The Trunk (page 7)

Cluck… cluck… sounds made from the insides of my trunk in sporadic episodes. It had never bothered me until now. and this was the first instant I began to shudder at the sound. It remainded me of popular fustian. Yes I remember what it contained. The fates of people whom I destroyed not due to my will, but due to my fate. The function of angel of death. How swiftly death had attacked my near and dear ones! And I collected their remains in my trunk, so that on the day of justice I can question God of his misdoings. But now, depredation against God was useless. I wanted to be exculpated, of being an angel of death. A curse to my family. The bearer of death. None in my lineage live to see this day.

Blink blink blink blink

Now it all seemed an imbroglio. The rancor vanished. The wait for death disappeared. I decided to end my itinerant. Everything seemed to be in an equilibrium. I decided to empty the contents of the trunk in to the holy river. The agog of letting off my past was strong. Now I want to live. For myself. Not for my sins, not for my painful past, not for dispensing my functions as angel of death. Not for fruitful or fruitless arguments. Not to confront God. I want to live for myself. I shed the patina of my form to enter into another dimension. In this dimension, time didn't matter. Everything seemed an eternity. As we look deeply within, we understand our perfect balance. There is no fear of the cycle of birth, life and death. For when you stand in the present moment, you are timeless.

The prophecy of a Chinese master (page 5)

I met him during a stay in a buddhist village along the border of Tibet. He possessed a composure befitting a saint and when he began to preach to a set of followers, his words struck me like a thunderbolt. He said
‘There are some men, whose curse is to be different from the rest. Among thinkers, they see only a lack of practicality; among men of action, they mourn the absence of thought. When they are at one extreme, they yearn for the other side. Such men are habitually alone, unloved by most others, incapable of making a friend, since to make a friend is to accept the other person’s thinking. But it may not be such a curse to be alone; wisdom is rarely found in crowds.’
I knew he was talking about me, I had seen that look in his eyes and the glazed expression on his face when our eyes met. He told me I was an angel of death. The reverberations remain rooted within me to this day.

Mr.I, Mr.C, Mr.E and ME (page 4)

Admist my miseries of life I looked for simple pleasures to keep me alive. One of those pleasures were my three companions whom I would unremittingly seek irrespective of any place I migrated. Mr.Intellectual, Mr.Creative and Mr.Emotional. The search for my companions would take me to erratic places. Forgotten book stores, where Mr.Intellectual would busy himself going through epics, Mr.Creative would be found painting the antique architectural glory and Mr.Emotional would indulge with a glass of wine or two crying over Romeo’s death. Three of them together would make a great combination for serious argument. On one such circumstance, I had risen the simple topic of why do people cry:

Mr.Intellectual said: if the situation is going to teach me something new, I would rather cry to learn. If the situation is going to teach me something more by controlling my tears, I would rather learn not to cry.

Mr.Creative said: ‘Heavy hearts, like heavy clouds in the sky, are best relieved by the letting of a little water’. So I prefer to cry.

Mr.Emotional said: There can be no human heart which cannot understand the joy of pain and brandish it with river of perpetual tears.

A normal man would have said, I cry because I feel like.

Spread around the world, with different names, belonging to different creeds and speaking different languages and yet a bond that brings the four of us together under a single roof at regular intervals. More than a coincidence…

A fellow traveller (page 3)

I ostracize (refuse to associate) to any community for fear of being called a ‘devil’. My handicap has inflicted me to give up a sedentary life style. I travel to far away lands and when I settle at a place, its not for more than a period of five years. Being as old as I am, I chose the profession of astrology. More because I had already mastered the art of reading people’s minds. I always believed it was an artifice, this mask of an astrologer. And I continued my research in studying patterns of human life. Not to be taken literally though. My fellow traveler – an ancient trunk. The contents of which would spill out my past to the entire world. now it remained locked, covered with maggots its secrets more mysterious than the pandora’s box’s.

My static life… (page 2)

Neither growing old nor young, static: that’s how my life can be best described. Immortality is a curse in the disguise of a blessing. Death is a humanizing experience. It has denied my invitations so far. Has death simply eluded me? Or is it waiting in unknown corners to swiftly attack me? The uncertainity of life and the fear of death no longer torment my mind. There were times when I would question my own existence. When people around me no longer took notice, I wondered if I had shed my body. Then suddenly I would thump into someone on my way to verify the travesty. These affectations were done so artistically that they remained oblivious to my innocent victims.

Today is like yesterday… (page 1)

As I walked upto calendar to remind myself what day it was, I heard myself say ‘today is like yesterday’ and ‘yesterday was like the day before’. To overcome consternation, this has been a ritual since a long time, to be precise- one hundred and forty five years. I may look like a thirty five year old youth but the fervor for life has died. Days seem lugubrious now. My family and friends were washed away in the deluge of time. I now wait for time to consume me, to end aberrations…