دستانے عجیب (Dastaan-e-Ajeeb)

The evening sun, glowing like an edible disc of flaring yellow low in the horizon, shimmers in the green water. A bridge of white on which I stand, and another winking up from the lake. Waves lap up the rickety white wooden pillars slant into submission, supporting the bridge, uncomplaining in their misery.

The bridge creaks under my footsteps, like olden generations groaning under the apathy of the present.

A solitary drop falls on my shoulders, quickly dissolving itself into the fabric, leaving but a grey souvenir of remembrance behind.

Rainclouds loom from the east, advancing like godmen dancing to chase the sun down. And meekly, silently the sun retreats down its melancholic western journey. And the battlefield abdicated, the evening takes a turn for the funereal.

As menacing grey vanquishes melancholy yellow, a chill sets in, like so many Dementors round the corner. Pine trees bow their heads down pensively like angels suddenly reminded of past misdeeds. The cold wind withers their barks and a fall of leaves fleetingly flatters to occur.

And then the Tandava begins. The hail first hits the road, marking out the curbs and sloping down the verge. Then the calm of the waters is broken by rude pellets of icy water and hail.

Standing on the opposite bank, I see the megalophobia-inducing wall advance towards me like Shiva himself dancing his way across his worlds in a mesh of creation and destruction.

And with a blast of numbing authority, He dances past me to the rhythm of the clouds, to the rain making love with the lake, to the trees weeping in shameful nostalgia, and to the grim chill in the air.

The Forbidden Seraglio

The dull sound of thunder far away suddenly rang out, disturbing yet again the uneasy quiet. The dingy seraglio in the basement suddenly lit up in frightening brilliance. Cobwebbed corners of walls; an ancient fan whirring noisily, emanating dust more than air; wooden boxes piled up one on top of another, untidily. A rat scurries on top of a box, nibbling rat-like at a tiny hole his forefathers had chewed into the tough wood and left behind for him to carry on widening. Layers of dust coat what had once been a floor of concrete, now just a beach of dust. A spider spins his yarn thicker and thicker onto the cracked yet solid walls. And then the flash of lightning. The skies conspire to reveal to the boxes hole rat spider dust cobweb walls: guests. A woman sitting cross-legged in a corner; corner newly devoid of dust, spider yarn. And cooped up, evidently asleep in her arms, a lump: Her child.

Fleshless, ragged, starving: the woman; plump, frightened, asleep: her child. The spider, slowly working his magician’s tentacles across the room, rests on the woman’s hair. Hair, once fine and cared for, now disheveled, dirty and greying. And the sorcerer spins on, spinning yarns of seclusion and lost promise on the unprotesting hair until hair and magic yarn become one and indistinguishable.

And then, the thunder and the rain outside are accompanied by another, duller, equally repetitive, unnerving sound: banging on the walls. Polite to begin with, then pleading, and gradually gaining in aggressive tenor, yet always beseeching and luring like sirens at sea, the banging breaks the monotony of rain, thunder, rat and spider. The child awakes from its deep slumber, clinging with alarmed fingers at the side of the mother’s rag. The woman holds it close, unwilling to let in an unknown intruder into her dingy haven.

Quietly, silently she waits.

Bhang Hallucinations

Antigraviti. I’m walking on the moon. The ground below me isn’t on Earth anymore. A strong force is pulling upward in my thighs, arms, wrist, the sides of my forehead, at each place, gentle hands are pulling my body upward. Skyward. Up. What is such a word? Gravity. But that’s down below. So its obverse, antigraviti then. And now, my bones have abdicated the soul. The crackle at each wall, corner, door and I swivel my way through. now my pen can’t go up the page. Ok. I can’t hold my hand down. The hands are firmer now. Only on muscles. No bones.

I reach for my phone. Now the force is to the left. I’m being held back in a comfortable prison of comfort. Whatever I do, a force shifts thatward.