Meta meets subliminal meets real!

Secret Lunch over and talk for the moment exhausted, Barkha and Shakuni continued to sit around the table by the window that overlooked the Beas River, to sip our coffee, pour ourselves another glass. It was here that Shakuni asked what Barkha thought about this idea of “finding oneself.” 

“Is there a character in Ramayana, Mein Kampf, Homer, in Shakespeare, in the Bible, in the Gita who thinks to ask, ‘Who am I?’ ” And the conversation was off again.

“Besides Lear,” Barkha said, “who asks ‘Who is it that can tell me who I am?’ And don’t you love the question ‘Who does he think he is’ or ‘Who do you think you are’ followed by a rhetorical exclamation point?”

Shakuni’s chair faced east. He had been watching people on the neighboring rooftop, and he said, “They’re having a party, and they didn’t invite me!”

“Do you know those people?” Barkha asked her.

“No,” Shakuni said.

Shakuni said that his search began with his grandmother Shankeshwari, the one he was named for. “She died before I was born, but I’ve seen an old sepia photograph—two photographs, actually, taken by someone standing outside the open door to her bedroom.”

Barkha was following her own thought: “The room is lit from the left, so there must be a window in the corner that one can’t see around. Secrets of the sepia bedroom: someone picked that flower and put water into the water glass; someone had set the glass on the bedside table. . . .”

“That’s what I mean!” Shakuni said. “What does it tell us about who we are that we are tenderly intrigued by an imaginary person walking through an old photograph but couldn’t care less about our neighbor passing our window at this very moment?”

Three days after they moved into their new apartment, the woman who lived above them, on the eighth floor, jumped out of her window. Barkha was just coming back from the coffee shop, carrying two lattes, when the neighbor hit the sidewalk. Barkha dropped the tray, spilling coffee all over herself, and her eyes locked in on the stains on her sweatpants so she wouldn’t have to see anything else. She heard running, panting, and voices shouting. Within seconds, a crowd had gathered, and the sweaty guy who cleaned the lobby was calling an ambulance. Someone said that the woman’s name was Draupadi, and someone else said that she’d seen her crying in the elevator a few days earlier. “It’s because of covid,” the cleaner said. “Everyone’s committing suicide these days. They were just talking about it on the news.”

The distant sirens mingled with the vibration of Barkha’s cell. It was Shakuni, but she didn’t want to tell him anything over the phone. She touched her cheeks to make sure she wasn’t crying, took a deep breath, and walked into the building. “Hey!” she heard the cleaner calling after her, and, when she turned around, he yelled, “Lady, where do you think you’re going? You’re a witness.” “A witness to what?” Barkha asked. “I didn’t see anything.” But the cleaner wouldn’t back down. “You were the closest one!” he shouted. “Look—her blood’s all over your clothes!” “It’s not blood. It’s coffee. I dropped my coffee,” Barkha said. “Well, it looks like blood to me,” the cleaner proclaimed. “The police should have a look at it.” Barkha froze for a moment, but, when her phone started vibrating again, she kept walking. “Hey!” the cleaner yelled again, but then a different male voice said, “Poor girl. Leave her alone.” Barkha wanted to run into her cabin at the news agency where she was the Editor-in-Chief and run the story.

Shakuni is dead while I write this story. In a year, he will not be alive, whether I write or don’t write this story about him. Except perhaps alive in the way stories live, or alive as people say people are alive in stories. People say that as if they do not understand: dead once, dead forever. As if they don’t know that once is all the time a person ever gets to be alive. As if they don’t know that Shakuni doesn’t hear, doesn’t desire mourning, clamor, and cries. As if they do not comprehend that their millions of bodies piled up all weigh less than this sheet of paper on which I scribble and that the commotion, agitation, the exercise of my millions upon millions of heartbeats will not summon a single breath of air when Shakuni needs it.

I will not pretend to bring Shakuni to life. Nor pretend to bring life to him. Shakuni gone for good. Won’t return. No place for Shakuni except the past. A place where he always belonged, he made the present for us, didn’t even know he was. And he visited me. And the past is not even past, a wise man once declared. Same abyss behind and in front of us is what the wisecracker writer signifying, I believe, and, if I truly believe what he believed, where would I situate Shakuni. if presented with an opportunity to put him somewhere alive? Not here. Not here in this story where I know better.

When she was writing, she was in her body, she couldn’t argue with that. But how to explain that she was somewhere else as well? When she was writing, it was as if she were working from six inches above and in front of her own head. If the energy of writing fell back into her body, all writing stopped. Then she was just herself, sitting in a chair. She was ready to admit—to herself, if not to her friends—that keeping that energy afloat was peculiar work, bodily work. It was like bathing a squirming baby that you weren’t allowed to look at. Babies are so slippery. You can’t believe it the first time you bathe a newborn. It’s like trying to wash the water. Writing was like that. Like water. More like water than like a body. Wasn’t that something she liked about it?

Everyone wanted more of the real, more of the world. Maybe it meant that they could get up from their writing and go do something else, immediately, something useful, wash a baby in real life, for example, looking at the baby the whole time. They could soap the baby’s back without any worry that they might accidentally drop the baby out of its blue plastic tub and into the grimy kitchen sink. They wouldn’t have to worry about the baby’s little arm or leg slipping into the garbage disposal, oh, God, or about the baby sliding out of their ungloved hands and onto the bathroom floor, cracking its head, the blood, oh, God. Not that she had a baby and never intended to, either.

She couldn’t stop thinking about it all the way home: Shakuni’s body, body, body, body, body, body, body.

 

 

P.S. This post is based on a writing prompt. And I think I have gone ballistic here with tense, active and passive voice. The whole park is littered in confetti of language!  

Topic: Barkha B meets Shakuni

This is a topic, not a phrase. Barkha is a former journalist and Shakuni from Mahabharata. No word limit. No restrictions. Go wild. 

Always coming

 I feel it is there. Ever approaching. Slowly. Yet, nobody speaks about it. Always in whispers, or, on occasions when it has come and everyone is circling around a dead one like watching a prey in a cage!

It's been around three weeks since he died. A mentor to me, someone whom I could rely on. There are days when I end up not wondering about him. Then there are days. 

When I had seen him lying strapped to the bed with contraptions as his armor, his beard, mottled with grey and coffee brown, smiled at me. I tried to steady my breathing, taking in snatching of coolness in the air. But this was not the tender air of the untamed world - the untrue definition of fresh air.

His daughter's whole world turned upside down - her vocal cords went so slack that she couldn't even groan. Strange how you picture these things sometimes - seeing things from the outside. 

His life had cartwheeled to a gully with an end.  

I could see and feel something. My eyes definitely did - widening, expecting it to vanish in a blink. Something not from this realm. Something not meant for the human eye. I rubbed the stinging gash of the vision listening as the rain began to fill the gap between my reality and shock. The rain was different. Chaotic. It was like a selfish, indiscriminate creature.  Nature had pulled out the fiercest arrow from its quiver. It's as if the sky was coughing out sick gouts of sadness and gloom.  

I walk away knowing the end is nowhere in sight, yet it is always coming. 

Hello, I am Golden!

'Attention, please! Red, yellow and blue are invited to the canvas.' 

For a moment, after this announcement, Golden, Prussian, Ultramarine, Vermillion, Carmine, and Lemon were unable to speak or move. Mr. Wide Brush picked up some water, splashed it, and gave a loud yell. The water drizzled like rain on A's head. Vermillion smiled at Carmine. Ultra kissed Prussian. Lemon and Golden shook hands. 

Do we have the lustre of living? both reds asked. 

Oh yes, absolutely.  Did you know, on an island of Hawai'i, when a rainbow was seen in the sky, indigenous folks announced that a divine presence was near and it was a sign of "heavenly footsteps" coming to light on the earth, said a thin, pleasant voice.

They wondered who between Lemon and Golden spoke. 

Hello, I am Golden. A sweet, musical voice was heard. 

Canvas was listening to their conversation. He knew, soon, there will be a melee. He was waiting for it.

The dance began. First, came Carmine.

I am known to relax. I bring an element of equilibrium between two opposing dynamic forces!

Canvas remained fluid and did not want to interfere with the way Carmine had come alive. 

Golden meets Carmine and their association is nothing short of divine. 

Everyone is fascinated by observing their transparencies and feels awakened in their inner lives.

P.S. This was an attempt to understand the quality of colors as stated by Goethe and Steiner. Both of them are monumentally challenging, and it is not a case of simply taking a helicopter perspective to see the whole picture. Far from it. The philosopher in me gets stoked by these indications. 

Color is a bridge between our inner soul life and the outer physical world...it is the soul of nature and when we experience color we participate in this soul - R.S.

The lonely leaf

 There is a plant, a Ceylon spinach plant, right outside the window.  It wears hues of green. Many leaves grow on the stem, some on the right-hand side, some on the left, creating a pattern, an intentioned design. 

This is the plant I observed for twenty-one days. Each of those twenty-one days, I met the plant as if I am meeting someone for the first time. Our meetings were intriguing, rich, eye-opening, and more than anything else, they were lessons in objectivity. 

I could feel and clearly see life forces, growth forces, and death forces working upon the plant. On the leaves, the stems, nodes, and even the soil. The weather outside and the weather within me did not make a particle of difference in our meetings. I remember one foggy morning, the tiniest leaf of the plant was a thing of absolute beauty. Each thin vein on the leaf was decorated with dozens of tiny beads of water. It glistened in the light and made a pattern of simplicity and mystery like a delicate cloud lodged right spang in the sky. I watched. I watched it again. Tiny beads of water inched away, slowly trying to join the next one. 

When I had begun the exercise, I thought, the leaf is lonely. It wasn't. Those dozens of water droplets inched away with mirth leaving the leaf blushing. 

I sing like the thrush

when they brush 

hush..hush..hush

I don't want to wake up the thrush

let them brush

in hush..hush..hush

 

Lucid dream

 It was around 3 am. The characters from my dream had tumbled out inconspicuously. Little did I realize that they were as real as the paintbrush outside my window. 

A huge paintbrush hurls itself into space, lets out a dragline as it goes down. One of the characters, a tall man, blunders into the lower part of the brush and gets tangled in the wet bristles. He flails his arms furiously trying to break loose and free himself.

I was completely gobsmacked at this man for being caught like this. And I wasn't the only one. The fat woman, the thin girl, the chubby boy and the black dog joined me in my astonishment. Hardly anybody in the room had a nice word to say for this man. The fat woman hated him. The thin girl detested him. The chubby boy loathed him. And the black dog complained loudly.

The light outside had turned into a midnight blue. I was wide awake. The light had illuminated my dream.

P.S. I don't know what happened next. Except, the alarm looked black and I was awake, again!    

  

Awakening of the Third Eye

 When I heard about the pineal gland and how it helps in connecting to the higher self. I was fascinated. Of course, I did not know much about it. 

So what is the pineal gland and why is it called the Third Eye.

Some medical scientists say it is a pea-sized gland shaped like a pine cone, located in the vertebrate brain near the hypothalamus and pituitary gland. In the pineal gland, melatonia is released that raises and lowers the body's hormone level to build circadian rhythms (day and night rhythms).

Now, when I researched I found that it's a revered tool of seers and mystics and is considered to be the organ of supreme universal connection. Rene Descartes packs the soul, like a parachute, into the pineal gland. Rudolf Steiner claims that the pineal gland and its functions are what myths of the Holy Grail symbolize. 

With this new found knowledge, my pineal gland is definitely active, circadian rhythms are in place, the nocturnal adventures find themselves in lucid dreaming, the dawn is fresh and fills up the day with concentration. It is also a way to connect with Divinity and attract what one wants in life: mental clarity, improved concentration, clear self-expression, strengthened intuition, a sense of bliss, insight and decisiveness. 

P.S. This post has been brewing in my soul for a while. It was time for it to reveal. 

The Phantom Room

After a long and epiphanic taxi ride, I finally reached my destination.

I stood in the foyer, studying paper-thin strips of blue gleaming under the shut doors. Unbearable despair and loneliness filled me up. Which one was it? Have I come to the right place?

I opened a door at random. The room was dim and tidy and filled with an enormity of a sea. There was smoke everywhere, through the smoke I saw him sitting on a low bed covered with husk. Just behind the bed ran a nice little river. Was it a river? Or a stream? Whatever It was, many fish lived in it. The fish didn’t care about my loneliness or despair or why was I there. The fish ate the weeds that grew in the stream or the river.

Water was streaming down the walls and gathering in a pool on the floor.

Hernando and Rachael were in their nightdresses. It seemed they had just made love.  

I exhaled them like the human-shaped river of smoke that had leaked into the room.

--

I woke up at three a.m. The moonlight lit up the room and its objects: bed, books, blood-soaked sheets, lamp, and a baby as if I'd turned on a lamp.

P.S. This is an excerpt from a scene where a man is trying to re-piece an event after being under the heavy effects of opium.