Freebirds

SKY
The purple tint at the horizon announced dusk. As the birds flew towards the mangrove forests south of Delhi, a warm and moist gust swept the city. The view from the roof of the concrete giant was breathtaking, one could almost see the curve at the horizon. Soiree dragged a puff from the wrinkly joint.
The year is 2095. It has been twenty years since she was born. She grew up with her parents in a posh locality in Karol Bagh. She received her Elite tag from APCL (Aryan Population Control Limited) at age 3, certified by them as a healthy child fit for serving the higher orders of society. Her parents were decorated scientists from the world war 3 era, which made the tests easier to pass. She still remembers the green blue lights they used for the scan. It reminded her of Yamuna every single time. It was the only source of water for this supercity. Ever since the Evangeline Corporation obliterated Mumbai, all the historical monuments worth saving were shifted within a radius of fifty kilometres from Delhi and kept under heavy protection. Soiree often spent her time looking at the faint shape of the Taj Mahal in the east and imagining a missile launch from the silos surrounding it.
The last drag is the sweetest. She filled her lungs and held it in. The smoke came out, mild like a wisp, drawing gibberish shapes galore. She could hear her mother crying loud, her father, drunk and raw, beating her with his belt. The Evangeline plague took her mother when she was visiting Bhopal, eight years ago. The devastation was unimaginable as millions of lives writhed in pain, begging for death in an infected city. At first, these visions only came in dreams, nowadays they come only when she is high. Soiree sleeps a very deep sleep, like a stone, cold, motionless. APCL was merciful to napalm the city to cinders. APCL, the saviour against Evangelists.
The history lessons that Soiree hated so badly goes something like this. In the first half of the twenty first century the global population spun out of control. With limited resources to sustain, all the countries of the world formed a coalition to bring a twenty five year plan into effect, whereby the population increase would be stemmed and production would be boosted. The Evangeline corporation and APCL were the biggest players assigned with this task of tagging individuals and controlling reproduction surgically. As time progressed, the two superpowers concentrated a sizeable amount of effort and funds towards amassing weapons for security of tagged individuals. Underground skirmishes led to escalations and eventually war. The global population suffered a massive blow in world war 3. As the Aryans took the Northern hemisphere, the Evangelists claimed the South. A no mans land was established along the Equator, twenty one kilometres wide on both sides, running parallel to the latitudes. Violence however did not stop and use of WMDs on random cities became a common ordeal.
It was at the borders of the no man's land that her father died from an RPG attack on his convoy, a year after her mother passed away. They did not find anything to bury, Soiree gave them his belt from the wardrobe for the gun salute. The Aryans said that the information about these incidents were now embedded in her tag. Her neck itches whenever she thinks of it.
Soiree ran her hands over the tiny lump on the back of her neck. Then she pushed a few strands of hair behind her ear. She wished for someone to hug her tight. Someone's shoulder to rest her head on. Ever since she joined the university to study aeronautical engineering, she has moved further away from the real world. At times she felt a little tingle at the end of her fingers, goosebumps all over and it made her feel like she was flying. She wanted someone to fly with. Aryan protocol however did not permit her to be with her special someone before she completed her studies and served the corporation for two years. Soiree was tired.
An old familiar feeling? She suddenly felt certain that she could fly!

FALL
Another sleepless night ahead. The forty plus unread mails in her inbox was enough to make her feel nauseous. So Ruth picked up her favourite red mug and went to the coffee maker for a double espresso. The apparatus hissed and steamed at the touch of a button and Ruth added the powdered beans and a coffee pot with practiced ease.
Spectacles, check. Sandwiches, check. Communicator switched off, check. Boxers and gym shirt, check. With a warm cup of coffee in hand and a precariously dangling cigarette at the corner of her lips, Ruth walked towards her bean bag on the open verandah. On her way out, she picked the zip drive from the table and put it in her pocket. She can not afford to lose the APCL designs.
Ruth works for an engineering and robotics contractor. She was picked up by APCL as one of the brightest students of her batch. She was a natural when it came to robotics and automation. Her dream however did not involve applications in warfare. So instead of a star spangled career, she started working as a contracted designer for a small firm specialising in drone surveillance. Their latest project involved sound reduction of a drone designed by APCL. The details were still a bit hazy. The designs in the pen drive had made her head spin back in office. That was when she decided to come back home and think.
Home is warm. Home is sweet. Home is the twenty first floor of a super tower with a breathtaking view. When the smog clears, Ruth could see the silhouette of the Taj Mahal to the east. The missile silos there were white unlike the other ones with camouflage, scattered across the city. As Ruth lay there, sprawled like a pretzel on her beanbag, her thought wandered off in every possible direction. Nothing had ever disturbed her caffeine trips ever, that is nothing until this very day. 
A mild gaze at the sky and Ruth thought she imagined a speck rushing towards her verandah from the roof. In the blink of an eye she was sure. Someone had jumped. As a free falling body zoomed past the twenty first floor, head first, Ruth choked, jumped up and ran towards the railing. Shattered pieces of a red coffee mug lay on the floor. A trickle of coffee crawled across.

FLIGHT
At first there is a moment of calm. Everything stands still, no breeze to fondle your hair, no bright lights to blind you, no gravity to pull you down and nobody to move you. Soiree felt like a theoretical observer of the universe, nothing affected her and she changed none for those few seconds.
Then gravity yanked her by the head like a torturer tricked into giving comfort to his prisoners. The calm air turned breeze and soon into a steady gust strong enough to push her arms and legs behind her. A fourth through, she thought she would die long before hitting the ground. The anticipation of the very next moment in this accelerated descent formed tiny drops of sweat on her cheekbones and temple. She felt a chill and a rush she had never experienced in her life. Soiree was not afraid. She was just dying to know if she could fly.
The heaviest part of a human body is the head. Soiree did not fight the torque. She imagined the arc she would form to glide out. The radius, the speed, arm span and the other details. Either that, or she could be a Rorschach blot on the sidewalk. Soiree felt the air at her fingertips, the raw feel in her nostrils, eyes watering up in a fight against a wall of air. She turned her arms and spread them, joined her legs to cut through drag. She moved faster towards the ground.
She was now accustomed to the weightless feeling inside her body. The fall seemed like an infinite climb down a concrete laden hole of a concrete clad earth. The blur had just stopped making any sense. Twisted shapes grew taller and taller around her. Roads beneath her gaped with wide jaws. The artificial dust of the artificial city was stripped from Soiree's face. Her eyes caught a dumbstruck observer on one of the verandahs who's silhouette was lost before she could blink. She heard a thin sound from behind.
It started as a weak call to her. Eventually unseen voices joined in. The whisper became a crowd and slowly a chant. They were calling her name. Not shouting, not screaming, calling with a calm control over the pitch and throw of the word. She tried to crane her neck and see who they were, but there was no one. As if the entire universe had concentrated all it's cosmic forces to connect with her. She felt warmth flowing from the tips of her hands inwards. She moved her arms. What was tumultuous moments back, happened at ease. The cosmic hymn chant had stopped. There was no other sound to fill the void, except the wind against her curves. Soiree rolled, spread out with her head pointing up and stretched her toes.

ENVY
Ruth was not breathing. When she realised this, she started taking short frantic gasps all the while trying to understand what she had just seen. Her fingers were aching from holding the railing so tight. Her whole body was arched in tension. She had forgotten to blink.
Hold up. So the body heading down to the street should have hit the pavement like a meteor. Instead, it pelted towards the sky like a rocket. This made no sense. Ruth was grasping around for a proof of reality. A broken piece of cup cut her. She barely noticed it.
She screamed aloud. She felt frustrated, angered at the prospect of flight. Human being were not supposed to fly. It was the machines which were supposed to do that, not a random crazy neighbour. She tore up the lamp wiring and threw the set across the room into the TV. She spewed and sputtered like a rabid dog. She ran to the bathroom and opened the shower. Standing beneath it should calm her.
No peace. The running water reminded her of rushing wind. The cool stream made her feel like she was flying. She was ecstatic and manic at the same time. Her eyes told the tale of madness, green flames rose around her, she gasped, laughed and stripped herself naked.
The kitchen counter would have to do. Knife in her right hand, she dug deep into her left shoulder, no wings there. She could barely lift her left arm then. She tried getting up and slipped in a pool of blood. Her head hit the vase with a terrible crunch. She got up still laughing. There must be an explanation. She was groggy. The world was out of joints. She ran towards the balcony. If someone can fly, Ruth thought, it ought to be her.
She dragged herself on top of the wall. She could not jump. A searing pain impaled her from her left shoulder to her right. Her body crumpled like a pack of cards and went limp as it sped towards the earth.

VERTIGO
Her hair had turned grey white. Her skin had wrinkled, dotted with dark spots. The cost of flight was too much to bear. She had aged more than two decades in a couple of minutes. Soiree had not felt so weak in her life, yet she could not stop. Her body ached at each joint. Her spine felt like it was giving way. She felt numbness on her left arm and drifted left. Her ears resounded with the thumping of her heart. Her throat was perched.
She could see her home from here with whatever vision was left. Home is where you hang up your wings. She balanced herself as well as she could and stretched her toes again.
The peaceful land below never looked so daunting. Soiree remembered that she was afraid of heights when she was a child. The cold creeping into her chest could only mean one thing. Soiree pushed for reaching her home, she was almost there. She wished she could live longer. When she fell asleep, her right hand was still making circles in thin air.

DARKNESS
Mother moon sang a silent lullaby as the Sun slept off that evening. The city was torn apart by sirens from all across. The entire area was cordoned off with men in uniforms shoving away curious folks.
By standers were gathered for debriefing and evidence was being collected from the entire building. The body had been moved into the forensics van when the APCL agents finally rushed in a few minutes later. They started screaming jurisdiction and codes and finally coerced the coroners and the local cops to give up the body.
Night was reclaiming the city by bits. As a lonely body bag travelled in the back of an APCL van, a thin wisp in the sky vanished towards the Equator.

Darkness Inside

"You are early today. Come in. Have a seat. Can I get you a glass of water? Was there a lot of traffic on the way? You must be tired. Do you want something to eat? Why don't you take a shower and change into something comfortable, then we can watch TV together".

The trickle of words trembled through her lips, spread across the room, widened, dying down in intensity, the wave creeped into his ear. A far away buoy wobbled up and down somewhere, something was underneath it all. The sky flickered like a dying halogen. One could look at it only for so long before being blinded.

Subrata was not used to this routine. Yanking a sock with his leg sprawled midair, he dribbled into the centre of the room. Nilobhona and Subrata were married for ten months now. A middle class arranged marriage following all customs, spiced up by a courtship of six months before the big day. The implications of knowing the would be partner made time fly by for both of them. The lengthy and elaborate affair called wedding, the tiffs with the purohits, the honeymoon to Lakshadeep, families and home made erotica, everything made an appearance in Subrata's hard disk albums.

He was breathing heavy. He felt he was not processing parts of his surrounding properly. He did not remember how he reached there, what he saw on his way up or what he heard from outside his rented apartment door. He could just see what was then and there. The dining room and hall was dimly lit. The corridor felt long, gloomy and gray. The bedroom door looked like an entrance to some jurassic cave. The tiny rented flat reeked of dust and sweat. Nilo's stare, smudged with apprehension, caught his eye. A sock in hand, Subrata walked towards their bedroom.

Shilajit's silhouette appeared as Subrata neared the corridor. Unshaved stubble, askew shirt, long black hair melting down his face. "Subrata it's not how it looks", Shila grumbled from beneath the french cut. "Please leave", a voice whimpered from distance. Shila, tucking his shirt, walked away slowly as the sound of sobs erupted from Nilo. Subrata stood there all the while thinking how dark it would be inside a television set when it is not powered on.

Her howl ebbed to a sob then a sniffle. Nilo sat there, her shoulders redefining gravity, kohl melting away like silt, fingers of her feet curling into a tight semi knot. Her breath came minutes apart, interspersed with writhing gasps. Subrata felt terrible to have caused her so much pain. Then something told him that he was being the spineless climber that he always had been. The snigger escaped before he could bury it. He followed through with an icy laugh, eyes closed, head rested on the pivot of his two index fingers.

"Hello. Shubhi? Hey, how are you? Are you home? Alone? Of course! Hey, promise me you would do something! It is. Yes. Sorry. Hmmm. Ask Shila where he was when he comes home tonight? Tell him Subrata called. Just for fun. Don't forget. Yeah. Gotta go now. Yeah. Bye."

When he finished the call, Nilo was dragging a half filled bag across the floor, her movement was disjoint, not alive, as if a carcass was being dragged by a puppet string. A bolus of clothes thrown in at a moments notice peeped from inside the bag. Nilo was tying her hair in a high ponytail. Strands of hair caressed her nape as she stroked them down and tackled them into a bundle and clasped it with the ivory clip Subrata gave her. "This is for old people" she had quipped. "Then you get to wear it when we are old together". Subrata was always a corny mess around her. The love wound stared right through his skull, knocked the wind out of his stomach, left him nauseous for a moment. He poured a glass of JD, dabbed it with copious quantities of coke and headed for the TV. As the cold perspiring glass melted away in his palm, the familiar feeling of being unable to remember something grasped him. "Hey Nilo, did you ask me to pick something up?"

As her shrieks grew shriller, her arms flailed wildly to clasp her head, time slowed down for Subrata. Her words came out in colours melting away momentarily after they left her, the smell of dust and sweat formed a penumbra around her skinny existence. Everything is dark inside, he assured himself. Subrata picked up his phone. In a practised motion, he typed "Come over tonight". Then he looked up towards Nilo, glanced at the TV and said, "wanna watch something good"? As he sat there, Nilo howling away in the corner, he grew strangely aware of the music box he had given her last summer. Shubhi always loved that tune.

The Plan

On a table in the room
The glasses stood tall, pale with gloom
To mingle with the music and the fumes

Drooping heads that memorise
Bloodshot stares in strangers eyes
Curses born of lovers paradise

Gliding through with practiced ease
Sailed across from fallen seas
She stole the crown he always said was his

Her touch was brash, her hunger cold
Her lips betrayed what her eyes told
A glimpse had made him feel senile and old

He learnt by heart her dire signs
Her thin long bones in a strange design
Her veins blue velvet rising up like vines

He searched out to the far far west
He searched up on the mountain crests
He searched till there were only bones to rest

Dust and ashes met the earth
He returned to his muddy hearth
Contorted face, she bursted out in mirth

Now he is on the other side
She would be his only bride
His every will and whim, she will abide

She waits for someone to steal her crown
She waits restless, manic frown
His plan was perfect, who first had penned it down

*****Excerpts from a lucid dreamagination******

Nothing here is certain 
Nothing you touch is real 
Across the wall you think you smell the other side 
You sense a turning of the tide 

Outside 
She is walking on the glass 
Rabeya 
Her lips are full and plush 
She croons 
A torrid tune of pain 
She leaves a crimson trail 
What does she gain 

Smell of myrrh all around 
Smeared vision immaculate sounds 
All the senses are tired of the show 
Is it time to let go 

Grey smoke 
Coils up from forest fire 
Rabeya 
She is a damn good liar 
She said 
That fire sears her skin 
And yet she lithely walks within 

A house of cards turned to dust 
Old emotions gather rust 
Haunted joints and mortal remains 
Die for freedom, breaking chains 

Dreamagine 
Rabeya is gone 
She's got 
No one left to mourn 
Worldly ties 
Were never meant for her 
She was never close never too far

Fire, Ice and everything in between

What i see, is just for me

For now, like this, will never be

They cant feel the chill of ice

They wont glimpse at paradise

I take turns to tell myself

That ice was never here to help

Ice was shiny ice was smooth

Ice promised me solitude

Fools jumped into ice for peace

In minutes they felt ill at ease

In hours their hearts slowly stopped

No pain was felt, no one sobbed

Ice stays calm and ice stays cool

Ice just mocks and ridicules

Ice was here, ice wont stay

Ice will lock herself in grey

And still when i am hurt today

Ice does take my pain away

Forever.....

Melting the skin

Running like a mad horse, a rabid Harlequin

Leaping across nails, across bone, tooth, shells

She eats

All in her path, she crackles in dismay

If any sorry soul would cling on to stay

And live

She is not here to give

She would not let you retrieve what you have lost

Whatever the cost

Fire beckons dark and lost corners of your soul

You turn to run and crawl

Out of ways to stop or stall

You see her growing aura chasing you across the wall

On the streets and in the shops

In the eyes of strangers waiting at the bus stops

Then she reaches out in red

Orange, amber, yellow, blue

And before even starting

The pain has left you

Forever.....

Void

For the last few weeks life has pretty much been 'living out of a box' for Sabyasachi. He had moved into this rented second floor studio apartment on a humid afternoon with nineteen boxes, a tv, a fridge, a washing machine, a leather couch, a wrought iron bed, a laptop and an acoustic guitar. While he was shifting, the city heat had given him the worst possible sunburn he could imagine. To top it all, when a dozen boxes were the last items to be neatly stacked outside, waiting their turn to be moved in, the sweaty, sticky weather had changed into a moist breezy one, and within a couple of minutes it started to rain. Sabya, as his friends often called him avoiding his mouthful of a name, scampered up and down, trying to save the boxes from getting wet. It was chaos. At the end of it all, the evening was a pleasant one, except for two casualties. Sabya had a bad muscle sprain and water was still dripping from his box of graphic novels, that he had so painfully collected over the last four years.

The second last box was full of his books from his college. The green, blue covers with angular scribblings seemed alien to him now. On his makeshift bookcase they found the bottom shelf. The last book was set in place. Sabya looked at the last box sitting in the corner. He imagined the box looking back at him. As the sense of relief started spreading, he stood up massaging his shoulder, went to the kitchen which was pretty modern judging by the in built chimney, and started boiling some water for his coffee. Putting it on simmer, he came back to his last box. The box sat pretty, the cardboard was a bit thicker with a layer of gloss on it, taped with green tape, thick marker stripes read 'etc' on it. Rolling up his sleeves, pen knife in hand, Sabya eased his hands through the cover.

There were wires, chargers, plugs, plectrums, pen drives, wrist watches and what not in that box. The box was confusion personified. Sabya scrambled through them, making a mental note of who, when, where and how for each of the items inside. Neatly stacked at the bottom there seemed to be a bunch of cards/photographs, which was quite unreachable because of what seemed to him like junk at the moment. He stopped, craned his neck to listen to the boiling of water in his kitchen, which seemed calm, put his hands inside the box in a gathering manner and started piling all the stuff on the floor, until finally he reached the papers at the bottom.

There were pictures, cards, invitations and a couple of notes in the bunch. A picture of his best friend from school whom Sabya has not been in touch with for the last couple of years. Another one of the girl from college whom Sabya did not find the courage to propose. One more of an office party where he had danced his knees numb. A couple of pages of poems he used to write back in college, one of the pages even containing apparent chords in D-minor. A couple of get well soon cards from his jaundice days. Three wedding invitations, two from his friends in college who are still in touch, one from an office colleague with whom Sabya had hooked up once, but it did not work out. Sabya was amazed by the kaleidoscope of nothings that had somehow gathered in that box. From within this unruly bunch of memories, a photo dropped on the floor, smaller in frame than the rest, but still bright and vibrant. Sabya picked it up with shaking hands, his eyes welled up, his throat hurt as he felt it form knots of pain. Of all the things that Sabya wanted to bring to his new home, her memory was not even on the list. The photo smiled away with warmth as Sabya started sinking back towards the wall.

As a burnt man cowered looking at flames, in the kitchen, water boiled seamlessly into a fine flickering trickle of steam. Sabya did not have coffee that evening.

... fall ...

The fall woke up and walked on the sand

As she picked up the shells and strolled hand in hand

The stranger had failed to quiet understand

The fall wants to take him to the fallen land

The air rushing past reminds me

Of the shores of a dark sea

How we built houses close to waves

The fun to watch them washed away

We held each other close uttering hymns

To build a home away from the sea

The fall fell down with a bewildered lurch

The stranger carried her all the way back

The vows were taken, they kissed in a church

The gifts were heaped in a neat little stack

The fallen stranger and the stranger fall

Both became one and one became all

that's when she picked me up in her claws and flew across time

the blinds of time will dampen the brightest suns.... swimming across the river seemed worth because someone promised something on the other side.... you don't remember what it is except that it cannot be bought by gold.... by the time your arms are giving up and you are gasping for air, The Fish tells you that you live on an island in a lonely planet and what you are looking for is looking for you.... as your finned friend lazes past, the promise of water in your lungs pumps adrenaline.... you thrash the water harder, hope for wings, gills, time and finally an easier death.... as you sink, a dry leaf in fall, the wavy brightness of a lonely star fades away slowly, like a warm goodbye....

My muffler was sweeping the metro floor

I was stooping, trying to see the fine etch at the bottom of the metallic metro door panel. Nothing was making any sense. The train jolted to a start like a dead man on a defibrillator. The random mark left by a million treading boots suddenly fell in place, danced like a pixie and flooded me with an understanding akin to ones mother tongue. As I stared, my eyes concentrated all their might on the sign, got tired, started itching and finally welled up with fatigue. They were not accustomed to look for so much clarity anymore.

I stood up, with sheathed viciousness, dug my heels into the mark. Armed with branded army shoes, I heaved and pressed my feet trying to add deforming dimensions to the pattern. I tried for an eternity. Then I put my thumb across the deformed emblem and in a swift flow made sure that the smoothness was gone.

A drop of blood left my thumb. It flew past my swaying muffler end in a perfect dive and made an amoeba shaped splatter on the cold floor. The jutting edges grinned, as my train neighbors looked at me in a way they would ridicule a lunatic and his antiques. I felt at peace. On my stroll back from the station I chanced upon the dark corner which the mark was hiding. That regalia if I might call it, reminded me how much it hurts to let go.