The wind whispered my name today as I was walking with my lonely melancholy. The air was crisp, filled with the fragrance of some far away song. The trees were like old men stooped over their chairs to keep track of life walking on by. My eyes strayed up to the sky where clouds collapsed into words of polite wonder. The path led on without a bend or a rent. My senses were filled with the desire for life. I took off my spectacles to look at the world around me through a blurred inspiration.

Sometimes one sees the door but not the distance up to it. The silent signals of another world wheeling away on the outskirts of a solitary society.

There were many holes. Too many that needed to be plugged to staunch the flow. In some ways it was a lost cause as new leaks sprang up as soon as an old one was fixed. Where did those holes come from? Why did they cause so much torment?

I touched her cheek to seek reassurance from the warm blood flowing beneath. She was beside me, wrapped in dry dreams. The distance between our minds separated our hands. But the words that existed in our hearts somehow slipped out from between us into the cold around like marbles from a child’s hand and formed footsteps in the endless snow.

Life as a doctoral student sucks. It doesn’t suck in the ordinary nobody loves me suckiness (does that word even exist?) level. No, it takes sucking (pardon my vulgar language) to a different level, a level where you are the lowest form of life in the world. I mean even bacteria have more fun. They are practically immortal. They have sex almost every 20 minutes. They can live on almost anything. And they have the coolest of names. Chlamydia. Nocardia. Vibrio. Contrast that with an average doctoral student. He is a mouse (although even a mouse would be offended to be compared to such a lowly being) like creature, most often with spectacles and irritating habits like trailing off in the middle of a sentence into vague silences. Their only sex appeal lies in their detailed knowledge about how two proteins fold exactly around each other. You get the picture.

What do such specimens of the human species do when a beautiful woman goes up to them and talks? To digress a little, such events do not happen in the real world. The probability of such an event happening, according to knowledgeable sources in the Mathematics department across the road, is 0.00. In fact, apparently, this is the only known event in the world that has such a perfect probability of not happening! So let me add the rider, in a hypothetical world, to the above scenario.

Continuing with the hypothetical situation, the said graduate student will first start perspiring. His pulse will be racing because hormones are being dumped into his blood, leading to rapid changes in his metabolic profile. He starts blushing. When he opens his mouth, either no sound comes out or else mumbled and garbled words pour out, which of course do not make any sense. If that beautiful woman still has any sense she would leave. However, if she is one of those rare beings, who for some insane reason either enjoy tormenting such innocent geeks, feel pity for such lowly life forms or genuinely like disheveled and bespectacled nerds, she will stay and talk further.

We met at one of those dark places. The silence between us had stretched. She was inhaling the new liquid. I was on the one with three letters. Twice our lips touched across the divide. A bridge of tongues. A stream of saliva. The mixture of lips.

“Do you believe in coincidence?”

“Do you believe in chance?”

The music swirled and swooned. Through our levitating bodies. Our fingers touched forbidden places. A moist sensation. A fluid emotion. Sudden laughter behind our eyes. Tears carved new pathways on her cheeks. I leaned forward and licked them off.

“How weird is that?”

“Yes, a midget and a transvestite having sex on the dance floor.”

“I saw you yesterday, in my last dream before I woke up.”

People swayed around us, drunk on this and that. There was something in the air. A flash? A streak? A swoosh? I inhaled her smell. Pheromones called out in a primitive language. Glasses tinkled beside us. Multi-colored liquids sloshed in perfectly shaped receptacles.

“I see you in my eyes.”

“Perhaps we should dance in our minds?”

The light faded. Conversation muted suddenly like a TV heard across a hotel wall. Where were we? Did you recognize us? Inside all was bright and innocent light. Outside was a kaleidoscope of sensation.

“I want to kiss your eyelids.”

“I’m telling you it was her man!”

“Boy, you must have been dreaming. How can it be her? She is thousands of miles away.”

“No, dude, I’m pretty sure it was her. I even followed her a little just to make sure. She is here. I’m willing to bet on that.”

We were on our way to a party neither of us wanted to go to when he dropped this bombshell. The thought that she was right here, in this city, made my heart race without my realizing it. It had been what, five years I think. We had said our goodbyes under difficult circumstances. I had never expected to hear from or about her again. But the world is small and in this era of connectedness any person from the past can pop up anywhere.

“So are you going to meet her?”

That question had been hanging in the air between us ever since he had said that she was here.

“I don’t know. Too much baggage still to be cleared on that front. So where did you see her?”

“At that hotel you guys used to frequent, you know.”

Yes, I knew the place. It was our adda so to speak. We were there practically everyday, so much so that the people working there knew us by our first names. In fact, we could get a room at a moments notice, a convenience which we often availed of frequently.

The street lights flashed by outside. The traffic lights blinked like owls. Traffic was sparse in this part of the town. It was a beautiful night. The wind flowing in through the window was cool on the skin. It was like drinking a glass of fresh water from a matka on a hot summer day.

The silence between us had stretched into a comfortable vacuum. Any thought was possible.

“Do you think she will look you up, you know, for old times sake?”

When lines converge life looks different. Ideas of fate take on an entirely different meaning. Yeah, that was indeed a million dollar question.

“I doubt it. If I know her she won’t. She is much stronger than me in that way.”

“What will you do if she called?”

“I’ll say hello.”

“Very funny. Seriously man, what will you do if she called up and said she wanted to meet you?”

I know three ways to kill a mouse. Squeamish already? Then stop reading right now, the going will get even worse. Reading on? Then don’t bitch later that I didn’t warn you! So let me start again. I know three ways to kill a mouse.

1. Hold the mouse down by pressing the first three fingers of your left hand on its neck and with your right hand pull on its tail until you hear the crunchy sound of a bone snapping. This is called cervical dislocation.

2. Take dry ice in a tall jar. Put a cloth on top of the dry ice. Then drop the mice, one after the other, into the beaker and cover it with a lid. If you are of the perverse kind you can take immense pleasure in watching them twist and jump, suffocating inside the death jar. I’ve seen some mice jump 10 times their height. Teach them pole vault and Sergei Bubka will develop an inferiority complex. Dry ice is frozen carbon-dioxide, all of minus twenty degrees cold. The mice die for lack of oxygen. The CO2 fills up their brain and starves it of oxygen. The cloth is to collect the involuntary discharge of pee and poo.

3. Inject Avertin, twice the body weight of the mouse. It goes into a coma. Now comes the moment of truth. Open it up and have a bloody ball. Cut out its liver, dissect the muscle and take out fat. You can have the brain for free, only, you will have to cut the head off and open the skull up. Avertin is a muscle relaxant sending the mouse on a ride to rodent heaven or hell. I don’t know.

She came into the room I was in sometime after midnight. I was still awake, tossing around under the weight of all the shared memories that had reared their head. Hard to think that what had happened was a decade before. The remnants of that passionate affair still echoed in my heart from time to time. But here they were unstoppable. The gentle heat of the night was also not making things easy. My body was consumed by desire and that was the main reason behind the lack of sleep. How can one sleep when every cell of your body is craving for that which cannot be had in the present circumstances? But her entry changed the equation a bit. Her roommate was in the other room, only a thin wall separating us. She stood at the foot of the bed. The soft moonlight gave shape to her beautiful outlines. It was obvious she was not wearing anything under her thin nightdress. Even in the dim light I could see that her nipples were rigid. My tongue craved to taste them in my mouth and hear her sigh from the depths of her soul. I was sure that her eyes would be half-closed, intimating that she too was in the grip of our shared past.

Without a word she slipped beneath the sheets beside me. Her flesh was warm to the touch. She snuggled up to me, her body turning me on like one turns on a light bulb in a dark room, a sudden rush of extreme passion. It was one of those rigid, painful yet sensuous erections. Chucking the burden of the past into lust’s dustbin, I embraced her fiercely; my hands tried to envelop every little inch of her. We moved to the edge of the bed, interlocked thus.

Slowly, we slid down the bed and onto the floor, still wrapped around each other. Our mouths dissolved into each other as my tongue undid the soft tension in hers. The languid kiss one dreams of was a reality lived only by our lips. A gentle exploration of each other while tasting the love written on our tongues. My nose touched hers, a pleasant friction of two disparate senses. The long kiss continued, uniting sense and skin in a low wave of rising erotica.

I loved the silky smell of her mouth. I committed to memory the mellow taste of her tongue. I savored the feel of her lips interlocked with mine. I anticipated the sensual delights hiding behind her naughty smile that I could only taste. Her hand traveled down my body in one graceful arc sending shivers along my shy nakedness as her fingers awakened sleeping rivers of desire along their wake.

After a billion years our mouths separated, the aftertaste of her tongue still echoing in my mouth.

I want to write. I want to write until the stars stop exhaling light. I want to write so as to embrace myself with the cuddly comfort of words well formed. I want to write like a Homer or a Valmiki, a vessel for words flowing out from my deepest wellsprings. I want to write until dust begins to settle on the tips of my toes. I want to write until the emotion wringing my heart is sated and put to sleep. I want to write till the tears behind my eyes translate into beautiful words. I want to write till I can feel no more. I want to write until all that is there ceases to exist and all that is to come is taking birth between my words. I want to write like God breathing life into mud and fire.

I want to write about languorous love, about lingering dew, about an orange dawn and a melancholic dusk, about wise whispers of the old, about sweet nothings of new lovers, about wintry mornings and rainy afternoons, about fresh air flowing through my lungs, about glorious feelings and wistful youth, about adolescent heartbreaks and everlasting love. I want to write about all the feelings that travel, tremble and tumble inside and around us.

I want to write about the many loves I found, about the sadness I learnt, about the warmth I gained and the memories I cherish. I want to write about you, me and everyone. I want to write about a bright tomorrow, a rosy yesterday and an unnoticed today. I want to write about moments we do not remember, like flowers smiling outside the window, like sunshine warming our hardened skin, like words we hear but do not listen to.

Oh, I want to write until I’m drowning in the thousand different voices of my words. I want to write until my fingers ache with a sweet pain. I want to write until the song in my heart fades into a distant echo.

I want to write until verbs weep, adjectives inspire and nouns conspire with the help of mischievous adverbs. I want to soar on the wings of ecstatic adjectives, joyous verbs keeping me company while I taste the lilting sound of nouns rolling around my smiling mouth. Words, words, words, I want to swim in their glittering midst, forgetting the mundane life outside their limpid depths.

I want to learn with my words, as they arrange themselves in perfect order, conjuring meaning out of chaos. I want to grow old in their nostalgic company, leaning on them for support in a lonely and loveless life. I want to be laid to rest with a wreath made of my words and a couplet carved in stone as my headrest. And if there is an afterlife or a heaven, I wish I’ll still have my words to sing me eternal songs of all that is wise and wonderful, of all that is a pure and divine joy.

Thrust into this dark well of despair I begin to imagine your beautiful body in my hands. The way your hair cascades down your neck and always smells fresh, a faint perfume lingering in its depths. Your forehead hiding heavy thoughts behind its broad expanse as I give it a fond kiss. Your ears with their rubbery taste, teased by my tongue, making you squirm with erotic delight. Your eyes, mirrors of desire, and gazing at me with that naked look of love that sends a thrill of joy down my spine. I kiss your eye-lids, leaving gentle imprints of my love on the windows to your soul. I rub my nose against yours, uniting our breath for an instant that lasts an eternity. I shift a little and gently trace my tongue over your lips, waiting for the faint quiver. They glisten with raw want. I kiss your mouth, hungrily, my tongue shooting in and searching for yours. There…I found it. And our tongues begin their sensual dance around and over each other, rubbing, rolling, caressing, and squeezing every ounce of emotion. You take my lower lip into your mouth and suck on it, trying to drink in my desire and I reciprocate by taking your lip and tasting the love waiting to explode behind it.

I kiss you again and again, full on your mouth, hungry for you and your body. My hands move all over your soft body wanting to greedily touch everything at once. You pull my head back and latch on to my mouth, thrusting your tongue in, wanting to pour what you feel into me. Like meteors shooting across the sky we burn with fire and desire.

My lips travel down your neck, breathing in deeply your basic smell, kissing it lightly, blowing my warm breath along its sinuous curve. I find your breasts, my fountains of desire. They glow with an inner light, the light of passion wanting to be touched and felt. My mouth envelops them one after the other. My tongue hungrily sucks on your nipples and feels them going taut. You squirm and moan, your eyes watching my mouth work magic with your body. I go on, wanting more and more, rolling your erect nipples over my tongue, kneading your other breast with my free hand. I travel down your body, tracing my tongue along the long highway between your breasts and your darkest depths, I linger along your belly-button, exploring its shallows, and I examine with the edge of my tongue the contours of your stomach and the twisting curves of your pelvis. Your sighs increase in momentum as I near my destination. The pressure of your fingers on my hair increases by that small amount. And I reach home.

The well spring of your desire and the playground of my dreams. I run my tongue along the outlines, gauging the wet heat emanating from your center. I prolong it, to tease you. I linger and linger along the outer edges while you stare down at me with a fierce hunger in your eyes, wanting to urge me on but failing to find the words for it. I take pleasure in watching your frustration grow and just when you are about to shout I thrust my tongue in. Instantly, I’m enveloped in your basic smells, in the searing heat, and the raw raw taste of you. I lick and suck to all my hearts content. I search for the spots which will melt you like butter and concentrate on them, the thick mound of flesh just on the outer edge, and the upper part on the inside edge. Your voice is high-pitched now, your eyes are closed and your hands are holding on tight to my head as if you are afraid that you will take off into the air. A hot flush runs through your body and normal senses desert you. You are on the threshold of another world, a world where lust and desire are your masters.

Suddenly, I stop. You are slow to notice it, your eyes open up reluctantly and look at me, confused. I smirk with the happiness of the one in control and return a look of disarming innocence. You realize that I’m up to my old games again. Without further ado you plead with your eyes and pull on my hair with mounting frustration. I would like to extend this little game but today I’ll indulge you. So I go back to what I was doing. I kiss your mound and suck on that little overhang. It is time now to go into the highest gear. Faster and faster I thrust my tongue, in and out. In and out. Your legs are thrashing around me. I hold them with my hands but my tongue does not stop. I go deeper if it was possible to go any deeper. You flail your hands and try to pull me off. But I cannot be stopped now. I go mad with my own desire and try to plumb your depths with my shooting softness.

In that instant you explode. Like an underwater volcano your raging depths release their contents and drench my mouth with nature’s purest juices. You shudder and thrash. You shake and pant. Your moans reach a crescendo which no soprano can ever match. You are in that world now where words do not exist. You experience the purest pleasure possible, untrammeled by any physical boundary. You are one with the elements.

I watch all of this silently, taking pleasure in having given you such sublime joy. You return to your senses, slowly. We disengage gently and stare at each other. We share the unparalleled bliss of fulfilled desire, reveling in the warm glow of our bodies entwined like thread in cloth.

Yesterday, or to be accurate in the wee hours of this morning, for the first time in his life he experienced gaps in his memory. Huge chunks just went missing. No idea what he had done or how he had got to a particular place. It all started at a lab mate’s house warming party with mixing beer and vodka. About two measures of vodka gulped straight. The process was to first put this horrible orange powder in your mouth and then take a swig of the vodka, allow it to mix with the powder and then swallow it. After about an hour of this insane gulping he started reeling from the effects of so much alcohol in his system.

What followed then was purely surreal. Surreal as he looked back now. Not then. For then he was in a zone. For in the next instant he found himself on the stairs going down. He couldn’t remember when he took the conscious decision to leave the party. He did not even say bye to anyone. Later, he remembered that he had even left behind his jacket and umbrella. Much later he was told that he had puked all over the stairs.

The next thing he remembers is walking on a road. He knows not how he got there. He knows not what road it was. All he remembers is walking, walking in the general direction of his home wherever that was. He remembers crossing the road once. He knows not for what reason. He remembers puking a little into the bushes once or twice along the way. He remembers thinking about flagging down a taxi even though he had no money in his wallet. But for some unknown reason he did not follow up that thought. All he did was walk. He does not know for how long he walked. He did not even know the time even though he had a watch. Then suddenly he was in a road tunnel. Cars were zooming past him doing 80 kmph or so. He can’t recall how he got into that tunnel. Perhaps he did not know where he was walking, although it was in the general direction of his home. He was on a narrow pavement-sort-of-thing to the side of the road. After a few minutes the tunnel ended. He saw that he was walking on a thin strip of clear pavement not encroached by the road side shrubs. And the cars were still whizzing past. Not many but at regular intervals.

Suddenly, a car pulled up by his side. It was a police car. Was he doing something wrong? Walking on highways is illegal there. But until one of the police officers told him it had not even registered in his zonked brain that he was on a highway. They asked what he was doing there at such a wee hour. He told them that he had kinda lost his way. One of them asked him if he was drunk. He said no. They asked him to get into the car. They asked for his passport. He did not have it. It was at home. So he gave them his student id card instead. Was he scared? Not really. He was in a place where emotions did not register at all. After driving for what seemed like a short while they stopped the car and asked him to get out. One of them wanted to administer a breathalyzer test. He actually took out the instrument and was in the process of opening what looked like the plug you keep in your mouth and blow into. He then remembers feeling some vague sort of trepidation. What if the test results were off the charts? What would they do then? He remembers one of the officer’s laughing at him too as he went about this process. That police officer kept repeating that he wanted him to “blow for freedom�?. But again he did not feel anything. Feelings were still far away. Perhaps still at the party place he had left. They would need some time to catch up. Fortunately, the officer driving was not interested in the test. They asked him to go home and left. He looked around. He recognized the place where he was. He was about one or two kms from home. He did not notice how they had got him there. The route they had taken had not registered at all. And there was light. It was dawn. He looked at his watch for the first time in hours. It was 5 am. He had been walking for at least three hours. To his side above perhaps the first tram of the day passed on the fly-over. As if echoing the slowly brightening day the mists covering his brain also started lifting. He started walking and reached home in about 20 mins.

He crashed on the bed and slept for about 7 hours. He awoke to the slow tempo of a jackhammer performing a solo in his head. The symphony had not started yet. This was only the entrée. He discovered that he had slept half-naked. Another first in a longtime. The rest of the day was pure agony. The agony of a woozy head and screwed up stomach. He ate some cornflakes with milk hoping that it would settle his stomach. But things got worse. The food gave him a high. Must have been the glucose. He felt even sicker. His stomach wanted to throw all its contents out but the mind was stopping it. He promised himself that he would not touch alcohol ever again, although he knew that he would be drinking by the end of the following week. He closed his eyes and cursed life, the universe and everything.

The auditorium is huge. It is an ocean of space built in three levels. Diffused lighting lights the whole place. The light makes the space expand further, pushing the corners in and masking the details. The light lacks quality but makes up with its evocative display of vast space. The stage is the focus of the brightest lights. It shimmers like a mirage. The curtains hide in the corners like nervous stagehands, streaked with fine dust. And it is quiet. Quieter than even an empty house. The silence covers everything like cold dew. It drips from the dangling microphones, it fills the chairs flowing in like waves and it gives shape to the shallow shadows hiding under the seats.

I’m lying in the center of the stage, stomach ripped open. My fingers clutch the intestines crawling out of the jagged hole. I want to scream but the silence is on me too. It covers my mouth with a dry kiss and the screams struggle at the back of my throat. I do not want to fight it. I want it to engulf me. I squeeze my intestines harder.

Everything explodes.

Space expands and then contracts into a thin but intensely white line. I close my eyes and embrace Death.

(final part in a trilogy of short pieces loosely based on the themes of light and death)