Goodness, Greatness, Me

I met a girl on an airplane, once. She was a Management student in a tracksuit and cargo pants with her hair unkempt. I gave her my laptop because hers had died and she needed to make a presentation. I gave her my flash-drive when mine was about to die as well. We struck conversation on a funeral note about false-advertisement and sleaze in product endorsement and how she vouched for both. We conversed for as long as the flight lasted – a span of six hours – five and a half of which I spoke. The rest of the time was spent in sleep and embarrassment, hers and mine in that order. I knew she started talking because she wanted my computer, I knew she kept on because I gave it to her. I wasn’t embarrassed, back then when it happened. 

It reminds me of what Woody Allen said about indulgence and guilt and, more importantly, guilt in indulgence – in that it’s post-dated and shows up after the damage is done to do some more. 

“When I was a kid, I used to play softball. I’d steal second base, feel guilty and go back.” 

In fact, there is no damage done, initially, if you think about it. The case of embarrassment is not a case of a crack widening. It’s what I’d like to call a pencil-mark illusion that blurs your vision that you fashion a crack that grows and grows enough for the building to collapse. And you wake up from destruction in a pool of sweat and thank the sunshine for making your body glisten – as though the forces of nature have nothing to do but avenge your fate and save you some grace. 

Take, for instance, the scene in Chaplin’s ‘the Circus’ where the Tramp listens in from behind the curtain as the woman he loves hangs his heart out to dry, telling a friend that she loves another man. She does nothing to cause his disappointment but he is, needless to say, disappointed. Nothing had happened, no visible harm done. And yet he is ashamed and humbly so. Is it sadness because his castle fell? Partly, yes. For the most, however, it has to do with the fact that he let himself build it in the first place, without the assurance of a foundation stone. 

Shame, that way, is what you do to yourself. It’s like an orgasm, but in reverse; the effect of a mind wide open. It’s like a half an orgasm. It’s like two orgasms when in a coma that you get out of and find yourself spent, much to your displeasure. If fame is the child desired in a union of self-interest and self-deprecation, shame is the bastard. In a life that is performance, we’d like some fame. There’s fame in acceptance, there’s fame in infamy. And there’s this gift-voucher that’s a coin on the bedside table. It’s smooth, it’s shiny; it has two heads. The call is ‘tails.’ 

Here I go back to Allen’s paraphrase of the Groucho Marx quote – “I’d never want to belong to a club that has someone like me for a member.” 

But then it so happens that I always sign up for it, first. 

“Love is sadism, love is treachery; love is the single most selfish thing in the world,” I once said. I’m ashamed I said that. Love is like chocolate on an empty stomach, guilt is the acid churned that helps process it. And I’m ashamed I said that as well. I’m ashamed because it’s a statement and a statement is conclusive. But life isn’t conclusive – art could be conclusive, where art is representative. The image beckons, the source eludes. Much like love itself. 

I was sitting in an interview, once, when I was asked if I’ve ideas for films I’d like to make as I had already mentioned I’d like to make some. I pulled a title out of the hat inside my head. It was called ‘her Secret Place’, one I found when sitting through Springsteen in a Leonard Cohen trance. And it met some images from ‘Punch-Drunk Love’ and it became something else entirely – that which drew the writer out in me. It was about a man’s facilitation in love by the woman he loves except he doesn’t know it till she does it and they’re together; he’s in constant fear of the facade of attraction, with doubt that threatens to tear it down. 

It’s a flit between ‘he loves her’ and ‘he knows not’, in short, but it is optimistic in that it puts the onus on the woman. The man is, perhaps, a bottle of beer and a scramble for responsibility. The woman keeps it (responsibility) in a jar in her kitchen and sprinkles some on top of tomato-garnish. The man never eats it, the woman never stops. She takes it upon her to put the man at ease, he does his part in that he learns to let her. Still, he does enough damage. Ego comes to play. Cynicism hurts it, guilt resuscitates – guilt, the fur-ball monster slain and sewn into a blanket that protects the fire as frostbite looms in a spectrum of cold, on your ears, your nose, your throat, your body, your knees that creak and sides that cramp as hands and feet and courage go limp as you decide to not decide to wake up; to tell her what you think. 

Dr. Chaubey, the man who interviewed me, asked me if I had read T.S. Eliot’s ‘the Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.’ I told him I haven’t. He didn’t have with him lines to recite, but he asked me to take a look some time. I told him that I’d make it a point to when I got back in front of a computer again. 

When I did, I found these lines. 

Do I dare 

Disturb the Universe? 

In a minute there is time 

For decisions and revisions that a minute will reverse

Somewhere along the way is a line that says “in short, I am afraid.” Why does he hesitate? What does he fear? Hesitation, to me, is the fear of letting oneself down, which, I think, is what causes disappointment in being let down to begin wit. It’s a foresight of shamefacedness, head hung low, when facing oneself in the eve of such a letdown. You play both hunter and prey to the same cannibalistic meal – you hate yourself for not tasting better, you hate yourself for not having had a different taste. It’s a win-win situation for the monster inside. 

I think every negative emotion, every measurable amount of suffering in the world, thus, can be narrowed down to two kinds of guilt – guilt in intention against guilt as a consequence of action. It’s like Dostoevsky writes about Raskolnikov in ‘Crime and Punishment’ – “If he has a conscience, he will suffer for his mistake. That will be punishment, as well as the prison.” You make a mistake, you repent it, you suffer. You intend a mistake, you never really bring yourself to do it, you still suffer. Dmitry Karamazov never killed his father, but he lived with the knowledge that he meant to. You’d need to be your own Devil’s Advocate to exonerate yourself from that sort of accusation. 

I ask the same question that Allen asks himself in his ‘Early Essays: On Youth and Age,’ validating myself constantly as I pose it to myself. 

“Is it better to be the lover or the loved one?” he asks. 

“Neither, if your cholesterol is over six hundred,” he answers. 

I can’t come up with a wittier response on my own – where mine would be to resign to fate. 

I’m embarrassed I wrote this essay 

I’m embarrassed you’d have to read 

I’m embarrassed I try to snap out of it 

I’m embarrassed I find I can’t beat 

my embarrassment

from one Ejaculation to another

The man had so much to say that it was like he lived with us. Or exactly the opposite. It wasn’t romanticism, for there was nothing there to build upon. It was fanciful to the point of being absurd, but it wasn’t like I was trying not to laugh for the sake of being dignified in a gathering that, clearly, was meant for something else. I was moved too by his performance and yes – it was a performance. The tone was robotic, synthesized; almost like medicine, prescribed and paid for. 

He was just the undertaker, after all. He couldn’t have meant the things that he said. And yet, no one seemed to resist belief. 

 He mounted one glorious thing on top of another, inventing ways to venerate someone who’s definitely not done as much. Someone associated, in his time, with more disrespect than honour, his presence a burden be it lovable or loathsome. Someone who had my Father question his integrity as a son, and it was like he almost needed a forced regression in this twisted good-cop-bad-cop routine where you play all three roles of Cop and Fugitive; to indict yourself and invoke the guilt. 

Someone who lay dead and cold in front of us. 

My Grandfather. 

It was every other morning of waking up in my bed in the room that I had to myself for the whole of two semesters, my final two semesters at college which were busy spent making plans for elsewhere – like planning dessert when halfway through the main course; as if there weren’t enough ways to objectify life even more. It was earlier than usual; my usual. It was a Saturday. There were calls from my Mother in the morning that I had missed and there were calls from my Father as well. Usual, again. They’ve always alternated with their efforts to reach out. 

What was peculiar this time was the time they had called – early to be ‘early’ but not too much so. It was like they were waiting for me to wake up or at least be in a position to wake up; where it wouldn’t be unfair to wake me up, if you get what I’m saying. You’re woken up at 2 in the morning, you know it’s an emergency. You’re woken up at five, you know someone has died. 

It’s something I assumed as I’ve seen neither before. 

I knew this man was sick, almost crippled. I have seen him sick; demented, broken, blind and living in shambles. And except for those times that I’ve fancied myself to be from this family of Superheroes where no one has died (on my Father’s side, at least), I’ve expected it; I had to. Some day, I knew, he was going to die. Some day, I knew, I had to quit laughing about it and take it with a straight face. 

I thought about the interview, then, in a rush of thought. There was this interview that I had to go to the very next day. I had to go to another city, report at this place that I was supposed to stay and get myself prepared for the day after. And I had had more than one reason to go to this place, to the interview. 

Now I had another. 

xxx 

Every time she saw me, she would turn away. It wasn’t even nice anymore; it was an act that had surpassed its glory and gone on to spaces I wouldn’t dare explore. I had my guilt subdued, if I ever felt it, and it irked me to find that she had hers intact. 

Actually, I didn’t know if it was guilt or embarrassment or anything of that sort. 

At first I thought she had gone anti-social. I didn’t see her in class, I didn’t run into her in the corridors, I didn’t see her at the hangouts, I didn’t see her up and about. 

I thought she was depressed because it was so like her to be. 

And she also had this nervous condition that gave her migraines and I knew she ailed – yet another demon to ascribe her abduction to. She hadn’t called, she hadn’t responded to my calls. But I knew she was around; I was told so. If only those people knew how it felt when they knew something that I didn’t know about someone I thought that I knew best. 

One thing that I did know is that she was to act in this staging of Stoppard’s play ‘the Real Inspector Hound’, where she was to play the seductress Cynthia, one who has wooed many a men in the audience and beyond with kisses showered on those on stage. Those kisses that got catcalls and cheers from an overawed crowd; kisses that were but caricatures that meant nothing compared to the tenderness for those we shared.

Kisses that were never shared, for it was a college stage, and yet they drove me mad with sheer malicious intent. She knew I’d watch, she knew I’d be there. I searched for a sliver of recognition beyond walls of lipstick and lotion, amidst a sea of people in forced orgasm that bordered on hers. If anger were orgasm, I had my share. 

I wasn’t past confrontation, though. 

In fact, it was all I wanted, but I wanted it chanced. She wouldn’t listen to plans, I had to run into her. She wouldn’t listen to whispers, I had to cry. She wouldn’t pay heed to tears but I can’t fake smiles in a massacre of emotion. 

I told her all this when it finally happened because I made it. It was like watching a concept take shape in form of her face, when what was merely a reflection of my energies transformed into a person who could sweat and weep, for she did both and I saw her do that. 

“Shit”, I said to myself. “She’s a girl.” 

She didn’t say much but she said enough. There was someone in her kettle she was drying to drown and I knew that. The water was too little, the pressure was too weak and the kettle, that’s herself, didn’t allow it. All she had done until that point, with me, was let off steam with the smoke she blew. 

And it was like nothing had ever happened. 

xxx 

I’m a single stroke person. 

If there’s a reason I wouldn’t write something, I wouldn’t want to write it twice. Thoughts are obscure as they are and I wouldn’t want them to repeat. It’s something that the observer doesn’t permit in me out of compassion for the writer who doesn’t want himself out there. There’s nakedness in every exposure, every moment on film. 

So I sat myself down to write, got distracted on the go. 

And I left one ejaculation for the sake of another. 

I like bathrooms when they’re dry; I don’t prefer virgins, if that’s a contradiction. I looked around, I stood my ground and I figured myself out. It felt like verse, as always. Quick, quiet and comfortable. 

“Screw writing; rub one out instead!” could become a slogan with a catchphrase that quotes the classic “it’s sex with someone you love.” Woody Allen would endorse it. 

Writing is for people who take their time, I thought. 

Like Virginia Woolf. 

Like Annie Dillard. 

Dried-up old ladies who came to mind when the deed was done and I was glad they did for they helped keep afloat on a sea of hormones. I doubted that I’d dive again. 

It was then that it happened – as though a cosmic force had propelled him, “fluttering from side to side of his square of the windowpane” before he fell right in front of me, there by the side; almost exactly like she wrote. 

A Moth. 

The Acoustic version. The Night-Prowler. The Bastard Child. 

Life would have had him fly; but then, he had fallen. It must mean death, surely. 

In a surge, I had a haunt of everything that had passed me by up until that point. His Death, the Break-Up, the Interview, the classroom discussion – a host of such things that needed a Moth to remind me of them. 

In a second, they all came around. 

I looked at the Moth again. His wing was broken, his legs twitched. I could almost swear that he was one eye blind. 

He stirred, he stood up; he looked around. He then took flight as though he had always been meaning to. Out through the window, and I would never see him again. 

I stepped outside the bathroom, my head buzzing with the air-conditioner, my mobile phone alight; I had a call to answer, I had a deadline to meet. I had water outside my door, threatening to break its way in. 

Then, I thought, was a good time to write.

to Annie, without Love

Annie, 

Have you ever lost a Moth when you looked at another? Or have you lost them both not knowing which one to look at? 

How many candles do you have, burning, in your room? 

What if the best you could recollect of death is a shadow flickering on your brazen wall; where ‘Death’, at that time, couldn’t have meant death at all for you just didn’t witness it? 

Between two insignificances, which one would you pick, to caress into meaning? 

There is a spider on a cobweb in my bathroom as well, sitting pretty on top of a mix of flies, dragonflies, ants and, yes, of course, moths – unsung heroes of a lost cause. There is a spider in everyone’s bathroom, isn’t there? More than one, in some cases, as though they symbolize the extent of predatory tendencies kept in check, realized but in conflict with mortal fear as we take the place of both assailant and victim at the same time. 

Just like falling in love. 

Like when you claim your ‘love’ for a person when you don’t know for sure if you really mean it but then you want them to know what’s going on with the hope that they, if not help ease you out of your discomfort, would get down and suffer with you instead. In ‘love’; ‘love’ as sadism, ‘love’ as treachery, ‘love’ as the single most selfish emotion in the world. 

Like how you derive the pleasure of existence outside of yourself; where the pleasure is felt not by the Moth, but by you, the Monster – the heartless machine that would pump its engines with the juice of lives that pass you by in encounters, both chanced and planned. 

If only for a second you sat on the Moth and saw through its eyes, you’d swap your candle for fluorescence to let it live. And you’d let it leave, because there’s nothing you can do to make it stay and death isn’t an option – not its death, not yours. You’d let it leave like how you’d have let everyone else leave or have learnt to, the insects of your life who’d have fed on your glow, whom you’d have nurtured, whom you’d have melted in front of before having to pull yourself together and collect yourself back again to get a new candle up – fresh, but recycled. 

That, or you could’ve fooled yourself with fluorescence and the flower that said ‘she loves me not’ (she never did) when the last petal fell. 

I read your work. I hated it. It was beautiful, but I hated it still. You can’t make me sad unless I have faith in you to make me happy sometime. I can’t let you do that to me. I shouldn’t have – for which reason, I hate myself more for having shown to you my naked self, not a strand of hair on my chest; naked thought and emotion – further naked. It’s like I spoke to but a mere ghost of you and desired more, only to find that you weren’t even there to begin with. 

It’s vivid when I recollect the time that I spent, under your influence; when I saw you sit there as you told me your story, shifting in your seat and glancing at the door all the time and I pretended to the best of my ability that I couldn’t see that because I had turned my back on you to make you some coffee, looking over my shoulder to check. And then it was like I came outside, disheartened, as I made this excuse that there wasn’t any sugar when, in reality, it was that I felt you didn’t deserve the sweetness of one who really cared. You didn’t get your coffee, I didn’t get my kiss. That tasted like fairness. 

The classic example of a reader’s dissatisfaction with ‘mere words’, if I can call it that. Where, in a toss between your garden and mine, I would ask for yours any day. If only you would let me. 

I suffered with the bounty of your mind inside my head, not knowing what to do with all the gold that I held, not wanting to spend, not wanting to count; dreading the fact that it would all disappear as it’s bound to. Not wanting to melt and cast into an image of my own in the meantime, where I know I’d fancy you to be the Bear that I hugged to sleep on the planet that I was, a million moons back – innocence. 

And now, dear Annie, I want you to burn in the black of mine. And I hope you burn a sunset Orange in a Purple haze, for that’s a colour I would ascribe you to. 

hatred and helplessness, 

Karthik

My, oh My, oh My

If only you were in the midst of my mind where I keep you alive because I need you around. You wouldn’t be talking about ‘things moving too fast in life’, then. 

I wanted to draw a picture of you and I couldn’t. Perhaps it was the thought that I had your image perfected inside my head and ready to replicate would have you admire me more; as though you didn’t admire me enough without me having to do that. 

But then, what do I admire you for? 

It’s not something that I’m not aware of and yet can’t explain. It’s the voice in my head that sounds like David Gray when he goes: 

“There’s something in your eyes 

That makes me smile... 

Oh, yeah.” 

There IS something in your eyes that makes me smile. Like I saw the glitter on the cover of those Pokemon cards I was caught stealing and got slapped for in seventh Class. In them, I find my desire to be a better person. In agitation to be more mellow. More nostalgic, more beautiful, more insightful, more fun; more of ‘me’ than I could ever be and I still want to go further. As if better versions of myself are all that you asked for. 

And that is because I don’t know what you want. 

This is my most fragmented narrative of all and I find it in order; in adherence to my mind’s sequence, a place where I’ve got it all mapped out – a plan so frantic whose potency I can’t keep pace with. A place where I get lost often; where the last I remember is holding your hand as you left me by the street on my way back home. Two kilometres in a head filled with you, in street-art, in car-headlights and the eyes of an occasional dog that I had to fight to avoid; that so terrifies me. In the most hazardous of times, most comforted. 

“If only life were like ‘Before Sunrise’,” I told you, if you remember. “I would kiss you on a roller-coaster with the sun in your eyes.” 

I couldn’t say the second part to you and have you scandalized. 

Why is it that I can never like someone and feel comfortable standing? What is it about attraction that it’s got to be so discomforting, compulsively, putting me in a whirlwind that sends me spinning to an Oz of my own where they’ve put up posters of you, your smile in red, your face in yellow and your eyes in sunset orange, lined by scanty kajal that you never knew how to put. Like you were the proud drawing of my six-year old self that I called ‘Dollie’ and showed my parents with a naughty little smile on my face. 

Where your hair was green and your retainer blue, for I only had a six-colour box where I had used up everything else. And I found you beautiful like that. 

If only you heard the things I said to those I complained about you. You’re the stomach ache that has me starve – to eat would mean to replace you for that’s where you reside, soothing against the acid; tickling me from within. We tried my heart where you were cramped for space. I suggested we move you elsewhere. And I suffer from my suggestion, only too sweetly. 

I’m clearer now. It’s like I’ve woken up from waters that you pushed me into, off my bed as I rolled over the side and lay sprawled on the floor; drenched, but never cold. I sleep without air-conditioning. I don’t remember if I’ve told you this before. 

I’ve found I can’t write when I’ve lost track of myself in my scramble for space and time (with you); I had to turn some pages to get familiar so I could write these things that I thought about you. And I had my hand on my mouth with a smile on my face and my head shaking in disbelief as I read these lines that I once wrote in a distant-sounding song. I had called it ‘Shame.’ 

“...and we’ll make love on sunset-streams, 

Splashing in the sand...” 

I was outraged; embarrassed that I had written/thought something like this before. Like I could pull my shirt over my head so no one can see my face turn red.

Look at how little you’ve made me.

SECRETS - II

This isn’t a commemoration. This is second-time honesty. 

I’ve been crazy the past few days and I even know why. I can’t say it though. I wouldn’t even hint at it, which is ironic because the very intention of this post is to do just that. Or to remind myself of a pitiful state of mind that I’m already aware of with enough of a dose to incite retaliation, intimidate my senses and to threaten them to cooperation with the fleeting vision of a doleful ‘or else.’ Not gruesome death as a ransom note that would sign my own release papers, but eventuality as the brick-red wall that grows with my efforts to climb it. I think I’m trying to put in words the inimitable agony of what it takes to ‘snap out of it.’ Which is what I’d try to do with the rest of this post as well, at the end of which I shall either have ‘snapped out of it’, or have admitted my failure to do so. 

The last time I shared my secret with you, I told you how I anticipated the time I would see you on screen and ask my mother to quit it with the Divas and take a look at mine. That song-and-dance routines never change was the bottomline where I wished for your intervention in that hour-long slot. And yesterday was the first time I felt threatened by that notion. 

Not that drastically– it’s not like I’ve never had to eat my words before, I think that’s primarily why I try to cook them up this well, so I wouldn’t have trouble eating them back in poor reception. That, of course, is a cooked-up statement as well. Words aren’t vomit where the mind is a takeaway counter that rings with the bell at every summon of thought delivering itself like a tasteful salad that’s both healthy and cold so you could relish it and it wouldn’t burn you and yet leave you like it should – warm in the heart and satiated in the belly. I’m going to go have one in an hour from now. 

Ah, if only life were as simple as a train of thought that I could take to the poles and bring back home loaded with Christmas gifts. Then I would have you gifted a record that played this song for you that I’d already have written and kept aside for the moment to come, except I wouldn’t remember it and you wouldn’t have expected it and both of us would be pleasantly surprised. You, with my intention, and me, with my ability, rediscovered. Too clichéd? 

And it’s not that I’m incapable of poetry. It’s that I despise it. Poetry I write for you is inevitably mine. I’d be a verbal exhibitionist encroaching upon you, puffed-up with the rise you gave me, wielding a baton you would never take in hand even though you might appreciate it from a distance. Appreciate and not be alarmed, because you’d find me beautiful, naked; because I’d have found you beautiful and I’d show you as I saw you through my eyes that made you so. Your beauty could be twenty two, about as old as you are, but I shall have made it twelve years old, sexless and naive. Part of me calls it 'inspiring consent', but then I hear a wry little voice saying 'Rape.' I'm no predator.

I can’t tell you, I can’t write you a poem, I can’t sing you a song, I can’t make you a movie that has us both as characters where the one that’s me tells the one that’s you exactly how he feels, and I can’t do that because I don’t know what would happen after that. Would you still smile the smile that you smile so often? Would you deem me misguided and spin me around so I could find my way, except I’d spin myself around and head back to you again? Would you be offended? Would you be kind? Would you shame me with your sympathy? Would you honour me with your anger? Would you dust me off with condescension – the air of one who’s seen much better, much worse that my adequacy wouldn’t impact you enough? 

I don't know if you made me, I don't know if I brought it upon myself, but for the first time in a long, long while, I'm speechless; clueless. For the first time in a long, long while, I ache. And for the first time in a long, long while, I write.

THE SECOND DAY

It was 18:57 when I last checked my mobile phone, (before I got inside, of course) I remember minimizing my music screen to facilitate that. ‘In the Sun’ by She & Him, and I stayed put for an unknown bit. Maybe 10 minutes, but I’m not sure and that’s the whole point. I’m not sure.

I’m not hung over, mind you. Kind of a pathetic way to begin a sincere narrative but I thought I had to stick to the trend to illustrate I’m not part of it. I hope that makes sense. I spent seventeen minutes between 18:30 and 18:47 at the exact place where I had boarded the vehicle yesterday, and my clock runs seven minutes fast, not that I intend it not to. And it’s not like I couldn’t wait longer, but I was struck by this better idea or at least something that looked better to me at that ‘lost’ point of time, so I stopped the next vehicle (a ‘share-auto’ if you must know). I asked for ‘Thirumangalam’ and he nodded. I hopped in.

Once right away, once when we turned at the arch and quite extensively from then. I remember ‘Ridin’ in my car’ pretty well, and I also remember me losing track of time and place at that point. I was doing it subconsciously, like a sort of normal emotional reaction. She had me hooked, yeah, I’d never deny that. I prayed that she wouldn’t get down at the next turn and she didn’t, thankfully. She only smiled even more at how I reacted to that fleeting rise she threw my way.

No, not here. Not here. I remember this illuminated white strip on an otherwise dark kind of road (it’s the same road, portions of which are darker than usual, a sign of uninhabited state). I didn’t have time on my side so I ought to be deciding fast, or so I thought. And I found no white rectangle.

How long would this go on anyway? How long… I mean, not that I didn’t want it to go on forever, but could I have trusted my near-hypnotized self? And I really thought she could hear my mind, I sort of highlighted that voice with whispers through my lips, forming phrases like, “Oh my…” and “this is so… odd, so… awkward!” and then I looked at her and she smiled and I smiled, and I swear I hadn’t smiled as broad before.

I was past it, pretty much and this self-assuredness gave me some weight, really. I was able to fully appreciate in a way that I could end up not seeing her again, but that didn’t have to stop me from trying, you know. Two things filled my mind, predominantly. One was that if I was past where she got down, then that would explain her absence in the autos that went past me, and the second was that if I was at a place before where she got down, then I simply had to be extra cautious, or I don’t know… Man, it’s a sick thing to be doing all the same.

Ten minutes? Of all the warmth that we had felt, and she could spare just ten minutes? What’s that, some super-miser, or just pure ‘femme fatale’? No, no way, this can’t be a test, this surely can’t be… and there’s this other girl sitting right in front, chic with a pair of lips glossing out from the oddest place for them to be, and… No, I was moving again and she was moving away. I couldn’t find voice enough to ask him to stop, to tell him that was where I should be getting down. She smiled at me, a distant smile from twenty metres away. The one next to me looked dumbstruck. And I was speechless, blank and misty.

Well before she got down, and all I had to do was wait. I thought I’d kip at a signal and peer into everything that went past, and that could uncomplicated things, an irony in itself. 19:28. I thought I had lost her already, you know. Recollections of how I wished to ask the girl in front of me if she liked what she was listening to and tell her what I thought of it, and... that didn’t make it out of my throat either.

“Are you looking at anything in particular, or are you just trying to not look at me?”. Of course I didn’t ask that! I didn’t ask her anything, I didn’t make the rhetoric I wanted to make, I didn’t progress on this front where I imagined me having a girlfriend like her, high-maintenance, lot of expectations, too much of promises that I couldn’t linger on for even a moment. Everyone else found a reason to get down before, and it was just me and her by the time we reached where I had to get down. She spoke in Tamil, much to my surprise, and she had successfully avoided looking at me for the whole of it. I tried to keep an eye out for her as I picked up a call on my phone. I answered it.

She was gone. I couldn’t explain this little tear that made its way out of my left eye. And I didn’t bother to look out for her either.

Umm nope, not answering. And I tried again, same result. 19:35. I thought of the things I said yesterday, things I wrote, things I wanted to write, encounters that never were and how chasing something that never was could only be a way into delusion; into believing what I want to believe as opposed to what needs belief. I thought of the only time when I had actually broken the ice, and how I had waited for dawn in my hostel-days so I could read what she had to say. A week, and they’d be back again, I thought. And that could be a level of happiness that could swallow this angst against myself, against this life that so denies itself in actuality, and cloud nine would be too low a place for me to be in then.

I thought of her, I thought of ‘seeking against living’, fidelity, trust, a stable mind and… my mother finally picked up, told me she’d be waiting where I usually get down, and I felt like something peppy to mark this change of direction. ‘Smooth’ by Carlos Santana featuring Rob Thomas.

I headed home.

THE GOOD MOTHER

“You sure?”

“He has her lips”, he observed. “Don’t you-”

“You look at her lips?”

“Oh, don’t tell me-”

“I’m positive.”

And he pulled out a page from a magazine folded into eighths from inside his pocket, unfurled it for him to see and held it beside the face of the one in focus, who closed his eyes, unable to bear the effect anymore.

“See?”

“Wow.”

“This is insane…” he remarked.

He turned to leave, apparently having had enough of the whole thing, seeing it was no fire-drill for him to get out of it unscathed. There were emotions (as ironical as it could sound) and emotions can get hurt wherever they exist, needless to say. He was addressed before he fled the scene, forced to turn around fighting tears of frustration.

“Can you…?”

He was extended a pen along with the piece of paper, now back to being folded. What was intended needn’t be said for it was more than understood. They stood up to leave.

“So…” the politer one hesitated. “We’ll see you tomorrow, then?”

The boy looked down, biting his lower lip.

xxxxxxxx

“So… Good day today?”

“Mhmm.”

“That’s nice to know.”

He stopped for a moment before he made a move on it, thinking he could probably lie to them the next day saying she refused. But maybe the world knew more about her than he did so he decided to give it to her all the same, a nicety in gratitude to her for collecting him from school that day. He thrust his hand down his pants.

“Mom”, he said.

She knew what was to happen for she didn’t quite seem alien to the whole thing. She sighed.

“Honey”, she shook her head, squeezing her brow (or what was left of it). “Haven’t I-?”

“I swear…” he said, handing the pen and the page to her. “I haven’t seen it.”

She took it in hand, a worried look playing around her eyes. It wasn’t the first time that she had felt that particular piece of paper in hand. It wasn’t the first time she had seen what was on it either. She almost smiled.

xxxxxxxx

“I’ll be back in a couple, love”, she said as she dropped him home. “Take care.”

The boy tucked the page (that now had her clothed in her autograph and a pair of hearts) back where he brought it out from and as he walked towards home, the door was slammed shut and the car sped out through the gate. There was quite a bout of silence before she exclaimed, looking at her watch.

“Shit!” she said. “I’m late.”

FIZZ

He leaned to his right and that wasn't a bias or bad posture, it was just where he could find some glass to stop his fall. And it wasn't like he was falling already, neither can I say if he's back from being down, but as much as I'm allowed, I could see him wetting the screen. Not really an exaggerated gush of tears but just a trickle that found its way somehow. Phones in his ears, but I can't say why, maybe his mind was so loud that he didn't want more; or maybe he just wanted the steam to stay where it was, not wanting out at all.

He got his ticket, nothing big or maybe not because there's no real time and place to kill oneself; there's no time and place to find it all either and I could claim to know more about it than I'm allowed to boast about and I'd be right about it too. I didn't know if he'd welcome conversation, I'm not a woman. And he was just a boy, I needed intention. Didn't take me long to find one anyway.

I debated a while on touch or call, but then I thought I'd wait till he looked this way, a gamble worth fifteen minutes of my life. I simply had to make sure.

xxxxxxxx

I read his lips, he was talking to me. I was sure he wasn't the one singing 'Edge of Desire' inside my head and that's not because I knew John Mayer came without a beard. It was mere impulse and some sort of pragmatic thought, and I don't know why I started trying to explain it in the first place. I had to pull my earphones out to make out what he was saying.

"Which college?"

"IIT", I said. "IIT Madras."

He questioned me no more, neither did he react in any fathomable way to what I said (not that I looked for it, though) but he managed to put me in a self-analytical (maybe self-deflating) state of mind as I tried to find what could possibly have made him ask what he asked me. Maybe that totally wasn't what he intended to throw my way, being just a residue of some screwed up thought that beards like him could be capable of. Maybe he was gay and I had long hair, and no I'm not American enough to get there upfront, there could be more tangible, yet relevant explanations to that than that.

Maybe the tears, yeah, that could be it. Dress sense, listening to music, lips that phrased English words, he could have thought I had a breakup or something, as absurd as it sounds, I was just misty eyed on a humid day, or maybe he was sick of seeing a grown man 'cry' and so he prodded me out like how you feed the child to shut its mouth. No, I still can't be sure about that. I don't know if or if not I was crying the first place, it's the kind of time when you think about something and it gives you some emotions and then you think about something else that turn your previous emotions to something very alien that a revisit would only make you all the more surprised, I really don't know. Or maybe it's just me.

I flicked a tear on glass because I liked to see it on something else, or maybe I just wanted to see more of myself in a sort of non-self way. He had a shoulder bag that hung to his side at the height of his hip to his right, and there could have been a million things that he could have held within, most of which would have to stay outside to leave some space for those within. As much as the mind can rave, I happened to think of a couple of things.

I thought Laptop, Brassieres, Cash Register, Milk Powder. And Detonator.

xxxxxxxx

Needless to say, even lesser so to emphasize, he got down at the next stop and 'he' got down at the one after that. The bomb blasted in Baghdad.

THE LAST STAND

“The Left that’s left”, junior read out loud as wincing at the sound of a gun fired too close for comfort. He then went on to read the main article, or parts of which he thought made sense.

“You never said-” began a voice next to him, as close as the gun. The Captain.

“Did I have to?” he responded.

Gunfire again. “You have to if you have to”, the Captain said, clearing doubts on faking. “Don’t let me stop you.”

“It’s not an uncommon thought to have thought that Marxist ideals took the ultimate plunge into obscurity when Latin America fell, the tale of heat from the cold needn’t be told again. But what the UCA (United Continents of America) knows not is that while the communists have been thrown out to the sea, they happen to have had vessels enough to save some spirit…”

Gun fired again, this time followed by a fading moan – The Captain had missed his mark. However, it didn’t take him long to correct his mistake, this time giving way to quiet after the ammo.

“Yes, I’m talking about the Atlantic. Ever wondered why the UCA flies? Ever wondered if the Airbus was anything more than just a cruise (or cargo) vehicle? Ever felt that the S.S.Obama is not just the wreck it’s said to be? If you have, you haven’t been just alleging: You’re closer to reality than the totalitarian can ever get, you’re hitting it right”, he paused for a while. “Have we made-”

“Yes we have”, came the interruption.

“Did he-”

“Yes he did.”

“Wow”, he sighed, mostly in relief. “Thank the force for that!”

The men then went ahead with what they were doing, although the Captain never really stopped.

“Post-modernism helped identify with them, even empathize perhaps. But a wider eye helps one see that post-apocalyptic is hardly the case here where revolution is concerned, because there’s a tag-team of proprietors of a movement that only just showed its first fa-”

“Wait a minute.” The gunfire had paused too.

He turned to face him. “What?”

The Captain pointed a finger at him. “You”, he said, slightly perturbed. “You could have-”

“The name was on the other side”, he responded coolly. “I can’t have.”

He thought for a while and then remembered, in the mildest of flashes. The boy was right.

“Shit speaks for itself”, he said, resuming business. “We’re just the calling card.”

“Have a look at this”, Junior said, pointing at a photograph next to a name obscured. Both of them looked down to their left, at a man who was trying hard to stay still, his tears signifying life.

“I missed that one”, he said in awe. “Of all my American a-”

He gripped the man hard by his collar and propped him against a cabin wall, the latter’s shudder strengthening his give-away.

“The last stand”, read Junior, his eyes fixed almost entirely on the faking man. “Of Marxism.”

He was in tears with tantrums to come. We need to note here that his nationality is of least importance, for it would mean kidding ourselves if we said the term ‘Nation’ was still in existence, even in the vaguest possible way. He wept, not out of fear but out of frustration and anger at his act of stupidity, at his firmness of opinion now made absurd.

“Doubt if you understand”, the Captain sneered. “We don’t speak bullshit over here.”

A splutter is all he received in return.

“If you mind”, Junior piped up, “can I-”

“I’m not going to kill him”, he smiled. “I counted a hundred, know nothing beyond.”

Silence, two pairs of wide eyes and one pair of slits.

“This man can swim”, he said, 'patting him on his back' before the splash. "And now, the resistance has the Atlantic for itself."

PERFECT SENSE

“The thing is… I’ve played a sport for more than half of my life.”

“So?”

“So”, I said, “you’re only saying this-”

“Yes.”

I was walking on a road that would nauseate me at other times and I knew I was doing it only because she was doing it, and that’s not sacrificial or ‘making do’, and I’m not ‘conforming’ either. People come in two kinds – like and dislike, and sure there’s the in-between but that’s the point: They’re not people at all. And needless to say, like and hate are two different frames of mind, not necessarily contradictory or mutually-exclusive so I can just be sure about the ‘frames of mind’ because it would be too chaotic to like something and hate it too, that points at duality of mind, a mental multitask that’s utter bullshit. My point is that to get to liking something you’ve hated for long, well… It’s just an evolution and every person is perfectly capable of that.

“No”, I shook my head. “I can’t do it.”

“Why not?” she smiled at me, curiously.

“Well…” I shrugged, “I guess I’m not that masturbatory.”

Her laugh was more of a reaction than anything I could have asked for, in response to which I looked away grinning, shaking my head in disbelief at the nonsense I had just said.

“But”, I tried rectifying my position. “But… Knowledge is, perfect sense.”

She nodded as her hair nodded with her. “Knowledge is perfect sense.”

You should have looked at her. I mean, I can still be placed under the allegation that this is fleeting, this notion of her that I had cemented in my mind and you could say that cement dissolves, given its time and space, but you should have looked at her. ‘Kes’, and incredibly so.

I looked at my wristwatch, something I wore just to highlight the occasion.

“I lost my old wristwatch”, I said to her, still looking at it. “I never threw it away.”

“You shouldn’t compare-”

“No I’m not”, I shook my head again, looking at her. “I don’t have a compulsive mind, it takes its time… I’m sorry about that.”

She could see that I was fighting emotion, maybe even tears but this was a test. Even if she had meant exactly she said and nothing less, this was a test.

“You get accustomed”, I began, strained, and I decided then to not take the bend. “Getting used to love isn’t reason enough to quit, is it?” I asked her while she quietly hummed ‘The thrill is gone’ – too suggestive for me to take. I had stopped walking and she figured that out after a couple of steps.

“I’ll see you tomorrow”, I said, looking down.

And I could visualize her being incredulous with her smile.

A GOOD MAN - PART TWO

What’s defeat?

Now, if you’ve got to sink that shit, you’ve got to sink this one too: What’s winning? I guess that could leave you with a fleshy third – Where’d you place what I did? Well, let me tell you something, the bastard was only down on his knees, I’ve been in deeper shit and I mean shit, rolling in shit, face-down in shit, licking shoes clean of shit and that’s a heck of a pair of shitty shoes I’m talking about. And you think that’s low? No. Low’s only when you dig it, when you eat into it. I knew I wouldn’t spare every single of those pairs of shoes that I’ve shined before and I knew that this shining was just a part of it, a part of seeing a head on the ground or a face made plane or a greasy heart that I’d eventually put a squeeze on. And you know what? I remember my shoes. I’m the footwear man.

So what’s there in a name, right? Everything. Everything, that is, if you’re me and if you’ve really got no wax at Tussaud’s, no square jaw, wavy blonde, gold-plated teeth or tattooed lower back. Everything, if a snap’s enough to snap him back and get him burned with his Polaroid. Everything, if that’s been all that’s ever worked out, everything, if that’s what your kids need to live without.

Everything – That’s what my name means to me.

There’s this kind, your kind, who need to be there to be there, you know, menials, and you’ve got your tag and that’s just a tag, it’s just meant to hold the alphabets next to the display cage and if you’re gone, then they’d just scrape the shit, pull the tag off and stick the next sucker that surfaces. But, I’m not my tag. The tag’s me and that’s all there is and I don’t need me for my sake; I don’t need you either.

‘Joel’.

Maybe your dictionary could say it better, but I’d say it right: This isn’t winning. The knees hitting the ground, no that’s not winning, that’s consolation. I’m missing the real deal here and that’s what I want you to see, to think about why this man who’s been hell bent on marking existence to whim suddenly got his wet-suit out in the sun, and that leads to think if I am, for real, doing what I don’t want to do. Am I standing against myself, is there the slightest chance of that absurdity to ever show its face, because heck I’ll never show you mine, will I?

I see their point, never said I didn’t, but that doesn’t mean giving in, I’m never giving in. I’m giving him his closure and I’m giving myself my count. Bullshit though, this change of name, the action hero loves the bruise. And my nostalgia is but right now and I guess I’d like some memories back, but this time I guess I’d need a fast-forward because I find that the anonymity could kill me.

And of all things, I can’t let him have that.

A GOOD MAN - PART ONE

“What’s in a name?”

“Look at your plate.”

“You’re equating me and you?”

“No”, he took a deep breath. “I’m just stopping you from making me do that.”

The commissioner stared into his face. Whether or not into his eyes was tough to tell because black in black can cause illusions. An equal match of power, shameless to say, had both of them agree against the prospect of participation by entities other than themselves in this discussion-to-be, and it was indeed unorthodox on the policeman’s part having wanted this in the first place. A drink refused citing reputation more than poisons, he found he had to spend the interstices of conversation staring at his counterpart down the only thing that could ever get him anywhere close to ‘vulnerable’. And although not a Sean Maguire idea, the commissioner did attempt to replace his moments of silence with rhetoric.

“You won’t do it?”

“I just don’t see why.”

“For once…” began the policeman, fighting to keep himself subdued.

“Hmm”, he smiled. “You’re not getting me interested.”

The commissioner heaved again. “Do you know-”

“So I’m going to stand trial?” he asked, testily, with more than just a hint of sarcasm.

There was silence where the commissioner’s face turned menacing, his anger being confronted by the battle he staged to channelize it to something constructive. The opponent took another gulp.

“If I weren’t representing the interests…” he began, his hand moving instinctively to an empty holster.

“Why can’t you, even for a second, admit”, he raised his voice much higher than the commissioner to ensure that the latter stopped with his remark, “that what is, is, and there’s nothing you can do about it, like there’s nothing you have ever done anything about it before?”

There was no bang on a table simply because there was no table in between, but there indeed was a pause that could be compared to the aftermath of such a deed.

“You”, he gestured, “are so flawed…”

“No I’m not”, the commissioner shook his head. “You have no-”

“Oh yes you are!” he laughed. “You farm dogs, you great Danes…”

“That’s enough.”

“Is there even a you to you?” he bit his lip, narrowing his eyes. “You’re moving the shit that moves with you only because you’re let to, and that’s only about the shit!”

The echoing room could be a cliché, but it still was so. The commissioner squeezed his nose and looked down as he, calm as he forcedly was, spoke again.

“Look”, he gesticulated to the ground. “I’m not here to discuss your philosophy of wrongdoing and you’re not signing my picture-book!” he shouted, anticipating interruption. “I’m here with a proposal… their proposal, and-”

“Get down”, he cut him short again. “On your knees.”

He took out the antique lighter that was a gift, took out the cigar he had on him, put it in his mouth, lit it with the loudest click, snapped it shut and took a puff as the policeman obeyed orders: a sight in itself.

“Now…” he said, blowing a hefty amount of smoke around him. “Beg.”

HEDWIG

It is not my responsibility to tell someone else’s story, but I do take up this task of telling how I’d say it if I could, and that’s partly because I don’t approve of certain details, or because I wish there were others instead of those established and that in turn would mean acceptance of details other than the ones I object against, which should make it clear that with the forthcoming effort I’m in no way demeaning or plagiarizing an existing franchise, but merely developing on what I thought could be a worthwhile elucidation of an unintentional fact.

“His sleep is but the hours”, she sighed.

Long, dark, unkempt hair, round-framed glasses, skinnier than she’s fed to be, she floated out of her allotted space leaving the door open. Others of her kind could consider this to be a decent level of disobedience, of neglect of such a thing as curfew but under his possession she had never had the slightest of feeling of bondage, or of being owned. Owned, maybe, but never by him, you know, it was like she owned him and he owned her and they co-owned each other, which meant that she couldn’t care lesser about herself than she cared for him and not that she shouldn’t care for him at all. And although the reason why she was out of her cage was more selfish than noble, she was also perturbed that the boy had started to eat his sleep with dreams and that she could find no tangible way by which she could do anything to help him out.

“Look how he sleeps!” she chimed, excited.

“He sleeps?” she queried.

“Yes, he sleeps!” came her response.

“Good”, she said. “He should.”

She sat herself at his bedside, clawed her way to that old photograph he so treasured, that which adorned the gloom he resided in solely by being distinctly out of place and that was what marked its charm; that was what marked the charm of those inside it, within the frame for it showed a couple of people who liked being out of place even when alive. What did she know though, about death and what awaited beyond? What did she know about sacrifice, or having to live without the ones one’s supposed to be living with on a permanent basis without the slightest of contact? Or what could she ever possibly know about love or the slightest sensation of the same, in its multiple forms ranging from the obvious to the obscure or about being deprived of it, that which the boy painfully had to live every day?

“You carried his letters”, she said.

“You took them even to ones you shouldn’t have”, she asserted. “You took them to her!”

“And how many times you have cried!”

“It rains!” she exclaimed. “He doesn’t know.”

“Is that the sun?” she gasped, suddenly aware of extending shadows. “It is, isn’t it?”

“Back to bed, then!” she ordered herself, but not before she lunged and kissed him swift on his lips.

“The boy won’t know what he doesn’t know.”

The cage was shut, the girl within, and the sun woke him up to a day that promised nothing but solitude. But she still smiled; smiled at the thought of him not knowing that love sat closer than he thought it to be and that it always came from where he’d least expect it. She smiled at what had gone beyond, all sobriety of tragedies past and with hope at the ones to come, and at the thought that there would particularly be a point where he’d see her for she is and it was that acknowledgement that was the goal and not the acceptance itself.

Until then she would have to live with the pecks she occasionally endowed, and the fondles she received in return, which she found to be more than what she could ask for.