Love and the Dark Night

ELEVEN

A pair of parallel iron lines glinted like twin snakes, taking a gentle sweep towards the left, and straight to Braille Station. The station was nicknamed the Snake Den by the local tribals.

The harbour is close to it. And that’s the landmark.

Are you sure? I asked the voice.

Pretty much.

The train was to leave in five more minutes. A light wind had begun to blow, the night wind from the river, carrying curling mist hanging low over its surface. I passed the oak and the deodar trees scattered around.

Rudi: Why haven’t you removed the little shrubs and gorse bushes? There were none earlier, and the floor was smooth and shiny like a mirror. The pillars have been replaced by these oaks and deodars, and it’s like I’m in a prison cell where very soon a huge iron gate with thick bars will lower down and cage my freedom.

The Voice: How can you say this? This place is ours. It belonged to your great grandfather. There, do you see the tree, twisted and knotted, its roots hanging down, its face wrinkled and wizened, and its skins weather-beaten? Well, that’s him. The great Senior Jashwant Singh.

Rudi: Who are you? You’ve been disturbing me always. I need to be on my own. I like to be on my own. Please leave me alone.

The Voice: I can’t. You only call me. You only tell me do this, do that.

Rudi: I have never. But to take your side of the argument, when was the last time I spoke to you?

The Voice: Hahahaha… You’re so naïve. It’s just now. All the words you’ve said just now, yes, just now, are the latest and the most recent ones. Yes, here, you said: I have never. But to take your side of the argument, when was the last time I spoke to you?

Rudi: I didn’t speak. I simply said it to myself. So how can words said to oneself be…

The Voice: Exactly. That’s the point I’m trying to administer into you. Our thoughts are words we speak to ourselves. When we say these to someone they become audible to someone next to you. 

   Rudi: But there’s a difference between words spoken to oneself and words spoken to someone. And words spoken to oneself is not heard by anyone except by the speaker.

The Voice: Yes. But you fail to realize that I’m your thoughts, and your desires. I’ve been with you since the moment you were seeded in your mother’s womb. I entered your soul. Before that after all the atrocities your ancestors did to countless innocent people, I had been thirsting to enter someone’s body. I was thrown from one place in the air to another, all because I didn’t have a body. But in all these years I had been collecting all the atrocities of the people of your land inflicted by your grandfather and father, your uncles and your aunts. The farmers whose lands were forcibly taken away and they made to work on those lands and give the harvest to your family and a small portion given to the farmers. And so from the moment I found a body of the same clan, that is your foetus in your mother’s womb, I have been clawing you with my fangs, with my rough sharp nails. I’ve been picking your brain matter every now and then.

Rudi: I don’t and can’t believe you. And besides, you can’t do it anymore, that is if all you say is true. I’ve found my way out from that maze.

*

I continued walking, erazing the rotten conversation from my head. I followed he parallel tram lines. when I reached the end of the wood, I saw across, the terminus and hear the hissing of the train getting ready to depart for its last run, the signal read and alive.

I boarded the train. It was empty, the entire empty carriage stared at me with its seats and handles and berths, and they looked as the bones of the train, that which has given it its shape. I walked to my favourite seat, the window seat of the central compartment. I sat down and began humming the Green Day’s hit:

I walk a lonely road

The only one that I have ever known

Don't know where it goes

But it's home to me, and I walk alone

I walk this empty street

On the Boulevard of Broken Dreams

Where the city sleeps

And I'm the only one, and I walk alone

I walk alone, I walk alone

I walk alone, I walk a-

When I was about to sing the second verse, the voice snatched it away from my throat and immediately throated it out:

My shadow's the only one that walks beside me

My shallow heart's the only thing that's beating

Sometimes I wish someone out there will find me

'Til then I walk alone

“No, I’m singing it,” I shouted.

“Sorry, it’s me.” The voice said calmly. “There was this woman who belonged to the class of grass cutters. She was young and shapely. her eyes were black and droopy, with the eye lashes heavy. her dusky complexion created a strange murmur in your father’s heart. He dreamt about her not only during the day but also during the night. One night while physical with your mother, he moaned Meenakshi oh Meenakshi during orgasm. Next morning while your father was having his breakfast of Makki di roti with sarson ka saag when this lady appeared and stood in front of him. Your father asked her the matter. “I have been called by your wife.” Her voice was soft and while saying these words, she had lowered her voice and her eyes were fixed to your father’s feet. Soon your mother came and told your father that since he had uttered her name in his sleep and specially while making love to her, your mother, she was confirmed that Meenkshi should belng to him. and thus she came to the household as the most alluring lady with eyelashes created by the sighing of pine trees and the blackness of them were a creation of charcoal black cold waves that came from the coal dust of the coal fields one hundred miles away. “Thus,” your mother confirmed, “Meenakshi should hold an important post in the household. But Meenakshi was faithful to her husband, a grass cutter too. She moaned in her sleep and sang the stanza I sang now. Besides, Meenakshi also sang this,” and the voice began to sing:    

I'm walking down the line

That divides me somewhere in my mind

On the borderline

Of the edge and where I walk alone

Read between the lines

What's f****d up, and everything's all right

Check my vital signs

To know I'm still alive, and I walk alone

I walk alone, I walk alone

I walk alone, I walk a-

            By this time the train had begun to move, the driver could be seen standing in front of the engine, a grey light fibre coat, somewhat like a summer coat, and charcoal black trousers. His cap, tilted to a rakish angle to the right gave him a smart look. The dark ocean of black welcomed the train. For a split second, a flash of light from ahead came rushing towards my train. The two vehicles met at a crashing speed of light, thunderous noise and twisted steel.

*                                                                                      

Anais rubbed her eyes and turning around, still with eyes closed, felt the space next to her. She opened her eyes. “Where’s Rudi?” she asked as if to herself. It took her sometime to realize that her hand was resting on a rectangular piece of paper folded several times. Why the newspaper. And who kept it here? She opened the first fold and a headline screamed at her.

TRAIN INJURES LONE PASSENGER

More than 200 people were injured in Malaysia on Monday when two metro light rail trains collided in an underground tunnel close to the Petronas Twin Towers in the capital Kuala Lumpur, officials said.

The incident occurred around 12:19 AM when one of the trains, after being repaired, collided head-on with another train going to the car-shed travelling in the opposite direction on the same track district police, Ashish Ghosh said.

“We are still investigating the incident…, but we suspect it was a lack of miscommunication from the trains’ operations control centre.

Videos and photos of the incident posted on social media showed the lone passenger was not alone but another female passenger who received a bruise on the arm escaped from the accident. The male passenger was bleeding with head wound. There were broken glass panels inside the train, operated by Manas Dev.

Transport Minister, Sujoy Debsen said the collision was the first minor incident in the metros systems seventy years of operation and he pledged a thorough investigation.

The lady passenger took the male passenger home, saying she knew him to be Rudi, a resident of the South neighbourhood of the city.