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.