Imaginary enemy

I have an imaginary enemy

Everything about her I envy

Her hair long and wavy

Her frame slim and curvy

Her pretty dress and jewels dainty

Her choices are under constant scrutiny

Her achievements induce jealousy

Her having an opinion makes me angry

Length of her skirt raises cries for modesty

Her rejection incites fury

She’s always clamouring for equality

For equal opportunities and to be paid equally

To not imprison her in an outdated reality

To not transgress on her bodily autonomy

To not suppress her sexuality

I preach sermons telling her to be a proper lady

But what right do I have to assume moral superiority?

Who am I to pass judgement on her purity?

Why do I have to restrict her to overcome my insecurity?

Why can’t we both be free and live in harmony?

I have an imaginary enemy

She’s winning over me slowly

Helping me overcome my toxic masculinity

Fighting my demons and still loving me unreservedly

She’s given me a glimpse of divinity.

Oblation

I couldn’t bring myself to close my eyes. I kept hearing something trickling down on the floor. Drop…. Drop… Drop… I looked around the room. There couldn’t be a leak on the roof. It hadn’t rained for months. Maybe the drinking water jar was leaking. I searched all around it for cracks. There were none. I lay back down on my bed.

Drop…. Drop… Drop… I listened. Drop…. Drop… Drop…  My breaths slowed down. I tried to focus as I listened. But I was growing tired with each drop. Each drop made my eyes feel heavier. Slowly my mind blocked out the real world and I slipped into a dream.

*****

I don’t remember if I was awake the whole time, but when I became aware of the surroundings I saw that I was naked except for a white loincloth and a woman whom I’d never seen before was applying some scented oil on my body. I tried to ask her where I was but the sounds that came out of my mouth made no sense. I was conscious but I had no control over my body. All I could do was look at her and hope that she could read my mind. She sensed the paranoia starting in me. She went away for a minute and returned with a cup. ‘Drink’. She brought it to my mouth and slowly emptied the dark liquid into me. It filled my insides with burning fire. It consumed my body. All duality faded away. The body perished freeing the mind. I saw myself lying on the floor. I saw it separate from myself… as I saw everything else. I saw the woman inking the body… marking various symbols… on the chest, on the shoulders, on the face. When she finished she bowed her head and left. Two masked men came in. They lifted the body upright, each man on either side, and they carried it outside. I followed. The door opened and a hundred masked men and women came into view. They parted to allow the two men to carry it forward. I thought I saw some of my friends in the crowd. All I could recognize were their eyes. Even in their eyes there was something unfamiliar… I couldn’t figure it out. The men carried it up some rocks and laid it down on a huge square slab. I heard the beats of a drum… in a slow and measured rhythm. A hooded figure approached… the only person not wearing a mask. But I couldn’t see his whole face. He stood over it chanting hymns looking up at the sky. The tempo of the drum beats increased. The chants became louder… almost breaching the barrier… turning into screams. He removed the hood and looked down. I saw his eyes and in them I saw… I saw reverence. All in the crowd looked at it with a reverence reserved only for the Gods. The man took out a silver dagger and the crowd marveled at its beauty. He kneeled and held the dagger above its heart. The drum beats reached a crescendo and the man plunged the dagger in.

Blood poured out and flowed over the edge of the slab and trickled down. Drop…. Drop… Drop… it painted the earth red. As the blood left the body the crowd faded away. Drop…. Drop… Drop… the corpse disappeared… the red earth receded from view… a blackness engulfed everything... the sound of the dripping blood also died down… and finally… stillness… in the realm of a timeless existence.

Home

I noticed a peculiar thing at my workstation yesterday. My keyboard has 105 keys. I’ve never used some of them… because I don’t know what they’re for. A sudden sense of déjà vu overwhelmed me. It seemed as though, in the blink of an eye I had teleported to some other place. I was sitting on a cream coloured Nilkamal chair whose smooth surface had been scratched into a hideous texture. There was a 26” Onida CRT television in front of me on whose screen was a short, pudgy, mustachioed Italian plumber trying to save Princess Peach. I was trying to figure out the brand new joystick in my hand. Okay. I got this. This button makes Mario jump. This one to make him move… and all this while my whiny little baby brother cradled in amma’s arms, screaming in his high pitched baby voice, ‘Lemme play… lemme play’. Realization hit me like a ton of bricks. This was the place I’d learned to call home… some fifteen years ago.

After five minutes or so I had to yield when amma spoke in the I-will-tell-Dad-if-you-don’t-move voice. Oh… how I hated my brother for all the baby-privileges he got. And so he played and played and played till he felt drowsy and I sulked in one corner cursing God, ‘I didn’t know it was going to be this way! Take him back!’, because they had told me it was God who gave him to amma. I just assumed God could as easily take him back. Later at night amma would call me aside in the kitchen and give me a few extra pieces of mussel fry and say, ‘Only for you. Don’t tell anyone.’, and just like that I would forget that I was sulking.

Slowly, my brother started growing up and I started hating him less… because his baby-privileges were downgraded to he-is-the-younger-one privileges. Subsequently he started hating me… because at some point his privileges were withdrawn and I started getting certain privileges. When my brother sulked, the only explanation he got was ‘because your brother is elder than you’. That is when I started to like growing up. I wanted to be an adult now. I wanted the adult-privileges. I wanted to stay out till late evening. I wanted to take a bath when I wanted to and not when amma told me to. I wanted to learn to ride my father’s Bajaj Chetak. I wanted the channel not to be changed every time two sets of lips came close to each other on TV. I wanted to know what happened during those times in the movie Titanic when amma had changed the channel. I wanted to grow up as fast as possible.

Now I know all of it was a trap. Growing up is a trap. They told me about the privileges. They didn’t mention the responsibilities. They didn’t tell me how much of a burden it is to live with the knowledge that you are responsible for certain things. They didn’t tell me that all I really needed to know about Titanic was that all of them had died in the end.

I read something yesterday, which affected me greatly. “Resign yourself to the lifelong sadness that comes from never being satisfied.” All I want now is to go back to that Bajaj Chetak, that Nilkamal chair, that Onida TV, that Super Mario game and my whiny little brother. I want to go home.