DARKNESS....

The Night gathered strength, forming ominous dark puddles at the foot of my bed. Where the rheumatic street-lamp offered its last bleak services to the world, the coconut tree, reclining against its quivering net of light, rose to a menacing stature against my wall. Moonlight there was none...just wisps of greying hair gliding indifferently in a bucket of inky black. An eclipse formed over my eyes, disturbing shades of darkness waltzed around me...every single object in my room seemed draped in black...draped and sashaying about, their feet barely touching the ground, or so it seemed to my blind eyes, for not a single noise did they make. The Night walked barefeet, painting my oh-so familiar world with the shades of unfamiliarity....'What was this place?', I wondered aloud...a timeless, formless space...a space that escaped the clutches of definition. This space i knew not...this place was not Home.

Do not forsake me at the tentacles of rabid Supposition.
Love does not dress in mourning black, but, in pristine white...in shining yellow... in rippling blue.
Our childish little plastacine world i have carefully built...the walls against which, many a times i have rested my tired head and dreamt...dreamt of petty squables over the logic of hanging a Chinese fan on it's face!
When your boat hit the side of mine, the wound was mortal...my boat sank, but my heart...you saved. After years of dormancy bordering on death, my heart finally gave a little leap...a tiny, elusive jig...and the world unfurled before my eyes.
Finally, i could see where Life would travel from here...the ports it would visit, the inns it would put up in...the inconsequential feats of greatness it would perform in public reading-rooms. Finally, i could build...build and make indomitable Hope the skeletal framework of my creation...
So, having lighted up the candles along my way, do not snuff them out now.
The darkness will raze down my dreams....it will trample over the candles, make them moan in pain...our plastine world will melt into nothingness....Armies of Doubt and Fear will march in, lay seigh...
All will be lost in the hot frothing claudron of Darkness...of death before dying...and my heart will stop breathing...again.

WATER-SHOOTERS!

The world seems weary of soggy shoes….of papery gondolas bobbling up and down in murky puddles, holding up traffic…of wet widow-seats of public buses, enticing yet unaccessible.
Something must be done….and so be it.
‘Government calls for a state of emergency! Hike in all prices…umbrellas and raincoats will come free!’
Free! Free! Free!
Sticking out defiant tongues at bundles of pregnant clouds above, military helicopters zoom across the sky, dropping carters of raincoats and umbrellas at the sneezing, coughing, shivering world below…Where they drop with a deafening thud on the soil of Iraq, men, women and dogs alike, scream in terror till their lungs expand and burst…phut!
Around the world, water-proof mushrooms blossom…like a Mexican Wave they pop-up…from west to east, south to north. Skyscrapers button themselves up in the massive raincoats, streetlamps look grumpy in their comically oversized cloaks…their gumboots like empty flower-pots, humoring the balancing act.
‘The Government is satisfied…all seems dry with the world…the battle has been won!’
But what of the clouds?
‘Will you not rain?’, I ask them. A shadow passes over their countenance, darkening them further. ‘We are not needed anymore…’, the tears they shed fall Plink! Plonk! on the stupidly grinning umbrellas below….
I grind my teeth….
Something must be done…so be it.
Bleary-eyed, slumping, swearing, the sun emerges from behind the moping clouds…A frothy toothbrush in mouth, it tightens the string of it’s night-gown….grumpily.
‘Eh! Disturbed sleep last night sir?’…My cheeky question flares him up…angry spits of burning flint coupled with specks of white froth dart out of his mouth…I hold up a woolly cloud in self-defence, and my shield deflects the raging arrows….down down they shoot….towards the earth…and phisss! Singe the leathery skin of the umbrellas….
‘A hole! A hole!’ I shout in glee…
The clouds they scream in ecstasy…do cartwheels across the sky…and then with loaded water-shooters, advance…..
Rain! Rain! Here they come…
Here they come…Again!


But I, have other jobs at hand….scaling slimy water-pipes, evading the watchful eyes of the wise, cynical world, I would have to make my way to the printing-room…
For, without me, who else would ‘Forecast’ the weather?

THE SEA?

Life marches on...I drag along.
"Lift your feet and walk!"- Life commands.
The logo on my coconut-oil bottle promises a wristful of sand...
I long for the sea...for the insolent pinpricks of salt in my eyes...
Crows I wish to seize by the throat and dip in pools of white...
Look! Look! Seagulls in disguise!

The man who translates life for me...is dead.
Now, I sit on my haunches, chewing on my nails, biting my lips...tasting salt...salt? ah! the sea?
The Sea! The Sea!
I run wildly down the streets, slipping on my slippers, bumping, shoving, kicking gaping coconut shells out of my way...Coconut Shells!... ah! the sea? again!
The Sea! The Sea!
Thoughts challenge my feet...they run...neck-to-neck, eyes set resolutely on the finish-line...
Tiny drops of sweat join forces at my forehead...a murky threadbare curtain falls over my eyes, blurrs my sight...i tear it away, with all my might.
The Sea! The Sea!
'I can read life!'....Relief runs a omforting hand over my head....
I run on....
I run towards Life...
But Life...
Life scowls down at me...I, the defiant foreigner, finally brought to my knees...made to pay for scoofing at the Language of Life.
"The Sea it is not"...Life smirks this time..."The One is Blood...the other,a rotting Coconut-Shell...The Sea it is not!"
I walk back in the dark.
In an incomprehensible world, the barring cannines of the garbage-bins seem to bark at me- "It's all Greek and Hebrew to you...is it not?!" and the streetlamps blink in appreciation of the joke..."Cheers!", shout the signposts....All great scholars of a wise old world.
The tears...they came, as they had to come....
But wait...the tears...the salt! salt?...
The Sea? Yes,the Sea!
The Sea! Here I come!

YOUR JOURNEY...

Shoelaces tightened in a solemn bow across your feet...

Over-stuffed mouth of your leather suitcase, stifled with a loud snap!

Halting before the mirror, your image makes you jump...a comical red bindi sits smugly on the clearing between your brows...but on a closer look...ah! the red rogue is not on your forehead..it is on the glass!

The otherwise dispassionate man-in-the-radio, chokes on his words everytime you pass by him...you hit him angrily on his head, twist his ears, make them go red. The 'roads to avoid' section of his narration becomes gibberish...a messy concoction of clogged lanes and roads holding rude sign-boards screaming 'no entry!', with the teary man-in-the-radio standing in the midst of it all, the clueless traffic police.......Sniff! Screech! Phut!.......and you pull him out of the socket. Silence...complete.

Hurried bites on the toast as the untouched cubes of butter stare at you...hurt, again...you ignore them everytime...why?

" Because i have no time", you say...

Time! Time! You remember then....strap the black ticking appendage to your wrist...wind yourself up...a human time-bomb...ticking away....

So you leave, your squeaky shoes rolling in dust like naughty children, the wind shooting arrows through your well-combed hair...arrows that burst into grains of dust and rain down on your head.

You board a bus...no place to sit....a tight fit, you are. Again and again you bring your hand down to your pocket...the bulge of your wallet assures you- 'im there!' A stranger in grey and white makes a pillow of your shoulder...you do not complain...maybe the man's formidable snores frighten you into submission.."it doesn't matter"- you console yourself...

You walk on and on...

On and on...you walk.

Through overflowing vats of concrete and sand, metal and man...you walk...

Finally,you arrive...

A tired sustained ring on the bell......

I open the door....

You smile...for the first time in the day....

' I would like to believe that this is what you prepare yourself for every morning....that this is what you travel towards...this where your journey ends...'

I close my diary...the only recipient of these loud thoughts- my red bindi sitting smugly on the face of the mirror....tomorrow, it will make you jump again...

THE LAST CUE....

Raised voices, fingers and flying plates of bone-China nudged the night awake...Sleep slipped down slimpy water-pipes, heaving a sigh of relief...He swore, dramatically and with eloquence...they, the three-and-twenty ancestors framed into captivity with steadfast devotion, wished and prayed to be devoured by termites or be felicitated with cobwebby wreaths...She, wrung her heart dry...not a single drop of tear left to be spared....

And then...the Silence, counting its breath.....She, combing her hair, tapping her feet to the dull rythym of the breaths...waited for her cue.

Her cue..it came...and she walked away with appreciative pats on the back...flicking jealous glances off her shoulder, smiling at the camera...waving at the stupefied world....a world that had dragged Her by the collar and dumped Her into the reeking box of 'the sufferers'...'She would be wipped and caned, Her eyes gouged out..and yet She will stay, rising for gasps of breath from the sea of self-inflicted grief...'

But look!

Look how the puppet hangs by the strings from the gnarled fingers of the ceiling-fan! Look at Her!....See how she hangs....Defying the desperate pulls of the infinite strings, She hangs motionless...

A puppet that would dance to the tunes of her puppeteer no more....

BEAUTY OF BRICKS!

Ah! The beauty of the bricks! Of the motar...of the sands...and of the Dreams!

Their enticing nakedness, making a thousand hopeful blueprints errupt in the mind. Bring in the potter's-wheel!

Blundering my way out of the musty womb of eternity, aided by a pair of forceps and prayer beads, the furnished world that greeted me with a toothy smile, was disappointing. I had expected disorderliness...chaos...the inexplicable charm in an upturned water jug or a Van Gough hanging carelessly by one arm on the wall. Then with my bulldozer i would have come, the blueprints receiving indelible wounds of the pencil all the while.

What about the hands that itch upon seeing a well-combed hair? What about the tiny ant of irritation that fastens its seat-belt tighter around your gullet when confronted with a creaseless milk-white shirt? It is then that we loosen our hair, kick away the sandals and run roaring towards the sea...the sea- unkempt, shabby, reeking of dead fish and skipped baths...The sea, rolling on wet sand, getting teary with laughter, pointing a frothy finger towards the world...a furnished world that had disappointed me.

Centuries of careful ironing has rendered the apparel too stiff for wearing. Now it hangs by the shoulder in the cupboard..the shoulders, too stiff to slump...too stiff! too stiff! A stoic without a choice!

This world then, has lost my attention...i will let it go, and search for alternatives here and there. Search for a place where my builder's kit and rubber boots will be of use....where my handiwork would speak for me....where i would decide after much contemplation, whether Van Gough should hit my visitors in the eye upon entering the sitting-room, or choose to sneak up on them as they sipped coffee in the dining-room!

For Ah!...The beauty of the bricks!..Of the mortar...Of the sand...and of the dreams!

THE STORMING.....

Dried slices of mango, strips of green and red chillies, deliciously pregnant cubes of lemon…all stamped into submission, staring out at the foggy world from their mustard oil-filled glass prison…intermittently, choking…silently spewing oily rivulets of tears….the tears, their only letters of unconvincing assurance to the loved ones around….’I am fine! I am fine!’
Then, a dull thud! The hot summer air drew in its breath…sharply. An army of ants scaling the rusty yellow pipe of the water tank for the fifth time, stopped in their expedition, shock gleaming loud and clear on their perspiring brows. And then, a nanosecond of ominous silence, followed by a thunderous crash!....and little Raja has set them free! The glass prison has been stormed…it has fallen, limp and defeated at the hands of a single thread-bare duce ball!
The exodus of the jubilant prisoners...the dying shards of glass counting their last breath under the smirking sun…the pools of oily blood, expanding, flowing into each other…drowning all long bottled-up grief and suffering in the massive ocean of freedom…..This moment will be remembered…remembered and recorded in little Raja’s personal archive…The day the glass prison fell!