I feel proud and honoured to be serving this world for so long now, for being here and showing its people a different way of living, a new perspective, an entirely different version of themselves, and the most astonishing part is that this new look, the parallel world, if they say, is very confidential, as also, entirely happy and good, although the sad part about it being that most humans are not even aware of its existence, most people do not know about their own empires. So, I take upon this responsibility of putting them in their rightful kingdoms, the monarchs of their own self and world, and to make this place a very happy and sustainable place to be. One may say, that my theories and philosophies fly right in the way of our great grandfather – the greatness glorifying both his works and age – Darwin, as he had said that only the ones fit to survive shall thrive and the others, the weak and feeble ones, the ones too lazy to get up and adapt to the changes of nature, shall perish. But I, the great me – greatness here is only suggestive of how much I like to boast and blow my own trumpet – am the living and breathing proof, that the ones who could not cope with the pressures and speed of the modern world, am also surviving, and not only that but thriving too, in my own place, my own kingdom, my own self proclaimed monarchy, of whom I am the self-anointed mighty monarch.
My kingdom, to the naked eye, is any patch of land I set my foot upon and decide on sitting on, or any place where I rest my tired and sleek physique, wherever my tattered clothes slither, or my dirty brown arms and legs stretch, for I, unlike the many others around, observe and think, I see the unseen and know the unknown, I can tell what may happen and what may not – a gift, a knowledge, a boon, or just a reason to breath. I say, I am a good Macbeth, my story is not a tragedy, but a happy one, perhaps that is why, it is not as good, and the catharsis is not as strong, but at least, I see no ghost or I am stained by no blood that I cannot wash, my lady does not kill herself, and trees shadow me instead of inflicting fear in my heart.
If you look up, what do you see? The night sky, says the ordinary man; the stars and other planetary wonders, says the astronaut; lofty buildings, says the businessman; the faces of my dead children says the mother; God, says the religious; and nothingness, says I, for only if you can empty the entire canvas, can you start painting. And the colour? Dark, black, with tiny spots of white, and he thinks, if he shall go to the city or stay? He lost his sister when he was a kid, then his father in his teenage and now, only yesterday, his mother, while he had been away, studying in the city. He could just stay back and get on with the religious work his uncle had been asking him to do, and have a good peaceful life, in the village, with his own people, in his own shack. But will the shack be the same without his parents and sister? Will he even like being there anymore? Maybe, he will, because as they say, time heals everything. Maybe, life will get back to normalcy… maybe.
But is this a good enough reason to stay back? His father had wanted to study and write, and thus make a living, but the daily chores and duty to earn money and feed his family left his papers blank while his pen was full of ink. Did he even succeed at living a good life? He was seldom sad, but did his thoughts and stories not die with him? Did he not deprive the world of some marvellous characters? But he did give his family food, they might not have lived a lavish life, but also, did not die of poverty either. Does that make his life worthy of living?
Also, his mother, who spent her days worrying about her home and mending it and keeping it from falling time and again, but in her death, was alone, with no one by her side, the fever ran rampant inside her as she had called for her son through her heart, for that was all she had left in her armoury, after her prolonged fight with life, all she could do was long and wait, and hope and cry. Was she a failure too?
Everything had jumbled up inside of him, he was only a boy, not more than 20. But he had so many questions and so many confusions, conundrums gheraoed him, as he stormed his head and heart to agree on one thing – to stay or to move, to be or to find.
Like the Sun, peeked through the skies, and clouds came out of hiding, as the birds chirped and the hens clucked, he looked around, the trees, the grass, the lake in front of his house, the well, the fields, everything seemed obsolete, rather boring. He had had enough of the apparent peace and longed for answers that these green surroundings could not provide. He wanted a far bigger peace, for which a far bigger war was ought to be fought, as he packed his bags and tied his bed, he dressed up and donned his boots, and there he went, bidding goodbye to his childhood, as he walked towards adolescence, as the train whistled towards the city, he must have thought of his abandoned broken home, or not, for I see the focus in his eyes, and the will to explore and fight for himself, as again, when he sat under the tree, yesterday, engrossed in his books, I see a young man, determined and disciplined, was he really reading or was it just a façade, an armour to hide his tears, as books are often ones best armours to protect their own monarchy.
It is a hot day really, it has not rained for quite some days now, the humidity is sucking all the water out of my body, and the hunger roars inside of me. I see a man, well in his thirties trying to get some water out of a tube well to clean the cow dung on his shoes. I helped him with that, as he also helped me while I drank some water and splashed it all over my face and neck. He bid his farewell and walked away. The day has been relentlessly unkind to him. He has been a daily wage earner in a factory for about a decade now, and the fun part is that he does not even know what he does there. He had been taught to run a machine, and move things from here and there, he does that but has no remote idea of where these things might be used or fitted or even who would use them and for what. Long pipes and thick black sheets, bolted metal plates and cagy screens – he has heard that these are parts of a bigger machine that is installed in a bigger factory, and there that machine makes something that is of importance to the modern world, but he still fails to understand its position in the world, mostly like himself, doing something, earning a meagre amount for his day and sweat, unmarried, unfathered, he longs to find a meaning to his being, to him being born. Is it for this only? To lift heavy metals and run machines that have no meaning to him, will he die like this one day, will his blood stop running as a protest, and his heart will declare a strike? He is no longer a boy, but a man now, a man well on his way to greying and decaying.
He reached the station and like every day, he bought a ticket and waited for his local train to arrive, that will take him to a nearby town, where he lived with his friends, his four friends, all of whom at one point in time, had big dreams and lofty ambitions, they had all fled home and rented this flat as they played in the local football league, and represented the town. They were teenagers and had started to earn both money and respect. But the club went into debts and one not-so-fine day, was dissolved, and these players were left out of contract and contact, with nowhere to go, one of them went home, while another committed suicide, some say he was murdered by some goons for not returning their money, but he still believed that his friends were honest, but cowards. He and his remaining friend came to this big city, the cesspool of all young jobless people of the region, and found themselves a job in the factory. His friend, somehow, managed to like his life and got married, even rented a room in the city, and had accepted his faith. But he was arrogant and adamant, and could never digest that he, a one time great, a defender playing across the backline, making overlapping runs through the wings, while also passing it on to the unmarked forward, maintaining the shape with the holding midfielders, and distributing the ball with pinpoint accuracy, he was like a tree, with his roots and branches spread across the backline, his leading voice and brave slides earned him the trusts of his fellow teammates, he built his own empire brick by brick, mastering one art of the game after another, always a disciplined disciple of the game, and is now being pulled and pushed with every turn the train takes. He was lost, in the crowd, in his own self, he also had questions, and answers, but like his friends, he was also cowardly honest – knows what he ought to do, but too coward to get on with it. He had lived his playing days working in the factory and was now fighting with himself, slapping and kicking and punching his younger self to lose belief in himself, to be beaten so easily.
He knew a friend who ran a small club nearby and has been looking for a coach, he had only just decided to apply for the same and was beginning to prepare his speech and plan his playing style when he stepped on a pile of cow dung on the street. He somehow limped his way to the tube well and was helped by a kind beggar. He was no longer sad then but determined to remake and rebuild his empire, which he once believed to be captured and lost, somehow somewhere he knew that a renaissance is a reckoning and his resignation at the factory was the first step towards it.
I have now walked into a certain part of the city, where the lanes are narrow but the houses are big, much like our imaginations and reality, where we dream big, but the roads to make them real are slim, but no matter what, roads are important, for they lead, they never end, unlike the one I have reached now. It is a good place to rest, I suppose, enough sheds, and I can see the sky from here. The evening is setting, and the day is ending. He sat there by the window, seeing nothing in particular, for his head was full of thoughts and fear, fear of losing someone he has many thoughts about. His love did not love him. His many acts of care and attention did not impress her enough, and he was sick of playing her best friend. He wanted more, he feels he deserves more, more attention from her, her time, and also, her touch.
On the other side, from a different window side, the girl was busy preparing for her exams, as she had set her eyes on a German university she wants to go to. She had no time for love and relationships, she loved the boy, he was her closest friend, the gateway to her unabashed self, a person she would hate to lose, but in the race between career and friendship, she chose the former, a modern outlook, some will say, but to her, it was not a question of modern or pristine, but one of building her own life, her own kingdom, the queen of her own self.
But the boy was not so thoughtful and craved for something he did not know what. He mistook love for something else as the maid entered the room to mop the floors, his eyes unknowingly stuck at her cleavage and her cellulose waist. The hormones were boiling inside him and the fool thought it was love. Unlike the queen he craved for, he was a slave to his penis and was fooled by the youthful desires of the body.
The maid finished her work and left. It was the last house of the day. She was used to men peeking at her and did not pay any heed to even the barely clad beggar on the streets. She walked her way back to her slum, where she had to take care of her grandchildren.
She was married young and had a couple of babies – a boy and a girl. The girl also got married before she knew it and died at the birth of her second child. Meanwhile, the maid had lost her husband to cancer and her son to the side effects of joblessness – he was caught in an act of theft and jailed. She brought her two granddaughters to her place. She has not known anything in life, never studied, never went to school, all she knew from her very childhood, as she was married off, as she still tries to figure when her childhood ended and adolescence began, she still struggles to keep on track with the fast-moving world and being at the very bottom of the social ladder, being veiled from whatever is happening in the above strata, she was determined to give her granddaughters a chance to climb up the ladder, and now that there was no one to stop her, the 45-year-old woman, was still strong and was fighting with all her might against every opposing force, her fort was still hers, against all peeking eyes, and flashing parts, against all economic exhaustion and breaking of body, her hair was grey, but her blood was red, and her heart was full of hope and a certain tinge of surety.
The night is still young, and the mind is still fresh, as I continue to serve as the alternative lives to all the people I see and observe every day. I am not a beggar, I am a chooser, I choose whom to give this alternate life to, and they give me food, water, whatever they wish. I have my own castle standing. And when food is not available when the body craves for nourishment, I enter my own alternate world, where I am king and I am seeing all these people living a better life – where the just orphaned boy is studying and finding his own answers; the man who thought had lost everything was coaching his team towards victory and his understanding and comprehension of the game was being recognised and acknowledged; where the boy gets out of the claustrophobic chains of perversion and feels true love that transcends the physical needs; the girl gets her dream career and also has her best friend to go back to and be herself; where the maid sees her grandchildren grow up and be respected women in the society, and many more, many many more…
As for me, if you are still wondering, who I might be, you will never believe, my friend, because I am a believer. I have read the sciences of evolution by Darwin, as also the philosophies of the many conundrums a human being goes through from Shakespeare’s works, I have a strange understanding of football, and am immensely drawn into the game and its tactical managements, while also, keep a somewhat vigil eye on the factories and their machines around me.
I am a gateway, to a different world, and I am sure, if one sees closely, one will also see the passage, the road to their kingdoms, I see a lot many daily, and all of them are diverse and disparate in their own way, with their respective problems and questions, all very unique, and when it comes through me, they all kind of merge and I get a mixed feeling, a white canvas, where all the colours mix, a colour that has every colour, and I no longer feel left out and no longer am I a mere waif sitting and sleeping on the streets, I become a part of this vast and great creation of life, I play the part, the most important part of seeing the unseen and thus show them what can be.
People come and go, but they leave me with the stories that keep me invested and rolling. One might not know, but unknowingly they have given me the strength to carry on. In cold and in heat, in hunger and thirst, all these thoughts and stories keep me glowing, keep me alive, for the light that they gave me, will ever glow.
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