Knocking on Heaven's Door

After having spent a lifetime wading through the monstrosity of human struggle for nothing, Anwar stood at the gates of heaven. Finally, the final home was here. But where that man was, Rizwan, the gatekeeper, or was it Chitragupta? Anwar couldn’t care less. The gates shall open soon and there shall be his interminable supply of wine and virgins. Knock. Knock. Knock. 

Will he have a new name? Having a right name, and the surname most importantly, was good. Because having the wrong one was horrible, Anwar had known, little love & too much politics. He stretched his neck. The stiletto that was stabbed in his neck was still there. There was no pain, no blood, but just the bloody stiletto which had travelled to the gates of heaven with the naked man. He wondered if that too will be answerable for his death. Knock. Knock. Knock.

He still had memories. Not so fond ones. There was no spotless mind, alas, but why. There was peace but no chaos to look for it in the first place. No death. No birth. And hopefully, no rebirth either. No sunshine. No moonlit trails by the river. No morning azan. No chai. Knock. Knock. Knock.

Rizwan! Anwar shouted. Chitraguptaji!

Once upon a time while replying to another of the stupid fucking journalists, Bruce Lee had said – If I am pointing at the moon, do not look at my fucking finger. But why was Anwar thinking of that now? He looked at his fucking finger. There was no moon, of course. Shit. Knock. Knock. Knock.

May be Bruce Lee will be there. He looked around but there was nothing apart from that gate. But this was certainly not that nothing which that Baba was talking about while sucking up Anwar’s consciousness through his chillum over a boat in the middle of Ganges in Shiva’s own city. Shiva was smart. Stoner city for the devotees, and himself in the hills… Cool, very cool… Like daddy cool, made Anwar crazy like a fool. Knock. Knock. Knock. 

And suddenly he could see more gates. And more people. Where were they coming from and where did they want to go? Their halo of social validation was shining bright. There were no animals at the gates of heaven, all of them stayed back with Shiva in the hills. Nobody was looking for God at the gates of heaven. Privileged motherfuckers! Anwar suddenly started to look for God. 

Knock. Knock. Knock.

If you are knocking at my door, do not point your fucking fist at me. Bruce Lee shouted. Anwar had tried to do things right. Treat people right. Do good, as his mama had told him, and people will do well to you too. That was not true. She must be in hell. Could he go there instead?

Rizwan! Anwar shouted. Chitraguptaji!   

Where was Rizwan? Where was Chitragupta? Knock. Knock. Knock. Where was death? Here. Knock. Knock. Knock. Knock. Knock. Knock. What would he ask of them? Hopefully, rebirth.

--

Lovely Madam

Lovely Madam likes to swim, in the sea. The last time she did that, she was fourteen years old. Now she is about to get married next to a little pond and is loving it just as much. You see, after all finding happiness is her passion.

She is a teacher in a private university. An assistant professor, as she likes to put it. She has recently joined and has undoubtedly brought a new life to an otherwise stifling place. All men love her and all women envy her. Lovely Madam loves some men and envies most women, married women especially, as she thinks that they have what she does not, love that is. Unknown to her, many women envy her for the same reasons, thinking that she has what they do not, attention that is, and lovers. Lovely Madam certainly has a plenty of the former. She does not talk about the lovers.

 

Strange world, Lovely Madam still does not think it is. She wants it all, the world, a piece of the moon and a few of the stars. But who is going to give it to her? Certainly not the writer, a poor jobless man that he is. But Lovely Madam likes men with broken hearts as she feels that she can stich those pieces back together, a la Fevicol Se, makes her feel all motherly and shit, you see.

 

But she is no Kareena. And he is no Ghalib.

She likes the shrieking quiet of the jungles, the wilderness of human soul, the lovers they could be, the madness of her hopes, the clear sky and a long stretch of an empty road. She wants to live in a palace, her palace, away from the profound emptiness she feels all the time, away, far away, where there is just them and hoards of colorful exotic birds chirping over a large beautiful fountain of scented waters and fireflies lighting up the pathways to the majestic bed of flowers… 

There is one such palace, apparently haunted, which strangely wonders whether it is any real at all. The writer does not like that, but we will talk about it later.    

__

New Business

I and my cousin have started a new business. We kidnap cute kittens off the streets and sell them on the internet. It is fantastic. The first kitten we sold was for twenty six thousand rupees where our cost was just thirty rupees if we considered the auto fare. An equally cute woman in her thirties bought it. It is crazy, but we broke even within an hour of starting the business.

We went to meet Babuji Smartass. He said we can not use the word ‘kidnap’. We are sourcing these, giving the cats shelter, we were told to speak. It would give a nice socially benevolent touch to the business he said. He also asked us to check if the cats have any rights we should know about. My cousin does not like cat rights and I do not like cats. They do not like the fact that they are smaller. Had they been as big as dogs, they’d have surely hatched a plan to get some of theirs to democratically live in Rashtrapati Bhawan.

Babuji Smartass also wanted a cat, for free. He said we should write a business plan so that we could set up a cat breading facility. We don’t have to kidnap each and every kitten, he said. Sure man, my cousin let him know.

The business is good. While working too much with cats, I think we too have become a bit cuter. My cousin says the cats talk to him. I understand. He has been spending much time with the clients. There are so many ladies who have found a Superman in him for rescuing free cats. I am astonished how the cats never tell him otherwise.

After much heated discussion over what could be a good advertisement for us, I put the posters of Cats’ Jurassic Park everywhere. Some people find a jurassic pussy very funny. When the kingdom comes, they’ll be the first to die. Chill man, my cousin lets me know, that this kitten meat is amazing. Apparently Babuji Smartass cooked it. Try some man, he tells me again. I'm planning to go off the grid for kingdom come.

_

Babuji Smartass

The Indian Psychiatric Society has recently announced a strange new illness. They have termed it as a historic development in the field of psychiatry. The illness, based upon the name of the first person diagnosed, has been called BSC – The Babuji Smartass Complex. 

 

Babuji Smartass was an Investment Analyst in a venture capital firm. There were two women in his life – his wife and her sister. They both lived away from each other, but they both lived with Babuji Smartass. And Babuji Smartass lived with no one but himself.

There was a repelling magnet in his charming aura which made him mysterious to everyone. He himself was addicted to it. Whenever his mind found him to be happy, it promptly created imagery suitable to turn him distant. Not everyone could fathom it. People thought that it was a kind of loneliness that poets write about. But it was not the case and only Babuji Smartass knew so.

The problem for Babuji Smartass began when his office computer was intercepted by the cyber crime police for planning an attack on a famous historical mosque of the city – because, as he mentioned in his chats – there were terrorists hiding underneath the mosque. Police was sure that this was the case of a raving madman. 

They had to take steps to avoid any accidental tragedy and embarrassment. So they put Babuji Smartass on surveillance, and that’s how the process of BS Complex’s discovery began.

Police was stunned by his demeanor. They just couldn’t categorize it. He was otherwise a healthy man living the life a lot of people dreamed of. But something was amiss. The officer in-charge of the surveillance was taken aback by Babuji Smartass’ nature. Babuji Smartass was an expert at delegating work. Babuji Smartass never did anything himself, but still, all the credit went to him for all the things that were done in his vicinity. He disowned any association with anything remotely unsuccessful. And thus, Babuji Smartass was a very successful man. 

Sometimes, he passed lewd comments on hot women passing by while he smoked cigarettes outside his office. He made most calls outside the office. Inside, he checked on what others were doing. Other people are working very hard, he’d often remark to other people. Think Bigger was his favorite phrase, hiring his favorite hobby, and politics his favorite sport.

He had hired a prospective detective to help him execute his plan. He was spending a fortune on this plan – the money he had told his wife he was saving for their own house – and her sister that he was saving for the divorce with her sister – the money, most of which he had used to order a lot of RDX from an underground online market, and for a later getaway to Hawaii.

A week before his planned attack, the police picked him up from outside his office for indecent behavior in public. He was then brought before the doctors from the Indian Psychiatric Society. Weeks went by. His wife thought he had died somewhere. She filled a police complain too. Her sister left the country. The detective he had hired joined the police.

Babuji Smartass emerged after three months, still as much a smartass as before. But people didn’t like it anymore. They avoided him altogether. And the parasite in him was frustrated without a society to feed on. Only his wife grew much closer to him than before and he too grew more dependent over her than before. He was arrested again in a matter of few months on the charges of killing his wife.

Babuji Smartass died in prison of pneumonia. But Babuji Smartass Complex lives on.

_ _

The Omelet Incident

Mrs. Batra made omelets every morning at 6 o’clock. Mr. Batra came home at around 7 o’clock after his night shift and went to sleep immediately after savouring whatever eggs he was served. Mrs. Batra then woke up the son, who apparently finished his nap in the toilet. The grandmother generally lay awake most of the time, moving only on a need to basis. The grandfather went out to play tennis. The dog barked after the newspaper arrived, and the morning as it came, came expectedly.

There was a milkman, obviously. He came on the right time, although not fixed time. Neither was he any Ravan, nor was Mrs. Batra any Sita. Neither could he fly away with her, nor did she wish for anything otherwise. So it was all good, life as it is. Until one day, when the cooking gas got over. And there were no omelets for Mr. Batra.

Mr. Batra worked through all night sitting inside the AC cabin of a chemical factory. He thought of the omelets in the pie charts and the glass windows of his world. There was little thought to it than a mere reflex. So when Mr. Batra could not have the omelets, he decided to start putting things on fire. Starting with the curtains in which was hiding the poor milkman. So much drama followed.

The milkman shouted for quite a bit but all the neighbors only looked up and around their roofs searching for a source of the sound. Few increased the volume of their radio or television. Mrs. Batra could never work in the kitchen without a radio playing in the background. She also upped the volume. The milkman said before dying, that the day was his most unlucky one.

So then it was all good, life as it is. They packed up the body into pockets and threw it away one by one, and by the evening it was all was gone. The only difference the omelet incident has ever made is that the grandfather now does not go out to play tennis. Also Mr. Batra said he was looking for a day job. And the rest is all good, life as it is.

___

The Loudspeakers in a Party

Once switched on, two loudspeakers can seldom be happy in the same room. Many have tried, and many have failed. Those speakers that have succeeded in being with one or more other speakers in the same room have either had to reduce their voice or switch off, if they could not absolutely shout out the rest. 

This creates much trouble whenever the louder speaker plays the generally straining rhythms. Nobody likes it but the idiot fingering that speaker. The louder speaker obviously likes it. The louder speaker controls the overall mood inside the room – happiness, sadness, romance, nostalgia, and the general party mood for the rest of the speakers. 

There was quite a mutiny last month when the idiot threw his bachelor party in a farmhouse outside the city. There were many speakers, all trying to be the loudest. The good thing they thought was that they all started with the party mood, blasting ecstatically thinking that the party mood was going to last forever. They had faith in their unity which was based on their belief in the party mood.

But the idiot and friends shook the living transistors out of them. 

They played all kind of things. Sounds mixed and turned into sounds yet unheard of – frequencies that tickled people inside the skull and shifted down to move their spines along with it – lyrics which made them think of all kinds of drama – and cry and laugh and jump around the house – in ways that it became a song in itself, confusing the loudspeakers to a great degree. If their song was not what made people dance, and rather they danced on a song much different than theirs, did it not diminish the loudspeakers’ point of existence. 

The little speaker inside a mobile phone was the first to show signs of protest – it stopped while taking the phone’s life along with it too. Many fell from their place and broke their own wires. Many sucked in the acidic liquid that was being splashed all over the place. Many took the fight to the next level and competed with each other to gain the maximum voice – while the idiot and friends sang their own songs upon hearing all kinds of melodramatic old sounds from the loudest speaker.

Most of the speakers were in mood for fighting but had to give up. It was not just the loudest speaker at the time, but also the old sounds of their great grandfathers which it was playing, which made them shut themselves down after all, for sake of their conscience at least. 

The party will go on to another day – the speakers told themselves in the wee hours of the morning as the idiot and friends repeated the same to each other. Many have tried and many have failed, but it’s never the same party again. 

_

The light down the road

She stands under the yellow streetlight after the midnight,

Down the road he lives,
Insects hover over her head,

Thinking it’s her,

That makes the light be there.

They never shifted to the other streetlights,

Since generations,

And she had never shifted either.

At the night,

When the city bathes in yellow,

The streets specifically -  

Her poise under the streetlight is rather hard to ignore,

Most people stop to take a look,

She chooses,

Her illusion of exercising a choice,

Much like the insects,

As they choose which pole to hover over,

Even as many die before the sun comes out,  

Even as she cries,

Sometimes when no one comes to look,

As the dying insects fall into her hair,

As she slowly brushes them away,

As someone stops to take a look,

As the light flickers and the stars hide away behind the clouds.

Down the road he lives,

Thinking it’s her,

That makes the light be there. 
_

Today's Horoscope

A lost man looked at his hands hoping for directions. There was none to be found. All the lines looked going haywire. Sometimes the lines on his hands appeared to be stronger than the hands were themselves. That was the ultimate despair that had left the fools wiser and the wise ones foolish.

Few lines hid themselves almost afraid to show up. And few showed up like the length of their stride would determine their right over the lost man’s destiny. It was almost an evil ploy by god to stop the lost man from going on to his own path of happiness. So the lost man looked for solutions from god’s agents, the astrologers and the old stone merchants. He read horoscopes everyday, of yesterday, today, and tomorrow.

The lost man wondered about all the dead people of the day who the horoscopes had missed, and prayed for himself to be a part of that crowd when the horoscopes turned bad. The lost man looked at his hands, believing in disbelief that all his life was coded there, and often spent hours reading between the lines, most of which crisscrossed violently on its way into the heaven.

God has a plan, the god’s agents told him, sold to him, and then told him again upon doubt due to delay in the services the lost man paid for. A proper plan, the lost man hoped, would be better than today’s horoscope at least. However, little doubt had seeped into his mind.

One day the government banned the horoscopes for spreading false beliefs and manipulating an entire race of mammals. There were protests all over the place. Middle aged men and women marched around the India Gate with candles, and their kids and the opposition debated over TV on the extent of the government’s moral policing.

In all this craziness, the lost man felt like a revolutionary all of a sudden.

Some people told him to take it easy, but he took to the streets flashing the rings around his eight fingers and two thumbs. He told stories of their success. He was all of a sudden, an ambassador of the people who were lost within their hands.

The government had to step down. The rules were changed. The power of the stones returned the faith of the mankind, and the lost man felt found for the first time. He then applied for a certificate of the knowledge of the telling of tomorrow.  

He now tells today’s horoscopes over YouTube, and also has been able to find this plan in his hands. It was clear from the beginning, he mentions often.

_

A long song

A song for the sins, thank god for them,

For the flesh and wounds,

Cleaned up with the juice of long forgotten sour grapes.

A song at the mercy of wind,

Heard at the turn with a house of ill repute,

And blinding lights,

Like pitch black with occasional reds,

The song that was heard till the morning,

Of the birds and flowers,

Of old things and lovers,

Of lights that slide through the eyes,

And kisses, broken at the turn of dice.

A song for the snow,

Under the dead tree in the desert of hopes,

Taken for granted,

Like the snow, the brother that lived away,

And the tree, the brother that lived here in its death.

A song for the lies of the employed romantics of life,

Of automated replies, neckties, and ethical culture.

A song for the singers of elegies, and for the mourners,

A song with much hated love,

From the corners of the streets holding the hostages of conscience,

Dipped in cheap rum and powdered foreign whores,

A song from around the time, a song for this time.

Played with the instruments buried in ground of mores,

And sang by little pet rats and dogs and cats,

And the little old man fixing the soles of brats.

A song so long I dare not sing,

I dare not complete,

So otiose,

I dare not write.

_