When the lights turn green

Yellow blocks of cement mounted on beams of metal and bricks, a rudimentary road-sign, announced the name, in fading black paint, to be Catholic Cemetery Road. It was a long stretch of water-logged pathway sandwiched by deserted cemeteries - a boulevard of impoverished spirits and remains of human bodies. Interred judgments and prejudices lay six or more feet beneath the ground, resting with rotting flesh. The barbed fence demarcating the territory belonging to the Catholic cemetery and the Hindu, and I think, Muslim burial ground[s], was twisted, bent out of shape, and at places, completely removed, for convenience - a skilful contrivance that was not allowed to reflect on articulated communal opinion or implied political inclinations, one that faded humbly into the cracks of conscience. An odd silence, representative of the dead, hung precariously on its hinges, waiting, willing to be shattered at the slightest sound, which in this case proved to be the garish, mechanical drone of the auto rickshaw that I was travelling by. The vehicle was headed towards the Railway Station. I was going home.

The fury of the rains that had trounced the city with whips of water all evening had expended itself, leaving behind stagnant water, humid breeze and a musty hint of more to come. It was also very cold. I shivered and pulled my jacket closer around myself, suddenly aware of the biting chillness in the air and the fact that the auto driver and I were the only [living] persons on this eerie road. I, somehow, was not frightened by the dead or the possibility of their presence around, but by this living, breathing being in front of me, whose mind I did not know, whose thoughts I could not fathom. I looked at his name on the licence that was stuck behind the backrest of his seat. Srinivasan. I suppose that makes us both from the same religion. If he harboured malicious thoughts, would my stating this change his mind about harming me? Highly unlikely. I closed my eyes, focusing on happier thoughts - of the ride home from the station the next morning after dad picked me up, of a gargantuan embrace from mamma, of wonderful food that magically materialised on my plate, without my having to cook it, of good cinema that my brother obsessed over and of a possible trip to the beach. The auto suddenly halted. I snapped back. We had passed the cemeteries. The traffic signal had turned a transient amber and finally, the arresting red. The timer informed all, pithily, that a hundred and eighty seconds will have to pass before the journey could be resumed.

I had twenty minutes to reach the station before the train I had booked my berth on made its scheduled departure. I was late, as usual. I prayed, pleading that I be spared the ordeal of hieing after a moving train, cursing its screeching and sighing shafts, or worse, missing it altogether, both of which I have been doing lately with alarming frequency and doubling tardiness. Sometimes, when I pray, I'm overwhelmed by a trickle of hope that I have come to believe, for my own inexplicable reasons, is a smile from God. It was like that now. I was already looking forward to good sleep on the train, an inevitable consequence of ten hours at work and the exasperated hustle of packing that results from my procrastinating it till the last possible minute.

Stifling a yawn, I realised that it was well past bedtime when I saw the lowered shop shutters. The stray mongrels had quietened, retiring to a corner, oblivious of the polythene bags and oil-stained papers drifting with the breeze. The street lights flooded the dusty tar roads with a blinding brilliance. Bathed in this yellow light, a woman, in tattered clothing, seemed to incandesce. She was seated on the pavement, leaning against the cement pole housing the street lighting, cradling a child in her arms. She was staring at the vehicles, whose numbers were gradually reducing, passing by, unaffected by the petrol and diesel fumes they were emitting, fumes that were corrupting the air she breathed, poisoning her child's breath. The child was still, so was she. Her sandals looked worn, as did the expression on her face. She was tatterdemalion; the sari carelessly draped around her looked torn, as am sure were her emotions, pulverised until the last thread was shred. She seemed to collect herself, and her thoughts, upon looking at the traffic lights and walked slowly in the direction of the revving engines, her expression pleading and practiced. I saw people turn away, trying not to look, pretending not to see her, and the ugly truth that was blooming like a foul-smelling Carrion flower in front of them - the new lows that are scaled every day in a basic struggle to survive, in a human desire to live. I looked at the child in her arms, maybe her own, maybe not. I wondered what he could have possibly done wrong to be shot through childhood like a javelin, skipping years of innocence and imaginary friends.

'Karma', I remembered an aunt saying, when we were discussing a similar topic, from my days of reading Ford, Cayce, Montgomery, Cannon, etc... five years ago, when I was in class XII, books by regressionists and spiritualists, of metaphysics and parapsychology, portals to the school of thought that proposed automatic writing, Ouija board, etc… in an attempt to rationalise the cycle of unequal births and unacceptable deaths, propagating the ideology that asserted the possibility, no, probability, of multiple births - the sole objective behind each birth being the lessons to be learnt and the price to be paid for mistakes in previous lifetimes. Though the aim was to make men attempt to learn to be good, to overcome fears and inhibitions, to practise abstinence in all its forms, there was a noticeable perversion which twisted the implication to a vengeful one that killed compassion and provoked judgement - those who suffered deserved it for crimes from past lives, and misery that they go through is chosen at birth - an unsurprising subversion. After drafting many such fanciful theories, preconceived and ludicrous notions, careful ostracism, denying people their fundamental rights, to live, to be, and sometimes, practising plain ol' indifference, debates are held, questions are asked out loud as to what the cause of extremism, the urge to terrorise people, is. Then there are the dubious statistics, after a careful analysis of which, the religion of the womb that gave birth to a fanatic is conclusively decided, leading to more ostracism as the answer to the cause. And after all said and done – the elections won, the men charred to death, the women raped, the children abused and deprived of their childhood, the corruption remains and the strife remains, as does the poverty, newly colour-coded by religion and other nauseating prejudices that men with their creative abilities abundantly furnish the world with. The misery remains.

She tapped on my knee with an index finger. Her eyes spoke plainly of how it felt to not have someone to love, somewhere to hide. They told the tale of the resurgent hope that hisses, screams and burns out like the embittered charcoal of the pressing iron, on which the man by the pavement, in his kiosk, douses water as the closure to a day's labour, a termination to a long day - hope that dies with dusk and burns anew with every waking day. As I looked at her, I wondered if any theory, belief or faith could ever justify her being here, without an arm to protect her honour, to keep her warm.

The lights turned green. The engines hummed into life. I rummaged in my wallet for lower denominations than what was going to be required to pay my auto fare. I slipped a twenty into her outstretched palm as the auto started moving away, my measly contribution to assuage the misery that left her atremble and alone in the midst of oncoming traffic and the honking horns.

It was ten minutes past the scheduled time of departure. I ran wildly, hoping the train would have, due to an otherwise impossible event, stalled in its tracks. And it had. 'You got lucky', my co-passenger was smiling. 'The signal is still red'. 'Oh God', I thought. He was seated next to the window. He must have seen my sprint down the platform from the foot over-bridge. I smiled at him, not saying anything. It certainly wasn't my moment of glory. I was relieved, tired and out of breath. I collapsed gratefully onto my berth, the side lower one, as always. It was 23:55 hrs.

I looked out of the window. I thought of the woman at the traffic signal. The lights would soon go green. I would move away, further away from her reality, lodging in the cave of comforting delusion that life was mute, only to me, to those I loved, while others out there had all their questions answered, or at least most of them, that my paltry control over life did not extend any further than my own lest it leave others helpless and cold like it does me. And every time I saw her, someone like her, I would wish, with all my heart, that I too could pretend I hadn't looked, pretend I didn't see.

Dear God,

It's 3.20 AM as I write this. Yes, it's one of those days that sleep has chosen to craftily elude me, leaving me restlessly shifting sides in bed. I turn on the night lamp and grab a book off the rack, the nearest that my outstretched arm could reach. Crime and Punishment. Existential angst colours my spirit. I certainly do not desire a portrayal of it. With much effort I reach out for another one. Of Human Bondage. I flop back into bed in resignation and stare at the ceiling, imagining, like I used to when I was a child, the fan somehow getting unscrewed and falling freely, rotating into an abyss, never touching the ground.

These nights are hard on both of us, for my thoughts, after their aimless meandering, will inevitably turn to you, sometimes in wonder, sometimes in pain, sometimes in frustrated, scalar anger. But, tonight is going to be different. I promise. Tonight I am going to be quiet, like I was when I was a child, on my knees, beside my bed, under that window with a view of almond trees and the scent of coconut palms, the leaves of which used to gracefully adorn the windows, forming sinuous patterns on the translucent glass. I am going to trust you without questioning, like I did back then, just for tonight, for when morning awakes me, my logically tuned programmer's mind is going to prevail – discarding illogical hope, discarding faith.

The gentle xanthous glow of the lamp reflects off shiny surfaces of the objects surrounding me – an empty glass, a bottle of water, a text I'd bought to prepare for a diploma in French, a book of crossword puzzles and a bottle of moisturising lotion. It adds an ethereal sheen to the gilded edges of a copy of King James Version of the Bible lying on top of a pile of numerous other books, a pile that has come to represent the chronology of my life, associating with each memory a book that was then read. I run a finger down the stacked spines and fore-edges. I love the way they feel, I love their yellowing pages, like fading memories, their crumbling binding, their missing cover, their wearing gutter, their disintegrating existence and dwindling importance.

It all started when my mother bought books of Russian fables, to engage the mind of her moody first-born who hadn't yet started school. I was addicted. I started reading all the time – through happiness, boredom and blue. I curled up with a book when my father scolded me. I turned to books for comfort, looking for company and solace in the words of unknown persons who I know will remain to be strangers. Reading morphed into a lifelong wont, an irrefutable love affair.

Then entered a snake in my bibliophilic garden of Eden. The bliss was shattered when I started musing about life, about you. I found that books no longer had an answer when I started wondering who you were, when I started wondering if there was more to you than the face of an idol or a picture that I was told was the magnificent creator of the beginning of time, more than feelings of peace, contentment and compassion believed to be you by remote East Asian religions, more than the omnipresent and monotheistic identity conferred to you by the Abrahamic faiths. Unnerved, I started perusing any remotely religious manuscript I could get my hands on, ploughing through everything from the four canonical Vedas, Bhagavad Gita, the Old and New Testaments, an English translation of the Koran, a site on Taoism, and some obscure article on Zoroastrianism to a weird piece on Rastafarianism. But books, I found out, don't provide answers to my questions – they don't explain the angst of everyday existence; they don't comfort me from my ever-swinging moods or the pressing loneliness, the all-encompassing solitude that people like me seem to be stamped with.

Books made promises – a lot of them, of unconditional love, unquestioning faith, of tender arms that don't judge, of the cup of vindication that runs over, of caged birds flying again, of flowers that bloom, never to wither, of fringes of flowing robe that drown humiliation and of the water of life that flows from the throne filling all with love and essence. They made promises that float on the surface of the river - evanescent and forgotten, leaving behind voiceless questions that drown and sink to the unilluminated bed of the ocean, unanswered…

Sigh. I'm sleepy. I've had a very tiring day at work. I think I will retire to bed now. Another long day awaits me at the crack of dawn. They call you a God of reason. Are you? Is there a reason behind the absolute chaos and disorder that this life is? If there is, I wish you’d tell me. I wish you'd tell me the purpose behind rising in the morning, day after day, only to fight another day. Sometimes, I don't want to face another day. Sometimes, I simply don't wish to leave my abode between my blanket and my mattress from which the consoling warmth does not dissipate on a cold winter morning. Sometimes, it's difficult to go on and impossible to hold on.

A song of hope

The night was cold. The currents were strong and the water was disturbed. The moonlight bounced off sheets of water, its form splintered like shards of broken glass. Stillness resonated in the air. Pain felt so close, its breath still warm on the skin it touched.

The sea seemed to entice as seconds brushed by, its waves singing of sweet repose. ‘It’s not as hard as you think - a little leap, a splatter of water due to sudden displacement, some sound of sputter in a short struggle for breath, a swirl of water and then there is peace, as the water closes over the head and life, over misery. The body deposits itself in the murky depths as do broken promises and shattered dreams’, the tides seemed to say, ‘and then, it ceases to hurt’.

The sound of the water reverberated in the silence as the shadows enveloped the light. The world gently dropped the curtains down on the mind.

She plunged into the water, sinking deeper and deeper, the sheer volume of which incapacitated her lungs, forcing her to partake of its existence. She drank in the liquid, her breath fading, her senses fighting against the mind in their primal struggle for survival. A few seconds towards death and a few seconds away from living, the moment at threshold seemed to last forever as faith battled with reason.

There was an explosion of thoughts and she felt pushed upwards, tearing open into the surface. She floated freely, her eyes shut, the water upholding her body. She lingered on, feeling lighter in the tender embrace by the cold air above and the water below, spared from the burden of sins that had been washed clean. A faint smile spread itself on her pale face as she listened to a soft voice singing gently with the wind – a song of hope.

Word...

He tore his eyes away from the window and stared fixedly at the plain sheet of paper in front of him, his elbows resting on the desk, his fingers playing with the pencil they clasped. He took a deep breath and commenced, his pencil working its way across the paper, guided by long, nimble fingers. Thoughts flowed from his mind, pouring themselves on the sheet of paper with subtlety and a gentle ripple.

He gave her form, his hands creating her delicate frame, her thin fingers and beautiful eyes, his fingers tracing her slender waist and arched hips. Time passed by as he created her, his hands and imagination bringing into existence what once was not. He gazed at his creation, his thoughts dwelling in a world of perfection and perfidy. The perambulations of his mind were broken into by a smile, a delicate curve of the corner of her lips – the demolition of the fence of inanimateness.

A slow smile spread itself on his face, penetrating his rough, masculine features. He put his pencil down and touched her, his fingers melting in velvet skin. She laughed, her eyes gleaming playfully, her legs moving her presence away from him, evading his touch. Her delighted laugh echoed in his ears, as she twisted, turned and swung her hips, causing his fingers to miss her yet again.

She gently skipped towards the pages, heading for her abode. She moved past him, her long hair dancing near her waist, brushing his arm ever so softly as she rushed by. He stretched out his hand in a final attempt to hold her back. She looked at him, holding his gaze for a long moment and smiled at him before diving into the pages.

He gazed after her for a while and started all over again.

In the eyes of a stranger

Into your eyes I looked, searching for the warmth that once was. The orbs were vacant, the soul sucked out. I no longer saw my reflection sparkling in them, but a distant, cold and dark tunnel reflecting all that I had seen but refused to believe, all that was so wrong yet seemingly right in my mind.

Pain flowed like the gush of a stream, loneliness like the gusts of warm winds in the wilderness. I sought shelter from them in your eyes, but there was no refuge for me there. And for once, as I looked into your eyes, I believed what I saw.

Lustful hands, I saw, holding me in a faithless embrace. Lecherous lips, I saw, covering me with spiteful kisses. Tender words, I saw, mouthed with no meaning. Finer feelings, I saw, flung out the window and trampled upon. Love, I saw, melted into impassivity. I saw all that was never said, in your vacuous eyes, in the eyes of a stranger (that you now have become).