The blood in the ginger beer bottle had clotted and that’s why it couldn’t be used to write the letter. Writing a letter in blood would have been a touch of genius. Yet, the letter had to be in red. That’s why, red ink was used. That was how it had to be.

The women on Whitechapel road were reprehensible. They deserved to die for their debauchery. They painted their faces by evening and dressed like no modest woman would, those trollops. They sweet talked to the drunken men who came to those grimy, dark alleys. The sight of these women repelled and sometimes so much so that the knife seemed to take life and shake violently in the bag but it had to wait. It had to wait till they were caught right after one of their nightly businesses was over and money was exchanged. Till then there was these filthy mouths to be fed in their sin-houses.

There was terror in those times. Everyone looked at the other disbelieving, especially the women of the night, the women of pleasures, the women of the streets. And amongst them was an older woman who knew why this was going about and why this will not stop and why this will never be her. She was the mother. She feared for the lives of the others and she cried for what she had borne. She knew that the killings were to impede a bastard being born again. Never again without a father. Never again will a prostitute mother a child, she was told. Sometimes, her wrists were slit when anger reached to manic heights. Just enough for her to scream in pain. Then there was crying and tears and guilt and love. This was her retribution for bearing a fiend in her womb.

All the women were chosen beforehand. Like a butcher chooses his fatted calf. They were befriended, trusts won and secrets shared. The women never guessed what was coming. They were certain that this was a friend, someone who understood them, someone who would not harm them, someone who cared. Such was the face of evil, plastered with innocence and joyousness. The women never saw it coming till moments before the gleaming blade spliced open the artery. Then there was fury and rage of some three decades that was allowed to run riot just within those few mad minutes. Bloody and gory, the cleaver would run wild over the body on the bed, hacking the organs, sometimes severing the head, sometimes rending off the heart but always the insides lying outside exposed, the way it is not supposed to be. Never shall she bear a child, the way it is supposed to be.

They said a surgeon, a labourer, a barrister, a doctor, a butcher, a lunatic and a merchant. She was never caught because no one suspected a woman.

The only way of stopping her, the mother decided was to slice her into pieces and throw them all over town. And then when it was done they only found an unidentified torso.

Six years ago, when I clambered down a bus that brought me from an industrious town in Tamil Nadu to this city of gardens, it was with a slight trepidation I then confused for excitement that I looked around the busy Madiwala morning. I had come to intern at a company which now cease to exist, possibly eaten up by the newly constructed Namma Metro. I had stayed in Kasturinagar with my sister and her husband while we all waited for life; my sister and her husband waiting for the construction of their house in K.R. Puram, I waited for my appointment letter from an Indian IT giant.

In six months time, I had moved to the prospering Koramangala, knowing fully well that my father had turned down a property deal from a broker ten years back, writing the place off as a dead locality. My aunt who has been residing in Bangalore for the past twenty something years had told my father that the place where he stood was formerly a lake bed. As I slowly discovered the city on foot, rickshaws and buses, I figured the way of Bangalore life, popular cafés and why there was so much angst deep-set within the locals. I saw that idlis and dosas the Sagars serve were differently made from what my palette was so used to in Tamil Nadu. I understood why the city of gardens didn’t have as many garden frequenters as much as it had shopping mall regulars. I also found out why people from the bigger metros came over and complained that this city wasn’t like theirs – because this city just wasn’t like theirs!

I was told the real expansion of the city had started in 1956 when they had decided to change the capital of the Mysore state to Bangalore. Some days when my weekends are free, I climb into the first city bus that comes my way, packed with a bottle of water and a day’s pass ticket to roam around the city to places the pass allows me. When I walk down roads in the older parts of the city, I see why it had once been known as the pensioner’s paradise. I can see how pleasant it must have been to live in a quiet town with its salubrious climate. Whenever I pass by the cultural remains of the city, I am at awe seeing the undying spirit of those patrons who try hard to retain parts of the city remain untouched by industries, commerce and housing complexes.

On the day of my induction, I remember thinking that the road that led to the office headquarters was beautiful with the canopy of trees on either side. It was a long, deserted road, notorious for the recurring thieving incidents. I was warned never to leave from work alone after sunset. Today for a quick commute of five kilometers, I take a vexing, dusty ride that lasts almost an hour during the rush hour times. The deserted road I was warned about is dotted with cafés and beautifully themed high-rise apartments and for a good long time I had considered moving to this part of the city till I came to know that the regions that had once been considered the outskirts have become expensive in the few years it had been left to develop.

Bangalore with its changing landscape needed residents who could adapt with its transformation in its pace. However, the city is packed with mainly two types of people – the old residents who hate seeing the city change faster than their lifestyle could and a floating population that is getting frustrated that it can’t change soon enough.

On the eve of the day blessed by many saints, I decide to walk down the road where I am sure to hear giggles and pealing laughter. A long forgotten road ridden with architecturally brilliant houses and boutiques that are not part of any retail chain. I know this solitary day will cost heavily on my pocket. I feel an itching need to quench a thirst for consumerism. So, dressed breezily to provide enough movement for all limbs, my feet make light contact with the tar road. Had I worked off some of the pre-holiday weight, I could have even been hovering.

As I turn round the last block to face the world’s best road, my heart skips beats with manic fervour. No one to stop me from owning the smooth, linen bed sheet that I had set my eyes on sometime back. This might be stupid; I hear my left foot talking. The right foot stamps it to shun such corrosive thoughts.

The street has changed and I can’t say I am entirely pleased. I remembered the many bungalows, outnumbered shops and the canopied trees. What I see are abundant franchises, houses turned to franchises and restaurants that serve more service than food. I can feel heartbeats returning to normalcy.

All hasn’t changed, I comfort myself. Oh, there’s the shop that still sells cream cakes and there’s the house, where the little blue-eyed boy lives. I wave at the blue-eyed boy, who has grown up to take on college and the girls in it. Maybe that isn’t the little blue-eyed boy. Maybe I need to have a sandwich from the music school café that has three tables for their patrons. Maybe I have taken a wrong turn and walked into another lane. Yet I know no one else who knows this road like the back of their hand, other than I. The music school café sandwich will fix my chagrin.

When I reach the building I had known to be the music school, heigh-ho! it is a gymnasium with beefy men standing around drinking watermelon juice through straws. Afraid that my gaping glares might get interpreted as appreciative stares, I quickly shut my mouth and continue walking. The lightness shifts to my head and before I could stop them, my feet walks into a coffee bar that I hate for their inexcusably, feeble coffee. The rest follows in a daze till two cups of coffee enter my blood stream and I breathe again. Hastily, I pay them off, collecting all change so that they don’t mistake it for a tip for their services.

Scrambling out, I decide the purchase of the bed sheet has become the utmost necessity. I briskly walk past the other stores promising discounts and offers of the most unbelievable nature. Ignoring the mongers, eyes determined, lips laid out in a straight line, I reached the linen store in a sprint. I stood on the opposite side of the road facing the store stripped off its sign board and interiors.

Hazy view, moist eyes, buckling knees, I reached out and grabbed a passer woman’s arm.

“There used to be a store here… they sold the best of linen… have they shifted… or have they shut…?”

She squeezed my hand. “When was the last time you were here?”

“Maybe a year back.”

“Yes, what you fear has happened. Maybe you need some water.” She reached into her bag and held out a bottle of water.

The world revolving, my legs gave away, I fell to the ground like a sack of potatoes. I felt kindly hands help me up and drag my limp body back to the coffee bar I just came out of. A glass of cold coffee was brought and four out of my five senses regained function. However, the taste buds had been ruined forever.

This has been the worst of my Christmases, I smile. A smile to a grin to a laugh and a bellow. The waitress hurriedly came with the bill and a form to rate their coffee. I paid double the bill and drew a face with dots for eyes and an up-turned arc for a mouth. My unbounded happiness seemed normal. This must be how insanity feels.

Having lost sense of time and reasoning, I figured that the yearning for owning has not yet been curbed. I shook off the draining feeling of the unconquered bed sheet. When I stepped out of the coffee shop, I notice that next door is a store selling make-up products. I gleefully walked in and asked the disinterested lady behind the counter to make me over. She complied whole-heartedly and I saw the mad gleam transferred to her eyes. On other days it would have appalled me, but today was different. She sat me on a high stool, took out multiple brushes, put black muck on my lips that I usually put in my eyes and used a lot of red goo on my face. After half an hour, she showed me the child of Lady Gaga and Marilyn Manson in the mirror and called me ‘Gothic’. I thanked her and shook her hands for a good minute while her colleague swiped one of my cards and all that she put on my face was mine in pretty tubes, making me considerably poorer than when I began the day.

As I walked back home, the effect of the deplorable coffee was draining off while my heart gradually fell into my stomach. The piteous day was closing and I pacified myself with the bag from the Frankenstein lady and told myself of the good cheer this day was to spread. When I reached home, I slowly walked to the mirror to look and admire myself once again.

When I fell, I fell with a dull thud, the way they all fall.

She was brought up cushioned from the world. When the family struggled to keep the house standing, when the family broke insufficient bread with silent prayers on their lips, when the family tossed and turned in the bed loathing the breaking of dawn, she never knew ill. She was born like an afterthought, born a good decade after what their neighbours assumed was a complete family. She came and unbalanced the system. She never found herself being amongst them. She couldn’t fit. She was a misfit. This was probably why she was the only one to voice the atrocities of her family business.

This was because her friend pointed out her father’s flourishing shoe business and then pointed at the pitiful lives the shoe makers’ wages brought them. Her heart cringed at the shabby state of their houses. The seed of the guilt of the privileged was adequately planted. She wished she could change things but she considered herself too young to be heard to.

We want you to take after the father, confided her thirty year old mother one sunny afternoon. Her mother had dreams of what her children would be and when her daughter was growing more and more like her, she designed of ways to fulfil her lost ambitions. Through her daughter. We have saved up enough to put you through school and you are the youngest and the brightest of them all, she beamed. She expected her daughter to be over the moon herself on hearing this. She always wanted to study abroad. Her puerile marriage watered down her plans. Quickly she added, this education will be good for our business.

Business, spat her friend and talked uncontrollably. From each according to his ability, to each according to his deeds, to each according to his needs*. While their talks went on in circles as always, an unusual nagging thought held her this day. You speak as passionately as my father, but she feared saying it aloud. Feared her friend’s wrath when such a comparison to a nemesis was made.

They were a close-knit family and never have they ever thought independent of the other. Despite being the oddball, she was very close to her family and loved each and every one of them dearly. Soon she was getting ready to leave the country to study. The first one to set wings and fly, all their hearts swelled in pride.

The new lands thrilled her. Predictably, she enjoyed the riches much more than the little town. She kept in touch with her friend. She wrote to her family often. Here she was far from the crowded thoughts, happy to be let off for once; she tested her newfangled ideas born of opposing theories. Never once dejected despite failing continuously to find the success that was promised, she kept trying. She was thrown in between: the devil and the sea. She failed and tried and failed and tried and failed and tried. Her experiments taught her life. Innocence intact, intelligence increased, she returned homeward laden with expensive gifts and other luxuries that her job afforded her.

Her family was thrilled to see a grown woman before them. They decided that the education from abroad had done her well. She set about trying to fit into a life that she could not relate to. She fixed up herself and started fixing up her father’s business calling it her own. Surprisingly, she did very well. She knew how to work around to bring harmony. They lead many happy years of a life that would’ve been a fairy tale… but it wasn’t.

I am not one to take after you, one day she announced her ambition or possibly the lack of it. How could you, the family argued. You are the most learned and we bank on you. We forfeited our lives to get you through school. She had been meeting to her friend for the past some weeks. They had met over a cup of tea one afternoon. They had spoken about how much things had changed, the weather, the old times and the weather. Then they talked about the work. She was so appalled by what she heard she wanted to work with her friend who was now working for the government. They wanted to shut all businesses like her father’s that exploited the workers. She was moved by all she heard and had decided to take a plunge. She wanted to tell her father how wrong this all was but she couldn’t bring herself to even start explaining, fearing those times how her rebellion was curbed. Turmoil within, she knew she loved the family and anything that hurt them, hurt her. Even when she was the one who hurt them. Torn between the two worlds, she ran away to another world so that she wouldn’t have to watch when they came to take her father away.

She engrossed herself at work, loyally typing out the pamphlets that spoke their religion. She worked at her small desk in the corner of a dingy government office. She adjusted to the new life and taught herself to like it. Whenever she heard of families, she’d shut her mind off and chant about the exploits of the proletariat by the bourgeoisie. It was an immediate mind reliever. She was doing well for herself. She was grateful to her friend for showing her the way of life. She and the other comrades were bubbling with overwhelming optimism. They were about to witness utopia. They were about to attain perfection.

Even when they thought they reached the peak of the crescendo, the promised climax never materialised. When the wait turned from days to months to years, they held to their faiths and still waited. Unassuming, non-judgemental, faithful fools. Whenever a mild sense of doom arose, they knew better than to voice it for they heard stories of comrades going missing. There was a light blanket forming above their heads that was starting to be uncomfortable. She stumbled upon her worst fears on a fateful day when she walked into a conversation that she wasn’t supposed to hear. Till then unsuspecting, till then trusting, she looked into her friend’s eyes and confronted the man she loved for so many years. She heard what she didn’t want to hear and the ground gave away beneath her feet.

Broken, taken and used, she longed for the familiarity of her father’s house. As she walked back to be single room that she has lived in frugally for the past few years, all the memories of her parents came flooding. All that she steeled herself against could not hold back the gush with which it came back. She wanted to go back to the love she trampled under her feet for unrequited love. She didn’t know what became of her family. She knew she couldn’t forgive herself for what she’d done. So as soon as she reached home, she reached to the corner of her suitcase where she had hidden a forgotten wooden box. She opened it and looked its contents, picked one up. Then she held her father’s penknife that she stole from her father’s office the day she left his house and pierced it into her heart.

When her mother heard of their daughter’s dramatic death she wept with her children at the family’s state of affairs. She put it down to the evil shoemaker who once slew curses at them before placing his head on a railway track. She said it was the devil that won.

* Mildly corrupted version of the dictum of Karl Marx.

[This post is neither intended to endorse any political doctrines nor debate their possible flaws. The mentioned ideologies are merely analogous to a parallel world the author lives in and yet not.]

I am still a clown and I’m working in the circus but you tell people your son is an entertainment artist and that I travel extensively. Mother, don’t think of it a shame that I turned to tomfoolery as a profession. Do not be embarrassed when you tell the neighbourhood children that we have a real clown in the family. I was always the funny one and I always had your guests in splits. Tell them now that I am still doing that and watch their faces turn into the sun-dried tomatoes like the ones on their plates. It will be a riot!

You remember how they taught us in school that clowns are never clowning around in real life and they are dirty and filthy and have difficult lives and that some of them are very mean people? I am not sure who conjured that up. We have a ball all the time. Mother, we have trainings and classes and I regularly attend conferences and workshops that are conducted by the circus companies. I am sure you are amazed that I need training to master the art of clowning. It is a hard task and they don’t let us eat anything we want. We are kept under strict diet and we have to undergo rigorous practice sessions that help polish our skills and maintain our fitness levels. They make me exercise a lot. I am usually asleep even before I get to bed. We are not allowed to dirty the grounds we are provided to pitch tents. They send housekeeping to clean the mobile units; they are not called caravans. Although I am not living in them all the time, I like them. They are quite fancy. When we are abroad or performing in the bigger cities, we stay in hotels. We can’t lug our units to the aeroplanes, can we? It is so different than how we knew it to be.

Mother, I was dismayed when I came to know that we had rules in the circus and they follow it to the T. You used to compare my room to a circus? Boy, you know nothing about circus people! Tell the neighbourhood children it is an easier option to go join med school before considering running away and joining the circus.

I wish you would come away with me for a month. The troupe manager and his wife keep telling me to bring you on one of our tours. Don’t tell father about this. Tell him instead you are going to your children who are living the life of class as he wanted. His elegant life of luxury and aristocracy is devoid of essence. It will always be as long as he measures people with their attire and not attitude. This might be spiteful, mother, but I say this only because he sneers at my choices. I find dignity in living off my own money and making my own fame. I shall tell you, I am known among these circles and I get recognised too. It excites me to be known as myself rather than my father’s son. It hurts that father fails to see that happiness comes to me quite plainly, unlike his finely woven clothing or the most exquisite of his wine bottles. We get that here too, would you believe? Last Christmas we were gifted bottles older and finer than most of his collection. I laughed a lot at that Christmas dinner and I laughed till tears came pouring.

My life is very busy but I think about you a lot. I wish you could see how happy I am, especially father. I know it won’t make him change his mind but he should know that I haven’t regretted the life I have chosen. Please let him know that my doctor’s degree will always be a reminder of a life I almost threw away. I don’t know if I can write to you anytime soon but know that I will remember what you once told me: that happiness is a state we create from within.

Yours always,
Clown Boy

He pushed his rickshaw into the shadows off the street light till his receding back was no more in view.

He told the story of his immoral wife. She stole his father’s money and swindled many others in their neighbourhood and ran off. She left him a pauper with two daughters to marry off. He did not curse her ever. He forgave her atrocities eons ago. She was but a mere thought, possibly a memory that he no longer cared for? He can only think of how he would make ends meet. His daughters were his immediate concern.

That’s why the Nepali girl found refuge in his rickshaw at midnight. She looked as scared as a kitten and his heart went out for her. He told her he had to go home but she begged him to drop her. She said a man from the club was following her and asking her to get into his car. The rich man from the club followed his rickshaw till her house. The auto rickshaw driver screamed out to him, go away or I’ll call the police. He told the Nepali as she handed him two hundred rupees, nakoji, insaniyath ke naam se, and drove away to the man from whom he rents his rickshaw for the evenings.

A few years ago, he had picked a young widow from the road. She was drunk, furious and was screaming at the two men she was with. She scrambled into his rickshaw and slurred out her address. When he turned around to ask the directions, he saw that she had passed out. He tried waking her up in vain. He considered taking her to his house but feared what his neighbours would say when they saw him bring a skimpily clad memsahib to his house in the dead of the night. In the morning, when she regained consciousness, but nowhere near sobriety, she hurled abuses at his daughters accusing them of kidnapping her. When he dropped her off at her house, she cried and hugged him and they remained friends since.

He was a woman’s man, they all told him. Although his daughters were irked by his generous ways, his heart swells when they say they are proud of him. Sometimes, when he runs out of gas, he pushes his vehicle to the sister’s house that is closer to the city than his own. His mind wonders as he lies on the hard bed outside their house. This is where he first met the woman who made his life this. He tells himself to sleep that he does not hate her.

Whether he still longs for that doe-eyed girl…

A glass of water, that was all that they were after. She always told me that you needed companionship to easily avail the luxuries of a glass of sparkling aqua in those dying moments. I wondered whether she was slyly belittling the institution with a drastic claim as such.

Then I heard it elsewhere and elsewhere and once again, elsewhere. It seemed like this was a mantra that was taught as soon as they attain puberty. “Go for that glass of water. It’s important. It makes or breaks your life. They gauge your success as a family woman by who holds (or not) a glass of water as life passes away.”

They actively seek to arrange their lives in the hope of successfully summoning a glass of water before that last breath. I am even beginning to suspect that they carry water bottles and spare tumblers as a pre-emptive to a premature demise.

The belief is yours, I respect that, I said. Expecting me to enjoy that similar euphoria you might have with cool water sliding down your throats was unfair, I debated. They said I am refusing to see beyond the glass of water. There was much more than water. To know more, I asked what. There was much more to it all. You will not understand till you agree to a compromise of believing in a system that you have already thought beyond.

She was always in the background, a subtle smile on her face and yet nodding in agreement to what they said. We don’t want you to die with a parched throat. I could see that they meant well. They shook their heads at my lonely death. They attached far too much importance to the exit. I promised to get into a settlement where I won’t be left as helpless as Samuel Coleridge. Maybe stash away bottles and bottles of liquid minerals? And yet I feel I’d rather die a sorry death than live a sorry life but I accept* that you wouldn’t understand.

Predictably enough, she died with no glass of water by her side but she always told me she died happy.

* Not to be erroneously corrected to ‘expect’.

Maybe you passed on some of your fears. Maybe you did them some good. Maybe they never turned out to be what you wanted them to be but that too is because of you. You drew up the expectations and decided to play god; who they should be, who they shouldn’t. If they’ve disappointed you, that’s your problem.

And then again maybe you let them free, asking them to lead their own lives, while you lead yours. Well, that’s not so right, is it? You never guided them, never cared enough, never loved enough, never appreciated enough, never there! Whatever you did, it was so wrong. You are the reason they trusted so much in life… or not! You probably never realised that you could shape a human’s life so much. You probably never realised the powers vested in you. You probably never realised that you hit the dead-end even before you begun.

Didn’t you blame your parents for what they did to you? Didn’t you swear that your child will never go through what you did? Don’t you see a spitting resemblance of their rebellion with yours? Don’t you get scared when you see yourself screaming back at you saying you are so unfair?

You have no choice. It was your decision to be a parent, wasn’t it?”

I am not a fan of cricket. Much less after the match fixing incident of the year 2000. I was amused when India won the World Cup this year, but I was not out on the streets cheering for the country. It did not mean much to me. I did not play. This wasn’t going to change my life.

I was not born in this country. I did not spend a childhood here. My heart doesn’t swell up with emotions when people look up to the tricolour and say with faux pride ‘I am a proud Indian’. Like they had a choice. They look at me accusingly for not standing up in awe and attention while the national anthem is playing… in a mobile phone. I wonder what they did to be filled with such pride. I want to tap on their shoulders and say “Do you really think India is as proud of you? Personify India and she’d probably want to keep miles and miles between the two of you.”

I, like millions of children, grew up hoping to be a superman readying to fight injustice by ripping off clothes.

I am no racist. I hate stereotypes. Sometimes when I catch myself treading on those grounds I remember those times I seethed with anger for having been categorised for hailing from a place of coconut trees and banana chips. This country is filled to the brim with polymorphism. I am going to sit on this pedestal a few feet higher from where the others are and proclaim that racism is for the uneducated (no references made to that what they do in schools).

I do not hate the Pakistanis. I’ve heard touching stories of lives of many. I’ve had classmates who were nice people from Pakistan. An Indian who cycled all the way from Bangalore to Lahore once told me they were just like any other human. They had dreams, they had intelligence and they were sensitive to others’ religions. To top it all, they were oppressed by the leaders of their country as we are. Of course, in varying intensities. If I didn’t know better, I’d have called them my siblings. Except they are Pakistanis. Just because a certain people-constituted body from this piece of land dictates that they are not one of us. Just because they chose not to be a part of this constitution and subsequently put a border where they wanted us out. Do you see how we grew up on games as such?

I pay heed to this country’s distorted laws because my ancestors were custodians of this land. They never bought it, somehow they managed to claim it. Then they fought with their lives to keep it. Now I pay the price for it. If I don’t consider myself a citizen of this country no other country would adopt me for free. So I prefer to stay put. Hell, I could pay taxes and no one would ever kick me out. This is the fine trap I lately found myself in.

He evaluated his life from his house in the suburb. He liked it.

While he sat content for those few moments, a wandering thought held him. He hadn’t struck off everything from his bucket list yet. He just had what he wanted that particular phase in life. He always dreamt of this day… when he’d be content for everything he had around him. He didn’t want to know that this was the last time he’d ever feel triumphant. He never realised his dreams. He never found them. He ventured so many things trying to fix that piece of jigsaw puzzle. It irked him that piece was still lying around not finding its place. He felt a familiar anger seething at the thought of lost dreams. He could feel his teeth grinding and his muscles going rigid.

Breathe in, breathe out, his shrink had told him.

Shrugging his shoulders, this was meant to be, he said out aloud to his empty room; his mug acknowledged it. The mug told him to put it all down to a funny thing called destiny. He did, and he quickly curbed any further disbelief. He was back to that happy lull. It comes easier these days.

He broke out of his reverie and thought whether that was all he wanted in life. To be content? Did he aim too low? Maybe not. Maybe that puzzle piece was not a part of this set. Maybe all that successes in life one had to attain was just a lot of baloney. He giggled as he considered that illusion. It sure was absurd to measure success with liabilities.

Before Ben left home the next morning he wrote off this house he liked to his nephew. He had sold off his old Beetle a week back and had bought a sturdy bicycle for himself. It was decided that was all he needed where he was going.