It Must Have Been Thus

She rinsed her mouth with his blood. The salty taste made up for all the bitterness she had kept hidden beneath her tongue all these years. She described his blood as the slumber in a cloudy afternoon. The siesta of a pavement dweller unknown to the conspiring rain.

One day, he had disappeared inside his own body. And blood had replaced his skin. She was the search squad. She walked into his blood. Searching him. She followed a corpuscle with a torchlight. Swam deeper into the red. And still, he was nowhere to be found.

After she had lived those three months thrice, he sprung out of her.

Distance: An Introduction

He found her in one of his own dreams, dreaming about him finding her, in that solitary, circular dream of hers.

Bias: An Introduction

A repetition of dreams. Uncircled thoughts. Unselected. Roamed about on her stage. The drama followed her instincts. A bunch of drowsy audiences. Invited by their fears of unrestrained light. An infection to their eye. Their only eye. Left. The other been washed away in their points of view. Bias.

The play continued, long after their only eye went to rest. The part they didn’t see was compensated for, in their dreams. Dreams that were repetition of each other. And therefore, alike.

Her acting was instincts. Missing. Next morning, from their interpretations. And interpretations said her play had a plot and a logical conclusion.

They never knew that the play went on forever. An infection that spread over to their lives.

Instinct had become their only eye.

The Implausible Stones

Each of his stones was impossibility. None of them had the property of visibility. They reflected no colors. Absorbing all. But you always knew that they were there. Some, because you could touch them. Some exuded the strange fragrance of a stone. While others created the dense, infinite silence that stones have always created – to make you listen.

She brought him a stone, one day, from the land of the free. It was sculptured on nothingness. Had various interpretations. Its only property was mood.

And then, she was gone.

After he had been sitting beside the pebble of moods for a long while, a realization slowly dawned upon him. The pebble of moods is the synthesis of every other stone in his room. A space where other stones are recreated. Because we cannot feel without our minds. Because sensations are also a form of interpretation.

Because impossibility is just another mood.

I Am

The eye is an abyss. Many who fell in it drowned forever. Many times when the eye blinked the world was drenched in darkness for a few fragments of a second. A black earth. It was an eye that held the world in it. Bees, people and civilizations all resided in it.

One day, tears interfered in the life of the eye. And the world residing inside started turning hazy. The people started fading. Civilizations disappeared. The world, like gypsies, moved elsewhere. Void took over. And like we all know now, in every void resides a flock of memories and a legend. And the legend told – the eye is an abyss. Many who fell in it drowned forever.

When the eye went to sleep that night, the mind awakened.

Writer’s Block: An Introduction

“A wonderful way to start would be a dream”

“How ’bout the feeling of being trapped?”

“In a dream?”

“Maybe”

“Sounds more like a writer’s block”

“That’s it, then. We’ll start with a dream in which the protagonist is trapped in a block meant for writers”

“And then, what happens?”

“The tale ends.”

A Clown’s Introduction to Alchemy

The dream stretched out of his forehead and wandered through the labyrinthine corridors of a day in his life. He became a reverie in there.

When he woke up, the next day, he was no more.

The Plague

She had purple eyes. There were certain colors that she couldn’t see and the world was a less congested place for her. She also had the powers of turning an object invisible for her eyes and thereby, eliminating the object. She had eliminated, for instance, pumpkins, crows, three whole men and a caterpillar.

One day, she met a sage who told her – “Growing up is adapting to the things we’d like to eliminate.”

She felt bad and decided she wouldn’t be eliminating things from then on. But suppressing your greatest powers is equivalent to holding within yourself a darkly cursed premonition. Soon she was on the verge of insanity.

At last, one day she murmured – “My powers don’t suit me. I could neither use them nor put them to rest. I’ll never be a simple girl. This world doesn’t suit me.”

After the world was eliminated, she started adjusting to the ensuing grey darkness.

Voyage: An Introduction

He had made a small hut beside the sea. On days of the tide, the sea would stretch to the place his home was. He had made two doors on the opposite sides of the wall – one from which the sea came in; the other, it went out. On these days he had plenty of sea creatures passing through his home. Some of these he really loved to watch whilst he sat on his bed – like the gray crabs, jellyfishes, fishermen and a few ships from the distant land. He had learnt quite a few languages from the foreigners on the different ships; found a few friends in the sailors who would pass in through his hut every now and then with their ships.

One day it started to rain and it didn’t stop. After a few days or perhaps, months, he found a huge ship coming in through his door.

“Which land are you coming from?” he asked them in different languages.

“Land?” they replied, surprised,  “There’s no land. The rain’s taken it all. We live in different ships. Each a country.”

So, the world started coming in through one of his door and going out of the other.

After he died, people claimed he was the greatest voyager of all times.

Victory, Reclaimed

Whether they spoke the truth no one could tell. Blindness covered their tongues. They were neither be found on this side of the red. Some claimed they had left. Others claimed they were still hiding in their basements. Still others claimed they had seen those melt like ice.

Their disappearance, the only certainty, revolved about their head. Drew crisscross lines on their feet. That’s where their skin started to crack. The crack took turns – up their stomach, in through their chests and reached their forehead. All at once, you could see the glowing lava called blood, under their skins. The infinite tears of the body. The final vacuum. The deconstruction of their last hopes.

Identities were nor to be found on this side of their skins.  

The Fading Dancer

Crippling on the recurring times, he left. Not aware of the song that she was playing. These days he had come to believe that there was nothing wrong with his leg. Must have been a growing tumor in his fading head that caused him to cripple.

“Crippling is nothing but a writer’s block meant to be faced by the dancers”, he told her.

She shan’t dance until his head burst. 

‘Memory’ by Borges

The windows were mirrors. When he stared out through them, he found his own room stretched at different angles outside. Unlike a mirror, however, he could step inside (which was also outside) through a window.

When he stepped out to one of these imaginary rooms stretched at different angles through the window (which was also a door, a mirror, a reflected door and a reflected mirror), he found that this room too had windows. As he stared outside (which was also inside), he found his own room stretched at different angles outside.

That’s when he realized that there was exactly one room. One circular room (which was also spherical, cubical and triangular) constructed such, that all windows would lead to itself.

He closed the windows; thereby eliminating the room forever.

The Break

Today as he took a wrong turn, he found himself walking right into his yesterday. Reliving a day you had just spent can be quite boring. Grudging, he decided that tomorrow he’d be taking the right turn. But when he woke up the next morning, it was still the continuation of yesterday. So he was unable to take the right turn because he was living in the past and the past is unchangeable.

Then, one day he heard an alarm clock somewhere and came up with a plan. He decided to set an alarm clock exactly one minute before the 24th hour from now, so that the next day the alarm clock would go off at the same hour, breaking the recurrence.

The next morning, just one minute to the 24th hour, he heard the alarm clock. He was jubilated. He suddenly came up with a plan. He decided to set an alarm clock exactly one minute before the 24th hour from now, so that the next day the alarm clock would go off at the same hour, breaking the recurrence.

Identity: An Introduction

She was playing with the mist. She made balls of smoke and rolled them into the denser mist. Then, she would go in looking for the ball. Each time when she came out with the ball she realized that it was not the ball she had rolled inside. And so, she understood that someone else was playing the same game from some other corner of the mist.

She decided to go looking for her playmates. She walked deeper into the mist and came out of some other corner. There was no one present but a few more balls of smoke waited for her. She kept down the ball she had in her hand and picked up another ball. Then, she looked around. Still there was no one to be found.

So, she turned around and started returning to the corner from where she had started. But when she had crossed the mist she found that she had come out of some other corner. And there were more balls over here.

She couldn’t decide which one to pick up.

Love: An Introduction

Her skin was aglow when she was excited. One evening, in her excitement she slit her skin somehow. Light particles poured all over the street. They gushed towards a direction the slope went.

People who slept in their bedrooms became conscious of this light. It was as if a million light bulbs rolled through the streets. They stepped out of their houses and danced in that light. Bathed in it. And they all gushed along with the light.

There was a blind man in the town, however, who unperturbed by the light went in the opposite direction, against the slope. He discovered the girl.

And as he waltzed with her in silence, he exclaimed – “I’ve seen many darknesses, none as colorful as yours.”

The Coming of Uncertainty

Uncertainty had never been talked about. And therefore, in time, it became a certainty that uncertainty would arrive, like the great depression, upon their town.

Still not talking about the uncertainty, the townsfolk decided to mend their own houses; to take safety measures; the apt precautions to eliminate uncertainty completely. When this completion was complete, each breathed a sigh of relief in their private bedrooms realizing that ‘their’ home, at least, was safe.

Slowly, as the news of the safety measures spread, each became further ascertained that uncertainty was imminent and that the neighbors knew. And as long as they’re all ascertained of this and do not discuss of uncertainty, they can keep uncertainty away.

Hence, they only thought of certainty. Since that was the only thing on their mind and talking about certainty, in some ways, was also talking about uncertainty, they were no longer certain on what topic they could talk with their neighbors.

Uncertainty remained never talked about in the town.

Schizophrenia: An Introduction

“”I was writing here” he said, pointing towards the torn journal “when I left.”

“And you were writing there” she said, pointing towards the torn journal “when you left.””

“And therefore, he actually went away from two places when he was writing in the torn journal?” the children asked their storyteller.

“They asked me the very question I had no answers to”, the storyteller wrote in his torn journal right at that instance.

Love Tales

1.

He was watching her breathe, when she stopped suddenly and turned towards him. “In this breath, I hold a thought” she said, “I’ll set it free once you can guess it.”

And still when he sits before the sea, watching lovers cuddling, he thinks of that breath of hers.

2.

As she has been going down the stairs she finds that feeling returning – of becoming lighter than the air above her. And then, the fear of rising up in through the block of air and reaching the floor she had started from; of finding the door, she had closed before she left, ajar; of finding him sleeping in the green light of the night bulb. That color hurt her eyes.

3.

He dreamt of waking up.

4.

When did you fall asleep on the sand? Did the last sun hurt your eyes? Like it had burned me? And the pages on which I wrote these love tales? Will the sea water heal your hurt or my love tales? Must I hold my breath in anticipation too? Hope? Do you know to dream? Am I the one who’s asleep in it?

5.

Her blood went nowhere. It lingered a few feet away from the steps. Steps on which no one shall step in a few more hours to come. And no one shall see her blood catch the strangest of hue. Perhaps, it was the green light in her last thought. A green thought in the last light filled up her eyes. Filled up her heart. Filled up her belly. Filled up her breasts. Her fingernails.

It’s hard to tell whether she had felt dizzy or drowsy when she decided to take the easy way down the stairs.

6.

In the crowd that had gathered on the shore to watch her beautiful corpse, there were children. They understood this to be a forbidden pleasure. They all stood in the warmth of her death. But for her, it was disturbing. The shame of being watched dead. The shame of it. She wanted to crumble into herself. But death, among other things, robs you of movement.

And if he were there, he surely would have covered her naked demise with himself.

7.

When was the last time you died? Was it down the stairs? Was it on the shore? Was it elsewhere? Can you tell me the events in the order of their occurrence? How many times did you die in there? In my love tales? Does it hurt anymore? Didn’t I restore your lost immunity? Didn’t I trap all your deaths in these folded pages that the sun burnt? And yet, now, without your deaths do I have you at all? Wasn’t your life the longest dying? Broken down to smaller grains of death that flew hither and thither in the wind that blew?

When was the last time you died? When was the last time the last time?

8.

He dreamt of waking up in a dream. There was dew all over. The dew that went nowhere but was everywhere. And in every dewdrop he found her trapped. He tried to catch a dewdrop to set her free. But the dewdrop gently slipped down his palm. And as it did, it slowly transformed to a waterfall of dewdrops, turning to a green stream gushing in full force. And in that stream he found her being carried away, drowning. Desperately trying to save her he jumped into the stream and found the water to be salty.

Once in the stream, he found that there was not one but a multitude of her. And that she wasn’t drowning in the stream at all, but into herself, over and over again.

9.

And then there was a mirror in her room. One of her images was struck in it. When he stepped in her room, in the soft haze of the blue streetlight pouring in, he saw that it sat in a corner of the reflected room. One of its feet stretched towards the light. Trying to hide from the light.

When he pointed his torch towards it, it tried to crumble into itself. It was always difficult for the poor thing trying to look at the man behind the source of light. She wanted to run away from this playful rape by an unknown light. But a reflected world stretches only as far as the mirror-eyes wandered.

Slowly, the torchlight mixed with the blue light, creating the green hue. And an old, rusty feeling of discomfort returned. Somehow, she preferred this feeling of discomfort. Perhaps, it was acquaintance. Maybe, death again.

10.

When she stepped out on the road, in ignorance of a death she had descended from, she walked gracefully.

He’d be waiting at the place where the road bends.

11.

Am I just playing with you as if you stood in my palms? Is your imaginative future a piece of marble for me? Shall I carve it the way I wish? And again? And again? Don’t I know you’d never be breathing life into none of my sculptures? But? At the same time, don’t I sprinkle you in the eyes of an onlooker? Will you not live in there? Make a home? Another room? With a mirror?

Will I close my palm when I find the answers?

12.

There was also a mother, lost in one of these tales. She had abandoned the mirror. And therefore, I guess, the author abandoned her too. But there she is, clinging onto the space above her head. Frightened it’d disappear soon, one of these days. As would her memories. And her hands.

“She danced so well”, she tells the boy “she danced.”

13.

He dreamt of waking up in a dream. They sat on a shore when she pointed with her fingers towards something that moved in the grass. It was a beautiful insect. She took it on her palm. It was then that he realized that there were more of the insects all over the place. And they crawled all over her body.

She whispered in his ear – “They’re eating through me.”

That’s when he noticed, lots of her was missing. And bleeding. Like the second last finger of her left hand. The part of her forehead where the sweet wrinkle appeared when she was in doubt. Her right foot. Bits and parts of her lips. The left corner of her last thoughts.

And yet she went on playing with the insects. She went on.

14.

The white cloth.

15.

She never understood what darkness meant. A creature of light, she loved wearing white. He called her Sanctity. When he held her hand, his hands would invariably seem dirty.

Once upon a time, there was to be a year that’d teach her the inviolability of darkness. That’d be the year of him. And violins. She’d learn a movement guided by instincts. The completed chapter of dance. Of waltzing with the winds. Of the less enchanted children.

There was to be a year.

17.

Dear girl,

I lost a very important chapter of our tale. It was almost like losing the sweetest year of all lives. And long after I’ve closed this tale with this letter, a reader will stumble onto a chapter lying somewhere on the sands. The staircase. The place where the road bends. In a dream. Trapped in a palm.

Maybe, the mirror was just another river in which you drowned amidst yourselves. Maybe, your mother caught a glimpse of you drowning in the mirror. Maybe, she’ll keep herself in the space above her head. Maybe, I’ll keep the sea. Maybe, you’ll know your last thought. Maybe, we’ll all become insects and eat through each other.

Dear girl, will a publisher buy you?

Kisses.
Him.

Death: An Introduction

He dismissed her memories as dark thoughts because she disappeared with the night.

He dismissed himself too, as dark thoughts because he disappeared within her.

Listen – 3

Dear girl,

When I opened the window yesterday, I found a breeze blowing out of my room. She said she was trapped there forever. Did you ever notice her?

I can, somehow, remember a day when I had been writing something on one of my dusty pages, when all of a sudden it began to flutter wildly. And I had thought it wanted to fly down to the bed where you slept.

Yesterday, when the breeze went out, the night came in through the same window. This time when I’d write, I’ll create invisibility.

You’d have more room to hide.

Kisses
Him.