A Dream Nears the Dawn

We are back. To the ‘Spill Your Beans Café’. It’s the next morning and you still look so blown. Eyelids heavy, half close, half open…the shoplifters have all gone away.

Nutcase plays bongo on the coffee table. You stretch forever on the bean bag, leaning on your left, drawing crop circles with the index finger of your right hand on the sand.


“How many years that we’ve known each other?” You murmured.
“We know each other forever.” Nutcase gurgled.

The music in your eyes played on. The music on your fingertips.


“Can you pass me that?”
“I can.” So I did. You plugged in the earphones in the empty sockets of your brain box. Electricity flew. Your fingers stopped drawing. Your eyes shut.


“I think she can do better,” Nutcase looked at you and spoke to me.
“Isn’t she?” I looked at you and asked her.
Nutcase nodded a no. “She has been agreeing to everything lately.”
“And why is that so?”
“Reluctance my friend, reluctance.” There was a sweet regret in her voice.
“I sincerely think there is peace in there. I mean in reluctance.”
“Only on the outside. I think inside you boil.”


“What’s boiling?” You lazily slurred. The song is over I guessed. We just smiled at her.

“Here, I want you to hear this.” You stretched out to me and passed me the earphones. I plugged them in. You pushed play. Electricity flew. I froze. In the sunshine heat. And while the music played, I looked at the two of them through the half-open shutters of my eyes. Their lips animated. A TV on mute. I don’t know what they spoke about. Still. The song was soon over. I heard, ‘him’.

I opened my eyes and asked, “Who?”
They smiled.

I don’t want to make sense out of anything they said. I don’t want to.


Nutcase leaned towards me and slowly swept away the earphones from my open palms.
“Can you play that for me?” Nutcase made her request.
“Nutcase and her nostalgia trips.” You grinned. I played our song for her.
“Are you planning to sell it?” I looked at you and asked.
“I don’t know. It has to be all of us on the board.”
“I’ll be happy with whatever you two decide.”
“Why? Why don’t you decide?”
“I don’t want to.”

We both looked away. In opposite directions, looking at each other only through the corners of our humid eyes.

“I just wish we didn’t have to make decisions at all. I don’t like to decide.” Your eyes looked sad when you spoke. I wondered if I’d ever see them smiling again. And immediately I know I will. This is the only thing I ever possessed. Once it is gone, I’m free. Forever. Even you will be. Free. The only reason we are sticking together is this. This that we’ll sell. Along with it our 3 years old partnership. A dream nearing its dawn.

“My turn, my turn.” I sometimes wonder where you get your sudden bouts of energy from. Nutcase handed you the earphones. You left us alone for the next few minutes. I and our picture perfect Nutcase.


“So what does she say?”
“Nothing.”
“Does she want to sell it? Do you want to sell it? Someone has to come up with an answer. And I just wish that you two come up with one. It’s more important for you two, more than anybody else.” Nutcase was visibly agitated. She cares. That’s why she is agitated.

“I don’t want to sell it. Don’t want to let it go. Don’t want to let her go. She wants to sell it. Only because of me.”

“Listen. Listen. Listen.” Nutcase scolds me sometimes. “Stop jumping into conclusions for fucksake. You think she wants to sell it because she wants to get away? She can do it right now. Anytime. Without even bothering about selling it or buying it or whatever. She can leave right now.”

“Awwwwwwww. You are still stuck at the same point. Selling. Buying. Selling. Buy. Sell. Fucking hell.” While you blasted, the unplugged phones hung lifelessly from your long fingers.

“Just, just do whatever. If this stays here and I’m left without you two, I’ll bleed the same amount as I would without it. It’s nothing without you two. Just decide. Just decide for me. Just excuse me this fire. Can I have a smoke please? Can I have those transmitting machines? I’d better retreat. And let you two decide. Help me for once this time. Save me the trouble. Please.” I lit the cigarette and sat at a distance. Under the tree where we’d nailed the board. The board on which strangers scribbled their secrets. For they had no one to share it with. In the maddening cushion of a comfortable noise, I looked at the two of you. My arms rested on my knees. In the quivering silence of the outside, I watched you decide my fate.

Rotating Light Box

“Can I read your mind?”
“How will you?”
“I’ll get on your nerves.” I smiled. “I’ll get on your nerves and I’ll intercept your neuron impulses.”
“Haha. You sound sweet. When you talk like it is possible.”
“It is.” I shuffled a little, crammed closer. So that I could almost breathe what you exhaled…so close.

Poof!

“Ho. Ho. Ho. Where are you Mister? Vanished like a puff of smoke. Where are you? Where the fuck are you?” How you screamed.

I have become the size of a bug. I have entered you. I crawl beneath your skin. I am on my way to read your mind. And I shall. Intercept the neuron impulses, the information packets which are scooting right in front of me now. There are so many of them. Helter skelter they go. Have to catch one of them. Phaattaakk. I slapped my palms together. But impulses aren’t any mosquitoes.

“No this can’t be.” I am amused when you sound scared.

I clung on to the inner walls of your desires and treaded on. Presently, I stood facing the towering spiral of your soul. I had to cross it and access the password to your brain box.

Some mountains are never too impossible to scale.

Just expressions, not words escaped me when I did.

The neuron impulses, they converse, they clash, they cultivate. Your brain box shimmers like the commercial breaks.

A massive disco light for a brain hung loose transmitting scattered impulses in each direction. The light balls, they travelled faster than light. Multi-coloured dreams zipped past in hurry, too hurried even to exchange a few words.

“Aaaaaaaaaaaaa.” You kicked your legs mid-air. “There’s something in my ears. There is something in thereeee.”…. “Taaaaakkkke it out,” you frantically repeated your orders twice.

My reverie broke.

For the first time in my life, I put my fingers inside your ears and dragged the intruder out.
Some intruders are happy intruding.

Perverse. Is it?

Cheap Thrills

When a Rs. 5/- substance can alter reality, there’s not much of it anyway.



“My heart is broke
But I have some glue”....Cobain.





“Huh! Cheap.” She sneered openly. The other two looked away. Visibly disgusted.

“Cheap thrills. That’s not just a hobby. It’s someone’s fucking livelihood. I buy an ounce of life every time I give away my soul.” My monologue surely was a part of the bigger dialogue.

“It is actually crazy to think about the number of household items which can get you seriously high.” You remarked.

“It’s cheap doing all that. Really dangerous. Bloody bad. And how can you, I mean how can you swallow that cream smelling like fucking turpentine? I don’t even put it on my sprained ankle. My clothes stink of it for months.” She sneered openly again.

A drugged laugh escaped my hollow throat. I couldn’t help it. Just like I couldn’t help anything else either.

“And those kids. Those rag-pickers at the railway station. They do some real crazy things.” You remarked again. You sure didn’t want to conclude the conversation. You left empty spaces. She was quick to fill in.

“Pity. Pity. Tch. Tch. Tch. I feel real bad. They die real soon.”

“One of them once came right in front of my bike. I braked hard. He looked at me. Drugged eyes. Took three puffs from his plastic bag. He then raised his arms like an eagles wings. And he started to wave them. Up and down. Rhythmic motion. This time he was smiling. The kid wasn’t even 7 I’m sure. His head was the same level as my headlight. He was watching his distorted self in the crystal mirrors.” I told them the tale.

“So did you help him? What did you do?” You asked.

“I stopped at the next hardware shop with ready cash of 7 bucks in my palms. Cheap thrills I told ya.”

Cotton

Sex is more exciting on the screen and between the pages than between the sheets.
Andy Warhol

And in dreams.

Crank calls galore. I gave you away this morning. To an unknown voice.

"Why are you so quiet?"
Silence

"Won't you say something?"
Silence

"Am I bothering you?"
Silence

"I am slipping away."
Silence. Ultrasonic Boom. Reverberations. Bat on a witch hunt. Dog whistles. I hear more than you say.

Trial Jittery Shutterbugs

Look ahead. Danger lurks. Shadows scream. Lonesome, abandoned: the civilization prays for extinction. The vultures swoop down. Snatch the last flesh of human pride, still clinging on to the bones of history. Genocide never looked any better. Mass graves unmarked. Skeletons abhor. Waiting for an autopsy. Post millennia.


All allusive. Boundaries blurred. Waiting for the words. Homicidal tendencies for friends. Left all alone. Fear. Of forgetting yourself. Silence. Not golden.


Nuremberg, 1945. Terror simply exchanged hands.
Jonestown, 1978. 900 cyanide angels. Hysteria. Suicide cry. Injections sans needle. Babies breast fed poison.

Sleep satisfied. Everything in control. The world is in motion. Everything is alive. Flowers bloom faster than babies. Sleep satisfied. Find yourself. Cheap self-help books. Strength of soul. Power of mind. Compete. Watch your step. Calculate. Cold. Die.

Ram Misunderstood

You look hot. Like the tip of a burning joint.
My fingers singe when I lay them upon your skin. But I am glad they didn’t when I lay four of them upon your forehead, looking for traces of a fever.
No it wasn’t burning. You were fine. I was glad.

Each finger is a flame. Wings scorched – the mynah flees the ancient Lankan flames which still licks the skies. It sits on a mangled branch of the seething trunk. The mynah watches its own pyre in its own eyes.
They mistook bloody bronze for gold. I mistook gold for bloody bronze.

“It is intentions, it is fucking intentions I tell ya.”
It is intention that gets it all wrong. Intention catches hold of life the wrong way. No intention – whether good or bad holds any water. As soon as intention creeps in – take my word – consider life dead.

True or False?

Sometimes I can hold my trip still. Not letting it ride over, not letting it slip away. I balance my trip on a certain plane. Between Level X and Level Y. And those are the times when I keep awake. Awake for the chewing gum nights.

And in one of those nights - I've found you. Curled like a forgotten necklace.



"You mean to say I am lying?"
"Exactly so. I woke up at 4. I woke up at 5. I woke up at 6. And there, Mr. You - snoring away peacefully. Not a stir. All that shit about holding your trip and bla bla bla."
"You woke-up?" I asked. "You opened your eyes and saw me?”
“Yeah. I did."


Now the truth-finder points at you. “Did you open your eyes for me?”

If the cat wasn't dead, the cat wasn't curious

I curiously scanned across the panorama. I thought I was walking alone. But I turned my head to find you by my side. You were catching up.


Curiously though, you walked on the sand without leaving any footprints behind. Will you do that to me? Walk over my soul without leaving a trace behind. I am sure you can't. There is no way. You are maybe lighter than the air, but my soul is lighter than you.


"Exactly. That is the whole problem. Why don't you add up some weight?"
"Hah. So that I be like lead. Grounded, dead. No babe, no way. You flutter around like a dead leaf in the desert storm. I want to be like you."
"No way Mr. You can't be like me. Can't you see?"
"Why can't I be like you?"
"Because you are already like yourself. You can't change the basic constitution. If you suck, you suck. Simple."


"Curious Cantabili. Will you be my friend? I am sorry and I am wasted. I need some place to sleep tonight."
"Crash in Cantata Canister. Lets have some Molotov Cocktails before we sleep. You can be here. Right next to be. I wouldn't mind."



We'll sometimes open our eyes and stare into the dark ceiling. The fan would dream in a rotational trance. In a trance. The fan on a groove. Ready to drop over us. But hanging on, still.


"Curious Cantabili, I would like to inspire a revolution."
“Fuck off Cantata Canister. We'll talk tomorrow morning."

Scabstraction

“Why do you keep shredding them into pieces?” I asked.
“Do you need a reason for everything?” You asked back.
I kept silent. I keep silent.

“But our brains keep talking all the time. Non-stop. And if I could shut my ears from my brain, I would’ve.” Added the man with incredibly small ears and abnormally big head.
“So the ear works backwards too. There must be earholes inside our faces. And then, it’s the same with our nose, isn’t it?” Continued the big-headed man.
“What about our eyes?” I have asked you that question many a times before.
“We are blind” – you stated nonchalantly. Still wielding a pair of scissors, legs folded, body rocking back and forth. You looked up, without lifting your head.
“Stop observing me.”
I did but I didn’t mean to.

Amused as you suddenly were, you looked up into the skies.
Alas! There isn’t a speck to be seen. The sky wears an overcoat tonight. Opaque and furry, like the Russians.
Slight irritation encroached upon your eyes.

It’s itchy in here. It’s the humidity. It’s the sunken wall. It’s the shredded roof. It’s the wet trousseau.
It’s nothing.

Eyelids heavy. Anklet feet move no more. Drifting away...you smiled. I kept waiting...awake.

The withdrawal

You may wonder, “Hey what’s it that he’s saying.” And it may spell genuine concern. Because it’s not everyday that someone uses words like ‘inebriant’.
“Was he high”, asked the lady with a long nose which cringed when she caught his eye. No one answered. High for the long nosed lady would only mean heels. I noticed how quietly you placed the half-smoked cigarette, dropping 2 gms of charred tobacco on the crime thriller cover. I blew the ashes. You still were in doubt. “Is this what he means?” A ball of muck on his fingertip underwent close scrutiny. Eyeballs rolled from head to toe. “Are we here to sit and stare,” he asked. No one spoke. They all stared.

“His sense of tense is terrible,” said the lady with the long nose. “That writer who has an obscure past,” she continues.

I am glad you didn’t mind my inadequacies. I couldn’t have covered them. The corner at which the two lips joined, there was a small drop of saliva. You cleaned it with your left thumb. “Are you always vague,” uttered from the now dry lips.

Two archs in your body faced each other. One curve at your navel, another at your knees. Like a perfect S. Like a perfect serpent.

“Why did you call me an ophidian?” Remember how you’d squeal?

“I didn’t,” there was remorse in my eyes. I did call you names.

“Can you pass me the ashtray?”

“There is no ashtray.”

“There it is. Right there.” You pointed out.

I still couldn’t see it. I was unsure. Whether to believe in your eyes or mine?