An Elevator in a Mall

Waking up the man walked a kilometer to reach the mall. It was noon. Throughout the day he was falling asleep intermittently. Walking for twenty minutes in the sun he was not yet properly awake. Through the glass sliding door of the mall, he entered in a daze. Before knowing he was at the foyer. 

Where the bright mesh of the LED lights, the fluorescence of the tubes of the corridor, neon signages blinking noisily; the whole foyer had been made in relative darkness so that the merchandises could shine.

The toy cars vroomed and vroomed, a lure to the small boys. A trampoline swayed the girls- they were shrieking. Bouncing and shrieking. Showing off joy. The customers gushing in and out of the shops- crisscrossing the corridors, gloom in their faces. Although that feeling was momentary. It would go away after purchase.

An elevator at the end of the foyer was lifting more bag holders heavenward. The riders stood in stiffness, in awkward proximity, with anxiety to reach the destination. Standing erect on a moving ladder- the silent, wanting beings- gradually being floated away from the man.

Looking at them he whispered, ‘What brought us here?’

The entire scene felt so strange to him.

The year was 2019. The month was November. The having-an-ambition-vs-the-other-ways-of-living argument had been settled in the man’s mind only a few hours ago. He had found in his observations that the most rebellious philosophy of the year against capitalism was in disguise a capitalism’s bastard child. Made of the same blood. 

It had disoriented him.

Nevertheless, the man had to ask the question again. It came to him as easily as to a patient asking his whereabout, waking up in a hospital bed. Or, maybe a vile forgetfulness had overpowered the man. Now his curiosity shining.

Or, perhaps, he himself was from the past, a la Rip Van Winkle of 2019, waking up from a slumber, had found a strange habitation that had mossed around him.

Of which he was no part. Of which he wished to be no part.

The truth that to be happy again one is to be wary and earn money and spend. And earn. And spend and be weary again and earn. And be earning and be spending, and be happy and be weary at the same time- this prospect of two stop traveling bothered him. ‘This is futile’, he whispered to himself.

But pondering again under that boisterous light; visiting the food court, smelling AC perfumes, hearing the children giggle in the mall’s made-up cheerfulness; it was difficult for him not to be convinced by the wiliness of the modern time. He could not foresee how life would be led without its convenience, without its hope for progress. No matter how expensive that was. How one would convince others that one might not be as unhappy as one ought to be. From stillness comes satisfaction. 

That life could be led without its constant croaks of neediness - that insight although seemed true, he didn’t know a way to convey it to his fellow beings.  

Blind Bee

“Kill me, kill me.” mother shouted, from the kitchen. It’s her daily phrase, only this time a warning to my father, not an invitation. 

Father came late from the office, didn’t eat his tiffin. The box that nested warm chapatis, boiled potatoes, brinjal fries came back hinged, unappreciated. The hotchpotch would go now to the fridge, in the household’s icy realm, where the diligent food maker’s present mood resided.

That day my mother died. The attack came to her suddenly, stealthily, making her hit the kitchen tap, blood gushing out of her head, staining her beloved kitchen sink that she had polished a minute ago. We did not go to fetch her on time. As father was sulking at the verandah. I was playing outside the blind bee.

It was the end of a love story, I suppose. Because father loved mother. Mother loved father. They loved me and I loved them back helplessly. The whole procession of each other’s love came to a sudden halt.

Because, after a week, my father died too. In their bed, more silently than my mother, with a pesky smile on his lips and an old alluminium tiffin box sitting on his chest like a brittle minar.

Moon

One night, Banshilal Chaukidar, on his watch, looked at the moon and remembered when he had been a little boy his mother had often compared him with it.

“I was damn handsome then.” he thought.

“But now I am not,’ he concluded.

‘Now I am a temporary night guard for a housing full of real-estate agents, teachers and bad-tempered government officers. I have diabetes and carry a trembling hand and I am old. But I don’t have a right to sleep- not even when my body gives up in exhaustion and my mind starts to play funny tricks on me. I wish my mother had seen me now. She would have thought twenty times before comparing me with something so bright and faultless.”

Banshilal sighed while he tried to tame his hand.

An unexpected thought came to him after a while.

He thought, “Even if she could have known my future surely she wouldn’t have told me. I was the happiest thing that ever happened to her and for that she would have willingly lied to me. Just to remain cheerful for both of us. May be she was more helpless than I thought.”

Looking at that magnificent, silent, yellowish globule Banshilal began to laugh.

Diwali Song

It was a Diwali evening when he rolled down his window and peeked outside. He found himself among the buses, scooters, auto rickshaws, cars, street hawkers, people, smoke, children. He saw them waiting, passing, cursing, coughing, honking, crying, floating. In a maze. Orbiting. Whining. Disbelieving. Without a rest. The busy bees were jumping signal. It was their everyday adventure. Addicted that they were.

Beside the street crowded stood the lamp stalls. Hung shoddily, slyly the fire crackers. Hung there those that were famously called: Atom Bombs. Nobler in life, docile than their namesake, expensive, noisy attention seekers. Would terribly make the babies wake up during the night. In time, those babies would grow up igniting the Atom Bombs, startling everyone in the colony and loving every moment of it.

The beggar girls were jumping like calves, knocking on every window. Knock, knock, knock. Open up. Open up. Coming. Singing. Mostly to themselves.

The peeking man took out a ‘chikki’ box that he had been saving for home to give it to a girl. Another girl appeared. Without thinking he picked up the second box and gave it to her. The third one came rushing. Now he had none. As he was feeling inadequate and angry, a hasty escape plan was hatched inside his mind. Hurriedly he rolled up the window glass and hid behind the tint of it.

My city is a place where kindness is stretched and stretched till it closes the window of my heart and makes me hide in coldness again.

The girl with ‘chikki’ was waving her prize in front of the empty handed girl, in glee. It was not her fault that there was scarcity in the world. The gleeful girl’s other hand was still waving at the window, where there was a repentant man cowering. Her right foot was striking the tar road in a thak-thak Kathak dance. She was shouting, “Hap-hap, hop-hop-hop, happ-py Diwal-eee.”

Swaja: a conversation with ten year old self

Silly boy, as we meet, as I speak, as you stare at me, this old self, without comprehension, with disbelief and doubt, let me introduce myself as your ‘swaja’, I was born of you.

I was born of you, as you were born one score years ago, of your mother’s womb and grew, so I grew, swifter than you, to be old and bitter, brittle boned and crinkled skinned, having more means and a few extra titles attached to my name, dissatisfied and doubtful yet. Call me your wiser self, just a nomenclature, probably untrue. Otherwise, how do I impress upon a boy, a silly boy, who goes on with his life without an iota of comprehension and the burden of failures invariably intertwined with it? That you look and talk and dream silly, boy! In this world, cruel or otherwise, in this state of people, selfish or otherwise, you are really nothing. As you build nothing, create nothing, sell and buy nothing, without purpose, without gravity, being entirely dependent on the affection, money and positions of your parents, kind neighbors and relatives. Useless. That’s what you are. How do I tell you that I will prove myself useful for you?

I have travelled across multitudes of physical and extra-physical realms, piercing the space-time continuum, unproving the laws of Physics to warn you.  And, if I may, steer you gently. Towards the right path. Before your concentration wavers, this fleeting dream breaks and you hearken me no more.

Stay away from death, boy.  A ‘nobody’, after death, goes beyond the rhetoric and truly becomes nobody.  Resist that. Learn swimming. Climbing. Clubbing, sawing, sowing, reaping, and starving. Learn free arm combat. Learn light arm combat. Learn heavy arm combat. Eat flesh daily and grow muscular. Eat minuscule poison daily and vary the poison. Hence, you know, the path to immortality is, but not without risk.

Embrace a tree, boy, today, now. Embrace that is green and blue and yellow around you. The flowers and the birds and the bees that go about with their ancient purposes yet seemed to exist solely for your own amusement. Bees sting. Still. They will be much gone when you are all grown up. People with fat belly and fatter purse will ask you to dream about concrete roads, dish TV and constant noise that comes from having high definition music stacks, mobile rings and honking SUVs. You are, my child, someday going to buy distraction as entertainment.

Stay away from distraction, boy. The chatter of foolish meanness will sound like the ramblings of ambition in the time of drip dozed love. No amount of Candy Crush Saga will bring you fulfillment that usually came after holding a pretty girl’s hand who drooped her eyes in shyness, kissing her, telling her not be afraid, since you were already there for her.

Embrace old theories, boy. Like Darwin’s and Pavlov’s and John von Neumann’s. If you don’t quite grasp, ask your father to explain them to you. In simple language, without the mathematics, but with the implications, what they really mean and how you can wield them to get unusual advantages in a society of self-serving men.

Stay away from the experts, boy, as much as you can, and the expert systems. Like the system that discovers merit and intelligence of a ten-year-old boy by asking two hundred multiple-choice questions. 10th Board, 12th Board, CAT, GRE, GMAT, and those sorts of nonsense. And the people who set them. This universe won’t ask you multiple-choice questions. Ever. Neither the HIV epidemic, nor the sudden earthquake nor the immortal cancerous cells. Your journey is and will be in an uncertain meaninglessness, in a wondrous vacuum, without the guidance of a map, without the knowledge of a destination harbor.

Embrace the uncertainty, boy. The not-knowingness. The people who love you will stop loving you soon, for reasons known only to them. And new people will come, to love you, in hordes, entirely for their own reasons, unknown to you. No love being worse than the other. And the fear and the anxiety of it will remain, any way, so will the hope and courage, in you, and the desperation to survive, to thrive and to go on no matter what.

And love. Oh, sweet love. That slow oozing pain at the left of your breast, the heavy heart thumping, the earth and the moon and the entire families of planets and stars revolving, around that strange sweet girl who was in a new dress and fantastic perfume, floating around your grand father’s old house, the grand father long dead; the cordial neighbor’s jolly grand daughter. That’s love. Not puppy love, not infatuation, not a teenybopper’s sporadic heart melt. That’s a clarion call to make love, to start a family, to be a father. It may not be legal now, but true. As the circle continues. As the circle will continue. With or without you. Till exists this silly human life.

Your eyes are fluttering, boy! Could you contemplate what I just have said? Would you commit them, pray, to the memory, to a plan, as a discipline, these jewel wisecracks, even if they are not so. Unlike the long verses of the great bearded poet, of your grandfather’s time and instead.  Or, would you, fancy, stare into the naught believing this is naught but a dream, in a childish fervor or in a quasi-adult fantasy.  Being plain silly. Hark, boy, this is true, now and for the all the time to come, from here to eternity, this life, will remain a wonderful futility. Thus, boy, it steals or so, eternally, the shame from your silliness.

Gadadhar

Paltan came to whisper in Vishnu’s ear. Ari had come. Worry oozing from Paltan’s furrowed brows, Vishnu could see, would drip anytime into his malt whiskey. Yikes! He pushed the glass away and kept it covered with his bloated palm. Paltan was an inferior man, an old bar manager, a wall fly, not worthy of any response, definitely not worthy of making Vishnu’s drink go salty with his scumbag sweat.

Vishnu remembered then; a long time ago, Pratima, Arihant’s wife, had pushed her four-year-old son aside from him like this, with her palm sheltering the boy’s tiny head. Like a funny cap. Like her palm would shield a .44mm Magnum fire. Like anyone - with a dose of good intention - could. She had been, Vishnu thought with a sneer, a funny woman.

Now, Ari - Arihant - with a penchant for drama and bloody ambush had appeared at the doorstep of this godforsaken, ugly bar at three in the morning. For what?

‘To have an ass fucking drink! Oh, yeah, yeah. The son of a bitch has finally realized. After seven fucking years. That bastard, that motherfucker, that dickhead, has finally realized that he’s got no one in this world. Completely alone. He has come here to make new friends. Behen-chod!’

“Ha-ha-ha!” Vishnu gave out a belly laugh and slapped the table in a sudden splat that scared Paltan a little. Paltan twitched his thumb, but kept his head bowed as if he was in humble supplication, before a regal lord. Then he craned stealthily on his left to have a glimpse of the famed Colt Anaconda, usually tucked proudly behind Vishnu’s back. For reassurance. He couldn’t find any.

“Bhai, what do we do, Bhai? Tell me, Bhai?” Paltan crooned. The wall fly seemed to be on Vishnu’s side. Actually, he was on the bar owner’s side. But who gave a hoot about integrity in his line of business?

“How many men are out there?” Vishnu asked. Nonchalantly.

“Don’t know, Bhai. Bahadur came inside and said, ‘Ari-Bhai is waiting outside for Vishnu-Bhai. Please send him out quickly.’”

“It’s dark outside. Let it be morning first. We will see then.”

“He has given the time of only one minute, Bhai.”

“Who?”

“Ari-Bhai.” Paltan’s face reddened at this faux pas. He dearly hoped Vishnu would be a lesser man without his pet Anaconda.

Vishnu bored into him an icy stare and felt the violence pent up in his belly, in his breast, just below his throat. “Let it be morning first. We will see then.”

Ratta-tat-tat …

A volley of bullets came splitting the glass windows, piercing the dirty draperies, spattering the glass, the table wood and plastics utensils. Making the entire room unruly and noisy - completely out of control - liquor and water splattering against the roof, iron splinters scattering across the room in search of soft flesh.

“I will count to three, Vishnu,’ a hoarse voice shouted from outside, ‘get out, else, you will be responsible for the death of everyone.”

Then, almost without a pause, the voice called, “One!”

“Harami, saala, brought an automatic rifle to a baraat.” Vishnu muttered under his breath. He was on the floor, lying beside Paltan who was red in the head: could be a gunshot, or an impact wound.

“Two!”

To think about it: Vishnu and Arihant had been in a fickle business. The channel of communication between them had always been fraught with suspicion, and often broken. Backstabbing and betrayal occurs as frequently in their trade as strangers becoming friends over liquors and cheap dancing girls. It had not been Arihant’s fault to become Vishnu’s partner … in crime. It had surely not been Vishnu’s fault to suspect Arihant had betrayed him to the Meenar gang.

When Vishnu had decided to take care of Arihant, he had not been happy about the situation. Things would turn messy; he would lose a partner, most probably his place in the gang. But then, this stupid broad, Pratima, would pretend she could stop a .44 Magnum bullet. Yedi thi, saali, yedi.

Vishnu had not forgotten, it had been seven years ago. Arihant had disappeared. Vishnu had to draw him out. He camped himself with three more guys at Arihant’s two-room house with his pet Anaconda, hoping someday or sometime, Ari would appear. What a shame that coward had not. Ari’s four-year-old boy, to whom Vishnu had always been affectionate, couldn’t understand the sudden aggressive bearing Vishnu-uncle had brought to the house. Arihant’s wife, Pratima, had been the most uncooperative. Enough to test Vishnu’s well worn patience.

“Uska namak khaya hai, tu, Vishnu. Sharam nahi aati, namak haraam!” the woman had shrieked.

“Uska khaya, uske beta ka to nahi?” Vishnu had rubbed the gun’s cold muzzle against the puffed cheek of the boy, greening. What was he supposed to do? Explain the futility of gratitude to that fucking broad?

The mother had pushed the boy aside while keeping her two palms on his head in a way that it looked like the boy had been wearing a silly paper crown.

“Goli kya haat se rukayegi tu?”

“Uske diye banduk se uske beta ko hi marega tu? Haan? Vishnu?”

Vishnu. Vishnu. Vishnu. The pathetic high pitched voice of Pratima repeating his name had amused him. He had realized, quite shrewdly, that it had been the helpless woman’s appeal to his goodness. Her way of begging. It had been futile.

He had pinched her cheek and said, “Bol, bol, aur ek baar bol, naam kya hai mera?” 

The boy had jumped and clapped his hand in the air and said, “Vishnu!”

“Nahi,’ Vishnu had laid his Anaconda carefully on the kitchen table and taken out a hammer from an open overhead cabinet.

‘Gadadhar. Gadadhar naam hai mera.”

He had cracked open the boy’s skull.

“Vishnu ka hi aur ek naam samjho.”

Now, seven years later, Vishnu couldn’t remember how many nights he played out exactly this moment in his head, when finally Ari and he would meet, for the faceoff, for their final ‘faisala’. “Darpuk, saala, brings an automatic to a baraat.”

Look at Vishnu now. He had pawned his Colt revolver months ago for two lakhs rupees. Why not? Even the most virginal bride wouldn’t wait for her absent groom for seven years. Moreover, Vishnu needed the damn money.

He stood up slowly and kicked the still body of Paltan, just to stir him up. Then he staggered across the floor, stepping on the debris, following the barely visible path on the red cement floor to the kitchen; in the light of a lucky unbroken green bulb. Two more guys were lying on the floor. Three men were crouching in the corner.

Vishnu reached the kitchen to find the cook, and the waiters hiding there. He walked all the way up to the coal pile that was heaped beside the tandoor oven. He found his weapon there.

“Three!” the hoarse voice called up from outside.

A waiter who was hiding in the kitchen came running to stop Vishnu. “Mat jao, Vishnu-Bhai. Woh log aap ko maar da-lenge.” Vishnu laughed hoarsely and pushed the man aside so hard that he fell, crashing down on the floor.

Was it the first time that someone had tried to kill Vishnu? Was it? Was not he, Vishnu, still alive? And was it not everyone whom he had decided to kill who had died?

He bent his head to accommodate himself against the meagre height of the bar door, crossed the bar’s cranky threshold and stood erect just outside the door, in cool air, looking at the unknown darkness, a cold coal hammer shining in his hand.

Gadadhar.