiteout of emotion
    And I've only got my brittle bones to break the fall

    When the love in letters fade
    It's like moving in slow motion
    And we're already too late if we arrive at all

    ~POTF(yet again :P)


    Flashbacks, and a memory that never ceases to torment, travel into the future, what for, to see a shattered fate, lets rewind.

    Awesome writeup, though I had to fire up my dictionary on every third line. Yet.

    Cheers,
    Blasphemous Aesthete

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  6. I went back to read your 'Fumes' as well. the narration is fabulous!

    the part about the 'twin'-- it reminded me of a movie-- "i know who killed me"... the whole way you have thought out the plot, i felt it was so much thought! Brilliant.. Brilliant!


    I loved the 'Fumes'! Smokes-- fascinating narration... for me, i am kind of fond of them. smoke/cigarette. they helped me create an article way back, that made me trust my writing... carry with what i wrote...

    Keep writing!

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  7. Yes S, that probably would be amazing had it not been fiction. ;)

    Thank you Althea. My knowledge about twins is very limited. I shall read those research papers.

    Twish, probably, she has become more of a concept. That's better, of course.

    Ah, POTF's War. And yes, true, let's rewind. ;)

    Thanks Matangi. Well, I haven't watched that movie. Maybe, I will; now that you've mentioned it. And maybe cigarettes help, sometimes, in spite of the damage they do. :)

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  8. fiction just stop being fiction. it transcended into reality...
    pains and catharsis stood together, hand in hand.

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  9. This is just brilliant...
    The concept of vanishing twin and the flow of the story was awesome... I felt like I was reading some novel... You can actually write a book on that...

    Tanishka

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  10. Narrated the conversation regarding vanishing twins brilliantly...and I must say I can never read long post patiently...but your post made me read till the end... :)
    and Honestly there were many words I had to refer to the dictionary...It will definitely improve my vocabulary ;)

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  11. I often feel very challenged when I read what you write, as you always work diagonally and from multiple directions bringing in a host of neat philosophical concepts. Beyond this, the images conjured up here are very fertile I think ... you've enough here for a small novel. Well done and get writing! ;)

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  12. amazing english, the way u connect wrds is brilliant :)

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  13. "Hi Sayak Shome, How have you been? After a very long time IndiBlogger is coming back to our favorite city Kolkata Its been 2 years. We hope to catch up again at the meet!Have you signed up for Kolkata IndiBlogger Meet If you haven't already, do sign up today, Only 200 seats available. Entry is free with loads of fun. Cheers,
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    IndiBlogger Team
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  14. Udi baba.. :P

    It tuk me days to complete this. To be frank, I was actually scared to finish it. :P

    Hogaya aaj. Aur behadd pasandh bhi aaya. Ati sundar.. :)

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  15. ...may be you're not, but you sketch beautifully.

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  16. Fiction or not, does it really matter Agnimita?

    Thank you Tanishka, I am thinking of writing a novel. :P

    Beyond Horizon, I am glad that you liked it. :)

    Matt, yes maybe I will do so, sometime soon. :D

    Thanks Vineet.

    Di, that's generous of you. :)

    The Blue Periwinkle, thank you.

    Nehha, thanks.

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  17. Okay I'm gonna be honest here Sayak, since you are one my very favorite writers.

    I found this write a big cauldron of jargon! My! The exquisite essence that this post carries get lost in the quagmire of the bombastic lexicon you've forced in every sentence. I mean literally every sentence!!

    I would so love it if you'd cranked it down a notch. But hey thats just me. Every writer has his genre. For me, loaded words are like punches I wanna bring in just now and then, I dont want my whole post to be made of punches, that way no one is going to see what my post was all about, fewer still will give up at the head shot.

    Apart from that, this is good stuff! Really.

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  18. this is pure Sayak...complex...dark...and infinitely rewarding...and whoTF says you ain't an artist???

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  19. Thank you Cindrella, honestly! I'll try to remember those as much as possible. :)

    Siddharta, it's too kind of you. But I say that I am not an artist.

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  20. Amazing blog and very interesting stuff you got here! I definitely learned a lot from reading through some of your earlier posts as well and decided to drop a comment on this one!

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