Take a drag

Bodies and lights. Bodies swimming in the stale air. Writhing. Undulating. Gyrating. Droplets of sweat charging across the space between the men - lit by the flickering serial lights from above. Blink. Blink.

The sound from the loud speakers comes only as an afterthought, loud though it is. Film songs. Self-compositions. Hymns to the gods. More film songs. The drums beat faster. The bodies are not swaying anymore. There is a jerky motion - like old Charlie Chaplin movies. Real life is doing a television - showing static frames and passing them off as one continuous scene.

There is an imposing, huge, gigantic idol of Ganesha. He is leering rather sadistically from behind his long, serpentine trunk. He dominates everything - watching over the drunken men and the cheap songs. The lights swim across the vision. Ganesha again, this time frowning at the quarreling men.

No. That's not Ganesha! That's Dionysus - the Greek god of wine that inspires ritual madness and ecstasy. You can see the ancient greeks on that road - 10th Main, New Thippasandra, Bangalore. You can see them carousing and dancing. You can see them gulp down Monitor Whiskey and sing praises to the seven dominions of Zeus.

Pretty soon, you will see them on the pavement. The rulers of this country, passed out on the sidewalks like pieces of dirt. The beggar picks the dried remains of yesterday's sambhar from his fingernails and watches the scene with rapture. Tomorrow's leaders squat with him - and drink in spirituality through half-closed, bloodshot eyes. Feed them with power brownies the likes of which Amsterdam has never seen. They are overdosed with all that power. Of the people, for the people and by the same stupid people. Give them democracy. Inundate the streets with beer. Fill the textbooks with Big Bangs and moral education.

Intoxication seems to be the only to answer to cynicism. One small whiff of illusion and you are hooked. High above the puny humans having a spiritual orgasm, a cloud drifts - lit by the innumerable sodium vapor lamps of the city. You get the feeling of an inferno underneath. We are all blazing in it. The pain from the scorching heat of our personal hells are supposed to cleanse us. Corporeal mortification.

The cloud curiously looks like a crucifix.