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We were a generation of people obsessed with our knowingly trivial pursuits, perhaps because we knew that we were small, and insignificant- a fact driven home by the vast sea of information floating before us- a vast and unfathomable sea with very few islands of knowledge. And our will to swim was at an all time low. So we obsessed over the number of emails we received everyday on our personal email IDs, even as we pretended to respond to all the emails we HAD received on our work IDs; the number of retweets on Twitter, the number of likes on our Facebook statuses…we were a generation who invented a unique method of protest in the form of walking the streets with lit candles in our hands; and then decided to abandon it in favor of another unique method of protest- sitting at home in armchairs facing laptop monitors and joining online groups and posting online petitions nobody ever bothered to read. Yes, we did manage to soothe our consciences.

In the evenings, we would rush to malls or pubs, trying to soothe our damaged, overworked bodies by playing games of indigent consumerism, and lascivious body-worshipping. Yes, we were petty people, trying to adjust our consciences to our realities; but we were also aware people, we knew that we were floundering because of a lack of direction, but we also knew that floundering did not mean that we had to sink. And we knew that we would recover, sometime, someday (that sounds like a cliché too, be we knew it was the truth)- and so we made the making of money and armchair protests the objective of our life. In the hope that things would be better someday.

Meanwhile, we tried our best to make things worse. We never left one vacuous-eyed, oily-smiling soap salesman go away from our TV screens empty-handed, because deep down we knew each one of them was one of us. And so we tried. We accumulated credit cards, and paid telephone bills; we earned loyalty points and accumulated junk; we bought frequent flier miles and tried to flirt with air-hostesses in return, even when we knew that the professional smiles were masks for personal boredom for doing the same job, flying the same cities day after day, month after month; masks for antipathy. We spent our time wondering why the one girl we imagined we were in love with eternally (eternity, of course, was a couple of weeks) always had imagined herself to be in love with someone else; we always worried why it was out best friend who had to be facing this particular heartbreak, and even she was, why could she not have had the heartbreak with us rather than someone other random jerk. In brief, we were a generation who had lost their way, and enjoyed the fact.

That was the summer of 2010 for us. We made some money, we braved a recession (and adjusted with our compromised hopes- of course we felt we had been betrayed), we fought our armchair battles and won kingdoms in Massively Multiplayer Online Games, and tried to map our life by the ever increasing resolutions of ever-megapixel-increasing digital cameras. We assumed, and we made our assumptions come true. But most often, we confused living with being alive; fighting with struggling and pleasure with joy. But we managed to live with ourselves- perhaps with temporary outages of conscience; but we survived. And that’s a fact proven by that fact I am here to tell the story. Isn’t it enough?

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more than thirty cigarettes every day (yes, we are back there. again)

three beers every night.

five hours of sleep.

and more traveling coming up. (again  :D )
life.

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Nights are spent silently gazing in the dark at the fan which is whirling somewhere up there but is not quite visible to the eye, but whose almost silent whirring is almost audible- sort of like a mocking itch on the conscience of the insomniac night which spends its time wailing for a bitter moon. May be it was all just dirty stories our parents hid from us. Or may be it was all the goodness in the world distilled into a shot-glass full of ninety-six proof whiskey which goes down the throat like a burning streak of fire, and all it leaves behind is ashes.
…

Blue eyes are no good for anything. The only eyes that matter are the ones which are a little wet, a little playful, and yet a little truthful. They smile, and yet they are serious at the same time; they are the eyes of an eighty year old woman who has seen all of the world, and at the same time they are also the eyes of a fourteen year old who has all the world before her…they are eyes who will blind you in their sunshine, and yet bathe you in their warm glow; they are eyes who will lead you to life just when you are gasping for breath, they are eyes who will kill you in cold blood just when you want most desperately to live. Bloody eyes. They are no good.
…

They shut down in a troubled night. Whispered curses thrown away in a vacuous night, shouted protests to oblivion…he doesn’t have a clue which way things turn, but he still makes his bets. One of those days, the winning number is bound to be twenty six point eight. Till then he will keep on gambling.

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We were together-

In the bloodless morning of scarlet sunrises,

And purple morning flowers rose and cursed us,

When we told each other to go.

Hard voices, brittle,

Sounding like knives clattering on porcelain plates,

Murmuring staccato goodbyes; and fragile eyes

Shouting pleas to stay.

Did it rain that day, I wouldn’t remember,

Perhaps there was a thunderstorm,

And the sun cried hot tears,

And a hint of regret was left unwhispered.

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P.P.P.S:And does that soundtrack comment say a lot about our bollywood movies?

P.P.P.S: Isn’t that a lot of post-post-post-post-scripts? Did i say four, or was it five? forget it.

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and you will probably never have it. at least not tonight in all tonights. it doesnt matter. There will always be a story which went along with the sound of a tinny piano playing in the parlor downstairs.“Mister, I met a man once when I was a kid.” and such it will be. To misquote again: “I’m very drunk and I intend on getting still drunker before this evening’s over.”

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…

Through all these cities and all these towns
It’s in my blood and it’s all around
I love you now like I loved you then
This is the road and these are the hands
From Mozambique to those Memphis nights
The Khyber Pass to Vancouver’s lights

Knock me down get back up again
You’re in my blood
I’m not a lonely man
There’s no load I can’t hold
Road so rough this I know
I’ll be there when the light comes in
Just tell ‘em we’re survivors

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:Estranged (Guns’n'Roses)

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On the surface, I lead an enviable life- I am a self-made millionaire, and a successful consultant, my wife a very pretty artist and poet, and a son who will soon be ready for life. In reality, I am the head of a dysfunctional family, my wife cheats on me and my son a basket case, nervous wreck who, his psychiatrist  says, is a paranoid schizophrenic who might also be suffering a mild case of the Oedipus complex, and business has never really recovered from the recession. Quite a state of things, and don’t even see the irony in it, anymore. These are just facts of life which I have no choice but to accept.

Even now, my son is sitting in his room, drinking my whiskey and thinking god only knows whatever crazy thoughts that wrack his brain. He is not allowed to smoke or drink. But sometimes, perhaps it does him good. Or bad, I don’t know- what I do know is that my poor, deluded child considers probably considers me his enemy, and my asking him to not drink will probably do more harm than good. The psychiatrist tells me not to interfere much with his life- God, I am as much a basket case as my son is, as far as he is concerned.

There is only so much emotion that you can spend in a lifetime on any single subject without becoming inured to it. You begin to accept things as a part of life. You stop fretting about wrong decisions and right ones, about the stuff that you could have done right and the stuff that went wrong when it had no right to. You just begin to take things as they come. Like my son. Or my wife. Or my life. It was not always like there, as all bad stories go; things change and happy times turn into sad or confusing ones, and you do not know what to make of things. You just carry on with life. Tired. And alone.

When he was eight, we knew that our son would grow up to be a poet. He always went after his mother, following her, clutching her saree’s hem like it was his only lifeline in a stormy world. She painted- so he took crayons and created thousands of colorful, if logically not making sense, sketches  on the walls of our home. And even though I was never a connoisseur of art, those scribblings were more precious to me than any M F Hussain mural. She wrote. So when he grew old enough to be able to start stringing together words to for coherent, if somewhat disjoint, sentences; he wrote too. She dressed in bright colours- the brilliant yellow of a sunflower, the blinding orange of a tangerine, the bloody scarlet of a ruby- and they were the colours he chose for himself whenever we went shopping. He never had any of my shades of gray in his life. And I guess that was the time when the trouble started.

When I was a child, he seemed always to be a very distant person- he still is- less of somebody who lives physically in your home, than someone who comes to your home everyday on the third page of a bling newspaper. I do not mean He is glitzy- just that he was never real. He would go to work before I woke up and come back home after I had gone to sleep. I sometimes never saw him for months, even though we lived in the same house. There never was any shortage of presents, but there was always a shortage ofa  parent. And He never really loved Mother or took care of her. The best He did to her was that neglected her. Totally.

He always was a slimeball- having affairs behind my mother’s back, coochy-cooing  with that bitch mathematics teacher, flirting with that EA of His client who regularly called Him ostentatiously to update Him on projects He was working on, with His own secretary, and even with the whore who sent me roses. It was all just a sham. Why else, after all, would she send me another bouquet of roses when I had already thrown her first bouquet into the dustbin and torn her card?

And, all this while, Mother suffered silently, like quiet earth, I am sure there were always fires raging in her heart which would be violent enough to snuff us all out in a couple of heartbeats, but she never let them go. Which is why she, to me is the colours of life- the violet of a cloudy sunset, the purple of a bloody sunrise, the crimson of spilt blood, the gold of a languorous mid-moon night. She is life in death.

I have not taken the blue pill for three days now. I realize now that the blue pill was poison- it made me sleepy; now I can think much more clearly now that I have not taken the pill in three days.

The girl whom I loved in college- she ran away from home with someone who had a big car. I was not allowed to drive a car by that talk-talk doctor guy and Him.

When I was six years old, we went to a picnic. I don’t remember, it might have been when I was seven. Or eight or nine. Doesn’t matter. The details are a little vague. We had gone to this park which shared a boundary with a zoo, and there was this old tree under which we sat. I do not remember many details, but I remember wondering why there was not a pond where the tree’s shadow ended. We might have had sandwiches that afternoon for lunch. I do not remember. It was a rare afternoon for even He was there with us. And we had a big striped plastic ball at least one of whose colours was purple, and I remember thinking how much fun it would have been had there a pond or lake or pool in which I could have thrown the ball and waded after it as it bobbed in the same place buffeted by the very mild breeze. It was much fun even so.

It was many years later that I found out that the whole park was fake, that the tree under which we had spent that glorious afternoon was actually a lamp post which had been covered with plastic bark and branches and leaves for a week as part of some show that the park was organizing in the nights, and that the grass that had grown there, where my pool should have been, was later grazed barren by a herd of goats who couldn’t care less, and never regrew because the park management never had enough money to plant seeds and water them. Today the park is still a park but more in use as a drive-through by car-or-bike-owners who hate to drive that extra kilometer around its boundaries and just drive in from one of the numerous huge gashes in the park’s wall. I, when I was six; or seven or eight; never knew.

The girl whom I loved in college- the one ran away from home with someone who had a big car- her body was found, battered and mutilated, in a town three thousand kilometers from home. She had fought. And lost.

NB: This is part II of a short story which is still being written. Part I can be found here.

PS: These posted parts are uncut versions. Once i complete the story, I will edit everything critically to the best of my abilities, and put up a spell checked and edited version combining all parts, as a .pdf here for download. Comments and feedback are welcome, and also, requested.Also, suggestions for a name for the story. i am currently working under the name ‘Working Title’.

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He has killed my mother. I don’t know how he did it- but I think I know when. I think yesterday, when I was sleeping, he killed my mother and disposed of her body in the night. I saw him driving away in his car in the middle of the night, when he thought I was asleep. Only I was awake, and I saw him. And earlier that evening they were fighting. Violently. I think my mother even threw that big vase we kept on the dining table at him. But she would have missed, I think. Pity. Then he sent me out and when I came home mother was no longer there. I think I should inform the police. He killed my mother. My father killed my mother.

They say I cannot concentrate. I don’t know why think like that. I see things that others do not. And still they make me go to see that talk-talk doctor guy. He is stupid. Always telling me to talk and talk and talk; and all the while I never want to talk. I hate talking, I think they all want to know what I am thinking, always- the doctor, He, even my mother sometimes; they never leave me alone with my thoughts. I think the talk-talk doctor guy and He- they do not really dig the way I think- how I see what others don’t see, how I am perceptive to vibes of other people.  They make me take pills- a green one and a blue one, and the green one used to make me lazy, always making me want to sleep.

There is a bottle of whiskey in front of me- His whiskey, stolen from his minibar; they wouldn’t even let me drink whiskey- and the level of whiskey in the bottle is as low as the depression I feel. I don’t know why I am sad, I think I should be happy- I generally do when break rules-His rules and the talk-talk doctor’s rules. But it makes me rather sad when mother finds me breaking the rules. Mother likes me- she is not like Him and that talk-talk doctor and the bitch-girl math teacher I had when I was in high school or that dumbfuckersonofabitch history professor I had in college or the-what’s the use of counting names- mother loves me and I love her too. And that’s all there is to it. She will always be there to take care of me. She is not like them. Not like Him.

The ice in the icebucket looks very interesting when seen from directly up top.  It reflects the cigarette’s scarlet tip and forms interesting patterns of red spots in white ice and it is nice to see them even though the smoke burns my eyes. Cigarettes are also not allowed me- but I sometimes smoke, even though it makes me feel really bad when mother comes to know I have been smoking. He knows, of course- He knows I smoke and it makes me happy, and so He tries to make me stop smoking. So I have to smoke in secret. In my room, at night, when they have gone to sleep, I walk up to the balcony and quietly have a drag or three- even though sometimes I fear they are not asleep when they are sleeping, that they are just lying down quietly pretending to sleep so they can catch me smoking. Mother once did catch me like that- but she did not scold me, she only took the cigarette and stubbed it out and went out of the room into the kitchen after telling me to sleep and later I heard her crying, sobbing my name when she thought I was asleep only I was still awake and I heard her and I felt bad and did not smoke a single cigarette for a whole week because I also love her and do not want to see her cry again- and after that I have been real careful while smoking so she never catches me again or she will cry again. But she never screams at me- she is awesome like that in many ways- she understands how I feel and she loves me and if she were to see- Mother is dead! He killed her!

It is three in the morning. He is probably asleep. I wonder why mother married him. She is so nice and so beautiful, she could have had anyone. Why did she pick a loser like him? I don’t like him at all. She should have thought of my feelings before she married him, no? But then I am being unfair, probably- I wasn’t even born, after all, when she chose to marry him. And He probably pretended to be much more fun then- fooling mother into a life of no-fun, just talk-talk arguments and throwings of plates and stuff, and making of shitloads of money which no one ever seems to need there being credit cards and all. He has his own company where He does some kind of computer stuff- and He just seems to meet a lot of people wearing badly fitting suits and ties that seem to be too tight for their necks and showing them presentations in dark conference rooms where everyone listens to Him and seemingly they pay Him a lot of money to do that. Strange. If someone paid me to listen to Him, I wouldn’t.

The bottle is empty. Is he sleeping? I think it is safe to go and bring another bottle from His minibar. He wouldn’t know. He doesn’t drink at all, it was mother who installed the minibar, even though it is His. Mother is an artist. She makes paintings and writes poems. She is regal. And beautiful. The most beautiful woman I have ever seen. Far, far prettier than that strange girl in college who once sent me roses even though it was not my birthday and whose card I tore without reading and threw the roses in the dustbin, what did she think of herself! Gold digger, I know she did not love me- she only liked me because of my credit cards, mother’s actually, which I used as mine- and she always covered up for me because He would not let me have any credit cards. And she was not even as pretty as the girl I was in love with once, only she did not really like me I think, she never responded to my friend request on Orkut, and I did not really love her, I think- it might just have been attraction- an infatuation, like mother said; and anyway, she did not deserve to be loved by someone like me and she was not even a fraction of pretty like mother was. Of course, I never told mother that. Mother!

Yesterday, He was fighting with mother! And mother tried to throw that vase at Him, I think. Only, she is so frail, the vase probably fell on the floor and shattered before it reached him. Pity. I always tell mother that He doesn’t care for her. She never listens. I even asked her why she married Him. She said that she loved Him. At the time. But she didn’t say she loved Him now.

I think I should go get another bottle from the minibar. A good whiskey. Something that mother would like to drink. She likes good whiskeys. Not like those wimpy women who drink those stupid tasting wines and sniffle over silly romantic movies. Mother appreciats whiskey like few men would ever do. And that is another reason I love her. Mother!! I am gonna kill him!

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