The Anti-Social

It was a cool, dark night. Mellow buffets of wind pleasingly tingled skin deep. I was alone walking alongside the road. A car came by, and then a face flitted across the window. There she was, a pretty lovely face casting an ingenuous look at me. My steps stopped, the faces stared each other until it vanished away…
- XX Oct, 19XX

The advent of youth confers multifarious frills upon innocence… and that too in proselytizing compulsions most of us give in to. But not all keep their eyes closed through these states of flux. And what results is a scathing, undeniable parody of the blindfolded hopscotch of society- the anti-social.
But he wasn't one. For a person who had withdrawn himself from the society, and had his matured wisdom thrive solely on vicarious feelings and dreamy jaunts, it wasn't difficult to apprehend the hollowness of emotions and the futility of blandishments the masses sought for a peg of so called 'emotions'.

The day was too idle- two hours of nothingness. The last bench was huddled at seeing some nude pics (…) was precariously showing. Yet, it was a fun sitting in last but one row and watching which guy or gal peeked hideously at which gal or guy…
- XX Nov, 19XX

He just never fell a victim to the tedium of idleness, neither to any flirtatious accounts. He rarely spoke, but observed intensely.

Saw two things worth a note today: KMkt is a posh place, litters are cleared daily, yet the jalopy at the roadside has remained untouched, and lies all fusty, layered with grime and cobwebs. Second, an elderly couple came asking me for Asnr. Damn it, it's a place of congested whorehouses and concubines. SA usually rants out his bonking tales whenever he goes there in the class. What's that place got to do with that pathetic couple?....
- XX May, 200X

Things broke out in the ensuing summer. Silence seemed to have stunned his speech. He further withdrew himself in his own. Something seemed wrong with him. Any interaction with the society seemed to intrude his occult, parochial ramblings. He came bogged down with heavy depression. He was shown to a quack. Explanation was easy- full time at home, too shy blah blah blah.
Forced to the outdoors, no change till a week. Then hope dawned again. He didn't speak up, but gone were the depressing bouts. Regained his ecstatic form again, though latched up with taciturnity. Two months gone…and back came those bouts, this time with a more aggravated puissance. Flunked in the papers the first time, referred to the quack again. The git had no explanations this time.
Prevarications and quack remedies followed, but to no avail. The degrading behavior forced him to be shown to some better place. Then came the outcome: Bipolar Disorder. Mighty fancy, he was currently dunked low in a depression. A few weeks passed. Back came the maniac tendencies, which remained cloaked by his segregated individuality. His disorder attracted some of the highfalutin blokes. 'Hey, u know I have a friend who is a bipolar maniac. He does this n that, is like a …' and all flaunting shit. He seemingly hated it. But he remained high on life.

Are these people sane? They all seem fucktards to me. Bickering on topics forced by society, summed up by social niceties, they keep their individuality immured in this stuff. There's nothing called emotions- just a crap. You were born alone and will die alone…
- XX Jan, 200X.

Then turned the coin. People began predicting him. Indecisions, depressions, low creativity…but nobody had a befitting reply to his statements. He changed, as was expected. Fluctuating serotonin levels, recurring catatonia and mania- his eyes saw the world through these changing shades. But his acts began confuting the predictions. What people got to see were more brilliant, though greyer shades of observation-

They say life's in going after your passions. But life has become just creating fake passions in flashy things. Being happy is never being considered being successful. A profusion of desires resides in me, and I live by them. But up to when will this continue? …
- XX Mar, 200X.

Then came what is said a permanent solution to a temporary problem. The world said he gave in to intense depression during his catatonic phase. He used to say the world has given in to a fake life.

[From one of those highfalutin blokes]

Lucid Haziness

Just thought of cherishing a few waning moments of teenage, but they just dwindled away out of existence. Wow…m twenty now. I am out alone on the road, shimmering lights below in the reflections and star spangled sky above…I try to ramble off to singalongs with me and…just me. I was expecting a few calls, but get none. Doesn’t matter even a l’ll bit, literally.

Past few days have passed mulling over if I would ever get to ride a gravy train, atleast in those tripped jaunts. Talents just whoop it up, but the sight of those parvenus hitched up by quirky windfalls and nasty strokes of luck simply invokes a fire in me. They aren’t even a mite of wht they are cracked to be, and still they notch the top whack of the jackpot.

Great…let them go…I don’t grumble. Past weeks have whizzed off in a high. Life’s screwed hard but everything seems fine like a panoramic view from the eyes of a candy-tripped geezer. I just want to retain the zing inside me, the current state m breathing in. But this time I want an ineluctable output. These teen years passed being a victim of impostures, and life having made a piss out of me. Perceptions became so bitterly smitten with paranoia that even a few good things seemingly looked like prescient insinuations of cliché ridden sinister events.

It’s not a rant-and-rave thing. Its time I want my results belie and debunk the specious notions of ‘lucky man’ kinda craps. I am regaining my passions, and m in a complete mood to nail those things (and some people too). It’s been two hours of my juvenile fruition of a score years. It’s not whoop-it-up or raver kinda thing. The vibes are just cosy. Its again one of those rare times I feel like rendering the moment a perpetuity.

Well, it had been quite a while I had written anything, so this was just a nice chance to pump up my penchant for writing again. And I want to withdraw myself to those mystic musings again…

The face is just a veneer but there’s fire in my palm…my mind is tumbling, those chinks are appearing again, dappled darkness, vortexing pathways, the senses have lost themselves, again those unknown figures lingering, those voices…aah…m again savoring the delectations of a maniac phase…

An unsung Hero

J was invited for the first time by his chum (A) for a hippie party at a roadhouse. Such binges for him were common, but it was going to be a first timer for John.

It was a tavern somewhere in between two large hubs of India, located on a highway. Recently, A had opened his young wings to the euphoric ecstasy of nose candy, and more recently he had just given in to crack. Its effects had quickly strewn all over his gestures. J eschewed such highs, but still was a nice chap of A.

It was 10 in the night. After a jaunty ride of 10 km, they finally reached the roadhouse. Its very sight was very rousing. Every room had a stippled frieze, marbled floor and a glittering facade. A picked up stairs, and made a beeline for the hall. It was dark, with jerky flashes of light making the facing wall dappled with colors. People were shimmying to jive and some kind of jazz. A went in, but it couldn't appeal J, so he came out and sat out in the lawn. And thus began his series of keen observations.

10:15 pm. J had just tossed off a drink. A bloke sitting aside him got up and sat in the front. J saw him. He was donning some really unwanted garbs, had a dour look but really keen eyes. His left arm mostly remained in the pocket, particularly whenever he talked to anyone. His quirky mannerisms incited J to observe more. But bounded by the social niceties, he satiated his desire by covert glances over him.

A few minutes passed. That bloke there was by now aware of J's glances. He took out earplugs, closed his eyes and dipped himself in some good music. A few seconds later, he got up quickly and went to the gate. He took out his cell, was about to call, but the sight of J made him fishy. Two flighty guys passed by him in a casual way. Again, left hand in, and then out.

Something began perplexing J. But he remained calm. Then A came out with a bunch of his friends and began freaking out near the entrance. One of A's cronies began making a call. In the meanwhile J approached A. Whoa! A wasn't on a dope this time, J queried (parties are enjoyed to the hilt when you were on a dope, A had once told him). A skirted off with a lame answer. J looked for the queer-looking man. He wasn't there. The one making call hurled, "What the hell! No connectivity." This made most of them quite worried.

J took out his cell. Yeah, no connectivity. He left the crowd. Some questions were really perplexing him. Why did A prefer to be sober this time? Why was his group so worried regarding the call? He scuttled off away from them. He was just going straight, maybe looking for that man. He would have covered about 60-80 meters when something left him nonplussed. His cell had started blinking. The connection was there. He trotted back to where A was standing. They were apparently in panic with the same problem. J turned around. He was looking for something. Then he saw a lone man with a vacuous look, having a drink with a suitcase by his side.

He smirked. He had inferred the implications, but was too diffident to tell the hoi polloi. But all this had bolstered his inferences. Something had clicked him. He ran upstairs, and saw the hall. Yes, he had expected it- a jardinière with some dense shrub, and a guard standing beside it.

He recalled how A used to delineate his states of high after his fling with nose candy, and how he had turned a bit cagey in matters related to this in recent days. A quick flash ran through his body, he ran downstairs, went to A, and hurtled him away from the crowd.

"Now tell the truth man. You are here to hustle dope. Right?", J asked A. Before the dumbfounded A could reply, J caught him by hand, "You crass, you have been trapped." A was wrong, but after all, he was he was friend of J. "Run for your life", and both of them darted on, leaving behind A's swarm of friends. The man with a suitcase sprang up. "Stop.", he shouted. But none had the guts. In a frenzy, the two were shot down. A whole army in a livery of black emerged out of no where and the friends were caught.

A, J and others were framed for drug hustling and doping. And not a single evidence was there to exonerate J. The insatiable drive for cocaine had ruined A and the exceptional wits and mental acuity of J cost him his life.

[Cocaine, popularly known as coke, nose candy and crack is highly addictive, and can drive the addicts to any limit. Also, whatever J noticed was a well concocted plan to bust the trade. The bloke was supposed to be a trigger. In the suitcase was a jammer, and in the flower vase was stashed, possibly, a spy-cam. The guard was there to see if anybody didn't hit upon it. The friend of A was trying to contact the dealers to tell them the point to meet. A was sober to carry out everything smoothly. But A was clean and away from all this. He had observed all this and inferred all these facts on his own. But the vibes finally colluded against him. He had stifled their plans, but in the race, had lost his own entity…of one with a great mind]

The Backslide

She might have been a blonde, and she must have been beautiful. She and her consort had chosen this place to celebrate their heydays of youth, when the climactic point of all dreams you cherish since the teenage becomes tangible. They had been lured by the glittering neon lights and dappled plush plexes. But they were not conversant with the dark by-lanes whence the murky eyes of the place stared. They were just supposed to tread the lightened paths, but they were scuffed into the dark alleys...

Place: Bangalore, sometime in the mid 90s.

It was the usual vernal brimming of the tourists, the time when Bangalore was a balanced mélange of sumptuous streets and verdant environs. The footfalls from abroad were on a rise, it was a high time for swindlers, and those eyes furtively glanced the backdrop.

Afternoon time, the glare of noon was closing in on cerise mildness. Traffic was buzzing on the MG Road. On a lane at a point, people had thronged around something. Shoveling and jostling the crowd, it was hard to manage to reach the front, and it was hard to make out anything from the hubbub.

There was that lady- withered eyes, wizened face, and in terrible fluster. Her hair was ruffled, clothes ragged, unaware of her presence, petrified by the milieu, and lost.

The throng was dispersing gradually. It was the man in uniform, hurtling the crowd away. There she was- she turned back, she grunted difficultly, her throat was visibly dry, her eyes deeply searching someone, she tried to stay in her senses, but then, she stumbled on her knees. She removed her eyes from the horrid sight, looked upward, and then came a shriek- one that lost itself in the cacophony of the city, but it resounded somewhere, with a mark. Her eyes, so keen to figure out someone out of the dull shades, had run dry.

The man took her away. Then arrived the grapevine.

The prowling eyes had finally pounced on the prey. Her husband had been abducted. He was heaved in quickly while she managed to haul herself out of the van. And there she was left, bereft, vulnerably exposed to the dirty streets of a beautiful city.

It was as if she had suddenly unraveled the true lineaments of the city, and removed the veneer of leniency. People chose this place to pass, and make some memorable moments here, with an idyllic scenery in their eyes, when they would be on the moon, all their plans and aspirations put in; and the depraved, debased cognomen of the miasmal society would pick out one, fiddle with his fate and show them the stark reality of the dystopia which reigned here.

A Week Later:

She was caught in an impasse. All she could do was wait and watch. But the play was soon over, and with a drastic end. On the outskirts, his body was found. He was strangled, and filched. They had left no scope for ransom.

A month later:

They were caught. But she was gone. The whole city had known her story, but none had listened to her jeremiads. It wasn't sure if she had come to know of this. She had now lost the local media limelight, so the matter was becoming impervious. But still, somehow it was heard that she had dabbled into the matter and left.

It's been more than 10 years now. But the images are still vivid. Not the exactitude of her lineaments, but her gestures. Her face has been hazed by the timeline, but not her frantic gesticulations, and her shriek.

Her demure mien is still expressive. And remains unparalled.
The city still beckons. And remains unfazed.