Temples

A sequel to Voices.

A temple stood on bamboo feet in the middle of an abysmally and particularly Sicilian-mafia-fashion brutally murdered place – a place devoid of death and full of life

‘Ah Life’, snorted the yak in disgust.

‘Aren’t you alive’, asked the woman.

‘I am a statue, can’t you see’, the yak replied.

‘With piercings on your knees’, the woman added.

‘I am punk, you idiot’, shouted the yak.

‘Oh, I see’, wondered the woman.

The variegated stained glasses ornamenting the window-ey eyes of the mud-clad temple with bamboo stilettos provided the woman with invigorating images of the world that lay rotting outside. The woman and the yak stood face to face in a metaphysical encounter.

‘Souls are real’, asserted the woman.

‘Commercial yak-shit’, laughed the yak.

Yes, they worshipped the yak in that devil-forsaken place. The zombies had a perfectly lit world with a 7 inch long Bunsen burner. Their ideas were cradled over the blue flame of flowery filth and littered hopes for the deceased. They called their world Earth and portrayed it as a utopian condolence for screwing up big time. And yes, they worshipped the yak.

‘Then, why do people come to you’, the woman thought to herself.

‘Because they are irreparable fools’, whispered the yak to her.

‘You can read minds’, exclaimed the woman.

Don’t you know Bunsen burners do not emanate a lot of light, do you? They are non-luminous blue flames. Blue films and laboratories are lit with such flames. Then how could it qualify as the sun of the world the zombies lived in? The coloured glasses had a certain mystical quality to them; they showed exactly what the person in conversation with the yak wanted to see.

‘They say, you are pimp’, blurted out the woman.

‘Yes, I am into souls...’, hurried the yak.

‘You hypocritical piece of excrement’, intercepted the woman.

‘...the business of bodies hit a rock-bottom a million years ago’, continued the yak.

The blue-ey, gooey mess the zombies lived in was swept aside with an acidic broom of tantrum thrown sky high by the yak. The yak swore by his foibles and abhorred vicissitudes although his decision making abilities rested solely on the visceral(stooping over the bent down carnal) traits of audio-visual juxtapositions, in a flickering no light effect strewn once in a while with a hard mix of psychedelic lights upon haystacks that carried the stench of cattle saliva. The yak was the root of this world. He had sustained the world with his sheer magic, his wand being the Bunsen burner. The zombies worshipped the yak.

‘So, what brings you here’, the yak inquired.

‘I came here because...’, the woman stopped.

‘Do you see what I see’, the woman resumed.

‘No, it’s only meant for you’, the yak added quickly.

‘But, I want you to see...’, the woman gasped frantically.

‘...what I see. I want to share them with you’, the woman murmured slowly.

‘Okay! I will have your soul’, the yak declared.

‘You are free now’, the voice of the yak echoed through and beyond the mud walls.

The glasses were funny, you see – they showed visibly transmogrified dark skins into fair ones and expensive lenses that entitle you to call yourself richly gifted with convoluted perceptions of a swamp, over which moths hovered and the zombies called those harmless creatures butterflies. As the caterpillars grew old, they invited the humans to wake up from their deaths and live, to become zombies. Then the caterpillars deluded the humans and fancy-dressed into butterflies. The zombies had a floating joke about the humans – they named their moths butterflies.

‘The temples are beautiful’, the woman said, looking through the stained glasses.

‘They are all fakes’, the yak quipped.

‘What do you mean’, the woman asked in disbelief.

‘Don’t worry, you would forget that they are fakes when you walk out of that door’, the yak sympathised.

You can only reach the temple of the yak by an invitation.

The woman christened zombie walked in distorted strides out of the temple and as she did her tinkling anklets rusted and wrapped around her feet like hand painted tribal tattoos.

The bamboo shoots twinkled with the blue light. The glasses had turned gray. The bowl of Earth had been heated enough for the day. The mud walls became soft and clayey. It was time for the yak to rest. Yes, they worshipped the yak.

Sean removed his shoes, then his socks. He put on his shoes again sans the socks and wore the socks on his hands like gloves. He stepped into the temple of the yak.

Voices

A sequel to Fits.

Fences crafted out of cheap, crude bamboos stood like imitation-ornaments along the dusty moon-burnt roads, guarding strips of black soil that bore clusters of malnourished saplings like uneven chest hair of an old man thinking of himself as an unusual child who has attained precocious puberty. Fences to protect a fistful of greenery from the herd, both human and cattle. To increase the green-ic beauty of the roads even the fences were painted green.

Splinters of green, born out of the muzzles of some automated science fiction-ed alien shotguns with infinite cartridge capacities and the ability to spit out those tiny quanta of hell as fast as the chronic blinking of the eyes of a person responding to some overwhelming temporary stimulus, shot across the place. Although fluorescent and illusory in appearance those splinters crept through the thin fabric and the bare skin of people and accentuated their collective hysteria of synchronised or desynchronised limb-manipulation and getting acquainted to strangers’ hides under the allowance of an unspoken treaty of overpriced fun.

The traffic lights turned green at the orthogonal signals. Sean was midway on the zebra crossing and the uncanny zephyr still irked him like mosquitoes hovering and buzzing around the ears. Music, that was, he believed but not the kind he needed right then.

The music stopped. A brief moment of superficial silence was crafted to overtly dramatise the wave of trance tsunami that was about to engulf the place, and also to let people catch their breaths. The girl ran to and fro between this bar and the bar opposite, impinging the sanctity of the eloquent moves of the crowd on the dance floor, with her lips sealed. ‘Truth or Dare?’ Dare, she had chosen. Now, she needed to fill the empty beer mug placed on this bar with the liquor she could carry in her mouth from the opposite bar.

Voice of the traffic police, voice of the hawker selling chewing tobacco, cigarettes and incense sticks, voice of the mother scolding her kid for throwing tantrums to get the balloon the other kid on vehicle next to them had, voice of the young girl with an infant in her arms begging for money, voice of the man shouting over his mobile asking the person on the other end to shout as well, voice of the old motorbike, voice of the dog limping it’s way to paradise; voices. The voice inside, ‘Voices’.

Voice of the man asking the bartender for a Screwdriver, another one asking for a Black Velvet, a woman asking for a Magarita, voice of the girl in blue stilettos describing how tired and cold she feels after coitus, voice of the boy passing lewd remarks at every girl he sees, voice of the girl talking softly to her boy, voice of the new watch, voice of the jerk getting off with steady hands exploring the female anatomy making his way to the restroom; voices. The voice inside, ‘Voices’.

Sean, in utter bafflement of the monstrosity of his ill-fate or snail-pace tripped. The man on the old motorbike hit him hard and shouted ‘Asshole!’ A myriad obscenity followed. The holes of Sean’s ears were violated so hard that his ears were cleansed. ‘Ah! Voices’, he sighed.  

The girl tripped amidst the madness of music, moves, booze and boots, her lips still sealed. Some complained, some didn’t bother. She emptied her mouthful (the little she could carry) of liquor in the mug. The glass overflowed. Her group of friends exclaimed in unison ‘Bitch! You did it.’ Her lips shone with the liquor-y lip gloss still positioned close to the edge of the overflowing mug. ‘Ah! Voices’, she sighed.

Sean got up and reached the other end of the road not bothering to get rid of the dust he had amassed from the generous road. He walked towards the door with the voices in mind. The doorkeeper stamped his arm. The door swung open.

The hand with the new watch tossed a lit matchstick at the overflowing glass of liquor. The liquor burned blue and so did her lips. She turned away and started moving, not bothering to put out the fire she had acquired from the generous people. She walked towards the door with the voices in her mind. She glanced at the stamp on her arm. The door was open.

Sean saw the blue amidst the black and green approaching the door.

The girl saw a silhouette walking in, not green, just black.

Sean held her and kissed her. The blue was lost. All that remained was green and a lot of black.

Sean made an effort to speak.

Before a sound could escape his mouth she resumed walking and as she went she said -

“Can’t talk. GN.”

n.b. - Not proofread. Please correct the errors in your mind.

Fits

A sequel to Visions.

Distorted red and orange ellipses surrounding a perfect brown circle, floated about a feet above the earth. Threads flying around – white, black, maroon.  A red dot stung by black and orange. Some blue, some splattered grey, here and there. An array of superfluous entities – destinies per se, transmogrified into cold clay clad idiosyncrasies resembling mercury droplets. Sean touched a droplet with his fingertip and watched it flatten.

Fairy tales and cocktails. Screwdrivers and safety pins.

The green shroud, deluging cloud – oh so proud; covered all of Sean, but his legs. His legs left bare to the naked air and the whistling moisture; to the infrasonic sounds and the blood thirsty hounds.  Rounds of bullets – long and short, heavy and light. A tight slap, across his face.

The beggar spat at Sean’s freshly slapped face. A crowd was about to gather around the place, when Sean walked away. The beggar tried to run after him, but gave up. Apparently, Sean had stepped on a sleeping beggar, and instead of moving his convicted legs off the beggar, he stood there nonchalantly, listlessly staring at the nearby playground.

About to sit on a mournfully marooned rock in an expanse of grilled greenery, Sean tripped over it. Indifferent to the aberrant actuality, not incurring a perplexing possibility, he froze, ruptured the frozen exoskeleton and exhaled a fit of brazen derision. Lighter’s clicks, mosquitoes’ licks, sick, sick, sick. Sean could not sit on the rock. The rock was stained with human blood – all over, probably donated by martyred mosquitoes.

The beggar came around and spat on Sean’s face again and sat down on the rock. Sean did not wipe his face. The beggar did. Sean did not look at the beggar. With folded legs he sat at the beggar's feet.

The beggar sang –

“Hunger is boiling your intestines,

Crows carry stale meat between their beaks.

The caws and paws, like music,

Harps strung with tongues and lips.

Snails swirling with giant-wheels,

Hogs and masses gargling cosmetics.

A breath of the trees,

A voice to cease.”

The beggar dropped a coin on Sean’s head and walked away.

Sean, in a fit of hysteria, jumped off the podium, tore off a page from his notebook, and chewed it. Then he ran away.

‘What on earth was that?’

‘Who let the lunatic in?’

‘Do you know the name of the poem he was about to recite?’

‘Yes. ‘The beggar who drank my cocktail.’’

Sean shook the beggar’s hand. The beggar spat at Sean’s face.

That was not all. The beggar took out the safety-pin that held the torn, loose pyjama to his waist, and pricked Sean’s fingertip, as if taking a blood sample. A drop of mercury popped up, from within.

Sean looked at the Raven, seated on the window sill, and asked her –

“If I were a beggar, would you be ashamed of me?”

The raven dipped her beak into the glass of Screwdriver Sean was holding, and made a hole in the ice.

Year.N

(i) This is an experiment, somewhat like Odd Even.ts.
(ii) There are 12 parts, each part consisting of as many words as the number of days in the mentioned month. Like JAN.gle - 31 words. APR.on - 30 words.
(iii) There are 3 sets - the parts with 31 words each| the part with 29 words| the parts with 30 words each
(iv) The parts or the sets are not necessarily in the correct order of occurrence.
(v) On an unrelated topic - My Blog turned a year old at 8:09 pm(IST) on the 27th of April, 2011.

 Year 2008.

“And as we wind on down the road 

Our shadows taller than our souls.”

JAN.gle

The metal bar slid over the strings of the lap steel guitar. The screech hit his eardrums – coerced his impotent hands to cease the rendering of mellifluous music turned noxious noise.

**FEB.rile

The smack and the coke in the same syringe.  He was speedballing. He was shivering with fever. Was he insane? She saw him and knew she had her story.

MAR.ijuana

The beige cloth draped around the cherubic chillum had turned feuillemorte. Inhale! His sore throat bled. The diffused smoke ushered the diabolical entities to their alveoli seats. His hands shook compulsively.

“In my thoughts I have seen rings of smoke through the trees, 

And the voices of those who stand looking.”

*APR.on

She loved the acetic acid stains on her apron, the vinegar odour, the light through the red filter, the negatives and the photographs. She knew she was ‘developing’ a story.

MAY.hem

The crowd was going insane. They should have been oscillating in unified trance then, with the reverberating rendition of liberating verses and psychedelic music. An hour gone. The stage was empty.

*JUN.cture

She stood still, stupefied. He excavated her words from the locked chest kept safe in a dungeon, and sung them. She knew, she should’ve captured. But she didn’t miss anything.

“And it's whispered that soon if we all call the tune 

Then the piper will lead us to reason.”

JUL.iet

He changed the tuning from standard to open E, for the song “Juliet”.  His voice echoed – faded to the sounds of saxophone, piano and drums. He waited for his guitar solo.

AUG.ment

The crescendo lingered. Lights changed colours like the chameleon – their long tongues ensnared him. The succeeding diminuendo got lost in his handcuffed silence. He recovered, improvised; then ended the song abruptly.

*SEP.ia

She wanted the photographs to live longer. She wanted them to speak the language he speaks. She wanted the story to be warm and brown. It had to be sepia.

“In a tree by the brook, there's a songbird who sings, 

Sometimes all of our thoughts are misgiven.”

OCT.opus

As his opus terminated, the tentacles of an octopus like creature swung before him. From the heavens descended 'Cthulhu'. He clung to one of the tentacles and wished to escape doom.

*NOV.ice

It was probably her last chance to click the conclusion of her story, given his wretched appalling condition. She didn’t have a pass. She was a photographer, but a novice.

DEC.adence

As he lay on his cot, staring at the ceiling fan, he wondered about Juliet and “Juliet”. The crescendo and diminuendo were dead. All that was left – the sound of shutter.

“Yes, there are two paths you can go by, but in the long run 

There's still time to change the road you're on.”

Do we learn?

Do we earn?

Do we Year.N?

Y/N?

 ---------------x----------------

“And if you listen very hard 

The tune will come to you at last. 

When all are one and one is all 

To be a rock and not to roll.”

The quotes are from the song - Stairway to heaven by Led Zeppelin.

P.S. - Lethargy and the El Clasico forced me not to proofread the post. I apologise for the brazen and imbecilic mistakes.

The Hunt

Gulp! Bang! Crash! Thud!

– silence –

Tick Tock! Drip Drop! Knock Knock!

– silence –

Creak! Whoosh!

His eyes were blinded by the Cimmerian hue. The deviant waves of the delirious Black Sea, forced their way through his nostrils and lips; the water mixed with filth and vitriol. Maybe, on the other side his eyes would be blinded by the luminosity, of lucrative possibilities of raw reflections that boast of their ephemeral existences in the delusory dimensions. The fluid soiled his torn clothes, fouled his breath, burned his throat, and moistened and charred his lips at the same time. Was THAT water? The acrid taste sprinted through his tongue to summon the participation of his senses that could send signals to his brain inferring the nature of the liquid. It was Urine.

“O’ sense of gustation. Liberate me.”

Discrete!

With not much ease he managed to stand up. His fatigued legs shivered. He started walking. He reached a cavern. He could not verify his presence in a cavern visually, though. He dragged his naked feet over the rocks. He felt someone’s breath on his neck. He shivered. Then he felt someone touch his hand. For a fraction of a second he was petrified, which probably lent some in(ane)-coherence to him to establish a camouflage with the stones around him; but it was overruled by his urge to run. He ran. He felt something sharp brush against his feet. He felt his warm blood gushing out of the wound. He stopped. He felt someone licking the blood off his leg. Scared, he started running again.

“O’ sense of tactition. Liberate me.”

Secrete!

Probably, he entered a hallway. The sounds of air resistance reached his ears. He turned back and forth to improve the reception of the sounds and then abruptly, with a frivolous intervention of an occult entity he was rendered immobile. But his fortification of quiescence was swiftly revoked by a harsh noise. A multitude of pins raced downwards, released from an unknown height. They hit some hypothetical metal obstacle in mid-air to produce simultaneous inseparable clinks. From there the pins came together and transmogrified into a sheet of glass and resumed their journey downwards to hit the glass floor and shatter into pieces to produce another host of clinks. He paused. He resumed walking.

“O’ sense of audition. Liberate me.”

Concrete!

He reached a room, probably. The smell of weathered wood hit his nose. The portentous wooden floor beneath him was not showing much promise. He walked carefully. The nauseating smell of his own sweat, blood and saliva was making him weak. He was on the verge of vomiting, when he was miraculously rescued by an overbearing smell of wet soil which shunned the stench away. And then the realisation dawned upon him that he was not walking on wood anymore; it was earth beneath his feet. An angelic fragrance met him. The fragrance came to him floating in the air, presenting herself be his mistress. She executed a quick exhibition of her skills of captivation. He followed her with carefree conviction, as she danced gleefully in the air and showed him the way.

“O’ sense of olfaction. Liberate me.”

Replete!

There was no transition or translation. Suddenly, he was greeted by blinding lights. The incessant and exuberant radiance of the place purged every drop of exhaustion from his body and killed every bit of the decadent darkness that had seeped into his existence. After a while, when the light ceased being harsh and started being soft, he realised where he was. Giant plants bearing gigantic flowers towered over him. The flowers were beautiful. They spread an empyrean aura of unhindered prosperity that delicately disfigured the inharmonious elements born out of the excrements of the excruciating interferences of apparently realistic iniquity. His hunt for the utopian garden was over. He believed his eyes. He was in heaven.

“O’ sense of vision. Liberate me.”

Effete!

----------

Flesh and bones lay scattered on the ground. The plants(flowers) had shared their treat. It was eons ago, when a human had wandered into their territory, conceiving an outrageous notion of exploration, fuelled by dystopian imageries of a transcendent utopia.

He was just the second one. There are more to come.

Delete!

----------

Whoosh! Creak!

– silence –

Knock Knock! Drip Drop! Tick Tock!

– silence –

Thud! Crash! Bang! Gulp!

The third one begins his journey.

But he possesses an extra sense.

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

Odd Even.ts

(i)   This is an experiment.

(ii)  The irregular chronological order is intentional.

(iii) There are 6+1 parts, each comprising 55 words.(so have I counted)

Beg.inning

6^th September, 2010. Night.

Norah clenched her teeth.  She gasped.  She embraced the silence that followed. No mirth, no melancholy and no miff; she was a stone. Sound of scissors. Severed umbilical cord. Time progressed. No relevant sound. The unwanted yet unavoidable, obligatory slap. Cries of the baby filled the room. Norah’s brain throbbed like her heart, with agony.

Cow.ardice

1^st January, 2010. Afternoon.

John was a powerful man.  Aal kept silent like a dead piece of log. Aal preferred to live like a castrated ox rather than fight with vigour like a bull and ultimately, probably die with his testicles getting crushed. Aal succumbed to the opprobrious clout. Norah’s body was profaned, mutilated; and now, her soul, amputated.

New.s

31^st December, 2009. Late evening.

‘You look terrific, Norah.’ Aal took Norah in his arms. The red dress she donned, embraced her immaculate lissome body, envying anyone, everyone else who could, who would lay a hand or even a sight on her.  She dispersed seeds of pulchritude that could absorb any man’s wavelength of restraint. ‘I am pregnant’, she whispered.

Part.y

1^st January, 2010. Around midnight.

Aal exceeded his limit of sane alcohol consumption and slayed his consciousness, probably unconsciously. John offered to help Norah get Aal home. She agreed, albeit reluctantly. John’s hormones flickered. He pounced on Norah. Norah let out muffled shrieks, tried to fight back, but in vain. John increased then ceased his pubic movements with diabolical satiation.

Mo.u.rning

1^st January, 2010. Morning.

Aal’s head was still heavy with the previous night’s alcohol. Norah handed a cup of coffee to him, her hands shaking incoherently. Norah choked on the lump in her throat, gulped it, and then let it all go. The fact that John raped his wife seeped in, as the hot coffee slipped down Aal’s throat.

End.urance

1^st January, 2011. Noon.

A little more, Norah thought. Endurance, that’s banal, mundane and superfluous. She can stay unscathed, unstirred, even if hot lava is poured on her coarse skin which used to be gentle sometime, long ago.  A little more she thought. The stifled muted shrieks of the child drowned in the cotton pillow, his legs stopped moving.

--x--

Epitaph

31^st December, 2011. Morning.

The kid placed the white rose on Aal Carter’s grave. His parents, Norah and John stood behind him. Aal was a promising writer, but he was addicted to drugs, which subsequently led to his death, after gifting him coma for a year. “Can people think while they are in coma? Maybe, Aal had a story.”

Rapture-Love-Rupture

Like a detached variegated feather of a possibly mythical, mystical bird that floats, dances in the air- a little exploited, a little caressed by nature, not stagnant, not firm, maybe fickle, almost always in turbulence yet in absolute peace; and then it comes to complete rest when it gets caught, entrapped by someone or something, depleted of alacrity, replete with insensitive senses, a sense of kinship, belonging, acceptance, of being overpowered, held, caged; Neil’s sight, the sight of a coherent, dull, fastidious, gullible, transparent, convoluted, sane, lunatic romantic walked, sprinted, peregrinated from one place to another, not waiting, not stopping, with unflagging spirit adulterated with mirthless vigour; and then it got stupefied, it froze, subtly, suitably, enchanted by some oblivious spell executed through a seductive, exquisite tool by a sorceress.  Neil’s sight remained bound, albeit loosely, like a ribbon tied carelessly to a little girl’s hair by herself, in a desperate effort to prove her mettle and failing miserably; but that outrageous freedom urged his sight to cling, hang on to the hypnotization. The freedom coaxed him, teased him, mocked him; it was as if a challenge, a casual one, thrown at him, telling him that he would not lose if he quit, he would not be humiliated, humbled if he refused, and just by saying that it also said that it would be his greatest defeat if he did surrender. His sight remained fixed.

She was an embodiment of the sun.

It hurt his eyes to keep looking at her.

What she had, she held, what she had begun-

He was helpless before that, he had to defer.

In one of her hands she held a small paper packet, the usual ones made out of sold off or discarded old newspapers. It contained a delectable mixture of puffed rice, spices, pieces of vegetables and snacks. Neil’s eyes chased the movement of her hand holding the paper packet. She raised her hand, tilted her head a little backwards, then poured some of the food in her mouth. He could separate, see, each element of the food that got lost in her mouth. A sole soul, a diminutive speck of puffed rice, a stranded, estranged entity, nonentity got marooned, prisoned in the island of her moist red lower lip; but she was generous enough to liberate it with a swift movement of her tongue.  Neil closed his eyes.  He was defeated. No. Not yet. He resumed looking at her, after that sudden pause of stare. Her mouth shut, her jaws moved, she crushed the food with her teeth, and then the sublime paste slipped down to her stomach, grazing her throat, leaving marks inside her with incoherent ecstasy. Neil’s eyelids batted in a synchronized fashion with the movement of her mouth, lips. He listened to the gentle sound of bliss, the unchained pleasure.

How he wished he was the…

The bus started moving. Neil had forgotten that he was sitting in a bus which was about to leave the bus-stand in a few minutes. He was startled, but he was relieved. He was on the verge of defeat; he was succumbing to the colossal coercion, the fatal force. Escape, could he? Did he?

Neil knew that he had fallen prey-

to that primitive propensity,

the delicate desire,

the daunting, haunting urge,

that he could not successfully purge,

the feeling, the reeling, the peeling of the soul,

the object, yes object,

which he had ruthlessly ruptured,

mercilessly murdered,

then carried it’s carcass himself,

in his arms,

and unceremoniously cremated it,

the thing called ‘love’.

Apparently, it had come back to life. Suddenly he felt an emptiness, a void in his stomach.

The ticket collector of the bus asked for the fare. Neil handed the few coins that he fished out of his pocket to the ticket collector and declared the name of the bus stop he was to get down at. The ticket collector asked for 50p. The bus fare was Rs. 8.50. Neil had only Rs. 8 with him. He produced his college ID and got a student-concession of Rs. 2, which reduced the fare to Rs. 6.50. The ticket collector sighed, frowned, returned the balance and left. So Neil had Rs. 1.50 left with him now. He didn’t know what was he going to do, from whom was he going to lend money; he was drowning in debts already. He rejected those naïve notions and closed his eyes. Of course he had better things to muse.

Neil went back to his own world, again. He wondered about ‘love’. It had been a conscious choice of his, semi-completely consequential to his circumstances, to sacrifice love. Then why did he feel love again? Why?

But he just couldn’t deny his love. He loved FOOD. He loved to eat, but he was broke, he couldn’t afford food, let alone good food. He could starve for days and weeks and months, now.

How he wished he was the one holding that paper packet and having the food.

---x---

Food is a necessity, a biological need. So is love, may be, or may not be. Some ascetics conquer hunger and also desires. If love is a desire, they conquer that too. Neil was not an ascetic. But he thought that he had conquered love, perhaps; hunger, of course not.

He still had food,
when he could afford to,

but he didn’t feel,

the same zeal;

love, was not there,

it didn’t matter though;
he didn’t care,

and then comes love again,

to heal,

or perhaps, to kill.

Neil was not hungry. Neil was in love, with food.

Visions

A sequel to Lives.

Sean did not visit Andy at the hospital.

Sweat beads decorated Sean’s forehead. The sweat infiltrated his eyes and irritated him. He scratched his eyes. His eyes, a little moist, a little tired and incoherently calm delineated a coldness that belied all comprehensions about and all complaints against the hot weather. His eyes carried a tinge of orange, formed by the redness of the scratch and the yellow left as a mark by an execrable and agonizing jaundice.

Sean entered the metro station. The cold air from the air conditioning hit his face, and fell back, as if accepting defeat to a greater force, to a higher degree of coldness. Sean stood at the queue to purchase his ticket. Tokens flashed before his eyes, reviving the memory of a city where tokens were given instead of tickets in the metro. The uninvited vision could not bother him. With the ticket in his hand Sean waited for the train to arrive. The train arrived. The doors opened. The doors closed. The train left. Sean stood at the same place. When the sound of the train moving on the rails ceased to reach his ears, he started walking towards the exit. He wanted to walk.

Sean was walking by a playground. The green-ness of the grass hurt his eyes. He stood there for a moment. A few kids were playing football. The swift movements of the white and black skinned sphere sent him in a tizzy.  He saw his brother score a goal. ‘No. Not real’, he said to himself and resumed walking. He walked past a house where a lady was singing Hindustani classical music. The voice of his mother singing Raga Desh, an evening raga filled his ears. It filled him with a peculiar sense of excruciating ecstasy. ‘No. Not real’, he said to himself and increased his pace.

Sean entered the coffee house. He wasn’t hungry, nor thirsty, probably tired. He rested on the chair and ordered for a cup of coffee. Two middle-aged men were sitting at the next table. They were discussing something very animatedly. Sean didn’t bother to listen, until he heard one of those men reciting a poem. The poem didn’t just sound familiar, he knew it by heart. He saw his father sitting across his table and reciting ‘Nirjhorer Sopnobhongo’, a poem by Rabindranath Tagore. ‘No, not real’, he said to himself and got up without finishing his coffee. He paid the bill and left.

He crossed streets adjoining which stood buildings with picturesque architecture. The white pillars, at a place, a thousand miles away got projected before him, as if through his eyes, exploring some hidden chambers of his mind. He saw a couple walking hand in hand, talking and smiling. Who was the boy, was it him? Who was the girl, was it…? ‘No’. A kit of pigeons rose from the ground and assumed flight. It startled him. No. ‘Were they pigeons or a murder of crows?’ They sounded like crows, but he thought that he saw pigeons.

He was exhausted, hallucinating.

He plugged in his earphones.

He needed some respite.

The hospital was five minutes away.

Andy had been unconscious for two days. The doctors did not say that there was much hope that he would make it. Andy had made it, apparently.

The first thing that Andy did after gaining consciousness was to call up Sean.

‘... Sean, my whole body is covered up with bandages and plaster. I look like, rather I feel like an Egyptian Mummy…’

‘Okay Andy, I will see you in the evening’

Sean pushed the glass door at the hospital’s entrance. His facial muscles yawned and stretched as if they have been woken from a long slumber. He was smiling. All the hallucinations and their misgivings were swept aside. A strange energy flowed through him. ‘Is this, what they call happiness?’ He thought to himself. ‘Adventures of the Egyptian Mummy and Frankenstein’s Monster. Now, that’s a vision, a good one’, he shared a joke with himself, the smile still painted on his face. Maybe it was Andy. Yes, Andy was his priority now. He felt that.

The last but one stanza of his favourite song stimulated his eardrums.

“I took a heavenly ride through our silence,
I knew the moment had arrived,
For killing the past and coming back to life.”

– Pink Floyd

Sean walked towards the reception.

Andy’s father was filling in a form. It was for Andy’s death certificate.

Andy had made it, apparently.

---x---

The End.

The Beginning.



Sequel - Fits.