Goodbye Macedonia

Farewell Andromeda

And a million synchronized notes

A satin black sky pierced with stars

Leaving Macedonia

Blurring in dust

Goodbye Macedonia

Farewell at last.

Macedonia.

Whom Alexander left behind to conquer the world.

Macedonia.

For whom Alexander, at 22, left behind his world to bring back the world.

Macedonia.

Dreaming of whom Alexander drowned himself in inebriation, cradled by the rivers of Babylon.

Distant Macedonia.

Whom Alexander never met eyes with again.

His fingers traced the white star on Bucephalus's black-as-death forehead.

Whispered names of stars in a crisp springtime Mediterranean sky.

Turned his eyes skywards

Searching lonesomely for familiarity

In a sky clouded with

Grime, and smoke and a million wraith-like spirits

Rising from the embers of burning Hydaspes.

Long-dead memories float off

And become murky clouds

Strangling nostalgic skies and referential stars.

Searching for a line

To thread together the stars

Into a necklace of pearls

Kissing Macedonia's slender neck,

Realization dawns in a smoke-stained autumn evening

Of clotted blood and plundered bronze.

Nothing happens for a reason.

No grander scheme

Nor a silver thread

Joining the heavens.

Vainly searching for a garland of pearls

He left Macedonia

Dying in dust.

Yellow Sunshine, Blue Filigree

The sunshine on his neck was like the warmth of her breath. The sun played among the entangled locks of her hair - all gold and bronze and lustrous black,

He took her hand in his.

Tender. Fragile. A lotus stalk.

And ran his fingers over the back of her hand, tracing the pale blue filigree of veins that showed through the paleness of her skin.

Her eyes. Always half-dreamy. Lost somewhere in the dense foliage within herself. She wasn't smiling. Not surprized. Just dreamily waiting for each moment to drag itself into the past.

If only I could look into your past, he whispered. if your palm can hold hidden all the secrets of your future, it seems just logical that I could read your past here. Flowing timelessly through these blue rivers of your memories.

And the present? Her voice distant and dreamy.

The present? That's what we make every moment we live. That fragile line between two certainties. The fingertips of time. The touch of your hand. What we create that spills over the moment next to add to our past. Teardrops and icy glaciers which feed our rivers of memory.

Silent half-parted lips.

Half-dreamy eyes tracing the contours of some cloud.

A blue filigree.

And the warmth of sunshine on his neck.

Grey is bluer than you think

Good morning.

A weeping afternoon.

Not a wisping breath of wind.

The musty smell of tamarind

Trailing airy fingers through

Earth-soiled dew,

Rubber balloons and cigarette ends,

A dime and sixpence,

A few dropped tears,

Listless tingling fears,

Smiles and smirks

Embroidered into a book,

And a pistol in my hand that shook.

It is as simple as buttoning your sleeve.

Even simpler.

Idiot-proof. Sharp. Efficient. And no quivering quavering metallic heart.

One trembling finger

And a six-ounce slug

Explodes the silence in vehement self-conscious defiance

Cuts a straight line through the two inches of air

(A line too straight to be natural

Yet too straight to be man made either-

The lethal has a beauty that is incomprehensibly divine.)

And pounds into soft tissue

Crunching bone

And lodges itself into

Soft electric pulsating

Grey matter.

The body snaps out of synapse.

Acetylcholin.

Resounding echoes in an empty chamber

Of a sound that never registered.

Too quick.

Quicker that hopes and synapse hops.

Hops and barley and beer.

No thought, no regret, no fear.

Red blood. White bone. Grey matter.

The sky is grey.

And old and stale

As moulded out butter toast

With furry rhizophus spreading out black fingers into its very heart.

Black fingers.

Nerves of thought.

The wind is a faint reminder

Of a long forgotten secret.

Of words that made me smile.

Laugh. Cry. Fear. Long. Wish. Love. Yawn.

Feel.

The mould smells of the past.

Thick, sweet and balmy.

Like sweaty palms.

Warms me up.

The moment has passed.

The grey is blue.

Bluer than it seems.

The gun clangs on the floor as frail fingers let go.

Sweaty and warm.

Good evening.

Bad night.

As Buddha smiles, so do I...

It was definitely the blueness that called me out. Placid. Tranquil. That self-content smile of Buddha played all over the surface. And in all its serenity, the water seemed thicker than it possibly could be.

As I stepped out of the window - the wood smelt of grandma's tales - the air was so crisp, the grass cracked under the weight of my shoes. They gave in willingly, dreamily; caught inebriated in the surrealism of that winter morning. The warmth was a surprize. The sun was out and the sunshine held you warmly yet loosely. Like a lover who had known you all you life; its fingers gently exploring every edge and curve in your body. And the snow fell so lightly, it melted off your skin, leaving behind moist lips where it kissed.

The water still beckoned. In its blueness. Its softness was there for all to see. The grass, despite the morning dew and the uncertain snow, was still too sharp. So were the craggy hills behind it. In the watercoloured sky, the clouds were too sharp-edged - their edges too white in the morning shine. And the wind had a bite of coldness that pushed needles till my bones. The water, by obvious contrast, looked too soft.

Marshmallows. Cherry blossoms. A leaf dropt somewhere. Floating handkerchief. Down feather. Dandelion head. Steam rising from a warm cup of tea. Too sweet.

I was neck-deep in water now. Again, the warmth surprizes me. And the ripples i leave on my wake don't move too far, nor too fast. They seem too lazy to fight the thickness. Too pacified by Buddha's unknowing smile. I walk forward. Even deeper.

The Buddha is everywhere. His presence, everything.

I do not choke as i reach underwater. The water for all its swaddling thickness, has by now wafted to ether. I can still feel its thickness around me, and its touch. It feels like I am walking in a thick breeze that hugs me, wraps its soft arms around me. I see clearly. Too clearly to be underwater. And then I pause.

I can definitely feel it happening. That irrational heart-scoffing fear when you lose something you prize the most. Feel myself losing out. Not that it was material. Not that I ever valued them when they existed. Not that I never wished them to be torn away. But the loss... The contradiction dawns. They were all I had gathered all through my life. They were my unsigned bank cheques, my unnamed appartment, my framed sepia photographs. They were my promise for the future.

As I stood at the bottom of the lake of tears, I felt it all getting thicker, all around me. The wrapped arms hugging tighter. And I felt my memories, my hopes, my dreams turning into ether. Warm. Mellow. Soft. My vision's now clearer than ever. I could see each wrinkle, scar, bemused smile, buried sorrow, as my memories float around me. Away from me. I can see each molecule. The electron cloud. I feel I am being one with them.

As the lake opened its eyes to the watercoloured sky, on it played the Buddha's self-contented smile.

Betraying the cause.

Causality

The relationship of cause and effect

The principle that nothing can happen without being caused

There was blood seeping

Tracing lines along the grains in the wood

And marking out the cracks in the floorboards.

Blood spewing out of his half-open mouth

And his bleeding nose.

His eyes were half-closed.

Half-open.

Staring aimlessly,

Trying to make meaning out of the rust patterns drawn into the bottom of the refrigerator door.

Trying in vain to substantiate life

And place pins, and hold it down,

And dissect its viscera

As he lay, dissected himself,

In a pool of blood.

His blood.

The blood of the cause.

The high-octane fuel that once charged

That turbocharged mind of his

Which identified, improvised, illustrated, illuminated.

No doubt he started it.

His mind was the manifesto,

And here lay, bread and wine,

And a thousand delusions which escaped the confining quotations

And puzzling citations within that psychical text.

Now with the knife staved deep in his chest,

It still was not easy.

Cutting a shredded line through his heart and his left lung.

Blood oozed out.

Filling the chest cavity.

Pulmonary oedema.

His lungs compressed, filling up with blood themselves.

As he choked on the high-octane fuel

That kept spilling though his breath now.

The blood wrote histories on the ground.

Stories he meant to achieve.

Walk in front of them, at the head of the procession.

His chest bared open to bullets

And cannon-fire.

Wrote tales of forgotten beds

And forsaken love.

The story of a cause

And how it made sense of the world to him.

How he tried to make them see it.

All they heard was a mad man's ravings.

All they saw was a path paved to their grave.

The knife plunged into his heart.

Soft and warm; and red with blood.

Allegropolis. Episode Four. Upturning the Fishbowl.

The fishbowl of existence. That unabated sense of euphoria substantiated - matter and the immaterial - within the inebriated minds of a million memory-impaired goldfish. The nauseating sense of aloneness. Sobriety in the middle of energy-pumping rave party. Ohh!! the flashing lights... The blacklights and the numbing baseline... Elliptic Epilepsy. My head spins. Counterclockwise. Understanding what lies beyond - the real substantial. They wont listen. Bluddy senseless goldfish. They are caught in the dream. Between the non-existent past and the stillborn future, their world is a stretched out elastic band of a present. the tension tears through my being. [T = mg cos A + mv2/l]. I run for the restroom. Nausea.

The band snaps. The fishbowl topples to a side, water pouring down its side.

Water drips down my face as I step away from the washbasin.

The Lassitude and Longi(ng)tude of Loneliness

On retrospection, he felt certain he must have left his mind behind. The take-away counter, most probably, he thought to himself.

But, he didn't realize it then.

When he stood there, in the busy bazaar -

Shoulders bustling for space

A stream of rickshaws blaring air horns

The bickering of women and vendors

And catcalls of a few who leaned by the stalls scanning the crowd

The occasional whistle of the policeman

The ringing bells of cycles snaking their way through the crowd

The unmistakable market scent

Of incense, jaggery, sweat, salt,

Rotten cabbages, fresh fish and soiled paper -

This heady concoction of sensory perceptions we so distanced and muted, he felt he might have been overhearing someone else's thoughts. Again he didn't realize it then, 'cause his mind was elsewhere.

Resting on the clean grazed stainless steel and glass take-away counter, shuddering to the unusual chill, his mind was dreaming. And creating those exquisitely intricate dreamscapes it so often indulged in.

Her warm kiss of sunlight on his neck.

Her gentle breeze running frail fingers through his hair.

Her lazy sleepy waves whispering music to his ears.

Her scent was a valley of flowers and rain and sunshine.

Her hair, waves of an ocean in night.

As he stood in the marketplace, the summer sun turning the world a monotony of white, he was searching for secrets and truth, for reason and meaning, as he looked into the endless depths of her eyes. In those few moments of lazy transcendency, of silent mournful longing, he was the loneliest person on the planet.

Yet, he remembered vividly that he was with her the whole while.