Category: Abracadabra

It arrived one morning, unannounced and not surprisingly, unheralded, on J’s upper lip. Something about it was distinctly disturbing. How can someone live through forty odd years with an upper lip as smooth as a baby’s bottom and then suddenly, this happens. It was perhaps then that the dreams started, J thought. Actually, they were more dream experiences, than dreams. He could tell a dream by the fact that it had soft edges and diffused lighting. Full time dream expert and part time professor Arnie Fell told him once. So, J started looking out for the soft edges and it was there. What a remarkable man, the professor was, he told himself. But then he started having dream experiences. In one of them he picked up his garbage and his jealousy of Morton and threw them into the bin. He didn’t feel like himself for a few days after that. Maybe the jealousy kept him going, but then for how long, so he did what he did.

In his next dream experience he saw and felt himself climbing the Eiffel Tower, except that it was called Pom Pom and there was a dollar store at the top where they sold kites and other such interesting stuff. J began enjoying his dream experiences so much that sometimes he took an extra day off just to have one of them. What was the point of going to work as a ticket checker on the train if you could be the train and roar through twisted tunnels carved out black rock. He could feel the wind whistle through him sounding a little like his uncle Puck when he fell asleep while knitting.

But that’s not how the mustache happened. It  was the result of  one of his dream experiences, because J clearly remembered the mustache coming to him for help. He had been waiting at a town square talking to a young policeman who told him that a revolution was on in the next street, so he better wait here and that was when the mustache appeared and asked for help. It was looking for a way to escape and J figured that the best way would be for him to wear it. There was a sense of swagger to wearing a mustache that had nowhere to go. Made him feel like a man. A hero.

And so it stayed with him. Every time he felt bored of its sameness he remember what the policeman had told him, ‘there’s a revolution in the next lane so don’t do anything foolish.’

Such profound words from one so young. Surely that should count for something.

There were drums playing  in my head on Thu. Usually it is the violin on Thursdays and the harmonica on Saturdays. I was a little surprised, maybe even perturbed, but the feeling didn’t stay for too long. Someone needed to pay heed to the music and since it was in my head, it had to be me.

The building supervisor had once complained about the guy who played the drums loudly on the fourth floor. “Not all of us enjoy drums,” he said to him through the din of the music. “You’ve got to stop.” Everything else that was implied just hung in the air between them and was of course completely ignored by the drummer boy. Since then the drums have gone off in my head.

As a child I was not considered to be very musically inclined, though it was not for lack of trying. I was sent to a teacher, in reality a bored housewife with middling music skills, who played an out of tune instrument. I came back from each lesson, even less musically inclined till one day it was decided that enough was enough. Since then I’ve dabbled in learning magic, trying to walk on stilts and ventriloquism . I just managed to get the hang of it when abruptly the drums and violin started playing in my head. I didn’t think much of it. I really enjoyed it, though to most people watching my head bob from side to side must’ve been disconcerting. I hope I didn’t look like a bobble head doll. I really hate them. They freak me out. They’re always looking at you from the corner of their big eyes and smirking from the corners of their over-bright smiles.

I realized that I was happy with the music in my head. Some days, I could turn the volume up if I wished to. I figured this the day I found M in bed with P. M and I had been engaged for two years and were on the cusp of marriage. A certain familiarity had crept into our relationship and I enjoyed that. It felt comfy…like old socks. But then M had to go and do this. And I had to find out. Why? Why couldn’t they have been more discreet? Then I would not have known and life could have gone on. Wonder why people set so much store on knowing everything.

Last night it was the piano. I woke up to it playing in my head. But when I was up I realized that it was coming from somewhere outside. I noticed the light under the door. It was to the room that I usually kept shut. Was the light dim or bright. And who could be playing the piano there? I walked up to the door and put up my hand to open it. And then it stopped…the piano. My hand dropped away. I turned to leave and it started. Yes, it definitely was not in my head. I would have to open the door to find out who was playing. But I didn’t want to. There was enough music in my head. I didn’t need to seek out new music. What if I came across M and P again in the room, like last time?

The king had decided to reveal to all that he was naked. Never before had the citizens encountered something so strange. The guy who sold brinjal and okra beside the cycle repair shop exclaimed about it. His vegetables seemed exhausted and defeated by the time the sun had climbed to its 12 PM position in the sky. Clearly, the number of customers would now dwindle so this was his time to discuss world affairs in a tone of perennial amazement. I often wondered if cynicism had passed him by completely. He always seemed astonished by the duplicity of the king and his courtiers.

The king’s revelation had paralyzed the will of the people. How could the country function if its king was naked? Wasn’t that a violation of natural laws? Was it even legal for the country to function like that? The lady who sold lipsticks in the mall, wondered aloud to her colleague, an anorexic girl in her late twenties.  The lady wore her profession proudly on her lips every day underscoring it repeatedly till they look obscenely scarlet. Today, the scarlet had worn thin but she let that slide as she looked  askance at the girl, waiting for a response. The girl just continued to arrange the racks of nail enamel mutely, as if the king’s matter was something too uninspiring to be discussed. Over across in the gentlemen’s underwear aisle, a stocky man threw lingering glances her way. The anorexic girl was aware of them, but she chose to ignore. His salary was a pittance. No point acknowledging the glances of someone who was at her pay scale.

Soon the hushed whispers of the cabinet gave way to mutiny. Mild at first and then increasingly vehement. The king needed to be replaced. The world was laughing at the nation with the king who was naked. History would judge them harshly. HISTORY!! It stopped everyone short. Of course, he needed to go. Nobody messes with history and gets away with it. The owner of the cycle shop didn’t care about history, he told the okra seller while sipping his fourth cup of tea. His children could deal with it. What good was history to him when he was dead. But yes, a naked king. That was definitely an inconvenience. Okay, okay…an embarrassment he said hastily, before the okra guy’s amazement magnified a hundred fold.

The next day, an elaborate announcement was made. The king was considering stepping down to make way for younger talent. Somebody who could bring the nation together. As the prime minister walked into the king’s chambers to get it signed by the king, he stopped short in surprise. The queen stood before him, her feline looks cast him a malevolent glance. The king is not naked, she said chewing on every word before spitting it his way. He’s wearing his top hat and fig leaf. Why would you want to tell the world a lie. He glanced over her demurely clad shoulder at the king who stood there wearing his usual idiot grin. The king nodded at him in glee and while the prime minister fumbled for words, the queen went up to him and hissed venomously, tell the world the king will stay until I say so.

As he turned around to leave he heard the queen say aloud, every legacy needs to be built carefully and we’ve just started building ours.

Milos was precisely made up of three emotions…21 grams of indifference that was weighted down by 19 grams of nonchalance and 5 grams of self love. The rest of him, like the red planet, is mostly unknown territory and no amount of trawling would yield any results, was the general consensus.

When I say precisely, I mean that the quantity of each emotion was very carefully dispensed, perhaps when he was pulled out of his mother’s womb kicking and screaming. And to his credit, Milos lived his entire life within the boundaries of these emotions. His indifference was more fine grained than lumpy and it had the tendency of seeping through other people’s emotions and caused them to choke on it while Milos, having doled it out generously went back to being himself.

The nonchalance, it was said, was of a thicker consistency. He sometimes tripped over it and one classmate from high school chemistry class swore that a piece of it caught fire when Milos was in the process of throwing it out to the teacher’s assistant. She said that the others stared in awe as it crackled and spluttered and then finally ended up as a dark spot on the table. The teacher never found out the truth about the spot.

When he turned 25, Milos decided to abandon his family and make a life for himself in another city. When asked how he would support himself, he said, he wasn’t planning on supporting himself. Instead, he would give someone else that opportunity. His response meant that he would be back home very soon. But clearly nobody had anticipated that five grams of self love could see him through life. Unchallenged.

He was known to display flashes of it every time he smelt a challenge in the air. It could be as simple as someone stealing his seat in the bus. Milos would gently sidle over and hover around in the person’s line of vision and proceed to gently move his bag from one shoulder to the other as if his shoulders were made of delicate porcelain that were not meant to shoulder the weight of anything heavier than a puff of frivolity. Most often, Milos managed to reach into the recesses of the person’s guilt and pull at a stray strand. It always worked.

When it came to paying for anything, he would look at the person with tears trembling at the precipice of his luminous eyes and say, ‘you’re a truly divine human being and I hate doing this to you, but I have some medical bills to take care of this month.’ By the time next month came around he had found someone who could be unraveled strand by strand.

For Milos, it was always, all about him. And just like that five grams went a long way.

The reality of more than one universe is something that has long intrigued philosophers and physicists. Could someone lead parallel lives in two separate universes? It was when I saw The Matrix with its bold concept of conscious shifting transformation that the penny dropped. Seemed to me like living in the parallel universe gave one extraordinary powers of both good and evil. What path we choose to walk on is entirely ours.

Is the reality that we inhabit the true reality? And if there is more than one reality should we strive for perfection in one and not in the other? For me, an alternate universe promises new beginnings. One where everything that is dark and ugly and unhappy in this universe stays behind and I emerge bright and new from a cocoon.

It is interesting that any discussion on a parallel universe is either scientific or philosophical. And there doesn’t seem to be any mention of God. So clearly, the theological aspect does not matter. Yet, the question always is – do right and wrong exist in a parallel universe? Although I must confess that my understanding of and interest in a parallel universe stems from The Matrix, there is a certain curiosity in trying to fathom the depths of the other universe/universes.

In a parallel universe could I choose to be anything my imagination can dream of? Are there ethics, code of conduct, law and order in the parallel universe or is it just a mirror of what’s happening here but without any shadows? So many things to consider. So much to hope for and also be afraid of. Not surprisingly it is more theological and philosophical than real.

 

I realized one windy morning while looking out of the balcony that the ‘something’ which whizzed past my face with an angry buzz was my fate. Thankfully it was a  good day and I could quickly reach out and grab it before it could fly away.

There’s nothing more annoying than having your fate fly in your face. Okay maybe there’s something else – having your fate fly away and as you reach for it what you grab by the ends of your fingers is a piece of bad luck that got dislodged. And if that’s all that you end up getting, boy, are you in for a bad summer.

That day when I could luckily grab the entire chunk of my fate I figured that I was in for a season of power and prestige just like the polished faced people on those TV shows which meander their way across a decade. Instead I found that having your fate tightly in your sweaty palm means nothing more significant than probably an abundance of loose change when you need it most. Or maybe some meaningful one liners in your fortune cookies.

The night of the fate catching I dreamed that I was by myself on a wind-kissed, sun drenched, white sand heaven with warm seawater bubbles tickling my toes. A happiness barometer dangling nearby showed an off the chart reading. Clearly, I was in heaven. But fate was not supposed to take you to heaven. It was supposed to be on your side helping you as you charted uncertain times, I thought. And as I was thinking this I opened my fist and let go of it.

I woke up with a start. My fingers were unclenched. Damn, what had I done? I had an opportunity to hold on to my fate and here I was, fingers unclenched. Thankfully I was not too superstitious, otherwise I would’ve spent the rest of my life bemoaning my lack of fate.

I have learnt that the maturity which comes with experience and wielding responsibilities increases the tensile strength of your emotions and your capacity to absorb stress and most importantly, deal with bullshit on a daily basis.

That when my eyes and lips don’t say the same thing I’m definitely lying.

That looks do matter and at the same time an old T-shirt and ragged shorts can make the person you really care about look like a million bucks.

That the heart sees and knows everything. The gut is highly over-rated.

That sympathy, kindness and patience come with an expiry date.

That innocence can linger around in your eyes and smile long after you think it has left you.

That you’re at peace when you accept yourself – warts and all…with a smile and a shrug.

That very few people really deserve a place in your life.

By the time I heard the story from P it had already curdled at the edges. The tiredness of it made it even more unappealing and insipid. But I was determined to laugh through it and enjoy it. Seemed very much in keeping with my sentiment of the day which closely resembled something I had read some months ago – if you live in the actual world you can’t have your own way. That about summed up my feelings when I heard P’s story, which like most of his other stories had the feeling that it was about to come apart at the seams. And that if he laughed hard and emphasized enough it could somehow be held together.

The evening was kinduv sortof gathering speed. T’s cackles lacerated the night air with their hard-edged desperation and C was just being herself, languid and bilious every time she imagined a slight. I nursed a tepid glass of wine, which in keeping with the general mood was less wine and more a statement.

‘Who makes a statement with a glass of cheap wine’, M remarked when I had described it all to her. She said it in her usual sweeping manner which brooked no second opinion. I had to agree. But that evening it did seem more like I was making a point.

By the time the evening was cruising along at a steady pace AR showed up and it was like somebody had slammed on the brakes. AR deliberately wore an air of intrigue. It always seemed like he was on the verge of divulging a secret and yet what he ended up saying was overwhelmingly ordinary. He was doing the same thing even now. He had walked through the doors staggering under the weight of his unsaid secret expecting everyone to wait with bated breath for what he had to say. Instead he found a roomful of people with other thoughts to explore and conversations to take forward. It was a moment that hit him hard and he chose to deal with it by walking up to the nearest person and saying out aloud, ‘what the hell is this’?

It was one of those moments that everyone remembers differently. I distinctly recollect that I had just scooped up some salsa with my tortilla chip, hand hovering near my open mouth while my ears took in the words. My brain had already absorbed the statement but had failed to pass it on to my hand. The tortilla chip found its way into my mouth. B told me, months later, that he found my nonchalance, stunning. To this day I’m not sure if it was meant to be a compliment. But then again, if it sounds like one and feels like one then it must be one. So I accept it the way it was, as a compliment.

The loud statement did nothing more than put a temporary brake on the overall momentum of the evening. AR was back to looking like he had to spill his guts while M walked up to him and scraped a seductive nail down his arm hoping that it would be the perfect catalyst. Was it effective? For that and more tune into this another time when I have more idle thoughts to share!

Shadows have always intrigued me. The ones that I encounter when I turn a corner are usually the friendliest, almost benign. The annoying ones are those that follow me around and slip away just when I turn my head. Occasionally, just to up the ante they leap out fully formed from my head ready to wrestle down other more productive thoughts so that I’m left wondering, what just happened? And then there are those that show up in the mirror. Turn around and they’re gone!

The ones that linger around are usually memories pretending to be shadows. Like my memories of my third grade teacher who used to mock and reprimand me so often that my feelings would curdle up inside me and then stay on as a sour taste in my mouth all day. To this day, the shadows that bother me the most are square and dark and of medium height.

My imaginary friend Vouz (I pronounce it  wooz), tells me that shadows are really us in a parallel universe. Since our conversations are usually one way I don’t know much about this idea, but the thought does indeed, sound very plausible. Since they’re made up of our thoughts and memories, what else could they be? Maybe in a parallel universe I continue to be tormented by a square and dark person or go on picnics with pleasant gargoyle like character. Ever since that thought has found acceptance within me I find shadows less bothersome….annoying yes, but nothing more.

But what really gets me and I just can’t seem to shake it off is that elusive thought that keeps gnawing away at the edge of my mind without revealing itself. I can’t swat it away and it just won’t let me hold it up to the light long enough for me to see what it is made up of. Memories? Disappointments? Unfulfilled dreams? Really…what is it and why won’t it let me see it properly? The day I grab it by the scruff of its neck and shake it hard will be a good day. Shadows are much easier to deal with, unlike pesky, malformed thoughts.

My luck has a tendency of sometimes outrunning me. When I speed up to catch it, destiny fails to keep up. It is really annoying, this constant slowing down and speeding up. Leaves me exhausted and completely messes up the overall equilibrium of things.  For example, the day I decided to go on a romantic date with Fey I had everything planned out. My luck was doing an even pace and it seemed things would be just fine. But then my destiny decided to take a breather and stop to smell the roses and Fey fell into a vat of wine and came out looking purple. We had gone grape crushing and the pips tickled his toes so much that he just fell over laughing.  Till date the sight of anything purple gives me the heebie-jeebies.

I have always favoured luck over destiny. That’s because with luck, the result is instantaneous and that gives me such a high. I hate to admit it but I’m one of those for whom instant gratification always scores. What can I say, I’m shallow. Destiny is such a slow starter,  takes years to warm up and that’s such a deal breaker. I mean why would it take seven years for me to get a promotion. Yo promotion gods and that dumb line on my palm which says a promotion is in the works…stuff it! Don’t need no promotion if it takes so long.

Looking back now I find that there are times when I should’ve caught luck by the scruff of its neck and forced it to listen to me. Maybe I would’ve got off the slow lane and moved into the faster lane of life if I had a bit of luck in the tailwind. But destiny interrupted the course of my thinking by forcing me to make ‘sensible’ decisions. But now that I’m older and okay with throwing caution to the winds, I’m ready to run at the speed of luck.  Did you hear a quiet giggle? That must be my destiny!