The Symmetry of Smoke
September 16, 2007
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.
The Thriller Novel
May 16, 2007
1
The cops came looking for the summer breeze. They turned everything I had in my room upside down.
“This place’s so dirty”, one said holding his handkerchief firmly on his scarred nose “don’t you ever do the dusting?”
“Not since she left.” I said
“What is it exactly that made her leave?”
“I don’t know. She said she had seen me making love to the summer breeze.”
“….. which is true?”
“Depends.”
“What?”
“I said, it depends.”
“What d’ya mean….. depends on what?”
“On the circumstantial evidences. Are you going to arrest me now or should I go and finish the painting? I’ve an art exhibition tomorrow.”
2
Voices played inside her head even when she sat on the roof. Voices she couldn’t discriminate. Nor own.
At times she wondered if they were the voices of all the people she had killed.
“Is it you, Kelly?” she’d ask.
“No. I cannot be there inside your head.” Kelly would answer.
“Why?”
“Because you’ve never killed me.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m still alive. And I’m sure that I’m living somewhere.”
“Oh Kelly, please forgive me. I’m so sorry. I just can’t seem to differentiate the living from the dead, anymore.”
And then, the voices would disappear. What would follow is the terrific silence. The silence in which she’d wish she’d once again get to kill someone.
“Who?” she thought.
Moments later, she shrugged.
“It doesn’t matter. Blood needs no calculation.”
3
In his childhood, he’d make exact errors on every mathematical problem he was told to solve. Even his teacher was baffled.
“You need infinite imaginations to make such absurd calculations.” She’d say.
And it was not an exaggeration. Each of his mistakes was carefully calculated. So well crafted that the possibility of any other error but the one he had committed would be nullified. His teacher would have to go through the heaviest of books in permutations and probability, and yet she had nothing to prove him wrong. It was impossible to be wronger than him. Because English had never defined a word called ‘wronger’.
“One problem could have exactly one perfect error” he’d say, “nothing less, nothing more. Once you get to it, you can feel the beginning of all fallacies.”
That is exactly how he had learnt to paint.
“A painting is the mathematics of distances….. between the root and the tree, between the bird and the sky, between the color and its absence, between the river and that drop of tear on the man’s cheek. And you could infuse movement in it once you discover the perfect error in it. All of us were nothing more than a painting until god made the perfect error. He made Eve do the same too, to introduce the concepts of reproduction. There could be no creation without the perfect error. It’s hidden in everything to be discovered. It’s just that we never do so because we have been taught to be afraid of errors. When we land into an error, we are told to learn something from it so as not to return to it. Instead, if we were to delve deeper into the error we’ve made, we’re bound to find the perfect error. And we would find natural creations. All my paintings linger in the glory of the perfect errors.”
He had written a book once called ‘Human and Fallacy’, but whoever started reading it said they couldn’t find its end. They said the book repeated itself with the page number being in a perpetual ascending order.
4
When your corpse was brought in my house, you had turned your head and smiled at me. So happy that I could recall you.
“Well, I’ve to do something ‘bout you, else you’d start leaving your stench on my paintings. Where would you like to stay?”
“In your garden.”
“That place’s already congested with the trees you had planted last summer.”
“Don’t worry. I’d find my place down the roots.”
“Who did this to you?” I said looking at your wounds, “you’re bleeding profusely.”
“Oh! Let’s not talk ‘bout that.”
“I wish I had some medicines. I’ve also misplaced my first-aid kit.”
“So….. you still care?”
“I’m….. I’m just afraid of blood.”
“Those are not your words”, you whispered.
We both smiled. I could sense my heart beating faster as I did.
5
The cops came in the evening. They said they’d like to question her about the murder.
“Murder! What murder?” I asked, taken by surprise.
“Don’t you know, she was killed?”
“What’re ya talking ‘bout?”
“Yes. She was. And you are one among the suspects’ list. Now, if you don’t mind, can I talk to her?”
“But I’ve already buried her.”
“Don’t worry. Our men would bring her here. Where’s the shovel?”
And thus, you were brought, still smelling of the wet mud that covered most of your skin.
“Gosh! Didn’t he even think of giving you a coffin?” The cop asked you.
Meanwhile, I thought of the rain that fell this afternoon. And the maddening fragrance of the first wet mud. The Frenzy.
6
Their first meeting was a mistake that repeated itself, ad infinitum, like the book he had wrote. He had been sitting that evening in the shade of the summer breeze. And he had been painting the summer breeze. For the last few hours he had been mixing the different shades of the colors. Waiting for a perfect error that would create the exact shade of the summer breeze.
She came following the summer breeze. Since the summer breeze went right through his paintings, she passed through his paintings too. Later, when his painting was completed, since he didn’t know her, he mistook her for the summer breeze. It was a perfect error – The beginnings of the perfect love story. And the beginning, as she had told elsewhere, does not lead to an end, but create newer beginnings. Perhaps, there was never a first time when they had met. There was only a sequence of moments – each preceded by some and followed by the other. And each time, for him, she was the summer breeze.
Each time, she’d pass away like colors on his drying palette. He wished his paintings were yet to be completed, forever and evermore. But time did to his paintings what a full-stop would always do to a phrase. For time was always the hole in both the barrier and the bridge to the accumulating moments. And then, to set them free, like birds from a cage, in a kiss.
“Too much of a perfect error in there”, he thought. She nodded.
7
After you completed the bath, we all sat on the porch talking. The cops took the lead.
“Do you remember the events that preceded the killing?” they asked you.
“Yes, I was with him, making love.” You answered pointing towards me.
“Okay. That sure is news to me. You never informed us of any such incident, sir.”
I was given a harsh glance with that statement. However, I couldn’t make out if an answer was wanted of me…. And what exact answer was wanted of me…. And who wanted it. I fumbled a little.
“I liked you a lot better the day before yesterday, sir. I thought you were much smart then. Which reminds me – how was your art exhibition?”
I could sense the sarcasm flying in the air. A few drops of darkness were assembling in the horizons. It was much too silent in my garden. Exceedingly calm. I knew this atmosphere well. I knew she had wished to come. She had wished too long. And nobody stops her when she wishes thus. None.
The summer breeze is coming. She had sensed the break in the rhythm of my breath. She had sensed my heartbeat as I sat with the cop and, more importantly, you. She had sensed that I was trying to defend your point of view. She knew I’d fall. Fall down the edges. Of my Frenzy. Our home. Frenzy. I had refurbished. Frenzy. With her. And I was about to stumble. To fall. If she doesn’t come. The edges were calling me again.
8
The first time they had made love to was to the fragrance of the approaching storm. Few of his paintings that were on paper, were fluttering. Creating a sound of liberty. They knew that they must cover themselves up before the storm. He knew he had to set the summer breeze free before the storm. And she knew she would lose to herself.
The first sounds of the storm were unmistakable. The first dissociation, unavoidable.
She left, you stayed.
Still beneath the weight of incomplete recognition you lied. Looking into your blank eyes. Without the shine. Lifeless. You were never the summer breeze. You were her gown. The robe she wore before she came to meet her lover.
They made love in the storm, that dusk. Dusts converging on their eyelids. Rain washing them through. Rain washing his paintings, too.
“You must come back to me”, he said “for without you she’s faceless.”
You had smiled, darkly.
You will never be her but I shall keep being him. It was an error that never seemed perfect enough.
9
You never wanted to open the window to her, last night.
“Own me, not her. Make me your soul”, you said while she whispered on your glass window-pane. Your closed windows trembled on her sweet, cold touch.
“Let her in, Kelly”, I said moving my fingers through your hair. “Let her in, if you love me.”
And I found your eyes becoming just as hazy as your glass window-pane. But tears always meant you’d listen. You got up and opened the window to her. And as you stood motionless like a shadowy figure in front of the window, I found the summer breeze glowing on your skin and the shine returning to your eyes.
And I was once again becoming him.
“Tonight, I’ll hide”, she said, “and you shall find me in the deepest of her chasms.”
I accepted her challenge. Our love shan’t be confined to the shackles of skin. I slit your skin in the places she could be. You never made a sound – telling me she wasn’t there. Whole night long I kept on searching but couldn’t find her.
I was losing my perfection in erring.
10
“Do you trust him?” the cops asked you.
“Not half as much as he trusts me”, you said
“But he had killed you, last night.”
“No. He had killed her.”
“Her?”
“The summer breeze.”
It was true. For even though the atmosphere had every sign of her arrival, the summer breeze didn’t come that evening. She was dead. You had made me commit the perfect error. I felt defeated. How I wished I would kill you, too. But I couldn’t. It was impossible. You were never there inside yourself. You always lived somewhere else. Inside me.
Love’s Long Awaited Tale
May 14, 2007
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.
Narcissus
May 5, 2007
[This is anything but fiction]
Narcissus was born inside a mirror. Many people who came to see the baby were disturbed on not being able to take it in their arms. They didn’t have access to the other side of the glass and so was the case with Narcissus. What, however, frightened them even more was their own absence inside the mirror. As if the mirror was a barrier between them and the baby. They realized later that the mirror itself was Narcissus’ mother and like all mothers it protected the child from the big, bad world.
Time passed and the town grew up with Narcissus. And Narcissus grew up with the townsfolk. Some claimed they cared for Narcissus much more deeply than they did for their own sons and daughters. They had watched him smile, weep and celebrate. Silently. Narcissus was deaf, for there was no sound on the other side of the glass. But all the same Narcissus was a beautiful baby right from the day he was born. The townsfolk could forget all their incompetence and incompleteness as they watched him smile. When he wept, unable to provide him with the warmth of the human touch, they recognized their incompetence. And as he celebrated his personal world on the other side of the glass, they became yet more incomplete. And then, he smiled again.
But as he grew up, people realized that Narcissus had become more powerful than the mirror. His beauty had overgrown the space on his side of the glass and now spilled on to this side. He had imposed himself inside the head of the townsfolk and went with them to all the places they went. There were people in the town. He watched each other with their eyes; smelled how each had its own fragrance; felt each one breathing on the other’s skin; but most importantly, for the first time, he heard voices. Voices inside their head. Voices, undesirable.
Voices, undeniable.
In their growing frenzy, he found that each claimed that Narcissus was in their head. They also claimed that he wasn’t present in anyone else’s head. Each claimed that he owned Narcissus, now. At these times Narcissus wished he could speak. No, he couldn’t. But he had other powers. He knew all of them would have to slee……
I couldn’t complete the story last night; so, I slept. Or perhaps, I couldn’t complete my story last night because I fell asleep. It was a sound sleep. A sound that was unbearable. A strange form of silence. It crashed into itself a thousand times creating even smaller grains of silence, each of which was the mirror image of the other. And the only thing I noticed as I slept was that the silence became deafening. Even when I woke up in the morning the silence reverberated in my ears.
I woke up to find myself on my writing desk. The pieces of paper on which I had been writing were scattered all over the floor. They were the different parts of the story. I remembered that I had written the beginning and the end of the story; also, many of the parts in the middle. Last night, as I wrote I had been assembling the pages in their correct sequence. So that when I finished writing all the parts all I had to do was connect the separate pages with the appropriate verbs and conjunctions. But that was not to be. A wild wind last night had scrambled all that I had wrote. I got up from my chair to pick up the sheets and I saw myself in the mirror.
“Where is Narcissus?” was the first question I had to ask myself.
“Where am I?” I had to ask myself, then.
“Why was I present where he should have been?”
“Maybe, he is present now, where I should have been.”
Slowly, it occurred to me that the replacement was complete. I was Narcissus, now. The man whose smile was oblivion; whose silence was music and who was more powerful than the mirror. I was so glad with this revelation that I suddenly felt the urge of letting the world know who I had become. Narcissus, the almighty. I put on a dress and went out.
Once on the streets I started feeling as if I was walking through the mirror. I found Narcissus everywhere. I met thousands of Narcissuses on the streets. The entire town had transformed. They had turned into him.
I had, too. I had become a part of the collective him. Identity-less. Like ants. Not an individual anymore.
And yet I couldn’t hate that face. It was mine.
Then, weeks passed…… like soldiers, marching. In synchronization with each other. And in these weeks I found my story getting completed gradually. One of the Narcissuses would come and write a paragraph or two and go away. Another would come to pick up from where he had left. When the story was finished I suddenly realized that there was only one character in the story: myself.
And there could be only one reader: Narcissus.
Somehow, it all seemed so futile. I had written a story on which I had no control. It became what it wanted to be. But not what I wanted it to become. I wanted it to have all the beauty and the brevity that each of my other story had. But not all stories that are finished, complete. As for this one it became the more incomplete the closer it came to its completion. I sat down in my darkened room that night and wept. I have created a crooked child.
And in my crooked mirror the Narcissus that was me wept as well. He no longer had that common face. He looked different in every mirror of the separate houses. He would have to assume the face of the person who used to live in that house before he had transformed into Narcissus.
It is true that as Narcissuses we have all become creators more powerful than the mirror – We can steal the identity of the person living on the other side of the glass.
Amen.
A River Measured in Time
January 13, 2007
Alberto Banks had been saving all his life. He wanted to buy a river.
As a child, he had been given a ribbon by his father. A blue ribbon. His father was always this strange man who would scrutinize his past much more spontaneously than he would do with his future. When he had brought the ribbon for his child, he would have seldom thought what the boy would do with a ribbon. The consequences of his actions were never quite as important as the precedence of the consequence itself. When he handed over the ribbon to little Alberto and noticed his confused expression, he wondered why he had bought it on the first place. He wondered whether he had done it subconsciously. He wondered what particular knack or interest had he noticed in little Alberto which could have prompted him into an action so decisive for the child.
“This is a magic ribbon”, he said at last “if you spread it, it’d become as long as the river.”
His father’s words were just as unmindful or irrelevant as was his buying of the ribbon – once again, in total oblivion of the collective future of the child. But for little Alberto it was the greatest of prophecies ever been foretold. He had no idea till then as to how long a river is or for that matter, should be. It had never occurred to his little brain what a terrific mystery it might hold in itself. A river that could be measured in ribbons. The feeling itself was so big that little Alberto was too afraid to open the ribbon and roll it to be seen. “It is a great gift and must be dealt with lots of responsibilities” – is what he realized. He just went and hugged his father, who watched with great amusement how his child’s confused expression changed to something immeasurable.
It was from that day that little Alberto slept with the ribbon under his pillow. And he dreamt all night long. He watched, in his dreams, a river which was more like a brook. At its center was a blue ribbon stretched from the misty infinity from where the river originated to an equally hazy eternity to which it went. The ribbon ran right from its middle, as if dividing the two parts of the water, parallel to the flowing river. And that imagery was so intensely beautiful that every morning when little Alberto’s father would wake up he would find his child’s room fragrant with an aroma of his dreams. Sometimes it would rid him of his asthma, as he let his child sleep late into the morning. Slowly, it became the only medicine he would take for his ailment and he had never been healthier.
One night in his dreams, little Alberto noticed that the two equal parts in which the ribbon had divided the river were of different colors. It was the setting sun. One of its parts was red like someone had mixed, with uncertain ease, the deepest of bloods. The other part was yellow – a dirty yellow as if all its water was drenched in malaise before it was let into the river. For the first time little Alberto was experiencing a nightmare. And a premonition. That morning when little Alberto’s father came to his room, he found his child sweating profusely as he lied trembling in a fever and there was a stench of rotting flesh in the room. At once, his attack of asthma returned. This was the moment when he should have run for some medicines left in his cupboard for such emergencies. This was the last chance he had of changing little Alberto’s life….. But, as we said before his father was seldom concerned about the consequences. He didn’t want to leave the motherless child alone in his fever. And so, he let himself die, comfortably, as he watched his child still trembling in his nightmares. It was so cruel of him to leave his child alone in the very first of his nightmares, for even when little Alberto would break out of his sleep the nightmare would continue.
Alberto Banks doesn’t remember what happened in the next few days, but he recalls that it was in the womb of those dark hours that he lost the magic ribbon, forever, without it being opened even for once.
Alberto Banks had been saving all his life. He wanted to buy a river.
He had been to many rivers all throughout his life but had never found one that was much like the one in his childhood dreams. Alberto Banks was an old man now who lived with an equally aged wife. His children were married and lived in a far-off town. He had inherited the same asthma that had taken his father’s life. He was sure it would take his too. But before he died he wanted to complete his dream. He wanted to buy a river. His wife wanted to buy gifts for their children with the money.
“We’d leave back the river as a gift for them”, he told her
“What would they do with a river?” she asked
“The river I’m talking ‘bout is the magical river. It is the healer of all diseases. It brings with itself the gifts of immortality.”
“But don’t you see you’ve spent all your life looking for it. How much longer do you wish to keep looking for it?”
“Till I die….. and I cannot die till I find it.”
And so Alberto Banks decided to do what he had never done throughout his life. He decided to buy ribbons of different shapes, colors and size. Then, he spread them on his floor, hoping that they would give him some hint as to where he might find the river. The ribbons tangled with each other, forming a diverse shape, intermingling with one another.
“Perhaps, the river I’m looking for is a maze”, it suddenly occurred to him, “maybe, that’s why I couldn’t find it in all these years.”
“Or maybe….” It occurred to him subsequently, “We’re living inside a maze and the river is just outside. Maybe, the river is an object in time rather than in space. Maybe, the river crosses itself so many times that even though we see it we fail to notice it in our linear search. Maybe, the river in actuality is cyclic.”
And as he climbed the staircase of realizations, he found that the river was slowly becoming visible to him. Yes, it was the magic river with the blue ribbon flowing from its center. He wanted to get down inside the river and leave all his money into its sacred waters. He wanted to scream “you’re mine”. He wanted to go and touch the ribbon that divided the water…… but before he could do any of these, he woke up.
When he woke up, little Alberto found the corpse of his father lying on the floor. He put his hand under the pillow on which he slept and found the blue ribbon that he had never opened, was still there, intact. Exhaling a deep breath of relief, he smiled.
The Intermittent Life of Pratti
October 22, 2006
The growing up years of Pratti was different from rest of the girls. She had developed a hobby of collecting the corpses of her earlier lives. She even made a transparent glass cupboard to keep them in. She had thrown away her dolls and spent the entire day tending the corpses. She would give them meals, brush their teeth, comb their hair and dress them up. Gradually her corpses grew up with her to become just a beautiful as her.
Pratti lost many of her friends in these growing up years. They abandoned her because they were jealous of the attention she paid to her corpses. So, her corpses were the only friend that Pratti was left with. In the evenings, she would run out of her house with her corpses following her through. They would arrive to a field nearby beside the brook where they would play different games. At the end of the evening, they would go for a swim in the brook. Pratti did it for fun, but her corpses needed the swim to get rid of the stench that the day had left back with them.
Pratti found her love in one of these dusks. The man was a metallic luster of the sun that had surely shone on him all day long. His feet were weary and he walked slowly as if dragging his body above the earth. Fighting against gravity. “He is the martyr of slowness”, Pratti thought “and he belongs to a world of a single pace. Of monotony. A world devoid of accidents and anomalies. And yet with an absolute absence of boredom: because boredom belongs to the world of speed. Boredom is the fastest spreading infection in the minds of serenity.”
“Take me to your kingdom of slowness”, Pratti wanted to say to the man but was too shy for the words. After all, she was only an adolescent girl who hadn’t encountered too many lovers in her life. Also, she felt she was not enough matured, beautiful and slow for the man.
For your sake, readers, let me assure you that Pratti was as beautiful as any of the heroines of a fairy tale are. When she walked down the road with her colorful corpses following her through, she seemed like a princess passing with her playmates. As for her maturity, she had the integration of all her earlier lives. She hadn’t got much experience of slowness as yet in this life of hers but was renowned for her slowness in her earlier lives. She could breathe in the rhythms of slowness, dance to it, make love in it.
The man looked at Pratti eagerly, hoping, perhaps, that Pratti would say something. When she didn’t he came towards her slowly, took her hand and walked away. All her corpses kept standing in a daze – they too, had fallen in love with him.
The next few days were even better than Pratti had imagined they could be. She had never known that souls can be exchanged in the union of two bodies. But that’s exactly what she found to be to be the most calming effect. The man had infused his slowness into her. She felt herself transforming into a courtesan of slowness. A world devoid of accidents and anomalies.
Gradually, as days passed she found out that she was not the only one the man made love to. The man slept variously with all her corpses. And even though she loved all her own corpses like her own sisters, this somehow infuriated her. One day she broke into a room smelling of fresh green chilies and found the man making love to one of her corpses, both of them screaming and tumbling on pepper dusts that was spread all over the floor. She went and picked his pepper covered body and slapped him on his face.
“You don’t love me”, she said.
But as she slapped him a few particles of the pepper flew and landed right inside her eyes. She couldn’t open her eyes. And they began to burn. The man picked her in his arms and led her to the fountain. There he washed her eyes with his hands.
“You’re different.” He said.
“From whom? From all my different corpses?” she shouted
“No. There’s something inside you that really interests me.”
“What is it?”
“Your life.”
“Why don’t you accept it, then?”
“Can you give it to me if I ask?”
“It’s all yours.”
And so he picked her up in his arms once again and led her to another room. It was the room of daggers. He pressed her body onto the wall where the daggers were, and made love to her. She groaned in pain and ecstacy as she found herself transforming to a corpse amongst her many orgasms. And slowly, as she found herself dying in his arms she realized that someone must come to claim her corpse as well. Someone from her future lives. Because it was a cycle of unending.
“You cannot keep me and my corpses forever”, she told him “Someone would come to claim us.”
“Someone already has, who is your subsequent life.”
She kept looking at him with an eyeful of unanswered questions. And waited until she died.
He picked her corpse in his arms and walked with all the corpses trailing behind; corpses that had belonged till now to Pratti’s earlier lives but now in the same cycle were his.
He walked towards the kingdom of slowness.
The World
October 9, 2006
I realized I was going blind for the first time when I started seeing things in the dark…. Things that couldn’t have existed….. Like a figurine of love, a dead eagle on my window-sill and myself in the mirror. It was a matter of time until I lost my sight.
When light came back on earth I went searching for a blind man. I found a woman, instead.
“Teach me blindness”, I told her. And thus, in a grey, cloudy afternoon our lessons began.
“Blindness is nothing but an alternative to the world you live in”, she told me. “You believe your eyesight is the best gift you have….. But you see, you never know what infinite options you have. Your eyesight is a limitation to your pursuit of these options.”
“What do you mean?”
“Eyes attach properties to objects. Blindness removes them. There are no particularities in blindness. As a blind person, you can see anything in as many ways as you wish. Tell me about your experience when you felt for the first time that you were going blind.”
I told her about the figurine of love, the dead eagle and myself in the mirror.
“Do you remember seeing them before your attacks of blindness? See, that’s what blindness gives you: Freedom of sight.”
When I returned home that night her words kept returning back. I remembered the number of times she used the word “see” in her words. It sounded pretty awkward in the words of a blind woman. But I couldn’t understand her purpose of using the word: Was it a mockery or enlightenment? I couldn’t understand the meanings of the things I saw in the attacks of my blindness….. Or if they had any meaning at all. Only my complete blindness could help me find answers to those questions.
The next few days, I kept waiting eagerly for blindness.
But the woman came back to me before blindness did. I told her that I was confused.
“Well, all of us are, sometimes”, she said taking my hand in hers.
I found she was looking into my eyes, constantly, without her eyes blinking even for a second. It took me some time to realize that she was blind. But aren’t blind people meant to see better than people gifted with eyesight? Wasn’t she seeing into me much more clearly than any normal person would do?
“Are you in love with me?” I decided to ask her.
She left my hand as I asked her the question. And moved a little farther away from me.
“What makes you think so?” she asked, a little concerned.
“You were looking into my eyes in such a strange way.”
Even though she was standing turning her back towards me, I could see her leaving a deep breath.
“Maybe, you should stop imagining things.” She said, as she tried to leave in a hurry.
“Why are you going away?”
“Because….” She shouted; then, fell silent. At last, in a much calmer tone she said, “because it’s fearful how you….” She fell silent, once again.
I waited for her to finish. But she never did.
“….Is it how I see into you? Is that what you were trying to say?” I asked.
“Not me, but everyone….. everything.” She continued, “Let me tell you a secret – We can see ourselves in mirrors. You don’t exactly need to go blind for that. It’s true that blindness assures freedom. It’s true that blindness is much, much more powerful than eyesight. Blindness in never dark, as the popular belief goes, but is capable of colors unimaginable by a common man. Only blindness gives you access to spaces intangible….. But you see it’s very, very difficult to come in terms with the fact that you are blind.”
“But I don’t think it would be difficult for me to come to terms with the fact when I do go blind. You’ve already taught me so much.” I said, hoping that I was able to understand what she tried to say.
“No. It’s you who taught me all these.”
Unable to understand I kept looking into her eyes, vaguely.
“The doctors did indeed, find you blind from the very day that you were born”, she completed.
And she reminded me what the world always would, that I cannot go blind ever again.
Snow
September 25, 2006
One evening when we sat by the distances, she told me of her wish to burn her body to see her souls catch fire, too. She said she loved the perfume of burnt-out souls. I realized that it was going to be difficult but decided to give her this gift on her nearest birthday, anyways. I asked her which of her souls she would like to burn.
“The wet one”, she replied.
It had snowed last night. It had started when we were playing with each other’s bodies. Fondling. Jostling. Mingling. In our silent apartment. I was drenched in her presence. I always was. Despite her perfumed hair, her ethereal nudity, the sentiments of her fragrant touch; her body was only an effigy. A mirage. Because she were innumerable women at the same time. In our silent apartment, her converging souls passed in and out of her body all the time. And in every parting moment, she fragmented herself more into the nooks and corners of my room. With every passing instance, my partner in the bed would change. I made love to all of them. It felt like a game of betrayal in which you’d stopped counting. And you had no idea any longer who it was that you were betraying. You betrayed each for all. And none for the other. Living inside a deadly turn-on.
I didn’t notice the beginning of the snow until she pushed my body aside and ran outside. Into the snow. Trailing one of her souls with her. I put on some clothes and followed her outside. Snowflakes landed on her naked skin. I found slowly, that her color was changing. She was becoming a deep, deep blue. I asked her to come inside but she refused. I was worried both for her and the soul that she had brought for herself. Gradually, I found that her body had begun to glow so that the space around her seemed to be lighted up in a divine light. The light kept spreading until it went in through the windows of the people who slept. All of them woke up to find their eyes being washed in a light so deeply blue as can only be found in dreams. Thinking of the light as a divine purgation all of them started to pray.
She stood unmoving, in the snow until she fell senseless on the accumulated snow. I went near her and asked if she would like to come inside. But she wouldn’t answer. So, I carried her in my arms and took her inside. I put a blanket around her. But before that, I took off her wet soul and put it next to the fire to dry.
It remained wet.
As days passed, we made plans for the burning. Even when we made love we spoke about her burning body and soul. It would turn us on. We started collecting matchsticks of different sizes and shapes. Ignite each of them to examine its flame. Our days passed like dreams.
At last her birthday came. She was apprehensive from the morning about the evening ’cause that’s when, we had decided, we would set her on fire. She seemed excited from the morning. I had never seen her so exuberated ever before. By the time evening came, she had tired herself out of excitation. She quickly put on her wet soul. I, on the other hand, lighted a matchstick and set her on fire.
As flames started playing all over her body she started dancing in jubilation. First she set a few of my important papers on fire, then my beautiful Arabian carpet and slowly, my entire apartment was on fire. But we little cared for any of it because nothing was important beyond this moment.
“Come take me in your arms”, she said at last, stopping “and see if I’ve started exuding the fragrance of burnt-out souls.”
I went and took her in my arms, but couldn’t find the fragrance of her burnt-out souls. I told her this. She seemed surprised. It was not some thing that we had planned for. I looked more closely at her. The flames coming out of her body seemed calm and composed. They were blue….. exactly the color of her snow drenched self.
Snows were nothing but frozen blocks of fires.
I realized that the fragrance that she was looking for would only be possible if she would burn in the snow, like the last time round. I realized, also, that I was on fire. Perhaps, I had caught it when I went and took her in my arms. When we stared outside, we found that the snowfall had started.
I took her hand and ran outside.
