The Technicolor Man : Chapter 3

—Love is a tender emotion that gently holds the eyes and the skin above it, and turns it towards delight, that every emotion that succeeds comes as a mild surprise. Violence is not love, it is an obsession. So to speak that when spoken that one can die for love translates the foolishness of the mind: a certain sense of the fishy heroic: a mockery of the feeling itself. We seem to have forgotten to live for anything. At everything we start dying. Murder, arson and hell! Grow up!  

 

Thud. Geeta sprang from the well, she was washing the utensils. She sees him. Gentle lonely tears fill her eyes. Misty, hurting.

 

—Education hurts.

 

Ma. Please give me some food. I am hungry. Chintu does not want much attention. He has been bestowed an eternity of attention.

 

Slowly she gets up. All the love that a mother feels, all of it can not be peeled. The earth is whispering something to her feet. A remark of love. Be calm.

 

Yes. Come and sit here. Suppressing her desire to hold him in her arms. Pour me your love, and make small bites of them. Children of birds that fly in our tender mouths. Signs of love. Sug’ga—maina.

 

Chintu slowly came and sat by her mother. Lightly touching her sari. She pours her love on a plate. His pain is lessened.

 

—Hurting faces can not chew,

“So plee-ee-ee-ee-ease,

Love me do.”

 

He devours the food, gulps it all down.

 

—The Chinese believe that one should chew their food properly. It prolongs one’s life. Ancient beliefs. Is there any food for our thoughts? There are guns now. Steel chambers of cold freedom.

 

—The darkness behind eternal light,

Just one shot,

Then a smile,

And let’s pass on the wine.

 

Take some more my love. She whispers. She does not want to wake his pain. Let them sleep.

 

No ma, I am done for now. I want to sleep. He says with some difficulty. A cotton sponge forms in his throat.

 

—How many feelings must a child feel in a day? Even a man! Negligence, hatred, fear, hurt, and then eventually love—the cure. Does love cure anything? A crying heart? Maybe a weeping heart. I have seen love cure. It cures life, once it’s gone, because then there is no death, just the absence of life. Pure and simple swarming particles of darkness.

 

He picks himself up and walks toward the well. The trees are shocked. There is no breeze. Dancers halt in surprise. Shock.

 

—The noiseless well holds in its bosom

All the tears and fears it has welcome

Over the ages of raking silence.

 

Chintu understands the nature of things. In his innocence he is far wiser then we are with our morbid hypocrisies. He understands that there is a cry in the wind, in the wilderness, in his heart of hearts. There is a deep anchor that holds him to life—immovable be thy destiny, only pain and agony. Reasons why melancholic poetry is far more popular then poetry that is alive. We are living lumps of pain. He does not feel any form of hatred for his Master Ji, only a sense of dumb fear with no roots, no leaves. Just a trunk of fear hanging onto the nothingness of empty spaces.

 

—This is where I understand why childhood and old age are the most innocent years of mans life. My book of my revelations. It so happens that when we are children we don’t know anything and hence everything is pure in its form, devoid of acid. The mind is immaculate and does not care about trivial vanities like war and glory. We are yet to learn the meaning of vile and hatred, though Freud says that we do have the Oedipus complex even at this age, but that is a sexual tendency of the animal called mankind.

 

And given old age, we have already understood all that corrupts the world and being. We have all the knowledge on a whole and nothing seems worth it. It’s all all-right either this way or that. We have already realized that there is nothing that can make a productive difference. We weren’t born to be productive; by nature we are destructive animals (exceptions please be left alone). There is one cause and in turn one affect—life unto death. And this is that makes us children again, because we become ignorant of all that is considered our rights and freedom: all the excuses of power.

 

In his beaten tired attire of the soul he wishes to sleep off the pain. He wishes to be in his room again. It hurts. His wish shall be answered with due respect.

 

Baba, if you are tired you can go and take a short nap. Papa might get late. Her voice echoes from the kitchen. She can not bear the burden of his swollen sight. It is painful. Neither can I. So I am making him sleep that he might feel comfortable.

 

—That wonderful mother of a child,

That love she conceived from her womb

How possibly can people live through death?

Without love and affection, in a tomb?

 

Chintu takes slow gradual steps toward his room. Fear grabs him in the throat, what if he would not wake up on time? Some more swelling—he convinces himself. He does not care.

 

—The Greeks were children. Wise men.

 

The room is lit brightly by the sun, and there is an abundant amount of stuffiness and heat. Soon he would sweat. Wet his shirt. The neat broken shelf on the wall and the broken Matka by the side of the room speak loud about the organization of the house. About Geeta. She would not get a job in a multinational. Do you know why? Not because she is unorganized. That could never be a reason. Because she does not have enough money to lie. To fake. The gems that are made by history are fake. Look behind the glitterati. Simplicity is despised, we crave for complications. We complicate things in our consciousness to evade the sense of truth. Truth defies death and horrifies life.

 

The wind sweeps in through the window and flaps them: imitations of a fan. Mr. Wind must have witnessed a fan when he was visiting town. To no avail. Chintu puts a thin torn sheet on the floor and lies on it. The sheet covers a little of his head, but the rest of the piece is torn in such a way that it wouldn’t make any difference at all even if he would not have put it. No difference. Where are the curtains?

 

The sweet dusty smell of the walls enters his nose. Casually singing a lullaby. The lullaby of nature. He is amazed. There is a surprise.

 

—Look when nature keeps its finger on a head

Everything by miracle turns into a comfortable bed.

 

A sweet dark cloud comes in at the right time, large enough to cool off the weather, small enough to not harm the crops. It moistens the floor of the house, making the bed softer. Nature is such a powerful entity that we can never predict it. It does not need to be predicted. It moves with its heart. It listens to nothing but its heart. And we strange species have not yet learnt the ways of the heart; we were too busy mastering the cunning of the mind. The irony is we faltered there as well. Flying shamans of survival: water wiser then the soul: nature, nature, nature: swoon in its name: we can swim to other horizons: love in its bosom and winter in its eyes.

 

—Silver petals and seven unicorns

Gliding against the sky

To greet and uphold the promise of love

Sway gaily, fly bye.

 

Chintu swims toward a sweet painless void. Dense and dark. Geeta comes to the door to watch his sleep. Not daring to come inside. She would have to open the door, and that could raise her son and his pain. She can not even touch him right then, a slight touch on the forehead. Promise of eternal love. A kiss on the forehead. Promise of eternal protection. She goes back to the well, to look into that dark abyss and wait for the whisper.

 

—Old wise whisperer

Please do tell

What is the cure?

I am so unsure

How do I react?

Teach me some tact.

 

But this time nature does not whisper.

 

—You can’t force those of the free will, they rebel. The entities of the heart speak of their own accord, of their own wish. Nothing can be beaten out of them. In times of desperation they become spectacular listeners: mute but not ignorant. Not torture—patient. The answer shall arrive, when time shall arrive. Nature has witnessed enough misinterpretations of untimely whispers: all the derelicts and their pages filled of unearthly vengeance, unleashed upon the innocence of the poor, dying and the dead. I despise the religion that man created. Shallow, short chains of disillusional freedom. I despise all those who preach the higher being, slaves and worshipers of torture and boredom. Capturers and turners of the pure. They should be hanged so that this world shall redefine power, redefine existence, redefine itself. So that we become men again. Not martyrs sucking the divine cock to get an easy entry into the kingdoms of lies. There is no heaven and no hell, no swarg! What is so damn tough to understand this simple fact? Why did Buddha die? Why did all the real men die?

 

He turns to his left. Agony. There is a small red spot: somewhere. It is disturbing him, running from one place to another. Faster. Faster. It grows to become a red spot on a black surface. Something starts to protrude from the spot, something with a thin end. The red spot becomes a stick. Red rotten teeth all over it. Marks of bites. The stick has jaws that open up and run toward him. He runs for his life. There are walls on his sides. They narrow the road ahead. The distance is flooded. He hurts his left hand. Red glue flows from his side; hot as lava. He is burning. The jaws close in on him. He ducks and falls into a pit the size of a dream. He swims. His left hand is about to tear from his body. He can’t breathe. Scream! He tries but fails. There is no voice. He has lost his voice. His cheeks swell and cover his eyes, he can’t see anymore.

 

The mud wall. Looking at him. Eyes open: his.

 

Chintu had slept until dinner. His father was waiting outside with surprise in his eyes.

 

Chintu, I was thinking if you would come with me to town next month? He asks in his gentle voice, full of the unknown. Trying to ignore the swellings on his body that now appears from the room.  

 

Chintu looks into his eyes. No reply. Nothing. Just a smile floods his face. All the pain reassembles at the ends of the labyrinth—they have to wait until the next beating. They will have to hide from his elation. Elation kills pain.

 

—What a lovely end

That begins with a smile

Perishes all the pain

Nothing is more worthwhile.