One evening
The sun had just set and I was walking back home from the khokha. I was thinking about how my clothes would one day be recognized as "symbolic" of this particular era. I was looking at my scorched hands and sun burnt skin. My shoes and my clothes were almost equally unclean. I chirped three times, good naturedly, at the cat sitting on the wall. It nodded its head, three times, back at me in a meaningful way. That was when I realized I was the maker of the meaning in my life and that my handwriting was filthy. The cat was quite fat.
“How much do you eat?” I asked but was not able to hide successfully the insult suggestive in my tone. The cat got offended and said: “Does your father pay my bill?”
I know when I am beaten and that too by a cat. The fault, however, was entirely mine. I should’ve used a more cunning approach, a bit more diplomacy perhaps. But I had never realized that one was expected to go fully armed against cats! I had only been awaiting a well deserved look of loathing from the animal but an actual witticism? From a cat?! I thought it was a bit extreme and I had been caught unaware. My balls froze as if they had been dipped in liquid ice. The colour blue flashed before my eyes and my vision blurred. My handwriting had suddenly improved.
I was almost halfway home by the time I realized I was a genius, full of symbolic manipulation and vast metaphors. But if I were to take an objective standpoint, I would have to admit that I was a complete idiot. Though my handwriting was improving and I was soaking information in like a sponge.
This is when I reached the black door that leads through the wall on to the back or maybe even the left side of my house’s backside, which was perpendicular to the left side of my house. There was a corridor and a garden filled with confusion, doubt and utter chaos, where squirrels searched for spare change to buy cigarettes.
But that’s a different story because I was stuck on the other side; behind the door, which was sure to be locked. It was almost always locked. This meant that I would have to haul myself over the wall and balance my weight against the, ugly but youthful, guava tree. The guavas were a most unripe shade of green and the place in general was a quicksand of insect debauchery; once the tube light was turned on. They were everywhere and of every sort. I especially hated those white ones that oozed yellow blood when they got squished beneath the hand of a “brownie”, a mere slave like me. White man’s burden offered a much more accurate picture in this setting, except for the insect. I hated those insects and was sure to come across it if I were to put my hands on the top of the wall and pull myself up. But the wall wasn’t all that tall anyway and I could see perfectly what was on the surface. It was just a matter of choice after all. Shall I try to blow away all these remnants and bits and pieces or just not bother and try to rely on careful hand placement and dynamic weight shifting?
Fortunately the door was open so I simply walked on in.
By now I could not recognize my own handwriting. In all honesty I could barely draw letters. Half the alphabet was alien to me.
In the middle of all this confusion, somehow, an element of morality reared its ugly head and things became even more convoluted. Forget Freud or the squirrels; no nicotine junkie mammal could ever help me solve this riddle: my conscience told me that I shouldn’t have bought cigarettes at the khokha. Not that I had anything against the khokha, except perhaps that it was too far from my room; its just that smoking made me feel guilty. My mother had told me, far too soon, that it was a dirty habit.
An old man appeared, dressed in green, but wearing his shoes on backwards.
“Why do your feet point backwards when your visage points elsewhere, O’ sage and most wise of mortal guides?” I asked the old man, trying to make up for the cat incident by being more courteous, just in case.
A sort of classy but somewhat feminine touch had invaded my handwriting.
The old man replied: "I am no sage; I’m a fraud. I point in one direction but take the other. Go look for Khizr in your own heart for my heart is a concoction of bitterness that will never be resolved!”
I instantly realized that the old man was mad and also that I was not having a good ‘social’ day. All interactions so far had ended in disaster. I turned away, lowered my head and avoided his gaze but even as I walked away, he shouted: “Don’t be so quick to shy away from your own image. Your contempt for me is for yourself!”
I could now see strange symbols in my handwriting: fish swimming or a collection of unblinking eyes. Some of the loops in it were almost comical and yet impressive in their genius at deception. My writing resembled, in its simplicity, the confession of a tarnished soul, a restless spirit and a fading conscience. This was the scariest part of my journey.
The garden of squirrels, squirrels that smoke, and talk like women, was always to my left. The corners of my vision betrayed an image of angular desires and nonsensical lies. Absurd predicaments were being chased by moments of personal embarrassment in an environment of ever possible public humiliation. I kept chanting a mantra over and over again to keep myself from repeating old mistakes. My heart gulped in terror and I shuddered as I muttered, “One plus one does not make one…it makes two!”
I was thinking about a cat. That often happens when you chant. If you’re a frequent chanter then you would know that an accomplished chanter always snaps out of a reverie, quite suddenly, to find himself thinking about something completely unrelated. There was a sense of peace in knowing how well my defenses worked. So now I was thinking about a cat. Not the cat, but a cat. The difference is significant.
My handwriting most resembled a seasoned philosopher or a practical joker who did not care about his handwriting openly but suffered ulcers on the sly. I wanted to move underground.
I turned the door handle and entered my house. I ate some food then went upstairs and sat alone. I counted my nails and my teeth...twice, just to be sure. I looked at shapes in the marble floor. I hid the floor beneath the mattress and tried to quit this habit. There was a wad of chewing gum on the chair’s leg. Wanton acts of rebellion surrounded me and suffocated me.
The time was right but the place was wrong.
The time was perfect…spot on…it’s just that the place was entirely wrong.
The wall beneath the cat had been a wonderful experience. I had enjoyed it. In retrospect, I must say that the wall had been covered in beautiful flowers and the cat, the most ideal ornament; how cleverly it had nodded! Clever cat, I thought.
By now I couldn’t tell if the ink in my pen was black or blue or red.
posted by Duck @ 10:15 AM
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