An Unfinished Story

Mr. K was a busy man. He had been busy for as long as he could remember and if he thought long and hard, he could remember a great deal. Needless to say, he hadn't a family. "Busy man like him," said his concerned middle-aged neighbour, "hasn't the time to breathe." Little did she know that her statement contained more truth than she could ever imagine. Mr. K never dreamt. He simply slumped into bed and feel asleep. Occasionally, on its way to another head, a dream would float past his. Nobody liked this particular phenomenon, particularly the people living inside Mr. K's head. Sometimes, if the dream was exceptionally inquisitive and mischievous, it would open the little door a little bit and peep to see the queer things that were constantly happening inside. The sudden crack of light would come as a bit of a shock to some of the older people living inside. Often one of them would fall off his chair and scream "Put that light out!" and shake his fist at the dream. The dream would promptly close the door but not before making a rude gesture. On such days, Mr. K would wake up with a headache that made his head seem like a volcano ready to erupt after centuries of dormancy. Understandably, he would break some of his china, kill a colony of ants that had been patiently building a enormous ant-hill in a corner of his garden and curse the human race in general. Then he would leave for work and would soon be too busy to remember anything about having a headache. On rare occasions, Mr. K felt a wee bit tired but he had learnt a cure for this a long time ago. The little bed-side table he had, had one drawer and in it was an old chess-set that Mr. K had been given on his seventeenth birthday. "There's nothing like a game of chess to clear the mind," his uncle had said and after all these years, Mr. K had found it to be an absolute truth. His tiredness would vanish as he played a game against himself. The mental fatigue would be magically transformed into a gnawing urge to destroy all the knights, pawns and castles in his path.
On rarer occasions, Mr. K felt sad. He called it sadness because he could not give it another name. In fact, it wasn't sadness at all. It was the feeling of sitting at the bottom of a dark, deep pit; of having nothing to see, smell, taste, hear or feel. It is one of the more complex emotions that humans feel and I shall not endeavour to explain it. It should, however, be said that chess failed to comfort Mr. K on these occasions. So it was that Mr. K lived on, without noticing how unremarkable his life had been, till the night this story begins.
None of it would have happened if Dream 150S6 (or Grouchy, as she is called) had not broken her shoes but she must not be blamed for two reasons: first, it had been a particularly rough night and Grouchy had had every reason to live up to her name and second, if she hadn't broken her shoes, it would have been just another night for everybody. What had happened was that Grouchy had lost her way a million times that night. (Or so it seemed to her. In truth, the number was closer to twelve.) Nevertheless, after finding the right head, she had terribly muddled up the procedure. It was a terrible head: full of dead ends, dark alleys and sounds that had made Grouchy jump. Just when when she'd thought that the worst was over, she had fallen off a plateau of some sort and into a great rubbish dump. Of course it had cushioned her fall but she had hit her leg on a big chunk of metal and broken her shoes. Dreams are not allowed to traverse the landscape barefoot and the most efficient dreams never leave a footprint but Grouchy had broken all the essential rules that night. "I had to get out, didn't I?", she would scream later on but it was in vain. An hour later, she received a brief note which said: Dreaming suspended until further notice. In her place, Dream T9081 was sent out for the very first time.

Shoes

It's funny how we are never truly satisfied with the way things look. Take this blog for example. Over the past two days, it has undergone repeated reconstruction. Google Blogger could put a plastic surgeon to shame.
Would you like a dynamic template?
Or a simple one?
Do you want to revert to the classic look?
Are you sure?
What about further changes?
Is the font exactly right?
Does it mirror your mood?
Your writing?
Your self?
Is the blog title too big?
Or too bold?
Is 34 fat?
You could spend an hour trying to make something look nice, only to realize in the 61st minute that you hate the way it looks. And then it's back to square one.
For now, I've decided to stick to this.
Why the shoes?
So that I'm reminded of the point of it all: ever onward.

Satisfaction on my Death-bed

Last night, I could not sleep. This is not too rare an occurrence. Often, my brain seems to be thinking at a pace that I find very tiring. The result is a sort of battle between my brain and myself. I know that scientifically, this is quite impossible but if you go by what things seem like, what I've just stated will not sound implausible to you. So, there I was, lying wide awake on my bed, trying to steer my thoughts away from the usual worries and cares that my brain repeatedly thinks about at night. Suddenly, I decided to go with it--to lull my bran into thinking that I was happy to think what it was asking me to think. Slowly, an envelope formed in the dark--not the kind that is made of paper. Think the hazy, translucent, fluid cover of a jelly-fish and you're closer to what I'm talking about. I tugged at it till it tore open at the sides and saw an old woman lying on her death-bed. She was all alone--as is usually the case, you might say but what struck me as odd was that she was doing exactly the same thing that I was: thinking about an old woman lying on her death-bed. We started writing our stories--in our heads, of course. I wrote about her and she wrote about the other.

There was an old woman who was about to die. She knew it, her children knew it, her long-dead lovers knew it too. They were all waiting for her to die. Including, the old woman herself. It was an awfully long wait. If you were ever waiting to die, you'd know but I suppose you weren't and so it's hard to explain. In fact, I'm not sure I understand it too well either. The old woman, on the other hand, does. In the mornings, she would stare at the ceiling, wondering why it looked like it was so high when she knew that it actually wasn't. The curtains were all white and the sky outside was whiter still. Everything was drained of colour. The night-gown she wore was slightly blue but she could hardly make that out. One day, on her customary ritual of staring at the ceiling, she noticed a wisp of a cobweb at one end of the room. Suddenly, that patch seemed not so ethereal or clean or white. She looked at it till tiny spots of grey popped up in front of her eyes when she looked away. She was thinking. She was thinking about an old woman lying on her death-bed, waiting to die. The old woman in her head lay in a white room with a cobweb at one end of the ceiling. She was staring at the cobweb and thinking about an old woman on her death-bed, waiting to die in a white room with a slowly growing cobweb. Suddenly, a little breeze made the cobweb shiver. The old woman shivered too, as did the one thinking about her, as did the one thinking about her. The cold breeze hit me and I shivered at its touch. All at once, we were all aware of the others. The old woman smiled, thought the old woman, smiling, thought the old woman, smiling, I thought and smiled to myself. The old woman thought of a story she had always wanted to write. She was a writer at heart. The world had changed her into many different things. She hadn't written since she was eighteen. Now, she was about to die and the world had left her in a little white room with a cobweb at one end and what she wanted most was to write, wrote the old woman, wrote the old woman, I wrote.
The old woman extracted a black book from the lowermost drawer by her bed and wrote about a young woman about to set out on a journey to an island which was engulfed by the sea every night and spewed out in the morning, wrote the old woman in her black book, wrote the old woman in her black book, I wrote, stroking the black leather of my diary. The island was beautiful, with its sploshes of brown, splashes of blue, stripes of green, blotches of purple and spots of red. The young woman, black and brown and pink, diffused into the island--she was the island. The sunlight went through her and left her burning, wrote the old woman in her white room, cold in the white, damp light streaming through the window, wrote the old woman, wrote the old woman, I wrote, my skin growing prickles because of the cold.
The young woman was free and alive--and she had but a day to live. She was warm and volcanic, spurting and gushing and spewing her life into the island, soon to be swallowed by the sea. As the sun shone into her eyes, the sea roared into life, advancing to her bare feet. For a moment, she stood there, feeling the heat above and the cold below, and looked the old woman in the eye, wrote the old woman looking her creator in the eye, wrote the old woman looking me in the eye. The island collapsed and we looked at each other. The old woman closed her eyes contentedly, thought the old woman closing her eyes contentedly, thought the old woman closing her eyes, content at last.
I closed my eyes, satisfied.

Blue Skies

Salar de Uyuni, Bolivia
Photo Courtesy: George Steinmetz, National Geographic

Some days I wake up with a yearning at the pit of my stomach. It spreads to my chest and hands and legs, radiating to the tips of my fingers till I can't hold still anymore: I must see the sky. I want it to be blue, warm and kind. I want the clouds to be white; so white that I can't look at them but for a moment. I want the sky to overflow with its blue till it drips on my clothes; till I disappear in the transparency. I want the sky to be deep: so deep that I can peel it layer by layer and never quite finish. I want the sunlight to be bright and clear: not the yellow it is on most days or the grey it turns before a storm. I want the light to be airy and colourless. I want it to bend with the wind and I want to watch it slip from between my fingers. I want. 

The sea-shell house

On the shore by the sea was the sea-shell house.

Smooth and curved

Like a mollusc

It stood.

And if you looked closely you would see

That the big shell was made of small shells.

It glistened in the sun and shone in the rain

And one day I knocked on the door

To find an old lady inside 

The house, for it was a house after all.

The sea-shell house had no floor

So that the carpet was sand 

And it was softer and grainier on your feet

Than the carpets in palaces.

I sifted the sand with my toes

Till they looked sandy

(I've never said yellow for the colour of sand

Because it isn't yellow)

And told the old lady that

I liked her house.

She smiled at me and the wrinkly branches on her face

Grew leaves and flowers at the end.

It was spring

And I felt warmed enough to ask,

"How long have you been living here?"

She shook her head this way and that

And drew on the sand

Beneath her feet:

A clock with three hands

(Hours, minutes and seconds I revised

In case she asked me.

We were asked everyday in school)

And then she struck it off

With a deep gash right across the clock's face. 

When she looked up,

I thought I saw the leaves on the wrinkly branches quiver

But I answered myself anyway

"You don't have a clock."

She nodded her grey head

And took my hand to lead me 

To the table.

There were little shrimps laid out,

Crispy and golden,

Ready for the eating

And I felt my mouth sweat from the inside

Like it does when you look at something

You really want to eat

But I didn't show it

For fear that it was poisoned like Peter Pan's medicine was.

Hook had done it and Tinker Bell had almost died.

And I knew I didn't have a Tinker Bell with me.

"No, thank you. I must go now",

I said

With a little voice for the shrimps looked really hot

And I didn't care if they were poisoned.

She looked away and when she looked back at me

I could see

She had cried a little

Because the leaves were now wilting.

Once more she drew a picture on the sand

With her shaking fingers:

A girl with a smile and a plate on the table.

I stopped looking because I felt sad

And sorry for thinking that the shrimps would be poisoned.

I went to the table, pulled a chair

And bit into the first shrimp:

It was hot and golden and melting 

Like a summer day on the sea 

Exactly as I had thought it would taste.

Soon, I was on my fifth.

I looked back to thank the old lady

And to say sorry for the fuss I'd made before.

She was still drawing on the sand

But her fingers shook no more.

Eaten with curiousity,

I left the table to see what she had drawn:

The girl at the table was now inside a shell

The sea-shell house, I thought

Because every little furniture was drawn exactly 

In its right place.

The old lady was drawing furiously now.

The leaves were shaking in a storm.

She drew a face at the head of the house.

Like a snail coming out of its shell.

That's odd, I thought.

That isn't there.

She was drawing eyes on the snail's head.

And wrinkles like branches.

And leaves at their ends.

And the girl at the table slowly fused with its insides.

My fingers grew cold.

Outside, the sea was calling my name.

Waiting for an answer.

The Book Thief

The Book Thief is one of those rare books that are bursting at the seams with life. It is dangerously addictive and haunting. The words are beautifully brewed and poured out-- have but a little and you will feel drunk. Stories of sunlit childhood days are not exactly rare (think Heidi, The Kite Runner) but what makes The Book Thief different is the sense of dread that pervades the most dazzlingly beautiful of moments. The story is narrated by Death and so you know how the story must end but, like the characters, you bask in the uneasy warmth and let yourself be lulled into a sense of comfort. The author, Markus Zusak, talks about the power of words-- he is not a stranger to the idea. His words carve themselves into the most resonant expressions. His words paint themselves into images of a girl, a stolen book, a library, a street, a fist-fighter, an accordionist, a boy who wants to be Jesse Owens and most importantly, the travelling shadow called Death who is as helpless, as miserable and as horrified as his victims. The Book Thief is a book that deserves to be read aloud, not only for the musical quality of its words but also for the colour that hides in its every page. Death likes to distract himself with colours, with stories and with humour. The last is present in great abundance. The humour is grim and premonitory of a dark future but it soothes nonetheless. In the end, Death finds the story of the eponymous book thief and takes it with him in all his travels. He finds the story to be a good distraction in all his hopeless voyages and by the end of the book, you can't help but agree.

Enno and Fear

So this is something that I wrote on the train.. It's not very good and more importantly, incomplete but it's something that I am quite fond of. In these times of word scarcity (for me), the occasional inspirational burst is rare and hence hugely cherished. Here goes:

          Enno vaguely remembered the day when he was born. Enno was almost five, short, wiry and had extremely dirty hands and knees. That day, like most other days, he had had nothing to do except ‘explore’. It was a game of sorts although it comprised of everything from collecting pebbles and sand to breaking into empty houses. It suited him well; he was a lonely kid. That morning, the task was to enter the house with the ‘lion on the wall.’ The house was clearly visible from Enno’s. It was the most desolate, sullen-looking house on the street. Its windows seemed to have wilted and the corners of their mouths were scaly and drooping. The house had a courtyard filled with shards of broken pots and fallen leaves. On the crumbling walls, was a melting pattern: a lion with an orb. The gates were rusty and squeaky. Enno peeked through the gaps between the iron, studying the house, coming up with a carefully structured plan to execute his day’s work. When he was satisfied with the plan, he jumped the wall and stealthily crept towards the house. He tried the front door and found that it was open. This should have bothered him, he thought years later, but it didn’t. As he entered the cold, dark hallway, a pair of hands grabbed him from behind and screamed “BOOOO!” into his ear. His heart leapt into his throat and for a second, he felt it beat its way into his mouth. Somewhere on the wall opposite him, he saw a frail, grinning face. The face flickered out the moment Enno’s heart stopped beating violently. The next second, he turned around, found himself face to face with the boy next door, socked him in the face and ran out. That was the day he was born. Enno called him Neno: an anagram of his own name. Neno was always grinning, “like the Cheshire Cat”, Enno would say. He had several bad habits, none of which seemed to bother him much. The worst of his habits was disappearing without prior notice. Sometimes, he would disappear in the middle of a conversation with Enno and Enno found this annoying, as would any other sensible person.

Death to Organisation!

Michel Gondry's movies are stories beautifully told. Most people who have watched Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind will agree that his plots are weirdly beautiful, and I mean that quite literally. They don't seem too logical at first like a person that you've just met, but, with time, all the tiny fragments fall into place and apart from a chink or two in certain places that always remain unfilled, you can see the whole picture. Once you've reached this state, you keep going back to them time and again, greeting the characters with the kind of familiarity that you share with extremely old friends or with people that you connected with instantaneously. The first time I read about The Science of Sleep was in a newspaper article of some sort. It had a particularly evocative snapshot of the movie alongside: the kind of picture that sucks you into it, like you were a part of it. I've always thought that pictures of this kind should be called something special. They're quite ordinary and yet not so. The article said that the movie was about a man who couldn't differentiate between waking and dreaming-- and so I stayed up that night, dwelling in the half-childish, half-grave world of Stephane Miroux. I have been in love with the movie ever since.
I watched it for the umpteenth time last night. My favourite scene in the movie (the picture above) is one in which Stephane and his neighbour Stephanie make a "forest in a boat" with felt, floating on a sea of blue and white cellophane. "Death to organisation!", cries Stephane, as he tries to mix white and blue to achieve the randomness of flowing water. The scene and the dialogue merge effortlessly to point at, what I consider, the single most important reason for existence. What are we but anomalies--tiny glitches in the twists and turns of genes that turned out to be favourable? Isn't chaos the underlying truth? Wouldn't we have been engulfed by the insatiable appetite of entropy had we not been able to break free of organisation and predictability?
Moreover, what is the purpose of all forms of art if it isn't to mirror life with all its deviations from the standard? Is true beauty any different from the startling differences that make it impossible for two things to be exactly alike? Is not the purpose of science to illuminate the fact that the deepest truths are complex and subjective?

I have great admiration for people who have come to terms with the world in all its disorder. The beautiful, strange people who live lives in snatches of reality. The social misfits who are not completely sure of who they are; so that they occasionally astonish the world with their colour and then turn an obstinate shade of grey. If you, like me, have been in search of people who belong to this elusive kind, then you will find two of them in The Science of Sleep. They are like the imaginary friends you talked to as a child. Their dreams are the dreams you had in the absence of logic. 

Hiding

It's scary to think how it's impossible to hide anymore. How everything that one thinks, writes, reads, says always remains. It's almost as if somebody pressed the record button so hard that it's jammed and you cannot pry it out. You try all the while, first with your fingers, then with the tops of your nails and then with your teeth. You pull, scratch, bite to no avail. If you're around people, you ask for help. Slowly, a crowd gathers around you: everybody tries their hand at solving the seemingly innocuous problem. Slight, skinny people are laughed at by the more hefty ones. They fail too. Everybody does. Some get angry, some perturbed. That's when the suggestions and the questions start pouring in. "Drop it and see if it stops!" "This might take a wrench!" "How did this happen?" "How did you manage to do this?" All the while, every single passing comment is on record. Everything is indelible. Every forgettable statement is stamped on to the reels, and the reels roll on endlessly.

In the end, you decide to lie, joke and make a fool of yourself so that everything about you that is recorded is a falsification. You hide under fake names, fake e-mail i.d.s, fake hopes, fake aspirations till all that's left of you has curled up so deep inside some nameless cavern that it can never be reached. And that's when the recorder is defeated, that's when you feel exceedingly happy, almost mad. It's strange how it's always more pleasurable to hide than to show. In a world so full of light, we're like tiny orbs of darkness floating without reason.

bronte

play of light in

shadowy moors

uphill, downhill;

busy feet, dirty hands,

skinned knees, fresh and old;

muddy sun in a puddle

shivering at the touch of imps,

of genii,

of Glass Town, Verdopolis,

of lessons missed

and glimpses stolen;

passing like a gust of wind

to trample another sun.