Geppetto

I don't know how I'd define freedom. It's as exasperating and frustrating as trying to describe and comprehend a color you've never seen. I only have a tiny sliver of an idea of what freedom must be like.  I might not have had that to hold on to, either, if it wasn't for him.

I was three when I saw them place burning logs of wood over my father. He was sleeping peacefully, in the open, in the chilly air. I recall inhaling sharply. He'll catch a cold. But the fire kept him warm. And engulfed him.

Two years later, he came along. For the first time since my father's death, I saw my mother laugh as freely as she did. The spark came back in her eyes. She started believing in happiness, in life, again. 
The house seemed to light up when he was around. The tiles shimmered, the flames flickered and even the clocks plastered a plastic grin. His shoulders became our mode of transport and his lollipops our reward. I always bullied him, pulling his hair and giving him directions. Little did I know, that's exactly what he, was giving us.

Woodcraft. That was the magic he enchanted me with. He had a small workshop in the garden of his palatial mansion. My human senses were perhaps inadequate to completely take in the aura of magnificence around its interior. The walls were carved with fairytales. I saw trolls, bridges and I saw goblins. Mischevious pixies with pointed wings, rainbows with pots of gold. I saw giants and ogres, villages and cities devoured. I saw the smug pied piper of Hamlyn, leading the plague of rats to their musical doom. 
And I saw fire. Indefinite shape. Undefined beauty.

His nimble fingers moved all over the wood, and he'd nonchalantly sit beside me on one knee, talking to me, while transforming that muddy stump into a gift for my birthday. I closed my hand over a miniature sculpture of a funny looking boy with a long nose. Pinocchio, from my favourite story. I looked up to the man, whose crinkly eyes stared back at me with good humor and fatherly love. I scrunched up my nose. "I still don't like you. You're not dad." The sawdust dancing around him froze in the air. The splinters embedded in his fingers suddenly started hurting. He simply smiled and let my comment pass.

The day he set my brother and I in the hall of his house. I ran squealing, my hair splayed out like a wildly flapping flag, senses clouded with the unbelievable liberty of losing control and ignoring rules and ettiquette. That's probably how I'll define freedom. With the sound of my quickenning thud of footsteps, flushed face, and erratic heartbeat.

Time flies. Two years became twenty. I look back to the lost man sitting all alone on that chair, gazing out the window with a dreamy smile. They call him a madman. Some thank the gods he's senile. They see him as senseless and useless. But each time I look at him, I see the man who loved me as his own when he was under no obligation to.

I gently wipe the dribble of boiled apples from his chin and laugh lightly. "I still don't love you, old man."
He reached out and playfully rested his finger on my nose.

Even when his nose didn't grow long, Geppetto could always tell when his Pinocchio was lying. 

Selling Souls.

You've looked inside you and discovered so much. Your inner demons, your fatal flaws, your dreams and the people you dream of.
Have you ever looked inside yourself and tried to find your song?
Push yourself deep inside and run your fingers along the contours of your soul. Do the contortions make you cringe? Or are they a subject of unparalleled beauty? The china doll of your admiration, despite all the tiny cracks?

In a few seconds, a beautiful wail will fill the hollow valves of your heart. There'll be a calming pleasure in your palpitations, your rapidly trickling perspiration. The nerves of your mind give in to the seductions of your psyche. Tell me when we meet, how does it feel to rendered sweetly helpless by the inhuman strength of this philtre?

The power of a song. A simple rhythm. Taps of your fingertips, lashes in the wind. Bubbling laughter to a lulling lullaby. A wave of crazy simplicity that strikes your being and infiltrates your persona, viral, a part of you, now seared in. Have you ever longed for a person to share your innermost secrets, your conundrums?  Has your shattered trust ever pulled you back? Tell me how beautiful it is when it enters, unstoppable, into everything you've protected from the stinging judgements.

What do you picture your song as? A cruel puppeteer who drives you out of your comfort and salvation, or the smiling angel who gets you by the horrifying day and its reality?

Is there some comfort, in this helplessness?
Is there some solace in surrender?
Is there some shelter, in being utterly, completely
Sold?

To Tamara.

Dear Tamara,
Do you remember that wooden bench we built together? You may not have done the carpentry, but your sunny smile and glistening eyes were what kept me going in the blazing heat. It was on this very bench you said "Dad" the very first time. Your very first word. I was the proudest man in the word and you made me cry, Tamara. In that moment, when I swept you off your feet and twirled, with you squealing in my arms, I knew. That you would be the most challenging, yet the sweetest form of responsibility thrown my way.

Do you remember when I taught you how to read? We went to the book store to pick your first book. Daddy's girl as you always were, you picked a flashy ninja comic. When we used to read, I used to deliberately skip some portions and get to the dialogues containing the word "shuriken". Maybe it was the way it sounded, but it always made you laugh with amusement, and you'd clap those tiny, chubby hands of yours. I used to watch you and stroke your curly hair in wonder, because gems like you come along only once in a generation.

That frightening day when I dropped you off to school for the first time. You stood at the gates half an hour early, with the best packet of crayons and sharpest of pencils. I'm sorry for taking so long to oil and braid your hair. My hands were trembling with the apprehension of leaving you alone for the first time. I feared you were too gentle, too delicate a flower to be torn apart by the world just yet. 

You were always a rebellious teenager. I never told you, but I'll shamefully admit, that there was once a time when I sat all alone on the couch and cried. I thought I was no longer your hero. That you no longer loved me, and now, I was not the only family you had. All I wanted was to guide you. It killed me,all those times I knew when you lied to me. Your eyes went all over the place except on mine, or you'd scratch your cheek all the time and stammer. I let you go anyway. I don't apologize for keeping a GPS check on you, or stalking your friends on Instagram to find out where you were, though.

The day you got married? You looked exactly like your mother from the other side of the aisle. I know she'd be watching from the heavens and smiling down at you. I know she wanted to be there, by my side, when I broke down as you left the nest. I closed my eyes and asked her if I had done a good job of bringing you up, without her. When I opened my eyes, I saw you, glowing, with a wide smile on your face, so sure of yourself as you said your vows, and I knew my answer was a yes. 

We've been through so much, Tamara. Now, you no longer laugh at "shuriken", as they're always hurled at you in the form of complications. I'm amazed when you face them bravely, unlike most people, who choose to dodge them. I'm sorry I'm too weak to protect you from all the shuriken now. I'm sorry for hurling one at you at times. 

Now that these are my last hours, and you're stuck in the snow,
 I'll have to do without looking at your beautiful face for the last time, simply remembering your childhood, Team You And Me.
But I can never leave without telling my partner in crime not only how much she means to me, but how she was the only reason I went on living, after I saw your mother's coffin being lowered into the grave on that cold winter morning.

I just want you to know that if you have a child who takes after you in personality or features, you need not repent or regret. You're perfect, and you can overlook the minor scratches on your surface, just like the red bench. A part of me will always be in that bench and in your heart, if you ever need me.

I love you. I pray, that wherever you go, people know that you have the one of the purest of hearts. 
Goodbye.
Dad.

Vicissitude.

Because as one darting star crossed another, when the Sky bent down to kiss the Earth, when strands of my hair felt lost interwoven in the dewy grass, A single thought stood out boldly from the rushing train in my mind.

I've always wondered how I want to die.

When I was young, I thought my departure should be all grand and heroic, like a legend should die. Probably a broken neck by falling off from Everest, or a leap from the highest floor of the highest tower. To approach Death with the only moment I'd lived.
But humans are born with these invisible feelers called bonds. You be mean, rude, inconsiderate but people don't stop loving you. That's not even the problem; you never stop loving them. Merely thinking if them as they saw my mangled body with my smirking face was enough to dispel the idea.

Organ donation seemed noble. Donate yourself into saving some other person, or finding some cure when you're old and useless and the only thing remotely healthy about you are your organs.

My friends were worried. What kind of person, lies awake past midnight and wonders about death and dying? Lectures of Viva la Vida. Joie de vivre.

Death has always fascinated me because despite it's visceral appeal and stark, garish reality, it's perhaps the only thing you can be certain about in life. That a time will come when you'll die, and thanks to that cloak of unpredictability your destiny is so fond of adorning, you'd be surprised how willingly you'd let your soul cling to the sole fragment of certainty you'll find.

Everything was in perfect sync that night, just a few hours before the crack of dawn, the song of the crickets synonymous to the cadences of Dark's symphony.  The moon, ethereal, shone omnisciently, reflecting off the wet drops of dew clung to my legs. I cocked my head sideways, my eyes shut, as my ears grasped the familiar notes of a traveller's folk song from the nearby tavern. 

Just sixty minutes ago, I was kneeling in front of a chapel, asking the Mother for forgiveness.
Just a few hours ago, I had killed a man in his Death.
And the disturbing part was, it hadn't appeased my sadistic urges.

A tattered bag on my shoulder, panting hard, I recall my feet slipping off the door of that moving train I was trying to board. A sharp stinging pain in my wrist, grimacing, as a crowd gathered around me, hushed notes of repulsive pity.
I recall how they backed away, when they saw my clothes, soiled with the dirt of fortune's cruel jokes. Lost the attire, labelled a tram.

The sharp, raised rocks of that horrible airport road pierced my bare sole, each stab of pain causing my eyes to flair with determination and tolerance. I took some time to admire the streams of vivid color streaming down my skin when I finally collapsed.

But, like all individuals with severe stubbornness issues, I stood up. I will go to meet him. In his final hours.

The next train wasn't due until evening, and the hunger, desperate as well as a tad carnal, was being too hard on my attempted renunciation. I begged for a burnt cinnamon bun, the crust of a fungus bread maybe. But humanity doesn't harbour hope any more; just mirages of it.

I sat in the train as soon as it arrived, the sole passenger in my carriage. A couple of people entered, looked at me curiously and walked out hurriedly, as if I was a scalding liquid burning into their pretentious  image. Solitude is bliss anyway.

I looked outside the window to entertain myself with the pleasures of a racing view; It's not just time. Nobody, waits for anyone. 
**********

<To be continued>

Virtuoso 2.

She crashed to the floor, clutching her foot, with her head down, as she silently wept.
The boy, shaken from his daze, anxiously comes up and sits beside her. He cranes his beautiful head sideways to examine and slowly runs his finger over the mehendi covered sole. She screams in pain, and then muffles it into a whimper. A silent murmur passes between both, and the boy stood up and took his place again. 

The girl unties one bow from her head and ties her bleeding foot with it. Then dusting her frock, she stands up and takes the same, stiff position with a slight grimace. The tune began to flow again, and the dance with the seraphic dance began again. 
The boy stood up slowly and picked up a small box lying beside him. If you looked carefully enough, you'd see tiny, peculiar little cuts and perforations on it. Not skipping a beat, he used his other hand to gently tap the box.

The taps grew more and more violent with each twirl of the girl. It's as if Horatio knew every move, soul of his lady Hamlet. At one point of time, the legs elongated and her hair grew longer, her skin grew fairer, and in the light of this mirage, I saw the perfect image of my graceful mother, dancing passionately but with excitement, as if she knew every secret of the set floors. 

He looked upwards and smiled with crazed euphoria as the glissando begun with the next beat.

The girl was muttering something with a calm expression on her face. Her feet grew violent, her movements grew cautious and intricate. Lost in her own rhythm, she giggled with delight. Fear passed like a shadowy streak on the boy's face, but he smiled gently as well. She spun around once and sat down in one flaccid movement. "Wasn't that fun, now? The pain made it all the more worthwhile."

The boy handed her something out of a packet, a biscuit. Crumbs fell on the stage. Good. I'd need convincing proof of the angelic visions I'd just seen. But the boy carefully brushed them away.  So lost was I in my daze, I didn't hear the ominous thud,  the children did though.

Trepidation hung in the air. In one quick stride, the boy had picked all his makeshift instruments. They raced towards the back door and halted. My eyes widened. I had shut it on my way in. The kids banged against it in surprise. They hastily tried to get it open.

"I finally got you. This is where you've been coming every night."

A man stepped into view. He would have been good looking, but constant wear, drink and frustration gave way to crease lines on his face. His eyes were red. He had an urumi in his hand.

The children had gone pale. With an expression of pure hatred and anger, he pulled them roughly off the stage. Tears ran down their face as they looked at the repugnant man, then at each other. 

Exiting through the front door must've been a scuffle. I heard shrieks. Helplessly, all I could do was stare. It would simply take one simple flick of that urumi to cut my neck into half. He, on the other hand, may not kill the children for reasons.

Shivering, I made my way back home and lay awake for a long time. The night had surely been eventful, and I was afraid I'd wake up and think it was all a dream. I stayed home for a day. 

Two days later when I made my way to the set,  I got news that there had been no break ins the previous night, but one, the night before that. I was congratulated, since I had gone to investigate. They assumed I had scared the trespassers away.

I traced my steps, hoping to find any sign of the happenings of that night. I made my way to the back door. 
Stuck on a single, rusted nail, peeking out from the hinge, was a torn red ribbon, stained darkly with blood. 

Virtuoso.

The prospect of checking on that movie set at night made me feel uneasy. The winds blew unusually quietly, tinting the dark night with the colors of eventfulness and apprehension. 

I loved the set. Perhaps it's the mere fact that it's unnatural, artificial and staged. Away from reality. How the rain, an involuntary force of nature that Indra controls with great difficulty, falls and stops with the simple click of a finger.  How anyone, can be in the immediate limelight. The way they replicate rarities like the first autumn shower or the torrent of snowflakes. Perhaps it's how you're the one who's done it all, and you still get a kick out of seeing it in action every time. 

I've been behind the lens for as long as I can remember. A pair of soft, fair hands with nimble fingers held me and brought me here, cooing a dulcet lullaby as the bright lights gave my newly opened eyes, the spark. Oh, the spark. 

I used to simply sit there, occasionally causing havoc and throwing tantrums as my mother, graceful and agile, magically twirled her waist and twisted her feet. The crease lines near her eyes as she threw me a furtive wink and a smile, as if aware of the enchantment I had lost myself into. When she passed away, however, I became no Madhubala - I chose to build Madhubalas. 

My car joined the fleet of countless others in the parking lot, and I nervously felt for the set keys in my pocket. The mystery of the countless break ins and strange rumours would now be resolved forever. 

My heart stopped and lurched when I reached the steps. The back door was ajar.
 Armed with nothing but a stick, I put my palm on the yoke of my dress, feeling my heartbeat accelerating. I gently peered to find two figures huddled on the stage, and as one cautiously backed away into the wings, I prepared myself for the capturing of the oblivious other.....
The limelight fell on the red carpeted stage. Amazed, I backed away. How on Earth did they manage to hack into the set controls?

The figure stepped in, and I froze. 

It was a tiny girl, with red ribbons and a brown velvet frock. Her skin was patchy and she was missing two fingers on her severely scratched arms, but her eyes had the same excited spark I once had, and lost as I learnt life was nothing to be happy about.

She stretched her body upwards, shut her eyes and pursed her lips as if Antoinette had tasted a raw cake, and said "Horatio, may the music begin!" 

A squeal came from the wings as a boy emerged, leaping. The girl gave him a scolding look, as if furious at his rashness. The boy retreated with a crestfallen face, and came back with a plastic toy piano, which you could probably buy for twenty bucks at the local store. He fondly stroked his fingers along the keys, as if a priceless instrument. Even the girl shot it an affectionate look. Then resuming her pose, she flicked her fingers. "Begin".

Soft, mellifluous notes began to flow from the wings, incapable of being produced from Satan's harp. The boy sat, as parts of the limelight illuminated his face and reflected off his shiny hair and lashes, colouring them golden as the specks of dust around him. As if an angel himself, sent by the Lord, to shame all the mortals who held instruments and tried to mimic him. 

My eyes fell on the girl next. Her expression had considerably softened into one of pure love and passion.  She traced patterns in the air, as if pantomiming the composition of the tunes, and her feet began to race and tap. 

Leaping high in the air, she came back to the stage in a graceful twirl of cheap, brown velvet, clicking her fingers and clashing her toes. Her closed eyes momentarily released a tear drop, as her sole bled from a rusted iron nail she'd unknowingly stepped on. 
 (To be continued) 

The Goddess And That Unfinished Bucket List.

Life is a long, long path, and there are a small number of us who actually plan it out like a strategic map. You know, with checkpoints and signboards and stress relieving techniques, yoga and hopeless idols like Baba Ramdev for the sake of appearing literate and clued-in.  Time is made up of threads which continuously switch around.

When asked to choose certain places I'd like to visit before I die, after being a freckle of fairy dust in Neverland, I chose to be a silverfish on the fabric of the space time continuum. It would be quite an adventure to mess around, trying to annoy all those busy, moving threads, causing the accidental death of a Mandela or the extremely unfortunate birth of an Indian politician. 

All the strategies would be rendered pretty much, sorry to say, pointless. However, I'm a sceptic as well. Of sorts. I do believe in checkpoints. 

I had the fortune of visiting my native paternal village. Free from duties and responsibilities or anything for that matter that weighed you down. Taunting goats with extra food became a favourite pastime. The rest would be spent making a bucket list, lazing in some hut on the fields. 


A bucket list is simply a list of all the things you want to do at least once before you die. Most of the stuff on mine is pretty much impossible.There is no way you would be kind enough to take me to the Comic Con.


Would you?
I'd be...good company.
I swear. I'll try to be polite as well.
No?

It's okay, I don't care anyway.      <Goes to a desolate corner and                                                             sounds like Himesh Reshamiya                                                             attempting a rock song>

Highly overdosed on caffeine, I lay amidst the very mustard field where Veer Zaara was shot. Since I obviously had no Veer, I simply let my mind wander. It evolved from the extremely ugly scarf in my cupboard I should throw away to whether or not Elysium is the best place after Death. Something tells me Cerberus might be cordial to fetching women.
Night used to pass making up constellations and longing for a friend who'd make your good side twinkle and shine as bright as the stars. Occasionally about debating about the existence of God. 
I remember one of my cousins bending down and whispering in the midst of a philosophical conversation, as if he was stating something composed of sheer hypocrisy, " I believe there is no God".

I gazed at him in utter, shell-shocked horror.

Of course there is no God!
The kind of God most people believe in? Wanting offerings of milk and money and young kids? Simply does not exist. 

What exactly is religion? It is a set of guidelines people follow in order to become better people. Humans are absolutely incapable of deciding what is right and what is wrong for them, so even their twenty first century selves allow themselves to be dictated blindly by scriptures written centuries ago. Why? Because those scriptures illustrate the paradigm of an ideal and right lifestyle. Because humans could never figure out not to kill one another or over intoxicate themselves.

Some people realized this and exploited it. Now the very same thing used for bringing about peace, became a source of sheer violence. Communal riots.

 I'm not an atheist because I believe in many of the selective good things religion offers, ones which don't defy all frontiers of logic. Many claim to be atheists because they think it's cool. I'm not an atheist; I like thinking of myself as secular. 

If pretending to acknowledge the presence of a higher, supreme being brings peace and a sense of reliance to people in times of mortal peril, then God should continue to be viewed as simply a highly controversial subject and not as a force of irrationality. 

People are known to be hands of God. God however, is a very busy man and cannot hear the quibbles of more than seven billion people. So sometimes thousands misread his instructions. 

They make idols. Loads of them. Worship them for a week. Then rip them bare of clothes and ornaments and leave them naked on the streets or to pollute a healthy river, which by the way is also, a resource of God.
Saving a life, is the work of God. Helping a hungry child, assisting the impaired. This, is the work of God.

He  doesn't want anyone killing. He definitely doesn't want a starving kid to stare at a lavish Puja feast held in his name. 

I sometimes wish a real human could be as honoured and loved as a Durga idol and then simply thrown away like that. Then I realized, it happens every day. 

"Slowly, then all at once"
   
My pen scraped the now worn out page of my bucket list a million times to write that. Because it would be what real pain would feel like. But I couldn't muster up enough courage. No one can, neither can they prepare for it. I doubt that even after centuries of being treated as such, even the Goddess ever comes to Earth knowing and prepared. Or perhaps the human love they give her out of selfish desire makes her momentarily forget it till the time actually comes.

The pen beside me, I look at the ugly, unfinished sentence. Striking it would make it hard to read, and I wanted to remember this unfinished entry as vividly as possible. 

And just like every parent after the kid's all grown up with its own problems to solve, she's forgotten and abandoned to rot. Wondering where all the love went. Thinking about the sweet kids that played on Earth's green fields ages ago. About her kids, who simply loved, cared and helped because it was worthwhile and made them happy. 

Thinking till the mud dissolves in the water, till she retreats back to the Heavens, disgraced, but with a smile on her face.

And true courage wasn't just defined by slaying Mahishasur any more; it was defined by coming  again  every year.