The Symmetry of Smoke

She entered the world of muteness as if she had just stepped into glass.

It was, once again, like her childhood. In those days a few gypsies used to come and stay in a place close to their country-house. A place where, when they cooked, you could see the smoke rise from your window. And that’d suddenly seem so far that you’d find all the more reason to rush to their tents. Their tents were constructed in perfect symmetry. Each of those was equidistant from every other. Each tent resembled the other exactly. And in the centre of all these tents was the one tent that really intimidated her. The gypsies called this ‘The Maze of Magic Mirrors’.

The tent was also a source of their primary income. Children who stayed inside various neighbourhood windows from which the smoke could be seen followed its trail to watch ‘The Maze of Magic Mirrors’. Inside the tent it was perfectly dark, except for a very bright light that seemed to originate from nowhere and invaded only a tiny, particular circular space inside the tent. And when you went and stood in that light you could suddenly see there’s actually a mirror in front of you. And in it, there’s not one but infinite numbers of you, standing in a cluster everywhere – beside, behind and diagonally to every single you. It was like a battalion of children where there was only one child – You.

When she used to see her manifold selves in the mirror, her first feelings were not of amazement but of pity. A pity which stems from concern; which, in turn, stems from some helplessness. She felt helpless as she thought she was her only self who could transcend the barrier of the mirror. She was concerned for all her other selves as if they were her own sisters. What a pity that they shall be trapped forever! And that’s when, for the first time, she could think of the world of muteness. Of absolute silence.

 

It was, once again.

 

She entered the world of muteness as she had done innumerable times before. And although she knew everything that was to happen, it all seemed equally uncertain. And ominous.

She had come down the road that promised to lead to his home, where beside a window he must have sat waiting, puffing a cigarette. She came down the road that promised to keep its promise. And when she thought of promises she thought of a mirror. When we make a promise we think of a future. In the present moment when we’re trying to keep that promise, we’re juxtaposing that future moment in the present times. So that the present resembles that distant future. In exact precision of a mirror image. When she lost her way, her mind was already preoccupied with a few other questions.

It was the beginning of dusk, and the road that promised to keep its promise but would no longer be able to keep it, was already lonely. And as she sank deeper into herself, she realized there were no directions.

What, for instance, would it be if one kept reliving a promise belonging to the distant future over and over again in the present? Say, for example, a man has promised his wife that he’ll bring her roses when he comes back home. So that he’s been bound into an agreement to bring roses to his wife every time he returns home. He must keep reliving the promise in every single instance of the present. And each of those singular presents would be a mirror image of the distant future. Like the infinite children of a single child.

And then, suddenly she stumbled upon a question that really frightened her. When we bring our promises to the present, the immediate – we’re fulfilling the promise. So that it no longer belongs to the distant future. And for every time that we’re fulfilling a promise, we’re actually annihilating the future. We’re annihilating the space where the promise had originally belonged. Is that how the children in the mirror annihilate the child outside?

She was brought back to her senses with this question and realized that she had not only lost her way but had actually invaded the world of muteness.

 

She was reminded once again of the promise she had made of meeting him. And she knew that she won’t be able to keep it once again. Like it has always been in the past. For every time that she had to take the road that promised to keep its promise, the promise shall be broken. And she would find herself walking deeper into the defying silence.

She could feel, as she walked, the last traces of sound recede farther away. The absolute silence is different from the absence of sound. Sound is a property that flows in time and diminishes through slowness. The absence of sound simply presumes that there are no sources of sound in the present. But what about the sound from the immediate past? The traces of sound still keeps rolling into the present however diminished in its magnitude. A silent morning could never be as dense as a silent night because the traces of sound are in different magnitudes.

The absolute silence is different because there are no traces of sound in its core. None at all. And its depth is immense. Almost deafening. And this is when she would want but find that she couldn’t scream. Or whisper.

 

The purple haze that gradually invaded could only have been a precondition of the muteness that had become heavier. Unbearable to be carried alone upon two shoulders. But then, as always, she’d learn she’s not alone in the muteness.

The first time she caught a glimpse of him was walking ahead of her. And he seemed so farther up ahead as if he were a property of the future. Like a promise. And she remembered her destiny was to walk behind him, silently, in the muteness.

He walked slowly as if he were tired too. She tried to increase her pace of walking to catch up with him and found that she couldn’t. And then she realized that they were all walking in the pace in which the silence dictates. They could neither move any faster nor any slower. It was a destiny that they all share in common.

All?

And then she remembered the succeeding moments. She must discover others following him too from the various directions of the purple silence. Each equidistant from him, forever. All sharing a common weariness that grew like happiness on being shared. And even though she couldn’t see any of the others following her as of yet, she could feel the muteness falling under a blanket of weariness rapidly.

Since they were all following him from the various directions, he was the centre of them all. And since they were converging in him, the distance between each other receded. Diminished. They each came closer to the other’s weariness. The unbearable weariness of the solitary. And the aroma of the sweat.

She recognized this weariness too. It was part of her childhood. On a day she ran. Ran far too long. Trying to run further away. She thought the gypsies were behind him. Because she had stepped inside ‘The Maze of Magic Mirror’ with a stone in her hand and done the forbidden. And then as she ran, she just wanted to run so far away that the smoke that led her to the tents would be found no more. She wasn’t sure what her exact fears were. Was it the gypsies who she thought were behind him? Was it the sound that the glasses made as they shattered? Was it her guilt? Her liberty? The first sensuality of adolescence? Or something very different?

Now, as she walked deeper into the purple silence of weariness, she found the same questions returning. And the answers receding, as always. But receding answers bring more questions. What brings him here? Why must others follow him even though he belonged to her and her alone? Was he actually like smoke and they captivated by its symmetry, like children? And why must she ask this very question that she’s asking right now, over and over again every time she returns to muteness?

He stopped.

In a place where the purple silence seemed so dense that it seemed to bathe him in its light. And once in the light, he turned to face her directly. And then for the first time she noticed that it wasn’t him at all. It was her. It was she herself dressed in a man’s robe, standing in front of her. Smiling, looking at her. And she found herself smiling back, even though she didn’t want to. She had no choice but to. And then, she suddenly noticed standing beside her on both sides and diagonally, were many women who looked the same. Like her. All equally uncertain, smiling at the self who stood in their centre dressed in a man’s attire.

Then, suddenly a feeling dawned on her. She was just an image. A mirror image. An illusion. That she didn’t exist at all. She was just one of the manifold reflections of the woman standing in their centre with a piece of stone in her hand. And she realized that her thoughts were only a reflection of what the original woman thought. Just as she can sense right now what the woman has been thinking of. She has been thinking of him, sitting beside a window, waiting, puffing on a cigarette. And she has been thinking of taking the road that promised to keep its promise, to lead to his home. And she has been thinking of her childhood. And ‘The Maze of Magic Mirrors’. And the infinite children of a single child. And the running away from the symmetry of smoke. And hoping there’s a place where the window won’t show you the rising smoke no longer. And hoping.

She saw the woman in a man’s attire throw a spherical stone, which she had been carrying secluded in her palm, towards her. And before the stone would crash onto the mirror that both divided and multiplied them, the woman turned around and ran for the road that promised to keep its promise.

Love’s Long Awaited Tale

The Distance

At last, she decided to mosaic her bedroom floor with his letters. They had been enabling her past. A past which she wanted to rob of the form and the structure. She wished she would find his amnesia, left behind in his forgetting, lying in full carelessness, on the creases, in between the folds of the letters. Manifold. But as always he had forgotten…. To leave back his amnesia. She decided to create her own amnesia.

She decided to tear his letters, off. Carefully down the creases. Exactly from their seams. So as not to hurt them.

He had written each of his letters in pencil, in some nights. He wrote them all in the light of the candle. She could still sense the smell of molten wax on them. All his letters bore this strange broth of a fragrance: of wax and lead. Each of his letters he had written in the form of dialogues. Each one he had decimated in acts and scenes. And she knew he had been writing one of his greatest plays in the form of letters with her as the protagonist and him, as her fool. She loved living in the play. She loved to take a dip in each of the words that made the letter. Words written by a trembling hand. His hands trembled most of the times. More so when he was excited. His words quivered down the line just as his hands did on her skin.

Once, he had written a story on her belly. It was a pseudo-whirlpool that originated from her navel and spread outside as loops. It tickled her when he began. She giggled incessantly but as his orders were, she didn’t open her eyes. She started to read the words from the feeling of them being written. She had never felt words on her skin. She had never read words with her eyes closed. She had never imagined words moving on her body with each of her breath. And as the words moved, so did the story. Slowly, the story kept running deeper into itself and she found that she could laugh no more. She was becoming a captive in its thoughts. The farther the whirlpool spread, her expressions were more choked in tears.

“What’s happening to me?” she had asked.

“Words have just engraved themselves on the other side of your skin. They’re now playing inside your body.”

“But how come it feels as if the words have repositioned themselves to create new meanings? Why is it that the way of your thoughts feels so distant?”

“Are you sure that you feel that way?”

“Yes.”

“….. Which means that the curse has befallen”, he had said, shaking his head, forcefully.

“What curse?” she had to open her eyes.

“….. Of the creation becoming greater than the creator; of a son who would despise his father, of a barrier more powerful than the distance.”

“But if there is distance there must be nearness, too.”

“Yes. That’s true. But there’s something else that you need to learn: The distance moves away like time. One day when you wake up from an empty night’s sleep, you’ll know.”

He had bid her farewell, unbolted her door and stepped out in the naked darkness that majored the night. The hungry darkness like a perfectly camouflaged man-eater had taken him. And as he faded slowly, she knew he’d never return.

He had written each of his letters in pencil, in some nights. He would say that he loved the music that was created when you wrote with a pencil in the dark. “Each word”, he had whispered into her ears, one night “has its own music.” Even after he left, his pencil written letters that really was the somber script of a play kept coming. And slowly, as she went through the dialogues she realized that he was losing her to the character of the play. He had that dangerous amnesia and she had become its aftermath. Day after day, as she went through his letters she came to realize that he was forgetting her slowly and was replacing her with one of her many imaginary characters. But this, somehow, turned her on. She wanted to know who she would become in his play, until the catharsis.

Then, one day, the letters stopped coming. And she realized that he had forgotten her address.

The catharsis was incomplete. And she understood that she must live on as an incomplete protagonist of the play. She tried for days, months and years. But then, when she couldn’t take it anymore she decided to tear his letters off carefully from the seams and mosaic her bedroom floor with them. She’d love to watch them in their perfect formlessness and let her past lay scattered on the floor.

Only when the words had repositioned themselves on her skin did he leave. “Let my memories scatter, too.” She wished.

When she finished mosaicing her floor with his letters, night had befallen. So, she lit up a candle to take a look at them. After looking at them for a long while from different corners of the room she suddenly realized something. The play was very well crafted. So that if you looked at its torn pieces from any of the directions it would still have an artistic flow of thought and more importantly, a plot. However, the genre would change – it might become a tragedy, a comedy or even, a monologue based on the direction from which you watched it. And all of these would happen because the distance between the scattered pieces of the mosaiced letters would change on being viewed from the different corners of the room.

The distance.

The next morning when she woke up she found that the distance between her bed and her bedroom window had increased. The window had moved farther away from her bed. And so was the case with all the walls. They had all moved away from her. Then, she considered the chances of this being a dream as she would often find happening with the protagonist in many of his tales. But no, this couldn’t have been a dream. She was never taught the art of dreaming. And so, she walked towards the closest of the distances and yet with her falling steps they all seemed to move further away. She would have to put her steps carefully so as not to step on the letters

“The distance moves away like time”, she remembered him saying.

“Reality has now become one of his prophecies”, she thought “What could be any worse now that I was trying to forget him?”

It became worse everyday: the distance kept increasing. And that included the distance between the different pieces of the letters on her floor. Their plots expanded and their spaces expanded. She had to be less careful these days on where she put her feet.

On some evenings, she would sit on her balcony, looking at the sky. It seemed to have moved away as well. She wondered how so very far he might have moved now that the distances have increased. She wondered if he still wrote letters and dispatched them to random addresses since he didn’t remember any particular addresses. She wondered if he still created the musik of dementia when his pencil moved on the white paper, whether he wrote much slower these days, whether words had replaced her, and whether time too, had moved away with the distance. She wondered. And wondered how she had been wondering.

Then, when she walked into the bedroom, she would find in the expanded spaces of her mosaiced letters, new acts of the play have been introduced. That night, she sat on the floor reading the newly discovered acts of the play in the candlelight. But it would take infinitely more time for her to move from one torn piece to another. She realized that time had now, full control over her. And that she was infusing into the time itself.

All of it came within that one unconditional revelation. She understood catharsis.

She remembered once again the days when she received letters from him that she thought that slowly he was forgetting her. It was not true. He could never forget her. So, he was forgetting himself, voluntarily. Fading. Melting himself into his letters. And taking himself to her. Letters that had become his creator; letters that wrote themselves; letters that were his home. And then, one day, letters stopped arriving. It wasn’t because he forgot her address but because in his last letter his melting was complete and he was all there in her room, without her knowing it. But she knew now. She knew it all.

And all at once, she recognized what he had said – “The distance moves away like time.”

“When distance moves away we come closer”, she murmured.

All this while she had been shrinking into herself. Melting, too. Because she was a part of the play, too. She realized that all this while the moving distance had brought her closer to her self. She had been a reader for all too long and now, it was time that she became the protagonist of the play. This, suddenly made her laugh out loud.

“We’re all fictional characters and we never realize it. That there are people who are reading my life as a tale. That I was always a tale that started as a whirlpool on my reader’s belly…. On your belly”, she said looking into your invisible eyes.

And saying this she faded into one of your letters that you’ve been reading all this while, here.

The Abstract, The Unreal, The Magical