Thursday, 26 December 2013

Weather-depression

Rains, and absent parents. The gloom that had drifted its way into Isaac's mind had to go. The movies on television were sour and bleak of their own. It wasn't fair, he thought, that it wasn't appropriate to make fun of a cripple, but was just fine to air the most damp shows amongst the plethora of sad, damp shows before one who was weather-depressed. Every turn on the miserably slow timepieces that adorned the walls of his house made him feel worse. Worst part was, it wasn't even raining right now. It's just that the sky was a stark white, a dreary, awful shade which wasn't even a shade. Morning skies were white, evening skies were white. Afternoon skies, which were supposed to be the brightest yellow were also plain white. Isaac couldn't take it. The fitting music that he played on the speakers that lay a few feet from him was perhaps the only depressing element that he had some control of, but hey, everything was so sad anyway that it didn't really matter which song of unrequited love or song of poetic death he played.

Vacations. He'd rather be back in college, where the multitudes of folk, annoying though most were, would give him some relief. But he was here, back too early. All of his friends of old were still stuck in their respective institutions, answering some term-ending exam which would set them 'free'. He couldn't take it. His parents had left for work five minutes ago. Without much though, Isaac located the duplicate key of his mother's car which he had so carefully hidden amongst the old photoframes of ever-smiling and now ever-dead grandparents. He descended his stairs, and drove off, taking the long route to the second gate of his housing colony, for it was manned by the gruff and unresponsive guard Ismail instead of the cheerful Bradley, the latter of whom would definitely announce his departure to his mother, for she had befriended him by bringing him the leftovers of every meal. Isaac drove to that shady little establishment behind a tattered building which was notorious for selling alcohol and cigarettes to underage students, and there he purchased a pack of strong cigarettes. A twenty pack, although he knew he wouldn't even consume a quarter of that. He knew he'd be ridden with guilt soon into his second smoke.

He returned to his parents' apartment, latched the main door, and walked into the prayer-room. There he located the lighter that was used to light incense sticks or lamps before the face of his parents' many gods, and then climbed up a spiral staircase to the terrace above. The skies had cleared up temporarily, and he was going to take advantage of that fact. He wore only a sleeveless shirt, and nothing to cover his privates. He lit his first cigarette. What am I doing? He was done with it, and moved quickly before regret would wash over him. His head was already a bit fuzzy with the haste that he had put into every deep puff. He lit his second, and unconsciously started stroking his penis. The cigarette grew smaller, and his penis grew larger with every puff. Soon, he was in ecstasy. I'm not even thinking of her. He stubbed the cigarette and carefully placed it in the corner with the first. He lit another and started stroking his penis rapidly, as if to make up for the delay that the process of lighting the third had caused. His pre-ejaculatory semen covered his left hand, and the third cigarette soon descended into ash on his right hand. It burnt. That aroused him more.

It was raining. Without any warning, water was falling from the sky. He looked up in wonder. This was the one aspect of the rainy season that awed him most. Water falling from the sky! And there were barely any clouds! A sunbeam hit him square in the face, and he had to squint to understand the rainbow in the distance. He covered his cigarette to keep away the water. He was onto his fourth cigarette before he ejaculated onto himself and the ground below. Regret finally overcame him, and he prematurely stubbed his cigarette. He refilled the twenty-pack with the used up cigarettes, and tossed it far into the adjoining housing colony, although the wind blew it further than he'd have liked. There was still semen on the ground; there was still ash on the ground. His father was no fool when it came to semen and ash. But the hateful rain would cover up for him.

Sunday, 1 December 2013

Bleak II

There comes a time when a cigarette won't keep you satisfied. Love, lust, careless hedonism - all lie blind with the arrival of the time of discontent. This phase of youth, where opportunities should abound, is taken away in a flash when the dull epiphany of 'this-is-not-your-life' strikes. Come on, says a voice very distinct, you aren't what you are trying to be. Happiness is not key here: in fact, you aren't truly happy right now. You're stuck in that place where hope does exist, but isn't plentiful enough to throw away all vices and emotions - and yet, temporary absolution does naught to keep your real self content.

When I recall the passion of you and the memories we made, they do not linger as they did. At first, I'd said to myself, "you must record these feelings, you must be able to relive them!" I wish I'd done that, for I cannot achieve those feelings once more. I think of the summers - so high! so very high! - and I cannot, again, recall the vague knowledge of throwing frisbees past the surf while the sky gloriously waned into inconceivable hues which were never the same the next day. Even the songs that made those long drives oh-so-streamlined and oh-so-perfect don't sing the same way anymore.

It is lost, says the voice. You can never reach those same levels of unrelenting joy again. Like a cocaine rush, the very first experience can never be reclaimed. My first kiss threw my very being (to be is to live, and to live means endless surprises) into a standstill - I deserve that again! And so the hope, the just-enough hope, recuperates as I await even more terribly temporary highs in the days to come.

Thursday, 12 September 2013

Bleak I

Drip, drop, his ears spring up
Three a.m. and someone filling his cup
Head is heavy, floor starts to spin
Ignore the intruder, take a deep breath in

Light from one reveals another
C.G. sparks it up, he truly is my brother
Numbing sensation, grin on my face
Can't wipe it out, so a puff in its place

T.B. quivers; this isn't a virgin mix
His eyes crimson, he'll be high till six
I take a drag, it sets my mind alight
Body in a cubicle, soul in flight

I pass it on, three pulls each
But C.G. puts another in my reach
Epiphanies strike in the realm of the spiritual
And so goes on this innately fulfilling ritual

As the light moves closer to my finger tips
I slow down my intake to feeble sips
One puff each is the call
They taxi around, pleasing us all

Flick them into the bowl, it's time to go
Or let's linger on a bit; can't reach the door
Zombie the way out with ashes in our wake
We'll return with another, for I.F.'s sake

But first, I must dissolve into my playlist, the Ultimate Trip
Undulating bass lines cherish me in their grip
Music video playing in my mind
Yesterday's problems left carelessly behind

Knock on my door, time to boom
Red eyes greet me outside my room
Unwavering grins obviate all strife
To the cubicle - I love my life!

(This image is not my property.)

---

Note: This piece has many fictional elements.

Friday, 30 August 2013

Remy on Merlin

The siren emerged from a distal source, as the shout-tower was located a few hundred metres from the main station. "Remy, the tracks bend away too soon," it called. Remy shook his head. He didn't like this train station. It was too big and too populous to be associated with the tracks he was familiar with. His life - his only life that counted - had begun on the hills of Nere, and there it had ended as abruptly as it had begun. Frozen and preserved at the back of his mind, his time in Nere remained to taunt him. I have been through everything that matters; my remaining time alive is just a bonus. Only the steam from a noisy engine could begin to mimic his time jumping tracks, with her watchful eyes smiling at him as he clumsily tried to stand one-legged on a rail.

The train he boarded was crowded, and his cramped seat between two fat tula merchants afforded him no glimpses of the disappearing platform. The seven hour journey was draining, and Remy kept himself hydrated with cans of crystal soda. He sighed. Manfried would be twice as crowded as this train and, being planetary capital, it would never shut up. This would be the second time Remy would set foot in the metropolis, the first time was when he alighted from a spaceship after an even longer and exceedingly more painful journey to almost literally the end of the galaxy.

His first time in Manfried was not a pleasant experience. Merlin was a newly settled planet, with Manfried being the first outpost established only eighty years ago. Hardly a million people populated the planet since then, with ninety-five percent of those people located in Manfried. His visit to Merlin, unfortunately, had taken place during the mass influx of labourers, technicians and the usual cults, which would one day be known as the first step in the "true" colonization of the Sagittarius-Carina arm of the Milky Way Galaxy, et cetera. Remy had had to trudge his way through a mass of dysfunctional security robots hopelessly trying to maintain order amongst the incoming visitors, pilgrims and workers. He'd then needed to explain, in length, to the power-blinded and lonesome tourism officials the purpose of his visit. He'd lost a lot of money on mandatory bribes and sodas, and had then tried to make his way to one of the swelling motels in the main city. Failing to do so, he'd had to commute for three hours to the suburbs of Manfried for accommodation offered by a grocer to anyone who could carry a message to Vern. After eighteen more hours of travel and pointless delays, he'd made his way to Vern and its loud railway sirens.

It was true, though. The biota placed on Merlin eighty years ago had made itself comfortable in the valleys and undulating plains that spanned most of the two primary continents. Manfried itself has boulevards now; lined by trees and shrubs whose hues betray their extra-planetary origin. Merlin was part of the small minority of planets which had breathable air and non-toxic soil, so the Merlin Terraforming Agency was, in practice, an outpost for some company to dig its tendrils into the compact culture of Merlin before it even has a formal currency. Yet, there was something naturally unnerving about the way horses on Merlin were still tame enough to be saddled by a random visitor from off-planet. Indeed, Remy had travelled several hundred kilometres on the back of a wild horse while on his way to the dig site beyond Vern.

The dig was not of the archaeological kind, but was instead engineered by biologists. Seventy years ago, when Vern had first been established as a sort of secondary capital in the southern hemisphere of Merlin, some biologists (many of them great-grandparents of the biologists he’d met himself) had added some Escherichia veni to a hollow portion of the soil, rich with the excessive faecal matter of planet Nappa which the E. veni so often feasted on. These initial E. veni had been subject to directional, non-mutagenic radiation, so that they would all cluster onto one side of the hollow so as to avoid decimation. Two hundred thousand generations of these bacteria had past, and the radiation had ceased to penetrate into the hollow some fifty years ago, yet the E. veni tried to cluster to that one side.

Genetic memory was the term that had been decided upon by the Vern biologists. Genetic memory is the reason why every single person stemming from Earth’s Israel still felt uneasy while looking at a holoform of the Concentration Camps, they stipulated. “DNA is the most protected and valuable resource in this universe. The fraction of objects that possesses this compound is so small that all the gold on Goldrush wouldn’t be able to buy a microgram of DNA, if DNA would be thus suitably priced. But it isn’t, and herein lays the very instability of humanity – we place a higher value on things that do not truly belong to us. DNA is us. And DNA remembers. If my soul could have a material form, it would be not my DNA, but rather the DNA of all my forefathers. As such, the soul is continuously evolving with the birth of every new generation.” So said the lord philosopher-biologist Reswyn Peck, and so bowed all of his follower-biologists and pursuer-biologists, without even gathering the implications behind his words.

Remy scowled. When the respect for a man precedes his teachings, the respect for the man becomes his teachings. Remy knew that only too well. Nice new that, and Nice bowed and surrendered herself gracefully to the Fleet. “Remy, you aren’t from here. You can go back home.” But she was home. She will forever remain home, and when I am done blasting a hole through the genetic memories of my lords and ladies, I will return to her.

Reswyn Peck knew that DNA was upgrading itself with the rise of every new generation, and that nothing from the past was truly lost. Reswyn Peck knew that DNA was the ultimate weapon and torture device. Being an independent group, the Vern biologists shared their observations with the rest of the scientific world only after much deliberation and review. The Vern biologists were now rotting inside a pit with E. veni feeding on them to fulfil their last rites. Reswyn Peck had died when ancestral pain had seeped through his gouty knuckles to his gouty heart. Assistant-biologist Beatrice Salomon too had writhed and succumbed, with her frothing mouth still wrapped around gouty little Peck.

If only you had accompanied me. We’d have found a place far away, even farther than Merlin, where we’d raise hills out of the horizon and lay down railway lines through twisting valleys. Remy knew he had to get off planet as soon as he could. The “inflammable” DNA they’d extracted from the bacteria in the pit couldn’t survive long in the blanks (microorganisms devoid of genetic material). The genetic memory was active in this DNA, and using it, he’d managed to trigger the same in the DNA of the Vern biologists.

Remy Raoveti - celebrated biologist, anthropologist and soon-to-be heretic. He’d have cults forming around him by the time he’d be halfway through teaching humanity a lesson. Youngest winner of the Deutschenwaldow Prize, number one on the ’89’s Top Ten Rising Stars, and Mass Murderer of the Century, I give you… Remy Raoveti!

Remy could see the Angled Spire of Manfried rise out towards the setting sun, in a bid to touch it at its coolest. The smells of the city reached out to him, but they were different; they were warped due to the steadily rising inflow of off-planet visitors with their queer, off-planet smells. This, too, angered him, although he knew not why.

DNA apparently had some kind of ‘field’ which stored genetic memory. Activating this required some changes in the current state of the DNA, both conformational and totally virtual. Remy did not care what exactly went about when this happened, all he knew was that humans would DIE on exposure to their genetic memory, simply because their mind was evolved enough to decipher exactly the contents of these memories, but not quite evolved enough to absorb such knowledge. Maybe that was the original purpose of DNA and evolution, for a certain being to evolve until a point wherein it could digest its genetic memories safely and thus transition into some kind of “singularity” being or something. Remy did not care – much. He did care enough to make sure that this “singularity” would remember Nice and her affable ways.

The train stopped, and Remy descended onto the platform in a hurry. The sooner he’d get off this planet the better, as authorities would soon realise that the Vern biologists were missing and would maybe somehow stumble upon the dig site. The burial site, Remy reminded himself. Was he halting the growth of science by this act? This gave him some pause, but a passing engine drove an image of Nere on a beautiful summer day into his mind. Nere, with the pretty house and the dipping-pond, with the smiling faces of Rory and Neville, Ava and her grandmother. Would this pain be imprinted into his genetic memory? Would his descendants be forced to watch him rip himself apart from the inside with every waking breath? Then this was his curse to them. Descendants. Children. Nice and I had once talked about having children, children who would jump onto me every time I returned home from a long day at work, uncaring that I’d be soaked with perspiration. If there are children without Nice, then may they be cursed.

He made his way to the spaceport with, surprisingly, very little delay. His reputation permitted him to carry the biological samples on board, and soon he was off. The earliest flight to Assez was five days from then, so he’d decided to hop on a long flight to Vaha, in the system of Canopus many thousand light years away. The journey was superluminal, but would still take him several years. By then the mishap on the secluded planet of Merlin would be forgotten, with “incorrect safety measures while dealing with the deadly Escherichia veni” recorded as the cause of the deaths of fourteen biologists.

Five hours into the flight, Remy started to feel the breezy upliftment that he often associated with superluminal travel. He knew that this would soon transition into a mind-numbing hurricane of illusory wind, so he decided to strap himself into the fugue pod adjacent to his seat. Superluminal travel couldn’t even technically be called a form of transportation, as it mainly involve the spaceship, or, rather, individual fugue pods of the spaceship linked within a primary matrix, disappearing from existence here and materializing there.

This was largely due to a modification of classical quantum tunnelling – a large distance impossible for even light to cover in a few minutes was somehow traversed through by the spaceship-matrix. In essence, the “large distance” acted as a limiting energy state which could be breached by the tunnelling. Remy did not know the details, and he doubted that he ever would. His activities in the past few days would certainly curtail his freedom to explore unknown territories of life, let alone science.

After reading projected magazines in his pod for an hour, Remy decided to get some sleep. Within the pod, it was eerily silent, something often attributed to for the scarring of weak human psyches. Remy took a while to get accustomed to this enforced silence, and as he drifted into that plane of thought which is suspended between the conscious and the unconscious, steam from an engine clouded his mind. Long after the noiseless engine faded from view, the smoke finally dissipated.

When the sunlight glinted off her teeth and the cool midday breeze ruffled her hair, he was in heaven. Tears welled in his eyes, and he smiled. The crook of her elbow found its way around his neck, and she turned, taking him with her. The unprecocious naiveté in her eyes beckoned in the direction of the hills far away, fencing the horizon. Railway tracks meandered and were lost, out of sight, at the summit of one hillock. Her head bobbed up, and she caught him staring at her, his eyes full of tears. She was to be left behind today, as he went on to greater adventures. Yet he was the one crying.

She said, “Remy, the tracks bend away too soon.” Swallowing the sorrow in his throat, he replied, “but they go on forever.”

“Does that mean they will never bring you back?”

“No, that means they will always be there to bring me back to you.” He smiled. How cheesy that had sounded, how cheesy it still did.

“Take me with you.” Was that a question or a command? He’d never know.

“I… You know I can’t. How I wish that I could, but you can’t move like this.”

“I know, I’m sorry.” She smiled, and played with his hair. “But I will be with you wherever you go, won’t I?”

“Of course you will.” Remy smiled, and finally wiped off the tears streaming down his face. He kissed her once, twice. He then turned and left, leaving her behind; she with her mechanical body rooted to the ground and the wind ruffling her hair and the cables that connected her to the soil. Once more an engine passed, and took him away with it.

Monday, 29 July 2013

Train, Set and Match

It's over. A long summer, a glorious summer. I wish it would never end.

I'm writing this at midnight on the 30th of July, 2013. Tomorrow is when I leave for college. Tomorrow I leave behind my friends and Cidade beach. Tomorrow I quit doing questionable activities and driving at 120 kmph on eternal Goan roads in heavy rainfall. I leave behind the sea and sand and fields around pleasant walkways. I leave behind family, I leave behind home. I leave behind that shady KA-registered Maruti with the frisbee in the back. Tomorrow is going to be bittersweet.

I love my college. I love campus life. I love the independence I get in my 3x3 m room over there. I'm excited to see what this new year brings - I'll have juniors, I'll be studying something that I haven't bothered to explore before, I'll be playing as much basketball as I can handle. Yet those lonesome stretches and our hidden cove on the beach will be missed. The eerie, dark Bambolim lane will be missed. The 24 hour cafes and pastry shops will be missed. The beaten-up Santro I've driven thousands of kilometres in this holiday will be missed. The faces of my friends separated by states will be missed. The windy house in Miramar and the painting easel will be missed. The guitar teacher I spent exactly 33 hours this summer with will be missed. The poker sessions and pointless gym hours will be missed.

Why can't anyone see that sometimes you just need the ability to pause? Every few years, take a year off. Grow up in ways other than attending classes and scoring grades. Live life to its fullest in order to make up for the hours you've lost in routine. Travel, explore, rediscover. These aren't words I'm tossing around to add to a word count. These are words I'm tossing around as an ode to days better spent elsewhere.



Always the summers are slipping away. Always.

Monday, 8 July 2013

To the Festival with a Lad of Ten

Look up at the moon, boy
For I need some rest
This weary road has taken its toll on me

We'll be there soon, boy
I know this road best
We must walk the mud road out to sea

We'll arrive at noon, boy
In town there's a fest
I'll get you a top and a candied bee

And even a b'lloon, boy
Let's see if it stands your test
I wager you'll rub it until its air breaks free

You know you're a goon, boy?
You should still be at your mother's breast
So hold your tongue or leave me be

Friday, 28 June 2013

The Raindrop that Falleth

The Raindrop that falleth
And fell through my rose
The rose was a roof under stary bed
The Raindrop hit me in the square of my chest
I saw images later describled biblicle but better
That led the fellows to declare that day my godhood
The Raindrop that awake in me happiness
"On that maximus that your study derives you
This is the moon with undulating plains, even trees and distant hills in view
Yes this is the furthest happiness that holds cannot hold"
My life lived a book today

I wept later, for I would not ever behold as good as that holy day
The Raindrop that falleth was neard by some
Like the turn through the cars endless wheels
But never in that amassed happiness
Althino hill happiness
Would they near the Raindrop and breese
Will you find the god at the top of the tunnel
The true image of god or what you dream him
This whole life a videogame
I know not if this is poem or real

I lived a life in just a car ride
For the Raindrop that falleth fell through me

---

Don't even ask for the origins of this 'poem'.