Animation

It was literally a stairway to heaven. Imagine ascending it under twilight. Evening. Thursday.
Two floors it rises, before coming to a halt at the terrace. Not exactly twilight. It is the uniform gold and pink and purple that seems to wash over the universe.

The trees - those are the first things that you notice. Trees swaying madly even though it's only a mild breeze. Maybe it's just the vibrance. I see the cuckoo nestled in the tree, her eyes searching. Is she looking for her lover? Why isn't he back? A hungry eagle, perhaps? A cat? The eyes pierce everything while her invisible ears must surely be perked up, straining to listen. No. It is not a 'she'. The woman is missing. And he is pining for her. Evenings are the best to mourn the loss of a love. But a sudden flutter of black wings and she is there, nipping at him playfully.

Such associations we make! The random interlude of two cuckoos caught in a poetic circle. How trivial! Mortality. That's what made us make up stories. Living a life with a perpetual expectation of death, it is purely natural that we glorify our existence.

Associations. Rhymes without reason. Make-believe patterns and imaginary fears. This is what mankind thrives on. The subtle wave of the tree speaks volumes when it shouldn't. A stray dog in the street looking for morsels. A hunt for survival turned into a reality show by people on the balcony feeding dry bread to it and haggling over whose turn it is to throw the crumbs.

There are numerous dhrishti bommais adorning the terrace railings on every house. Ancient charms to protect the insecure people in their flimsy dwellings. And all these charms are usually grotesque faces - a Hindu version of the gargoyle. But they are not scary. They stand (or are they sitting? It's just their heads, you see!) with their faces turned towards the distant horizon. What are these friendly demons saying to each other? Are they, perhaps, talking about humanity's desperate need to anthropomorphize everything around it? Do they want us to let them be so that they can happily practise voodoo?

How much had the clouds been part of my childhood! And now, they look mean and threatening for having ignored them. One huge cloud in particular is slowly taking the shape of a giant walking over mere mortals. Like Atlas holding up the sky. Slowly, inch by inch, he steps over invisibility, banishing all thoughts of the clear sky above. No, he is not banishing the view. He is teaching us humility. To lean down with the face hunting the clouds; to wait for a glimpse of the vast, unmoving, ever-changing permanence that is the sky; to spread the arms in bliss as infinity smothers us with love - the clouds are here to teach us that.

Where is the other soul - that other person that centuries of writers and poets promised me? Where is the person who can lean down with me? Pining? Why, I sure am! Seeing the evening in all its vastness can not only be humbling but also belittling. I want to be secure in the foolish knowledge that these things that I experience don't go unshared. My eyes search.

There! A woman in a saree, staring at the horizon. She doesn't look as if she is contemplating what to make for dinner, or whether to bring the dried clothes in. She is just looking. One more. A man. Two other girls, stopping their shuttlecock match to drink in the splendour. We - that housewife and that college kid and those two girls and the rest of the dhrishti bommais - look towards the horizon. Anticipation. Suspended animation.

I wept as I held mankind's collective breath - waiting for the next second.

I am me as you are me.

Winter. The words flow like a glacier, unbridled in their beauty. Words are tiny icicles zipping through the icy floor of the canyon like frozen bullets. The clear white sky and the ocean meet in obscurity, the horizon all but a memory that is fast fading. Quiet.
In this stillness, there is a sense of dread. That of the unknown. That of knowledge opening the eyes to new fears.
The tender snowflakes fall, landing like little fairies. The flakes are reluctant to be grounded, their obstinance clear from their levitation. They are suspended ever so slightly above my skin, not wanting to end the journey. Then, as if instant salvation was attained in the breath of a second, they evaporate from my heat.
The next flakes are not so ethereal. Their attachment to reality is real. They are solid. I believe in them and so, they exist. As huge mounds of snow. As massive mountains gleaming like burnished silver. Snow Is.
Belief and fear. The two emotions build over each other, building my world. The snow is real.
The sky is real. The silence is tactile. And fear is solid. Frozen.
My words write me. Spelling mistakes included. A bad phrase ruins my day. Words flow around me as if like the frequent rarefied dust in a science-fiction movie merging together to form a superhero. The Z-particles zing through my skin, adding another layer to my dream. Another coating of paint.
This is mine. Everything is me. My words. My dream. Beyond me, there is nothing. I am where it all begins. I am the destination.

நான் என்ற பொய்யை நடத்துபவனும் நான்.
I preserve the 'I'.

Where is the fear? Where is the knowledge? They are gone now, like the morning mist under the sun. The veil is not lifted, mainly because there is nothing to uncover. Nothing to disillusion. You, reading these words - know this. I ordered you to read them. I made you. The years culminating to your perusal of this were my doing.
Next, I plan to add Unicorns in Russia. So long.

The trip continues

Continued from The trip begins.

We always wait for something to happen. It is this anticipation that we call hope. But so immersed are we in this anticipation that we fail to recognise that our needs have always been fulfilled even before we resolve that need. All you ever wanted in your life - they are right here, in front of your eyes. Go and grasp it before it vanishes in a puff of green smoke.

Enchantments - they are nothing but the frequent lies that we uncover. Once the charm fails, the truth shall out. But are you ready for the truth?

Traveling in a typical South Indian bus can be quite harrowing and overpowering for a newbie. There are so many people that you come in close contact with. There are so many stories that you hear. And the bus has always been the best storyteller.

The grime from the rusty and wet window is something that remains foremost upon anyone's mind that has been on such a bus. The grime and the sweat. The bittersweet essence of humanity. Hardly an endearing aspect of our race. But I wanted this - to lose myself in this sea; to try and forget the smell of deoderants and flavoured cappuccinos. To try and be human.

I didn't know what I was waiting for as I stared out the window. Inspite of my long speeches about the love for humanity, I couldn't wait to set my eyes at the distant, darkening horizon to diminsh any awareness that I might have had of the world inside the bus. The world inside the bus was ugly. It was full of drunk college professors and obese housewives. The kids were obnoxious as ever, throwing up and eating spiced cucumber at the same time.

Now, spiced cucumber is probably the cornerstone of any bus travel within Tamil Nadu. The hawkers swoop in around the bus as soon as the black smoke from the exhaust mingles with the smell of urine in the bus stand. These sellers are true dare-devils. They often do not care if the bus is going to leave within the next thirty seconds. They will still manage to make the sale. And they can get you a change for 500 bucks if only you are ready to buy the cucumber with chilli powder wrapped in an old tamil newspaper that proudly proclaims the improving health condition of MGR.

One of the main events that led to me sitting in that rickety bus that shook with every passing breeze was my want to plunge back into a world that I had only just about started to explore before it had been taken away from me rudely. I am, of course, talking about my curious childhood. I was born just at the time when telephones were fast becoming an essential commodity. Before I could revel in obscurity, I had my mind numbed by the reality shows. And just when I had discovered that touring talkies were making their rounds in my hometown, we had bought a video cassette player. I am not a technology-hater. I just happen to be someone always stuck in the wrong time. But in this travel, I had planned to wrestle with time and stop it.

But none of this made me want to buy the cucumber.

This might end up as the starting of some chapter in my book. And this might be continued as well..

The Kitchen at the Center of the Universe

For a long time, I've had this creeping suspicion that my kitchen might be the center of the universe. Whenever I decide to do anything there, chaos abounds. I was afraid that, owing to the enormous amount of cosmic activity going on there, my making instant noodles might cause the premature extinction of the weathered-horned wadywysts in the star system of Merak. Thus, I was forever happy in the knowledge that nothing was ever cooking in my kitchen. Nothing that might shift the entropy and result in astronomers wetting their pants in excitement. So, you should be thankful for the musty smell and obese spiders and the fatter lizards.

If you were to notice the Orion nebula these days, however, you might detect an increase in its size. I am immensely sorry, Mr Hawking, but I simply had to make those chapathis!

My chapathis have taught me a lot about polygons. Initially, the biggest problem to me was the kneading. It is oddly satisfying and slightly kinky. But don't rush to make conclusions involving the dough and me. I swear we are just friends.

Once I had the dough right, it was the shape. They were predominantly rounded rectangles. Then came the octogons. I realized that I had been trying very hard to get a circle. Why? Confirmance? I decided to move into abstraction.

So, this is what unemployed writers do. Some learn the guitar, some learn French. I, on the other hand, have entered the orgasmic world of gastronomy. While on the subject, let me tell you that 'gastronomy' is an extremely unappetizing word and evokes images of oily potato crisps and butter chicken sold on the roadside on a hot, humid evening by sweaty vendors. We need a new word. Something along the lines of - Oh, I don't know... something that doesn't make you visualize a middle-aged man eating a burrito!

My invisibilty was sealed one afternoon when I was trying to make some sambhar. My sambhar flowed around with the consistency of hydrochloric acid when the phone rang.

"We are calling from ICICI Bank. Would you like to go for our premium platinum credit card with a coating of tungsten and duralumin? The credit limit is five lakhs."

All of this was said in one continuous flow and I am making it up about the coating of tungsten. That's reserved for the really privileged customers.

"Thanks. I don't mind another one of those. I am an uemployed writer and I do need a lot of money."

*CLICK*

No more sales pitch before they take that leap of faith and realize that I could turn into a bestselling author. My sambhar tasted like carpet. Blissful ignorance. And sweet invisibility.