If I had a God,
a Religion,
a Calling
or a Cause;
If I had a Best Friend,
a Philosophy,
Wisdom
or Good Whisky;
If I had Children,
a Destination,
You
or an Imitation;
I’d still be this, no
different -
a sentence
flung into the sky
in wild abandon,
impish in its opening,
and impervious
to how it ends.
But if I had You,
and not an Imitation,
you, diviner of passion,
would smile like the sun at
what that awe-struck line said.
As they turn us into ghosts they invent in their heads
so that we too are loved just like they do their dead,
and our homes become orphanages for growing shadows
the truth of the falling night will in us rise as a living dread.
That little black dress you wear
all smooth silk and lace,
all lust bursting at it’s seams
in a grave-like space,
all desire perfectly stitched
into grace.
It’s all my sadness
and all my longings,
all my rapture
and heart’s wanderings,
all my dreams
and all the promised mornings,
that little black dress you wear is
eternity wrapped around
an ache for me.
That little black dress you wear
is Divinity touched by you
for my eyes to see,
a reason to believe so that
I may wish to continue to breathe.
That little black dress you wear
is Life presenting itself
in all it’s glory,
all that I need
to know
to feel
how Gods become me.
Some day a meat cleaver will be put to work on your very core. You won’t see it but it’ll all be there – blood, shattered bones, flesh hanging loose from big ugly wounds of your soul. That used to be a person before, you’d think. Now it’s just a gooey lump in red, white and purple blue. Splattered across surfaces like a Jackson Pollock painting.The inside is all outside, and all over the walls, and floors. Clinging to curtains, hanging on to coffee tables, creating strange patterns on the dirty carpet marked by heavy footprints. Barely recognizable as human in its new form or spatial arrangement. And you’d stand there amidst the pieces like a ghost while a tiny voice inside your head will ask in mock amusement, “Anyone you know?” Curiosity is limitless. Concern not so. Some day it’ll help you to remember that.
The morning weather, I remember, was particularly pleasant that day. I was walking down the side street, picking up lilies and lilacs from the shoreline of my fantasies, heading towards the City Hall for a public engagement when it happened. I tripped and fell. Face down.
“Oh! Oh! Oh! Is that really you, Mr. D?” I hear a delicate feminine voice exclaim in my ears. “Is that really YOU?!” She repeats before I lift myself up from the ground with the dignity found in gentlemen of certain social standing after falling flat on their faces in public places.
“Oh My God! I must be dreaming!” The delicate voice coos again. I try to focus on the origin of the sound while brushing off dust and invisible particles of embarrassment from my clothes. Discreetly, of course. A knee-length black skirt comes into view followed by a black top without collar or sleeves. Two tiny eyes sparkle at me from a rather demure young face. I am reminded of a cat that has spotted a rodent on a hungry day.
She gushes forth, bringing in an intoxicating aroma which I deem is how money smells when it transforms into little bottles of perfume. “Oh, but it IS you! I can’t believe this, Mr. D. I’m a big fan of your work.” My right palm is grabbed at, and finds itself tucked neatly between her two tiny hands. Tiny they might be but they sure were strong if one can judge such things simply by the vigorous shaking my right arm was being subjected to. I admire her pale green nail polish for a moment before the shaking gets more enthusiastic and breaks the spell. What was that she just said?
”A big fan?!” It is my time to exclaim.
”Oh, C’mon, Mr. D. I’ve seen your pictures! Hundreds of them. And I know it’s you. But if you are going to pretend it’s not you just to discourage this meeting I can understand. I’d be heartbroken though.” She’s still pumping my hand – with the kind of generous vitality ‘big fans’ display on bumping in to the object of their adoration on pleasant mornings. I like her face. It’s quite symmetrical and all. But her child-like enthusiasm and girlish charm fascinate me more. And, of course, the look in her eyes — Ah! The kind that makes toils of the worst sort seem worthwhile.
”I want you to know this.” Her quaint voice, trembling with ricocheting emotions reaches out again and beats against my ear drums while they are still buzzing from the headlong fall. “You are a genius, Mr. D. A genius! I have read all your books. Every one of them! “
I remain silent. Not because I want to discourage her or dampen her enthusiasm. When your brain feels like it has been sandbagged out of its secure place and little bells are ceaselessly ringing in your ears and you have just found yourself in a horizontal position on the road while vertical is what decent folks must strive for, it isn’t quite right to expect instant or sane answers. Upstanding citizenry finds a surreptitious silence befalling their very beings on such occasions.
”Where are you off to, Mr. D? Would you please, please have a cup of coffee with me? I mean, this is pure destiny. Or how could I have just bumped into you on a side street? Please, Mr. D. Spare five minutes for me. For destiny!”
I figure sitting down is definitely a good idea. A coffee is sure to help me regain my composure and feel myself again. And five minutes is something I can definitely spare. “Of course, Miss…? Mrs.?” I fumble with grace.
”Oh, I’m so sorry I forgot to introduce myself. I’m so clumsy, Mr. D. It’s Miss. Miss Be.” Suddenly as if waking up from a trance she lets go of my hand, takes a step back leaving a civilized distance between us and offers me a shy smile. “If possible I’d like to get a picture taken with you. If you will allow me, that is.”
I smile reassuringly at the thought of a chair and coffee. My body and soul badly need immediate life support like a patient suffering from serious malnutrition needs IV fluids. “Shall we go and get coffee then?” The question is more in the manner of a pleasantry for I am already leading her into a small cafeteria nearby.
”You are such a gentleman, Mr. D. Such a wonderful human being. Is it true what the newspapers say, Mr. D? About all those barbaric things they did to you while being a war prisoner? Did they really hang you by your thumbs? But, hell, what is more important. You fought for our country. Were you writing back then too? When you were a soldier? Will you show me the bullet wound on your legs? I mean, it’s OK if you don’t want to. I’m so sorry if I’m talking too much. I’m just so excited, Mr. D. To actually see you in flesh and blood.”
”Here we are, Miss. Be! It’s coffee time.” I hold the door open for her as we enter the cafeteria. I can sense her excitement breaking the usual banks of her feminine reserve and flooding the five minutes now before us like an avalanche. Between drinking coffee and her excitement, will I get time to regain composure, I wonder.
We take our seats near the glass panel overlooking the street and ask for coffee. My legs are relieved as my body weight finds firm ground on my hind-side.
”How did it feel to spend six years in a Tibetan monastery, Mr. D? I mean, cut off from the rest of the world. Away from everything you have grown up with and have known? Family, friends… I can’t think of being away from my home for more than a week. Not even on a holiday, Mr. D. That was when you climbed Mount Everest, isn’t it? While in the monastery? Was it the war that made you choose to become a monk? All the blood and gore, killing and dying? Is that it? It is understandable, you know. War can really scar the human soul. Especially a sensitive soul like your’s. It is understandable.”
The coffee arrives. I eye it longingly before succumbing to gentlemanly behavior and address my companion, “Well, Miss Be…” Before I can say any more a large, well-clad young man comes rushing through the cafeteria door, a searching glance running across the length and breadth of the place, and finds what it was looking for in the person sitting across me.
”Be!” The stranger exclaims and comes across to our table in short, swift strides. “There you are, my dear! I have been looking all over for you. You got me worried, you know.” The look of pure relief on his face changes to straying suspicion as his consciousness finally divines my physical presence at the table. “Who are YOU?” His voice changes from the gentle to the guttural in seconds. I sense the menace behind it but thankfully it is well harnessed for the time being. Or so I tell myself.
”This is Mr. D, Pi! Mr. D! The war veteran, a true patriot, a monk, the conqueror of Mount Everest, and the greatest writer in the world today! Not to say, a perfect gentleman too!” She looks at me demurely. I gulp hard a generous dollop of saliva. The man Miss Be was referring to as Pi looks at me for a long moment, then looks at Miss Be. “Will you excuse us for a moment, my dear? I and Mr. D need to have a short talk. You stay right here and finish your coffee. I’ll be back to get you real quick. OK, honey?” She nods in affirmative, and then giggling a bit adds, “While at it you can ask for his autograph, Pi!” Pi motions me to follow him and walks towards the counter – that’s as far one can go from the table I was sitting at while still being inside the cafeteria.
”Who are you?” He asks facing me. He is taller than me, I notice, at least by a couple of inches. “Well, I’m…” I fumble again, this time without much grace. A rather big man towering over you with his hands on his hips – a particularly aggressive posture – is not a conducive sight for quick thinking in sedate souls.
“Anyway it doesn’t matter. I am just glad I found Be.” He gives a quick sideways glance at the girl sipping coffee and a loving smile spreads over his rather non-genial face. “I am just so glad she is safe. You know, she is not quite right in her head. Persistent flights of fantasy, the doctor says. She imagines things, you know. We don’t let her out alone usually. But once in a while she gives us – me and my mom – the slip. I hope she wasn’t any trouble to you. Once again, thank you very much. Now I will take her home.” His voice is gentle again. I find great comfort in that.
“Mmm… by the way, about Mr. D…” I bring myself to speak but Pi is already at the coffee table helping his sister up.
”How was it to walk on the Moon, Mr. D?! Did the President give you medal for that?” Miss Be asks as they pass me by the counter. Pi gently but firmly guides her out of the cafeteria. “Mr. D? Will you write to me sometime?” She stands at the door for a hesitant second then walks out with Pi into their private world. There is a faint trace of mockery in her voice. Or is it amusement? Or maybe I am just imagining things. I stand at the counter undecided between the untouched coffee and a compulsively growing thought – Where can I find Mr. D?
Approximately 3000 meters high above land where life is made better and worse at the same time by Man I have found a certain quiet place to live by myself. On certain nights though people crowd my consciousness like moths around a flame and a strange hope, that I often consider dead, awakens and flutters around my heart. My cape of freedom gets caught for a while in the barbed-wire fence of civility I have dodged all my life. Last evening the twilight brought along two girls in halter-tops and back packs. Lesbians, I said to myself, when they walked up to my shack, and I liked them instantly – two midgets in a world obsessed with 6-foot tall, pouting myths. They were both dark, both short, and both uncomfortable in themselves. One had the page-boy haircut and was built like an adolescent boy – lanky, and disproportionate in form. The other had breasts that stood up in cultivated defiance inviting you to look at them. The rest of her looked emaciated; like her body has decided to shrink in instead of growing out at puberty. The defiance of her breasts seemed justified.
She’s holding a map in her hand. Under the kerosene lamp the blood-red of her nail polish looks dark and dull. Nail polish is an anomaly in a hut. Like dildos in a nunnery. But then strangers are anomalies. In our heads. To our known notions of what is. That is why they are strangers. Like fog their strangeness permeates into my soul. I watch it sullenly. It is dark and dull. I struggle to escape the looming sense of dreariness. My eyes, like homing pigeons, go back to her breasts. They have a confident air about them. Unlike the girls I notice. I picture them making love – these two strangers, naked before each other in their uncomfortable selves. The picture looks cute; cute being how I describe little babies making gargling noises in joy. I like babies. And I liked these two visitors in twilight cause I saw them making little gargling noises in joy as they made love to each other in my mind. Their bodies move in jerky slow motion. Hesitant yet hungry souls in search of an inordinately beautiful dream to share. I wondered what their bodies said to each other while their souls were in the throes of passion. All apologies? Like Curt Cobain sang? What a shame that would be.
‘Hello! I’m Cecelia,” she says – the girl with defiant breasts. I smile without curiosity. I notice the pimple scars on her face. “This is Caitlin.” I nod at Caitlin. She’s standing behind Cecelia, partially hiding herself from me – and generally from the world, I believe. “Are you lesbians?” I ask. “No. We are sisters,” says Caitlin with emphasis, and disappears behind Cecelia completely. I close my eyes tightly.
One.
Two.
Three.
Four.
Five.
Six.
Seven.
Eight.
Nine.
Ten.
Ten seconds are good enough to detach from enforced realities. You just need to know how, and keep practicing it. Cecelia and Caitlin might have stayed with me, shared my dinner and snuggled up to each other in the only extra mattress I keep, before heading up the hills. I don’t remember. Things that don’t interest me are not worth remembering, that’s what I believe. Why waste mental space and energy storing things that mean nothing to you. Childlike should one’s approach to life be. In intent and purpose seek a benevolent bliss, I tell myself every morning. In the night I go to bed with a smile and the daylight still intact in my heart. Caitlin and Cecelia, you could have been lesbians. Your strangeness would then have been so special; so tender and so fragile. So much a stance against the morality of the masses, so much a tribute to courage and love. Ah! Your presence would have filled my hut and my heart with so much beauty. What a night of hope it would have been. But you were just sisters – products of a chance relationship, uncomfortable still, and you broke through the 3000 meter barrier I built between us to give me that news! There can be no peace in this world, I reckon uneasily.
I hear a knock on my door. The door bell is broken. I haven’t fixed it. Why should I? I am not expecting anyone. Not anyone I can think of. Wait. Could it be? Is she coming back? She did leave in a huff. Could have changed her mind. Haste never is good, I used to tell her. She said I was just lazy. I guess she was partly right. But it evens out. If she was right half the time, she was wrong the other half. That’s how it all works out. Nobody is right all the time. Maybe she realizes it now. That kind of thing happens. When given enough time to think, people see their mistakes. And people do make mistakes. It is part of being human, isn’t it? That’s where the whole idea of second chances come in. That’s how we correct our mistakes. If we want to, that is. Do we take them – the second chances? All of us? I don’t think so. But I have a higher level of faith in my girl than I have in humanity as a whole. She will take that second chance. The time to think. So maybe she thought a bit. Or maybe a lot. You can think a little or a lot in any given time. And she saw she shouldn’t have left in her typical ‘Or I’ll huff and I’ll puff till I blow your house in’ kind of way. So she felt remorse and has decided to mend fences. She wants to say she is sorry. That we shouldn’t have split. But then she is headstrong. She is the kind of girl who would want me to apologize even when she is the one at fault. You know that kind, don’t you? It has something to do with their ego. Or absolute lack of it. I remember reading something of that sort in one of those ‘Man, Woman, & Relationships’ book. Pretty pretentious that lot is. How they make suckers of the common man!
One thing is for sure. She ain’t getting off easy this time around. I am sick of these temper tantrums. It gets on your nerves after a point, you know. I mean, in the beginning it is cute and all. She throws a fit, walks out and you stand there thinking, ‘It’s OK. This is what they do. Take a deep breath and just go and get her back home. Buy her something she wants if that works.’ It’s once again the thrill of the chase for you and the rush of being chased for them. Lovers become a couple on their first date once again in that brief time span. Romantic, right? But after thirty odd encores it is no more fun or OK. Especially when you have run out of new entreaties and the money to buy ‘welcome-back-gifts.’ Maybe she sees what I see. That is why she is back. She isn’t stupid or anything. She understands and she knows. Clever little fox she is, I admit. I remember this one time when we were out for a proper dinner in one of those restaurants where even the waiters seem to dress better than you, and we couldn’t get a place to sit. So we stood there at the reception with a dozen other people; all of us pretending as if we were not really praying for the bastards inside to eat real quick so that we can get on with our dinners. Out of the blue my lady’s shapely knees seemed to give in and before I could say ‘What the Hell!’ she was on the plush carpeted floor making a bed out of it. A kind of civilized ‘ooh,’ ‘aah,’ and ‘Oh my God!’ rose from the assembled crowd in tandem and had turned into a restrained murmur as the restaurant manager walked in. Just as he kneels down beside her my lady opened her eyes and wiped her brow in a proper lady-like gesture.
“Are you all right, Madam?” The manager’s voice showed a respectful and appropriate concern. I wondered if that tone would ever cut ice when proposing a girl.
“Oh! I’m sorry. I am so sorry,” says my lady as she gestures the manager to come closer to her. Then she whispers something into his ears. As I watch, the manager’s face seemed to reflect all the things his voice had just a moment ago. He looked at her for one more second before assisting her back on two legs. My lady smiles apologetically at the waiting crowd. The Manager escorts us to the dining room door. Another murmur rises from our dozen odd compatriots-in-misery but does not sound so civilized this time around.
“Oh, ladies and gentlemen, please accept my deepest apologies but this lady here is pregnant and as you saw needs immediate attention. With your kind permission, allow me to take her inside and help her settle into a chair.” Having said that, he ushered us to a table from which he dexterously removed a small sign that read ‘Reserved.’ After he had asked my companion thrice if he could get her a doctor, an offer she firmly declined thrice, and left us promising to return with our dinner in five minutes or less, I turned to my lady and beamed. Clever little fox, this one, I said to myself, smiling broadly at the people around with genuine pride.
The knocking is a bit impatient on the door now. Haste makes waste and often is the root cause of worry, I’d always said to her. But love is not only blind but many a times I have found it to be deaf too. I could have been talking to a wall. She just goes ahead and does what she feels like doing at any given moment. ‘Be spontaneous,’ she’d say. Spontaneous, my foot! Who’s waiting impatiently outside the door knocking to make amends now, Ms. Spontaneous?! Hah! It would be a real pleasure to see her sorry-faced pride now. Wait. That knock somehow seems to lack the grace of a ladylike request for entry into someone’s house. It sounds more angry than apologetic. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe it’s the landlord. Those people are animals, I say. Not an inch of humanity in the whole length and breadth of their bodies. Like ghosts they haunt you till they get their green. Or could it be the neighbor who always wants to know if I’m fine? Pesky fellow that one. Can’t stand him. He can literally chase you down a block or two just to check with you if you are fine. I mean, people with such over-enthusiastic concern about others are real pain-in-the-you-know-where. But it’s a bit early for him to be up and about. It could be… Mmm…Who could it be? I am not expecting anyone really… I mean, no one has come around in a while… The doorbell died a long time ago, you know… can’t think who it could be… I’m not expecting anyone… the doorbell, it hasn’t been fixed…
Is there a knock at my front door? I thought I heard something.
He was sickeningly lonely.
She wanted to be cherished.
She gave him companionship.
He gave her a diamond ring.
‘Now we are happy,’ said they
and died – together
in their private peace.
Oh, mother, maiden, moonchild! -
whisper to me as this falling night
what darkness your heart beholds
what tragedy so undying a love?
The human world hangs in a dark universe. Like a glowing, red terracotta lamp. The kind that lights up living room corners of people convinced of their aesthetic tastes and can afford convictions. Little black bugs, flies and mosquitoes buzz around the warm spot of life, swarm it in increasing frenzy. Lust for life hums in relief. The vast expanse of lifeless, lightless universe around it waits patiently. Like a pet python that knows the chicken thrown inside its cage has no escape. Certainty gives one the patience of a saint.
And the world goes on spinning. Ever so fast. But not more so. In its pitch-perfect way. Every day, every hour, every millisecond spinning toward an absolute unknown. Perfect in its calculated motion. Perfect on its axis. Spinning. Like a merry-go-round. Round and round and round and round. Nauseate if you must, but don’t fall off.
Don’t take your feet off the ground. The ground is haloed. It is the warm spot of life. Where the sun doesn’t turn you into cinder. Where the moon doesn’t suck life out of your lungs. Love, laughter, lust, even if available in carbon copies made in triplicate, give you reasons to dream. Holding hands and smiling babies divulge meaning. Sustenance is to be found. Stay on the ground. Off it there’s only floating emptiness. Without light, without life. Causeless. Ceaseless. Helpless isolation in a darkness without end. Floating in dead cold. Going nowhere but going all the same. It’s so black out there the Grey in here is beguiling. Don’t take your feet off the ground. Nauseate if you must but don’t fall off.
You have seen them before. The fallen. They are everywhere.
At the bottom of ravines and cliffs.
Splattered on concrete pavements next to tall buildings.
Hanging from ceilings and trees.
Bloating in sewers and decimated on train tracks running through every city.
You have heard the stories. The shotgun in the mouth, empty sleeping pill bottles by the couch,
needle sticking out of bleeding veins, an overdose of something not really sane.
You have seen them stare mutely from obituary columns that say – You Left Us Too Early.
In Fond Memory, it is not.
It’s a scar.
The mark of sheer brutality.
Incomprehensible as all that lies in the dark is. Unreasonable, it is.
The calling card left behind by some invisible, invincible enemy.
Whose cold, calm hands drain away the red of life with manic precision.
Leaving us with the blue of pain, and then, the black of absence in our lives.
The black void of goodbyes never said and the hellos never to be said again.
Of loss. Of grief that pales only because the horror is too much.
The living cannot dwell in emptiness for long.
We must keep spinning. In the dark. Against the dark. Spin.
Round and round and round and round. Nauseate if you must but don’t fall off.
There’s some white in grey but none in black. Hold on.
