The universe,mob and everything

All that remains
Of those brave warriors’ dreams –
These summer grasses

It was around four years ago that the floodgates burst open on a dark (and not so stormy, as you are by now aware) night.
An indolently growing dread had seeped into the lives of the men gathered on the top floor of the building. November was slightly nippy, but they shivered more from a nameless chill that periodically arose from a dark recess in a neglected shelf of the subconscious, and hijacked the spine. It moved upwards and seized the senses, morphing into moments of sheer, inexplicable terror.In those moments, the mind saw visions of the impending moment of truth, the edge of the precipice beyond which lay a world that they had left behind.
For a few years these men had lived by their own rules. They had been cultivated together, a product of a system which had evolved to preserve their minds from being ground to a pulp by the machine that they had been sucked into.The protege of similar individuals who passed on the flame from year to year.They were misfits, perhaps even mildly deluded, but they never believed in a four digit number being their absolute identity.
Living in an enclosed, controlled environment, with a big brother always in the background , had made them even more determined not to degenerate into the uniformed automaton. How some of them hated the brass tags. They were the symbol of all that was wrong with the system . A system that saw them as pink uniforms and roman numerals, a mass of human uniformity. A system whose ultimate aim was to see them marching hand in hand,moronic grins reflecting amputated minds, singing to the glory of the brotherhood.
They were not antisocial psychos though, just ordinary men who thought, questioned and believed in free will and the power of individuality.They secretly dreamt of music, beauty and lonely hilltops.
A new breed emerged one fine year. This breed was different in a very fundamental way.
Whether it was cleverly manipulated by the operators of the machine, or was a quirk of fate,we will never know, but this generation was built for the system.
Our men who had gathered in that room on the top floor had looked on with revulsion and resignation as their successors twisted, flexed and moulded themselves to fit the system. They were the square pegs in the square holes. They polished their brass tags, religiously worshipped their rulebooks, and most disgustingly, took pride in buying their provisions from the CSD canteen.
The men in the room were huddled together remembering the good times, hurriedly drowning their anxieties in large measures of a dark liquor, a fluid of shamanic import, tantalizingly called the "old monk". A few rolled and (passed around) joints, and transported themselves to the members -only lounge of a private universe, where Dave Gilmour was currently questioning the world about what it wanted from him.
As was usual, the group had fragmented itself into many sub groups. Some sat in dimly lit corners, contemplating the various dimensions of Salvador Dali's nuclear mysticism.Others were engaged in appreciating the anatomical marvels of the lithe supermodels cut and pasted in artless collages stuck crudely on the walls surrounding them.While some debated that India's progress lay in acquiring a perfectly rhomboid shape by abandoning albatrosses like the North East and Kashmir, others rolled more joints.
The men on the opposite block, who secretly fancied themselves as renaissance men, sat,content and slightly self righteous in their neatly ordered rooms. After attending their lectures, enjoying the regulation lunch at 'A' mess,washing their bikes, and devouring three extra helpings of kheer at dinner time,all of them were proud to have been seen studying at the library.At exactly quarter past nine, they had made a trip to the canteen to witness and be witnessed by their women.Now, safe and secure in their rooms, they prepared for another day of this heady excitement.
With consternation and righteous irritation, they viewed the sounds of the block oppsite, a chaos seperated from their own sanitized, organized existence by something more profound than a year or a few metres.
A stillness that had slowly been seeping into the party acqired a critical mass.The nameless dread, so far smothered and drowned in a sea of intoxicants ,swiftly rose to the surface. The men awoke to an unseen hand gripping them in a death grip, choking thier vital breath, reminding them that the end was getting nearer.
They moved to the balcony to get fresh air. Some ejected the contents of their stomachs beyond the ledge, a purgatory of sorts.
Then an eye fell over the lit floors of the opposite block. Years of rage against the machine, the fury at the injustice of it all, the hatred of the servile foot soldiers of the system, and most importantly, the fear of the future welled up in their collective consciousness.
They thought of every occasion when they were declared inadequate and incompetent. They remembered every instance when, faced with losing their ideals, they resorted to subterfuge to escape trouble. And in every such instance,they would invariably detect the smirking, contemptuous presence of the outsider, the man from one of the lit balconies accross the block, wallowing proudly in his own conformity.
A voice thundered in the dark,aimed like a large,solid rock thrown in anger. It ordered the youngsters to switch their lights off. Then another.. and another. Soon, every man in the gathering was spewing venom.
The boys, cursing and mumbling, decided to turn their lights off. They were just not built for confrontation, especially with damaged, wayward losers like the hooligans accross the block.
They swiftly recited their nightly prayers, closed their text books, packed their guitars and played music from the latest Subhash Ghai hits (on low volume) on their 12 watt music systems, preparing to sleep.Perhaps tommorow they would be lucky enough to be asked the ten common causes of atrial fibrillation in the morning clinic.
The lamb was a different variety. He was innocent and soft, devoid of malice. Believing whatever he was told, he lived the life of a moderate, law abiding citizen. Sure, he had his share of gastro-intestinal trouble, but then into each life some rain must fall..........


next episode- the sacking of the garden of eden.
There-happy?. a humble beginning, but the words will flow now. it's a promise

mob !! a retrospective,four years on:

it was a dark night. stormy, it was not, not by a long stretch. calm and november, it was an inky blackness that had settled over the outer western lip of the deccan plateau; wrapping the calm, and slightly nippy night air in a protective shroud of muffling darkness..........
the boys were asleep. most of them, at least.or were preparing to. in any case, their day- to -day duties were in no way affected by the raucous band of Boys-Soon-To-Be-Men in the building right across the road.they were here to do their duty, and as most of them settled down with their religious tomes, reading about the very principles they had enshrined in their own lives, and made such an obvious part of their outlook on life, it was with a sense of growing irritation and genuine consternation that they viewed The Mob of howling hooligans next door.
The Mob of howling hooligans was next door.fortified by cannabis and lubricated with alcohol, they lurched their way to the closest soak pit,bringing up red- coloured chicken pieces and scarcely mashed local breads with ease.their stomachs emptied, they wove their way back into the lair, clutching desperately at the bannisters, the world coalescing in front of their rheumy eyes in soft and blurry focus........
some of the boys began to stretch; some of them yawned, in spite of themselves. in some rooms, rags of cloth appeared miraculously in hands, in some others, the bottle of brasso was taken from behind the mirror.
brass tags are notoriously hard to polish.particularly if they consist of one roman numeral, or four letters of the english alphabet with dots fusing the letters in between.
yet the boys perservered.the sweat that coalesced on some of the brows was the perspiration of honest labour, the satisfied glow that fills a man when he knows that his duty is done, and that when he says his three hail marys and his hallelujahs,he is at peace with the world, and is about to sleep the contented sleep of the blessed.
suddenly, The Mob seemed to be roaring out something in collective inebriation: not much could be made out in the babel of voices, but the boys recognised something about exhorting them to turn their lights off. an involuntary curse went off in the minds of many of the boys. some of them hastily covered their mouths, looking at the kitschy pictures of their gods on the walls. some others shook their heads, and went down on their knees to say their prayers again.some of them peered through the windows at the building across the road, some took a deep breath, and forced themselves to stay calm, and to forgive.
all of them switched off their lights.
the boy was about to turn his lights off, and say his prayers before slipping into morpheus' land.he had been vaguely aware of The Mob all evening, but he hadn't given it much thought.The Mob's affairs were a universe removed from his, his slender frame was already burdened with more worries than his one score and two years had prepared him for: an upset stomach, a suspected volvulus, an indifferent lover, a recalcitrant motorbike: the boy's cup of woes had been filled to brimming the previous week; and this week there were still the mail to be opened.
but they were chanting his name.he stopped for a moment, slipping out of the cocoon that he had spun around himself, so carefully, over the past few hours. in one single bisyllabic roar, The Mob had suddenly burst back onto the garden of his consciusness, trampling over the flowerbeds,kicking the dog, and frightening away the geese. in the far corner, one of Them was urinating into the fountain, laughing raucouly all the while, and making lewd comments on the size of the fountain in his garden.
because it was a small fountain, to be sure.white, and flawlessly smooth; he had spent days softly caressing its alabaster surface, humming to himself as the fountain softly gurgled.
The Mob was chanting his name, and the tempo was increasing.gradually, the chant became a frenzied roar, and his curiosity was aroused, in spite of himself. he was aware of the awesome strength of The Mob, and recognised its capacity to strike out, and maim, and crush; but he had done nothing wrong.he had never sullied by thought or by action the happiness of The Mob, choosing instead, to follow a policy of not engaging them, and to keep relations to a minimum, and cordial in the rare occasions when they did come up.in fact, until this day, he had been prompted to believe that some of The Mob, in person, actually liked him for wat he was, and would never strike without provocation.
he was wrong, of course. as he opened the door, and stood outside, blinking suddenly in the glare, he experienced a single moment of pure, undiluted malevolence.the wave of hate was carried across that crisp winter air as clearly as if it had been a airbus 320 with screaming propellers. he paused still, unsure of himself, and not comprehending wat was going on. he was innocent, as far as he knew; and surely not even mobs, impulsive as they are, would not attack without reason?
then someone in The Mob started baying.he could not make out the words,but he could understand. the man peeing in the fountain invited the others to come and join.somebody had seen the peacock nestled among the high branches of the tree, and was trying to coax it down into a cauldron of steaming water.the man peeing turned around and saw him, his eyes bleary and unfocussed, his breath rank and fetid, his reddening face twited into a horrible grimace of malice, and hatred, and jealousy, and spite.he looked at the boy and uttered a single name.
they were shouting out Her name.it was Her that they wanted. it was Her being that was his mistake. She, who was unattainable to all of them, was his.each day, they frolicked in this very garden,making love in the cool shade, whispering sweet nothings to each other as they lay in each other's arms, listening to the nightingale sing to his love, far far far up in the trees.
The Mob was rampaging now.forty able bodied men, blood lust in their eyes, their nostrils flaring,their rabid frenzy snapping at his face.stinging him like a slap, leaving him bewildered, and hurt, and afraid.
he shut his door, turned the light, and curled into a ball, hot stinging tears of his own impotence sizzling on his face.
The Mob went on, late into the night.and late into the early hours of the next day; till the last among them, too tired to go on,dropped off in mid- sentence, and fell asleep.
the garden, ravaged and ruined.gazed forlornly over the wide expanse of the deccan plateau. then , somewhere in the distance, it began to rain.

>fear...... its very primal isn't it? it wafts to ure nostrils from the bloodied tarmac, insinuating itself into the labyrinthine hall of ure turbinates,to filter slowly thru ure sieve - like skull opening, and hits ure mind with the same intensity that it spilled onto the earth in the first place..... the smell of it, the taste, the feeling of abject terror tghat wraps around luike a warm and clammy coat on a rainy afternoon, still causing u to sweat and burst out in tiny salty beads.......
where will they strike next? when? how? was this a success? or was it a botched attempt at city- annihilation that just got off at the wrong station??? will they strike my neighbourhood next?? what if he's not waiting for a bus, at the corner???
wat if he's watching me??? now??? wat if they come to get me???? wat if they miss?? wat if they don't???
i don't suppose anyone yalks of much else these days.... looking fearfully over their shoulders at the hobo in the corner of the railway station; with righteous anger at the kaftan- wearing mohammedan in the bus, who sees it and recognises.he probably shrugs, and turns away.... maybe he bares his teeth....
in fear.
always in fear.
terror, anger, hate, suffering........
and always, always the sound of sirens.
and the deadly silence of the afterward.

Old pond
Frog jumps in…
Splash.
-Basho
What a sweet irony it would've been if nothing was ever written on this site, leaving infinite possibilities to exist silently, transcending name, shape and form, alive yet unborn.
Yet, as a freak monsoon hits England and a warm, fragrant breeze blows across the land, a frog jumps into the stillness of the mind, creating ripples of desire…
Out of desire is born suffering, as the silent one propounded a few thousand years ago. The tiny suffering of an insect bite that blemished the perfect ness of a languid summer afternoon spent on lush grass, sipping beer. The interruption for news for the hearing impaired that scarred the final over of an India -Pakistan cricket match in 1990.
Thus the pursuit of pure pleasure becomes the ultimate desire, and every loose end the beginning of a knot, which complicates the tangled web we weave.
I ponder the meaning and depth of a corny line from a movie song. Roughly translated, it means that if the intoxication were in the wine, then the bottle would dance. A stiff peg of rum convinces me. The rest of the evening, I watch the mind dance to strange tunes. Librated and unleashed, it goes places and has many adventures, then trips and falls, and awakes with a hangover. The Buddha smiles.
I was treating a girl the other day, who has come in many times with deliberate self harm. Her knowledge of pharmacy far exceeds mine, as she knows the exact dose of every drug that will just not kill her. Much more than I can say of some of the doctors I have met. She has taken to cutting herself, and walks in this time, a proud surgical gash on her forearm. An insolent gesture of defiance against the rest, a psychological middle finger flashed at existence. She has by now become an exquisite device for experiencing pain. She laughs and giggles as I stitch her wound, and glares as I warn her of the impending sharp scratch. I ask her why she does it; she looks into my eyes and says "I have it so I cut it". All of fourteen, a damaged Descartes
Smoking a cigarette, I try to think about the rains of the past, the smell of wet earth, and I, back from school, knee deep in the filthy water, passionately folding paper boats torn from last year's textbooks. I run out of paper, and contemplate tearing a history test marked 10/10, with a magical” good" to boot, in the red ink handwriting of my class teacher. The joy of that result reappears on the mindscape, slightly faded and sepia toned. It is quickly overwhelmed by the heady sensation of launching a boat into the swirling, alive rainwater.
Stolen glances and burning moonlight mix with the blue smoke of the cigarette, all arising out of thin air and dissolving into the great infinite, leaving memory traces fading with time. The cobwebs become thicker each day, and as ennui threatens to strangle me, I search for the fabled centre from which radiates consciousness, and the ever-changing streams of the mind. Have to make sense you know, find out the meaning of life and stuff. Escape from cycles and be one with the universe. Anything to avoid boredom.
As I sit with the spine straight and the mind focused on the tip of the nose, I feel purposeful and serious. Just then, an itch arises in the nether regions, and punches a hole in the dignity of the lotus posture. Divine comedy. After half an hour of wrestling the mind, the pond is still at last.
With a silent desperation I rush to look in to see the source that I seek. Out of nowhere, insignificant and unseen, a small frog jumps into the pond from between my legs. It disappears into a hidden recess.
I stand there alone, watching the ripples spreading outwards, then laugh at the absurdity of my situation.