Destiny

M. walked out of the university and looked wistfully at the large gate. He had taught there for 40 years and had retired the previous day. He planned to leave the city to spend the rest of his days in the warm, anonymous solitude of a sea-side town.

That day he decided to take a last walk around the city. An hour later he found himself, inadvertently, on the road he had carefully avoided for the last three decades. His eyes leaped to the small white house surrounded by a well-maintained garden. Painful memories that had been suppressed forever rose from rusty corners of his mind.

He saw Lila, 30 years back, with a tuft of hair falling over her forehead, her slender limbs flitting around her careless gait....When their eyes had smiled at each other, he knew that his love for her was deeper than anything he had felt before. He was incomplete without her and why was that so obvious to him when he held her hands....He saw himself kissing her and still remembered the strange feeling he had had after - that everything in his life before that moment had been a mistake. The life they both yearned for lay in each others' arms and everything else felt absurd.

Flashes from the past flew around in his mind threading the story of their lives. He froze for a moment when he saw himself so clearly that night, long long ago. The stars seemed to twinkle despondently between the passing clouds that were being pushed by a pleasantly chill wind.
Lila: I have to go back now.
M: How can we live like this without each other Lila?
Lila: I have to leave him. I have no other choice. I feel very sad for him, he has been so good to me. But he has to understand what I feel for you.

M. saw himself, the very next day, staring at the small painting of a child hanging on the hospital wall. He could have painted that picture himself even today for he had stared at it for so long. Lila was beside him in tears. She was narrating, fitfully, the events of the previous night.
...they called me and asked if I was his wife....he is paralyzed....he may be able to speak and think....
M. was silent and was looking at the painting gravely. Lila began sobbing.
....he was not fully conscious last night....he held my hand and said don't leave me Lila....

M. heard a creaking sound and quickly hid himself behind a tree. He saw a wheelchair emerging from the door and wrinkled hands that were intimately familiar. He turned his face away and walked back.

Many fall

With a strident yell, I fell off the edge of a cliff and felt my heart thumping out of control as the air pushed me, with increasing anger, miles downward into a thick darkness.

My eyes were closed and limbs were outstretched on what felt like curved surfaces. My head, turned to a side, was flattened against a sphere. My eyelids shivered and opened a little and shut again. Consciousness was around me, not inside and was about to leave but it felt like I woke up too soon, caught it by its trailing strings and was swallowing it back into myself. I became aware of my body in parts. My arms and legs appeared slowly. I could see that I could see again. It was white all around, everything was still.

Sight and movement felt novel, exciting. For a long time I just moved and observed my fingers and toes and all the joints of my body. I looked around and found gigantic white spheres all around and found myself in the gap between six spheres - two above, two below, one ahead and another behind. There was space between the spheres for me to walk - as though a path had been created. My mind was completely blank. I had no thoughts, no memories, no knowledge. Feelings - strange and new - were emerging.

I began moving in the world of spheres. Each touch felt the same curvature, the same glassiness of the surface and the same bright white rays from every sphere. I was walking on spheres and the path went on endlessly, jumping from sphere to sphere always finding more on every side.

After a while I saw a blurred image in the white light. I strained my eyes to see clearly. Bit by bit, the image grew to completion - large and alive. The creamy white light carved out the image of single female breast. Above the breast was a big, uneven forehead of a woman. A man was making love to the breast and the forehead. I went closer and saw the man from behind. The breast was as big as the man and the man was lying over the breast and kissing the forehead. I went closer and bumped into the surface of a sphere. I realized that the man, the forehead and the breast were inside the sphere.

I moved away and saw that inside each sphere there was an image occupying the entire sphere. The whiteness of the spheres all around were getting replaced by the colors inside. A bright red sphere drew me closer to itself. I saw a small black oval bud that had not yet blossomed. A swarm of bees was hovering around the bud trying to open the flower. The swarm formed a cylindrical shape and started attacking the bud like one single log of wood. Fresh red blood, dripping from every bee, had filled the sphere.

These sights were pure images and I could not identify what I saw with any system of concepts or language. I didn't know what I was seeing - I just knew that I could see. My mind was slowly buzzing into a state of convoluted activity. Images dug up memories and sounds. I started uttering sounds, meaningless sounds. I was still staring at the trickling redness when I uttered "beeeeeee..." and the sound of 'e' revolved around the spheres and kept hitting me as the bees were rhythmically trying to force into the bud. A vague, rusty associative memory between the image and the sound I just uttered was forming.

Every image was different and yet every image was inherently spherical. The world filled with so many different colors and objects seemed to have just one shape when touched: what I felt with my hands was just a spherical glassiness everywhere.

I walked ahead and saw more and more large images within spheres - a tuft of black hair dropping to one side with a few white strands, the legs of a farmer ploughing a barren desert, waves of the sea lapping the striped back of a woman, a glowing yellow sun setting itself behind a razor's edge, nimble fingers caressing a pair of hands, a small dark umbra of darkness and a penumbra filled with skin stretch marks, lips locked into each other kissing and starving and putrefying into a pink gangrene, a window of a bus intermittently flashing lights on an enchanted face, a slimy snail shaped like a human ear in orgasms of joy, foam filled hands scrubbing and laughing, a spine tickled into jerky movements, a mouth being fed pages of a novel, large eyes surrounded by blackness and filled with tears, two shadows walking in circles around the moon, blind eyes absorbing endless expanses of throbbing skin......

Words were rushing into my head and I was yelling them out in a nonsensical stream of babble. I ran between the images and yelled "haaaaaaaaair", "leeeeeegs", "feeeeengers", "peeeeeenk",... stretching out the vowels and reveling in the formation of my mental associations as they emerged from my clouded mind.

Suddenly I saw someone looking at me - was she inside a sphere or outside? The word 'mirage' flashed in my head, I yelled out "meeeerage" and pursued the figure. Catching glimpses of her now and then, I kept running between those images inside the spheres trying to find the image outside the spheres.

Then, with a roaring sound, the spheres started melting. The images inside started acquiring life. The sounds from every sphere filled the air with a deafening noise. At the same time all the spheres also started coalescing. The entire world was melting and fusing around me. I was at the center of a tremendous vortex. The woman I was seeking began to form from the melting and coagulation of everything I had just seen. She had been inside each one of the spheres. And now she was congealing inside me. I was also melting and fusing with every image.

I was not outside anymore. There was no outside anymore. There was no inside either.

The wait

Dull movements of an endless strife,
Hazy visions of an asymmetric time;
Life vacillates between
The ridiculous and the sublime.

The first touch

There was a moment of hesitation, a tentative movement. And then, he let go. She reached out to him and he felt a dusty, dormant string within him, untouched for ages, plucked. A touch connected two fingers and broke a silence that had been stinging him unknowingly. It stirred something; like an uncoiling of a spring. In a flash, he saw two springs coiling together and his life getting tinged by the fragrant color of her being. It was a strange feeling of another presence. Like a tactile expression of abstract life previously unimaginable. It gave birth to a desire for togetherness that he had earlier found whimsical, absurd. That two lives could connect and feel each other with such a mysterious intimacy was inconceivable. He felt he could see life through the mirror of another vision. Perhaps it was an illusion and that illusion necessitated her presence.

The flash of colors that sang inside made him aware of an utter loneliness within him. Its these rare beautiful moments when we deeply relate to someone that make us aware of the empty passages of life in between. The contrast deepens the void. The daily din of life desensitizes us, cons us into living. Her touch was a momentary celebration of a liberating death. Life has befriended time. Beauty and death still belong to the glorious realm of timelessness. Like a sponge we absorb life drop after drop. A hand comes along and squeezes the sponge - there is a fleeting glimpse of harmony, a soothing emptiness that itself sucks in life and life gushes in.

Your shadow still lurks

Your shadow still lurks
...in my murmuring dreams
...in the anguish of my darkness
...in the gleam of my tears

Melting the present, forging the past
Lingering embers remain redolent
And the world shivers in the fiery haze

Still. Resplendent. Lila

She was sitting on the ground with her knees bent. Her heels touched the ground delicately and her feet were bent towards herself, her toes straining to touch her shins. Her arms gently embraced her knees. Her back was stretched and curved inwards and her forehead rested on her knees. Her curly black hair spun out of her head in long wavy strands and spread on her shoulders. The symmetry of the spread had a mathematical beauty. Her pale white skin was moist and glistening. Her back, arms and legs were taut. She was like a wound spring who could spring out of her stillness any moment.

The light showed her from the side. Her face was completely hidden by her hair and arms. Her breasts were flattened, pressed against her thighs. It was dark all around. She was the source of light and only she was illuminated. I approached her from the darkness, from behind. It was light that I was seeking. Darkness was within me, enmeshed with me and indistinguishable from me. I wanted to embrace the embracing arms.

As I crept close, I confronted the hard shell of a turtle. The dark invisible turtle was crawling very slowly on her back. Its movement was as incredible and unreal as the possibility of its existence between us.

My embrace was an inert fluid that surrounded her and the turtle without their knowledge. I waited in agony for the turtle to move away and allow the fragrance of her naked skin to touch me. Time was frozen in the endless wait and she sat motionless in her resplendent, silent beauty - palpable and yet remote. As the turtle moved, my arms started metamorphosing into large white luminous wings - the only part of me that was now visible. My body disappeared leaving behind a head, my enormous wings and claws that had nailed themselves into the turtle's shell. The turtle had conquered me. I flapped my wings in vain, in an attempt to fly with her and the turtle. Her stillness was unyielding and the darkness impenetrable.

things - Lila - anguish

the incessant humming of the fan - silent sunlight flowing in through the windows - a table littered with books - a wasted education - the face in the mirror - a wretched experiment of nature - the telephone - conversation - Lila - the cold voice - the emptiness - a dry invitation to meet - the bottle of rum in the fridge - two swigs to pour tranquility into blood - the wall clock that is anxious for the future - bleak, scary, purposeless - a look at myself - limbs of pain, leprous skin - just a few more decades of existence - i close my eyes - the past strangling me with colorful ribbons - "happy birthday to you" - a cake stuffed into my mouth - the grease smeared on my heart, lungs, brain - suffocating, stinking, rotten entrails - Lila's melting hands caressing my forehead when my eyes on her lap meet her tears on the sky - i open my eyes - Lila's mangled face squeezing out of my pupils - alas, i close my eyes again - entrapment - fury - an axe, a club - the pulp of the body i loved - blood, crushed bones, putrefying flesh - i kiss them all - purifying rains - i open my eyes - the ghost is born again - the tree - the moist, verdant leaves - the withered, tired, rusty bark - filthy human beings - cars - roads - movement - struggle - corroding ambition - noise, hunger, poverty - a carnival of death - the clawing anguish - a long, miserable, mysterious wait.

A short conversation - Lila

M (in a low, soft voice; His eyes were constantly moving, avoiding her eyes) : “How are you?”

Lila (head slightly bent, eyes almost closed): “I’m fine. And you?”

M (His hovering eyes finally found a tree conveniently placed behind and around her face. He stared vacantly to the left of her face at the tree. He found the position of his face ridiculous but couldn’t think of any better position. He answered nonchalantly): “I’m ok. Life’s going on.”

There was an awkward silence in their conversation. Both were frantically searching for topics of conversation and couldn’t find any they both would be comfortable with. Lila bit her lips – emotions and words competing painfully within her. M looked at his watch.

Lila (She raised her head slightly and sighed with visible effort): “I-I’m going home now for the vacation.”

M (Moving his eyes from the left of her face to the right, stealthily looking at her face and again fixing it at the tree behind): “Ah. Ok. How is your health?”

Lila (pleased by the question that came like a milestone on a highway giving direction to the journey): “My health is ok. What about yours? And, how is your work?” (She risked looking at his face now)

M (irritated for having continued the conversation): “I am all right. Work’s ok. Everything is just the same.”

Lila (Tears clouding her mind): “What else?”

M (He said something and was surprised to find his throat choked and the words inaudible. With more control and deliberation…): “Nothing much has been happening. Life’s quite monotonous.”

Lila: “I gotto go. See you later.”

The stammering words were battered by the emotion she couldn’t conceal and as she turned, her head hung down and she walked away hastily. He saw her hands bending up to her face as she sat in the car and shut the door. The car raced forward and stole itself away from his vision.

He stood staring as the car turned to a vacant moistness. The corpulence of his friend slowly filled his aching eye.

C: “Hey, I’ve got the coffee. Who were you talking to?”

M (Shaking himself up and putting on as wicked a smile as possible): “My Ex!”

C (delectably sipping in the aromatic coffee): “You still in touch?” (Ending with note of surprise)

M: “No.” (with a wistful look)

Of, relating to, occurring in, or appropriate to winter - Lila

When I look at Lila now, I wonder how I had ever fallen in love with her then. She is talking about things which I don’t want to hear now. She is telling jokes and laughing and I am responding by smiling my arrogant smile – only to let her imagine that I am with her in the conversation. Perhaps she knows that I am not listening and she doesn’t care either – she never cared anyway. I don’t even know why I came here when she called me. Despite all that had happened between us, I have come. Her face has not lost her radiance; she is still as attractive as she had been. But, it’s lost. The feeling just isn’t there. I actually feel strange at the thought of my sitting and talking to her. But, that’s what I am doing. I feel disgusted at myself and the fact that circumstances have led to this. I really don’t know how to describe it. I have thought about it for about six years now – the thought of how it happened almost made me crazy.

After those two months, I always loved her only in her absence! Or, perhaps I only loved those two months – the time, the place, the atmosphere, her. But I loved those two months after those two months…

Her sweet smell used to drive me mad. The soft, freezing nights, fog fragrant with blooming jasmine - enchanting and still vivid in my memory - Our first train and jeep ride; the mellifluence of her voice; our walks together in beautiful moonlit nights –
when we discussed dreams, philosophy and coffee! Her special treats only for me; her relief when I came alone to meet her without my friends; chocolates for attending her concert; her calling my name aloud in her shrill voice; our emails which determined when we would meet next and where – despite the fact that we met at the same place everyday and at the same time! Her songs sung only for me and the stars in the romantic quiet of the temple garden; her standing close when I was sitting on the parapet; the warmth of her touch – her hands on my knees; her reading my fledgling writings; her prophecy of my writing, my dreams of her – real and fabricated, her piety and my atheism, our only photo that I lost, my dreams, my dreams, my dreams…

Those two months I didn’t realize what was happening. I was in a trance. Everything had changed. My only pastime was to wait for her evening calls. My only thoughts were the cumulative memories of our togetherness of the previous days. Each day only added more memories. I was dormant, I did nothing – she came and there was magic… everything happened effortlessly – like an intoxicating fog coming from heaven, enveloping my helplessness.

And then, it snapped. The fog lifted. The sun blazed the plains but froze the memories - neatly casketing and locking them up. There was nothing more to be filled and yet there was enough for a lifetime of agonizing recalls. All of a sudden, there was a callous wall between us. We met, but not the same way. We talked of the same things and yet, the feeling wasn’t the same. It was as if the curtain had been suddenly raised and the chilling suspense and sweet anxiety evaporated leaving an annoying vacuum. It was maddening. I just couldn’t figure out what had happened. And my confusion led to bizarre behavior. I acted stupid – behaving like a spoilt child, nagging her sometimes indirectly and often, directly. That furthered the rift.

Life moved fast. It took us to different places, led us to different circumstances. Our paths didn’t meet of its own like the earlier magic. And when forcibly intersected, it only brought to the fore the saddening absence of harmony. All the while, I kept thinking about what had happened. How? Why? What did I do? What did I not do? Each time I met her, I went with an expectation. Outwardly I put on an angry, stoic front; deep inside I wanted those two months back. They never came. I never discussed it with her. It had to happen by magic like in those two months. My conscious efforts in the past had only ruined it further. I tried for two years and then I was sapped out. Hope has a limit.

Love only touches for a moment. And then, nothing lasts – neither love, nor the moment; only memories of the moment – tender and haunting memories.

Once in a while, we meet like today. I don’t like these meetings. Yet, the ghost of hope lurks within, gnaws inside and brings me to her. The safely hidden casket in my heart opens. Those two months flash through my mind along with the absurdity and nausea that followed. I try to keep the latter away from my precious casket. That’s my secret treasure that nobody can comprehend or see – not even Lila. And yet, even while I write this, I am hoping that she sees this and…

Hope never dies. Fortunately, love does! Does it?

At the railway station - Lila

He had boarded the train with four other companions. The din of the railway station had started boring him nowadays. Looking around, he saw people of all kinds with one thing in common – the dust and grime of the railway station. He remembered the time when he was fascinated by crowds especially on a railway station. So many people, each one with so many thoughts and ideas, would it be possible to look into the minds of all these people, know their thoughts…thus he would muse often. And now, having thought of the same thing over and over again, he had got exasperated and was daydreaming about his past daydreams.

“Coffee!” he yelled out. The man carrying a huge container of coffee came rushing to him. “One cup,” he said. While he was searching for a five rupee coin, the man quickly handed him a cup of coffee and was ready to sprint to the next customer. The coffee soothed his dry throat. ‘Perhaps I am about to catch a throat infection. Better drink some coffee to prevent it,’ he thought. He looked out of the window and could see an amalgamation of floating colors. The rush was so terrible that he did not want to distinguish the people it comprised of. He preferred to imagine a “bird’s eye view” and just observe the illusion of colors rushing to and fro. Suddenly he felt a torrent of grey and brown and green almost overwhelming him. Something else also perturbed him – noise. It was more irritating than the din of the mob. It was someone, rather a group of three or more people talking near him.

He shook himself mentally and focussed to perceive what was happening. Just on the other side of his window, on the platform, stood an elderly couple. His hair was grey and her sari was green. He turned and saw a man of about forty sitting in front of him with his glorious paunch celebrating his existence. The man with his paunch was verily the embodiment of feast and gaiety. His thoughts were now interrupted by simultaneous invasions of a sweet-smelling perfume and feminine chattering. On his left, was a girl who was bending to look out of the window to talk to the elderly couple.

‘She is so engrossed in her talks that it appears that she hasn’t even seen me. My presence is obviously a hindrance to her conversation. I have to get up but I don’t want to. I like her smell! And it’s not daily that I have the opportunity to sit beside a sweet smelling female!’ He quickly made the chivalrous decision. He looked at her and made some movements in order to get up. She looked at him without any expression. ‘Maybe that’s an expression which signifies a little bit of irritation and a little bit of worry. After all the biological self is the first to react. An unknown male moving in the direction of a female is bound to inspire biological apprehension and fear!’

“Please sit comfortably and talk,” he said to her and moved to sit beside that epitome of mirth. Her expression changed in an instant. She smiled at him and quickly resumed talking to the elderly couple. Her smile instantly changed his mood. ‘Wow. I hope this girl travels with us,’ he felt delighted at the prospect of spending the next two days traveling with this sweet smelling creature. He began to observe her carefully and was ecstatic at being engaged in his favorite pastime. She was thin, very thin indeed. ‘I guessed she considers her emaciated self slim!! These girls are too much.’ She was his age or probably older. She spoke Tamil fluently and indeed buoyantly. She appeared to be a bubbly creature with a body capable of withstanding the gymnastics of her exuberance. Her face was pleasing, not really beautiful. But all of a sudden, an ornate smile displayed a lovely set of teeth and made her immensely beautiful. ‘Oh! Come on. Nowadays I have started finding excuses to make every girl beautiful!’ She had a large forehead which made her look old as well as wise. ‘Her eyes! Yes, that’s why she appears so beautiful. Her eyes sparkle when she smiles and gives her a divine beauty!’ Her thin eyebrows and extremely thin lips accentuated her feminity but when one looked at her below her face, it seemed to accentuate her rather gaunt features. Her nose was sharp and small.

He immediately felt a dichotomy in her being. There was something of a contradiction between the face and the rest of her body. He wasn’t fully aware of what it was. He realized it only days later. Her body radiated vibes of spirituality. The thinness of it reminded him of yogis of ancient India!! Her sweet smell further added to an ethereal, mystic aura about her. Her broad forehead seemed to be fighting this spirituality, trying hard to come out of its grips into the mundane world - a world where a woman had to be beautiful to succeed if she didn’t have any other talent or skill. The battle lines seemed to have been drawn at her chin which was small and pointed and from which seemed to emerge her lower spiritual body. The face had been able to resist till this chin and not beyond that – the broad forehead and the small, strained chin gave this appearance. Of course, he just had a vague notion of all this. He was able to articulate it better much later.