flying ninja

2008-06-02T18:36:00.000-07:00

The rain hammered on the roof of the stationary car, flowing down the windshield and the windows, creating a blurry wall of water separating the outside world from them. Mu swallowed, trying to keep his voice calm.

"I don't know what to do." He turned to look at her. She stared through the opaque window at something a million miles away.

"If you love me, why can't you do this?" she asked. Mu sighed. It was a useless, rhetorical question. They were going round and round, in a tight loop, hamsters on a wheel.

"I can't. I just can't. I know, I am a fucker. But what do I do?" he ended almost plaintively.

She stared stonily ahead, through the waterfall cascading down the windshield.

"I'll always love you," he added --- it sounded fake and insincere; and, he reflected, it was an unnecessary and pointless thing to say. But he said it again, anyway --- "I won't stop loving you."

She didn't answer. They sat there silent, listening to the steady drumbeat of the rain on the car; and then, with unexpected swiftness, she opened the door of the car and went outside, slamming it shut behind her.

He stared at the door for a second, not knowing what to do. He felt loath to go outside and get wet, and he wondered if staying in the car was a dramatically sound option --- the camera in his head panned out to an aerial view, zooming out, away from the car, going higher and higher until all that was visible was a tiny speck of a girl walking away in the rain, away from the love of her life who she could not be with, and who sits inside in phlegmatic acceptance of his sorrow --- he sighed and got out of the car.

The rain ran down his spectacles, making it hard for him to see anything. He squinted through them, looking around for her; but the parking lot was empty. She was gone. It was over. He stood in the rain, getting drenched; somewhere in his head, the aesthete smiled in silent appreciation of the tragic beauty of the moment.
--------

He did not hear from her for a couple of days. He was busy with a new idea and he spent a couple of nights in the lab, happily engrossed in scribbled whiteboard diagrams, sleeping on the couch and going back home in the mornings to take a shower. By the end of the third night he was spent; as he took the bus home he thought with satisfaction of the meetings ahead. In the shower it occurred to him that perhaps he should call Anju and find out how she was doing. He did, after all, care for her, boyfriend or not.

Her phone was switched off --- it went straight to voice-mail.

He thought nothing of it and went back to campus. Jason was excited over the new idea and they made plans to write a paper on it over the next few months. After the meeting Mu sat in the lounge with a cup of tea and the New York Times, feeling good about life. He tried calling her again. No luck, once more. It occurred to him that she was blocking him. Oh well. He called again and left a voice-mail: "Hi Anju. Mu here. Just checking to make sure you are okay."

He paused, wondering what next to say. "Can we talk? Just give me a call back, when you hear this." And then went back to the article on Iraq.

By nightfall he was slightly irritated that she hadn't called back. He called her twice more; her phone was still switched off. He tried to work, but the thought of her ignoring him gnawed away in a corner of his head. Impulsively, he walked out of the lab, and then out of the building, heading north. It was ten at night --- she would either be in one of the libraries or at home. He knew her schedule and her favorite haunts.

The library was full of undergraduates studying for mid-terms. He scanned the spots she usually sat at. She wasn't there. He headed further north, towards her department; he could see from outside that the light in her office was switched off. She wasn't in the departmental lounge, or in the little coffee shop downstairs.

"She must be at home," he muttered as he left the department and walked further north, across the bridge towards Home Park. As he approached her house his heart sank --- the window of her room was darkened. He strode up to the front door of the house and tried it - it was open, and he walked in. In the living room, two of the undergrads were watching TV. They glanced up at him momentarily, nodded a cursory greeting, and went back to watching South Park. He nodded back and walked up the stairs, feeling like a thief. He paused outside her closed door, wondering for a second if he was behaving irrationally; then it occurred to him that until two days back he had practically lived here. He walked in.

The room was empty. He turned the light on. Her shoes were not in the corner, and her bag and laptop were missing as well. She wasn't home.

He stood in the center of the room, irresolutely. And then, with a sigh, sat down on the bed and decided to wait. He figured he would go to sleep until she came back; and when she did, she'd see him sleeping and --- for some reason --- he thought this would make her feel disposed to be nice to him and not get angry that he had barged into her room. He went to sleep instantly, the hard work and lack of sleep in the last two days taking its effect.

When he woke up it was eight in the morning. The room was exactly as it had been the night before --- she hadn't returned. Mu could not quite classify what he felt: a sense of betrayal, equal parts of anger and disappointment, with a whole lot of petulance and self-pity thrown in. He felt abandoned.

He called her again, but the phone was still switched off. He cursed and threw his phone against the wall; it bounced off and skittered under the bed. He sat on the bed with his head in his arms, taking in a few deep breaths and trying to erase the dense, heavy feeling in the pit of his stomach. He was hungry; that was it. He hadn't eaten since last afternoon. Obviously he was irritable, he always got irritable when he was hungry. He bent down to retrieve his phone, happy to find it working and unharmed, and then went to the restroom to brush his teeth - he had a brush in the bag he always carried around, in case he slept in the lab or at Anju's place. He sniffed at himself as he brushed and decided to take a shower as well. He stripped, stepped into the shower stall and turned on the faucet, reaching for the bottle of liquid soap that always sat in the right back-side corner of the tub --- and found it missing. A quick check revealed that her shampoo and toothbrush was gone as well. She wasn't living here anymore.

2008-06-02T18:30:00.000-07:00

As he walked into the Starbucks, a disorienting wave of deja vu washed through him; he stopped, shaking his head, trying to retrace the faint outlines of a lost memory:

He walks into the café, eyes dilating into ovals behind thin glasses as they adjust to the darkness. He finds her sitting at a corner table, and he walks over.
“Hello.”
She looks up at him, turning away from the laptop. “Hi, how are you?”
“Good enough.” He sits down opposite her, placing his elbows on the table, and looks outside at the bright, sunlit courtyard. There are no other customers in the café, and only a couple of people lounging outside; it is summer in Troy, and its floating population of students has drifted away to homes and hotels around the world. He looks at her, observing the lines of worry and irritation creased deep in her forehead, the nervous tucking of her lower lip between her teeth.
“How is the presentation coming along?” he asks her, with no hope of a short reply. But she restricts herself to a shrug. He smiles to himself; perhaps she is loosening up, after all.
“What are you smiling about?” she asks.
“Nothing.”
“What do you mean, nothing. There has to be something. Tell me.”
“Really, nothing. I am just feeling happy.”
She stares at him, seriously.
“What, I can’t feel happy?”
”You were laughing at me. You are always laughing at me.”
He sinks his head into his arms, in mock desperation. After a while he props his head up.
“Why do I take this shit from you?” he asks.
She gets up and starts packing her laptop. He does nothing to stop her. She stops and sits down. “Why should I leave, I was here first.”
“I didn’t ask you to leave.”
”Well, I am asking you to leave, now.”
He smiles a bit; he knows it’s a superior, irritating smile, but he can’t help himself.
“Why do you always fight?” she asks him.
The smile vanishes, and he gets up, saying angrily, “Oh, to hell with you.” He walks out into the brilliant sunshine, hands in the pockets of his jeans.

He finds an sms on his phone an hour later – “sorry. I don’t know what for, I am always saying sorry to you, but anyway.”
He sends a message back – “grow up.”

They don’t talk for the next two weeks.

He shook the feeling off and looked around the cafe. It took him a minute to spot her --- she had cut her hair short, and sat next to the window, reading a book. He walked over to her, his heart pounding.

"Hey Anju."

She looked up, and smiled; and getting up, walked into his arms, hugging him tight for what seemed an eternity. "I missed you," she said from somewhere below his chin.

They disengaged and stood apart, looking at each other awkwardly, and then sat down abruptly at the same time. She looked at the book he was carrying.

"Mishima. What's it about?"

"He's a Japanese author. Almost won the Nobel, writes beautifully. You should read him."

She beamed at him. "I loved that other book. Norwegian Wood."

"Yes. Mishima is different. Killed himself through ritual disembowelment."

"Yuck. How unpleasant."

They looked at each other. She spoke first, "I got you this."

It was a key-chain, a plastic figurine of TinTin. "I thought you might like it."

He looked at the key-chain, and suddenly the absurdity of it struck him in full force. "Anju. What are you doing here?"

"I came to say bye."

He looked at her, baffled. "Where are you going?"

"Far, far away," she smiled, dimpling. "Hong Kong. My sister lives there."

"Yes, I remember. But what will you do there?"

"I got a job at Barclays."

"When do you leave?"

"In a week. I'm visiting Troy for the weekend. I just wanted to say bye to the place, and to you."

-----------

Sometimes he wondered if they were sane. They fought madly; clawing like cats at each other. Once a fight started, it would rapidly develop into a battle of attrition; words flung with bitter precision, calculated to hurt, corroding any semblance of love that still lay between them.

Once, after hours of sparring, he couldn't take it anymore. He glanced around the room. She went on inexorably, scolding, threatening, whining. His eye landed on a solitary earring, fallen on the bed. He picked it up, slowly, deliberately, positioning the sharp end against his left palm, and with the other hand began to push it in.

She stopped talking and stared at him.

"The more you talk," he said quietly, "the more I will push this pin into my hand."

"But all I wanted to say...", she trailed off as she saw him wince. "Okay. Okay. I am not talking. Stop that. I am not talking."

He kept the pin pushed in. "Are you sure?" He felt almost sorry that she wasn't fighting any more. He wanted to push that pin in all the way; feel the solidity and absoluteness of pain.

"Yes. Please. Don't do that."

He pulled the pin out. The sharp end of the pin wasn't really sharp, at all. His palm showed a deep indentation where he had pushed the pin in, but there was no blood. He felt let down. In any case, he had to make his point.

"Do you see? I would rather push that pin into my hand than listen to you go on and on. It's that bad."

She stared at him. They were in different worlds, now.

Dissolution

2008-05-27T20:31:00.001-07:00

He sat in a darkened room, sipping on a wine glass of vodka. Outside, it was a typical Troy summer evening, warm and slightly humid with the ever present hint of approaching rain. A thin line of waning sunlight entered the room through the gap between the sill and the thick curtain draped shabbily over the single window; it fell on his table, illuminating a mess of dusty bills and scribbled over scratch paper. The rest of the room was in similar disarray, with clothes strewn across the single bed and on the carpeted floor. A vague abstract painting hung on the wall from a solitary pin, like a skewed diamond. It had been erected more horizontally by the last tenant of the room, and the other pin had fallen out a month back. A thin, low strain of classical music issued forth from tinny laptop speakers buried somewhere underneath the paper foliage on the table. The vodka was almost neat; there were faint traces of orange juice in it, which struggled unsuccessfully to elevate it from alcoholic disinfectant to cocktail. He hadn't drunk much of it; it was almost full and this was his first glass. He gagged a little every time he took in some of it.
He wondered what it would be like if she were sitting on the bed, across the room from him.
She looked around at the mess and reacted in mock horror.
"God, why can't you be clean? I have been gone for just two months and you are already living like a pig."
He looked at her sadly.
"I am sorry. I missed you so much."
"Oh, baby. It's alright, you'll be okay. Listen, I have to go now. I am going out shopping with mom and she is calling me."
"Can you stay a minute more? Please?"
She cocked her head to one side as if listening to someone in the distance.
"Mom's calling me. I really have to go. Sorry."
He took another little sip from his glass of vodka and stared blankly at the empty bed across the room. A gecko on the wall blinked back at him. It reminded him a lot of the geckos in India, the ones that clung fatly to the walls. He had been terrified of them as a child. He hadn't seen any after leaving India till recently, when this gecko had begun to frequent his room. He looked at it now in revulsion, and the glass shook in his hand. He got up and staggered a bit unsteadily towards the door. A minute later he was outside his apartment, in the gathering evening gloom, the wine glass still in his hand. He started walking towards the university campus. A bolt of lightning flashed somewhere in the distance.
She was walking next to him. He felt it odd that they should walk together without talking, so he tried to start a conversation.
"There was this girl."
She smiled at him and replied, "Yes. You already told me. A hundred times."
"Oh. Sorry."
"Serves you right for leaving me."
He looked at her. She looked much older than he remembered. In fact, there were wrinkles near her eyes, and her cheeks were sagging. She was an old woman.
He heard a roll of thunder, and he looked up; a drop fell on his spectacles, obscuring his vision. He was almost at the bridge.
"Should have brought an umbrella," he said to her. But she was gone.
He shrugged and walked on, to the center of the bridge. Large, heavy drops began to fall in a staccato prelude, and then, suddenly, the deluge began and he was drenched by thick, unbroken sheets of rain. He went to the railing and gripped it with both hands, and looked down. The stream was as yet weak, and he could make out the rocks jutting above the waterline. But soon it would be in spate, fed by the relentless downpour.
"Hey."
He looked up and saw her sitting on the railing precariously, close to him. He was happy to see her; of the three, he liked her the most, but she understood him the least.
"Hello."
He could barely see her; the rain kept flowing down his spectacles.
"Champagne in the rain?" she laughed.
He looked down in surprise at the wine glass overflowing with rainwater. On an impulse, he tossed it over the railing. It hung in the air, floating gently away from him. For some reason it stood out very clearly against the rest of his water-blurred view. With an easy motion, she jumped over the railing and glided over to it. She plucked it out of the air and looked back at him, and laughed happily, beckoning him towards her with a pert toss of her head.
With a tiny, inscrutable smile, he put one foot over the railing, and then the other, till he was standing on the edge of the bridge, hanging onto the railing. She held out her arms to him, and he walked out to meet her, through the pouring rain. The last thing he remembered was seeing the wineglass explode into a thousand beautiful fragments, creating a wonderland world of glass and water, in which every direction held a rainbow, and on every rainbow sat a tiny version of her, laughing.

britain

2008-05-27T20:23:00.000-07:00

Oct 05

fast-ly we segue into travelogue mode - britain, land of fish and chips, white wall splashed with shades of indelicate, raucous, wonderful brown; it set foot in the mud, did it not? as the comedian says, we too have a motherland.

an airhostess with an accent of midland butter.

in the airport there are toilets - complete with apparati that crank out cloth towels, no paper tissue.

drunk professors stagger around arguing - wine on their breath, eyes clouded, fists clenched; egos bruised as indictiments are hurled in quick, precise fashion.

this is what they call a seaside resort, in the books that ate into my brain. it rains steadily and dismally outside.

important men who have built entire lives around the premise of the word; ecosystems of verbiage float in their heads, screaming and jostling beneath a translucent jelly-pane of flaccid precision.

they held me and poured glasses of wine into me; it was not my fault, faith. the wineglasses levitated in disgust, shaking chalky stems at me. demanding to be ravished.

the channel throbs outside, in agitation. patience, butterflies, i am drunk yet.

butter flies across the table, fleeing angry knives.

why blog when there is wine downstairs?

enter the ninja

2008-05-27T20:19:00.000-07:00

nov 05

have you seen the ninja fly?

a shape flits across the full moon - that is the ninja in flight.

he lands silently, even the dust does not awake.

he is inside your room, crouching in a corner, waiting and watching.

he has patience. he has waited centuries for this moment, and he can wait centuries more, crouching in that corner, biding his time, observing and learning, but most of all, procrastinating.

2008-05-27T20:14:00.000-07:00

Dec 05

i can hear batwings, feel soft velvet brush against my skin and against my closed eyes. i am scared; of what? bats that flit around me, suffocatingly close, wingflaps away from covering my eyes ears nose throat entering me and filling the void inside with cottonwool batskin. of that i am afraid, yes. but more of opening my eyes and finding nothing there but floating dust in bright sunshine; afraid of finding out i am insane.

-------

the ninja lands on his feet, watchful and wary, 3-foot sword held carefully upright with both hands. he moves his head slowly, calibrating first and then localizing the slight shuffles he hears in the dark. in a far corner of the mansion, a rat scurries in the darkness, and he factors away this sound source and continues to probe his surroundings. his blind eyes are covered by a steel band containing sophisticated sonar equipment - a device that transmits sonar waves at a particular soundless frequency, bouncing them off walls and back into his head through a device that translates them into tiny vibrations on his eardrums. he has mastered this alternate representation of space in sound with years of practice and discipline, and in the temples of the initiates he is held in awe.

somewhere in this dark building is the man he must kill; the last shaolin, hiding here for days months years, breathing so softly that the cobwebs built by spiders on his face hang motionless in the stale air. the shaolin senses the ninja in the mansion - senses each individual collision of atom with atom as the ninja's landing sends out a tiny radiating disturbance through layers of dust and air.

the shaolin blinks once to invite his nemesis, sending spiders scuttering off the massive cobwebs on his body; even before the spiders move, the ninja hears the eyelashes moving downwards, and knows he has found his prey. silently but surely, he moves down the corridor, towards the room where the shaolin waits for him.

the shaolin sees the ninja walk in, and he stands up, ceremoniously and with dignity. from a scabbard to his side, he pulls out the curved sword emblematic of his temple, and bows. time stops still; and then the two silhouettes leap at each other, and as they meet a blinding flash of light illuminates and destroys their world and everything in it.

shards

2008-05-21T21:00:00.000-07:00

A pretty girl at a bus-stop, oblivious. This is the silent spring --- I walk in the shadows, unknown. Fresh snow compacts under my feet / screams as I step on it. This is the spring of oblivion.

the rain falling on the rooftop sounds like an inarticulately mumbled prayer...

coitus annihilatus.

you know you are still young when a clean shave is all it takes to stop looking like shit.

How should life be lived? Like a raindrop exploding into a million little prisms; like the sunlight passing through that raindrop.

In a corner a man spits tobacco in a graceful arc, multiple spheres smeared into leaping red dragons that race each other to the waiting ground.

2008-05-21T20:52:00.000-07:00

i worship rusting gods
stone totems in the falling rain
forgotten and unfeared
eternity, from unbirth to undeath
fettered in inches of shallow mud
i worship them to save the world
locked in a twisting embrace
we vanish into the butter churn
ejected.

Ephemera

2008-05-21T20:39:00.000-07:00

There are some realities a man cannot accept and retain his sanity at the same time - the mortality of his flesh; the immortality of his soul; the futility of his existence. Man is born with a whimper and dies with one, and in between he rages loudly and obscenely at Gods he cannot comprehend.

Man is unspeakably wet - a creature of sweat, piss, tears, semen, saliva, blood; emerging from the swamp and belonging to it, putrid and eternally damp.

A throbbing sky; purple bruises backlit by a sun that dips into the horizon like a waqar special. Silver contrails hanging in the sky, so many trails of mucus left behind by itinerant snails.

Free will, of course, is the maraschino cherry.

chronology of an obsession

2008-05-21T20:27:00.000-07:00

September 06

there's a lyric looping in my head - swerving and rushing through the empty seats in my mind's peep-show...

a geisha balances intricately on stage - and it begins to rain around her, wetting her hair and her ornate clothes.

January 07

i dreamt of snakes and beautiful women;
large snakes, pythons, slithering through the grass, following me.
two women --- i walk into the pavilion, and they sit at consecutive tables, alone, brooding.
i know them both; are they the same person?
they're sad, waiting, their eyes glimmer with unshed tears as they stare into their drinks.

the sun is high in the sky and it's a hot california summer. i watch her dry the long, beautiful cascade of hair; sitting on the edge of the bed, waiting patiently, happy to just be there.

there are moments in your life when you wish you could stop time. freeze life and not let it move forward; because you are happier than you have ever been or will be.

but you can't hold back time, and it trickles like desert sand through your fingers, until --- one day, she's gone.

and all you are left with is the memory of laughter.

Feb 07
The department is empty on Friday night, and µ walks through its corridors, roaming the labyrinth; searching for the minotaur, to sit down and have a cup of coffee with it, examine its personal crises, entangle it from its moral dilemmas, and then --- best of all --- be eaten by it. No more loneliness, reflects µ, as he leans over the railing of a third-floor balustrade and half-contemplates vaulting into the vast central atrium. No more pain, no more insignificance, no more guilt, nothing. What if hell is an eternity of this --- being stuck in the department on a Friday night, no friends, no girlfriend, nobody to talk to, nothing to do, just an endless contemplation of silent spaces. Perhaps I am already in hell, he thinks. All that is missing is the element of permanence.

He is Sisyphus, doomed to existence in the eye of a tight loop, long intervals of strenuous uphill effort punctuated by mere seconds of pure joy. Wash, rinse, repeat.

April 07

cigarette smoke curling upwards, tracing fairies in the musty air of the salon.

fingers holding the cigarette askance, eastwood style; stubble, greying, on a weathered, beaten face. eyes of unburnt coal, steady, hard.

just like that.