The jarring note

The misguided pursuit of Happiness

2007-06-17T02:15:00.000-07:00

You have probably come across vedanta, in some form, heard about it and moved on. You probably said to yourself..."Yeah, nice theory, but I got to chase Hot chicks and make more money".

Here is a mentally stimulating and interesting talk. By the way, the speaker makes no reference to vedanta - it is a purely scientific talk. The Vedantic connotations are my own.

The Frog Prince - "A Fairy Tale Love Story"

2007-06-07T16:32:00.001-07:00

Once upon a time, when there were just tales and no fairy tales and none of them ended with “they lived happily forever”, there was a kingdom so poor and wasted that no one wanted it. As a model of early communism, the lord and the peasant looked and lived identically. With the passage of time, we would come to learn of the same kingdom as very powerful with a just and wise king.

The prince of this kingdom was going through a bout of depression. Seeking a solution to his ailment, he managed to get up from the bed before 2 PM and made his way towards the witch who lived just inside the forest that lay at the boundaries of the kingdom. This witch, for reasons beyond the scope of this tale, was temperamental and eccentric. With the passage of time, we would come to know of her as an evil witch whose heart was filled with malice.

The prince poured his heart out to the witch while she sat there daydreaming about flying off to better lands in her battered old broom. The prince got upset as the witch was not giving her undivided attention to the royal prince – he was a prince after all albeit clothed in tatters.

“I shall have you banished from the kingdom” said the prince.

“Calm down man, will you? A few centuries from now I would get paid to have you on the couch rambling on. Thank me that I am doing it for free. Anyway, when did you last get laid?”

“What? How dare you speak to me like that you pagan witch”, the prince screamed.

“Whoa….easy on the pagan stuff dude. That condescending piece of crap is not supposed to happen for another ten centuries. Anyway, listen to me and get laid. That is the root cause of all your anxiety”.

This made the prince think. The witch’s idea did not seem too bad. But, there was a problem. Had he been a normal prince, he could have had any hot chick in the kingdom summoned to his palace. But, his dad was the king and he was the prince only because no one actually cared. Plus, their palace was a rundown cottage. And he knew he sucked with girls anyway.

“Oh witch, as the prince of this land I order you to brew me some love potion immediately”.

“What? You must be freaking out of your mind. The love potion is not something easy to make and plus whatever I have is reserved for this totally cute wizard. So be gone and do not trouble me any more with your adolescent silly troubles”.

This did not please the prince. He first threatened, then pleaded, then begged and then cried declaring he would not leave until and unless he got hold of the love potion. The witch got angry, and taking her wand, cursed the prince into a frog and kicked him away from her house. The Frog Prince croaked in indignation as he stumbled into the nearby pond.

The princess of the nearby kingdom, a fair maiden, decided to grace the pond with her beautiful presence. It was a splendid sight to behold; the princess with her long golden hair sparkling against the sunlight, her fair skin like emanating a soft glow akin to a moon in the middle of the day, and her blue languid eyes serene like the deep ocean. That, anyway, is the version we will come to know with the passage of time. Actually, the princess had an acne problem, bad breath, was deathly pale, suffered from dandruff, had bunny teeth and was prone to flatulence. Since, she was the princess and her dad’s kingdom, which though poor, was not as poor as the Frog Prince’s (i.e. she and her family lived in a two bedroom apartment as opposed to a cottage), she could afford to have a couple of aides.

The aides hated their jobs because the princess was a brat, but they put up with it for the money. The princess loved to play with the royal golden ball – the golden ball was actually made of copper heavily polished. She would throw the ball far and away from her aides – being the bitch she is, and giggle as the aides scampered to retrieve the ball; something not different from playing fetch ball with a dog. As fate would have it, the royal golden ball fell into the pond during the course of this game. The princess threw a fit and her aides were, of course, not going to get into the ankle deep muddy slimy pond for the brat.

It was at this very moment, that the Frog Prince heard the princess crying. Having never seen a maiden so fair (did I mention that the prince sucked big time with girls?), her tears tugged at his heart. Diving at once to the depths of the pond (which was not all that deep), the frog prince retrieved the golden ball and threw it back to the princess. The princess, overwhelmed with happiness that her ball had been returned to her, lost her bitchiness for the moment, thanked the frog prince and kissed him on the cheeks. And lo and behold, the curse that the evil witch had cast upon the prince lifted and he returned to his scrawny self back again. Biology played its course (the same stuff that takes place in pubs and clubs all over amongst drunk people), the prince kissed the princess hands and asked her to marry him, to which she promptly agreed (did I mention that she suffered from flatulence?).

And so, the prince and the princess were united in holy matrimony – a feast was arranged the likes of which had not been seen in both the kingdoms; people’s stomachs were half full for a change. The prince rode on top of a stallion whose likes would not be seen ever after again (it was a pony) and the princess was resplendent in a dress woven by thirty virgins (they were 80 years old) and was the only dress in both the kingdoms that did not have a tear in it. The prince and the princess looked lovingly into each other’s eyes as they took their vows and as they danced their first dance together, even the wind between them seemed to be embarrassed to be between the loving couple (that was until the princess had to break wind and the prince maintained a safe distance from then on). Thus, the prince and the princess lived happily ever after.

If ever after was a month, that is. They grew a little tired of each other after a month. They grew tired of sex and the princess grew tired of the wimp that the prince was and the prince grew tired of the bitch that the princess was. The fighting became frequent. The prince was tired of his wife’s unladylike flatulence and the princess was tired of her whiny husband. The princess returned to her father’s kingdom in a fit of anger (her aides chose to stay back though).

A couple of months passed by and the prince started feeling a little lonely. And horny. He decided to take things in his hand and mend his sorry life, if he could. Thus, one fine day, the prince once again suffering from a serious bout of depression, managed to get up from bed before 2 PM one day and set out to meet his wife in the neighboring kingdom. He managed to convince his wife to go for counseling. The princess, being the attention seeking bitch that she was, was over the moon that her husband had given in first and this made her sinfully happy. She agreed.

Thus the newly wed couple found themselves on the doors of the witch again (she was the only person who passed for a distant cousin of a doctor – pagan or no pagan). The prince knocked hesitantly, this time reminding himself to be respectful to pagan evil witches who wielded power enough to turn fine young men like him into slimy frogs. Taking a deep breath and taking his wife’s hands in his hands, the prince knocked on the witch’s door.

The witch was taking her afternoon nap - partly induced by the pot she had smoked to get over her heartbreak (The cute wizard had dumped her). She was not pleased at the interruption. This was how the prince found himself at the wrong side of the witch yet again.

“What do you want now?” said the witch.

“Good afternoon madam. I would like you to meet my wife, the princess of the neighboring kingdom”, said the princess.

Despite herself, the witch smiled. She loved to see or hear about a love story and live vicariously through the couple involved like anyone of us. “So, you took my advice and got laid huh?”

The witch left the door ajar and went inside and sat on her chair. Recognizing this to be as much as an invitation that he is ever going to get, the prince hastily got inside, along with his wife.

“So, how is married life treating you both” the witch asked.

“Actually, we are separated now” said the prince.

Apart from his wife, there was another lady on the prince’s side – lady luck. Her idea of vicariously living through the couple for a few minutes cruelly shattered, the shattering more pronounced because of the pot and her heartbreak, the witch was in a more receptive mood.

And so, the prince and the princess poured their hearts out. They told the witch how they conjugated non stop for a month before they were tired of each other. How after a month, they seemed different from the people they had married at first - How the other person had changed. How things had changed between them. How a gulf had opened between them and neither knew how to bridge the divide. The witch listened patiently. The room was filled with smoke from the pot she was smoking. She almost seemed asleep as the prince and the princess talked (she was).

“What made you marry the princess in the first place” asked the witch.

“Well, she kissed me and I returned to a prince from a frog”, the prince said.

“Dude, do you realize how ridiculous that sounds? I have no power to turn you into a frog. It was your perceived inferiority complex that made you hallucinate that you were a frog. Do you really think this bitch here can turn a frog to a prince just by her kissing? Stop being a wimp”.

“Huh?” the prince said.

“And you? Why did you accept his proposal”, the witch asked the princess.

“Well, he was understanding and considerate of my feelings – he wooed me by getting the ball from the muddy pond when no one else would. He understood me like no one else. More importantly, I could change him” the princess said.

The witch laughed so hard that tears flowed from her eyes. “Both of you are hopeless. You are a wimp and she is a self centered bitch who feels she is of any worth only if she can change the man in her life according to what she wants”.

“So, are you saying that we cannot be back together”, asked the prince.

The witch was silent for a minute, deep in thought. She signaled to the prince to shut up by signaling with her hands and smoked some more pot. After a few seconds, she steadied herself and spoke.

“I will prescribe you a course of treatment, which, if you follow, will make you happy. Ready?

The prince and the princess nodded.

“It will cost you a sack of rice a month” the witch said.

They were both ready for the sacrifice.

“Not that you care, but ten centuries from now, marriages will be saved because man and woman will live in such a screwed up world that surviving will take all their energy away, thus not letting them think about their marriage”.

The prince nodded, acting as if he understood, careful not to anger the witch.

“But, unfortunately, you are a bum and your wife is a spoilt brat and you have too much time on your hands”.

The prince swallowed his pride and squeezed his wife’s hands imploring her to keep her mouth shut.

“Have sex, each day the first four days of the week and do not see each other for the rest of the week. Make sure you do not even see each other’s shadow for the rest of the week. That is my prescription. Now be gone and let me smoke my pot in peace.”

Having learnt not to overstay his welcome, the prince retreated with his wife in tow. They followed the witch’s prescription and found that it actually worked. They had lots of cute, bright little children (they were neither cute, nor bright actually, saddled as they were with the prince and princess' genes) and lived happily ever after – kind of, sort of, you know, just like you and me. They had another midlife crisis a few years after that and went back to the witch and they had to involve the princess’ ex aides in a threesome to save their marriage. But, for now, let us say they lived happily ever after - kind of, sort of, you know.

Frogs in a Well

2007-03-20T20:18:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time, there were three frogs in a well. They lead a life of peace and contentment. Mornings were passed away in feasting upon insects and algae in the well, afternoons in play and nights in predator free sound sleep. It was the monsoon season and the rains brought two more frogs into the tiny well. The resident frogs did not like this invasion of space and privacy. Frogs being frogs, the resident frogs made fun of the FOB (Fresh Off Boat) eating habits and found that the FOB frogs lagged behind in culture - a condescending point of view that did not help the volatile situation in any way. This naturally made the FOB frogs pissed off - who had their own world view on culture and civilization. The resident frogs often got together and discussed why the FOB frogs lagged behind – why their croaking was ugly unlike their own melodious sounds. The FOB frogs got together and cursed their luck for having to end up with retards like the resident frogs.

Now, a snake by chance came across the well. Finding five plump juicy frogs made its stomach growl in hunger. Lying by the last step of the well, it laid a careful watch on the frogs. Soon, it came to the conclusion that neither of these frogs had ever met a predator in their lives and it would be snatching candy from a child to have them for dinner. The snake devoured one of the frogs that day and its hunger not sated by one measly frog after a long dry spell, devoured one more. Its stomach full, the snake went to sleep happy in the knowledge that food would not be a problem for the next few days.

Not that the snake noticed it, but it ate one of the resident frogs and one of the FOB frogs. The next couple of days saw the frog population in the well take a hit leaving behind one resident frog and one FOB frog. Given the situation, the other frog did not seem so different to the FOB and resident frogs – it had the same round glazy eyes, croaked in fear and joy, had slimy skin and lived life in a similar way. Next day, when the snake was about to pounce on the last resident frog, something came over FOB frog and “Croak….Croak”, it croaked. The alerted resident frog jumped and got away. Things had not cooled down enough between the frogs to start a conversation, but they dropped the “resident” and “FOB” prefixes sometimes in their thoughts.

Thus the game continued. Each time a frog spotted the snake making a move on the other frog, it would croak. But, the frogs were growing weary and their survival skills, however rapidly improving was no match for a cunning predator like the snake. The next day saw a change in the dynamics. Both frogs weary from a long vigil found exhaustion coming over them heavily. The snake waited, knowing the game and all the moves. The moment it had been waiting for finally arrived. Realizing it’s now or never and its grumbling stomach providing the time honed primal motivation, it seized upon the resident frog and grabbed it in its mouth. It relished looking at its prey, savoring the taste of victory at the end of its long hunt. The resident frog shot an accusing look at the FOB frog – its long dead resident frog friends were right after all. The FOB frog scum had betrayed it to survive the night.

The snake licked the juicy resident frog - it tasted heavenly. The resident frog closed its eyes and prepared to die. “Thud”, landed the bucket a villager had dropped into the well – right on the snake’s head. It was enough to make the snake let go of the resident frog. The resident frog got away with nothing more than the snake’s smelly saliva all over it and its blood pressure soaring into the stratosphere.

The coming night saw a lot of croaking in the well, which did not go unnoticed by the snake. The FOB frog broke the ice finally and croaked in indignation that it did not betray the resident frog – it had been exhausted and caught unaware as well. The resident frog did not know what to believe. The choice it made was influenced as much by what survival dictated as by belief in the general goodness of frogs. But, for the first time, a small voice in the resident frog said – “how different and bad can a FOB frog be – given that it is also a slimy ugly flawed frog?” The tenacious truce made, the FOB and resident frogs retreated wearily to their corners of the well cursing their fates to put their faiths in frogs from God knows where.

The next couple of days saw the frogs taking turns to watch over the snake carefully. Loneliness started creping over the frogs slowly. Their survival not as much an open ended question as before, they felt the loss of their friends dearly. To make things worse, they were saddled with a retard frog of a different kind. It was alright to make an unholy pact of survival with a foreign frog, but friendship was out of question. This did not stop them from croaking to each other from time to time. They talked about their lives and a good deal more - much of which is beyond human comprehension.

Days painfully turned into a week and the snake saw no let up in the vigil of the frogs. Its irritation grew by both lack of food and the constant croaking of the frogs – in fact, the snake suspected they had become friends now. A master at its game, the snake knew when it was beaten, accepted defeat gracefully, and went away to seek wetter pastures filled with dumber preys.

And the frogs? What happened to them? The ordeal they had been through forged a distant cousin of a friendship between them. In the absence of the snake, they noticed the differences more than the similarities. They fought for sitting rights on the last step of the well. On a bad day, they bitched about having to put up with a foreign frog. But, they tolerated and accepted each other. This was as much a result of a shaky belief in the general goodness of frogs, as it was from the thought “who knew when the next snake would be around”? They found the well big enough for both of them to live and play around. They remembered the similarities they had seen in each other as frogs when the snake was around in the back of their minds – and given that each of them were after all a frog, how bad could it be to share the well with another frog?

One of those Beeping Days

2007-02-05T22:45:00.000-08:00

This post has lots and lots of "beeps" - after affect of watching Al Pacino in Scarface for the sixth time.

It is Monday – you get up all groggy and irritated. You remember that you have not shaved for the last couple of days and the shirt you were supposed to iron during the weekend lies all crumpled up in the laundry basket and it is beeping 8 A.M. You get ready just about in time, rush out of the apartment (your stomach growling with hunger), run to your car, start it as you get in and put your foot to the gas pedal. But, wait….there is the beeping old lady going at 25 miles per hour on the left most lane of the road. Then there is the guy in the truck before you whose wife probably gave him some last night and so his highness chooses to express his gratitude to the cosmos by letting three other cars cross the road. The beeping beep hole – does he think he owns the road? There are people behind him in a not so generous mood for beep’s sake. Why can’t he express his gratitude in his backyard or something?

You finally reach your office and you are 10 minutes late. You bump into your manager (who has probably been here since 8 beeping 8 AM) and he looks wired and his good morning rings in your ears as you still try to get up. You get your coffee, check your email and them suddenly remember that you have forgotten about your beeping time sheets for last week (time sheets track how much money you make for the company and it works like this….why in the beeping hell are you still reading about time sheets? Go to the next line already…and if you still want to be cognizant about the efficacy of time sheets then go get a beeping life…please). You fill in the damn thing, get another cup of coffee and try to do get some beeping work done.

You hear your colleague shout to his friend if he wants to go down for a cigarette. The craving hits you bad and you cannot remember why you are trying to quit – you resist and resist by going down to the water cooler for a drink of water. You meet another colleague on the way and he asks if you want to go down for a smoke – you say no to him and say no to yourself and go get another drink of water.

You come back to your cubicle and you really need to get some beeping work done – it is 11 AM already. You hear the lady in your neighboring cubicle ramble on about bears and colts and the super bowl. You wonder who in their beeping right minds would want to name a bunch of people as bears. Then, the talk drifts onto her daughter, her son, her husband, her dog and her eyesight. You get your head into the beeping headphones and try to get some beeping work done. You hear a song from your CD and you suddenly you remember the moment associated with it. Nostalgia hits you and hits you hard. Your brain conveniently forgets the bad parts of the memory and mines, extracts, polishes and presents a beautiful snapshot from the past for you. Your eyes look at your monitor but what you see is all in your mind.

It is noon. You really need to get some beeping work done. Your friend comes over and wants to go for lunch. Your grumbling stomach betrays you and you go on to stuff yourself. You come back and your friend smokes – you stand there beside him, aware that he is talking but not really aware of what as you devise ways and schemes to snatch his cigarette and take a puff. The pretty girl from the opposite office comes down to smoke and asks if you have quit. You mumble something about cutting down, inhale as much of second hand smoke as you can and rush to your office – you are a second away from grabbing the beeping cigarette from her and then dealing with what may come after that.

You get another cup of coffee and think it is time to really get some beeping work done. You sit down and suddenly you are curious about what happened to a cricket match. You pull up Cricinfo, laze around a bit and surf over to read what Harsha Bhogle has to say. You feel lethargic and sleepy after the lunch and curse yourself for going to bed at beeping 2 AM last night. You computer(bless it's cold logical heart) reminds you that you have a beeping meeting in another 10 minutes and you do not have a beeping clue about what. You spend the next five minutes frantically reading what you can, the next five minutes fighting with the beeping printer (have you ever had one of them work in the heat of the battle?...ever?) and the next five admitting your pathetic defeat and supplicating the printer in first floor. You run to your meeting – with loose unstapled papers in your hand, out of breath and your manager welcomes you in with an enthusiastic good afternoon – his greeting rings louder in your ears this time.

The meeting goes on for an hour - you manage to come to the world of the living now and then – spending the rest of the time multi tasking with thoughts about how you should go to the gym, eat healthy, study more and musings on how people publish books, what makes successful people successful along with images of the pretty girl from the office across the hall interspersed liberally in between. The meeting is about to end and it comes to the point where you absolutely have to say something – something intelligent at that or at least something that is remotely close to intelligent so that your manager looks good. You recollect all your past meetings, bring together jargon and meaningless buzz words that you have heard/read about and put together a loaded phrase with every jargon you know on something about responding to changes in requirements. The moment passes and the guy in the seat next to you has to say something – and you go on to thinking about the pretty girl you see around your apartment complex this time.

The meeting ends (all bad things have to end at some point) and people linger on before dissipating – as if they cannot to bear the separation from their “loved ones” for a few hours with the distance of a few cubicles in between them. The blessed folks choose to stand right at the door and talk about a stand up comedian you have no beeping idea about and because they look at you from time to time – you nod and try to politely smile at the right places. Finally they break up and head for a smoke break. You go for a drink of water (again) and head back to your cubicle.

It is beeping 3 PM and you really need to get some beeping work done. You check your email (an obsessive compulsive habit) as if the whole world wants to talk to you every second and see an email from your bank that says your credit card is maxed out. What in the beeping hell? You grab your cell phone and as you head out, you realize that the conversation in the neighboring cubicles has moved onto some beeping sit com. You punch in your credit card number – get transferred, punch in your social security number – get transferred, punch in your pin code – get transferred, pronounce your mother’s maiden name in an American way – get transferred, punch 0 – get transferred, go to customer representative – get transferred, go to lost or stolen card sector– get transferred and end up in some place you have no idea about as you explain your situation – you have not used your beeping card in a month. You are told it is a beautiful phishing scheme and the lady on the other end of the phone line condescendingly starts to explain what phishing is. You almost reply you know what it is – before biting your tongue and reminding yourself that you just got sucked into it.

You head back to your desk and it is beeping 4 PM. What the beeping hell – the beeping day is shot anyway. You browse the help files and read about something that you are pretty sure you are not likely to use in your job in the foreseeable future. Now a little bit of guilt starts to kick in. It is 4:30 PM. You work for the next three hours and see your manger heading out. He asks you to not work too hard and his good night rings the loudest in your ears. You get a final cup of coffee and head out at 7:45 PM. You go home, read Lord of the Rings, watch TV, watch cricket videos on the net and write a beeping blog entry at 1:30 AM in the night in a blog you have not updated for seven beeping months (why now?) –how in the beeping hell are you as going to get up tomorrow? Oh well , tomorrow is another brand new day and hope springs eternal.

Self Esteem

2006-07-21T19:12:00.000-07:00

He never thought much of himself. His successes came as a surprise to him and his few failures seemed to make sense, like the failures were eventual. He was bad with people and terrible with women. When someone praised him at work, he felt cheap; somehow he had tricked them into believing he was actually good at something. His life was a struggle, and everyday was a battle. Compliments embarrassed him and made him feel distinctly uncomfortable. He fought it, like everything else, convincing himself that he liked himself. Few years went by. Then, it happened. He felt good about himself. He liked himself. He was no longer good at his job; not even competent. People then started asking him why he had allowed himself to slide so much. He was viewed as a failure. Personally, He slept with a smile on his face at the end of the day, almost every day.

It

2006-07-11T22:02:00.000-07:00

I know I am going to die. I wish I would die soon and without this much pain. But, I know that is not going to happen. I know it; some things you just know, like you know you can die for a woman but unfortunately she is just being nice to you. I exhale and a stream of my urine hits the metallic bedpan. The sound is accompanying it is oddly satisfying. Did you cringe on reading that? I don’t blame you; I would have, just like the way we cringe at the ungainly stump on an amputee. We wonder what he will do with his life and think we pity him. We are embodiments of compassion and our hearts melt. I try to laugh as these thoughts hit me and my laugh comes out as a snort. Bull Shit, I say to myself. We are just glad that it is him and not us who has to live with an ungainly stump the rest of our lives. We might probably be more curious, we scavenge more and our thoughts may drift towards whether he is paralyzed or if he can still get it up. We want to know the extent of his misery; when people don’t have that many blessings to count, misery may transform their mundane pain into blessings. Don’t worry, I understand. If a distant cousin of a coherent thought about whether I use the bedpan just to pee or for its counterpart too ran across somewhere inside you, I would smile. No problem. But, please do not pity me. Can it, save it or whatever. I know we human beings, as a species are not entirely capable of that.

I realize that I am getting bitter; perhaps going mad and senile. That is to be expected. But, still hard to accept and deal with. If you are not a religious zealot, you would say I have not sinned much. I am not afraid of hell anyway. I have helped a few people and I do not expect heaven for that either. I know my son and his wife are expecting my death. After all, there are practical considerations. People have to be informed, schedules made, somebody should say a few good words about me and make me seem taller in my death. The nurse comes over to pick up my bedpan. I wonder if she resents me. Who in the world would want to do this for an old man day in and day out? She should hate me by now. That is okay, really. Then, she goes to the window and opens the drapes. It is raining. I don’t know why she did it. I had spent about 12 minutes without thinking about It. Now, I would be thinking about It and nothing else.

I was about ten or twelve years old when I saw It. It was raining, just like today. My greatest fear during those days was that somehow my parents would die and that I would never hit a boundary when we played cricket across the street. I smile. They seem lame now. Then I cringe. They were not lame back then. The fear was as real as anything I feared in my adult life. Time cuts off the edges of your worst memories. That is how we survive; we learn to forget our worst moments. I almost forgot mine completely for sixty years only for it to come back to haunt me from the dead. I don’t know what made the neurons in my brain rewire to bring back the memory of It. When the memory came back, I knew it was for real. I knew I had not been hallucinating and I know I am not going Schizophrenic. I had seen something I should not have. I had seen something that had no business being in our world and I would never forget It. The memories come rushing back. I try not to think of It and that makes me think about It even more. This time, the images are well defined. This time, I manage to catch the opening credits of the horror flick I made for myself. Perhaps, a few more neurons made it across and are firing. I did not know whether to be glad or sad for it.

__________________________________

I watch the rain drops dance on the train window. They would scoot over to the direction opposite of the movement of the train. I feel at peace with the world. My parents were with me and alive and we are going to Bombay for the summer holidays. I did not want anything more than that. The rain stops a little. I bug my mom for permission to open the window a little since it is not raining now. She says it will start soon and the coupe will get wet. I give her one of my disappointed look and go back to watching the scenery with a forlorn face. She knows the sequence of acts I was going to put up. My next move would be to refuse to eat. She sighs and decides she cannot take more than Part One of my act this time. She opens the window and I feel the cold air backed up by a few stray adventurous drops of rain hit my face. A heady smell of wet earth and water on the rusted window grill hits me. I breathe deeply and feel light.

I notice that it has gotten dark quite suddenly and quite soon for a summer day. The lights come on gradually in the coupes. The lighted windows and the compartment make strange shapes. I am hooked. The ground beneath the train leads by changing its shape and the shadows follow with a rhythm of its own. I make out a dog amongst the shapes. I smile to myself a little. The dog changes into a buffalo. The buffalo becomes a bus and then a lorry. The lorry becomes a man and the man is getting transformed into something else. I watch without realizing that I am holding my breath. My heart is beating fast now. I can see something new; new not in the sense that it is something that I had not seen or something for which I did not have the vocabulary for, but new in the sense that I knew I had no right to be seeing that shape on good old earth. My heart feels as if someone with a hand inside the freezer for an hour is gripping it and squeezing it. The shape is almost complete now. I want to look away and yet I cannot. I want to close my eyes and I cannot. My mom shakes me and practically screams my name to eat my dinner. The spell is broken. I am thankful at her shouting for the first time in my life.

I get the upper berth because I fight for it. My father gives up and asks me to be careful. I see that somebody had written something about the stuff grown men and women do behind closed doors on the compartment roof. I know it was something vulgar and that makes me curious about the graffiti. I trace the drawings etched on to roof of the train and see a few more scratches her and there coming together. This time I close my eyes before it could start. I open my eyes after a sold minute. I look down into the middle berth and see my mom and reassure myself. I look down the aisle and see the blue lights down the aisle. It looked creepy. I close my eyes and start scoring imaginary centuries. I fall asleep.

I am dreaming; I cannot catch the images of my dream. I have a feeling I have had the same dream many times after that night. It irritates me now. It is like food which gets stuck somewhere inside your mouth that you can feel with your tongue but cannot get it out with your fingers. I shudder and gasp and moan in agony. My body performs gymnastics and writhes into angles I did not know I could do without breaking my bones. I hear a great sound approaching my younger self. I now know it is called the Doppler Effect. I scream in unison with the train traveling on the opposite direction. Our train vibrates. The noise goes back and forth between the two trains crossing each other. My body goes into yet another impossible angle and I fall onto the bright red floor of the coupe.

I cannot speak. I want to cry and shout in horror but I cannot. I feel an acute shortage of wind and breath. I realize how red the floor of the coupe is. The bright red is beginning to hurt my eyes. I see the shoes stocked away underneath the seats and the musky odor of an unwashed sock hits me. I want to vomit. Some bile and blood comes out of my mouth. My mom’s face hovers over me. Tears are streaming down her cheeks. Absurdly, I am glad that my parents are still alive. She is screaming now. I can tell by her wide open mouth. But, she sounds far away from me; far away and receding like the train that is continuing on its way after having played its’ role in my life. I find it difficult to breathe and to hold my head straight on my neck. My neck tunes sideways. It gets dark. Not the kind of dark anyone alive would have probably experienced. I know that I am going away into it. Forever.

I hear my mother’s voice from somewhere. It is still dark in here. I don’t know where I am. There are no roads, no landscape, just wide plain space in complete darkness. My eyes hurt. Then, I feel It. I can feel It’s being. I shudder. I shout and nothing comes out. I know It is nearby. I realize no one sees It when they are alive. It does not belong to our world. I deduce I am probably dead and that makes me cry. My eyes adjust better to the complete dark, if that was what it was. I wipe away some of the snot running off my nose with the back of my wrist. I wish my mom was here. Then I see It; in all it’s glory. I realize there is no seeing with your eyes here. It is all about feeling and the feeling of It is thousand times more richer for the senses than seeing. I can feel it pervading me, eager to suck me into It, into one of the many million lost voices howling inside It forever.

I open my eyes to feeling something with a bald head massaging my chest. I bring up some bile. The light inside the compartment hurts my eyes. For a second, the strange creatures and the bright light scare me. I feel I am blind. I am not able to see anything here with my feel like before. I then scream. Then something hugs me. I get it all back. I open my eyes, blink many times and enjoy the warmth of my mother’s hug. I hear my father thanking the doctor and God for the good luck. I feel intensely grateful. I do not realize why, but I feel I have won a great battle, perhaps the battle of life itself. Someone produces a Candy Bar from somewhere and I promptly forget the night for the next sixty years.

________________________________________

My seventy three year old self opens his eyes to the same sensation of blindness and an intense feeling of not belonging on earth. I shudder. I sweat. I feel victimized. I also feel a little elated at figuring some things out. I know It is waiting. It had been cheated once and It will not stand to be cheated again. I should have died sixty years ago and somehow did not. It had waited sixty patient years in the dark, feeling its way through for the smell of my soul, hunting in its’ own macabre way. It knows and feels somehow that the wait is going to get over. I break down and cry like a baby. I know It is waiting and I have no way out.

Mr.Anderson....Let us wipe the slate clean

2006-07-10T21:16:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, you have to wipe the slate clean, give up the past and start fresh. It is the law of nature that all old things should give way to the new. Or, hmmm...well, you know, after some time when you go back and read the crap you have written, you kinda feel, you know like a dumb jackass. So, out they all went. Thank you Mr.Backspace. Sometimes people wipe the slate clean not to start over again, but to start acting the goat (Thank you Mr.Georges Remi) all over again. After all, what in the freaking hell is life about if you don't get to act the err...goat or donkey? So, a clean slate it is. Or, a clean slate it was until this piece soiled it all over again.