Living Daylights...

They say when you’re seconds away from death, your whole life flashes before your eyes. I’m not sure who this ‘they’ are, but I know for a fact that they are absolutely clueless about the whole affair.

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The first time I met him, I had a gut feeling there was something, for want of a better word, ‘off’ about him. It was my first day in college and we were all having our customary introductions, awkward howdys, trying to size everyone up.  Names, schools, place of origin were shared and then when topics dry up, there was always the ‘do-we-know-someone-in-common-from-over-there’ ritual. But then again, I digress. I met him, exchanged a few words, had an odd feeling, walked away, that was that.

First year rolled by, without incidents. Or as incidentless as a Mechanical Engineering division, an exclusively male diaspora, functions. Then in my second year, our hostel rooms were reassigned and as fate would have it, I got this guy as my room-mate. When i walked into the room and saw him putting up a poster of Leonard Nimoy saying ‘Live Long and Prosper’, was I apprehensive? In hindsight, I should have been.

A month with him and I learned that apart from brief stints of eccentricities, he was an ok room-mate. He wasn’t exactly chatty all the time, but when the mood strikes, there was no stopping him. He talked about his dead dog, switch to how badly he wanted to be a vampire, switch to his opinions about the ship at Roswell. During particularly loquacious bouts, he would talk about his fruitless attempts to woo girls, with whom he claimed to hopelessly in love with. The fact that he told four stories and each had a different heroine notwithstanding, he always sounded a little tragic. Everytime he talked about it, I thought a shadow cross his face, portentous of an impending storm. During the introverted phase, he would disappear behind his laptop, tapping into the hostel wifi, oblivious to any external interference.

A few months later, he announced ceremoniously that he had, at last, found the love of his life. As it turned out, his words and I quote “she was a friend of my friend of my friend of my friend on facebook”. Judging by his long-winded chat sessions and the confounding frequency with which he checked his facebook account, which almost bordered on Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, I was only surprised this did not happen sooner. Law of averages demands that he’d eventually meet someone with that kind of persistence. Anyway, I was happy for him.  As his chat sessions grew longer and longer and extended into the middle of the night, the constant tapping of keys and screen light which filled the room made me less happy, but still happy for him nevertheless.

He showed me her profile, showed-off really, she was smart and pretty, by all means. They both had the same interests, same likes, dislikes and their rapport was evident from some of their chat conversations he shared with me. If I had any thoughts about him practically dating a stranger whom he had never laid eyes upon, whom he met via the social network, I kept them to myself. The guy seemed happy, as long as he did not bother me, all is well.

Then one day, I borrowed his laptop to look up an assignment. He had set Firefox as his default browser. He had not logged out of his facebook profile either. For some time I mulled over a prank, whether to post something scandalous. Then remembering how touchy (paranoid, to be frank) he was when it came to his account, I closed it and opened Chrome, with which I was more comfortable. And Voila! There it was, like the astounding plot-twist at the end of a movie which you took to be a maudlin romedy, instantaneously transforming it into a petrifying psycho-thriller. The girl’s facebook account was active in it.

I considered the possibility that she might have given him her password, like star-crossed lovers. But a quick history check confirmed he had been using her account for months. I considered the possibility he had just made her fake account so he could show-off in front of the class. But another check of their chat sessions, which lasted into the wee hours of the night, said it was too elaborate a drama to pull off. And as I skimmed through their chat messages, they were definitely not faked.

As the great Conan Doyle put it, when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. I  had read about Dissociative Identity Disorder in fictions, seen it in noir movies, so I knew better than to confront him with the truth. This guy was chatting with a split personality, one his subconscious had invented in a desperate attempt for companionship. But before concluding that a guy has a serious mental condition, one ought to be sure, so I thought I would talk to him, treading lightly.

So that night, I had a small chit-chat with him. I engineered it as harmless as possible, without imagining for a second that at the crescendo of this orchestra lay my spectacular demise. I asked him about his (pseudo) girlfriend. He replied, I asked more, he soon broke into his talkative mood and started preaching his undying love. I steered the conversation towards fake accounts and how one should not take people they meet on the internet at face value. I saw the same shadow I had seen crossing his face again. In between his vehement retorts, I asked him to arrange her to meet with him one day, so they could, at last, meet. Hasn’t the relationship been going on long enough for a face to face date, I asked. He said he would think about asking her and turned away haughtily.I had thought, in a childishly misguided notion, that when he realised she would not turn up, he would understand there was no "she" and that would be his first step towards acceptance.

The next day, he seemed brighter than usual. He told me she had agreed to meet with him that evening. As she lived in the city nearby, he was going to meet her at the bus station. I have to say his conviction caught me off-guard and I once again entertained the possibility that she might be real after all. He asked me to go with him to meet her if I’d like, and I agreed.

During the recess that day we went up to the top of the twelve floor college building. Some of us, students often did this, skipping classes, some to get drunk, some to just sit and stare and ponder at the intricacies of the universe. That day, it was his idea. As we reached the top, he closed the door, I unsuspecting went and stood by the railing, marveling at the beauty of the landscape, intricacies of the universe.

“I lied to you. She isn’t coming.” he said. Something in his voice made me turn around. “She said you are a bad influence. You are cooking up suspicions to drive us apart.”

I knew in my gut that something bad was about to go down here, “Did she now?” I asked, trying to sound casual, but the glint in his eyes making my voice shake.

“Yup,” he said, as if trying to explain something to an obstinate child, “and she also said I must get rid of you for us to be together.”

“What the hell are..”

Human brain, I have read, is the most advanced parallel processer ever. It acclimates information, takes in exabytes of data from our senses, makes logical inferences, adds emotional parameters, and produces outputs every single second. In the next one second, I processed a lot of things. I understood what this psychotic nutbag was planning to do. Realization swept over me as I understood whatever evil wraith that had a chokehold of his sanity had instructed him to get rid of me. Me, who had questioned its existence, so that they could continue their relationship. His split personality had understood that I was a threat and instructed him to make me go away.

My adrenaline charged brain tried to form rational sentences, but simultaneously knew they were all futile. I saw him assume a posture and start charging towards me. My brain instructed my arms to rise protectively in front of my torso and my legs to move away from the collision course, but it was all a tad too late. He hit me with full force and my brain registered that there was no longer stable ground beneath me, that I was falling like humpty dumpty down twelve stories.

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They say the time slows down during the last seconds, just before your death. I’ll grant that ‘they’ got that one spot-on. The first four floors, I tried in vain to find a foothold, any hold to stop from falling. Even in the disorienting state of free fall, I realized my arms were windmilling at my sides, trying to regain some sort of Centre of gravity. My next thought was how comical I would be looking from down below, a flurry of hopelessly flailing limbs.

During the next four floors, panic set in as I regained balance. By balance I mean I wasn’t falling aimlessly now, but had assumed a position (involuntarily, of course) which made me see the term ‘nose-dive’ in an altogether new light. My head went first, followed by my torso, followed by my legs. Then absurdly in the background of my sane thoughts of sheer hysteria, I heard a voice calculating the time in which I’ll hit the ground using Newton’s equation of motion, and another voice reasoning with the first that the height of the building was not accurately known.

As I went down the last four floors, I felt something profound, something poignant and the frenzy lifted. Like some of those deep philosophical quotes you come across randomly and feel ‘wow’ after reading. I guess, it was acceptance of the inevitable. Somewhere in the murky pandemonium of my fading consciousness, I heard Beethoven’s Ode to Joy start playing.

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They say when you’re seconds away from death, your whole life flashes before your eyes. I’m not sure who this ‘they’ are, but I know for a fact that they are absolutely clueless about the whole affair. But I won’t blame them, how were they to know. I know this now, roughly two seconds before my skull cracked open. The last sane thought on my head wasn't flashes of my entire life. They were psychedelic images of me cheerfully choking the living daylights out of my dear demented room-mate.

                     

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Incognito..

As he pulled up his facebook newsfeed, he knew exactly what to expect. The newspapers were full of it, the TV channels were blaring it every 5 minutes, how could it be anything else? For the nation so obsessed about public outrages, this was a heyday . A chance to be outraged about something new. There was no question about which side to choose. A teenage girl was gang-raped.

He scrolled down the newsfeed, liked a few posts and made a few comments. He pulled up his profile and wrote up a compelling status-update, expressing the expected and socially accepted quantity of shock and fury. Then he opened another tab and started browsing.

Ten minutes later, he changed tab to his facebook profile, while waiting for a video to buffer. His status update had earned him the public appreciation of 47 likes and standing ovation of 19 comments, each of them complementing his spiel. He had got another 15+ likes for his comments on other posts. Satisfied, he turned back to the tab in which the video loaded. The screen now displayed a 50 year old man ravaging an teenage girl.

..if, in a parallel universe, all our lies were true, wouldn't that be the perfect world?..

Namesake...

Today is the day. I smiled…

                                                    

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She came to me one day. I did not know why, and I never asked. There was no need, no reason. She came to me and wrote ‘friend’ on my arm. She wrote it with a drop of dew in the morning. She wrote it bold and clear for the wind to see and tell the story to the rustling leaves. She came to me like a shade in the summer, rain in the ocean. I did not ask why…I should have…

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“Sad. Isn't that the most beautiful word? It has all the ache and loneliness that it tries to convey”

“Why do you ask?”       

“Don’t know. Maybe because that’s what I’m feeling right now. Sad”

“Hmmm…”

“What do you think is the most beautiful word is?”

“Mine..”

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She was crying and I was holding her. I did not speak, just held her, letting her know. The silence between us, interrupted only by her sobbing, wasn't heavy. It did not need to be broken. When she looked up, her eyes misty and red, I could see myself in them. She took my palm and wrote ‘love’. She wrote it with the rays of morning sun. She wrote it soft and warm, so the autumn moonlight would not see it and tell stories to the haughty nightingale. We sat in silence… She held me now….

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“Why is the ocean always melancholic?”

“Is it? I think she is the happiest creature in the world. She has the setting sun which always returns back to it, she has the loving wind which would never leave it demure.”

“But yet, the one she weeps for is the shoreline. She weeps for that which she could never have, which always send her back with painful goodbyes.”

“Then it is because she does not know when to let go.”

“Mmmm... Perhaps…”

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I met her in the park, where she said she would be. She would tell me. I knew what she would tell me. Yet I went. For I knew this would be the last time I’ll see her. She had told about us to her parents the day before. She kept herself calm as she talked to me. But I was not listening. Those words did not matter, they were hollow. Hollow compared to what we were feeling. She was talking about her father, showering her with diatribe..I was looking at her eyebrows..her mother threatening suicide..I was lost in her hazel eyes...her sister’s stunned silence..I was imagining my hands on her cheek..I did not hear a word. 

She took a broken shard of glass and scratched out the words in my arm and palm. I tried not to look hurt.

I rose from the park-bench and started walking away. I did not turn back once…

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Today is the day. I smiled ruefully as I looked myself at the mirror, trying to figure out what to wear. I did not put on any make-up, she was not vain. I did not weigh my hair down with pins, she liked it better when my hair was down and free. I knew what she would say, this would be the last time I would see her.

...what are we, if not trying to cheat a breath of air for ourselves...

                                                           

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Words of Nothing...

you could play with words all you like...

you could sew up words as sweet as sorrow..

you could get them to sing and shout and weep and love and lambaste for you..

you could hide an inferno in them as if it is nothing more than an autumn breeze..

you could make words as hateful as a vicious nightmare..

you could break a dreamy heart with it, bring it crashing back to brutal realities...

or make a quiet wish or tear down centuries with them..

but sometimes, words fail u..

sometimes words don't suffice, are just not enough..

and then i listened...
 

Fragments...

to watch the dust in the wind and marvel at its nonchalance..

to listen to the restless ocean waves and understand her imploring whispers..

to make figure out the paintings in a murky sunset sky, as red as hate, as merry as a melancholy..

to catch a falling feather and see what it saw..

to be alone under the moonlit skies with a thousand stars and know all their names, all their tales..

to chase after a waking dream, to pull down and rage over the infallible fallacies ..

to believe in a reason, a purpose, a meaning, an angel's touch..to say that which is better left unsaid..

for a chance to break down and give up and stop pretending for just once..

to pick up the pieces, to hope without hoping, make and break..

to slice open an old scar over and over for sum masochistic ache, to make sure it leaves a mark, a burden worth bearing..

for the serendipity of a realized heart, to be fortuitous enough to be at d right end of a wishing bone.. 

to just stop and stare for a while, without giving a darn, without care and concern, to break those shackles which keep dragging forward..

to make sense of the ripples in a serene lake, the symphony of a lone lark..

what i would not give...

Auld Lang Syne…

It was the same old summer sun, witness of countless tales. A lone figure strolled down a grassy lane, his feet straying off the road as much as it was on it. A face that portrayed a mask of mirth as if a forlorn trance had settled upon it indelibly. Nothing seemed to break his reverie, not the irascible radiant sun above, or the soft whispers that surrounded him, nor did he look up once to savor the stunning landscape the midst of which he found himself. It was as if he had forsaken the world just as it had done to him.

He trudged the seemingly endless path. Seemingly endless to the mere observer, but he knew this path; he knew it like his hand, back and front. He had walked on it a million times, stepped on every inch of dirt, stumbled over every misplaced stone. It was his vista that never changed, where the universal law of transience digressed, a fey realm where the senseless made sense, where perception took a plunge into the unknown, where his totem kept spinning. Nothing surprised him here, for it was his safe place.

But today was different, as is the beginning of any story. Then again, it wasn’t exactly a beginning; here there were no beginnings, like a midsummer night’s dream. Today his eyes held a questioning gaze at the gentle breeze that had sprung up. It tickled his cheeks and ruffled his hair, like an old lover, long forgotten, yet unabashed, yet uninhibited. It was alien in his breathless field, and it bothered him. For it was his safe place and it bothered him that it bothered him. As he looked up again, the mask of silent amusement fell, for a fraction of the fraction of a second, indiscernible even to the shrewdest of eyes; yet it was there. Lines of some half-remembered dream that seemed to plague him, an awful wraith crawling through his soul, snatching at the fabric of his very existence. Then the detached countenance was back, as if it had never left, as if it was there forever, as if the shattered mask had melded by itself. He cast his eyes back down. The world was crazed and he wasn’t.

Yet today was different, for it always is. He looked up again; weary of whatever was awaiting him in his solitude. Then he stared with wonder at what he longed to see every time he walked this lane. A crested lark perched on a mighty oak. He stared in awe. But something was amiss. The lark did not sing its sweet melody. It did not soar the petulant blue sky. It sat there as haughty like the kings of yore, condescending his gaze of wonder with all the authority of wanton fate itself. The only time he ever betrayed his emotions, and he did not care. Echoes down the lanes of time, footnotes on pages ragged. The silence that set around seemed to stretch on in a thousand layers. The longer it lasted, the shorter it seemed.

He opened his eyes an instant later; a blink of an eye later, to be exact, he saw what he knew he would see. His safe place vanished with the darkness of his eyelids. He saw her before him and what he felt he did not know. All the words wouldn’t suffice; now he knew what only a tranquil hush could convey. He saw her holding his hand, looking away. He saw the same cool breeze send a few strands of her hair down her face. It did not provoke a questioning glance from him now, for it did not caress him now as it did before. He looked at her and wondered what was it she had which he knew no face in the sea that surrounded him.

She turned and their eyes met. It had been two decades since he had seen those eyes for the first time, which had held him her captive ever since. But there was much that had changed. He was not what he was once and nor what he thought he would be. What remained was just his paintbrush, once, now and, he knew, forever. His paintbrush and pencils which did not forsake him amidst the ruins of his fanciful childhood dreams. He could have watched her forever. But right now, he had to complete his work.

He tore his eyes off her face and started the final strokes at the canvas before him. It was the perfect piece, the best he had ever done. It had everything; the sea, which refused to say its farewell to the shoreline, the gentle breeze, which loved anything which stood in its way, the sun, which seemed unsure whether to leave this world at the mercy of the gloom, and her holding his hand. He looked without seeing, a haunted gaze. A mere trickle, but a rain in essence. He kept his eyes steady, unblinking, almost as if scared of the darkness of his eyelids; he did not want to go back to his safe place again. He looked around at the noise of the beach that seemed to engulf him, like the darkness trying to subdue the tongues of flames of a dying fire. But silence weighed on him.

The silence of the lark, the silence of that which was found and lost. It weighed as much as a realized heart. It was as light as a feather-tickle, but it was also had the crushing load of a million words. A burden worth bearing, a gift and a curse. It was a drizzle in the dawn, an autumn breeze, but it was also the relentless downpour of scorching memories. Memories which were worth the price they seek. He took down his work and went to her. He smiled at her, but she did not recognize him, it had been a long time, too long. Thanks to years of cynicism, thanks to the law of transience, thanks to the soul of the universe. He rolled up the canvas and handed it over to the one next to her, to the one whose hands she held, the one with whom she left thanking him when he refused payment, even though he knew he needed it. This one was for his lark in the mighty oak. The seaside-artist watched them leave and sat before a blank canvas, waiting.

Turn the pages and you’ll see a man fall, he thought.

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