On a fight outside a Khan Market bookstore

This is something I saw once
while browsing through a bookstore. Two men were standing outside a little
bookstore in Delhi, a Khan Market special, where you can pretend to riffle the
books on the inside and watch all kinds of perverse attempts at the human
experiment on the outside. Old ladies in feather boas and leather pants
shuffled past two young boys, their faces barely registering a trace of fuzz,
their heads securely covered with a skull cloth, who looked past at them
angrily, then turned forward to stare grimly at the world before them. Dogs
wandered by, fat and comfortable, and clothed in cute doggie sweaters, and
maimed, half-malformed bodies shuffled alongside them, gums and scarred face
almost hiding the fact that the body belonged to a teenager. Around you, the
hustle and bustle of Europe, China, Japan and the wonders and freaks of the
Americas, packaged free with a gigantic katoriful of India. As I looked out, I
saw a human drama that transcended and encompassed these. What I saw was a
little play, with an imaginary beginning and an imaginary end, but no sense of
context or reference, like watching an isolated snatch of some much larger
movie. It was up to me to place it in whatever context I wished to, and it’s up
to you as well.

 

Two men were arguing over some
matter. They seemed to be poised at that precipice of an argument before it
descends into simple animal violence. One man held in his hands a small, worn
cricket ball. He held it away from the other, as if his life and soul depended
on it, fear writ large upon his eyes and body. The other was a tall, moustachioed,
well-dressed man, in an expensive suit and a tie that carried colours the
rainbow (very sensibly) had never heard of. He held the man’s shirtsleeves in
one hand and groped wildly with the ball for the other. The other man dressed
pretty much as the opposite side to such an opponent would under these
circumstances. We shall call them, under these circumstances, Jared (call me
Jared) Khataria and Muninder Chamiya.

 

As they struggled, they launched
into a curious dialogue that seemed to be encompassing a lot more than I could
know of:

 

"Give it to me"

"No"

"God, its falling apart,
give it here, I'll give you another one while I fix it.""

The man looked horrified at this possibility.
"Please don’t do that, it’s the only one I have," he cried through
plaintive tears.

Call me Jared looked angry enough
to crack the other man's skull open. "Look you fool, I have one exactly
like it right here."

The man looked puzzled at his suggestion,
wondering what that ball in Call Me's hands had to do with the one in his,
failing to understand the import of his suggestion, as it were.

The Call blackened considerably
and hissed into the other one's face "You can use the other one until I
fix this one, then when I'm done with yours, I can give it back to you."

The man's fear turned into
revulsion, as he pushed away with all his strength. He seemed ready to vomit.

MeJared stopped suddenly and said,
"Look, I can show you something. It's not even similar to that one. It's
the same." He pointed to a mark on it and to a similar mark on the other
one's. "See, you put that there yourself, it’s on this one too."

The man returned to fear, mixed
with some awe, as he gaped at the mark as if transfixed. Then he shook himself
together and screamed, almost as if like a small child "No!"

Call Me RedJar looked about ready
to burst, but he tried again. "It's not just the outside that's the same,
the inside's exactly the same too, all the way to the core. In fact, you could
never tell the difference between the two if you had a million years and a team
of experts."

This stopped the other man for a
second. He stepped back, holding the ball protectively in his hands so as to
examine it. Majeredcall, sensing that that other man may have developed an
interest, stepped back as well, and held the ball in his hands.

"Look, I'll even give you
this one to keep once I fix that one. I'm only doing this for your own good,
you know".

The other man stood transfixed,
staring at the ball in his hands. His hands seemed to grip a little less
protectively over his ball as he stared at the other one, curious. His eyes
shone for a second, then filled with fear again, as he stepped back, holding it
to his face like a small child or a precious pet. "No" he screamed,
favouring consistency over variety.

The De Majrecall bowed his head,
almost defeated, and then lifted it up again. In his eyes shone a determination
to try a final time.

"They're practically the
same, only mine is stronger and wont fall apart so soon. You don't even want to
keep the other one until I fix this one. I give in. I only ask you this thing
sir. If you answer me in any fashion aside from no, I shall give you this one,
to keep along with that one. Why will you not part with that one?"

The other man fought his fear
down, then stepped up with a simple, quiet pride that bordered on humility.
"I don't want that one." He looked at the ball held tight between his
hands, as he held it up to Jarmeadcall, he looked at it with the pride of
owning a watch since the time he was a child. "It's not this one," he
said, softly.

 

At this point, the altercation
tipped over into violence and I lost them in the melee of observers who had
crawled up to watch. I watched the throng for a while, and then disappeared.
All throngs look the same. They're fun to watch under the right circumstances,
like a lynching, or perhaps a violent protest, but otherwise, the milling brain-dead
throng that obeys simple herd instinct to circle a curious event was a boring
and pathetic thing to watch. However, as I left, I could not shake the feeling
that there had not been a proper resolution to that argument, no matter how I
turned it around.

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On eating honey

Eating honey is a semisexual experience



Its vaguely psychedelic, especially if the honey is cold.



Then, when you tilt the jar ever so lightly,



It lolls toward you like a tongue,



Licking its lid lasciviously, lolitalike



Tantalisingly hovering inches above your tongue, just refusing to trust to your moisture



Then it drops and the world shimmers for a moment



A little shockwave haze envelops the world, radiating outward from your tongue



Jets of electricity shoot through your head, hitting just the right pleasure centers



You watch its golden yellow viscosity wind its way sinuously into your mouth



And set your tongue on fire.



And you bask silently in the glow of the aftertaste, ignoring the obvious verbal innuendo



And in the mixture of pleasure and guilt you come down, and raise the jar again.





You should try it sometime.



 

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The Summary for my novel as a hero story

A hero looked into his dreams

Inside he found nothingness

He had no feelings you see

So he hitched a ride into nothingness which was made of a hyperlinked, cross-referenced, referenceable world

But a beautiful one nonetheless

The subtle imagery of a world in transition lay behind that era

For the dreamer was coming.

And his presence carries ripples through the space-time continuum

Infecting and mutating many before its time

Finally tearing apart the host

In an explosion that would rip the seams of space and time

The dreamer never woke up

His subtle mememnemonic message trapped within his body, unable to explode into birth

Unable to grip the ears and eyes and mouths and mind and soul of the nearest planet, sometimes an entire solar system, occasionally the odd galaxy

They found him and saw him for what he was

You know, them.

Those guys

The ones

The ones who're always there

Black (as a state of mind, not a colour)

Ha

The traitor watched his pawns linger by

The first and only real violator of society

He placed his pieces carefully, then snatched up the deck and squeezed them into each other

The hero screamed into the depths of the dreamers mind

And his hyperlink followed him

And he saw hell and heaven and the stars and the cockroaches and the Gods and the Demons and the violent long haired hard living rock stars and the blood of the angels and the holy grail

And he emerged, unscathed, for he drew inspiration from his dreams

And summoned up the colours of his past

From the depths of his memories of tarot cards lying on the floor of his house

In a neat, orderly pattern

The inspiration of the multiverse written into the cards

The cross of the celts incscribed upon the floor

And to children and wraiths and gentle good men and to horrifying slavering monsters and to the emptiness of addiction and to the heady giddiness of pride and vanity and the bitter taste of fate and probability he had an answer

And he did what was required of him for a time

Then he realised the answer

And he prepared himself carefully, and drew strength from his hyperlinks and his dream guardians

And rose up into the sky, and made the ultimate sacrifice

He fused his mind with the dreamer

Their bodies never survived the impact

But their memes survived, and fused into a communicable whole

And travelled into the hyperlinked world

An act that transcended the era, plunging it headlong into the next step in evolution

For they discovered infinite existence in energy,

Infinite patience in the strength of a spirit without a weakness of the flesh

Infinite Omniescence in pure energy existence

And eventually they transcended time and space

In the meantime, the traitor watched open mouthed, then saddled his horse and rode into the energy zone. unprotected.

He lives on to this time as a tormented snake in this new dawn of creation

For every creation must have the seeds of its destruction in its womb and every slide into entropy leaves behind a few crumbs of life-dust as it crashes in on itself

Confessions of a Creature from the Black Violation of Society

In my dreams I saw a fit of violence.

We live in a society where violence is a gene but not a disease

It grasped me in its claws and thrust me into the act

A man lay before me

He had violated some tenet of my fundamental being

Or he'd just pissed me off somehow

I moved through a world that had been turned into jelly around me

Every living breathing moving immovable object had been turned into blurs of stone

Except me.

As I grasped his neck and waist I felt the clarity rush into me

As I lifted him off his feet I wondered aimlessly what I had done to see him on the floor like that

As I hurled him into a cupboard, body shuffling down the wall like a slinky,

I felt like I had just been introduced to colour

And I lived for a time.

Yesterday I spoke to a girl who told me she wanted to return to nature

So did I

As she lifted her eyes and rolled them in the air she told me how she wanted clothing to be an option, not a rule

So did I

A she looked at her feet and admired her reflection in her toenails she told me she loved all God's creatures as her brothers and sisters

So did I

As she shrillingly imitated a cheerleader doll she told me she lived to see the death of inequality, violence and oppression

So did I

As she stared blindly out at me from sunken sockets she told me she loved the innocence of youth and the feeling of freedom and rebellion

So did I

And yet...

We never could see eye to eye.

Starry hurricane rides into the star blinded city of dreams and smegma

Bloody violence with the rushing of the wolf's fetid breath in your nostrils and the fragmented throat of your prey in your teeth

Cold rational insanity in the face of the perverse violent ribaldness of normality

These are the answers to the black violation of society

From the shreds of this we shall create a new evil,

An evil, perhaps diabolical mirror to goodness, but never a perversion

We must craft an evil that is unlikely to return our society to normal

In regression lies hope, so that in going back, we may retrace our steps and pave ourselves a new path

Cauterize this wound against its festering explosion