Extended darkness with its long wagging tail screeches like a grave yard. The whispering wind flutters and snivels like a preyed bird, fallen wings spread. Moments are tickling past and fast. The wind is dying out in those shrunk and cracked horizontal bamboos barricading the caked cow dung dried for lesser mortals’ fuel. It circles and whirls inside those cracked bamboos before being vomited out like undigested foods. Darkness rules. It rules with hysterical mystery with agonizing silence. In the dark branch of a near by tree owl started groaning. John looked to the sky. He did not see any stars in the dark night. Sometimes night becomes mystical and hysterical, perhaps reminding us the menace, ruin and awe of darkness inside us.
John has spent many times alone in that darkness of river bank when the sound of a jumped fish in the water passes a cold shivering inside the spine. It had no effect on John. John has seen more darkness and has experienced more chillness in the past. It is that chillness and darkness when logic runs away from you, the beast inside you wakes up to pent up desires of century. Enjoy the unknown. It is more alluring and bewitching than that apple, Adam saw. It is a new taste. Perhaps a new thrill. Feeling of flying, floating, vacillating and forgetting everything. It is a run away from the reality to a perceived happiness. It is a run of an escapee. But where shall you escape? The kick will go. The hallucination and induced euphoria will dry out. Where is happiness? Pinch and bite of humiliation will resurface again. Do you call it life? Do you like that momentary hallucination of forgetting the reality?
John had met Ricky in one of that rumbling and yet whispering darkness in the coast of Bay of Bengal. Ricky was strolling and falling like flotsam and jetsam of a depressant day. What has happened to him? Why it happened? How it happened? All these are too distinct and distant in Ricky’s memory. The pain and bite of withdrawal symptoms is gripping him like a coiled snake. He looked to the bottle full of cough syrup. His last resort of the day. Should it work? Would it work? May be temporarily. He gulped that with sound. The sound had no synchronization with wave of ocean. Waves. Big and small. Waves of water. Waves of thought. Waves of depression. Waves of memory. Floating to and fro. Comes and goes in that confused stage. Surely and slowly calmness in nerve is setting in. The snake loosens its grip, slowly uncoiling.
The dark night unfolds the memory of another distant night. It was not dark. It was not lighted though. The moon was about to sleep. May be, the moon was about to be lost. Stars were gleaming, glistering, and hanging like pedants from ear lobes of nubile. Same sea shore. But it was singing then. No. it was crooning then. Crooning a lullaby. A gentle and poignant. Sleep, why did not you come then? It was an agonized remembrance. It was not a visual cliché worth storing. But it never leaves. Life listened to that unknown beast in that dreadful moment. Taste of dry salted fish roasted in smoky charcoal. Soft sand of withdrawn sea. Behind the bushes of dwarfed Tamarisk. The sound of the gulp of that acidic liquid with smell of urine that burns the food pipe as it flows into. God! It is nauseating. Is it a taste? The sound of gulp, then too, had not synchronized with sound of waves. Sound of waves was roaring and cautioning. Stop! Now! Please!!! But where is that kick? I must explore it. Second gulp. The wind is revolting. It is protesting. No! Stop! A sudden burst of sea sand blasted on the face of Ricky. Those sands laden heavy in the tear of sea. Ouch! The third gulp. It no longer smells. It no longer burns. But where is the kick? Where is the pleasure of forgetting everything while eyes are wide open? Where is that dream? Gulp followed another. Yet another. Floating dreams. Revolving stars. Stars move around the earth. The earth is stationary. Me too, Ricky dreamt. All are drunk. All are down. Not me. Not Ricky. He is only kicked. The sea is no longer crooning. It is sobbing now. It just witnessed another death. Another defeat. Dead while alive. Oh! God. Am I here to witness the defeat and the dead? The sea started sniveling.
It started with fun. It ended in a habit. Engulfing dreadful habit. That is the character of that old beast. Ricky looked to the sky, head upward. Arms and legs spread. It is deafening dark. Stars are far apart. They no longer glister from that dreadful day of the past when the sea told him about his defeat. Stars surrounded by engulfing shadow of defeat. It is every where. It is pushing them apart. Stars are moving away. The effect of cough syrup thinning away. He felt the crawl of itches throughout his body. He moved his hands. Hands can not cope up, it is spreading fast. Fast enough. He felt bites of thousands ants throughout his body. A wave of panics set in. It is coming like a tempest. A giddy wave of ache is spreading fast. The desperate hands moved fast .But those were not fast enough to push away those crawling ants. Ants, not visible. It is inside the blood. He needs to kill those floating inside his blood, stinging him from inside. He desperately searched for his pockets. Quickly unfolded those paper packets. No those are empty. Something pierced through his finger in that desperate search. Oh, it is comforting. It killed an ant perhaps as it pierced. Crazy ideas. Crazy thoughts. Earth started moving. Stars became stationary. No, it is wrong. Earth needs to be stationary. He shrieked, yelled and started piercing his body in that niddle.Fast.Fast enough. Those crawling and biting ants are getting killed. They are coming out through oozing blood. It is comforting. The earth is becoming stationary. Ricky yelled out a hysterical and mystical laughter. Slowly he is sinking. The bell on the near by church started tolling. Has the time arrived? Last thing he saw two eyes. Eyes of hope. Those are glistering and comforting like his mother. Have you come mother or have you sent an angel?
Dangling legs of Ricky started hitting John on his back as John started running. Perhaps he is running the run of his life for somebody’s life. A run to defeat the defeat. He must. He should. The waves of sea started smiling. They started crooning again. From the distant sound of that crooning, somebody voice resurfaced. It is encouraging. It is assuring. You are a winner, John. Defeat the defeat. You can. You should. You must. Is it Sofi?
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The clouds have moved away. Sky looks clear. Ricky must have grown up and settled down, John thought. Mistakes hardly get repeated. Night no longer carries the mystery. It looks like baroque garden. A garden full of Parijats.
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