LIE

The wires are entangled, I am clearing the intricate twists and setting the wire straight. I turn my i-pod on and am jogging past the Locust walk. These days I have control over nothing, not even over my Ipod as it selects the songs that I listen to. It did select an apt song to start off with “there must be some way out of here, said the joker to the thief. there’s too much confusion in here, I can’t get no relief…..All along the watchtower, the princes kept their view…,” I feel like the joker in that song who’s agitated from lack of freedom.

Many days pass since I let imagination kick in. I try to think while jogging but unfortunately I am panting. Within ten minutes I arrive at the Schuylkill park, finish a lap around it in another ten minutes. Its time for a break, I sit down on the bench, take out a piece of paper and try to write a line, atleast a word. Its not as easy as an impulse from the brain that passes through the nerve activating our action to hold the pen and move it in a rhythmic pattern, its more complex. It requires an impulse that comes from the soul stinging our heart and forcing our brain to do the above action. I can feel the inability to rearrange the universe, suspend the stars from clouds, the force in me is fast becoming a lost possession. I feel like a droid controlled by the world around

I ask myself a simple yet complicated question ‘who am I?’ – a question that has been asked many a time in my life but never leading to a perfect answer. This time the answer is a rude awakening from the person whom I have deserted myself from “To the truest of senses and the most bitter of tastes I am the TRUTH, the truth you love to hate, its presence you hate to have.
I am the TRUTH my friend, so better not be in my world for sweetness is all you love.
This is the fortress without boundaries my friend. Once you are in there is no way out. “
It took me a moment to recover from this violent outburst. I realize that I reached a point where I am not only hating myself but also faking personalities to impress others. I escaped from my fortress sans fringes and got stuck in a cell surrounded by a system that defined the parameters of my world.

The night is fast growing old, filling the avenues with cold. People heading back home, those conversations on roads about democratic convention, about the eagles odds to win superbowl grew sparse by minute. Midnight joggers are tagged weird entities in this world and so I have grown to be weird. All these days of living a lie, bragging about lies, I try to reconnect with myself. I pass through the spruce street, with lights going off at my every passing step as if I am carrying a decree of darkness from a cast off world. The old story about the pied piper of Hamelin flashes in my head at this weird coincidence.

Another day dies a silent death. Not a word on the paper, not a thought written in my head. I move on like a dead man walking with his dead eyes glancing at the world with nothing registering in his world of numbness.

Socializing is the catchword that spread various aspects of humanity, that is believed to have connected various cultures, but it often produces a weird and unnecessary chatter yielding wasted minutes. On such unfortunate meeting happened once with the people around the table choosing to talk about their fiancés. A sweet topic to be brought up until the brag-a-thon begins with the perfumes to clothes, none describing why they were the chosen ones for the rest of their lives.
Unfortunately, my thought process loves to parry such useless banter. I know at one point of time the baton will be passed to me and I also knew that there are two ways to answer this one:

The truth is that I befriended with death, I promised her that she has the choice to come to me and propose any day and I wouldn’t say no. There are very few tomorrows in this life of mine, fewer with every passing today. One day she comes eventually for the final proposal to take me home and I would just walk with her on the altar. All that impressed me to be with her forever is her promise too take me into a completely new world when my force conjoins with her.

That’s a bitter truth my friend and in this game of socializing truth gets least love and is tagged bohemian. So I go ahead with a lie talking about the Polish girl, Megan Sczowinski born and brought up in Krakow and how my interest in Poland has become our subject of regular meetings. How easily this regular meetings blossom into love which happened because of this mutual exchange of information about Poland, how easily our relationship is leading us to a trip to zakopane next summer. People around the table start paying more attention to this newly burgeoning relationship. A well crafted, wily and imaginary lie might make the society happy and accept me to be part of it but truth is always a crude reminder of reality, a reality that always mirrors our truest self.

I have come to an understanding that truth has more enemies, lie has more friends and these days I seem to have more friends than before. I seem to find many people who want to grab a slice of my happiness. But where is happiness, my friend. I chose to sacrifice it, I chose to sever it from my life. There is no happiness in the shots of vodka that I buy for you nor in the home runs that yankees score.

In a world where the “money is the root for happiness” had become axiomatic, I am a pariah. For a person whose true pleasures cost no penny, he chooses to be part of this wicked axiom. That was stage one of self destruction, part of the soul has been sold to stupidity.

There is a deep abyss in this world that requires to be filled.

RENEGADES

It was a day of coronation for freedom. We walked through these gardens that were smiling with the most beautiful roses that epitomized the love that existed between us humans. ”Careful!” my mind reminded because beneath these roses lay thorns, behind this freedom lay a sanguinary past. Reminiscing grievances of this liberation, the only one interested to lend an ear to it was my mind, only sane companion left for me. It is time I open the door that lets me into my past.

Money was their gun and greed, bullets as they sprayed them around for these inches of land that justified their hegemony. Everyday they romped around this land with that lust, Gallows were never empty for they always had heads that embellished them and this was their exemplar to crush resistance. Cannibal instincts in us humans had been reinforced by their strong-arm, bloodthirsty tactics as a man was whipped to death in his field while he was made to pull the plough in place of oxen, a perfect masterpiece of savagery.

Direst days ended with murkiest nights, it was for a faint beacon that this heart longed for, fainter than the stars glowing far away from our world. Everyday I offered a gaze to them hoping for a change and it was answered in the days to come. Just like the high tides of the sea that roared their presence, it was a man’s words that dug deep into my heart like a dagger, clearing all the malignant thoughts. “Oneness is their strength and selfishness is our weakness, a count of their heads can be done with our fingers, so what do you think WE are capable of?” these are the words that ignited a vicious cycle that awaited them. A virus called ‘unity’ spread like any other virus across us people. We took up arms and it is time we show them a taste of their own toast. Strategies and survival skills, regiments and training were part of my life for next few months. The regiment I was part of was called Regiment Seven and I could still recall my first day in this regiment.

“ Welcome! To Regiment Seven,” Yelled our officer.

“ Here, there’s only Victory or Death,

There’s only blood for your thirst,

There are only corpses for your hunger,

Remember, every drop of blood we drain is to make our flag fly high,

Gone are days of joy with your families,

Voices of your mothers, fathers, wives, children are all MEMORY!

Days they start with dawn, nights they end at ten,

Snow may fall,

Heat may sap,

Gusts may shake,

You should stand tall,

Fall, should you, out of here,

Victory should never lose your sight,Never!” declared our Seargeant.

“ If good begets good then bullets beget bullets,

When the enemy draws near,

Never lose your thoughts to nature,

Move like a tiger tracing its catch,

No signs of your presence,

Each move to deceive your enemy,

Each breath saying the word ‘KILL’,

Each heart beat should go unheard,

Hear will you, death will follow.

Head on your shoulders,

Hands on your weapons,

Eyes on your enemy,

Dagger, if he’s near,

Bullet, if he’s farther,

A half-alive enemy is good enough for retaliation,

Make their end memorable,

Filling fear in their thoughts,

FEAR! That’s what our enemies should feel when they hear about us, FEAR!” taught our Seargeant.

‘The Brave take refuge only in heaven, and the cowards, everywhere else’ was our motto and it had been printed on our flags. Those days with the regiment were sculpted deep in my heart.

I glanced at the river that flew across our village, it was crystal clear as of now but it won’t be in days to come. We marched towards the battlefield for this war and knew that our freedom is bloodstained. The writings on the walls were written with the blood of dead, ammunition to our minds, reminding us to make the count even. Now the battle shifted to my home, I glanced at the river one last time, it was carmine with blood flowing in place of water. I knew that I may not be coming back here again. I gazed at the dusky skies, it was blood red, warning the world around of a war here. Thoughts dominated actions at this point of time and so I fell victim to a sniper only to escape with a bullet in my back.

“Lieutenant! Lieutenant!,” nurse yelled shaking me violently, I opened my eyes. The atmosphere here was more serene with scents of spirit all around. I came to know that it was seven days since I was in control of my senses.
“Swallow this pill,” she ordered.
Unable to bear the pain I blasted out at the nurse “Will this pill rest me forever?”

But this momentary lapse of reason was thwarted with a smile from the nurse. My engines have cooled down and my thoughts back into groove and so it blabbered “Even in the worst of your days remember, there are people fighting more dire situations than yours. This pain is good, it is the medicine that keeps your desire to win higher.”
“Sanity is back,” I thought.

Sometimes it is better to let your mind do the talking rather than your mouth and So I unleashed it.
“Look at these hands, they want to hoist the flag that symbolized our freedom,
Look at these limbs, they want to be part of the victory march,
Listen to your heart beat, every beat is a sound that rejoiced our victory,” my inner force continued as I felt better.

Few more days passed, the shots of the snipers were clear, the beds here were all filled with souls like me, all of them who fell down fighting safeguarding our land.
One fine day everything seemed serene, there were no more visitors dripping with blood down here and so I felt a ceasefire must have been reached. The nurse walked over to me and gave me my routine morning pills “Is the war over?” I asked the nurse unable to control my curiosity.

She replied, “Well the sound of thousand conchs,
March of soldiers,
Smiles over children’s faces,
Suggest that the war is……”
“WON!” I completed.

Well that was all past and now I’m back alive but not the same. My mind underwent vicissitudes of sorts during that period. The pain is effervescent, but now there is one thought that sends me into dilemma “Is it better to forgive and forget or remember and retreat?”
I can hear the sounds of guns firing, this time in air and not into an enemy’s head.

For now I kiss my past goodbye.

Mahendra Sharma,
7th July,1946.

It was a double page that fell from my grandfather’s old documents. I searched for his diary but it ended in vain. Old man always had wise words and there are few here I pondered.