The Ransom

Chapter 1


The knock on the dark door was like a knell. A big black dot on a white page. Announcing the end of a sentence and the beginning of another. He had come. An old stunted man opened the door just a crack and peered out into the freezing ink. No words were uttered, only looks exchanged. The old man opened the door and let the stranger in. The guest walked straight in without expecting to be led. He didn’t need to be. The house was lit only by enough light to see contours in black and blacker. The only hint of any color apart from a grayish yellow was a purple picture of a man and his son. The man stood with a long blade in his hand and the little boy clutched his father’s hand very timidly. The boy’s eyes were transfixed on the lowly creature in front of them, a fotham. The front of its face and its horns had been painted a dull red, redder than the rest. If purple was white in the picture, then this color was the color of blood. Minutes after that picture was taken, the little boy beheaded the fotham and puked and cried and lost sleep for a month and grew up and old and now lay in the bed in the room at the end of the dark hall in the purple house with the purple picture.

The room was lit only by one lamp, and that too was running low on oil. So the flame flickered. Anyone who walked into the room would think this was one of the long nights these men and women sat up for an infamous nizzecher performance and watched the shadows dance like black flames on the walls and got hypnotized by the yellow blurs and told their spouses every sorrow and every truth they had known since their unhappy childhoods. That would not have been very far from the truth, except that this particular nizzecher performance was coming to an end – to an end at least in this city. It would continue in another place and another time after tonight. And it was to help sing the ending credits for this place’s performance that the stranger was here.

As he walked into the claustrophobic space, he sniffed. The air smelt of blood and sweat, not of tears and sorrow. That was because this was the house of a warrior. Ever since the day he decapitated the red-headed fotham and came of age, the man lying in bed was used to the iron smell of blood and the soggy smell of flesh. And that man now lay wrapped almost completely in yellow cloth, smelling his own sogginess and iron. The squatting crowd in the room parted at the door to let the guest enter. He walked slowly and purposefully to the foot of the bed and turned around and looked at the man in the bed for the first time. The man in the bed slowly opened his eyes and looked straight ahead into the eyes of the guest and his head lolled forward so it seemed like he nodded painfully and flinched because the nod pressed out blood from his neck and it spurted out on his own chest. It was dark red blood, straight from a vein. But he only barely flinched. His ego and his race did not allow him more than that.

The stranger did not start. He stood stock still and waited. Eyes stared at his silhouette and whispers rippled around.

Another knell rent the metal air. The stunted man looked only slightly surprised. He dragged his feet out of the room and returned with another man, who entered the room with a little more speed than the stranger and he was shorter than and lacked the liquidity in movement that the stranger showed. He halted beside the first guest and nodded. For the dozen witnesses in that crack of a room, the tall man simply floated to the head of the bed and sat and in the chair set beside the lying man’s head. The whole movement seemed to take an eon but only the shorter man, who had the trained eyes, saw, with a twang of jealousy, how fast he moved. The tall man took the sick man’s heavily bandaged hands in his own and looked straight into his eyes and his lips widened into a smile. It was not a happy smile. It showed very little of his off-white teeth, but the man in the bed felt a cool warmth spread in his hands. Neither man’s eyes looked away or closed. The tall man, hunched in his chair slowly began to straighten up. The man in the bed too rose with him, never letting go of his hands. The tall man barely started to lean when he let go of his hands, one by one, and fell back into the chair. This time it felt like an eon even to the short onlooker. The chair creaked like it pained it to bear his weight. The man in bed sat up and nodded again at the man in the chair, but the man in the chair seemed to be asleep. Only his eyelids fluttered like he was in a dream of colors and noises. The man at the foot of the bed now walked over to the side of the bed opposite to the chair and sat down beside the living mummy of a man and took his hands in his. Even when he had seen his friend do the same thing he had not imagined how damaged the man may be. Now when he almost heard the torn flesh and skin squish in his grip, he almost let go. But he controlled the reflex.

The crowd in the room, with their silent shadows dancing on the yellow walls and their cloudy eyes glued to the tall man, stood like statues and props in a gothic play. The tall man, for his part, lay stiller than them because he was barely even breathing. Only the occasional flutter in his eyelids gave away any sign of life. “…like the flutter of a hunting frosthark’s heart”, they said. And they stared so at him in an unannounced contest to spy the first sign of feeling or motor response in him.

The short man sitting on the bed was now leaning into the lying man’s face. He held his head in his hands and whispered something in his ears. But the sentence was a short one because he cringed at the smell of the man’s brain fluid and straightened up. The man in bed looked at the short man and for the first time, his eyes wore an imploring look. Any man unfamiliar to the history and tale of this city and its peoples could easily have judged that it was a victory of Death, the great leveler. But he couldn’t have been farther from the truth to think that this man, who lay in bed with his skin split and his flesh torn, his heart slowing down, one beat in a long while, letting him suffer every moment of his unwanted existence, was afraid of death. He wasn’t meant to be afraid. None of you have the right or the wisdom to judge the look right now. So, take it from me in faith – it wasn’t fear. The man in bed lay there, eyes wide open and slowly opened his mouth. His cheeks were split and wet blood still oozed out of them as he put his tongue out. Or at least whatever was left of it. It was split into three like someone put it through a shredder. The eyes remained wide open even as the tongue fell back limply and the mouth closed, squeezing more oozing blood from the cheeks. Then the short man noticed what was odd with the eyes. They weren’t imploring; or anything for that matter. They were blank. He looked at the tall man, who was still in his dream of color and ink, and sighed. Slowly he put his hand on the throat of the man with the shredded tongue and waited. He felt the half-dried blood oozing out of the rip under his finger but he waited. An hour later, the oozing stopped. The eyes of the man closed very gradually and a stink began to rise.

The crowd was still in the contest, but now it was to spy the first movement of waking. The stunted slight man was the first to notice that the flutter in the eyelids had stopped. He shuffled over to the tall man and held out the pan of hot perfumed water that seemed to have appeared out of thin air. The tall man opened his eyes very slowly and squinted like he was getting used to whatever little light there was in the room. He put out his hand and took the pan of water that was warm by now. And without any ceremony as breathing in, he put his face into the water. When he pulled it out, his eyes were completely clear. The stunted man proceeded to help the short man wrap the body of the man in bed in a black cloth. The tall man, meanwhile, pulled a pouch out of his pocket and pulled out of it a dried leaf and crushed it. Next he pulled out a stone cim and stuffed the crushed leaf into it and lit up the cim and smoked it for another eon. When the other two men were done, the stunted man showed them to the door. But he did not wait to watch them melt into the cold ink outside. He had other work in the purple house.

But the warrior had passed. He had passed without pain and he would be thanking three men for that, but the three men could not thank him. For the first time in centuries, the men had had an ulterior motive in the visit. They had chosen to commit that crime. But that motive was thwarted too. The warrior and his torn skin and his tormented flesh and cloven tongue and his blank eyes were lost to the next city. And whatever it was they wanted, was also lost with all that.

The Rechristening

I felt like the whole blog was looking effing morbid because of its name. So I hereby rechristen the blog "The Stoned Lemon".

Cyclops Speaks

I hurt myself today,
To see if I still feel.
I focus on the pain,
The only thing that’s real….
…..And you could have it all,
My empire of dirt,
I will let you down,
I will make you hurt.

I am not blind. And that is my curse. After so many posts where I unscrupulously shouted out my gladly irreverent opinions, if those first lines make you think I am writing this to give an intellectual outlet to pains I have suffered and wounds I am licking, you could not be more wrong and more right. I am not whining. I am telling you what I see with my eye. I am telling you what you cannot see. I am painting a rebus for you. If you don’t know what kind of animal that is, don’t bother. That red button on the top right…

To be born blind is to be the luckiest, because you will live your whole life in full knowledge of the fact that a light awaits at the end of the tunnel, but as long as you are in the tunnel, you will be blissfully oblivious of it. To become blind is sad, because in making you blind, the world took from you all that you really owned – sight. To choose to be blind is truly tragic, because you cannot possibly be more stupid. But to have sight is verily a curse. And that is a funny thing about the world - the privileged ones are the cursed ones. It is as if god wanted to justify the privilege to those who do not have it. It is like telling a poor man, “Sure you are poor, but look at that rich guy and see how he suffers because he is rich and has to guard and sustain his richness” – a convoluted justice and a twisted joke that laughs in your face.

Let me describe a scene to you. A man who could see once went to a city of blind people and as he entered the city, he met an old blind man. In course of conversation, the man did not mention that he could see. The old man invited the man for lunch and as they ate lunch, the old man stole food from his plate. And the person who felt the worst in the whole room was the man who could see. Not because his food got stolen but because the blind man thought he got away with it. Because what just happened was so grotesque in poetry and so painfully anti-ironic, anyone with the shadow of a heart would have felt queasy. And our man is, after all, one who has a heart and an eye. When thick black ignorance rams into white hot knowledge, the stink that rises is beyond words. If, even for a moment, you thought what I am talking about is inconsequential or extra-terrestrial, that is only a confirmation of the fact that you, more than anything else, need an eye. One needs to have an eye to smell that kind of stink and grimace.

There are two kinds of people on the planet and they are wall-builders and wall-breakers. And there is only one kind of wall and that is a glass wall. For the wall-builders are blind and they think the walls they build around themselves are rock solid and that they will keep out everything including eyes, but little do they know that the only reason most others cannot see inside their walls is not that their walls are made of steel or mortar, but because they cannot fucking see! In a city of blind men who would need to build a wall? Only a blind fool.

The breakers can simply see and that is why they don’t shatter most walls. And that is another unwritten law among the breakers – “A wall that can be seen through does not need to be broken. Only one that binds needs to be.“ So the builders build away and the breakers sit and watch in amusement. And that is the way of the world.

But our tale does not end there. To just pronounce such dry and weird statements and stop right there and let you think whatever you want is exactly what I would have loved to do any other time but right now, I am not finished.

Those with the gifts are the ones who are cursed. Those who do not have the gift are so many that the greatest mistake a gifted one can do is to love them. And that is the first mistake a gifted one does – love. And once your heart feels for those who walk in their sleep, you want to tell them you are only as good as them. Sure, the sun can nurture and nourish a little sapling to help it grow, but it cannot come close to the sapling as itself, because that will burn the hapless creature’s very core. The sun can only be itself when it is miles away, a warm reassurance of a greater light and power. That is the pain that an eye must carry in itself. A true god’s mortal life is one that goes completely unnoticed - one that is born in the dark, lives in it and dissolves into it but out of the dark explodes into light almost in futile for none sees it.

That is the curse I was born into and the one that shall be my cradle when I lay down to sleep. But, as I said, there is no use describing color to a blind man. I know the next time you see me, you will still see a mortal soul inside a mortal coil, a little mind that thinks it is god. I know the most I may have done by telling you about all this is make you look at me like I am frikkin ET. And completely miss the point. I know the next time I decide to veil the light so it doesn’t hurt you, you will think I’m grey. I know.

So just forget whatever I just told you. It was just a story. Just a rebus. Let it be.

The Mindless Mass

“Power to the people”, you say. “I alone am!”, says I.

Put one intelligent man in a room, he will do the work of one intelligent man. Put one more man and they might do the work of two men. (Or better still, put a woman in with him and more work will happen.) Try to extend that logic and the screw-up begins. Put three men in a room and they will end up doing less work than three men can. (Or worse still are two women and a man or two men and a woman.)

Why do I say that? Because a crowd, at its best, is stupid. The mass is always mindless. It is the genius of the design of the immaculate creator (if there is one). It is just the nature of the world. It just has to work that way. But if you try to squeeze out reasoning for it from me, you will get what appears to be a highly biased reason. But I’ll prove it to you before you finish reading this post. A crowd is stupid because it is meant to be. The individual is intelligent because he (or she) is meant to be. Because there is only one God (if there is any at all, that is). Because the individual is more than a mob. Because the whole universe is shaped by the dynamics amongst the individuals. Because the wishes, dreams and nightmares that you and me explode with make the black and white of the universe. And that is why the crowd has to be a spineless, plastic and imbecile creature. Alright, it was harsh to call the crowd imbecile. It is a puppet with a vacuous cranium. That is the most polite I can be. And as sad as it sounds, it is the one thing that keeps my conviction that free-will is superior to destiny, that I am more than Him (or at least the idea called Him).

If, at this point in this discourse, any one of you has any doubts about my logic or is not sure about what to think about the deluded author of this post, which is to say those who don’t have the minimum faith to follow the twine that a Theseus left in this labyrinth just for the heck of the story, then the only advice I can give to such sub-humans is please stop reading and get out of your house, walk around, open your eyes and take a look at the world around you. See the drunken dance of the individual ego that no one can stop. See the stoned stupidity of the crowd, quick to anger and to angst and inexorably slow to progress. And you will know that I speak the truth.

Any progress, any good feeling moves very slowly, inch-by-inch through a crowd and is lessened by every individual. And by the time the giant leap of a genius is disseminated through a crowd, it is reduced to a small step for mankind. And throw a cinder of anger into a crowd and it inflames like frikkin gasoline. Incite a score of people and by the end of the day you will find a whole city roaring and tearing at itself or at some imaginary enemy or most commonly the ‘system’. Normal well thinking men and women turn into fiends and unsocial animals when they walk into a crowded place like a public bus. And that is because of two reasons. The first is the safe anonymity of a crowd. The second is just personal justice – that is what they get from the crowd and that is what they shall give back. The next time you get on a local train or on a crowded bus or in the queue for a first day first show, be scrupulously aware of yourself and the people you may know in the crowd. And you will notice that everyone, including you, is at least twice as well behaved when alone than when in a crowd. Are you few faithful ones still with me till here?

Now, finally, we come to the basic premise of this post. Having established that the mass is mindless, it is most easy to pronounce this – democracy is for suckers! The slave system openly turned humans into slogging animals, the feudal gave them security and food in return but still made them work like animals and so on and so forth. Every step forward in the system of administration of the masses is not a step forward in justice and fairness. Justice and fairness are dreams that a mass can never achieve because one can’t talk about fairness and the crowd in one breath. The breath that you are inhaling at this very moment could have been someone else’s. But it is yours because you took it, because you were unfair to another living organism. Every step forward in the systems of administration is not even a move towards communism because that is another unachievable utopia. Every step forward (apparently forward mind you) is a step forward in indoctrination, a step forward in mind control.

Is something coming in through the fog? Sure the power of selection and of empowerment is in your hands. Sure the power of giving and taking power in your hands. Sure the positions of all those you put up there are in your hands. But do you know what is in their hands? Your brains and hearts. Your very souls. To control and trade as they will. And there is nothing you can do about it. That is how we sons and daughters of the great and lucky Adam and Eve are made. Now if you tell me that this outlandish theory does not apply to an inspired population, a people fighting for a cause, I would like to ask you where they got the idea from. Sure they were equally dissatisfied with the old idea but inspiration was cast in their midst by one leader and their souls just resonated.

Our rulers and their rule has, no doubt, changed but I doubt very much if it has progressed. It has to change because the mind that has to be controlled is also evolving at an ever faster pace. It is because the system is trying to keep up with the individual. It is the same monster of a million faces appearing and disappearing with a new face ever so often. And that will be so forever, for they is us and us them. That monster is none but me and you.

And that is the truth that we, as a race, have to learn to live with. And none can change that. So…let it be.

Run, Hamsters Run…

“Your son was a hero”, said they, “he will never be forgotten and you shall never be helpless. He is immortal.” “No he is not, the fool”, said she.

English is a funny language. It labels a limited number of things, happenings and feelings with a million different names depending on how it looks from the point of view of the limited and twisted individual mind. For example, sacrifice and compromise are one and the same act but different for different points of view. Anyone who, at this point, thinks I’m over-simplifying, that little red button with an x on it on the top right corner of this window is just for you.

I’m going to discuss a couple of funny words here – patriotism and martyrdom. Let us look at a case study – the Nazis. They fought more than half of the world and killed for apparently random reasons and acted like barbarians and beasts. That much we all agree about. And every soldier who fell in the battle field fighting those madmen was a right patriot. But what were the Nazis? Patriots? Patriots. And, believe me, they must have much greater patriots to have blinded themselves to the fact of the sheer manslaughter they caused with their own hands in the name of a far-out philosophy called Aryan supremacy. The Gestapo or even the CIA for that matter? Patriots. So who is a patriot?

The answer, in most simple terms, is – an individual who believes and trusts his nation’s philosophy, even so much that he is ready even to die and kill for it. And by what is this trust of his informed? By what is he inspired to give up his all in the name of something that may be as irrational as Aryan supremacy or a communist state for that matter? You don’t have to be a conspiracy theorist like me to see the ugly, twisted hands of the state in the whole stinking idea. They told you what is correct and what is the correct way to put what is correct and what to do if you want what is correct to prevail. They told you what your culture is. They told you what your way of life is. They told you what your social standing is. And this ‘they’ I harp about is not just a parliament or oligarchic conspirators putting their convoluted brains together to make paper puppets of you and me. ‘They’ is the state, the institution that we put up there to govern our unhappy selves. And ‘they’ don’t have a choice either. The easiest, but mind you, not the only, way to peacefully govern millions of people is make them hamsters in a wheel of their own running towards a treat but staying in one place. So was the genius of a very great distorted and gnarled brain somewhere and the rest of the world followed suit.

Patriotism is an idea of being one with a nation and taking the responsibility of maintaining and protecting. Sure, it’s a good idea, but it is not ‘the idea’. Because patriotism is the final and the biggest circle of limitation one can draw within a human being’s existence as the universal mind and soul. It is the strongest, biggest and the fanciest shackles you can bind yourself in.

Now lets us look at the funny words again – patriotism and martyrdom. And this is how they look to me now. ‘Patriotism’ looks more like ‘conformism’. An organism shall become one of them and help them protect their idea of right and wrong and it shall be rewarded justly by being called a patriot. And if the organism, in the act of protection is unlucky or stupid enough or both to lose its very existence, it is rewarded even more and made immortal by being labeled a martyr. So martyrdom, as logically follows, is the prosthetic limb that a government gives to the family of the fool who unwittingly lost his life in the pursuit or protection of an intangible principle. Oversimplification? The red button, please.

The big difference between me and my father is that he believes in democracy and I do not. I don’t expect any of you to do the same. But, for calling yourselves thinking voters and would-be voters, all I ask is - Do you know who is pulling your strings?

But I don’t expect all of you to be as sharp either. So let it be.

The Hidden Balance

Four monks took a vow of silence. When walking together down a street, one of them tripped and cried out in pain. The second monk laughed out loud. "There goes your vow of silence!", he said. "And there goes yours, you fool!", said the third. The fourth just smiled a complacent smile and walked on ahead. That evening when their master asked them who had kept the vow, and the first three jealously looked at the fourth and told the master all that had happened. And the fourth one was still smiling that complacent smile. When they finished telling the story, the master looked at his face and said, "So none could keep the vow."

I was really young, not more than 6, when I did my first crime - I stole. When you do stuff like that at home, it somehow doesn't feel like crime. I stole 10 bucks and bought a hundred candies from it. But I did one fundamental mistake - I chose the wrong guy to buy it from. The shopkeeper was a family friend. And I bought a buttload of candy from him. So he put two and two together and came to wish me Happy Birthday that evening. And it hit the fan! But I should consider myself quite a good learner. Every stupid mistake was followed by a perfected crime. And every perfect crime was followed by a perfect burial. I just got better and better by the day. Shall I tell you about every wrong I committed and every secret I kept? And once you know what I know won't that make me seem like the kingpin of some information network? Won't I prove that I know so much about so many things? And if I tell you everything, can you keep the secret? If you can, so can I.

If I made a list of all the wrong things I did in this lifetime, I know it wouldn't hurt most of those reading this. Because for that most, this is just a cold record of my opinions, or a place to show off my writing ability and that in itself is a tragedy of our times. But I wont talk about that now. All that bull notwithstanding, what I have done will definitely hurt, no shatter, a handful of souls. And scandalise dozens more. And I am not a special case in any way. Try telling your dad what you saw your sister do with her boyfriend, or try telling your mum how much of an Oedipus complex you had (no perverted readings! please grow up!) and you will know what I mean. And that is only the bad side. Ever thought twice before telling someone what you gave up for them? How much you love them? What you gave them and what it cost you? How much you sacrificed for them? Ever thought about telling that kid on the bus what a big favor you did to him by listening to all that nonsense he was chatting? Ever thought telling your best friend how rude he was on that particular occasion and with what magnitude of heart you forgave him? Keeping bad secrets is a good habit. But keeping good secrets is more important. Because it is the only thing that lets the world think it is equal and human. Because it is only thing that lets egos be. Because it is the only thing that keeps the mortals in their incubator shells, comfortable in the dream that everything is as imperfect as they are - that everything is as mortal as they are. That balance is more vital than you can ever dream.

It is not to show off the contents of my closet that I write this. I write this because I have come to understand the meaning of silence and sacrifice and to realise how omniscient it is. Until a little over a year ago, I was ashamed or even pissed when someone said I did something like my father would do it or said something like my father. But now, everyone tells me I look and act just like my dad and I couldn't be happier about it. And that I guess is an irony no man can escape - that, in a lot of ways, he will be like his father before him. But I no longer wish to escape it. As I said before the effect of this would be very little on any Tom and Harry who would read this because this is just a blog for them. But believe me when I say the best way to learn about your father is from other people - from people he has known and whose lives he has touched. There is no better way. At least not for me.

Because not only did my father teach me sacrifice. He taught me silence. It is like he is a completely different man from what I knew him as. He is a demigod now - invincible, indestructible. Because he could give and not tell. Because he could ask and not tell. He could cut open his own heart to feed his children but not flinch while doing it. And therefore he is my god.

Keep the balance friend. Keep it in. Let it be.