Once upon a time in the future (part II)

The year...is not important. The time... is monumental. Memories of the night are among the first I can recall vividly. Things were rolling into motion for the worst much before I remember. We only lacked the foresight to see this eventuality....

Life is lonely.  I breathe in a time when the definition of life has ceased to be of any significance. I wake up everyday, drenched in sweat, with the same dream- It's pitch black. There is a thunderous roar in the sky. The skies light up obscure faces below, all expectantly facing up with open mouths, begging for water. There is no rain. It gets dark again. I hear the rain. I see sparkling rain droplets in the sky, but they don't reach the ground.   I see ropes dangling from the sky, people hung by the neck from the ends. There's a blinding streak of lightning. A baby cry. The sky is clear. It's pouring rain.

 I'm startled from my sleep. The cat clutching on to my leg scrambles and dashes for the window. Stranger cat. It's 7:55 AM. I wake up at the same time, same place everyday. I have had the dream again. I sit up on the bed damp with warm sweat. I shiver awkwardly ; it's the chill crawling through me. I shake it off, jump off the bed and stroll to the bathroom. I had managed to recycle 6.354 litres of water. Time for the prized shower. The next shower is scheduled for a date exactly 128 days later, god willing. The sensation of water on the skin serves as nostalgia. 170 years ago, showers could readily be arranged for. There was ample water to take 2 showers, sometimes even upto 5 showers, a day. The smell of the body after the shower gathers hope for me. This smell is only one of the many things that is on the brink of extinction. There's a grotesque body odor everywhere today amongst others; that due to the lingering smell generated by the breakdown of apocrine sweat by  a grossly mutated form of staphylococcus epidermis, and the scarcity of clean water. Whatever purified water is availabe is routed to the diet; the diet mostly of the elite. People of godforasken land has learnt to embrace this fate and many such others. That is  because it's all a manifestation of their cumulative undoing. I take one last sniff of my body before my clothes spoiled the smell. I sit down to eat 'the meal'- a few crumbs of bread, 9 bean seeds, 17 grams of 'meat'(textured vegetable protein/ soy protein) and one glass of water. Since the 'golden days'( A period 200 years ago) sky high costs of food have restricted 92% of the population to one meal a day. I'm about to cringe at the thought of the day ahead when my cell phone beats rhythmically for approximately the duration of a news bulletin. The screen is crammed with information-1289 txt messages, 89 voice messages, and over 800 missed call alerts. I scroll through the voice messages, and screech to a halt at Dr. Rozario. The content of the message is a massive breakthrough.  I put on my goggles, my gas mask, and I check my watch which is in working order, by virtue of the flaring solar energy, before I step into the smog.....

to be continued....

Once upon a time in the future (part I)

Eyes flutter open. Pitch black. A lazy drift of wind makes way through the window, but dissapears in haste. I try to retrieve what time, date and place it is. My cell phone beeps. The screen flashes a wink of 'el lumbre'. It warns- battery low. Now I know I'm in my bedroom. It's midnight. The same midnight, same place, same life. Almost a Deja Vu.

The heat is unbearable. The occasional heimlich-charity-breeze-maneuver prevents me from choking from the heat. Attempting to fall back to sleep is 'mission impossible' re-defined. Counting sheep isn't an option.(The creative portion of my brain draws up a deadly association between wool and heat). I try counting polar bears. Can't, I'm still bothered by the fur! I give up. Time for brainstorming! Read a book? ; But which? The Bangla novel I read halfway through? Any of the three other English novels I read to varying page numbers? None. It had slipped my mind that 'el lumbre'-the elusive blessing- was missing. I devise a plan B- listen to the radio on my cell phone? Curiosity gets the better of me, and I wonder if the radio stations have a power cut too. The wondrous brain has a rebuttal- even if they did have power your cell phone's battery is dry. Plan C-Make for the kitchen, and find something to snack up on with whatever light is at your disposal. Plan C in effect. As I scan through the freezer all I could interest my taste budswith  is some kebab with a cold glass of Ayran(a yogurt based beverage, popular in Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Greece, Iran, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Syria, Turkey and other parts of the Balkans, the Middle East, and Central Asia.)

I whisk the kebab and the yogurt out of the fridge and rehearse the steps of making the ayran:

Pour the yogurt in a medium mixing bowl
Using the electric beater, blender or whisk, beat the yogurt until it is completely smooth.
Add in the water one-half cup at a time, beating it into the yogurt after each addition
When all the water is added in, continue beating for one minute. The surface of the ayran should be a bit bubbly
Add salt to taste, beating the salt into the mixture.
Add mint to taste, beating it into the mixture to release its flavor.

Ahh..mmm. The thought bubble in my head already has me sipping and savoring every bit of the Ayran. I'm through step 1, and 2(had to go with the whisk), and then I gleefully greet everything in the freezer to take 'cold water' out tonight. After ransacking the fridge and the freezer, first patiently and then gradually more frantically, for a good few minutes, the closest thing I find is a bottle of ketchup. No problemo. I check the jug- it's dry! I check every other container for water- dry! I resort to the faucet-it's dry! With utter frustration I divert my attention to the kebabs. I poke a lit match at the stove repeatedly.Voila-nothing!  Murphy's law or Karma?

I'm crotchety. My life path number says so. But things are happening on a big scale now, so I can't give the credit to my life path number for feeling the way I'm feeling by now.  My cell phone is dead. No power, no water, no gas. No, we're not at war. We haven't been hit by missiles, or mortars, or RPG's, or anything the military might use to bring about this outcome. No, we're not reeling from any devastating calamity, or such. We haven't been hit by cyclones, or droughts, or floods, or anything nature might use to bring about this outcome.....

What if?

Benson & Hedges: Don't let your worries kill you like Ben's son in the hedges! Smoke your way out...

Camel: Ride the camel through the worrystorms. Rescues you from the desert of worries!

Dunhill: Not climbing the Dunhill may cause fatal worry cancer! Smoke to the peak.

Gold leaf: You're special. You're not smoking tobacco, you're smoking your worries away!

You could smoke away your worries? Every time you winced and wrinkled your face to yank smoke into your lungs, you could inevitably spit out into the world fumes of your cancerous worries? Every fag end you stubbed meant you whipped the butt of a band of unruly worries? Hahah! You could hear the strangled shrieks of your ashen faced worries resonating from the pit of the ashtray?

Initially, I would frantically huff and puff, dance, and fire gunshots into the skies-Arab style! I would lie on the ground, arms and legs sprawled, smoking Hookah. I would smoke a Havana and tickle Benjamin Netanyahu. I would take hits from weed joints and sing parodies of  Kawali songs. I would do a voodoo dance and blow smokes on a grumpy Sumo Wrestler's face. With a big grin on my face and smoke billowing from my mouth and nostrils, I would shoot at 'ugly' politicians with a water shot gun.  

What after the initial frenzy?
 A mob chasing me. Benjamin Netanyahu threatening to put me on a cigarette ban forever; Mossad could surely make that happen regardless of whichever place of the earth I inhabited! Kawali singers yelling abusive songs at me. The Sumo wrestler swearing to crush my bones once he got hold of me. The politicians, teary eyed, swearing in their abusive local dialects (more worries for me because I'd need a translator to figure what they were actually threatening me with!)
And I run, run- big strides, hopping, leaping, skidding- taking ever big puffs of smoke, and blowing smoke every time I turned around to see my chasers. Then I bump into a sign post reading ' Have you angered passive smokers today? Don't worry, treat them to our finest brands of worry alleviating cigarettes from the nearest vending machine!'



I'm about to buy an assortment of cigarettes, to pacify the mob, when I suddenly hear 'Wait! Hey you shameless smoker man! You're deadmeat! Did you know that research suggests passive smoking poses as much a risk of removing  worries as does active smoking?'
' What's the worry then, why're you chasing me?' I scream back.
By now they've caught up with me. It's a dangerous stand off. I'm smoking ever quick!
'You've ruined it all you...you..crazy addicted smoker guy! Reduced worry, reduced performance!'  a politician man  lambasts. The Kawali singer man steps up and asserts himself ' Do you even have the slightest idea about performance anxiety! Arousal can be enhanced by anxiety and therefore heightens the degrees of sensitivity and imagination. In other words,  it is helpful and necessary to perform tasks more efficiently. '

Performance! Pffttt... I bail myself out saying I'd smoke 'blanks' only in the presence of others(How could I stop smoking altogether? My worries are the kind that stamp the neural circuits of anything remotely similar to 'performance' ). I swear at that by the cigarette clamped out of shape by my frightened lips.

'Phew, that was close' I tell myself. I fish a smoke out of the pack, and something catches my eye: Smoking can cause heart stroke. That gives me the goose-pimples. I feel my face. Thank god! None on my face! I wonder why we don't have those on our faces, but my thought is displaced soon...  I turn the pack every way around to find the 'promising label' but to no avail. I light the fag and take a strong drag. I'm spinning in a bubble of worries...  The smoke I exhale is pervaded by the thought: What if you could smoke your worries away? ( A voice inside me says- Yeah yeah bonehead, you would display worry-labelled bottles, stuffed with ashes from every cigarette you smoked, in some Musee de Extinct Worries..Hahah.)

silent reflections...

Thoughts cram for space in my mind. Happens so often, so spontaneously, of it's own accord. Maybe it happens to others too, I'm not sure. Mine are about right and wrong, just and unjust, true and false, and to-do or not-to-do. Are they little sequences of silent revolutions? I'm not sure. They say everything happens for a purpose. Whether the purpose is for you to comprehend or not isn't for you to decide I suppose. Am I right now? Maybe there's good in that. But the moment I say 'maybe there isn't', I'm actually talking about this word discovered as 'controversy'. Where there's a choice there's a controversy. Isn't that so? We might be slaves of one choice or another, groups of believers of one thing or the other. But then again choice makes us human. At the same time not making the right choice can make you inhuman; animal is the word right?

Contradiction. The best of all species -humans- judging those of it's own kind, among themselves. Some will always judge and some will always be judged. Do you know any better? Every act of good and bad-what are they for? Who are they for? Selfishness. The happiest of mankind is he who can claim he doesn't know of selfishness. He who has never been subjected to it. Can man be truly selfless? If true exists that is. Every act of good and bad- manifestations of one's effort to be selfish. Is it not? Who am I to judge? I'm only entitled to an opinion.

I'm only human. Is it when you know this, when you fail to understand any of this, when your mind goes static, that you conclude- You can go only so far as your legs can take you. As for he who has no legs you don't know where he can venture. It's only one opinion which is blurred in a continuum of right and wrong. Right? Wrong?

Confessions?

Confessions, confessions that are virgin, pious, immaculate
There's none other than you, you were, you are, you will be
Faith, trust- can they be written in indelible ink?
Promised in the mosques, churches, and temples?
Confessions that this is it
Confessions that the past is a sea of mistakes
Confessions that the past is nothing but time that's withered away-old, frail and lost
Truth or deception?- Mere words and emotions; do you need to know which is which?
Laughter or tears?- Double standards- Mysterious cloaks of happiness and sorrow
That what is stained- Can you wash away in the holiest of intentions?
Confession of love, confessions of trust, confessions of a desperate desire
A priceless gift of an irreplaceable heart for you, and what not
Haven't you given away the same gift a million times over, to a million souls?
Haven't you confessed a million times over?
That musical soiree of yours- hasn't it blessed or cursed the lives of so many more?
Mere confessions; treachery it is in disguise or is it otherwise?
Faith I have in you- though it's only the unseen.
Faith it is, only, in your confessions- of love, trust and a desperate desire.