Elbow Room

दर्द कुछ देर ही रहता है बहुत देर नहीं--
जिस तरह शाख से टूटे हुए पत्ते का रंग
मांद पड़ जाता है कुछ रोज़ शाख से अलग रह कर
शाख से टूट के ये दर्द जियेगा कब तक?

ख़त्म हो जाएगी जब इसकी रसद
टिमटिमाएगा ज़रा देर को बुझते बुझते
और फिर लम्बी सी एक सांस धुएं की ले कर
ख़त्म हो जाएगा, ये दर्द भी बुझ जाएगा--
दर्द कुछ देर ही रहता है बहुत देर नहीं!

I change my bedsheets too often. And spend more time to clean my room than I spend inhabiting it. Yet its never clean enough to my taste. Not just neat as in things in their proper place, but as appealing to my compulsive aesthetic sense as I'd like. I do dislike the discipline of a room that's been drawn out with a ruler, with things at perpendicular angles on the desk, the furniture in too fixed an alignment to everything else, but I can not do away with smoothening out the rough edges, like when the clock on the wall has slid out of its original position or the wires of the speakers are tangled and sorely in view or the books on my racks are jumbled. So, uncompromising and unrelenting,I find myself improvising a messiness tailor-made to my sensibilities.

The endless quest clears my mind as much as it frustrates it. Life is no different.

This one is going to be a very personal post. I dont care who is reading it, i dont care how i sound and read here, i dont care what you think of me, i dont care a fig. Its one of those sickly selfish times when you are the most important things on your mind, when the fact that people have bigger, more graver problems, that the world is crumbling under socio-political and economic crisis, or whether the beggar across the street is dying in the heat, or whether justice is sold to the undeserving in a lawless world, that people have lost their loved ones and are struggling to survive every minute of every day in a manner you cannot even fathom, all this does not matter. I can not serve others before ive served myself. I can not make anynone's life any better when my own house is on fire. Yes, i am being selfish. You bet I am. And i wish for once i am able to stare in the eyes of that smug philanthropy with a look that says, "You will come later, much much much much much MUCH later."

They say in order to say I Love You (romantic, friendly, familial, any love) you need first to be able to say the I. To truly love some one else, you need to love your self, completely, tirelessly, desperately, shamelessly. And those who think sacrificing their self for the love of others is an honourable vocation, i want to laugh in your face and tell you how wonderfully deluded you are. I wont chide you much because its a very glorious and tempting idea, and more often than not i have given in to the temptation myself. It makes you feel good like empty patriotism. And we all queue in to sacrifice ourselves first and adjust the halo of the martyr on our heads. Ive seen my ma do it all her life, and she is a martyr in the real sense of the word but what remains in the aftermath of that war is a hollow case of nothingness that resembles everything and nothing at all.

This prayer-song ma sings keeps whirling in my mind these days, and theres a line in it which goes, "दूसरों की जय से पहले खुद को जय करें". And i interpret it in a sense that is slightly different from how its intended i suppose. But it does the trick. And yes i am talking about a Satanic pride in being who you are even if its Hell where you get to be that.

This kind of selfishness may not bring you any happiness. But it will bring you your self which you have scarce acknowledged let alone understood and forget about loving it. But thats the one person who will never leave you once youve befriended her. Yes, you will be lonely still, but you will never be alone.

So, go ahead. Judge me. For once in my life, i want to tell this to each and every one of you, I could not care less.

This palaces, thrones and crowns infested world
Defender of Society, prosecutor of Man, this world
This is the lusting money mongrel's world
What have I if I have the world?

Wounded the bodies, the souls are parched
Bewildered the glances, wretched are the hearts
Is this the World or is this Woe?
What have I if I have the world?

Here they toy with a man's identity
No less than a graveyard is this City
Death is reckless, Life here is thrifty
What have I if I have the world?

Youth loiters like a lunatic in this world,
Young flesh forever fresh for the markets of this world,
Love is but a business in this world,
What have I if I have the world?

This world where a man is nothing
Loyalty is nothing, Friendship is nothing
This world where the value of love is nothing
What have I if I have the world?

Oh Damn it! Blast it! Burn the world!
Let it burn! Let it burn! Blow up in ashes, the world!
Get it out of my sight, oh get it out of my sight, the world!
Have it, have it all, it is yours, the world!
What have i if i have the world!
What have i if i have the world!

(Tr. 'ये दुनिया अगर मिल भी जाए तो क्या है!', Lyricist Sahir Ludhianvi, प्यासा, 1957)

Again, there was that same feeling. Something inside trying to burst forth. An angry caged gorrila beating his chest with cupped hands in wild frenzy. If only she could stand in the midst of everything and everyone and beat her chest wildy like that till whatever it was that was trying to free itself inside her could either be beaten into silence or an opening was engraved for it to get out and breathe.

गाड़ी की आगे वाली सीट पर बैठने के लिए
अपने चोट्टे भाई से हमेशा ही दौड़ लगती थी
कभी जब पापा गाड़ी पार्क कर दूकान से कुछ लेने जाते
ड्राईविंग सीट पर लपक के शूमैकर बन जाते थे
उस से भी पुराने बचपन में पापा की गोदी में बैठ गाड़ी चलाती
मेरे हाथ तब होर्न के बने उस चोट्टे से आइलैंड पर खो से जाते थे
पिछली सीट पर मैं और मेरा भाई यूँ फैल कर सोते थे
और वो गाड़ी हमें हर गढ्ढे पर से जादूई कालीन सा उड़ा के ले जाती
उस पुरानी सफ़ेद वैन के बाहर की दुनिया सपनो की दुनिया थी
वहां किसी का एक्सिडेंट नहीं होता था
होता भी कैसे, पापा जो गाड़ी चलाते थे
उस गाड़ी की खिड़की से बस हरे पेड़ और गुलाबी चेहरे दिखते थे
बड़ी अनोखी, बड़ी मायावी गाड़ी थी
उस गाड़ी में ना क्लच-ब्रेक होते थे ना ही कोई गेयर
बस मन की इच्हा से चलती थी
पेट्रोल की जगह भोलापन डलता था
और ज़रा सी ज़िद्द डालें तो एवरेज अच्छी देती थी...
कभी जो पापा स्टीरिंग से हाथ हटा लें, तो यकीन मानें खुद भी चले चलती थी!

आज जो कुर्सी पीछे ना करूँ तो टाँगे पिचक जाती हैं
वो सफ़ेद वैन अब काली होंडा सिटी हो चली है
इस गाड़ी के बहर की दुनिया
धुएं, बेहेस, कानो को चीरती होर्न और पंचर टायर की दुनिया है
पेट्रोल पम्प की लाइन में Godot का इंतज़ार करती बोख्लाई दुनिया हैं
स्टीरिंग व्हील के पीछे कुछ घबरायी सी मैं सीट बेल्ट में बंधी बैठी हूँ
रीअर-वीयू के शीशे में जैसे कोई सिपाही जंग को जा रहा हो
मेरे पहियों के नीचे ना जाने कितनी ज़िंदगियाँ बिछी और रोंधि पड़ी हैं
ये रास्ते ये फलाई-ओवर्स, ये मेरी और ये तेरी लेन
बचपन को लाल बत्ती में तोड़ते युवक
कोई उड़ता हुआ पंछी आसमान से नीचे देखता होगा
तो भला क्या दिखता होगा?
टकराती उलझती आड़ी-तिरछी,
हाथों में तकदीर की रेखाओ समान
बस एक उलझी हुई इंसानियत ही दिखती होगी...

उस सफ़ेद वैन के अन्दर से सब कितना सरल लगता था
कुछ मिनट पहले ही तो था वो सदियों पहले का बरस
उन मुख़र्जी नगर वाले अंकल को 15000 में बेच दी थी
और उस दिन तो पापा भी रोये थे

He stopped and sniffed the air, and still sniffing, looked down at the old dog. "God awmighty, that dog stinks. Get him outa here, Candy! I don't know nothing that stinks as bad as an old dog. You gotta get him out. " Candy rolled to the edge of his bunk. He reached over and patted the ancient dog, and he apologized, "I been around him so much I never notice how he stinks."
"Well, I can't stand him in here," said Carlson. "That stink hangs around even after he's gone. " He walked over with his heavy- legged stride and looked down at the dog. "Got no teeth, " he said. "He's all stiff with rheumatism. He ain't no good to you, Candy. An' he ain't no good to himself. Why'n't you shoot him, Candy?" The old man squirmed uncomfortably. "Well-hell! I had him so long. Had him since he was a pup. I herded sheep with him. " He said proudly, "You wouldn't think it to look at him now, but he was the best damn sheep dog I ever seen. " George said, "I seen a guy in Weed that had an Airedale could herd sheep. Learned it from the other dogs. " Carlson was not to be put off. "Look, Candy. This of dog jus' suffers hisself all the time. If you was to take him out and shoot him right in the back of the head-" he leaned over and pointed, "- right there, why he'd never know what hit him. " Candy looked about unhappily. "No, " he said softly. "No, I couldn't do that. I had 'im too long. "
"He don't have no fun, " Carlson insisted. "And he stinks to beat hell. Tell you what. I'll shoot him for you. Then it won't be you that does it. " Candy threw his legs off his bunk. He scratched the white stubble whiskers on his check nervously. "I'm so used to him, " he said softly. "I had him from a pup. "
"Well, you ain't bein' kind to him keepin' him alive, " said Carlson. "Look, Slim's bitch got a litter right now. I bet Slim would give you one of them pnps to raise up, wouldn't you, Slim?" The skinner had been studying the old dog with his calm eyes. "Yeah, " he said. "You can have a pup if you want to. " He seemed to shake himself free for speech. "Carl's right, Candy. That dog ain't no good to himself. I wisht somebody'd shoot me if I get old an' a cripple. "
Candy looked helplessly at him, for Slim's opinions were law. "Maybe it'd hurt him, " he suggested. "I don't mind takin' care of him. " Carlson said, "The way I'd shoot him, he wouldn't feel nothing. I'd put the gun right there. " He pointed with his toe. "Right back of the head. He wouldn't even quiver. " Candy looked for help from face to face.
It was quite dark outside by now. A young laboring man came in. His sloping shoulders were bent forward and he walked heavily on his heels, as though he carried the invisible grain bag. He went to his bunk and put his hat on his shelf. Then he picked up a pulp magazine from his shelf and brought it to the light over the table. "Did I show you this, Slim?" he asked. "Show me what?" The young man turned to the back of the magazine, put it down on the table and pointed with his finger. "Right there, read that. " Slim bent over it. "Go on, " said the young. During the conversation Carlson had refused to be drawn in. He continued to look down at the old dog. Candy watched him uneasily. At last Carlson said, "if you want me to, I'll put the old devil out of his misery right now and get it over with. Ain't nothing left for him. Can't eat, can't see, can't even walk without hurtin'. " Candy said hopefully, "You ain't got no gun. " "The hell I ain't. Got a Luger. It won't hurt him none at all. " Candy said, "Maybe tomorra. Le's wait till tomorra. " "I don't see no reason for it, " said Carlson. He went to his bunk, pulled his bag from underneath it and took out a Luger pistol. "Le's get it over with, " he said. "We can't sleep with him stinkin' around in here. "
He put the pistol in his hip pocket. Candy looked a long time at Slim to try to find some reversal. And Slim gave him none. At last Candy said softly and hopelessly, "Awright--take 'im. " He did not look down at the dog at all. He lay back on his bunk and crossed his arms behind his head and stared at the ceiling. From his pocket Carlson took a little leather thong. He stooped over and tied it around the old dog's neck. All the men except Candy watched him. "Come boy. Come on, boy, " he said gently. And he said apologetically to Candy, "He won't even feel it. "
Candy did not move nor answer him. He twitched the thong. George chuckled, "I bet Lennie's right out there in the barn with his pup. He won't want to come in here no more now he's got a pup. " Slim said, "Candy, you can have any one of them pups you want. " Candy did not answer. The silence fell on the room again. It came out of the night and invaded the room….
A minute passed, and another minute. Candy lay still, staring at the ceiling. Slim gazed at him for a moment and then looked down at his hands; he subdued one hand with the other, and held it down…
The silence was in the room again. A shot sounded in the distance. The men looked quickly at the old man. Every head turned toward him. For a moment he continued to stare at the ceiling. Then he rolled slowly over and faced the wall and lay silent.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Voices were approaching from outside. George said quickly, "Don't tell nobody about it. Jus' us three an' nobody else. They li'ble to can us so we can't make no stake. Jus' go on like we was gonna buck barley the rest of our lives, then all of a sudden some day we'll go get our pay an' scram outa here. "
Lennie and Candy nodded, and they were grinning with delight. "Don't tell nobody, " Lennie said to himself. Candy said, "George. " "Huh?" "I ought to of shot that dog myself, George. I shouldn't ought to of let no stranger shoot my dog. "

खुद से दोस्ती करने को मन करता है
जब देखती हूँ खुद को तकिये से गुनमुनती
रात को गली के कुत्तों सा
भगाने को मन करता है

कुछ खाने को मन करता है
बेमन जब चम्मच को कलम जैसे लिखते पाती हूँ
यकायक उठकर कुछ
नया बनाने को मन करता है

मायूस यूँ रूठी आएने से
मुह मोड़ कर बैठी रहती हूँ
ठुड्डी पकड़ धुंधले मुह पर आँखें
बनाने को मन करता है

यूँ छोड़ रखा है खुद को
के पास जाते कतराती हूँ
डरते मरते खुद को खुदे से
बचाने को मन करता है

बेजान से मरियल कमरों में जब
दिन-पहर बेसुध हो जातें है
हाथ पकड़ ज़बरदस्ती खुद को
घुमाने को मन करता है

बारिश की बूंदों को मैं जब
व्यर्थ सा गिरता पाती हूँ
गुस्साई मन के हाथों में पत्थर
थमाने को मन करता है

बेचारगी में डूबे खुद पर
तरस तो आता है लेकिन
ठहाके लगाये मुझ उल्लू पर
कभी हसने को मन करता है

वोडका का वोह शोट ऐसे मारा था जैसे
तुमको किसी बेहेस में तगड़ा तर्क दिया हो
हाँ, था तोह एक नाटक जैसा ही--
पहले तुम्हे चाहने में वोह बन गयी थी
जो मैं नहीं थी, और अब तुमसे दूर हो कर भी
मैं मैं सी नहीं हूँ

आजकल आधी इधर आधी उधर रहती हूँ
किस बात पर बिगड़ना चाहिए किस बात पर हसना
दो बार सोचना पड़ता है
मानो तुम ही सब तय किया करते थे

सोचती हूँ जो कुछ देर और तुम्हारे साथ रहती
तुम जैसी ही सांवली हो जाती
जो खो गयी थी तुम में इस तरह
ज़ाहिर है, तुम से भी खोना ही था

“What’s got you all wadded up?” he drawls, toothpick in mouth, as usual.

“Don’t ask” I say, but then I start talking and tell him every bit of it, concluding with, “And worst of all, I can’t stop obsessing over David. I thought I was over him, but it’s all coming up again.”

He says, “Give it another six months, you’ll feel better.”

“I’ve already given it twelve months, Richard.”

“Then give it six more. Just keep throwin’ six months at it till it goes away. Stuff like this takes time.”

I exhale hotly though my nose, bull-like.

“Groceries,” Richard says, “listen to me. Someday you’re gonna look back on this moment of your life as such a sweet time of grieving. You’ll see that you were in mourning and your heart was broken, but your life was changing and you were in the best possible place in the world for it – in a beautiful place of worship, surrounded by grace. Take this time, every minute of it. Let things work themselves out here in India.”

“But I really loved him.”

“Big deal. So you fell in love with someone. Don’t you see what happened? This guy touched a place in your heart deeper than you thought you were capable of reaching. I mean you got zapped, kiddo. But that love you felt, that’s just the beginning. You just got a taste of love. That’s just limited little rinky-dink mortal love. Wait till you see how much more deeply you can love than that. Heck, Groceries – you have the capacity to someday love the whole world. It’s your destiny. Don’t laugh.”

“I’m not laughing.” I was actually crying. “And please don’t laugh at me now, but I think the reason it’s so hard for me to get over this guy is because I seriously believed David was my soul mate.”

“He probably was. Your problem is you don’t understand what that word means. People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that’s what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that’s holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life. A true soul mate is probably the most important person you’ll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with a soul mate forever? Nah. Too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then they leave. And thank God for it. Your problem is, you just can’t let this one go. It’s over, Groceries. David’s purpose was to shake you up, drive you out of your marriage that you needed to leave, tear apart your ego a little bit, show you your obstacles and addictions, break your heart open so new light could get in, make you so desperate and out of control that you had to transform your life, then introduce you to your spiritual master and beat it. That was his job, and he did great, but now it’s over. Problem is, you can’t accept that his relationship had a real short shelf life. You’re like a dog at the dump, baby – you’re just lickin’ at the empty tin can, trying to get more nutrition out of it. And if you’re not careful, that can’s gonna get stuck on your snout forever and make your life miserable. So drop it.”

“But I love him.”

“So love him.”

“But I miss him.”

“So miss him. Send him some love and light every time you think about him, then drop it. You’re just afraid to let go of the last bits of David because then you’ll be really alone, and Liz Gilbert is scared to death of what will happen if she’s really alone. But here’s what you gotta understand, Groceries. If you clear out all that space in your mind that you’re using right now to obsess about this guy, you’ll have a vacuum there, an open spot – a doorway. And guess what the universe will do with the doorway? It will rush in – God will rush in – and fill you with more love than you ever dreamed. So stop using David to block that door. Let it go.”

“But I wish me and David could —“

He cuts me off. “See, now that’s your problem. You’re wishin’ too much, baby. You gotta stop wearing your wishbone where your backbone oughtta be.”

The wretched agression which fuels his ego could win him the world if he were to redirect it. I think of him as an anti-Mahatma of sorts every now and then. Thin and bony, sometimes like a baby who can barely keep his chin up, he walks with me, happy for the moment, on the red soil paths. The green trees, the wind blowing our sweat dry, people excersing and doing Yoga, an old couple with a labrador, and a stick in hand to keep the monkeys at bay, the healthiness of the surroundings pulsating in jogging feet--he is such a misfit here. Everything inside him desperately soaks the wellness in the air like a thirsty dog laps water, like a band-aid on a wound.

His forced exile has given him what others may call...the gift of time. But its nothing short of Pandora's box. For most of us Time is a gushing river we can not bathe in twice; his Time however is a quiet lake that looks exactly the same at all hours, even the waves the winds paint on its wet surface are not random.

Everytime i enter his room, its as if time has ceased to be till i step out and the clock starts ticking again with a gasp. Strange it is then that the angry clock on his wall runs ten mintues ahead, as if forcing him to take cognizance. But he lies there on the same spot, in the same way, facing the same wall the paint on which seems to have stopped dead in its track trickling down, once liquid and colourful, now solid and caking.

The claustrophobia of his existence chokes me. Someone has bound my hands with heavy manacles to this side of the bed, i cant seem to break free. I am desperate to help him for his sake and my own. But i am afraid to approach him at times, like you would telling a war veteran that he must stop trying to gulp down in his drink the hideousness of the world he sacrificed his leg to save. You'd be afraid he might just throw his drink in your face and holler at you for daring to ask him to smile and let people think of him a mad fool.

I feel his pain. Its spread to us and become ours too. And that gives me authority to enter the room which has imprisoned time. And as i do, the birds outside stop chirping in mid-song, the people on the road freeze in their activities, the rain holds its breathe and the hands of the clock in the kitchen stop waving the minutes away...

"Its not the food thats stale, dad. its the drink."

He looks at me with bloodshot eyes that if you stare in them for too long you can see someone trapped crying out for help.

"Its not mom, its you."

He asks me to stop preaching to him. I try to tell him subtly this is not him. That this is what Freud called the Ego, what so many spiritual traditions call the 'False Self', that it is often a pathological term. He waves sheets of paper in my face, that say his blood tests and his urine tests, everything is normal. But how do i convey to him that the medical reports cant reveal the sickness he seems to be suffering with. That what he feels to be connivace of the rest of the world is a misplaced pride.

I sense I have a few seconds left to stop talking before he makes me his enemy too. I change the topic. And as a post-thought, i quit trying to avoid the fate this road he has taken must take us meet, i quit trying to find a solution. I realise there is no solution; the kind that i have frantically been looking for. The kind that the five years of english literature in my veins pumps into my idealist heart. There is no solution.

I keep up at nights, staring at the fan, feeling utter lack of any emotion as blank watery tears stream down my cheeks gently. I feel nothing. There is no solution. There is no solution. There is no solution. So i quit trying to understand the anatomy of his meloncholy in order to cure it.

'We defy augury; there's a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, 'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come: the readiness is all.'

There is just this. A readiness to face this meloncholy, and a tolerance, whose limits are not infinite. And as always, there is distraction. Rebellion sometimes is a kind of denial of reality.

So we walk in the green and red scenery, and i let him talk of his time, his time when it was a speeding train, and how quickly it did pass him by. I put some songs in the car i know he likes, and let him hum along. And discover a melodious voice i didnt know he had. I let him take pride in what he has created, and he looks across at me with wonder at his own genius, and for now, i dont break his illusion.

And at times it makes sense. At times its all alright. At times the sunlight gleams mellowingly through the clouds just so you can see the way ahead for a while, not in any ultimately enlightening way. Just thin occasional glimmers and rays that quiver with the leaves of the trees they peep through. Its difficult to keep holding on to the slender fragile ray for long; it melts in your fingers and disappears if you hold on to it too tightly and then there is darkness again. So you have to be patient. Yes, you have to be very patient...

Says Paul Varjack, “You know what's wrong with you, Miss Whoever-you-are? You're chicken, you've got no guts. You're afraid to stick out your chin and say, "Okay, life's a fact…”

She stops dead in her tracks. It’s as if he is addressing her and not Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Like Holly, she has been running too. Running ceaselessly, running fretfully from something she is afraid to acknowledge. Running from that which threatens to change her world irreplaceably, irretrievably. As if ballroom dancing, swirling from one arm to another and hoping the music will never stop. City after city, people after people, distraction after distraction; like downing drinks after drinks, those that make everything forgetful, blurry-- hoping she'd never be sober enough to see what the real picture looks like. It’s ultimately useless, as Varjack says, because no matter where you run, you just end up running into yourself.

In her dreams she sees the face of a monster, so close to her she can feel its breath on her face. Her eyes are shut and she knows from somewhere deep within that to be free she must open them and look it straight in the eye. But she cannot bring herself to do it and therefore must remain enslaved till that time to this phantasm of fear. And keep running.

Her state is what Richard Coe described as--

A freedom of a slave to crawl east along the deck of a boat going west.

the hair on her arm rise up like on an angry cat's tail
if she had claws, the nails would come out screeching
carving uneven lines on some smooth surface
so hard its sure to bleed
she wants no hot milk
neither any bells or balls of yarn
nor a fish tank to stare at...
far less a hand to stroke her cold fur.

“There is no such thing as duty. If you know a thing is right, you want to do it. If you don’t want to do it—it isn’t right. If it’s right and you don’t want to do it—you don’t know what right is—and you’re not a man.”



"...you see, if we had souls, which we haven't, and if our souls met - yours and mine — they'd fight to death. But after they had torn each other to pieces, to the very bottom, they'd see that they had the same root..."


Kira: "Haven't you ever wanted a thing for no reason save one: that you wanted it?"
Andrei: "Certainly. That's always been my only reason. I've never wanted things unless they could help my cause. For, you see, it is my cause."

"And your cause is to deny yourself for the sake of millions?"

"No. To bring the millions up to where I want them--for my sake."

"And when you think you're right, you do it at any price?"

"I know what you're going to say. You're going to say, as so many of our enemies do, that you admire our ideals, but loathe our methods."

"I loathe your ideals."

"Why?"

"For one reason, mainly, chiefly, and eternally, no matter how much your Party promises to accomplish, no matter what paradise it plans to bring mankind. Whatever your other claims may be, there's one you can't avoid, one that will turn your paradise into the most unspeakable hell: your claim that man must live for the state."

"What better purpose can he live for?"

"Don't you know," her voice trembled suddenly in a passionate plea she could not hide," don't you know that there are things, in the best of us, which no outside hand should dare touch? Things sacred because, and only because, one can say: 'This is mine'? Don't you know that we live only for ourselves, the best of us do, those who are worthy of it? Don't you know that there is something in us which must not be touched by any state, by any collective, by any number of millions?"

He answered: "No."

"Comrade Taganov," she whispered, "how much you have to learn!"

He looked down at her with his quiet shadow of a smile and patted her hand like a child's. "Don't you know," he asked, "that we can't sacrifice millions for the sake of the few?"

"Can you sacrifice the few? When those few are the best? Deny the best its right to the top--and you have no best left. What are your masses but millions of dull, shrivelled, stagnant souls that have no thoughts of their own, no dreams of their own, no will of their own, who eat and sleep and chew helplessly the words others put into their brains? And for those you would sacrifice the few who know life, who are life? I loathe your ideals because I know no worse injustice than the giving of the undeserved. Because men are not equal in ability and one can't treat them as if they were. And because I loathe most of them."

"I'm glad. So do I."

"But then...."

"Only I don't enjoy the luxury of loathing. I'd rather try to make them worth looking at, to bring them up to my level. And you'd make a great little fighter--on our side."

"I think you know that I could never do that."

"I think I do. But why don't you fight against us, then?"

"Because I have less in common with you than the enemies who fight you, have. I don't want to fight for the people, I don't want to fight against the people, I don't want to hear of the people. I want to be left alone--to live."

She laughs like its her last time. Pouncing on every opportunity. Sometimes a little too hard. A little too gayly. Hugging it tight like a favourite cousin you're afraid you wont see for a long time.

She just surrenders, as if doped. Careless, mindless, free. As if she owes no one nothing and no one owes her nothing. Her playlist has undergone a drastic change. She likes the head-banging rock music suddenly or at least it likes her. It has the same numbing effect like a hot water bath, the excess in this case not being really hot water but really loud noise.

It doesnt mean she is never sad. You could have a sense of humour, take yourself less seriously, eat a lot of chocolates and still be sad. It seems like she is unwittingly sad most of the time. You would think it was better than being consciously sad, but it isn't really. Its like you've hurt you're knee but you don't know it. You keep limping, confused but indifferent for it doesn't hurt. And in the backdrop, that invisible wound, like termite is gnawing at your knee making it hollow from within—till the day you cant walk anymore.


She wakes up in the morning with another strange dream. She sees she is living by the sea in a shack like one you may imagine painted on a cover of a children's novel. The sea a deep azure blue, coiling tides at the shore, a little girl with torn clothes and a dark complexion, sitting with her hand around her dog on the beach, watching the waves come and go. She dreams she is that girl. And a wave as huge as a Tsunami rises like a monster, asleep for a hundred years, from the bottom of the sea, and destroys her little hut and everything in it. As the tide rises like a massive wall in front of her, she rushes back to her shack, and watches frozen with fear from a round tear in a curtain. Her eye round and animated from the whole, like a cartoon character's with curved lashes, that makes a magical sound as it blinks.

And what does she see?? All the aquatic life and fishes and sea animals, in the this fantastic wonderwall rising along with the water. But what she sees most clearly is an octopus. Suddenly she is on a log of wood floating on the sea and the octopus is hazily around somewhere. She is afraid of the huge octopus with its many tentacles more than the water itself. It has a face, that octopus. She could clearly see it. Like King Triton; yes, Little Mermaid's father with the trident in hand! But evil and angry!



And as is customary in dreams, she is suddenly eddied into another place totally unconnected. She is in her bathroom now! With...him! Saying her last goodbyes, hurriedly, for the sense of urgency and danger created by the Tsunami hasn't altered with the change of scenes. She hugs him, cries, kisses him, and there's somebody at the half-open door, knocking...Probably its her brother...

And then, it dwindles from memory. A mass of fog. Thats all she remembers.

Sitting in office, intrigued no end by her strange strange dreams, she searches what her dream means, if anything, because you know, not every dream has to mean anything. What she finds is this:

To see an octopus in your dream, means that you are entangled in some difficult matter. Your judgment is being clouded. Alternatively, the octopus indicates that you are overly possessive and maybe too clingy in a relationship.

To dream that you are in the bathroom, relates to your instinctual urges. You may be experiencing some burdens/feelings and need to "relieve yourself". Alternatively, a bathroom symbolizes purification and self-renewal. You need to cleanse yourself, both emotionally and psychologically.

She finds it funny,and useless. A Dream Bathroom to "relieve yourself" of psychological burdens? Merlin's Beard!

Immediately after she wakes up from this dream, she is still somewhat dotty. Still in bed with her head in her hands, she sits with her mobile in her lap. A few messages blink on the screen from last night. She doesn't open them just yet. She still hasn't completely stopped sleeping. Odds are she is still dreaming a little. With one foot in her dream, and the other in reality, she tries to take a stance. She is unsure where she wants NOT to be. Its 8 am, she has a faint clue that she is late for work. In such a precarious situation, her phone beeps a new message. And its him. She knows she would rather go back to sleep.

Confused, sleepy and disoriented she staggers to the bathroom. About to close the door of her room behind her, her hand comes between the door as it closes. Aaaaaaaaaaah. She totters to the dressing room. After about thirty seconds, her finger bursts with pain like an atom bomb. And right there, she begins to cry. Her brother and parents are fast asleep in adjoining rooms. And she begins to cry. Cry, as if everything in her life is wrong because she caught her finger in the door. There goes her sense of humour and everything happy or funny or right in her life! Because she caught her finger in the goddamned door!

Only she felt like in crying about the finger, she was really crying for the hurt knee which hadn't really begin to hurt yet.

The water is scalding hot. It pours in a thick linear transparent line in the empty plastic bucket — resonating around the tiled bathroom walls like drum rolls. She sits in the cold on the silver steel settee, naked. Her body hunched and gathered in her arms, swaying back and forth — waiting. She watches the steam rise like smoke from a funeral pyre, divine and purifying, disappearing into the ceiling.

Slowly, very slowly, she puts both her feet into the bucket. The warmth attacks her toes, feet, spreading to her legs up to her cold bony knees. As she does that, the water spills over from the bucket onto the floor, overwhelmed. Bones in her thin legs crackle like cold logs in the fire. She puts her hands and arms in next. She finds a therapeutic relief in the boiling hot water that almost burns her skin. It feels like she could go to sleep under that effect. Stay here forever. The band that holds her hair tied in a knot at the nape of her neck, she loosens with a wet hand. As the warmth reaches up to her thighs and back and neck and face she feels renewed. The warmth seeps into her very being, getting the blood frozen in her veins moving again. Hot red thick liquid. She can feel it travelling in her body like tiny fishes. All her troubles seem to melt for a while. There she sits, hanging suspended in mid-air in space-time continuum.

Now that her body has adjusted to the hot water, the heat that had embraced her body like love begins to abandon her limbs. She takes her arms and legs out of the bucket and stands up, her teeth clattering against each other. Her hands are wrinkled and pink. Water drips like greed from her body. She stands there contracting back the cold slowly. The wind jabs at her naked soggy body as she stands shivering... defending herself with a dry towel.

The curtains over the windows block the rain falling outside from view. But I can hear it crash on the winding rocky garden path outside. A thousands jabs on my heart. The smell is intoxicating. Ive always wanted to make a perfume out of it. But thats nothing new. Many love rain, many love that very earthy wet fragrance that oozes like a genie from a bottle, awakening all desires. It isn't for the first time that rain has fell on someone's dry thoughts as they do on mine this moment—rinsing them alive and breathing again, throbbing on the temples. Not for the first time has the sound of thunder sent blood shooting down someone's veins as it does in mine tonight, as pipes and sewers are unclogged in a rainy gush. It isn't for the first time that a memory has opened its arms to lament the romance in the air. Nor am I the first one to wipe a tear escaping through the corner of my eye as i sit facing only the sound of rain.

Its not an easy tear, one following the other, like the ceaseless rain outside. Its a hard-earned tear like a drop from a dry tube well on famished earth. And im grateful for it. Even though a torrent would be so much more merciful than this suffocating starvation. I stare at the curtains, imagining the lush greenery dancing, shivering in the wet wind. Sheena is in the bathroom, talking to Bhuvan. Its Valentine's. I wished id have given them some privacy but its 1.30 in the night, and i cant leave the room. Its isnt Valentine's Day thats making me cry. The rain is. But for the rain, it would probably have been just another practical day. But for the rain...

“That love is reverence, and worship, and glory, and the upward glance. Not a bandage for dirty sores. But they don't know it. Those who speak of love most promiscuously are the ones who've never felt it. They make some sort of feeble stew out of sympathy, compassion, comtempt, and general indifference, and they call it love. Once you've felt what it means to love...the total passion for the total height - you are unable of anything else.”

Something inside me—like a shell—which was protecting me till now, saving me from an unknown malaise, is beginning to crack. I can feel it inside my chest. It cracks, sometimes it melts, sometimes it wants to come out with a final push like a baby is born. People around me, i see, have it already broken in them and its not a defeat. Its a predestined failure to save a beauty that was born to die. It was meant to be broken, like a fruit is meant to be eaten when its ripe. I didnt even know such a covering existed—over your heart, over your soul, your innocence, your self. It breaks one by one. A million cracks slowly spreading over a block of ice.

Some are immune to it, those who were born that way or make themselves immune to its stranglehold. Others like me must find Knowledge a painful evolution.

I can hear it cracking inside me. Inside my womb, evolving to die, like an aborted foetus. Under my chest sometimes, tapping it from inside every hour, ready to burst out with a gasp. Sometimes like a woman sick with pregnancy i wish it'd just come out. And i know id be someone dead, someone changed, someone new.

From the suffocating warmth of the crowded metro, she walks with a vague sense of momentary purpose towards the escalators that perforce augment her as an inert object out onto the threshold of the whistling cold wind. The gust of wind that greets her threatens to send her hair into a disarray. She flips them aside with a jerk but they strike back with an equal and opposite force covering half of her face trying to block her vision. She takes her hands out of her jacket pockets and shoves them behind her ears where they lie confused like a child who doesn't know what he is being punished for. She folds her arms on her chest and grips herself tightly, as if her body will drop lifeless if she were to let go. Like the metal ball in a pinball machine, her surroundings and her routine carry her mechanically, sometimes aggressively launching her aboard, at other times she just falls limp and is sucked down the vacuum into an abyss. She hears, sees, responds, as best as she can, but doesnt register the ambience around her. She is somewhere far off no matter where she is. The cold wind falls disappointedly on her insufficiently clad body. Unable to draw even a sympathetic shiver from her numb limbs, it coos away spiralling up rustling wry trees.

But she keeps rolling on, waiting for a push, a jerk that might send her shooting up like the metal ball under the glass surface of the arcade game of life, only to be dropped down again, and to be thrust back up again and drop again and up again...