The man who fell in love with a Bus-stand

Part 1 – The Realization

Let me tell you a story about a boy

who fell in love with a BUS-STAND

All his life, it was in front of his eyes

But he couldn’t see the LOVE

..Until that day..

when he was standing there

waiting for that gloomy bus

which would take him to the mortuary

where he toiled like a dog locked in some ceiling-less building

where he worked with the dead

where his sweat got mixed with the blood

..

blood of the unknown

blood of the rotten life-less-ness

that red blood which smelled like stale mustard sauce

and which turned blue on his white shirt

with blood blotches and blood stains

with livers, kidneys and intestines in his hands

with ashen eyes and dry mouth

he worked

..

..BUS-STAND,

never changed,

always stayed

the same

but still

LOVE had to happen

..

he remembered the first time

when he felt LOVE

..

he was in school

and waiting for the morning bus

to come and pick him up

and suddenly it had started to rain

..

he was wearing the white shirt..

all his life he worn white shirts

he never wore any other color

just those plain white shirts

he didn’t want the rain drops to spoil his spotless white shirt

he took shelter

BUS-STAND gave him the shelter

he stood there

waiting

for that early morning bus to come and pick him up

..

he waited and waited and waited

and it rained and rained and rained

..

he was the only one standing there

in the shed of the BUS-STAND

he smiled with the sky

the sky cried with the rain

that day was the day when he realized

that something out of ordinary had happened..

..

Part 2 – The END

That night

people saw someone

a naked man with blood blotches and bruises all over

some said he had a lot of white shirts in his hands

he was shouting something, almost screaming

some said he was crying and laughing at the same time

some said he had chopped all his fingers and

shaved all his hair from his body

someone saw him hanging his white shirts on the bus stand

he covered the bus stand from his shirts

he kept on wrapping it

till the time it became a big white thing

some said he stood on the roof of the bus stand and slept for sometime

someone saw him spilling petrol on the bus stand

some said he took out a matchbox

and lit it on fire

some said the sight was horrible to look at

a naked man jumping on the roof of a big white thing

in the milky moon light

white cloth started shining when the flames came out of white shirts

soon fire caught the naked man

some said by the morning

there were just ashes of

the white shirts

the bus stand

and

the naked man

some said he burned his love

to live again.

Signed

A (dot)

Artist-Spectator..a love story

 

Artist –

Forget curtains

watch me

how fluid I am

in whatever I do

I am shamelessly smart

so you smell the stench

of my fart

of a performance

without further ado

 

Spectator –

My eyes & ears are open

my mental cunt is closed

you don’t titilate me enough

I cant sit here with your foes

like a body, decomposed..

YOU fracture art

then you call it an ‘arty fart’

you philosophise amatuer-ish-ness

you need more sand on your stage

rub it in your eyes

if you want to be a sage

 

Artist – 

You fool, you are a mere spectator

what do you know about art?

‘Traitor’ you will be called

if you don’t witness the end, from the start..

I see you are blessed with big mouth

and a sentimental brash tongue

first count the rashes on your skin

and then tell me about Gaugin

You are just another jerk-off

from the debris of mediocrity

we, artists, are unlucky

that you praise us, only after calamities

I question your audicity

coz’ in my eyes

you are born out of paucity

Sit down and praise me now

or that’ll be considered a ‘foul’

 

Spectator –

oh, Great Artist! you are good

you can surely amuse me

but I am not here to laugh on your face

Everyone is an artist

while standing at your place

but me..

I praise when its worth it

I can patronize you

I can see that you are in dearth of it

Don’t misunderstand me

coz’ I am standing on my own feet

unlike you,

you stoop so low

to hear the broken mistaken sound of claps, and its beat

I am just here to heal you

not to suppress your urge to perform

coz’ I know

suppression leads to aggresion

and aggression melts the form

you carry on with your digression

let me take care of my digestion

 

Artist – 

From now on, you will be called a

‘Nincompoop’

coz’ you are neolithic and you belong to poop

I suffer for art, I loose my appetite

you should be dragged out of premises

you are uptight and not bright

you have a spine made of snakes, you have glass eyes

confusion reigns your words, ‘liquid’ your conscience

I should freeze you and break you like ice

and would suffice

 

Spectator –

fuck off, I am done with this shit

 

…..and you’ll have to clean

piles of shit before you sleep

piles of shit before you sleep..

 

–a/an/the end

 

 

– A (dot)

Why/How Cormac McCarthy’s – The Road – scared me

If you have read the book..let me help you reach the level of disgust which you have, I bet, not yet achieved.

Do you remember the scene where this Man and his Son are hidden in the bushes and they see three men and one pregnant woman passing by…and some moments later they find out that what they were trying to cook was their own infant baby? Do you remember that??

Well, I only remember those things from the book which kind of scared me so badly that I could not eat anything for exact three days. Yes, when I thought about those people who had no choice but to eat their own new born infant, I kind of leaked one or two tears from my psychological eyes.

I mean, SERIOUSLY??

Yes.. when I asked from my inner self that if that kind of thing can actually happen or if there is any possibility of that kind of thing happening.. I got a reverberated answer with millions of ‘YES’ess’.

What MORALITY are we talking about ha??

I know that when you will have nothing to eat, you will eat your own soul, those body parts can not fill your stomach by the way…and the best part is, we all know that.

I had this dream once..I was walking in this crazy park, there was no one around..I was all alone.. all I could see was…bones..some belonged to humans…some belonged to birds or animals..I could not tell…but that whole park was filled with bones…so there was greenery all around and on the grass-bed..there were bones..I kept on walking and walking and walking…I was wearing my brown gum boots…I remember that I was wearing my favorite shoes..they were made of rough leather and they somehow made me feel powerful..made my every single step on that grass, powerful..So….I kept on walking…I kept on crushing those bones..they were mixed bones…bones of humans and birds and animals and everything..decayed…I could hear the sound, the crackle..I don’t remember what I was doing there, or if I was going somewhere..all I remember was that that I kept on walking for a very long time.. after sometime, when I got tired, I stopped..I got hungry and thirsty..I started licking and eating those bones..they were hard and dry but still I tried to suck and bite them.. and that is when I woke up.

This book called ‘The Road’ is not talking about some post-apocalyptic scenario.. this book is talking about our very own sweet-looking Present…and when I say ‘present’, I don’t mean the gift..I mean the TENSE…yes stay tensed because if you try to go deep in the meaning, the meaning is capable to suck you in.

So that brings us/me to this golden question of Why am I trying to exaggerate the horrors of this book?..well, I have got my very own personal reasons..You want to know?.. of course…okay.. here we go..

The conversations in this book between the father and the son are brisk and emotion-less..You can not call them Dialogues, they are just necessities.

Imagine.. that you have no extra words, all you can talk about is if you are hungry or sleepy or thirsty or not..Imagine how the world would look like when we have no extra things to talk about..the conversations will be like – “Hey, I am hungry”..”Oh good, eat”

Okay I am not worried about the limitations of the words, if you ask me I am not even worried about the vocabulary that much..I am worried about the death of the desire to share things with each other..I agree that I hate ‘people’ but that is a very personal thing, I like sharing thoughts or words or emotions or expressions but..this book tells you that you will be living in this world where if you share anything you will loose your life..that is amazing, isn’t it?

You should not have any thoughts..only good things which you can feel should be there in your imagination..they could never be real.

When I was reading this book, I stumbled on those pages where the Man and the Son, accidently lands up in this house where they find out that there are so many naked people trapped in this haven..they somehow manage to escape that place but..what was the fate of those people? what happened to them later?? noone knows..they were powerless and poor and naked and starving.. they became dinner of the powerful people for all I can imagine..

See, cannibalism is not a thing which is disturbing me here, I am talking about the degradation and the decomposition of your so called structure of the society.

That Man and his Son, they are trying to reach on this beach where the sea water is black and the path is dangerous..the Man thinks that there is hope there, later he dies, ofcourse, but why he pursued that journey..nobody knows..

The son is the personification of some angel from heaven..he can’t see the bad things, he cries when he fails in helping someone..he has got problems with accepting the harsh realities of the times he is living in..

The Man or the Father knows that he cannot escape the reality, he has got recurring dreams of things which he always desired or his mental consciousness..but deep down he knows that whatever he does..he is bound to fail and die…he knows that he can only protect his son till his death but he is scared of whatever might happen with his son when he dies..he is scared that people might sodomize or eat his son..since there are almost no women left in this post-apocalyptic world. He teaches his son to shoot himself in the mouth.

I thought of living for few hours in this world and when I was walking on that road.. I got caught, twice, and people ate my fingers and toes and ears and nose..I could not stop them..they were so hungry and they were about to die..I felt that I somehow did ‘GOOD’..but what is GOOD or BAD in that world?? and that is the exact problem which we are facing now…I am confused..what is good now?? or what is bad?? If I am bothering someone for someone else’s good…is that bad? or if someone is bothering me..is that bad??

You can twist and twirl the meaning of the good or the bad..you just have to mould it in a manner that it will come off as GOOD FOR YOU kind of thing..The Road projects that..that book shows you the emptiness of the world where we are trying to live in..it can disturb anyone for atleast two days and three nights ..and when you forget about the book and its world..you will know that you can never forget what all was there in the book..After reading the book, all I can say is..May God Rehabilitate Humankind!

 

Signed

A (dot)

Birthday on the Wheelchair

 I could see five faces, all lost, all of them resembled those walls which have been torn down.

All of them had sockets for eyes, black sockets, dark and hollow but shy and a little bit malevolent.

Heads were swaying in a scared-pendulum-ly fashion. They took extra seconds in coming back to the normal center position.

I could feel the bubbles in me reaching up-till my neck, bubbles of some feeling which was looking for some emergency exit inside me.

I closed my eyes and tried to look for words, I was fool enough to trust the words.

I started making some parable in my liver, tried to keep up with the train of the mental thought, which was a little bit slower than this train, in which I was in.

I closed my eyes to add some dramatic effects, from outside I am sure I was looking handsome with that abject face.

Eyes closed, lips pursed, disheveled hair, three vertical lines on my forehead danced and I filled my lungs with extra air.

My concentration got broken when I heard nervous giggles from two girls, they were standing five feet away from me.

They were not there when I had closed my eyes, now they were there.

One girl seemed like a Norwegian, broad shoulders, burnt light brown shoulder-length hair, sore lips, life-less eyes.

The other one seemed like an Indian girl, an Indian who had never lived in India , crew cut hair, pierced ears and almost-no lips.

They were looking in each other’s eyes while talking, they were in love with each other.

I tried to over-hear their conversation which kind of scared me.

They were discussing about some unknown breed of Penguins in the Northern Antarctic region, who could fly with their flaps, thrice as big as normal penguins and ate humans.

Pseudo-Indian said that her Professor’s brother used to work for some people who went to make a documentary on this breed.

And those penguins ate the whole shooting crew, they didn’t even leave their bones.

Those penguins , they claimed, had the potential to eat whole of the human race.

At that very moment I realized what I wanted to do.

In my head, I had written one poem which I wanted to recite to them.

I didn’t know them, of course, but still I wanted them to hear my poem which was about green bubbles.

But their love for each other made me jealous and I changed my decision.

Their love was contagious, I just wanted to look at them talking to each other, I got enamored.

They were holding each other’s hands and I could see their thumbs rubbing the back of the hand.

I was touched by their uncorrupted love and I felt like crying in front of them.

It was so pure that I couldn’t look away and I forgot about my poem.

They got off on some station whose name I didn’t want to know, that idea didn’t amuse me much.

Love in pure form was shining like a stain-less steel knife on that station.

The glow of it pinched my eyes and I closed my eyes again.

I had not forgotten that it was my birthday and I was going to some place where I had planned a drunken gathering.

I had invited some people whom I really didn’t know and I was already getting late but I still wanted someone to hear my poem.

I got off on a random station and I started walking in the street full of hazy fog.

I tasted fog from my eyes and it was sweet; unlike sugar, more like honey.

I saw an old man waiting for someone on the street, he was in his tweed jacket and he was sitting on his wheelchair.

I stood on the opposite side of the road and waited for the same thing which he was waiting for.

I had a paperback book of some dark short stories and I started reading them in the dark.

After nine minutes, a car full of old people arrived and that old man got off from his wheelchair  and hopped inside the car, leaving his wheelchair on the side-walk.

His wheelchair was shining like a newly bought aluminium bicycle, it reminded me of my first bike which got stolen from outside my school.

I sidled up to the  wheelchair and sat on it.

After sitting on it, I started moving the tyres and I felt good.

I must have driven the wheelchair for almost sixty minutes when I started feeling tired and bored.

I didn’t want to walk or run so I waved my hand for lift from an ugly purple car.

Some newly married couple was in it and the wifey was on the driving seat, she was pissed drunk.

The hubby held my hand from his window and we covered some seven kilometer distance like that.

Me, sitting on my birthday gift wheelchair, zooming away to glory, holding some random married guy’s hand.

On the way he told me about his younger brother’s story who was specially challenged.

His brother had a disability where he couldn’t stand or walk on his feet in winters.

And somehow his family had to shift to a city where it was cold through out the year.

He told me that his brother looked exactly like me, except I was bald and his brother had long red hair.

He told me that his brother committed suicide. He ate a lot of marmalade which had rat poison in it, which actually didn’t kill him but after eating it he tripped over and slipped in his bathroom and knocked his head on the toilet seat.

They dropped me off to the place where all the people were drinking alcohol and the occasion was my birthday.

I invited the couple but the wifey was sleepy and they told me that they didn’t fancy me that much.

I waved them goodbye, they reminded me of my parents but they were almost my age.

Before climbing the stairs I folded the wheelchair and started reciting my poem to it.

When I was through I realized that the Wheelchair started moving and it made some kind of metallic sound.

I took it as critical appreciation and round of applause and bowed.

I left the wheelchair there on the sidewalk and climbed up the stairs.

Signed

A(dot)