Departed: The Obituary Of An Arrival

Orgasms are beautiful.

Perhaps that is their cruelty.

They arrive wearing the face of creation,

while carrying the quiet certainty of a funeral.

A beginning disguised as a goodbye.

Ask the foetus.

And it is the first miracle it will ever know.

The reason there is a heartbeat where once there was silence.

The first evidence

that two bodies, for one impossible moment,

created something that would outlive them.

But ask the woman before she knew she was a mother.

Before her body became a home.

Before her future acquired a heartbeat.

Ask the woman who existed only for herself in that moment.

And perhaps it was different.

Not creation.

Not a miracle.

A goodbye.

The funeral of a pleasure that would never again exist alone.

Because knowledge is cruel.

Some things die the moment they acquire meaning.

Perhaps that is why the first orgasm

is always followed by the death of something unnamed.

Not innocence.

That word is too convenient.

Perhaps it is simply the death of possibility.

The death of not knowing.

Or perhaps worse: the death of an orgasm that never arrived.

A grave for a future

that never learned how to become a memory.

Because every orgasm is an ending.

Some end in emptiness.

Some end in creation.

Some disappear so completely

that we spend years 

trying to recreate a few seconds

that already buried themselves.

But all of them leave something behind.

A moment that cannot return.

A version of ourselves that cannot continue.

A small death we willingly enter

because, for a brief instant,

it feels indistinguishable from life.

Maybe that is why we gave it such a beautiful name.

Orgasm.

A word borrowed from creation

for a moment that resembles a funeral.

A few seconds where the body celebrates

the exact instant something is already leaving.

Perhaps language was never meant to reveal what things are.

Perhaps it was invented because humans needed a way

to seduce themselves into agreeing to their own endings, 

to decorate the things they were never strong enough to face naked, 

to make their own disappearances sound voluntary.

Schrödinger's Equation

We met.

There was a story.

One story.

You brought half.

I brought the rest.

The halves kept changing.

The total never did.

Then we parted.

After that,

people began counting.

Not the days.

Not the distance.

But, the stories.

Everyone wanted to know

how many there really were.

I searched for an honest number.

But how do you assign a constant to a variable?

The answer changed every time someone asked.

With you, there were two.

With me, there were two.

Curiously, they weren't the same two.

Memory is a peculiar mathematician.

It never solves. It edits.

Every witness adds another author.

Every retelling subtracts another silence.

Every certainty divides another truth.

Eventually, the arithmetic stopped recognising itself.

One refused to remain one.

Two couldn't agree on who counted first.

Three arrived without ever being introduced.

By then, the numbers weren't describing the story anymore.

They were describing the people trying to survive it.

Years later, people still ask

which version is true.

I tell them I don't know.

Not because the truth was hidden.

Because the moment someone found it,

they became part of the story they were trying to measure.

The first person who counted us changed the number.

The first person who judged us changed the ending.

The first person who listened became someone who had been there.

Maybe there were never two stories.

Maybe there was only one,

being torn apart by everyone

who needed a different version to survive.

And maybe, somewhere,

there is a seventeenth person telling this story

because sixteen before them couldn't agree

which two people they were talking about.

Two people in versions nobody remembers,

still arguing over which one of them was the original.

Funny thing about mathematics:

the answer is always different

once the equation realises

it was never seeking a solution;

it was only trying to prove

that everyone who touched it

was already part of the problem.

There's A Ghost In My House (Unhinged)

Travellers loved my house.

At least, that is what I told myself.

That they weren't trespassers.

That this was still a house.

The truth was less poetic.

People love houses the way they love hospitals.

Mostly when they need one.

They arrived at dusk.

Wet clothes. Heavy bags. Heavier histories.

I opened the doors.

Not because I was kind.

Because empty rooms have a way of reminding you what you are.

A house without inhabitants is just a corpse with better architecture.

So I let them in.

Everyone left something behind.

A photograph. A promise.

A stain on the carpet they swore was already there.

I never complained.

Complaints are for places that still believe they deserve better.

I had stopped believing that some time ago.

They called me home.

I found it amusing.

Home is a beautiful word.

It convinces people that a place belongs to them while quietly hiding the fact that they belong to their habits.

They came here to rest.

To heal. To hide.

Some succeeded. Some didn't.

Some broke things. Some repaired them.

Some loved the house. Some hated it.

The difference was mostly how honest they were.

Because every person leaves fingerprints.

Even the ones who arrive with flowers.

Especially those.

Years passed.

The walls grew tired.

The floors learned the weight of departures.

The windows stopped expecting faces to return.

People called it a ruin.

I disagreed.

Ruins are honest.

Houses are just ruins that haven't admitted it yet.

I remained.

Not because I was abandoned.

Abandonment requires someone to have promised permanence.

Nobody did.

I remained because that is what houses do.

They stay.

Even when staying is no longer loyalty.

Even when staying is just another form of cowardice.

Everyone who lived here became a chapter.

Everyone who left became a memory.

And I?

I am the ghost inside the ruins.

Not the ghost of the people who left.

The ghost of the house that believed being needed was the same thing as being loved.

Everyone had somewhere to return to.

Everyone had somewhere to go.

Everyone had a door waiting for them.

Except the house.

The only thing that was always open

was the only thing

that was never allowed to leave.

There's A Ghost In My House

Travellers loved my house.

At least, that is what I told myself.

That they weren't trespassers.

That this was still a house.

The truth was simpler.

People love houses the way they love hospitals.

Mostly when they need one.

They arrived at dusk,

with rain in their pockets and histories in their hands.

Some came carrying flowers.

Some came carrying fires.

Most came carrying both and called themselves guests.

I opened the doors.

Not because I was kind.

Because empty rooms have a cruel habit of introducing you to yourself.

A house without inhabitants is just a corpse with better architecture.

They all left something behind.

A photograph. A promise.

A crack they swore was already there.

Some loved me. Some hated me.

Most simply survived their time here.

Years passed.

The walls grew tired.

The rooms learned that footsteps sound identical whether someone is arriving or departing.

People called me a ruin. I disagreed.

Ruins are honest.

Houses are just ruins that haven't admitted it yet.

I am the ghost inside these walls.

Not the ghost of those who left.

The ghost of a house that mistook being needed for being loved.

Everyone had somewhere to go.

Everyone had a door waiting.

Everyone eventually became a story they told about their time here.

Except me.

I remained behind to preserve the evidence.

The only thing that was always open was the only thing  that was never allowed to leave.

Dead Once. Buried Twice.

Goodness and greatness are but

buds of a night jasmine

that bloom in the chilling air of autopsy rooms,

beneath the flicker of dysfunctional neon lights;

never quite as much

in the changing seasons

of an oxygenated existence.

Perhaps some things need the smell of death

before people finally notice they were alive.

Spare me the circus.

I have a rather lengthy journey to oblivion.

Don't pretend to cry.

This isn't a funeral.

Funerals are reserved for people who were loved 

or liked at the least,

before their stories could be harvested

and rewritten by those who mistook surviving for having the right to write.

Would it befit a protagonist

to author the obituary of an anticlimax

that met its ending exactly on schedule?

No.

Say what you always wanted to say.

Say I deserved it.

Say it should have happened sooner.

Perhaps it will help cover

the blisters on the tender skin

of your shrunken anuses,

caused by years of sitting

on the throne of your rented moralities.

You are all storytellers.

Sacred in faith.

Righteous in truth.

And I was merely

the hiccuping epiglottis

choking the vocal cords

of your carefully rehearsed tales.

A minor inconvenience

between the lie

and its performance.

So let the story remain.

Let it sink.

Why clean a biography

you spent years writing

with neatly drained ink

from neatly manufactured lies?

Don't let death guilt you

into granting me posthumous glory.

You have a reptilian honour to preserve.

Don't contaminate it with the inconvenient interference of a mammalian frontal cortex.

Think of me exactly as you always intended.

It is easier.

Stories survive longer

when nobody checks whether they were ever true.

As for me,

I shall take your leave.

Keep your stories. Keep your sermons.

Keep your immaculate versions of what happened.

I'll keep the only thing you could never redact; the corpse.

The Melody Of Naren Uncle

Dawood Ibrahim Kaskar was a vile man. 

He called Mumbai his beloved, 

long before Bombay became Mumbai.

Then, in 1993, he cut her up, head to toe, 

like a butcher draws through the flesh of a slaughter goat,

and history had the decency to call him what he became.

A terrorist. An enemy of the state, and the country.

The grammar was honest.

Years later, a wise elderly well-meaning man came along, 

and turned the idea of romancing geographies into a thriving business. 

He was fondly called Naren uncle.

He didn't stop at a city. His first love was a state. His motherland.

He doused his first love in petrol, left the gas on, and a matchstick lit itself up, like it were a firefly.

He called it cleansing.

Fire has a strange way of sounding romantic

when politicians are the ones writing the wedding vows.

By 2014, his appetite had outgrown his legislation.

"The nation," he whispered, "is my one true love."

Petrol became patriotism.

Hatred was declared a civic duty.

The matchstick learned parliamentary procedure.

Citizens of the country were so hypnotised by the performance,

so busy waving flags at the theatre,

they never noticed 

they weren't being hugged, but held captive.

That's the thing about propaganda.

Unlike bullets, it enters asking politely.

It removes your spine before it removes your freedom.

Then convinces you standing upright is foreign conspiracy.

Dawood wanted a country to fear him.

Naren uncle wanted the country to mistake fear for love.

One murdered a country in a city.

The other turned a country into a slaughterhouse and then changed the meaning of the word "country".

Vocabulary is honest.

Until someone powerful gets hold of the dictionary.

Then suddenly, antonyms become synonyms.

Cruelty becomes compassion.

Silence becomes peace.

Obedience becomes patriotism.

And the mirror reflection of a monster is introduced as a messiah.

And Naren uncle has always been known to be a tongue-twister.

Because the most dangerous tongue-twister is not the one that makes you struggle to pronounce the words.

It is the one that convinces millions to pronounce the same lie as truth.

Question Paper

The government doesn't fear terrorists.

Terrorists make excellent headlines.

It doesn't fear wars.

Wars arrive with flags, anthems,

and enough cameras

to make destruction look like history.

It doesn't even fear hunger.

Hungry people are too busy

counting their last meals

to count who took the first one.

No.

The government fears classrooms.

Because classrooms have a dangerous habit

of creating people who read before they obey.

A child with a question paper

is more dangerous than an adult with a slogan.

Because slogans tell you what to think.

Questions ask you why.

And why

has buried more empires

than weapons ever did.

In a country

where generations escaped 

famine, debt, discrimination, and surnames

that arrived before they did,

education was never just education.

It was a ladder built by people

who were never allowed inside the building.

Every examination was a small rebellion.

Every piece of paper earned in a classroom

was proof

that destiny could be negotiated.

Which is why 

nothing terrifies power

more than a child who believes

their future belongs to them.

Because a child

who believes they own tomorrow

eventually asks who sold yesterday.

Every dictatorship begins the same way.

Not by burning books.

That comes later.

First,

it convinces people

that questions are disrespect.

Raise your hand?

Suspicious.

Raise your voice?

Seditious.

Raise an eyebrow?

Anti-national.

Raise your child

to think?

Now that's dangerous.

We tell children there are no stupid questions.

Then they grow up.

Turns out there are.

Mostly the ones asked loudly.

Outside Parliament.

Inside classrooms.

Anywhere a microphone

can accidentally hear the truth.

The funny thing about a baton

is that it has only one answer.

It keeps repeating it

until the question forgets why it was asked.

History teachers must be exhausted.

Every few decades, they have to explain

how every empire made the same mistake.

They mistook their own echo for applause.

They mistook silence for agreement.

They mistook fear for loyalty.

Funny.

We celebrate the people who questioned an empire.

Then punish the people who question a government.

As though

a government and a country

were the same thing.

They are not.

A country

is the child who studies beneath a broken tube light

because darkness is cheaper than failure.

The farmer praying to clouds

that arrive everywhere except his field.

The student carrying an answer sheet

like a lottery ticket written by someone else.

A government is merely the hand borrowing the pen.

And history has always been cruel

to people who mistake

holding the pen for owning the paper.

Because eventually, the question changes.

Not:

"Will you obey?"

But:

"Why did you think

you were allowed

to ask?"

You can arrest the student.

Confiscate the notebook.

Break the pencil.

Rewrite the syllabus.

Erase the names.

Polish the statues.

But the question?

The question has already graduated.

It lives in every person who watched.

Every person who remembered.

Every person who quietly wondered

if the answer sheet was ever meant for them.

Because that's the problem with question papers.

They were never for the students.

They were always for the examiner.

And governments, no matter how powerful,

eventually discover the most terrifying truth about examinations:

The person holding the pen

is not always

the person giving the marks.

History has been invigilating governments for centuries.

Every empire entered the examination hall

believing it had written history.

Centuries later,

history arrived with a red pen,

and failed every answer

they spent centuries,

forcing generations to memorize, 

until the lie no longer needed to be defended, 

for, 

it had learned to answer in everyone's handwriting.