Cult Film Club

The Who Sell Out

Is there a smilie for love?

It goes like this <3.
It’s not difficult to learn: It’s less than three because it takes two or one or none.

She plays out this nostalgic little jazz tune here. Appreciative audience clink their glasses and jewelry. Deviant artists hungry for the jewelry, act like they are above it and take in large proportions of ego, praise and brokerage deals.
She praises the lord that she is not dead yet, driving at two hundred miles an hour without the keys to the highway, drunk on venom and self loathing.
She realizes that <3 can correct itself to a straightened out red, if she uses the right software.

She is making up a story for the kid. It’s dreadfully boring and he has that vacant look in his eyes. A few minutes on they turn bright-those dark, restless eyes- with his imagination burning bright. He tears her meager efforts into shreds of useless storylines. She faces probing questions, mystified judgments and confused denials. Her story is forgotten or dumped in the bin. He wants his story again-the one where they live happily ever after.
She tries her best to read it like it is new to her. Girls sweeping floors for wicked step mothers hold her in thrall like never before, again. He falls asleep and she stays awake.

She fights away remorse and dread and the painful load of unambiguous failure. She is calling that number again. He does not pick it up. If he does, he yells at her for not letting him be. She texts him instead. She wonders if there is a smilie for...

Tinderbox



Choose a place. Theo is in his bed.

Choose a time. He is waking up, his body struggling against the alarm beeps of wakefulness, grabbing out and reaching for the sheer webbed strings of fast fading sleep. They vaporize, leaving behind a head ache, sand speckled mouth and dying embers of a bad dream. He clings to his blankets seeking comfort and warmth in its dull darkness and soft smug caress. It reeks of an unwashed moistness that has never felt the curative light of sunshine. He is awake, full of despair and annoyance at the prospect of facing unchanging, repetitive life for another day.

Choose a miracle. He passes it by, not noticing much. He is eager to get to the blank dirty whiteness of his bath, to look away from his reflection in its stained cracked mirror. He does not know that there is a God below his bed and another in the corner- the darkest unlit part where the brown paper wall meets a cupboard at the bend.

There are two Gods in one tiny room in an apartment that is falling apart with chinks of ceiling, wet bloated seep cracks and unexpected iron rods poking out of the unpainted cement work. They are guests in a room with one window, whose panes rattle at the sound of passing trains every fifth minute and filter in whistles, grunts, laughter and honks from every direction that is faced. The Gods will stay on for a while, flexing their Godly muscles, carrying out the duty of divinity and the incalculable precision work of mind numbing micro management. They are here for the regulation of universal laws and natural function.

Choose an identity. You can name the Gods as you please. You can call them Iris and Osiris. Hera and Heracles. Ra and Petra. Indra and Kama. They can play the part that you like. They can have the curve or the bulk, carry the weapon of choice and narrate a back story of love and lust or a moral play on the tragedy of men. They will dissolve into the light and reappear as darkness and sleep. They stay on long after the end of this story, in that same corner, doing what they do best- giving no meaning to life and pretending that there is one.

Choose another place. Theo is at a McDonald’s. He is waiting his turn behind two boys and a girl. He is alone. He is in a city that does not speak his language. Around him is the whirring dull noise of chatter and the bright blood redness with glass boxes and slippery floors. Enlarged pictures of food look down upon him like Gods from the altar, in accentuated colors and slick stylized frames. He is vaguely attracted to the girl standing ahead of him. Her perfume distracts him-heightened by the exposed skin of her neck with a dull green butterfly tattooed in. She can be the love of his life that he will never meet or speak to.

Choose another time. It is Saturday evening. The city is buzzing with young people full of life and loud joy. They come in pairs and groups of girls and boys in stylish clothes and waft around in mingled sweet smells and restless happiness. They have filled up the McDonald’s, tucking in fries and shakes and burgers from white paper folds, before they hurry away in their painted chariots with loud pounding music to the congregation of youth and the now.

Choose another miracle. The girl smiles at him. She has walked up to his table near the glass box with the kids-meal plastic toys of cartoon animals. He has forgotten her, easily abstracted by the sense of his loneliness and the sight of several young women in beautiful attire. She asks him if it’s ok if she sits at his table. She is from the music class he goes to. She is new to the city and she wonders if he could show her around sometime, if he is doing nothing else. They converse freely in five minutes. They discuss people in the class, their cities; they show off, they immerse themselves in the exercise of self exposition. They do it very well- the thrusting of voluntary ambiguity into descriptions of their mundane lives- adding sheen and color and polishing in, through words, looks, gestures and smiles, that all important attractiveness to themselves. Soon, they will be in an explosion.

Choose another identity. You can choose to be there yourself, eavesdropping into their chatter. You can let somebody write it for you as a story and shock you with unexpected twists and ends. You can marvel at the self-satisfied arrogance in tone and the assuredness of the touch. You can opt for the omniscient voice.

Digging Deep-1

When she met him last, he was into politics. He talked knowingly of economic policies, poverty, village upliftment and cross subsidies. He held her spellbound with mind numbing eloquence from across the coffee table. He wore a black t shirt which riffed on the theme of 60s British Rock bands- Cream and The Kinks Live, it proclaimed. Hair on his head mostly askew, nostril hair untrimmed, stubbled face, thick black framed spectacles through which his eyes looked larger than they were, unwashed blue denim trousers and a pair of dirty brown floaters- all of twenty two years old with that remarkable disdain for the present and the future that only the young are allowed to have. And she was falling in love with him.

Her heart filled up with this strange cross wiring of motherly affection and a lust driven inability to speak. She pictured herself sitting there, looking like a tongue tied, smiling cow, losing control of all self respect and maybe even the will to move facial muscles into any other emotive shade or shape.

"You look tired", he said, pouring himself his fifth coffee of the last forty minutes. He would let it cool down into a dull tepid brown before he took his first sip. He was not even looking at her when he had said that . She seized remarks that had personal relevance, far and few though they were, to turn them away from rants on the macro economy or rock and roll.

"It's been a long week", she sighed.

He wasn't listening. He had two thumbs and an index finger on to his mobile device, furiously typing out replies to perhaps another fifty more like him, who were sitting uninterested in their surroundings, agonizingly enraptured by comments and jokes that were not funny.
She looked at him blankly all the while trying to understand where her life was heading. She was spending time with a boy eight years younger, whom she had met in a night club, both parties drunk. It was obvious that her life was meaningless. If she thought hard, the lack of meaning seemed to be a vital component of life on earth- a reason to exist, a catalysing necessity. The trouble seemed to be that the other necessity for life was this heroic effort required minute after minute from the living, to imbue life with some meaning so as to counter the obvious void.
Animals and children had it nailed that way, she thought. They could endlessly obsess over the daily routines of survival or stare fascinated at the common place, though if they went as far as to fix meaning to signifiers, she could not be sure of. Perhaps, that was why she was attracted forever to these younger men- hoping that they would share with her their secret of escaping knots and traps by just not being there. She must have known it too once, like every on who was young once, but the curse of life seemed to lie in the forgetting.

She wondered where they got the time to read if their lives were filled with an endless stream of meaningless minutiae. Perhaps it was all a farce. If she actually listened to his discourse on anything and pushed him a bit, he would spout internet garbage. She had tried it once. He sulked, became vociferous and reiterated a hopeless point, with greater force every time.

"Dee is such a funny guy", he laughed, looking up at her, eager to share some fascinating trivia from his life. She signalled earnest interest by leaning in towards him a bit. The movement seemed to distract him away from the story and incited dreamy eyed staring at her chest. She leaned back and asked him about Dee. He had lost interest in the topic already and gave her a dull and bland summary.

"Deep -we call him Dee...Dee's sis pinged her friend, who likes Dee and asked her to join them at the party that evening. So Dee went "yay" and posted some pics on his page with him and his sis and all in this wild party saying "cool sis" and he looks so funny in it" The thought seemed to give him much merriment.

She forced herself to smile like she was in the joke, leaned forward a bit and let the staring continue. She couldn't care about it any more now. She couldn't care if the world ended that way, either.

Cover Story
We were hungry that evening.
It was close to midnight. She had come to stay with me after much deliberation and heart ache. There had been fights with her dad, sly footwork with mine, deception and lies. She had flown down from Delhi or somewhere far off. It was a long time ago.
We were meeting after some months. Our stories together, together in the same points of time and place, were few any ways. We had kissed once on a brightly lit, lonely staircase in a public library. We had exchanged undying promises of love a few times through hasty telephone calls and sweaty, immature letters written on blue green paper soaked in fountain pen ink. Most of the sentimental talk was, as would be expected, instigated, dwelled upon, lingered on and flogged to boring predictability by your humble narrator. She never spoke too much about love. She found my fascination for that topic strange and absurd. She could talk about several other things though in some twenty voices, all at once, interspersed with glints and glimmers of the eye, curl around the ears and smiles, all imagined vividly but strained out faint through the invisible pores of crackling telephone lines.
It was a love affair of distances, with promised encounters being so far and few. Every day efforts at reaching out to the other stealthily drained the infinite magic from all the love. She promised to come down once, just once, to meet me in that dump I called home. She made it out to be an adventure of startling magnitude. The secrecy and the conniving added to the thrill of misplaced guilt. Again, it was I who ended up with the romance in the head. She descended on Bangalore with a steely view of what was to happen, and what will and what the limits would be. She acted like she had rehearsed it all in her head and whatever it was that unfolded was taken in, with large strident steps: all, but that untimely hunger.
We had spent about three hours together till that point in time. The first was spent cuddling together, with exploratory kisses but a firm rejection of any bold behavior. The firm rejection led to a second hour of rambling whines on the state of our relationship (me), work life (her) and sulking (me). The third hour was spent by her in the bath, while I tried out a few Sade songs on the desktop stereo, hoping it would set the tone for the rest of the night.
She stepped out of the bathroom with beads of water in her forehead and a whiff of hibiscus and jasmine. She looked beautiful enough to get me into love proclamation mode any moment, if I got such a moment again. And that's when she looked at me with that look that conveyed annoyance, grief and helplessness with a certain difficult to define tone. She said "I am hungry". So was I.
I had a small kitchen filled with empty beer bottles and mice. The refrigerator smelled of a week old tomato and semi rancid butter. I had forgotten about the food. There was disappointment in her tone- an emasculating annoyance that could have made me go on my knees to please her at once. I wished love would conquer all. She would forgive this transgression, forget that hunger and spend a blissful evening slumbering peacefully wrapped in my arms. That of course was not to be.
“I am tired", she said with resignation, like the limits of patience pulled hard at the fragile fiber of her love for me. "I have had a long day, sweetheart and I need food".
She had called me sweetheart. That was love wasn't it?
"We could eat out", I said helpfully. I was lying, hoping for the impossibility. The city shut its restaurants at midnight- government regulations -and it was already ten minutes past.
We went out in my green old beaten car. The brakes wouldn't work too well. She wasn't talking to me any more. She stared out of her side of the car, into the dying lights and amber street glow of the city. We drove around silent construction sites and dark sinister parks out into the main deserted roads of my city. The silent facades of long closed restaurants passed us by. Wait staff cycled out of one South Indian restaurant. A drunken bunch of college kids took turns to puke out of a Beetle.
I took the smaller by lanes hoping for bird feed from some late operating cigarette vendor. A police van stood instead in such habitual places. I asked her for the time. "One" she said in the same tired soft voice and continued to look out.
It was all going wrong of course. I pushed in the Dylan mix tape in my car stereo to break the sad uncomfortable silence. It refused to play once, twice and after receiving some button pushing and left fisted banging, it burst out into Jokerman. She was unmoved. I loved that song. I still do. I hummed along with it and joined in every time with the bird flying high in the light of the moon chorus. I thought I could spot a smile on her face.
We drove for twenty minutes with little success. She gave out a sharp little frustrated groan and looking almost fierce said “I will kill for food now”
That was cute; I tried to give a broad indulgent smile. I turned to see a set stony face, all the prettiness frozen into a threatening emotionless mask.
The fear of loss that it inspired set my brain into flash alert. It responded with a wave.
“We can try the airport”, I said. They have a coffee shop right outside which ought to be open twenty four hours. She said nothing, so I speeded up towards the main highway. The airport was some twenty kilometers away. I decided to reach it before the end of the next song.
She got out of the car, before I could turn off the engine and walked with still purpose towards the coffee shop. An uninteresting girl in a black cap and red t shirt looked at us sleepily.
“Two sandwiches please,” I said.
“No sandwich. We are closed”
“No you aren’t. You have a sign saying 24 hours right over your head”
“No Sir. Cash Machine is problem. No billing”
“We drove forty kilometers to get here. Give us something” I was trying out my charming face and persuasive tone here.
“No Sir” The girl turned away from us and fiddled with some coffee machine at the back of the shop. She was ignoring us.
That was when the love of my life gone by, smashed the glass of the temperature controlled food display counter with her bare fist. She was running towards the car before I could understand what had happened. The counter girl was screaming for help. I ran in panic towards the car. She was already in the driver seat when I reached it.
“Get in” she said flinging open the door on my side. By the time I was in and closing the door, the car was already moving at some 1oo km per hour.
The stereo was turned up to full blast and she choked Dylan out with her left fist.
She was driving badly. The car jumped several speed breakers. She switched to second gear for no reason and jerked us clean towards the windshield, made it up by accelerating further and got the fifth gear on just in time.
“There’s no one following us”, I shouted, my heart still pounding. “Let me drive”
She slammed the brakes on the fifth gear and the car skidded noisily.
“Here”, she said as she walked out of the driver’s seat and claimed for herself the seat behind me in the rear. I turned to look at her. She was surrounded by six shrink wrapped sandwiches and two small Crystal Magick water cans. How she managed to steal so much in the blink of an eye I would never know.
“Are you ok?” I asked
She showed me her right hand, moving it around in some front-back-front dance routine. It had a small cut under the thumb. It looked small, white and pretty. She was smiling, her eyes gleaming in pride. She stripped the plastic off a sandwich and passed it over to me.
“Here” she said in that soft cuddling tone, that was a caring caress. She loved me again I told myself. I took a bite into the cold bland brown bread sandwich that smelled of some pungent spice and tried to look happy.
She wasn’t bothered too much though about my feeble demonstration of perfect love. I could hear her munch through the sandwiches and click open the can as I drove back to my place distracted by the sharp blinding head lights of the trucks that crossed us. She started talking only when we were almost home. She talked about the weather in Bangalore. Before she could complete her monologue on the rains in the city, we were there. I stepped out and opened the rear door for her. She clutched a ball of plastic wraps and a crushed water can, which she flung into the dustbin near by.
She handed me a can and walked up the stairs to my house. There weren’t any sandwiches left, of course.
The moment we entered my home, she headed straight to the bedroom and flopped over on my bed, kicking her shoes out. As I walked out of the room with my pillow to the couch outside, she turned her head towards me sleepily and said, “That was fun…”
I had to agree that it was.

Film Maker

The bass brings in the count. Some one’s on the ivories, playing that quiet measured beat out. It’s cool, languorous, and indulgent. There’s so much smoke around. I feel like have walked into a movie that's playing a dream sequence in black and white. I expect to meet the love of my life here. Painted ladies, smiling sweetly, walk around me to meet some expectant short term paramour. I don’t belong here and they sense it. I guess the denim matched with a round neck t shirt and a coat, don’t fit their idea of a regular. Good for them too, because I am broke.

I ask the woman rushing around with a glass of water on a silver tray, for table number five. She points in the general direction of the washroom at the end of this sad little restaurant that must have been cool in the 50s or 60s or whenever such things were in fashion. It’s a place for tragic old men now, sitting in groups or alone with fancy glasses full of gin and tonic or whisky and soda. It swarms with the slime of the city and those who profit of it, all full of pretend sophistication and badly faked refinement. The man on the piano starts to sing an Elton John song. He doesn’t really fit in here either: he is too young, too handsome and too full of life to be employed by this time capsule seeping in slow decay through the cracks where reality could access it. I am mistaken. All that heaved out smoke has blinded me. It’s a girl, dressed like a man, with short cropped hair and no make up at all. He looks like one at least.

Table five is the smallest in the restaurant. It can seat two and occupies a minute space triangulated with the washroom in the same corner, and the band and a wall. It has not been cleaned yet and someone’s half eaten burger lies amidst several paper napkins drowned in green mayonnaise. Did that man-girl at the piano look at me a little too long? I look around to get someone to clear the table. The silver tray woman passes me twice, giving it little attention. The song’s over. The bassist yawns. The singer walks towards my table, smoking this big lean cigarette. It’s a woman alright, the curves hidden away in some ridiculous checked shirt that’s at least three times too big for her.
“Why are you trying to get rid of my burger?” she drawls out. She does not fit a single word, line or sentence in that letter I was carrying folded and creased, in my pocket. I imagine her face super-imposed on the letter reading out the lines with that blank expression they have when they look straight into that camera. Not her.
I shrug and give her my apology “I’d asked for table number five and that lady pointed me here”
“This is table five alright”, she says, letting out a cloud of smoke through an unpracticed O of the mouth. “You got my letter. You are late” I am falling in love with this woman already. That drawl of hers sends old memories shivering up my brain cells.
“Care for a drink?” I ask. She nods shrugs and sits at the other end, chewing down the burger quickly. She looks around at her band, as they unwire, coil and pack. There are two boys there, one on bass and the other on guitar. They wave at her, unsmiling and she ignores them, turning back to concentrate on the fries on the table. I ask the man in the stained white shirt who takes the orders, for a beer and ask her for hers. He’s already gone. He returns with a can of Budweiser and a glass of whisky with a cube of ice.
I let the can fizz and try to do the “Cheers!” bit, but she’s on her second sip anyways.
“So what do you suppose I should do?” she asks
I snap out of my fancies. I like this part of me that can talk business to even the prettiest of women dispassionately.
“I charge twenty five hundred a day plus expenses” I ask her.
“Of course not”, she says, blowing out smoke away from me, turning her face to show me a beautifully intricate ear surrounded by dark curls, tiny nose and thin stretched lips. “If I had that kind of money, I wouldn’t be working here would I?”
I continue drinking my beer.
“I will give you twenty five hundred all inclusive”
“Not if it involves too much gas and leg work.”
“I can afford you for three days. You have to find a man. He made off with my thirty thousand or more. I was stupid to have kept it all at home. He is a good looking fellow though and got me this job thinking I would sleep with him out of gratitude.” She exhales smoke with a grace I never knew a smoker to have. Women smoke to exhibit some sense of power to men and this show of control. Men smoke out of boredom and for company- Never a woman.
“Where does he live?”
“He lived some where around the Presidency. He worked here as a bartender. He hasn’t turned up, of course” She wrote out the address on the paper napkin and drew some intricate geometric patterns around it as she spoke.
“How do you know it was him that took the money?”
“The money disappeared with him. He’d slept in my place the night before.”
“Sixty hundred all inclusive no matter how long I take,” I tell her. “I need a thousand now and three days time”
She takes five hundred from her denim’s back pocket and gives me the crumpled unrecognizable mess along with his photograph. It’s a picture of the two of them against the Taj Mahal. He took her to quite a few places before he got her the job. She looks three years younger in it and he looks like filth.
“That’s all I have. And we’ll make it Fifty hundred more when you get me the money. Got to go play my solo piece now” I nod and give her the card I have printed with my own number on it. She takes it and walks back to the piano.
Her band is long gone. She starts singing “Hey Jude”.
A decrepit disaster of a man obstructs the view as he starts slow dancing with one of the painted women, who is all fake embarrassed laughter and encouragement.
I ask for the bill. The man charges me for the burger, the double Imperial scotch and beer.

I start at the address she scrawled into the thin napkin. It’s late and the street is empty. Every one’s home by now: they are watching soaps on the TV, arguing over dinner, making love or expecting rain. He lived in a dirty government built shack. I pass the balconies with clotheslines. They are grey, unpainted and over look a fly over on one side. They have barred windows, curtained out with dirty towels and underwear. I step over five scrawny children who fight loudly, unmoving on the stair case. Three flights up I reach his door, one of five tightly shut crevasses that somehow all manage to face each other. I knock five evenly spaced times. The fifth time, I hear shuffling of feet inside and a drunk with an unintelligent face opens the door. His grey head contrasts the red alcohol soaked eyes. I tell him the name of the man I am looking for.
“Why?’ he asks, suspicious.
“He owes my boss some money”
He is happy to hear that. He gives this wicked laugh, amused at somebody else’s troubles.
“Tell your boss that his man has made the run for it. He packed all he has three nights back and disappeared. Ha ha ha!”
I put on this tone of menace and ask him if he would like to pay on his friend’s behalf, uncle. That sobers him up some. He gets annoyed and then scared and then sulky. It takes him three minutes to swing between these emotions.
“Why don’t you go get if from his brother, if you have the guts?” he spits.
His brother runs the local liquor joint. They are closing by the time I reach it.
When I ask for the boss, the boy at the counter tells me to meet him at his office tomorrow. The office is in the ground floor of the same building. I ask him for two cans of beer. He charges me twice the rate. When I start to complain, he takes them back, asking me to find another this late in the night. I pay up and finish off a can standing there. I take the other home, read her letter again and watch late night crap on the television, beer in hand. I think I am in love.

The telephone rings loud and uninterrupted to threaten me out of a dream. The television beams colorless glowing static and the sharp naked yellow electric light makes me feel lonelier than ever. The darkness outside my window is silent. The phone grates loudly, troubling me, filling me with a sense of dread. I answer and I know it’s her.
“I had to call you now”, she says in a small scared voice. “I am so sorry to wake you up. I am fine. I don’t want you to go after him any more. You can have the five hundred I gave you. Please”
“Why?” I ask. I get the dull beeping tone of a line gone dead on the other end.
Two Fifty Am. I am sleepy, scared, wide awake and faintly alert. My mouth’s dry and I can hear myself breathe harder.
I play her voice back in my head. I play back the sounds in the back ground, the static hiss-the small voice that had sounded so distant. Why did she say that she had to call me then? Was she being threatened?
I don’t know where she lives. I decide to go now and find her. I ask myself if she is worth it and feel embarrassed by the thought. I think of her fingers around the cigarette. She had tried to look so cool in the evening. Beneath all that was this sad scared little woman. I have to protect her, shield her. I love her. I hate myself for not knowing what to do. I hardly know the woman.

I step out into the heavy night that radiates heat. Three dogs chase me barking with blood lust and give up when they see my face. The streets are filled with yesterday’s garbage and vermin. Two street lights flicker like the shadows of ghosts. Where am I going? I don’t know. I am scared of the night for no reason. I tuck my right hand into the pocket that carries my gun. I decide to walk to the bar she works in.
When I reach the end of my lane and start walking up the main street, I hear a voice behind me. It’s a slurred, whining whisper “Where do you think you are going?”
I turn around quickly to land my fist on his face, but there are two of them there. A heavy built shadow that towers above me by some five inches hits me on the head with something like iron. I hit the pavement, break my nose, bleed and pass out.
I wake up eyes to the hard biting stones of the pavement, to the first sound of the milk van passing me by. He moves on, pausing for all of three seconds, classifying me as too drunk or as a police case- some body else’s problem. My head can explode any moment. My nose is cut. My gun is cold to the touch, intact. They could have killed me if they had wanted to. They had just wanted to teach me that old lesson. Where was she?

I am mad. I have nothing going on my head. I have no emotions. I am blank. My head aches so bad I scream once. The dogs bark. A couple of lights turn on in the distant apartments. No one else bothers. Day light turns off the street lamps into dull white tubes and glass baskets. The morning air is unmarked- new. It hurts the cut inside my nose.
The liquor joint is closed and shuttered. I kick it once, twice, thrice, countless times. I call her name. I call out to him. I haven’t noticed the small door next to it that within its entrails holds the dark and narrow staircase bound tightly within old walls. It opens and this dull short dark beast walks up. He wears nothing but tiny tight red trunks. The rest is muscle, well oiled, glistening in hairless skin. He is bald and might have a genial look- if he wasn’t trying to have an angry scowl, like he did now. He seems irritated to see me. I ask for his boss. He says something that could have been smart in his world but makes no sense to me. He slaps the back of my head twice. It sets it all loose. I take five steps back and draw the gun. He stops: freezes. That genial look comes in. He tells me not to get so serious and get myself into trouble I will not understand. He looks terrified. He is not sure if he has to be the man he would like to be or admit that he is afraid. I walk back facing him to the end of the street and run. He shouts at my back. He tells me that they know where I live.

I run fast enough to stop thinking. I need a drink. Seven AM. My room is lit by pale morning light. I have stashed away a bottle of Glenlivet for that special occasion. I had bought if when I turned twenty five- several ages back. I wasn’t so alone then. I was. It was for the day when I meet the girl of my life. It’s all down the drain now. The bottle opens with a pop that could have been cheerful. It’s stale old air escaping. I pour myself half the glass and I drink it up in five parched sips. It’s beautiful and smooth and unforgiving. It fills my nostrils and throat in sweet little fumes. I cannot sleep now, I know. I latch the door, push a chair against the knob and wait. The alcohol has done nothing to my pain. It lulls me into weird thoughts of her placed in my childhood situations and daily life. Why am I thinking about her so often? I see her imperfections now- the mole on the tip of her nose, two worry lines starting on the forehead, the age showing in her hands. I am fascinated. She plays the piano and sings so softly. The blood from the nose starts flowing again. I pinch it hard. I am too numb to feel anything now. I catch myself nodding off twice.

They are here.
They knock the door back by the count of five. There are five of them. The short ape and the giant choose to stand at the door. The scene also features the drunk, a respectable looking man with grey hair and him.
The drunk lumbers up aimlessly to the toilet door and stands undecided. The respectable looking man looks for a place to sit and chooses my table and looks on silent.
“You’ve been looking for me?” he asks
I get up and hold out my hand for the shake. He is more interested in playing the- cool gangster who can wreck your life this moment- stereotype. He has got the frown, the tone, the posture- modeled after some cheap villain with a two minute bit part in countless movies. The drunk eyes my Glenlivet.
“Lay off!” he enunciates slowly in that tone that sounds very deep and meaningful.
I am lost here of course. I have no idea who these gentlemen are and what it is that they are so worried about protecting. I don’t like them. I ask the only question that comes to mind.
“Where is she?” I ask.
This amuses the grey wise man. He guffaws heartily in a deep male voice that can sound like the father I have never heard for a while. Ape and giant join in like movie acolytes.
The drunk opens the bottle and sniffs it and whines “Scotch” appreciatively.
Their laughter gets to me. It reminds me of everything that is wrong with my life- taken for granted, worthless, unloved, a subject for ridicule or non concern. It tells me I am a wage earner in a country of the newly rich and the dirty. They laugh so hard at a loser. They know that the best I could ever be is a cheap hit man for a security agency, cheating my boss out of work to make a little more money. They know I have read a letter unaddressed to me. I pull my gun. They are expecting this. But the drunk screws it up. He rushes unplanned at me, trying to dash my bottle against my head. He distracts everybody. I shoot the right lung out of my target. The bottle becomes useless pieces of liquid and glass against the Wiseman’s face. His pain fills the room in shrieks as the alcohol burns the blood. Ape and giant are confused and look at the drunk who collapses sobbing. I run out. It’s dark again outside. It’s evening already.

I cannot run so well now. The air cuts into that still-bleeding nose. My gun is warm. I realize I am holding it out for every one to see. I throw it away. I fling it as far as I could into that garbage dump with dogs. I have to get away. I have to find her and get away. I am not thinking too well. I think I stopped doing that well a long time back. Where do I go now? They will find out about this soon. Somebody would have heard that shot, even in that desolate no man’s land I call home. I have messed it all up. All I had wanted was some stealthy little money. Now I was wanted for murder and was in love with an unknown woman gone missing. She is so beautiful. I will kill two more to kiss those lips. I can get a bus to Town, take the train to the Beach and bribe my way into a boat off the country. Will she come with me?

I am here at her place again. She is there alright. She is alone on the piano. She is singing a Dylan song. “How does it feel?” she sings looking at no one in particular “To be unknown?”
There is hardly any one around. It’s too early for the sweet old whores and their genteel customers. She looks up from the piano and sees right through me. It must be the light I think.
I walk in to go to her. Someone taps me on the back. It’s that dumb new office boy.
“Boss has been looking for you” he tells me. “Boss found the letter and thought you would be here. He says you are fired and it would be great if you can meet Boss now for your own good.”

It’s a set up. It always was. I have seen this movie too.

Mushroom
You would have spotted us if you were an angel. We wouldn’t have been very visible, I admit. You would have seen two sad yellow lights streaming ghostly yellow dying beams on the darkness below- on that bottomless blackness of a sullen unforgiving sea.
You would have spotted, this way, my boat, alone, leaving a trail reminiscent of the undead. You would have wondered for a second or more on what a boat might be doing alone, so far away from land, in such dull darkness and then you would have gone on. We would have continued with our existence below, undisturbed.

There were three of us. He, I and the almost dead remains of the man whose name I do not remember. I would find out his name, remember it all over again, when all this is over. Perhaps, you would know it, if you find this piece that I am writing now, ahead of the time I intended it for you. Because that would indicate that circumstances and fate lead me nowhere, despite everything else. That would be unfair. I do not wish such an end on myself.
I cannot remember well how we made our way into this glorious tale. I remember its origin can be traced to a myth that predates our civilization.

It was in those times that there lived the followers of Dionysus. They traversed the earth with him all the way to India and back. He had evil women with him, that God, who called themselves the Maenads. I imagine them as these ladies of fabulously well endowed upper halves, unashamed to let them be seen and admired, if anyone dared to that is, with whip like strands of dark hair, wet with lust and such exercise. Their eyes were red, teeth a little yellow and lips too red, with the foul breath of the continuously drunk. They ran with terrific purposeless energy draped in loose streaming strands of cloth tearing apart Greek children found wandering the streets en route. Women who did not pretend similar liberated insanity would also meet the same fate. Such was the following that Dionysus had and they roamed the earth and conquered everything in their path.
I am raving here myself, distracted from the story I set out to put down, but such is the power of the God, I describe. Bear with me. Tales of wondrous feats keep my mind away from the despair and depression that stare at it unblinking eye to wavering gaze.
Dionysus conquered India with this insatiable squadron and returned home after many an exploit, rape, pillage and squalor. They had imbibed of the essence of a mushroom, the God and the devotees, which gave them such powerful lunacy and the complete loss of self and reality. Many believe that the potion was but wine, but I know that it was not so. It was a humble mushroom – a dung mushroom to be precise- that imparted such unspeakable prowess over the mind, setting it free of limitations and filling it with the most enjoyable hallucinations. But the cursed product had an after effect. It enervated the body and soul, making the men, who had feted its magic so recently, feel as impotent as the dead, when its effect faded. So it happened that the Great Dionysus and his hoards were annihilated in battle the moment they returned to their homeland, unable to will their bodies to move –a will suddenly sapped of all energy.

I sought this mushroom. I had read of these tales so often, from so many sources. Legends of its magic had passed through many generations and its genus and origin had long been identified. For decades I quested after this piece of magic. It took over my soul. I abandoned all sense of purpose and ambition. I know not what happened to those that I loved before, before my mind was invaded by this divine herb. Why would I be so infatuated with something so obviously a creation of barbaric minds- a footnote in mythology’s obvious lies? I do not know; maybe because I have read accounts from trusted intellectuals and experts of the existence of such a species. It granted me deliverance from my own obsessions: the single object for my life that made everything else that I undertook a shadow-ephemeral and insubstantial. So I hid myself away from them who loved me. I deserted my vocation, my tribe and my country. I roamed the streets of Greece as a fruit seller and at night continued my obsessive search. I found sources. A few cultivated it and traded in it discreetly, with only those whose wealth and power could afford the responsibility. They were unreachable. Their footsteps led to labyrinths that ended in vortices of pain and hazardous poisons. However, there will always be vice to find a profit motive and break any circle of discretion. In this case, there were two. One was Him.

He sits now in one corner of the boat, hearing me debate with myself if human sacrifice would be forgiven in a court of law, given the circumstances. He sits there, absorbed in thought, although his tall athletic body with musculature resembling that of a God’s, misleads one into judging him as a man less of thought and more of beauty. He is fearful to look at and his countenance, though handsome, has a hint of anger. He is weakened of course now, but it does not show. I would love to stand close to him and feel the fear rush through my blood, pondering on the next possibility of him raging, frothing and attacking me. I would fall at his feet and pray to him, like I would to a God.
He had never used it on himself. He did not need it. His life, He told me, on one occasion when He deemed to speak to me in a tone that could hint at friendliness, was stuffed with enough excitement as it was. I met him alone, near an abandoned railway station, on a hot dusty afternoon. It was not difficult to recognize Him although I knew him only as instructional replies to my sweaty, devious wanderings through the squalid side alleys of the internet. He had been curt, professional and promptly responsive to my amateur queries and lurid doubts. He was patient with my ignorance and forgiving of my lack of the same virtue. He seemed to see only one motive in a dealing-profit. Such is His impious sense of mischief. He pointed a gun at me and made me walk into a foul smelling asbestos shed near by. He wanted to be sure that I was the one I pretended to be. He patted my bag, found the wallet and relieved it of the money I carried for Him. He flung a small plastic packet with five dark dried mushrooms at me and cocked the gun. He acted as if we were being followed. He made to move out, leaving me behind with my stash. I opened the packet with unseeming haste and nibbled gently at one mushroom. He ran back into the shed and closed the door tight, immersing the hell hole into darkness. Footsteps and loud male voices ran around us. A shot was fired. I swallowed.
I sank to the ground, my body gripped by unspeakable pain. I was drenched in sweat. My eyes shut by themselves and my teeth bit my tongue as if to severe it. Tremors seized by body. A lizard fell on my right foot and writhed its way up my leg. Its cold slithering feet made me want to scream out loud. I did. He kicked me in the abdomen. The pain was in my head. The lizard moved up and rested on my forehead. I could see the tip of its tail on my eyebrow. It made a clicking sound that seemed to speak of death. The footsteps quickened as men spoke in an unknown tongue laced with menace. They were now pounding the door with their hands. They laughed. I thought there were worms in my brain- small, purple wretched creatures that curved their bodies through the blood stream into my thoughts. I spat one out. It came out as white foam.
The door opened streaming bright light in and I rolled out. I had never realized that it stood on four immense wooden pillars. I was falling head down, facing these scratched, mud brown, somber structures. My brain shut down to meet the inevitable. The wind rocked my free falling corpse. I realized I was on a boat, wet with lashing sea water, in the middle of nowhere. He was standing over me. He cursed me for being so old and useless. I protested. He smiled at my confusion. I realized it was His divine humor. My eyes saw him for what He really was, at that moment, as his well crafted frame towered over my supine useless one. I had been blessed. It was Him, not a dark, shifty, dangerous, and unknown denizen of the internet, with no glory or divinity. My mind was overcome by a clarity that I can never put in words. To me, this old man of no consequence, had been revealed the Answer; and by none other than the God I had sought all my life. I felt exhausted, yet exalted. His omnipotence filled me with an energy that would have made me lift a planet on my shoulders, if He wished it to be so. I was connected to everything and to Him, in ways I never understood before. I ran towards Him. He stepped away in playful disgust. Behind Him, stood another, uninterested in what was going on. I seized him by the shoulders and tried to tell him to see the Light. He was bleeding from the right shoulder and seemed too much in pain. He was singing out loud. He told me, in his thunderous deep voice, not to touch him, unless I wanted myself framed for murder. I danced ecstatically around the dying man, to release his Soul to the God. He slapped me hard on the back of the head and I collapsed from the blow. I hit the hard wood of the boat and slipped into darkness.
We’ve been on this boat for three days now. So He tells me. He tells me we have been left here to die, by the men who wanted the secret, the Truth, to disappear with us. They had set us afloat in the middle of nowhere. It would take us thirty more days, if we were lucky, to spot a glimpse of land. He told me I had been through a seizure and was now a raving lunatic. He said this with no sympathy or anger; as plain fact. Who was the third? A man, He had wounded in the quick pointless battle. He had been left adrift with us to add excitement to our lives by those treacherous souls.
My mind is tortured by the clash of voices within me. I know Him to be the God I seek. And yet, there He sits in silent contemplation, impotent. I anoint his feet with my tears, but he kicks my face away, when I try to kiss them, calling me an old fool. I catch him staring at me, now and then, as I write this on these currency notes, I found on the dying man. His stare tells me nothing. Is this a trial, I wonder? How do I succeed? And if I do, what do I gain? I have already been given a glimpse of the knowledge that I sought, the sweet poison that opened my mind and revealed Him to me. What more could this soul need?
There is the heat: the unforgiving sun blinding me and scalding my skin. The water grates the throat and smells of effluents. The stomach churns up acid and burns holes through the linings. What more should I do? Should I stand on one leg in a yogic pose, arms stretched above my head and pray for waters from above. I tried but I collapsed week and feeble, in a minute. He saw me in my futile effort at a penance and laughed scornfully.
The dying man has started singing again. He has been singing for ever it seems now. Death does not visit him in a hurry. So he sings paeans to his Gods. He has a deep voice that seems to originate from the depths of his body. Gurgles of blood in the throat and rasps of an injured lung impede the flow, giving the songs a ghastly turn. His songs turn my empty stomach, reminding me of my thirst, the merciless heat and the death that awaits us. I do not understand what he sings of, but they seem to be invocations of not mercy but vengeance on us. His eyes stare at me in mockery and hate, fixed upon me. He goes silent, every time He makes a move. His moves though are no longer the graceful dance of masculine ability. This emboldens the Demon. He sees me writing these words and spits out his venomous prayers.
His voice reminds me of my dark sins, worms, defecation and lust. I scream vengeance.
A hundred female forms seek to invade my thought and pillage my body. They are crones, hags, lustful dirty whores and pestilent diseased. They moan in pain and covetousness. I feel them within as the song and its wretched words invade me. Their fingers claw at parts of my body that a woman has not touched for decades now. Were these the Maenads? Or were these the Furies unleashed? They take shapes most repellant-reptiles, amphibians and arthropods, kissing and caressing my body with cold long tongues and hairy limbs. Their faces scarred and scaled by a thousand wrinkles pressed against mine, watery dull eyes filled with bad intent. I begged them to stop. I grew despite my shame and repulsion. He was watching it, distant. I cried for mercy, for help, for release.
I stopped the singing. I killed it forever. Where lies such rage and power in these old limbs, I do not know. I tore him apart and fed him to the sea. He stopped me from throwing it all away, asking me if I would rather take his place. He has placed his head on top of the boat, spiked, for good luck. He looks at me with eyes that tell me nothing He says He is glad I did the dirty work.The day has ended and the full moon rises. The night is dark and lonely yellow blackness surrounds us again. I am ecstatic. He has promised to throw me out with my precious scribbles into the sea, for I looked too sick to keep Him alive. I tell Him that it is of His glory that I write. He makes to grab this humble offering. I give it willingly.

Tuesday
It was a day for missed flights. He was at the air station- suitcase in hand. He was told that the flight had left an hour back and he could have his money back please minus the cancellation fee of course. He had felt that something like this would happen the moment he had woken up that morning; the newspaper was not folded right when he had opened the hotel room’s door. The news print was too dark- facing up and the picture side was down, pictures kissing the dark grey carpet floor. He often did this- attributing portentous reasons to every day coincidences- like a Hero- living a myth in his own universal microcosm.
Now he was here at the crowded unwelcoming stark whiteness and steel of the airport, with not much to do. What happened now, now that he was stuck in point A and not B? Had life moved on while he waited behind? How much further? Had his incompetence changed the world and turned it in a new direction-an unplanned unintended direction-by a couple of hours? A day? Forever?
Images rushed through his head, as he darted from the counter to the next to get himself on to another flight: mother waiting for him at the airport, long clean white legs of cabin girls, bland sandwiches in cold plastic wrap, Penelope Cruz.
Penelope Cruz? Why on earth would he think of her now? What relevance did she have with anything that could be related to his current situation or the sagely contemplation he was indulging himself in- in the midst of the anxious pursuit of a ticket?
This was not the first time that this had happened. She popped up like this once too often, unconnected to trains of thoughts or fruits of actions.
This time though, the way she made her appearance-as if wading through a coalesced glue of uncalled for memories-made him pause a bit. There were certain physical repercussions to this mental appearance that were now not extremely appropriate or impossible to manifest, being as he was in between flights and ticket counters. He would need to make his way to the nearest washroom. It was late enough for the washrooms to be empty. There in one washroom, he looked at himself in the clean mirrors that projected his image against white walls, plastic paper holders and antiseptic smells. Unshaved, unwashed, with his thinning hair out of place, he did not like what he saw. He splashed water on his face and found that the paper left forty two white specks in its path to self destruction, against his stubble. He wiped them off with the sleeves of his shirt and ruffled his hair with some dry paper. Having done this he felt more confident of facing a world outside that was uninterested in him. Then, he saw her there.
The sight of a woman passing him by, nonchalantly, within the confines of a men’s washroom did not strike him as extraordinary at first. When the incongruity struck him, he realized it was her, Ms Cruz. His mind raced on. He stared at the passing female image, with that impotent stare, often mistaken for lechery, but what was actually a feeble admiring gesture that was also despairing at the inability to act. He wondered what he could tell her. Should he walk up to her and tell her how much he liked her in that movie where she sang and cooked food for film crews, low plunging neck lines revealing her sweet beauty? Would that be effrontery? Should he ask her how it felt to make out with that callipygian actress in the Woody Allen film? Trivia. She had dated Tom Cruise and played whatshername to his Dylan memory like the album cover of Free Wheelin’. She was a vague definition of beauty for him, startling yet at first look, ordinary.
When he decided that he would approach her like a gushing fan and make a fool of himself, saying something like “Big Fan”, she had disappeared.
She had never been there, he thought. Of course, he knew that all along. It was the lack of sleep, he told himself- the result of early morning cold taxi rides to missed flights with the promise of fitful sleep, strapped to a chair, a thousand feet above sea level. He tried ruffling his hair into a better pattern, once more, and walked out of the washroom.
The best thing to do now was to get a ticket for the next day and go back home. He could if he hopped counters some more, get himself a ticket on a flight some five hours later. But that would involve hanging around in the airport, in its cool aseptic afternoon quiet, trying to read a book and longing for company. Or sight Penelope again.
The best the woman behind counter number five could give him was a flight at nineteen hundred hours which would cost him fifty nine five hundred. He would land the next day.
Eight hours at the airport then, and reaching Point B twenty four hours late. He made three quick phone calls to salvage the situation a bit and made his way to a recliner facing the landing bay.
“Who knows what tomorrow brings”, he sang, a little too loud, loud enough to wake up the snoring obese gentleman on the seat next to him.
Pretending to read a book, he started counting the seconds, the minutes and the hours till he finally closed his eyes to sleep.

Carte Blanche

The elevator was jammed. They had to walk up five floors to find out that she did not have the keys to the apartment. He walked down to the Concierge to get the spare and up again and by the time he did, the door was opened, the elevator had started working again and she was in singing a saccharine little love song.
The apartment was small and like most girls apartment’s messy. At least like the apartments of the ones who seem to be inclined to have him over. That was a thought. That was one of the key jokes to the understanding of how the gods who controlled his life functioned. He looked around for a place to sit, found a rug on the floor and tried to read a newspaper. The newspaper distracted him easily with photographs in exaggerated newsprint colors of Kim, Mellie, Ray and such starlets. It spoke of them as if they were famous. He felt old and left out for he did not seem to know of any. He could only stare at their full bodies and tanned skin and feel terrible about himself. He also managed to feel guilty that he was indulging in such lechery in a girl’s apartment. He kept the paper back on the floor, feigning disinterest, although there was no one around to notice it. She was in her room, locked in, ‘washing up’.
She came out, in a loose shirt and jeans, smelling of watermelons, with a warm smile.
Would you like some tea, she asked him.
Yes please, he said.
What kind?
Would you have green tea?
I do. I love Green Tea.
He smiled back at her thankfully and asked her if he could use the washroom.
You can use mine, she told him, if you promise not to notice how filthy my room is.
Her room was clean and tidy, with some clothes strewn around on the bed. It was dark though and did not seem to get too much sunlight. He wasn’t sure if he was being watched through the crack in the door and went straight into the washroom. The mirror shelf was crammed with small bottles of hair moisturizing cream from some hotel. He was surprised to notice, that there wasn’t much else in the lotions and creams range, something he would have expected in any woman’s washroom. Just the basic shampoo bottle, soap, toothbrush, cream…he was guilty again, this time for spying around needlessly and exited as soon as his business was done.She had the tea ready. There were two cups on the table, each carrying the Manchester United Logo.
She was sipping on hers with great contentment. He took his. She had added sugar to his green tea. Should he tell her that he liked green tea without sugar? Should he politely sip and finish it off, gulp down the sickly sweet green fluid smelling of lemon and honey? Should he wait for her to ask him whether he liked it and tell her of his preference? That seemed the right thing to do.She never asked though and started talking to him about her work. She worked as an engineer in a technology firm. Two sentences down, he was lost in a stream of jargon. Her work seemed very complicated. Even the way they worked was quite a maze for him as words like groups and teams and protocols and work meets filled the space.

So what do you think I should do?, she asked him.
That confused him. He hadn’t paid too much attention, of course. She looked tired and she hadn’t narrated the story to him with great enthusiasm. So he took the risk
You need a break.
That seemed to please her immensely.
I would like to go to South Africa, in May. They have beautiful cities there and mountains and such a vibrant night life.
They do?
Yes. They have fabulous night clubs and strip clubs in some city.
Strip Clubs?
Yes. They have some super hot men and women there and there are people from every where. It’s a crazy scene there.
There was something strange about this conversation. She smiled with almost open innocence and genuine enthusiasm as she elaborated on her image of a crowded strip bar in South Africa . It wasn’t very pornographic-the imagery- but it sounded strange to hear a woman he had know for all of twenty days spout sentences that contained references to items of male and female underwear and occasionally, the anatomy.What should he do now? Should he interrupt this steady flow? She was now detailing the dance moves of a lap dancer and the experience of a male friend in London . Her fingers twirled on the table and head swung slightly in ways as she tried illustrating them. This was a funny story, he presumed, because she laughed every time she mentioned the guy whose lap was being danced upon in the recounted scene. Maybe he was her boyfriend?
He closed her out and inspected the drop of green tea in the bottom of the mug. He tried memorizing the color of the table top and the rug beneath his feet. He wondered if his watch was running fifteen minutes faster, again. Her laughter snapped him back.
You are blushing, she peeled laughter.
He wanted to refuse. He liked the way she laughed though and hence smiled.
So when do you go to the strip bars of Cape Town ?
Soon, she said and then looked extremely sad.
I have no money to go there, she said. I never save much and it’s all gone now. I am broke.
Do you really want to go there?
I sometimes wish I can just go there and never come back
What would you do there?
She looked startled by his stupidity, Become a lap dancer of course! Duh!
He hated that word. He hated the sound of it and the way girls four years younger than him used it. It was an alienating sound reeking of youthful arrogance, beauty, modernity and technology; everything that had passed him by without waiting to take him on board.
So how much would it cost you to get there?
I don’t know. May be around an eighty thousand…would you lend me some?
Twenty thousand?
I am sorry for asking you so shamelessly. I will repay you in a month’s time.
What had he got himself into? What would this favor earn him? Love? Could he afford so much? Even if he could, would she actually return it? Or would it just be forgotten with her disappearance? How much was she worth? The risk of money not coming back but the bonus of earning some love, adding a point to his starved life… at the cost of a dent he could afford to paint over?
I don’t know I will have to check, he said. I would love to help of course…You will come back though some time right? Ha ha!
That laughter was faked, badly. It sounded dry like a throat clearing cough.She smiled warmly though. Her lips stretched across her face like a pretty version of the Cheshire cat.
I understand. It’s so nice of you to even consider it. You hardly know me right?
That’s nothing. Do write to me when you get to Cape Town . It would be quite cool to receive e-mails from a lap dancer, I think
She laughed.I will send you postcards, too.
Even better!
He returned home soon. He never really bothered to go out of his way to meet her afterwards. He received a mail from her once and she forwarded messages wishing happy festivals for a while.He never found out if she ever went to South Africa . He had missed his chance in life to receive a post card from a lap dancer.

Love at first feel
Frog and I were listening to AC/DC in my car.

I need to write that sentence again. The word "Listening" indicates a prolonged continual stage in the past through which Angus and Scott played loud rock music and we pay them the rapt attention that they deserve. That was not how it was.

So, I start this story at that particular moment in time where our conversation stopped, after a few variations on the theme “I wonder what ever happened to/ Do you remember the time”. We upped the volume after 4 great songs had passed us by, to a bluesy, slower number. And then, we did what we actually did best in the past we seemed to be so fascinated by: we listened.

“You know… I am sure AC/DC was a blues band at heart”he said.

Those were my lines. He had beaten me to it, stolen the speech bubble away before the words could form. In the days of my youth (and his) we did this often to each other. It spooked us. It screwed up our heads.

“They have the most inane lyrics ever and they get away with being absolute crap.” I said. I was trying get back at him, feeling a little peeved that he had stolen my great rock insight moment.

“...And you just love them for bringing it all down, tearing it down to some core unintelligent rock and roll essence and that’s so cool!” said Frog.

And then, we shut up. The bass line pounded the woofers on the back of my car, making my rear view mirror do wondrous leap tricks to the cars behind us. Angus and Malcolm traded great lines with each other. Frog was reading the booklet in the CD pouch, smiling at the ridiculous cartoon inside featuring Angus and some big and busty Flora and Fauna.

The rain had stopped and the parched dusty lands of Delhi seemed to have sponged away all traces of such an event. We didn’t realize it then, but I was driving way too fast for those slippery roads, their dirt and craters hidden by the last remains of the treacherous warts of small mud brown pools. It was the music that was making me do it. Who am I fooling? It was just a sheer sense of recklessness that I was trying to channel through his presence there in that car.

"What now?” Frog asked me. He was rotund now, with fat around the cheeks, chin and belly- something that age and hard drinking seem to produce in all males. The neat curve of his head which gave him that boyish look from a distance, was grey in most parts. I had seen him last when we I was twenty five and now six years hence,  here we were pretending to each other that little had changed

"We can go get drunk somewhere”, I suggested. That didn't sound right. I was hoping that he would propose something else and help prolong the illusion I was constructing so well in my head-of times when we could be eccentric, cool and fun, needing no additives or artificial flavors. Liquor had been our first step towards this relentless, slow, frustrating process of aging; our collective renunciation of innocent madness and embrace of the mundane and non essential. Now that we both needed it to continue our lost myth, I realized that I was just kidding myself. My wisdom though lasted for five minutes. The guitar was far too loud and my driving, far too angry, for any wisdom to last leaving traces. I drove towards Roxotica –a pub in a near by shopping complex with live rock concerts on Fridays.

That was when the car in front of us decided to swerve right without warning. ThI made a dash to the left to avoid the collision. Our car hit the road divider and bounced. I rolled down the windows and Frog shouted out an obscenity with a series of clenched thumps in the air aimed at the driver. He had to do it at the top of our voice to be heard above the last track on the album.

The other car turned back in to the road and started speeding. They made to dash our car sideways. The driver had two companions in the back seat, all round, dark, with red eyes and drooling mouths. They wanted us to stop. They screamed abuses in Hindi which were beyond our common knowledge and cultural grasp. I, much to Frog’s disappointment, jammed the accelerator to avoid the confrontation. They were faster than us. They cut in. We stopped. This seemed to release the maniac within Frog. He reacted like lightning, opening the door and leaping out before I could make up my mind on what was the reasonable way of handling said situation. The three men were walking towards us with unsure, slow, drunken menace, their white shirts clinging to their paunches and gold chains. I got out. It seemed the perfect way to round in this great story of youth recaptured.“What’s your problem?” I asked. They did not like English. They were displeased terribly at the use of this alien tongue. They wanted to know, who it was that I had exactly in mind, when I cursed some one’s mother in their general direction.

“You of course", proclaimed Frog helpfully.

The slimmest of the trio, spat at my face and missed. One of the not so slim ones grabbed my collar and attempted to land a slap on my head. Frog intervened. I blustered. I admit that I was terrified. The last time I had been in a fight was in school- junior class. I plunged in, screaming tears and vengeful survival lust. My first wide swing told me that this was not going to end well. His dark, sweaty body, moved away with little effort and he with his breath smelling of alcohol and tobacco, hit me in the stomach, hard. I was initiated thus, into the rite of the violent pain, to feel a corporeal presence that was me, brought suddenly into existence through the awareness of death. I wanted to scream but it came out as tears and a muffled “Aargh!” that seemed to convey blood thirsty intent and not surrender to those men of murder.

I am sure that the friend of mine must have chipped in some where, but I seemed to draw all the attention. I had hit the pavement hard, flipped over on my back, somersaulting in the air, much to Frog’s later amusement and derision. One of them held my neck and dashed my head against the road, the hard small protrusions of the surface tearing the skin on my face.

Frog escaped unscathed, almost. That forehead of his that so unfairly made him look so much younger than I, had a deep long cut, that would need to be stitched up. I was immobile. I had landed on my head. My left elbow was definitely broken. I felt a deep pride within that I had managed to make two of the fat ones bleed. They had made me wish death on myself with strong grapple holds and unrepentant knocks to the head. The thought made me rage uselessly. There was no shame though. Not at us, valiant men of small might.

I couldn’t drive. He opened the door of my car and I flopped over, as if I was drunk. I felt the pain but numbed myself. I can remember some one saying “the biggest balls of them all”. Brian. No Scott. Fuck Knows. I passed out.

-----------------------------

We are here now in some hospital bed, washed white with dirty yellows and cream, smelling of shit, piss, antiseptic and damp air. I am drained and can hardly write. No one knows that we are here. Only Frog does, who told them I had tripped down two entire floors of unending concrete steps. They bought the story or they weren't bothered.

I don’t know how long I have been lying here. I am writing this tale to remind me of what I am doing here in the first place. They seem to have got me in a daze with dripping medical aids and regular shots up the ass. One of the nurses is cute and could have starred in any porno she chose. That’s not my opinion- that’s Frog’s. He tells me I am having nightmares all the time. I can’t remember any. The only ones I remember feature me sleeping or being bored or being beaten to pulp by a hard breasted school teacher with fangs. He puts his cool hands on my forehead-I don’t think we’ve ever touched except through slaps on the back and the occasional male friend signifier of hand on the shoulder. He says he has called my cousin. I don’t who he refers to because I can’t think of any. The hot one, he winks. I feel guilty because my mind tricks me with an image of a girl I dated when I was sixteen. He says my condition reminds him of a song. I know. I know!

The nurse tells me I shouldn’t write so much. She really is hot. I am giving this up to Frog. He will complete it when he thinks fit.

I sign out.

Roll Over Mystery -2

They were made to sit down on the road, in two neat rows. Rahab was in the back, between the boy and Mars. Around them stood thirty silent adolescents.They parted way for an older man, bald, with a round middle. He was dressed in a tight black shirt, bright green denim coat and trousers. He carried no weapons but an air of authority. There was a broad smile on his face that was warm and friendly. He stood facing Gahib and the rest, while his hoard surrounded them in a tight circle. He spoke in a quiet, clear voice.

“Our life takes us in roads that we sometimes do not intend it to take. This is one such road for you. We have blocked this road for three days now and we have allowed none to pass it. We will of course, one day, when our voice is heard and peace sets in again in our Great Land. Your humble lives will join the gushing torrent of history and your contribution will not be forgotten.”

His eyes rested on each of them as he went through his speech. It sounded rehearsed. His eyes lingered on Mars’ bosom and settled on Rahab's head. He recognized him.

“We have a star amidst us” he said. “We have poetry and skill and talent unwanted in our time of hope. We have Rahab Gahib”

There was a quiet hum of recognition that died immediately. The bald man laughed out loud.
“What providence! This must be what they call Divine Intervention. Our Revolution is blessed!” There was delight on the man’s face. “Now our little execution gains significance. It transforms from press article to cover page news. The voice that started a revolution lays its life for a greater cause”
He was hamming. He was acting up to a two-way audience comprising of his own zealous non starters and the cowering eleven from the bus, squatting uncomfortably on the burning road.
“Rise up, man of our moment. Music’s lost hope!”

Mars clung to him with bony fingers and dragged the back of his shirt, as he stood up. All guns now pointed at him. She whimpered and let go, for death to carry him away.

“Come here”, he said, gun still pointed towards his chest, with a finger beckoning him lazily. “Come here and kneel at the altar of the revolution.”
It was an odd gang of the wasted and unwanted armed with frightening steel and guns.

“They call me The Riddler, these young rascals, whippersnappers. You know why? They named me after your epic song of revolution.”
His mind blank seemed to fill up with the chords that made the chorus.

“You thought no one would get through the static to figure out what you were mumbling there. You thought the chorus would sell the song for you to all the tone deaf, swarming little dribblers, who you thought were your fans. That’s a line from your song isn’t it? Swarming dribblers…the greatest rock song ever and it was a slap in our faces.”

The Riddler snatched a semi automatic from a girl standing behind him and pointed it at Rahab’s head. Rahab clutched at the newspaper he had been carrying along all the while, uselessly.

“What’s that in your hands? A newspaper? How interesting! Let me see that! I never thought a Star read the newspapers. Do the sordid details of the dribblers’ lives even interest such great souls? Or were you looking for your name there? Do you miss it these days? Do you see that no one cares about you any more?”
He gave him the crumpled mass of paper.

“You have been solving a cross word puzzle. How apt. How full of significance. How stimulating…How did he know?” He turned around to his gun wielding audience to add effect to the rhetoric. Some of them smiled back.

“J here is our executioner. We also have Vee, Gee and RK. They will now be given the wonderful task of being judge, jury and executors of the Law.”

Three white boys with blond hair, shirtless, stepped in from the back and walked up slowly. Each trained his gun at a different target- the mother, the driver and an Indian.

“So the rules are simple. I live up to my name and you to yours. We solve the crossword together. I give you the clue and you, Master of the Rock Word, will answer. You answer wrong we shoot the victim and move on. You answer right we spare the life. Let’s start. This looks like a good one- Dilemma in the paths of anger. Five Five. I count till ten. Solve it song writer extraordinaire else Vee gets this lady here…”

“Cross roads” He had solved this one already. Hope stilled his quaking body. He was sweating profusely. He was burning up. He kept imagining a bullet ripping through his head.

“That was easy wasn’t it? Cross roads- the story of our lives and of the revolution, if you ask me. Run away lady. You life is spared. Oh! She won’t go anywhere without this boy? So mama and boy at stake now, Gahib! Classic Stone Centre piece in Evil Circle’s Menu …Five Four Four."

His mind raced. He threw out the self pity and the fear and resolved to play along, desperately. The clue meant nothing. He wondered if it could be something to do with menhirs or Solstice. The menu hinted at food. He was sure it was an anagram of menu or of evil. An anagram of evil could be Live.Druid was a five letter word…

“Three, two, one and out”

They fell without a sound- mother and child.The bus driver’s cries were incoherent.
“Not into Classic rock are we? Here let me draw the answer for you.”

He dipped his gun in the blood and drew a circle and a five pointed star within.
“Centre piece, in evil circle, my friend is the goat head!”

He should have solved that one, no matter how badly constructed the clue was. The Stones music was dead and gone. Two lives were lost and he could never go back.

“Let me go!” he pleaded aloud.

“No…next one… A small family of the atom heart mother . Seven letters. What is this a rock crossword he asks? My clues, henceforth my friend. After all am puzzling a rock quisling. So who’s next? Ah! The bus diver. Your time ends now…ten, nine”

He turned to look at Mars. She was staring at him in blank fear. She was hoping he would take her through it all. He could see no end but death. He did not want to give up on it. He trusted life to find a way over.

“Nuclear?” It was a clever compact clue, but perhaps he could see this through.

“Well done! You are not just a pretty face are you? Run away little bus driver. Leave your bus and run.”

The driver rolled, crawled, stumbled and ran panting away into the highway’s distance.

“You saved a life Gahib! Your first greatest truest achievement in your life this can be. Now that we have you warmed up, let’s increase the stakes. You solve the next one, I release two. Else I shoot three. These two Indian creeps and this old man here. Gahib…what kind of a name is that? You are an Indian too aren’t you?”

He kept his head down. He would do better if he thought of nothing else.

“Here goes nothing. A wise word in these commercial times. Five letters”

“Adage”

“Great! Am I getting worse or are you really good. We let go of the old man and one dirty Indian boy. Shoot the other one for luck”

They shot one boy and the other screamed his life out. The old man plunged at Vee’s gun. Gee butted the old man on the head and shot the other Indian boy in the face. Mars sat there unmoved amidst all this, frozen, still.

“What a waste? Here I was ready to spare two lives and they all die! A wise word in these commercial times, my friend- take nothing for granted! So what have we now? An old woman, two pretty women and a black man. Who do we go for now? I think the old woman is feeling lonely, don’t you? We might as well get it over and done with her then. Shoot her. Good. Now we play for something real. The father and daughter, I presume? You good sir and your daughter should join our forces. This is after all your revolution. If we spare your lives that is and that depends on our friend here…ready? Something inspired by his pretty daughter- Slaves say, like the thousand launched for her beauty? Seven letters”;
He was thinking of Mars now. He couldn’t really be bothered about any one else. He was certain they would kill her. If they did would he find another one like her ever again, he wondered. He had heard people say they would give their lives for the ones they loved. Was this what they meant? He could see her holding his hand in bed and loving him, like no one had ever in his life.

“Vessels” he said aloud, unthinking.

“Too late! Slip of the tongue can cost lives. Bang! Bang! Pity! I liked that girl. So we come to the two of you little lovers. Oh yes don’t think I couldn’t find out….you love this one don’t you? And she thinks of you as a hero, whose intelligence is beginning to amaze her. She wishes she could be with you there and protect you. Let’s make things interesting though. I will give you a choice. You can have a difficult one and if you don’t get it I kill the two of you. Or you can have an easy one and you can choose which one dies. I spare the other. What would you want?”

It was not a decision to make. He took no time to reply. “The easy one”, he said.

He caught Mars’ eyes. They were cold.

“Great”, said the Riddler, “The eccentric unloved is Ophelia’s end. Five letters”

Roll Over Mystery

He was riding the bus to nowhere. The girl he had been sleeping with for two weeks, was sitting next to him, snoring. She was blond and pretty with a small frame. She had big motherly breasts and that pleased him. She was a devotee at just nineteen. She pretended to know things in bed that she obviously did not,full of the curious power that virginal women tasting freedom had. He had started caring for her and wondered if he was good enough for her.

Rahab Gahib was a star and all he ever wanted to do was to write the greatest rock song.

The rock press loved him. To them he was God. They invented the phrases “surreally perceptive” and “exhilaratingly transcendental” to describe his sound and style. Most music fans, if there were any, were convinced that he was the last great hope for rock. One day he would rule the world that they inherited. At thirty, he was at least ten years older than most of them. He fed on their youth and adulation. He preached to them the things they lusted and fucked for and they worshipped him with inchoate amorphous grunts and squeals.

His beginnings were poor. His mother was dead and his father was conveniently forgotten. He came from a city nobody cared to remember. He was the City’s own, ever since anyone who professed to know him could remember. He had dropped seventh grade. Once, he had seen the Ones live in concert with Buddy for back up. That was way back then, some fifteen years ago. The sight changed him. He had seen the prettiest wildest girls there, and they seemed to like what was going on. He had pretended to be a part of it all. He had an evening of fumbled kisses with a drunken girl after the concert. She insisted in calling him Buddy, but he couldn’t mind. The next day he stole a guitar from a kid at school after beating him up. He dropped out of school. He ran away to the nearest bus stop, paid a dollar for a ticket and bummed his way through for a year towards the City.

He thought up a vague rhythm that was jagged and unpleasant. It was remarkable enough to make the cut one day. He was not sure what the girl’s name was. He was calling her Mars because that’s what he thought he had heard when she had leaned across and shouted her name out to him from behind the bar. She was in a low necked white shirt that hung loosely all over her top frame. Her black dark hair fluttered all around the exposed skin at the neck. He caught himself radiating warmth towards youth sleeping blissfully,head rocking to the rhythm of the bus.

The newspaper on the seat next to him was talking about war. The war was every where .The kids and their flags had all seemed frivolous when it started. It was a show by a bunch of well fed adolescents who had nothing to lose, to whom playing heroes was cool. They were ubiquitous, walking around with candles and banners and photographs and flags making up inane rhymes that sounded worse when said out so loud in unison- as if the old order will vacate their seats and run for cover, retching at the revolting doggerel.
The band and the record label wanted a song to go with the scene. A song that every one would go about marching and singing freely: they would have placards quoting it and wave photographs. It would make a packet. He wrote them a sardonic little song with a stupid two chord chorus that rhymed real revolution with blood carnation. He drowned everything else in warm loud guitar fuzz and spewed vitriol on the kids. The song was a hit. They played it along with their Dylan covers during the demonstrations.

A year on, it had become a war. There were shelling and tear gas strikes. Neighborhood gangsters joined in with free guns and bullets to their faithful. It became dirtier every day. His studio was destroyed in a fire. The drummer lost his wife and kid in a shooting. The City was no place for rock and roll bands. It was no place for any one any more. That was why he was escaping it all with a young blessed woman called Mars. He leaned across and kissed her on the head. She smiled sleepily. He clung to her love now. Her sweet innocence seemed to give him some hope in this hard cynical time. He would protect and keep her forever. He would find a place to settle down, away from all this mess. Maybe he would end up in Paris, where everything was still alright. They loved him there too and he could start life again with Mars, who loved him. He wondered if he had been good enough for her in bed.

He looked out. They were on the State Highway. There was no one around. He missed the endlessly honking trucks and the tourists who once jammed these roads. It had rained the night before. The bright green of the passing countryside lifted his soul. He started solving the Daily Crossword on his paper. Words came easily to him. Their beats and rhythms were what he was tuned to.That, not his guitar, was the secret of his magic. He solved the first few clues with little effort and stared absently at the burning skeleton of a bus that passed by on his window. A lady behind him screamed. He turned around to look at her. There was hardly anyone else on the bus- the lady and her little boy, a dozing old white couple, a black man of around fifty and his strikingly pretty daughter and on the other aisle were two young men, who looked Indian.

Panicked at the sight of the flaming iron frame,the bus jerked to a halt. They were surrounded by men and women who poured out of the dense vegetation around. Each carried a menacing gun and wore white dirty t shirts with the red blood mark of the Revolution on the chest. They were quiet. Ten of them boarded the bus, wordless. They got them all down with a wave of the guns. The screaming woman knew better and followed them out in quiet acquiescence as did Gahib and the rest. Mars cried silently and clasped his right hand. He stroked it with his fingers and whispered that it would be alright soon.