Again

Authors Note -

This is the first in four part series of short stories both independent & inter related to each other.

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I think he’s making me do it again.

Who said that? Did you say that? Maybe I said it. No, No I didn’t say it. I am sure it was nobody. Nobody said it. What, Nobody said it? How is that possible? No its not literally nobody. Its just this darkness. I can’t see anything. I am pretty sure I am not blind, so the lights must have gone.

Ha, the lights must have gone. Good one.

I am floating. No No I am stuck. I am stuck in a floating device. I must remember, Must. How did I get here? Something happened. What happened?

I remember something. The darkness. Yes, I…

I am married. I have two kids. Two boys. I wish I could say they were bright but what’s the use now. They can’t help me out of here. They couldn’t help a guy cross an empty street. Ungrateful, greedy, stupid, all of them.

And my wife. So proud of her wittle kids. She thought she was the first woman in the world to push a few vacuum cleaners out of her. Kids are that. They suck the life out of you. And then she went ahead and named them after gods. Do you have any idea how hard it is to yell and scold a brat named after the guy you spend half of your day praying to.

I’m surrounded by stupidity. Surrounded by them. Yes that’s what I remember. I am surrounded by them.

No, no that’s not what I remembered the first time. No the darkness. The darkness. It was the one time she acted in a way that surprised me. Well ofcourse I took the initiative but even with the light reflecting off the big screen I could see that she wanted it but wouldn’t open her stupid round mouth to ask for it.

The theatre was empty. Not a single soul. Akshay Kumar was on the screen. His face was trying really hard to emote. What other variety does it know anyway? I took her hand. I opened my zip and shoved her reluctantly open fist down there. I saw that once in a movie and thought it was very funny acting it out personally in a movie theatre. Sort of like coming back to school in your thirties and reading out ‘My Favourite National Hero’ essay in front of the entire class; which I couldn’t write in sixth standard.

She pulled her hand out and shoved both of them under her thick thighs. Under her enormous weight, they’ll never budge. But then she turns her head towards me. A slow deliberate move. She wasn’t even capable of making sexy bedroom eyes but in a her own Akshay Kumar sort of way, I could guess what emotion she was aiming for.

I think it was after we had our first monster. Yes, that was a fun night. Fun for her anyway. Memorable for me in the way that you remember how that one day when that one guy in your office who is always shut off, has news that his daughter came first in her exam in the entire state. And you hadn’t even imagined that, that guy had a family and was capable of smiling about anything. The happiness has very little to do with you, if anything you feel the punch in the gut when you realise that you will never feel it yourself. But in the first moment when he shares his happiness, you feel a little content and the world as you believed it to be, has changed a little, by the millionth of an inch but it did change. That guy can actually smile. How about that. And then the ogre goes back to his initial stage but you remember that moment had happened once.

That’s what it was.

Oh…Oh its moving and shaking…I am knocking my head, knees and legs against its soft surface. A little light is peaking in. How did they do that to my hand? Am I cured?

The last time I remembered seeing them gather around me. I was converted into a waste recycling plant. My ‘food’ going in through my many pierced veins; the hand was reduced to perforated piece of slip ready to be torn off; the soft diapers and pissbag catching my throw every time.

But that was all at the very end or rather what I thought was the very end. I was running a modest business. We manufactured intermediary chemicals for making glue and pharmaceuticals. My grandfather founded it. My father took over and then me.

I enjoyed my work. I grew the business more than either my father or sons could ever imagine. I opened two new factories. The government even gave me an award for my “Entrepreneurial Initiatives”. Sure it was rigged. I even paid them to have the award designed in the way I liked. But they couldn’t just give it to some homeless guy on street. I contributed to society, to the economy and of course to the many foreign trips my family members took over the years, which I can assure you were hell of a lot more than I knew of the countries that existed on this earth.

Ohh….what is that. A bright streak of light has entered my holding space. I can’t turn my head to look at the source. But that’s not the whole reason why I am not looking. Oh my god. Oh my god. I am in a psychopaths home. A crazed mass murderer. A man so crazy he has literally painted the walls red. And he has trapped me in a plastic bubble. What could he want from me. And blackness engulfs me once again. I am trapped but there is hell waiting outside, if I step out. I now know it was always my choice to step out but I am also sure of this more than anything else in the world, I don’t want to go out.

A happy memory. A happy happy memory is what I need.

The second factory. Yes, we had setup a factory in the industrial estate next to a village. There were murmurs of discontent. Your guess is as good as mine as to what they discontent about.

The export orders, the meetings, the travelling, the compliances and the assurances had taken over my life. It was one unpronounceable guy’s & place’s name after another. One day its Mr. Xiang from Guangzhou, next its Mr. Nováček from Brno then its Mr. Koch from Salzburg and then Randy York from I don’t remember. Somewhere.

In the middle of this overwhelming exposure, I decided to start a new factory. You know how a train zips along the track when it has momentum; the first pull to move the multi thousand ton piece of steel with wheels, takes enormous amount of strength.

The government, the locals, the government again, the construction contractors, the government again, the financiers, the government for the billionth time, the environmentalist.

Huh, the environmentalist. I don’t really care how many times and from whichever direction the government comes. I always know what they want both officially and unofficially. But the environmentalists. I don’t get this bred. No matter, how open I keep my ears. I could never get what they want.

They started protesting outside the gates. Two people grew into a dozen and now they had a working kitchen outside while the big banner proclaimed – Hunger Strike. It was the curiosity than anything else that made me go against the advices of my managers and invite the protesters for a meeting.

They came in. A not too well groomed bunch but they had a very slick looking guy with them. They introduced themselves and the slick guy as their lawyer. Ah fancy rebels, I thought. The meeting started with a bit of friction and this one guy with his hair cut short and a flowing beard, (which if I may add, made him look like he was eternally constipated) lead the charge from their side and the slick guy was reduced to passing a couple of sheets, here and there.

From what I recall their main concern was a pond, a kilometre from the nearest edge of my new factory. The locals used the pond for drinking water and the emission from my factory would pollute the land and spread its wing of wrath to the pond of eternal health & happiness.

“Do you propose any preventive, you know, measures?”

“Yeah get out of here.”

We all laughed, “Ok enough fun and games. I am a reasonable man.”

“You could buy land anywhere. It just because its slightly cheaper and the labours here are poorer, that you have chosen this village. Don’t go sanctimonious on us and call yourself the messiah of development. You could do it somewhere where its less destructive.”

“What less destructive, it’s a pond. When my factory gets built, the government will bring huge water supply to this area. They won’t need the pond.”

“And what, they’re supposed to die of thirst till the day the government graces us with their magical water supply pipes. Think of the children, they’re just like your children.”

“Uchh. And ‘Us’. You don’t live here. Look I haven’t heard a single word of prevention. I am assuming you don’t have any. If you stay out there any longer, I will call someone.”

“Someone? Who? Are You? You threatening me. Fuck you. Fuck your …”

I can’t really remember who he asked to be fucked next. The point is it didn’t go well. They had done some sting operation of our meeting. Which I thought was very funny because the sting made it to national TV except that the story was sold by the media as – ‘The nature guys threatening good and honest businessmen’. And you can bet that wasn’t a lucky coincidence.

The factory started and seven years later I built another one of those, only bigger, better and without any hippy distractions.

Huh, that was a good memory. Made me almost forgot that I was a middle of something, floating without any tether, inside a device painted in red by a psychopath, wrapped inside a plastic bubble and every so often a streak of light blinds me. And I can’t remember how I got here.

They were good couple of decades.

I was afraid when he first graduated from his college. I told him work somewhere out there. I deferred his arrival. I was always testing the waters with both of them and seeing if they had any other interests, pretending to be their confidant. There were many days I wished that both of them discover some ridiculous hidden artistic talent in themselves like acting or writing or photography or something. Something they would be delusional about so that they would forget about joining the business.

You can delay but you can’t wish away the inevitable, forever. So my first son started working in the factory. A month into his job, the boiler, mixer and dispensers just gave up and emergency repairs cost us a high seven figure sum. I ignored.

Funny little things kept happening – a few batches below par, a few workers taking early leaves, government officials not getting their dues. Controllable problems. And then one day when the orders were piled up a mile high on us, a worker died. The police, a few media people, locals, government officials kept coming and going for next week. The orders cancelled. Within four months from the day I put my first born as head of the factory that was founded by my grandfather, it shut down completely.

Then he went into the next factory. It didn’t shut down. I wouldn’t let him touch a square inch of anything till I saw it through first. So a few months down the line, a storm of debate erupted.

The days and nights, weeks and months, every hour and ticking second for the next two years went haggling over control. Who controls what. What ends up in who’s hands? The younger bastard was a half drunk with his brother’s dim wittedness but equal amount of greed irrigated his alcohol soaked mind.

My wife kept saying “But it all will be in the family. Why does it matter?” It matters you retarded bitch because he will blow up himself, everybody else and my life’s work within a second of his taking over and don’t even get me started on the younger lad.

‘Why don’t you just di..disappear’, I could just read their constant thoughts like a bubble in a cartoon strip.

I knew behind closed doors and hushed conversation, they were wishing death but life made a proposal nobody could refuse. I had what I call, ‘I can’t tell anybody to go fuck off’ disease; a gift they call, ‘We can do whatever we want’ and what the doctors call, A Paralysis Attack.

I saw a face I hadn’t seen in a long time, walk in one day and he held my left hand. It felt reassuring. The two of us together in what I felt sure was my deathbed. His sweaty palms were never much of hand holding type, they usually told me where to sign. The family lawyer pressed a wet pad on my hands and imprinted my thumb a few papers. When he let my hand go, he did a curious thing, he straightened the many shawls over me, straightened my pillow, wiped my hand with something, placed my hand on my chest and walked out of the room. He never looked me in the eyes. That was the most loving act anybody did for me in a long time.

That day my wife, all the leeches I had raised and their wives surrounded me. All the family together. It was one of those great loving family moment except that there was no love.

I am hearing scratching, rubbing noises. The kind you hear when those beggars are cleaning a car’s windshield at traffic light. For a moment, I thought I was hearing a familiar voice again. Then it went away. There were always little indescribable noises that accompanied the complete darkness in this place but this was different. It was vibrating all around

A small hole, a breach. The little streaks of light earlier didn’t seem to have any source but this hole was definite. And white light spread across. The hole was just a starting point. Someone was coming in and he was tearing the walls apart. The walls some maniac had painted red.

Maybe it was the maniac himself. If the streak of light blinded me, the opening in the wall had all but convinced me that whatever world that was trying to enter was made only of light. I closed my eyes. They were of no use anyway.

And I thought of my life, was it good life or was it a life ruined. Whatever it was, I lived it to the fullest, I thought. That thought struck me like a lightning bolt. It was an honest thought. The purest I have ever had. I had lived my life to the fullest of my ability.

Tears rolled out of my eyes. They were tears of neither joy nor sadness but of complete acceptance. Acceptance of my inability to control everything. So what’s the point of denying reality; if you can’t control it, open your arms and accept it.

Open. Open. I open my eyes. I am in a casket. A transparent plastic casket. I thought to myself, I am Hindu. When did we start to have caskets. I look around and there are other boxes lined up in the room. Even in my delirious state, I saw something I am sure was not a hallucination.

I start looking around again. I am lying flat inside a transparent box in a pristine white room lit by even more white lights. I am wrapped tightly in white cloth. I can look in all directions through this transparent box. The other boxes aren’t like mine. There’s seem more wooden and white. Its like a theme these guys have going. I swear to you on whatever’s left with me, there was a moment when I though this is what they call Swarg, Heaven. My religious credentials must have got mixed up and they put me in with the cross praying ones.

And then I looked at the one place I was avoiding. The wall in front of me has a glass window. Only this window was not looking outside to some scenic location. It looked out in a hallway full of people. Familiar People.

All of them. Making funny faces to me, teasing me. And I know I said it this time.

I think he’s making me do it again.