About nostalgia, metaphor, reality, dreams and despair for a city of memories
Thursday, November 15, 2007
Yemberzal
By Leya Mathew
The pigeons have found the ideal Suicide Point – an old disused net that hangs out of the 3rd floor window balcony of the house that was abandoned 17 years ago. The new spot is ideal and fool proof. Everyday they come, sometimes as many as four in a single day, to hang themselves by the neck until dead. Sometimes they try to escape, when they feel the breath of life being strangled, but their strenuous efforts only tighten the noose faster.
The winter is long and hard in the mountains. Many of the younger pigeons have known nothing other than bitter adversity. They were born into the wrong generations, one without hope; or even a memory of hope. The torment of life saps the strength of Youth and many are looking to Death for deliverance.
Yemberzel was fat, even for a pregnant pigeon. She had never been pink cheeked and pretty, she was the sturdy hardy domestic type. She felt the eggs inside her and continued her search for a nesting site. Times had changed. It was going to be difficult bringing up children as a single parent in these difficult times. There were many things to consider, but the eggs were not going to wait till she sorted her life out. In fact, she was cramping already. Was it happening? So soon?
At the window below Suicide Point Yemberzel found two half empty clay flowerpots. The contractions had begun in earnest and Yemberzel plopped down heaving wearily. The mud was hard and caked from the cold, but the soft down feathers warmed them up in no time. What with global warming and everything, the climate had also lost its sense of time. It should have been spring already, but it was as dark and howling cold as the middle of winter. Shuddering from the exertions and the cold, Yemberzel neatly arranged her feathers around her and snuggled deep into them for warmth.
Everything had gone wrong from the beginning. She had fallen in love with the wrong man and had been too proud to admit it. It was pride that kept her from going back to her parents even in such a state where she clearly needed some womanly advice. Now, here she was, in a half empty flowerpot for a nest, having her first babies, in the middle of the freezing winter. Two tiny eggs eased out and nestled inside the soft gray forest. Yemberzel looked down in surprise and a stupid grin plastered her face. She felt a warm wave of satisfaction creep over her and something like happiness envelop her. Tired, she snoozed.
On the bare winter branches, Yasin clucked angrily. What was this fat pigeon doing beneath Suicide Point? They don’t even let you die in peace. He swooped down to cackle Yemberzel away. Only when he was directly above her did he see the tiny eggs. Swerving in his flight, he shifted gears and landed gracefully back on the dead branch. There was nothing to do except wait. He couldn’t go hanging himself above babies, could he? He hung around and noticed the other Suiciders hovering around undecided like him.
It became a habit for the suiciders to check in on Yemberzel every now and then as they went about their daily business. Yemberzel was fidgety and quite crazy by nature. But now, she sat as still as the winter, gazing out into the snow with a glazed smile on her face. One still afternoon, Yasin was pleasantly surprised to see an ugly yellow bundle peeping out from under Yemberzel’s fat ass. Yasin puckered his tired forehead and on a sudden bent of curiosity flew over Yemberzel to investigate. As he flew around trying to get a better look at what he hoped would be a beautiful baby, Yemberzel stared back fixedly, rotating her neck in all directions like a broken wheel. Yasin found this most disgusting and went back to perch on his dead branch.
From his top angle view Yasin could see one perfect half of the discarded eggshell. Yemberzel shifted her fat bum around and Yasin saw the baby. An ugly mangy bundle with large scales covering the eyes. What a monster. Nothing like what he had expected. He had hoped for a nice wooly soft bundle of clucking joy, not this repulsive creature.
Sajjad and Umar joined Yasin on the branch. The Suiciders knew each other by name now. They still kept to themselves, after all they were intensely private brooding individuals forced together by an unforeseen quirky twist of fate. They hardly talked to each other but contended with watching Yemberzel and the yellow patch under her. Yemberzel was busy gurgling up food into her throat. The baby stuffed her beak deep into her mother’s gullet to receive her food. Mother and child writhed in grotesque orgasmic convulsions and the Suiciders looked away. The baby flapped a wing and lay down to rest. Yemberzel continued to stare at the Suiciders with that unflinching stare of hers, still and plastic.
The second baby soon arrived and within a day, they were clucking their beaks at each other, eyes still sealed shut under the dirty gray membrane.
It was strange to see the Suiciders together. They were acutely aware of how gross it must look. That fateful day, as always, it was Yasin who arrived first. He liked his hours of solitude on the branch. He sat himself down, resting his old tortured legs. He had grown old while still young. There had been a time of anger and hope. Now there was only bitterness and he had wanted to end it all. He couldn’t deal with Life anymore. He wanted to die. Yasin heaved a deep sigh. It had seemed simple. The Suicide Point had become a beacon of escape for many like him. He had thought long and hard before deciding on this course of action. He would never have given the others credit for such a brave effort. He thought them opportunists who had used every heartbreak to enrich their coffers. But, here they were. Did they also see the deep darkness, feel the numb pain of despair Life had become. Death would be such a welcome relief. But Yemberzel had changed all that. Fat, ungainly Yemberzel.
Yemberzel. That name sounded faintly familiar. An old memory of a small white flower flooded Yasin’s mind. A memory of flowers and gardens and valleys and meadows flashed past his despair. Was he dying? Was this paradise? The wind howled and Yasin shivered. No such luck. But he did remember what Yemberzel was. She was the first flower that bloomed at the death of winter, announcing in the white wintery cold that Spring was coming. She was the flower of Faith and Hope while the snow still fell thick and fast around and froze the blood. Yemberzel. Why did she do that? Why didn’t she let them sleep the peace of Death? And what would he do when Yembrezel and her babies flew away? Would he still continue his path of suicide? Yasin grew tired of the incessant questions wandering around his small brain and of staring at the dirty yellow balls sticking out from under Yemberzel’s still fat ass and he flew away to attend to his daily business.
It was a long day. The daily grind was tough. When he returned to the dead branch in the evening, he was not prepared for what had happened. The flowerpot nest was empty. Even the eggshells had disappeared. Except for the earth spotted with grey green shit, it was hard to imagine Yemberzel had ever been here. What had happened? The Suiciders looked at each other. Yasin volunteered “I had checked in on them in the morning, they were fine.” “Then you’re the last person to have seen them” Umar replied. They listed their questions like a TV journalist listing the options in a popular murder scandal. Did a kite eat them? No kite would eat both chicks together and the discarded eggs as well. And where was Yemberzel? It was her disappearance that puzzled them most of all. If she could be found moping around then the story would fall in place, but she had vanished into thin air. “When do pigeon babies start flying?” Umar wanted to know. Old Geelani shook his head, “No, its too early for them to have flown away.”
Over the next few days, the Suiciders searched high and low for any news of Yemberzel. Nobody had heard anything of her in a long time. They said she had migrated long ago, that she could no longer be found in these parts. The Suiciders were left wondering whether they had had a communal hallucination. Had there really been a Yemberzel? In some corner of the dark winter of their hearts, they wanted to believe.
The River was rushing furiously. The current was churning whirlpools. Yasin shifted from leg to leg as he sat on the banks scanning the onrush. It would be suicidal to jump in. The chances were very low. But what if the babies had fallen in? What if they came flowing down with the current. He knew he would jump. Would he die? Suddenly he was terrified. He didn’t want to die. He didn’t want the pigeons to die. He scanned the horizon anxiously. Yasin turned and tossed in his sleep as many agonizing hours passed by. Only debris whirled past. Yasin woke up with a heavy heart. The snow had ceased to fall. The sun was making a hesitant appearance. The dark heavy secrets of Yemberzel weighed him down, but he knew Spring would come to gladden his heart. He had returned to life, Suicide was not for him anymore.
The pigeons have found the ideal Suicide Point – an old disused net that hangs out of the 3rd floor window balcony of the house that was abandoned 17 years ago. The new spot is ideal and fool proof. Everyday they come, sometimes as many as four in a single day, to hang themselves by the neck until dead. Sometimes they try to escape, when they feel the breath of life being strangled, but their strenuous efforts only tighten the noose faster.
The winter is long and hard in the mountains. Many of the younger pigeons have known nothing other than bitter adversity. They were born into the wrong generations, one without hope; or even a memory of hope. The torment of life saps the strength of Youth and many are looking to Death for deliverance.
Yemberzel was fat, even for a pregnant pigeon. She had never been pink cheeked and pretty, she was the sturdy hardy domestic type. She felt the eggs inside her and continued her search for a nesting site. Times had changed. It was going to be difficult bringing up children as a single parent in these difficult times. There were many things to consider, but the eggs were not going to wait till she sorted her life out. In fact, she was cramping already. Was it happening? So soon?
At the window below Suicide Point Yemberzel found two half empty clay flowerpots. The contractions had begun in earnest and Yemberzel plopped down heaving wearily. The mud was hard and caked from the cold, but the soft down feathers warmed them up in no time. What with global warming and everything, the climate had also lost its sense of time. It should have been spring already, but it was as dark and howling cold as the middle of winter. Shuddering from the exertions and the cold, Yemberzel neatly arranged her feathers around her and snuggled deep into them for warmth.
Everything had gone wrong from the beginning. She had fallen in love with the wrong man and had been too proud to admit it. It was pride that kept her from going back to her parents even in such a state where she clearly needed some womanly advice. Now, here she was, in a half empty flowerpot for a nest, having her first babies, in the middle of the freezing winter. Two tiny eggs eased out and nestled inside the soft gray forest. Yemberzel looked down in surprise and a stupid grin plastered her face. She felt a warm wave of satisfaction creep over her and something like happiness envelop her. Tired, she snoozed.
On the bare winter branches, Yasin clucked angrily. What was this fat pigeon doing beneath Suicide Point? They don’t even let you die in peace. He swooped down to cackle Yemberzel away. Only when he was directly above her did he see the tiny eggs. Swerving in his flight, he shifted gears and landed gracefully back on the dead branch. There was nothing to do except wait. He couldn’t go hanging himself above babies, could he? He hung around and noticed the other Suiciders hovering around undecided like him.
It became a habit for the suiciders to check in on Yemberzel every now and then as they went about their daily business. Yemberzel was fidgety and quite crazy by nature. But now, she sat as still as the winter, gazing out into the snow with a glazed smile on her face. One still afternoon, Yasin was pleasantly surprised to see an ugly yellow bundle peeping out from under Yemberzel’s fat ass. Yasin puckered his tired forehead and on a sudden bent of curiosity flew over Yemberzel to investigate. As he flew around trying to get a better look at what he hoped would be a beautiful baby, Yemberzel stared back fixedly, rotating her neck in all directions like a broken wheel. Yasin found this most disgusting and went back to perch on his dead branch.
From his top angle view Yasin could see one perfect half of the discarded eggshell. Yemberzel shifted her fat bum around and Yasin saw the baby. An ugly mangy bundle with large scales covering the eyes. What a monster. Nothing like what he had expected. He had hoped for a nice wooly soft bundle of clucking joy, not this repulsive creature.
Sajjad and Umar joined Yasin on the branch. The Suiciders knew each other by name now. They still kept to themselves, after all they were intensely private brooding individuals forced together by an unforeseen quirky twist of fate. They hardly talked to each other but contended with watching Yemberzel and the yellow patch under her. Yemberzel was busy gurgling up food into her throat. The baby stuffed her beak deep into her mother’s gullet to receive her food. Mother and child writhed in grotesque orgasmic convulsions and the Suiciders looked away. The baby flapped a wing and lay down to rest. Yemberzel continued to stare at the Suiciders with that unflinching stare of hers, still and plastic.
The second baby soon arrived and within a day, they were clucking their beaks at each other, eyes still sealed shut under the dirty gray membrane.
It was strange to see the Suiciders together. They were acutely aware of how gross it must look. That fateful day, as always, it was Yasin who arrived first. He liked his hours of solitude on the branch. He sat himself down, resting his old tortured legs. He had grown old while still young. There had been a time of anger and hope. Now there was only bitterness and he had wanted to end it all. He couldn’t deal with Life anymore. He wanted to die. Yasin heaved a deep sigh. It had seemed simple. The Suicide Point had become a beacon of escape for many like him. He had thought long and hard before deciding on this course of action. He would never have given the others credit for such a brave effort. He thought them opportunists who had used every heartbreak to enrich their coffers. But, here they were. Did they also see the deep darkness, feel the numb pain of despair Life had become. Death would be such a welcome relief. But Yemberzel had changed all that. Fat, ungainly Yemberzel.
Yemberzel. That name sounded faintly familiar. An old memory of a small white flower flooded Yasin’s mind. A memory of flowers and gardens and valleys and meadows flashed past his despair. Was he dying? Was this paradise? The wind howled and Yasin shivered. No such luck. But he did remember what Yemberzel was. She was the first flower that bloomed at the death of winter, announcing in the white wintery cold that Spring was coming. She was the flower of Faith and Hope while the snow still fell thick and fast around and froze the blood. Yemberzel. Why did she do that? Why didn’t she let them sleep the peace of Death? And what would he do when Yembrezel and her babies flew away? Would he still continue his path of suicide? Yasin grew tired of the incessant questions wandering around his small brain and of staring at the dirty yellow balls sticking out from under Yemberzel’s still fat ass and he flew away to attend to his daily business.
It was a long day. The daily grind was tough. When he returned to the dead branch in the evening, he was not prepared for what had happened. The flowerpot nest was empty. Even the eggshells had disappeared. Except for the earth spotted with grey green shit, it was hard to imagine Yemberzel had ever been here. What had happened? The Suiciders looked at each other. Yasin volunteered “I had checked in on them in the morning, they were fine.” “Then you’re the last person to have seen them” Umar replied. They listed their questions like a TV journalist listing the options in a popular murder scandal. Did a kite eat them? No kite would eat both chicks together and the discarded eggs as well. And where was Yemberzel? It was her disappearance that puzzled them most of all. If she could be found moping around then the story would fall in place, but she had vanished into thin air. “When do pigeon babies start flying?” Umar wanted to know. Old Geelani shook his head, “No, its too early for them to have flown away.”
Over the next few days, the Suiciders searched high and low for any news of Yemberzel. Nobody had heard anything of her in a long time. They said she had migrated long ago, that she could no longer be found in these parts. The Suiciders were left wondering whether they had had a communal hallucination. Had there really been a Yemberzel? In some corner of the dark winter of their hearts, they wanted to believe.
The River was rushing furiously. The current was churning whirlpools. Yasin shifted from leg to leg as he sat on the banks scanning the onrush. It would be suicidal to jump in. The chances were very low. But what if the babies had fallen in? What if they came flowing down with the current. He knew he would jump. Would he die? Suddenly he was terrified. He didn’t want to die. He didn’t want the pigeons to die. He scanned the horizon anxiously. Yasin turned and tossed in his sleep as many agonizing hours passed by. Only debris whirled past. Yasin woke up with a heavy heart. The snow had ceased to fall. The sun was making a hesitant appearance. The dark heavy secrets of Yemberzel weighed him down, but he knew Spring would come to gladden his heart. He had returned to life, Suicide was not for him anymore.
Unfinished story
By Leya Mathew
I am the Writer. I would have been called Wanderer, Explorer, Revealer but by a colossal case of misfortune and misrepresentation, I am called Weary. Between what I would have been and what I should be, lies ‘I’ the Character. Since the Writer has been misnamed, I the Character remain unnamed. Therefore, instead of some meaningful, dark, brooding name, or a witty, satirical, half auto-biographical one or even a non-referential pretty poetic name you shall know me as ‘I’. How unimaginative, you might say; how ill-fated, I say and plead my case. The Writer is stubborn. To squash all further rebellion I am further made genderless. The Writer insists that I am that which is common to Man and Woman and that Gender is totally irrelevant to the Story. But, no Sex? How will the Reader identify himself or herself? Dissociate himself or herself from me? I hang my face in shame. The Writer claps in anticipation and proceeds eagerly.
I have been wandering the realms of reality and illusion in search of my destiny that has so far successfully eluded me. In tandem with my spiritual confusions, I have wandered the villages and the cities without paying much attention to the Ancient Glorious Past constantly being reinvented or the Global Super Power Status that is imminent. I passed by the unapologetic pre-occupation with Money and Power. It was on one such nomadic excursion, that I found myself in the neighborhood of my parents’ house. On a sudden whim, I decided to pay them a visit.
My mother was pleasantly surprised. This was the first time I was visiting the re-constructed house and she was anxious to show off. The house I had grown up in was unrecognizable. The walls I had eagerly marked in pencil to keep record of my growing elevation had made way for a larger drawing room. The pale yellow room whose paint I had irreversibly damaged by pasting over with Van Gogh and Monet prints cut from calendars and Readers Digest back covers had become a modern bathroom complete with gilded taps I couldn’t work. I settled myself in the farthest room in the back corner of the house on the first floor. The windows on one side opened out onto a mango tree in full bloom and on the other side to a wasteland that will soon be crowded with apartment flats and multiplexes. I kept myself away from the business of the house and was allowed to let myself be. I had earned my solitude.
I am the black sheep of the family, brilliant as a child; I had excelled in everything there was to do. It was commonly expected that I would join the Administrative Services or at the least become an eminent surgeon. Instead, I had studied the Arts, found formal education bankrupt and drifted through various jobs depending on fleeting inclinations and the lightness of my wallet. My siblings had worked harder at their destiny and had landed well paying foreign jobs. I was a calculation gone wrong that my parents had many a time attempted to set right, but could never find the precise detail that had floundered. I had become an embarrassment in family discussions that hovered around unintelligent investment patterns and had slowly distanced myself from family and school reunions. I was caught up in some unexplainable quest that sought a greater meaning and purpose than mere success. I wanted to learn the secrets of the incessant world within and the endless world without, its harmonies, its energies and its languages. I had been over ambitious. I set myself tasks I did not know how to solve. In the middle of this continual struggle with the soul, I attempted occasionally to write – to find some sense to my concentric journeys.
Now that I found myself in my new house, I let my agonizing narcissism rest and concentrated on eating well and sleeping long. My mother is an excellent cook as most mothers are and she enjoyed feeding her children. She conveniently forgot that we were no longer lanky teenagers growing at an alarming rate and the food we appreciated and partook of in such astounding quantities would only settle into fat and cholesterol.
It was at night after a particularly satisfying dinner that I noticed a small colorless bubble on my left wrist. It was pristine and perfectly round – almost like a dew drop. I was fascinated. I am obviously a very sensitive person and my skin takes after me. I am used to unexplained bouts of rashes in varying colors. But in the morning I woke up with a raging fever and multiplying dew-drops. They were everywhere, even on my scalp, hiding in all corners and appearing at the most inconvenient places. I called in reinforcement. My mother took one look at me and declared ‘Chicken Pox’. I looked at her with mounting distaste. She had the uncanny habit of being right in such unpleasant situations. I was immediately shepherded to the neighborhood clinic where the doctor confirmed my mothers diagnosis and hurriedly sent my off into forced isolation. I racked my brains trying to figure out where I could have picked up the infection from, but no lightning streak of inspiration struck. And the furthermost corner room became my universe.
Don’t get me wrong. I love solitude, nay I thrive on it. It is not unknown for creatures of my disposition to shut ourselves up in dingy rooms to introspect and absorb ourselves in vanity. But forced isolation? No, no… I considered it my duty to rebel. My rebellions had always been stupidly ill timed and this one was no exception. I morosely sat in my large single bed and stared through the mosquito mesh on the steady earth that was supposedly rotating and revolving continuously. The sun came up. It grew warmer. The horizon of dusty thorn bushes fluttered through the day. The sun went down. Night fell. The thorns continued their intermittent flutter. I was fed on weak gruel as the unchanging world stared back at me throwing in my face the proposition that the only constant is Change.
The universe didn’t have to expend much energies of Fate to cover me in boils. Crown to sole (and soul) was soon covered in tiny multiple dew-drops. If I were a flower in a misty valley I would have looked mesmerizing. Instead I was wrought with an intense desire to scratch and tear out every one of those bastards. They smiled back innocently. I tried counting them. I started from the top, but before I could finish with the head, I could feel a new one germinating in some forgotten corner and that fuddled my numbers. I washed myself in cold water, in hot water, creamed myself, covered myself in oil, flitted neem leaves on my naked skin; nothing worked. Finally I restricted my mad energies to my customary evening bath in lukewarm water. Dettol soap and Vaseline Creame became trusted accomplices. And I waited. I waited and watched the thorny bushes from morning to night. If I could, I would have shrunk into myself, lowered my heart-beat and metabolism and slept like the polar bear through my winter of discontent. We humans are not that lucky.
There were books all around – an interesting variety. Readers Digest, Mad Comics, Shakespeare, Paulo Cohelo, Dostyovesky, Dickens, The Guiness Book of World Records. They peered down on my from their high shelves, some condescending, others peering intelligently into far space. I cold shouldered them and continued my obsession with the barbed shrubbery. I started familiarsing myself with my boils and indulgently watched them grow and bloom. The pioneer on the left wrist had shriveled up in old age and I mourned the demise of close associations.
That is when the Tree appeared. Bang in the middle of the thorn fields. I had not seen it grow. Did somebody plant a full grown tree in the middle of the night? I had watched over my thorn fields night after day, over the course of the lifetime of many boils and had never seen this Tree. Was it a hallucination? Or had my eyes skipped over it and never seen it? Whatever be the story of the genesis of the Tree, it was there. It was tall; or maybe that was just a relative term, because all around it were stout bushes that did nothing to question its monopoly of height; and bare. It was still early February, so I could not blame old age for its nakedness. It was an ordinary, non-descript tree- neither old and knotted with stories of generations or young and eager and thirsting for life. Its ordinariness captivated me. It did not question its purpose in the grand scale of events prescribed of the Universe; or the lack of it. It stood tall, at once proud and humble in the middle of an unremarkable field of thorns, content in its nakedness. How was there such harmony in Nature? Why were we; though so much a part of Nature, yet so divorced from its fundamental essence of balance and concord?
As I watched, the Tree transformed itself into an unfinished apartment building. The main beams had been finished and the blocks of empty holes, the same concrete ash colour as the Tree, were placed row after row, column after column like some fantastic card trick. A pigeon flying around mistook the construction for my poor old tree and flew about looking for a suitable nesting corner. It found one easily enough, on the left flank, a sturdy corner well protected from the winds. The pigeon went about building its nest while the workers filled up some holes with bricks and the others with large glass window panes. The twigs were in place and the straw was going in when the painting was finished. The workers liked the pigeon, so they were careful with her. She grew to trust them. They dabbed a little yellow paint on the corner of her nest as a souvenir to remember them by, when they packed up and moved on to build taller and larger houses.
The apartments were all ready and the landscaping was in full earnest. The golf course was in place lined by gulmohars. The large ‘Tropical Paradise’ was filled in with desert palms, delicate foreigners and exotic natives. The pigeon looked on approvingly. The view had definitely improved. The thorny bushes were lost to view and like an oasis in the desert, Tropical Paradise bloomed. Prospective buyers started dropping by. The animal rights activist was the first one. The broker showed him around. He wrinkled his nose at the pigeon, sent the broker away for some details from the Building office on the ground floor and hurriedly relieved his bladder that had been troubling him awhile. Many more bikes and cars parked at the basement parking lot in the days and weeks to come but nobody came to disturb the pigeon. Then suddenly work started. The tiles went in, soft and creamy white, the doors and handles and other fittings were installed. The house was ready. The pigeon gurgled satisfactorily and promptly laid her eggs. The couple came in the evening. They were young, and terribly excited. The boy could hardly contain his pride. The girl was wide eyed in wonder. She loved every bit of it, but most of all the large French windows with the cozy window seat that opened out into the tiniest of balconies grilled in for safety. Spring had creeped in unnoticed and the world was in bloom. Lilies and magnolias mingled with button roses and gardenias. The jasmine bushes bowed under their white burden and even the pigeon was overcome with the terrible beauty of the moment. She sighed. The girl started in surprise. They stared at each other, the owner and the tenant. The girl’s face broke out into a grin, “Darling, look, there’s a pigeon here, and she’s even laid her eggs. Isn’t that wonderful?” the boy was more practical. “Oh, what a nuisance.” The girl wrinkled her nose at his total lack of romanticism. The soft evening light fell gracefully on her face and the boy forgot all about the pigeon. They held each other close in their eyes and drew nearer as if hypnotized. “Here?” she asked. “Is there any better way to make this home?” asked the boy as he quickly bolted the door. The girl giggled like a nervous teenager. They disappeared into the cool whiteness of the creamy tiles. Our camera moved tactfully away to two large velvety daisies nestling at each other’s cheeks.
There my Elysian vision vanished. I was left with a sea of thorny scrub, a dreary tree and an abundance of boils. I stared hard into the void willing the vision to continue. What happened next? What snake came to tempt my Eve in the Tropical Paradise? Did passion slowly trudge into domesticity? Or did the model-turned-actor neighbor prove too distracting? And what of the pigeon’s babies? Did they hatch and grow up to play with the rose buds and the jasmines or did they hang treacherously from a discarded nylon net? I variously questioned my boils, from the wise old wrinkled ones to the baby still flushed at birth. They were too busy multiplying and dying to answer me.
Night fell. A new day dawned. The sun rose. I pecked at my festering memory. I hated my prickle bush and the darling Tree. I drew the patterned curtains over them and searched the landscapes within. Finally, exhausted and empty handed, I let it slip into a long collection of unfinished sketches. I fondly go over them one by one. There is the ‘City of Dreams’. The richness of detail still overwhelms me. It is a large canvas, almost finished. I had created the city to destroy it, but as I filled out the tiny back alleys and the crowded market places with hope and love and pain and despair, I could no longer agree with its destiny of destruction. True, the city was seeped in sin, but there was also so much honesty and dignity among those bewildered strugglers. The final act of heavenly retribution will not be written. I move on. Large and small, sketches, outlines, watercolors, charcoals, oils, they have come back to haunt me with their incompleteness. There in a corner is the ‘Salvation of the Devil’. This one I had been loathe to abandon but eventually I left my little devil stranded at the gates of Salvation. Because my God couldn’t answer his one question – ‘if God is Love, then why is Love not enough? Why should there be pain and death?’ My heart wrings when I see the expectant hopeful little D, so ready and joyous, eternally waiting.
I go back to my boils and find company with Job. We sit together among the ashes scratching and agonizing. My skin has begun to clear. I will soon go away into the world to continue my meanderings. I have been oft pregnant but I pray that Life will grant me the kindness of giving birth.
I am the Writer. I would have been called Wanderer, Explorer, Revealer but by a colossal case of misfortune and misrepresentation, I am called Weary. Between what I would have been and what I should be, lies ‘I’ the Character. Since the Writer has been misnamed, I the Character remain unnamed. Therefore, instead of some meaningful, dark, brooding name, or a witty, satirical, half auto-biographical one or even a non-referential pretty poetic name you shall know me as ‘I’. How unimaginative, you might say; how ill-fated, I say and plead my case. The Writer is stubborn. To squash all further rebellion I am further made genderless. The Writer insists that I am that which is common to Man and Woman and that Gender is totally irrelevant to the Story. But, no Sex? How will the Reader identify himself or herself? Dissociate himself or herself from me? I hang my face in shame. The Writer claps in anticipation and proceeds eagerly.
I have been wandering the realms of reality and illusion in search of my destiny that has so far successfully eluded me. In tandem with my spiritual confusions, I have wandered the villages and the cities without paying much attention to the Ancient Glorious Past constantly being reinvented or the Global Super Power Status that is imminent. I passed by the unapologetic pre-occupation with Money and Power. It was on one such nomadic excursion, that I found myself in the neighborhood of my parents’ house. On a sudden whim, I decided to pay them a visit.
My mother was pleasantly surprised. This was the first time I was visiting the re-constructed house and she was anxious to show off. The house I had grown up in was unrecognizable. The walls I had eagerly marked in pencil to keep record of my growing elevation had made way for a larger drawing room. The pale yellow room whose paint I had irreversibly damaged by pasting over with Van Gogh and Monet prints cut from calendars and Readers Digest back covers had become a modern bathroom complete with gilded taps I couldn’t work. I settled myself in the farthest room in the back corner of the house on the first floor. The windows on one side opened out onto a mango tree in full bloom and on the other side to a wasteland that will soon be crowded with apartment flats and multiplexes. I kept myself away from the business of the house and was allowed to let myself be. I had earned my solitude.
I am the black sheep of the family, brilliant as a child; I had excelled in everything there was to do. It was commonly expected that I would join the Administrative Services or at the least become an eminent surgeon. Instead, I had studied the Arts, found formal education bankrupt and drifted through various jobs depending on fleeting inclinations and the lightness of my wallet. My siblings had worked harder at their destiny and had landed well paying foreign jobs. I was a calculation gone wrong that my parents had many a time attempted to set right, but could never find the precise detail that had floundered. I had become an embarrassment in family discussions that hovered around unintelligent investment patterns and had slowly distanced myself from family and school reunions. I was caught up in some unexplainable quest that sought a greater meaning and purpose than mere success. I wanted to learn the secrets of the incessant world within and the endless world without, its harmonies, its energies and its languages. I had been over ambitious. I set myself tasks I did not know how to solve. In the middle of this continual struggle with the soul, I attempted occasionally to write – to find some sense to my concentric journeys.
Now that I found myself in my new house, I let my agonizing narcissism rest and concentrated on eating well and sleeping long. My mother is an excellent cook as most mothers are and she enjoyed feeding her children. She conveniently forgot that we were no longer lanky teenagers growing at an alarming rate and the food we appreciated and partook of in such astounding quantities would only settle into fat and cholesterol.
It was at night after a particularly satisfying dinner that I noticed a small colorless bubble on my left wrist. It was pristine and perfectly round – almost like a dew drop. I was fascinated. I am obviously a very sensitive person and my skin takes after me. I am used to unexplained bouts of rashes in varying colors. But in the morning I woke up with a raging fever and multiplying dew-drops. They were everywhere, even on my scalp, hiding in all corners and appearing at the most inconvenient places. I called in reinforcement. My mother took one look at me and declared ‘Chicken Pox’. I looked at her with mounting distaste. She had the uncanny habit of being right in such unpleasant situations. I was immediately shepherded to the neighborhood clinic where the doctor confirmed my mothers diagnosis and hurriedly sent my off into forced isolation. I racked my brains trying to figure out where I could have picked up the infection from, but no lightning streak of inspiration struck. And the furthermost corner room became my universe.
Don’t get me wrong. I love solitude, nay I thrive on it. It is not unknown for creatures of my disposition to shut ourselves up in dingy rooms to introspect and absorb ourselves in vanity. But forced isolation? No, no… I considered it my duty to rebel. My rebellions had always been stupidly ill timed and this one was no exception. I morosely sat in my large single bed and stared through the mosquito mesh on the steady earth that was supposedly rotating and revolving continuously. The sun came up. It grew warmer. The horizon of dusty thorn bushes fluttered through the day. The sun went down. Night fell. The thorns continued their intermittent flutter. I was fed on weak gruel as the unchanging world stared back at me throwing in my face the proposition that the only constant is Change.
The universe didn’t have to expend much energies of Fate to cover me in boils. Crown to sole (and soul) was soon covered in tiny multiple dew-drops. If I were a flower in a misty valley I would have looked mesmerizing. Instead I was wrought with an intense desire to scratch and tear out every one of those bastards. They smiled back innocently. I tried counting them. I started from the top, but before I could finish with the head, I could feel a new one germinating in some forgotten corner and that fuddled my numbers. I washed myself in cold water, in hot water, creamed myself, covered myself in oil, flitted neem leaves on my naked skin; nothing worked. Finally I restricted my mad energies to my customary evening bath in lukewarm water. Dettol soap and Vaseline Creame became trusted accomplices. And I waited. I waited and watched the thorny bushes from morning to night. If I could, I would have shrunk into myself, lowered my heart-beat and metabolism and slept like the polar bear through my winter of discontent. We humans are not that lucky.
There were books all around – an interesting variety. Readers Digest, Mad Comics, Shakespeare, Paulo Cohelo, Dostyovesky, Dickens, The Guiness Book of World Records. They peered down on my from their high shelves, some condescending, others peering intelligently into far space. I cold shouldered them and continued my obsession with the barbed shrubbery. I started familiarsing myself with my boils and indulgently watched them grow and bloom. The pioneer on the left wrist had shriveled up in old age and I mourned the demise of close associations.
That is when the Tree appeared. Bang in the middle of the thorn fields. I had not seen it grow. Did somebody plant a full grown tree in the middle of the night? I had watched over my thorn fields night after day, over the course of the lifetime of many boils and had never seen this Tree. Was it a hallucination? Or had my eyes skipped over it and never seen it? Whatever be the story of the genesis of the Tree, it was there. It was tall; or maybe that was just a relative term, because all around it were stout bushes that did nothing to question its monopoly of height; and bare. It was still early February, so I could not blame old age for its nakedness. It was an ordinary, non-descript tree- neither old and knotted with stories of generations or young and eager and thirsting for life. Its ordinariness captivated me. It did not question its purpose in the grand scale of events prescribed of the Universe; or the lack of it. It stood tall, at once proud and humble in the middle of an unremarkable field of thorns, content in its nakedness. How was there such harmony in Nature? Why were we; though so much a part of Nature, yet so divorced from its fundamental essence of balance and concord?
As I watched, the Tree transformed itself into an unfinished apartment building. The main beams had been finished and the blocks of empty holes, the same concrete ash colour as the Tree, were placed row after row, column after column like some fantastic card trick. A pigeon flying around mistook the construction for my poor old tree and flew about looking for a suitable nesting corner. It found one easily enough, on the left flank, a sturdy corner well protected from the winds. The pigeon went about building its nest while the workers filled up some holes with bricks and the others with large glass window panes. The twigs were in place and the straw was going in when the painting was finished. The workers liked the pigeon, so they were careful with her. She grew to trust them. They dabbed a little yellow paint on the corner of her nest as a souvenir to remember them by, when they packed up and moved on to build taller and larger houses.
The apartments were all ready and the landscaping was in full earnest. The golf course was in place lined by gulmohars. The large ‘Tropical Paradise’ was filled in with desert palms, delicate foreigners and exotic natives. The pigeon looked on approvingly. The view had definitely improved. The thorny bushes were lost to view and like an oasis in the desert, Tropical Paradise bloomed. Prospective buyers started dropping by. The animal rights activist was the first one. The broker showed him around. He wrinkled his nose at the pigeon, sent the broker away for some details from the Building office on the ground floor and hurriedly relieved his bladder that had been troubling him awhile. Many more bikes and cars parked at the basement parking lot in the days and weeks to come but nobody came to disturb the pigeon. Then suddenly work started. The tiles went in, soft and creamy white, the doors and handles and other fittings were installed. The house was ready. The pigeon gurgled satisfactorily and promptly laid her eggs. The couple came in the evening. They were young, and terribly excited. The boy could hardly contain his pride. The girl was wide eyed in wonder. She loved every bit of it, but most of all the large French windows with the cozy window seat that opened out into the tiniest of balconies grilled in for safety. Spring had creeped in unnoticed and the world was in bloom. Lilies and magnolias mingled with button roses and gardenias. The jasmine bushes bowed under their white burden and even the pigeon was overcome with the terrible beauty of the moment. She sighed. The girl started in surprise. They stared at each other, the owner and the tenant. The girl’s face broke out into a grin, “Darling, look, there’s a pigeon here, and she’s even laid her eggs. Isn’t that wonderful?” the boy was more practical. “Oh, what a nuisance.” The girl wrinkled her nose at his total lack of romanticism. The soft evening light fell gracefully on her face and the boy forgot all about the pigeon. They held each other close in their eyes and drew nearer as if hypnotized. “Here?” she asked. “Is there any better way to make this home?” asked the boy as he quickly bolted the door. The girl giggled like a nervous teenager. They disappeared into the cool whiteness of the creamy tiles. Our camera moved tactfully away to two large velvety daisies nestling at each other’s cheeks.
There my Elysian vision vanished. I was left with a sea of thorny scrub, a dreary tree and an abundance of boils. I stared hard into the void willing the vision to continue. What happened next? What snake came to tempt my Eve in the Tropical Paradise? Did passion slowly trudge into domesticity? Or did the model-turned-actor neighbor prove too distracting? And what of the pigeon’s babies? Did they hatch and grow up to play with the rose buds and the jasmines or did they hang treacherously from a discarded nylon net? I variously questioned my boils, from the wise old wrinkled ones to the baby still flushed at birth. They were too busy multiplying and dying to answer me.
Night fell. A new day dawned. The sun rose. I pecked at my festering memory. I hated my prickle bush and the darling Tree. I drew the patterned curtains over them and searched the landscapes within. Finally, exhausted and empty handed, I let it slip into a long collection of unfinished sketches. I fondly go over them one by one. There is the ‘City of Dreams’. The richness of detail still overwhelms me. It is a large canvas, almost finished. I had created the city to destroy it, but as I filled out the tiny back alleys and the crowded market places with hope and love and pain and despair, I could no longer agree with its destiny of destruction. True, the city was seeped in sin, but there was also so much honesty and dignity among those bewildered strugglers. The final act of heavenly retribution will not be written. I move on. Large and small, sketches, outlines, watercolors, charcoals, oils, they have come back to haunt me with their incompleteness. There in a corner is the ‘Salvation of the Devil’. This one I had been loathe to abandon but eventually I left my little devil stranded at the gates of Salvation. Because my God couldn’t answer his one question – ‘if God is Love, then why is Love not enough? Why should there be pain and death?’ My heart wrings when I see the expectant hopeful little D, so ready and joyous, eternally waiting.
I go back to my boils and find company with Job. We sit together among the ashes scratching and agonizing. My skin has begun to clear. I will soon go away into the world to continue my meanderings. I have been oft pregnant but I pray that Life will grant me the kindness of giving birth.
Village of Women
By Leya Mathew
Extraordinary people like Jesus, Buddha and Gandhi can expel the evils accumulated over generations of oppression and injustice with the message of Love and Non-violence. This is however a story of commoners.
Somewhere along the line of control in Northern Kashmir, there once existed a village called Dard-nag (spring of sorrows). The hot springs there were famous for miraculous powers but even the healed complained that drinking of the waters gave them the unpleasant feeling of laughing when the heart was sad. During the years of militancy, Darg-nag became a preferred route to cross the border. Over a few years, militants, ex-militants and Army men killed all the men in the village. Now, Dard-nag exists as a mythical village inhabited only by women, lost somewhere among the dense forests of the upper mountains.
Far south, beyond the stubborn rocks of the Deccan, in the land of the Tamils there was a similar village. The tillers of the land heard of a magical city by the sea called Bombay where money could be made by hard work. Dreaming of buying land or setting up variety shops or tea stalls at the nearest town, the men migrated en-masse to the city of dreams. They found their way to other Tamils living in the slums of Dharavi and did what work was to be found. One by one, they went to the by-lanes of the red-district and came back infected with that dreaded disease (which as if to highlight its magnitude is always written in Capitals) AIDS. As their health bore down and they coughed up sputum scrawling with Tb virus, they went back to their village to be nursed to death. The women buried their dead one by one and took over their duties. They tilled the common land and the thorny bushes closed in on the dusty road and forgot their existence.
Years hence, as the children of the village grew up, the boys shriveled of polio or malnutrition and died away while the girls grew as thick as weeds. Only the older women were left with any memory of man.
It was at such a time that a young man in search of Truth decided to explore the arid bushes and dense forests to find out whether such a village was real.
It was in the golden light of the setting sun that the man set foot in the village center. The few girls wetting the dusty entrances stared at this strange creature that still looked so familiar. Suddenly a strange scream emerged from the bowels of the earth “it is a man”. The scream of the old woman brought out the village in full force and they took up the cry after her. “Kill him” “Cut him to pieces” “Castrate him” “Throw his innards out”. They rained down on him like a hailstorm.
The hands hardened by years of toil tore away the crisp white kurta into shreds. Blunt broken nails traced rivers of red. Throwing their scarves aside and hitching up their woolen phirans, the old and the young raped him repeatedly. The winter-sun set early ashamed at its witness and mist slowly settled on the gnarled remains left in the open.
When the sun rose again curious at the fate of the young man, the women were already busy with their chores. An old woman ready to end her years heard a garbled mumbling and went out to investigate. She saw the bleeding frozen young man and hobbled away to call for help. The women rushed out with hot water and clean scraps of cloth and gently carried him to the nearest house as if they had no memory of the previous evening.
They cleaned his wounds with a motherly outpouring of love and covered him with the softest cotton cloth. They moistened his lips with warm water and worried over him like their own child. The fever raged and the man sweated and muttered gibberish and the women anxiously kept watch. He slowly got better and 13 days later he was able to eat some rice gruel. The events of that fateful evening stayed secret with the sun for no one else seemed to remember anything.
The strength came back to his limbs and the women fussed over him like with a favourite grandchild. They brought him creamy milk and fresh lightly flavoured yogurt and roasted their best chickens for him.
Then one day, in the soft early moonlight of the mountains, the man spread out a prayer mat and called out the faithful to pray. The women heard the lilting voice raised in supplication and worship and got out of their patchwork quilts. Slowly their forgotten prayers came back to them. Heads covered, limbs bowed, they murmured the soothing verses in unison. After the prayers they bowed and kissed his hand reverentially. They took him to the springs to bless the water for them.
A new hut was constructed for the holy man and his fame spread far and wide. The thorny bushes shook the dust of their gnarled stumps and made way for the village road. People poured in from the towns and cities and new trades found root and flourished. Men who came to pray fell in love with the village girls, married them and produced children. Soon the mythical village was just another regular rural stop famed for its Guru.
Extraordinary people like Jesus, Buddha and Gandhi can expel the evils accumulated over generations of oppression and injustice with the message of Love and Non-violence. This is however a story of commoners.
Somewhere along the line of control in Northern Kashmir, there once existed a village called Dard-nag (spring of sorrows). The hot springs there were famous for miraculous powers but even the healed complained that drinking of the waters gave them the unpleasant feeling of laughing when the heart was sad. During the years of militancy, Darg-nag became a preferred route to cross the border. Over a few years, militants, ex-militants and Army men killed all the men in the village. Now, Dard-nag exists as a mythical village inhabited only by women, lost somewhere among the dense forests of the upper mountains.
Far south, beyond the stubborn rocks of the Deccan, in the land of the Tamils there was a similar village. The tillers of the land heard of a magical city by the sea called Bombay where money could be made by hard work. Dreaming of buying land or setting up variety shops or tea stalls at the nearest town, the men migrated en-masse to the city of dreams. They found their way to other Tamils living in the slums of Dharavi and did what work was to be found. One by one, they went to the by-lanes of the red-district and came back infected with that dreaded disease (which as if to highlight its magnitude is always written in Capitals) AIDS. As their health bore down and they coughed up sputum scrawling with Tb virus, they went back to their village to be nursed to death. The women buried their dead one by one and took over their duties. They tilled the common land and the thorny bushes closed in on the dusty road and forgot their existence.
Years hence, as the children of the village grew up, the boys shriveled of polio or malnutrition and died away while the girls grew as thick as weeds. Only the older women were left with any memory of man.
It was at such a time that a young man in search of Truth decided to explore the arid bushes and dense forests to find out whether such a village was real.
It was in the golden light of the setting sun that the man set foot in the village center. The few girls wetting the dusty entrances stared at this strange creature that still looked so familiar. Suddenly a strange scream emerged from the bowels of the earth “it is a man”. The scream of the old woman brought out the village in full force and they took up the cry after her. “Kill him” “Cut him to pieces” “Castrate him” “Throw his innards out”. They rained down on him like a hailstorm.
The hands hardened by years of toil tore away the crisp white kurta into shreds. Blunt broken nails traced rivers of red. Throwing their scarves aside and hitching up their woolen phirans, the old and the young raped him repeatedly. The winter-sun set early ashamed at its witness and mist slowly settled on the gnarled remains left in the open.
When the sun rose again curious at the fate of the young man, the women were already busy with their chores. An old woman ready to end her years heard a garbled mumbling and went out to investigate. She saw the bleeding frozen young man and hobbled away to call for help. The women rushed out with hot water and clean scraps of cloth and gently carried him to the nearest house as if they had no memory of the previous evening.
They cleaned his wounds with a motherly outpouring of love and covered him with the softest cotton cloth. They moistened his lips with warm water and worried over him like their own child. The fever raged and the man sweated and muttered gibberish and the women anxiously kept watch. He slowly got better and 13 days later he was able to eat some rice gruel. The events of that fateful evening stayed secret with the sun for no one else seemed to remember anything.
The strength came back to his limbs and the women fussed over him like with a favourite grandchild. They brought him creamy milk and fresh lightly flavoured yogurt and roasted their best chickens for him.
Then one day, in the soft early moonlight of the mountains, the man spread out a prayer mat and called out the faithful to pray. The women heard the lilting voice raised in supplication and worship and got out of their patchwork quilts. Slowly their forgotten prayers came back to them. Heads covered, limbs bowed, they murmured the soothing verses in unison. After the prayers they bowed and kissed his hand reverentially. They took him to the springs to bless the water for them.
A new hut was constructed for the holy man and his fame spread far and wide. The thorny bushes shook the dust of their gnarled stumps and made way for the village road. People poured in from the towns and cities and new trades found root and flourished. Men who came to pray fell in love with the village girls, married them and produced children. Soon the mythical village was just another regular rural stop famed for its Guru.
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