[ A Cosmic Nightmare ]
[ The Escape Route ]
[ The Collage of Modern Life ]
[ Prophets and Rock Stars ]
[ Wake Up! ]
[ Surreal Drive ]
[ Mourning for the Monkey ]
This was a usual day of solo flights for the Angel. Although he was learning to fly, he had become quite good at this sport. He would take a deep breath, filling his senses with the fresh air above the layer of cosmopolitan pollution, smile and praise the Lord. And then he would take another dive through the atmosphere of the third rock from the Sun. His golden wings shone in the sunshine above the clouds as he sailed across the skies. Flying around, his thoughts wandered back and forth in time, going back to when this whole mess was created.
God created heaven and earth in six days, and the seventh was a public holiday. Holiday sales are certainly good for the market.
“We will prevail,” said Adam and his long-time girlfriend Eve (not that they had another choice) when they were banished from the heavens. What good were the heavens anyway? Sitting with dumb angels and praising the Lord 24/7 was not their idea of life. Adam wanted to work for a multinational with a good 401(K) plan and Eve was waiting for the day when they get married, eager to file for a divorce and win alimony and child support for life. The cosmic historians later turned their resolve into an apology and published it in all holy books.
“We will prevail,” said the monkey from Texas on air. The Angel heard this as he captured the radio waves from various parts of the world. He wondered, “What will the human historians do with him?”
The angel took a deep breath in the fresh air above the clouds and spread his wings in the golden sunshine somewhere above the war zone in Iraq. The beauty of the blue planet below him and the luxury to ignore the ugly details of human sufferings from so far above made everything look so beautiful and calm. To pass his time, he started counting all the holes in the ozone layer. Having done his internship with the Angel of Death, he could foresee a possible future of mankind where global warming will lead to the apocalypse before the actual event was scheduled to happen. He muttered, “That’s what you get when you don’t listen to your angels and give free will to man.”
He saw jetliners sailing through the air currents. Even so high up in the air, man had invented brilliant ways to create class boundaries: first class, business class, economy plus and economy. But then, even the heaven and the hell were supposed to have class differences. “Where will all the socialists go?” He wondered. He had briefly met the soul of that Marx guy a few days back. Poor thing was so upset at finding that he had a soul and that there was a God that he refused to enter either heaven or hell. The last plans were to send him back to earth in a new life where he would get a chance to cherish the blessings of capitalism and organized religion and stop being such an idealist.
Somewhere down below, the Pentagon was planning to test fire a brand new shining missile to test the anti-missile defense shield in the making. The generals gathered in a cold dark conference room, looking at the marvels of military technology. By the grace of God Almighty, dynamics of the market forces and generous flow of Saudi oil, the US economy could afford such defense luxuries. The terrorists from the outer space will never be able to get away with murder. Ancient microscopic life will be found on Mars, that planet will become habitable, and life of earth will perish without a trace.
The unsuspecting angel took a dive through the air, enjoying his time of leisure, as the button was pressed down below, and the missile blasted through the peaceful atmosphere, finding its way towards a dummy spy satellite. Neither the angel, nor the missile had any idea what would happen next. The ground control saw the missile getting disintegrated with a flash of light in mid air. The farmer in an Afghan village saw a shooting star in his evening sky and made a wish that the world will stop using his land as a playground of global powers. And the angel saw his wings burning in horror. The fabric of time and space was torn open, as the angel transformed back into light, the essence of his being. The global optical fiber connections whizzed him through the complex network routes, spitting him out in some genetic engineering lab somewhere in the military installments around central Washington State.
With static noise in his hearing and colors resembling rapidly changing fractal
patterns in his vision, the angel had transformed into an intelligent life form,
resembling inhabitants of the planet earth. Breathing hard, he looked at the
complex machines around him in shock and disbelief. The green light in the lab
above his head flickered as the cosmic dimensions started getting back to
normal. “That was so not funny”, he looked up and screamed, and breaking the
window, he jumped out into the darkness of the night and disappeared from the
view of the surveillance cameras.
In primetime news, the newscaster casually mentioned something about a failed
missile test. In other news, widespread momentary disturbances in global
networks were experienced, and attributed to some unusual solar activity. The
world moved on to another day in existence.
To be continued...
There was a certain loss of interest in life, till I felt the cold chills of death in my feet and hands. And a certain storm of brain waves moved around the room, swirled, rotated and entered my mind, and left. Worms ate whatever was left of the appetite for life. The stimulating thoughts froze somewhere in the dead cold silence. I looked around and found emptiness whispering some words of despair to dreams which took their belongings and left. Hey, wait! You are taking away… umm… what was the word? “Joys?” someone screamed. Oh well. I went through the dictionary of my life and found the half-erased J word. It’s a sin… don’t say the J word. I am an eternal cynic.
Last night on TV, they sent a machine to Mars, to look for the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. One mountain on the red planet resembled the turban of Bin Laden. And G W Bush pointed at the sky and the word “Evil!” slipped from his mouth and spread across the land on air waves. Tomahawk missiles flew, and a few hundred lives were lost on TV. And before they announced a few hundred more, there was a pause to cool off the emotions with a can of Vanilla Coke. It tastes like regular Coke. Just that you burp vanilla after-taste. Feels good indeed! Did someone say the J word again?
I looked at the red digits on my answering machine in blue night light - nineteen and not blinking. I blinked my eyes, still nineteen and still not blinking. Electronic toys don’t say a word, but this one has a story inside. Her lipstick stained her telephone receiver with long-distance kisses. And while her husband wiped it off, she still had nightmares of red wax on cold white plastic. And as she woke up in his arms, in the dead cold silence of the night, she heard someone whisper, “I love you too”. He was sleeping, as her eyes were fixed on the ceiling, like a dead corpse. Her eyes were not blinking. Just like the answering machine. Did you count it right? Yes, nineteen was the number. And she went back to sleep.
Mindless labor kept me busy all day. And I felt the wind from life as it passed by in a snap. A few glimpses of corporate junk and stock tickers in front of my eyes. I programmed it to start at five. It did, but I didn’t leave till seven. There was a pale yellow light in the room, and the friendly silence, mixed with humming sound from more machines. Computers live a better life than humans. They are deterministic. I walked out and heard the door close behind me. Another day was done, and I was successfully another day closer to the day when my eyes will stop blinking too. I can relate with the answering machine. Death is the common denominator.
The guy at Seven-Eleven was half asleep. He obviously had a long day too. His fake smile had a message as profound as, “Flavored drinks bring joys”. Ah, the J word again. Would it ever leave me? I took a few sips from whatever it was. And soon it was over. I was thirsty, but towards the end I wasn’t. Sounds like life. So is it umm … the end? “Never mind” I thought out loud, as I put my car in Drive, and raced away. They call it the ultimate driving machine. More corporate junk!
“Would you like an extra large serving of pain with life?” He asked. That comes free with membership of the 21st century intellect club. Thanks, but no thanks. I am on a diet. I turned on the TV, and saw the familiar images over and over again. Same words, sometimes rearranged, sometimes deranged. I turned it off. Dark emptiness surrounded me like a comforter. I wrapped my arms around the pillow. The telephone wouldn’t ring. In a distance, I saw the dead number nineteen. I closed my eyes. A message appeared in front of my eyes: It is now safe to turn off your brain. Welcome to the escape route.
Stick to the scale. Even rock music is for sale. There is an E and an F and fiddling around B, and then back to E. Is it the perfect formula for ecstasy? All this time, where have you been? Modern life is a drum machine. It is mechanical, controlled and loud. It makes the chief executives proud. We are wandering around the circle of fifths. We hang between urban dreams and rural myths.
A little distortion wouldn’t hurt. From the strings, you better wipe the dirt. Ghosts of Hendrix and Morrison are in trance. It is up to us to head-bang or dance. A long wailing solo screams. Then a certain silence kills all dreams. On the air waves, music streams. It all gets confused and blurred. Should I slide down to a fifth or a third? Rebel, don’t follow, and break the rules. The ones in orchestra are all fools. Is playing out of tune such a sin? What’s the key I was playing in?
Who needs a reason, to justify treason? Some would die for a cause, and some for a mere applause. Eyes blink; instincts of profound thoughts get extinct. Chaos turns into cosmos and back to chaos again. Cycles of uncertainty. Immorality goes out for a date with moral questions without answers. Closed chapters. Stay home, don’t roam. It is all unfair, they shout in the air, but no one cares. The only place left to go is nowhere. There is nothing to spare.
Keep intact, your artifacts. Black blood-sucking insects on white papers. Race tracks inside skyscrapers. Senseless competition. No conclusion. Making connections, to win a contract at resurrection. Energies of life blended in a huge blender. All the glitter and splendor. Consume that in a sudden haste. Life is such a waste. Portions of an unrealized desire poured in a disposable cup. We have come together to celebrate a magnificent mess up!
From media to relationships. Artificial smiles and dirty tricks. Mass production kills the art. While we stay back to play our part. She wants to make another start. Three missed calls, and a voice message. Attempt to pull me back to the center stage. It’s high time for us to come of age. I am bored and sitting alone on the backseat; contemplating the meanings of victory and defeat. Come on now, rise above the petty personal problems; change the world. Some broken ideals swirled.
It is all such a big confusion. I turned on the television. George Bush walked out of his chopper, promising to bring harmony to chaos and disorder. More clashes on Pak-Afghan border. He emanates feminine grace of Margaret Thatcher. Yet another actor on the political theater. My brain can be dumped on a DVD in surround sound. In the meantime, I’ll simply let the darkness play around.
Amazing grace, so sweet the sound, of bombs falling on the foreign ground. Cowboys in command. Clouds of uncertainty showering rains of new-found faith all around. Harvesting brand new beards, through centuries old fears. Pop stars and cricketers baptized at the Tablighi Woodstock in Raiwind. Gods of mankind making love. Birth of a cocktail of holy wars.
Insane chants of crusades and jihad. March of armed Hindus under a peaceful façade. Jews high on holocaust’s memory. Continued blackmail of humanity. Remains of classless red religion sold in the free market. Human values in silent retreat. Self-appointed protectors of state in military uniform. More third world dictators born. Racial hatred and scorn. Bitter talk show hosts. Silent Vietnam soldiers’ ghosts. Haunted by memories of a possible future, free of conflict and strife. The collage of modern life!
Before I had closed my eyes, everything had been blanked, leaving a fresh canvas to paint life on. The chaos had reached its end, and another one was about to begin. I opened my eyes and found an ecosystem developing around me. The whole process of evolution was taking place in front of me, like a silent movie on fast forward. Microorganisms were born and they took various colors and forms before they evolved into plants, trees, animals, and finally humans. I found myself in middle of a city, with streets, buildings and road signs.
People of the city needed something sacred to celebrate. Some of them waited for a divine messenger, while others waited for a rock star. There were head-banging devotees from madrassas to rock concerts. Some of them found refuge in pages of a holy scripture, while others religiously recited rock songs. Both abstract forms of expression had found home, and late that night everyone slept happily with their newly found faiths. Far away in a distance, some equally divine malangs spent the whole night dancing.
The city had a tradition of change. When they felt bored and monotonous, they crucified Jesus and shot dead Lennon. I watched them turning into idols for worship. This satisfied some of them, but others remained unsatisfied. So they banged a couple of planes in tall skyscrapers which fell to the ground on live TV. And then in chants of crusades and jihad, missiles in red and blue, and body parts of suicide bombers flew all over the land. Behind displays of human sufferings, media celebrated these events as I watched death on sale from the comforts of my living room.
Every morning there was a hailstorm of gold and a rain of flavored drinks washing away any signs of guilt from hearts and minds of people of the city. Every new day brought a brand new cycle of repetitions for them, while they spent their time mindlessly consuming themselves. Memories of sermons and guitar solos haunted their collective consciousness that was put to sleep by constant injections of fluctuating numbers on the stock exchange.
The movie had reached its climax when I heard a click. The movie stopped, and everything was blanked again.
Wake up. Were you dreaming or having a complete blackout? Was it a dream, or a nightmare? The eyes would not open. A feeling of being dragged down into another vision is so overwhelming. An illusive sweet dream slowly cross-fades into a terrible surreal nightmare. The presenter says, “Stay tuned. This program is brought to you by…”
Static noise, followed by a sudden silence! The nightmare begins.
The round old world turns into a flat new world, with a dark river flowing through it, terminating at edge of the world. I close my eyes, and happily jump into the cold waters of this river to the sound of music, and try to swim against the flow. Yet it drags me away from luxuries of the land towards an unknown destination. And there are many more in this senseless competition, trying to be the first to reach the end. We all swim happily, as we are dragged backwards towards the edge of the world. And then as we fall off, with fear flowing through our veins, the audience laughs and the presenter takes the first commercial break.
In front of a waterfall, the orchestra plays a symphony of Beethoven at the tempo of chewing a chewing gum. “Sugar is injurious to health”, reads the low-carbohydrate diet message. But the good news is that they have a sugar-free version too, manufactured in some remote part of South America with customer support in Asia, competing against the rival product which has 1 more calorie. All hail the free market.
I stop a cab and sit inside. As it drives away, I notice that there is no driver. A familiar chill runs through my spine again. But then I just open the window and look outside. The sky is blood red, and it is raining human body parts. They say the clouds came from the newly liberated lands of the old world. The smoke from the fallen towers is suffocating children thousands of miles away. The cab speeds up, and wouldn’t stop. The traffic light ahead turns red. I close my eyes and try to wake up. The presenter takes another break.
A car with crash test dummies inside hits the concrete block and airbags deploy. One of the dummies has borrowed my eyes. I see the windshield shatter to pieces as the dummy’s head bangs into the airbag breaking its nose. The audience cheers the marvels of science for human safety. We all move on.
The newsroom is full of schoolmasters from the British colonial days. Their canes are capable of marching out of the television screens and radio speakers, fixing up the viewers and the listeners till they believe in what they see and hear. They enter every home and every office. The entire population wears the same uniform, and repeats the lesson after them. The chalk powder from the blackboard blinds my eyes when I try to wipe it clean. One of them walks out of the television screen, with fire in his eyes and cane in his hand. The presenter switches to a public service message.
The state is offering distance learning programs for all citizens. These programs are free of cost, and pushed inside homes of everyone, everywhere. There are no electives, and no one escapes the mass education. The audience remains fascinated and absorbed as blind faith takes another form in the new world.
The lovers of democracy paint Mars blue. They say it was too red, a threat to the free world, and they don’t want it to turn green. At a good distance from Mars, lakes of hydrocarbons, lack of warmth and lifelessness fascinates the oil companies to shift their businesses to Saturn’s moon Titan. They take most of the oxygen from the old world with them. Somebody lights a cigarette, and the whole moon bursts like an atomic bomb. The presenter mechanically follows the regulations.
This time the message is, “Smoking is injurious to health”. There is no one left to hear this message. The lack of oxygen on Earth caused a fight over the rights to breathe, triggering World War III. Soon, all nations religiously blew up their arsenal of nukes and conventional weapons, sucking up remaining oxygen. There is no one left to breathe either. The presenter’s head blinks his eyes and looks around at the world in ruins. He says, “Now where is the rest of my body?” and closes his eyes.
Blackout and static noise, followed by deafening silence! It is high time to wake up.
Driving down the freeway, a lost soul bumped into the windscreen of his car. There was a spectacular display of dazzling lights all around, flashbacks from his past mixing with glimpses of his future, and then it all got pitch dark. Time had stopped. He blinked his eyes, but couldn’t see anything. Just then, a voice whispered in his head, “Does this really seem to add up?” He shook his head, “No! It certainly doesn’t!” But then he wondered what the voice was referring to. Did anything make sense? He was a little scared.
The lost soul initiated a glow around him to make him feel a little comfortable. In this glow, he could see all familiar objects around him, hung in time. Cars, people, birds, waves in the lake, everything was just frozen. He wondered why. Obviously the light had also stopped, and all that he saw was now visible by the glow of the lost soul, coming from another dimension of the universe. As he focused more, he could see some eerie things around him too. Time over multiple centuries had just overlapped. He could see an old tribal totem right in the middle of the freeway, and tents of the tribe all around it. And of course, there was a lot of blood. Every great civilization takes birth in murder.
To be continued...
Shadows of the evening were getting over the tired jungle, populated with trees that had passed their day swaying and dancing with the breeze. And now they were calm and quiet, standing with their roots deep down the ground. Their leaves did not clap. Perhaps they were listening to the music of the fall, which could not be seen, but one could feel its cool fresh water with the ears. The environment around was getting humid by the fall nearby. All was set for another peaceful, calm, drowsy and hallucinating night, including the tallest and the oldest of trees, which had seen a lot of this all.
Under this tree was lying a stone, on which a young monkey sat. Though he was a monkey, he was not as monkey as other monkeys were. Apparently, he had everything needed to make him a monkey. He belonged to the monkey race, had a dumb average face, a long tail, dark hair and everything an average monkey could have. The difference was that strangely, he had a human brain. And that was something, which made his life miserable.
And why this could not be so? After all, he didn’t follow the age-old monkey traditions strictly. These traditions were very traditional for all monkeys. They all used to look for food all the day, fought over petty issues, feared and worshiped everything that seemed to threaten them, and in short, did everything a good monkey was expected to do.
On the other hand this monkey used to spend most of his time sitting on that stone and thinking about various things that bothered him. He did not want to take things for granted and suspected monkey traditions. Although he never dared to express himself in public, he never put restrictions upon his thoughts. By the way, another reason for not expressing himself in public was the fact that this monkey was not good at the art of bold expression. And so he kept his thoughts to himself, and to save him from any trouble, occasionally joined other monkeys in their rituals.
To be continued...