Being

I am quite tired of eating with strange faces everyday. People eat differently, some of them stare at you, some are too intent on the food which is how it should be. My first brush with police stations and FIRs (First Information Report) happened today when my phone got ‘flicked’ in the bus. I was also asked for a bribe, in return for which I was promised a second hand phone that would cost me less than the second hand market. That should be a third hand phone actually!

I got a good story and I lost my phone. When two things that make you very happy and very sad happen on the same day, they cancel each other out and you are left with an empty feeling at the end of it. At such times, you go home and crash, crash,crash..

You fall into a dreamless sleep. Its beautiful because you are beyond any kind of interruption and when you get up the next morning, you feel light-headed, almost drunk. Suddenly, realisation strikes. You don’t have a phone and you can’t get in touch with people even if you wanted to. Most of the times, I don’t want to.

Such moments are those rare moments in your life, when you attempt to get out of yourself and to analyze yourself objectively. You hover over yourself and think of yourself as a specimen. You change your position on your bed and decide to turn over and sleep. Life goes on around you: people get up, bathe, get ready, go out. You pretend that you are dead. You stop breathing for a minute and then start breathing again because the body doesn’t understand your strange whims.

Suddenly, you realise you are all alone. Everyone has left and you are alone in the big, rambling house. Slowly, you get up and begin your day.

Drugs and me

Joint pain in the middle of a Monday is not the ideal beginning to a week. I went home soon after, popped a crocin and was soon in the grips of a drug and sickness-induced slumber. When I got up, my head was pounding and my eyes were burning. There were a thousand mosquitoes buzzing over my head and I could feel a faint sweat beginning behind my ears. Soon, I was mumbling, muttering strange things, at first to myself and then to the world as my voice rose slowly, both in pitch and fervour. It was a devilish night and I tossed and turned in my bed the whole night.

The next day, the whole hostel came to see me and pronounced judgment that I wouldn’t go to college on that day. I was only too happy for that judgment despite a menacingly close deadline. I visited the doctor (a sports consultant) in the evening who prescribed the standard antibiotics for an apparent sore throat and crocin for the fever.  By then, a fine red rash had broken all over my body. However, it was not until the next night that the itching actually began. It was horrible like a thousand hungry rats gnawing at my skin, all at once. I kept scratching myself the whole night and even fainted at one point. When I came around, it was morning and people were leaving for college.

I was rushed to the Apollo Hospital that day and given 3 shots (anti-histamines). I had developed a drug reaction to one of the drugs that I had taken. It reduced rapidly after that and disappeared just the way it began.Abruptly.

Sickness gives you a perspective especially if you faint during your sickness. The few moments, soon after you come to consciousness are mindless, blank and beautiful. Then consciousness catches up with you.

The death of beauty

It was a perfect setting for the concert. The moon was up and the sandy courtyard where we sat, was surrounded by trees. Bare trees. Green trees. The faint sound of the waves could be heard since the sea wasn’t too far away. The cool breeze danced attendance on the listeners and the musicians. It was a concert of sufi music by the Gundecha brothers at Sadanand Menon’s house.

I don’t understand music at all. Sufi, classical or any other. The only reason I went was to be in that house. There is something about that place, that captivates me, holds me back. I never knew Chandralekha and I will not say that her ghost lingers. When you have never known someone, you can’t feel the ghost lingering even though the person may be a famous one. 

It would be great fun to live all alone in that old, hoary house. To sleep in the sand when you felt like it. To look at the moon after the day’s work and to go on looking at it all night. There is a sense of wonder each time I look at the moon. In fact, looking at the moon relieves me of everything, leaves me utterly devoid of any sort of feeling.

I don’t understand culture at all. All those people nodding their heads and at times even shaking their entire bodies was nothing short of funny. There was woman with bobbed hair who seemed to be in an orgasmic bliss. It was spooky because I could find nothing great in the music and yet people listened with rapt attention. Experiences like these make you wonder if there really can be a collective appreciation of beauty. I am a little sceptical about commonly acknowledged things of beauty.

You can stare away into the oblivion when you are standing on the beach and pretend that you are thinking but it doesn’t mean you are. I stare into oblivion when I am standing at the beach and I get distracted by the waves. That is why I go there. The waves are distracting. I want to stop thinking. I can hear the waves in my head for a whole night after I come back and my thoughts don’t pound in my head. That is why I find the sea beautiful. With the mountains, I feel as if I am falling over a cliff.

Beauty is dead. What passes off as beauty is merely Kitsch. I couldn’t agree with Kundera more when he says : Before beauty dies entirely it must continue to exist as a mistake. It is a mistake for all else is design, careful and contrived.