Vera

                                                                                        

Father pushed my hand and I looked into his eyes. Usually they were playful and vivacious. We were leaving the din of the city. Lights traveled by, blurring every moment. When I looked into his eyes, the world blotted out. We would sometimes venture into the peregrinations to the shore when he would want to make love. We would walk down through the city scum, us alone hand in hand, to our beach of the loners. The path was tortuous.  A stranger could never penetrate into our realm. It is only by practice that one can begin to understand our path. Father always said that only we could take this journey, no one else could submit to it. I followed him, like an obedient child. Today was another one of such journeys; and so we set out for the sea, hand in hand.

Father was a little pensive today. He had a worrisome brow. From time to time he left my hand and put it on his temple. I could not comprehend his presentiment. His dark eyes were tired; maybe that is why he thought of making love today. Sometimes, when overworked, he would come to my room with an air of melancholy. He always said- that my sight was all glitter and he drew strength from this very dust. I engulfed him in my dust and made him stronger and weaker- he was there to take it all.

I touched his shoulder but he kept walking on. At some distance we saw a looming figure. He was a boy, about my age with aquiline nose and eyes as dark as mine. He seemed as if he was standing there for quite some time. He kept making marks on the ground by his shoes; he kept drawing some illegible patterns. His eyes met my father’s and at once they held the knowledge of recognition. Father saw him and left my hand altogether. Suddenly he started towards the direction of the distant boy. I was rooted to my place, all incomprehensible. Who was this boy, I thought. Father went up to him and took him by the shoulder. They sat down on a broken tree bark. I kept my distance. It was hard for me to cope with strangers and estrangement.

They were talking and listening. I could not hear any of them. I did not try hard. I had a looming sense of jealousy. Father was with him by the shoulder and not with me. I started for the shack. I kept walking with sand in my foot. I reached the destination in sometime. The landscape was overwhelming, as always. It was dusk and the sea was deep blue. Our shack was on the cliff which overlooked the sea. In the distance there was civilization; the people of the world. I thought of how I could compel father in my own way. Maybe a candle would be mystique with aroma of roses. I would need some preparing for that.  I took a chair and sat facing the sea.

Sometime later, I heard a someone walking down. It was father with his slow steps. He sat down beside me and took my head on his shoulder.

‘Who was that boy?’, I asked.

‘He was my mistake.’, he answered.

We were silent for a long time. He kept stroking my hair, stroking my wet cheek. I started sobbing and he took my face in his hands. From the back, we heard voices of women. We looked around and saw mother and sister coming towards us. My father disentangled himself, and embraced mother. I saw my sister in all her glory, with her tallness and feminine charms. She was always so beautiful, with long silky hair, bright eyes and charming face. She was so tall, twice as tall as any one of us. She wore white all the time. When she walked, it was as if a stallion was gracefully racing against the wind. She was a celestial nymph.

 She bent down to kiss me on my cheek. Oh, how difficult it was for her!! We all moved to the other part of the shack where she could stand without difficulty. For her, we always had twice as much things. It was difficult to accommodate her sometimes. I put my head on her lap and heard mother singing.

Sometime later, I stood up and walked over to the edge of the cliff. I sat there. The family was singing tunes. I thought that now there would be no love.

Suddenly I felt a hand on my hand. I turned and I saw Vera. He had come again test me.

‘Why have you done this?’ , he asked.

I kept looking at him, hating him with all violence.

‘I have not done this.’

‘It’s ingrained in you. It’s in your being. Every time you come to this brink, I see the futility. Why? Why? Why?.....’

He kept ranting. He kept ranting. He kept ranting.

Suddenly I felt a rush of heat. I opened my eyes to his and shouted-

‘It isn’t me!!! It never is!’

He stopped in between his words, as if my words struck him. He was heaving. His heaving died down. He looked into my eyes as if the knowledge finally penetrated him that it is never me. It never was.

He took my hand and we started off for the Neverland. 

The Excess of Silence

Descartes said- ‘I think therefore I am’. I wonder to how many people he could truly explain this. I wonder how many people have truly understood what he said. ‘Saying’, grown to ‘talking’ is a bit of a problem. Thinking is fine; it has a limited domain. But talking is difficult. Talking requires an effort of construction- and that too an appropriate construction. We’re all builders; we try to build our lives. One block after another, piece by piece- we try to make our places. But building sentences needs deliberation. I can think, I can think in my sub-conscious. But when it comes to engaging basic faculties of another human being, I am at a loss. I lose myself to the idea that I don’t have the capacity. It’s like traversing the unknown grounds with invisible pitfalls. One doesn’t really want to fall in the holes so one resorts to reconnaissance. It’s as if I project myself elsewhere- like radar to know what rocks I might encounter. I am always pulsating to find, to search but with equal derision for myself, my being.  The derision foretells the story of rejection- the rejection of my being from an unchartered context.

Let me tell you the story of the time when all this started. It was a time of great impacts and great distinctions. The theory of ‘single child’ is appropriate; it causes great harm to be alone- for it leads to distorted speech, dehumanized bedrooms and play areas full of imaginary friends. Now the great thing about the imaginary friends is that they know you- so you don’t have to explain anything to them. It is through one’s soul unknown to oneself that a child alone fabricates his universe. The communication is in whispers, in countless lost moments of togetherness. One may talk- and the other may listen. Here, in the bedroom of the single child- one may talk and everybody may listen. Everybody is present by their absence. The child has the sun to talk to in the day and the moon to talk to in the night. Certain wind may carry his words elsewhere- but hardly to any place where they are not misconstrued. The friendly chatter is too much clamour and too much clamour is excess of silence and silence is the infinity. Like Simon and Garfunkel said-

And in the naked light I saw

Ten thousand people, maybe more

People talking without speaking

People hearing without listening

People writing songs that voices never share

And no one dared

Disturb the sound of silence

So yes, no one dares disturb the sound of silence. Silence and the being exist in singularity. Vaguely do I remember the song of other voices but hardly have I forgotten my own melodies. Vaguely do I recall touching hands all the time but never do I forget my own complicated being. It’s what I call the internalized form- and what they think is a melodrama. It’s what they call confusing and what I call ambiguous.  I don’t think I exist in the binary logic of nature – culture. Neither have I had a stand of a Unitarian rejecting the trinity. I look forward to form a perception; I close my eyes for a moment or so. That is where I encounter the countless moments of solitude.  The reconnaissance is only for the well being of my faculties. Reconnaissance is to know that something beyond me exists. And here fore, I begin my construction of sentences to tell you the relatively true story of silence in excess. 

CIRCLES

Speed -0 km/hr. This is just a beginning. I see the road around me- black moist tar, silver splinters, reflections of the neon and a resident beggar on the pavement. It had been raining since the evening and one could still feel the dreadful flashes of lightening. The air is full of chronic anticipation. I am inside my box, trying to be distant from this apathetic world. I feel I am protected.

Speed- 20km/hr. Here I have really begun. I am in relative motion. I think about the time when I was a little girl in my childhood….or was it that I was a boy?....I can’t seem to remember. I think about the time when I was little and I was sitting in the drawing room, waiting for the father to come home to me. I had a red crayon. My mother sat beside me. I felt pangs of hunger and I looked at my mother for some food. But there was none at home. We had no refrigerator and everything was a rot. The only bout of fresh air was a mile from my place of birth. I close my eyes, the steering in my hand, and recall the crayon.  Somehow I feel in control and I am cruising alone in this apathetic world. I give twenty credits to that childhood of mine.

Speed- 50km/hr. I feel as much air on my face as the dreary weather can allow. The city is in a blur as I am depreciating downward. I see tail- lights in front of me and I want all of them to turn off. When I imagine all of them turned off I want them to remain the same. And then I come to love them…their flitting movements….as if a lullaby of lights. For some moments I feel unwound in this dark world. I am in control of my light. I can choose to cruise and I can choose to shine and choose to fade. The others only fade out and fade in. How would that dance be? I think more and I see my emotional attachments- the sister or the brother, the father and the mother, the ghost of the family, the ghosts of the families to be, the ridiculed spirits of the friends and the  preserved intimacies of distant acquaintances and at last, myself, bigger than any of them. More money, more clothes, more food, more wine, more cigarettes……...more money, more clothes, more food, more wine, more cigarettes……..more money, more food…..

John Mayer sings- maybe I’ll tangle in the power lines….and it might be over in a second’s time….

The buildings have grown bigger over my head. I am hungry. I need more food. I have been circling round in the city. I am tired. I need more food. All those buildings won’t feed me though….those are meant to feed birds in the sky. I am the worm underneath, or so is their belief.

Speed- 0km/hr. I get down in a friendly environment of the derelicts. The place is ablaze with dark matter. But I am familiar with this. I am familiar with the carcasses, the carcasses to be, the hyper-active mites and the forgotten furniture. This is the murkiest picturesque setting. I am leaning on my car, eating and my eyes are on a beggar….no, a person who is begging. Our eyes meet, and I see the dance of the ghosts. It feels I have talked to him. He is my brother and sister. I feel unprotected and perishable. I see my reflection….no money, no clothes, no food, no wine, no cigarettes. I see his angry eyes. He comes to me and I go to him. We meet halfway and he stabs me in the chest. The air and blood gush out.

Speed- unknown. I go out as a light. Me and my beggar are travelling to a distant place. A place where money, clothes, food, wine and cigarettes will be so much that they will stop to matter. I reach there in no time. This is just a beginning.  I see the road around me- black moist tar, silver splinters, reflections of the neon and a resident beggar on the pavement. It had been raining since the evening and one could still feel the dreadful flashes of lightening. The air is full of chronic anticipation. I am inside my box, trying to be distant from this apathetic world. I feel I am protected.

All that a lie is…

A lie- all that it takes to convince me that I am a being. Lying makes me human. Dr.House says everybody lies. It’s a fine process. A lie in physical world is the shady colour manifested in eyes, the surface of the darker face, in the slight trembling of hands and the slight fluttering of eyelids when the occasional pangs of conscience surface. I know this because I’ve been lying all along. Lying is a collective knowledge, occasionally used as wisdom. It is wise to lie when someone’s life is at stake. It is even wise to lie when other needs consolation of acknowledgment. I would like to sample such lying exercises expansive knowledge.

Bertrand Russell writes that each man perceives all words of a language in different ways. Every man is unique and so is his perception. So if one says- ‘we are having sour soup’, I have my own layer of understanding. Sour is good for me. Sour keeps me up on my toes. For me all relations go ‘sour’; seemingly all sweetness disappears. For me the idea of ‘sweet and sour’ is potentially wonderful. What if one speck of aslt is more than collective specks of sugar? Quantitive analysis should be very conclusive. And what about brainwaves? What if my brainwaves go berserk and my brain tells me to understand what is sour as sweet and what is sweet as sour? What if my chemical equation changes? Will I still be kissed with same amount of urgency, with the knowledge that my body’s wants are inconclusive? Evry body lies. A person walking here may be running on some other planet in multiverse so gravity lies. This matrix of cognizance is dichotomous. I have access to everything if I move but to nothing if I’m unable to move. I see colours with eyes open and become colourless with eyes closed. I have maps of my mind but I trust none of them. I lie to myself that I can walk fast when I know I can walk faster. I have questions for more questions- all disregarding lies and grievances, but to get more lies of more colours. It is not disbelief that; it is an assurance of conscience that lying is as good as eating dry cakes with no cherry topping. Please don’t misunderstand this with the true cubs of lion and its pure pride. I am talking about a seemingly overpowering Liger, all a partial lie in genes and a full lie in its roar lying is like that liger- it seems mightier in proportion but has bad mane style. Nevertheless a liger roars as good as a lion or tiger.

A person walking with a hat and an umbrella might be a complete subject of torrential storms inside. As he moves towards the edge, he wants comfort in the shade. He lies that the outer sunshine placates him. I might be him someday, thinking that lying, in academic vernacular, is cheating on me.

A lie has a free form, like liquid; doesn’t behold a shape; rather consumes the space and becomes greater than the definite shape of a being. Lie can traverse distances in this free form. A lie, thus, is never caught; the person lying is caught. Nina Simone keeps asking- ‘ Oh sinnerman, where you gonna run to?' and keeps on asking about the destination of running. With a lie, one can relay between the Lord and the Devil. Unless lie really doesn’t get on one’s conscience, it’s an instrument of entertainment for the Devil and the Lord. And in between, no one is immune to the lie.

Can there be ‘music of lies’ wherein every note is a lie. To come to think of it, it is all relative. The notes, they could always be less melodious or more. So is the lesser melody a lie before or after a melody? Is there an ultimate truth in the seemingly ultimate melody through which divinity is bespoken? Or the ultimate truth lies between the warfare of relative lies with relative degrees of atonement? That miscegenated form of life- the liger looms everywhere and yet it is a subject of relative degrees of atonement. Was it not for the truth of the species and our own partial knowledge of the world did we consider liger as a lie? Co-habitation of different species is evolution and nothing in evolution is absolute. A truth can be as much a lie as that liger from the desert and liger from the forest.

At a fountain, all in light and shade, I thus caught a speck, glimmering hot and cold. I put it in my mouth and heard my own gulping of it. It was sweet and sour. All was in black and white. It shall remain in this exclusivity till the time truth and lie become one as the ultimate superhuman reality and the ultimate hopeful fantasy, together in this bipolar world.