Monday, August 31, 2009

Confessions of a Beleagured Mind------Part Three

Part two is here

"Why did you kill your father",asked the lean,thoughtful police officer sitting in front of me with composed authority.Anurag Chaubey,IPS.The name sounded strangely familiar.The police had arrived about fifteen minutes after the peon had rushed in hearing Mrs Irani's scream."I can't help you if you say nothing",he continued.I looked at him indifferently.He looked at me inquiringly.The bulb shone brightly on my face in the small,dingy room.I could hear a fly buzzing around and i wondered where it was."Listen,boy,you are in some serious shit,you just don't know it yet,you think some hot shot lawyer will get you out.You are mistaken.You have been caught red handed on the scene of crime.Don't make me try a different approach.Now,why did you murder him?",Inspector Chaubey then stood up and gave me a patronizing glance.I looked at him and said"Can i have a cup of coffee,please."He looked surprised but said nothing.He left the room and returned two minutes later with a steaming cup of hot coffee in a shabby looking mug.I drank deeply,savoring each drop with life clinging affection."I admit to my crime.I killed my father or rather my mother's husband.I killed him because i had to.I don't care what happens now.",I said quietly.Perhaps it was the way i said it but i felt his eyes boring into mine,trying to unmask my soul."Your statement is recorded and will be used against you in court.Is there anything you wish to add?"."I would like to finish my coffee before you take me anywhere".I smiled.

My case was forwarded to a fast track court.Since i had admitted to my crime,i was not given a death sentence but rather life imprisonment.My face was splurged on every newspaper in the nation.Debates were held about morality and the inevitable decline of family values.My relatives came from far and away.They came with seething anger and a scathing tongue.I was abused with cuss words every moment fate gave them.A shoe was thrown on my face during the court proceedings by my father's favorite cousin.My humble request to light my father's pyre was rejected by family elders.Our family lawyer visited me and told me that i was now the owner of my late father's legacy.Sixty Seven crores worth of land,factories,cash deposits and what not.It was now all mine.I met one of my uncles after a humble request to Anurag Chaubey."Why have you called me here,you lowly piece of garbage.I,I celebrated,I danced the day you were born.I wish i had strangled you then.What sort of son are you?",he half said,half shouted.He would have continued had i not interjected,"Do you want the money my father left me?".He shut up and looked at me.I looked back."What sort of sick game are you playing now?".I looked back,a small smile playing on my lips."Everything i own will now be yours.I want you to comply to two of my requests.Firstly,I want to be transferred to the worst prison possible.I want to be tortured and beaten.My life should become hell.Let the sexually abuse me,let them bring upon me dark deeds unheard of.Make me suffer.Make me weep.Secondly i want you to burn down every possession my late mother owned.Everything.Do this and you can have everything.",i said in a tone of cold authority.He abused me,threatened to have me shot but finally agreed.He left with numb disbelief at my demands.I relaxed.

My demands were met.The money was transferred.I was beaten everyday without fail.The guards took care that i did not fall unconscious because of the severity of their beating.Cold water,inhumanly frigid was thrown on my face.It felt like being hit by a frozen block of ice.Still the tears would not come.I was raped by frustrated,deviant men who did unmentionable things with me.I ate little,drank much and meditated the whole day.In the evening,the guards would come and the ordeal would begin again.I suffered from hallucinations,often waking up in the night,screaming at unsaid horrors.But gradually my screams lessened and i began to steel myself against the tortures that would never stop.An year passed.Then another too passed.In the third year,I had a visitor who would change everything.

Thursday, August 27, 2009

Confessions of a Beleaguered Mind------Part Two

Please read the first part here.

My mother was a professor of English.She was a beautiful woman but her beauty was never noticed;not because of some sinister reason but because her charm preceded everything.She dressed simply but elegantly.When she spoke,people especially men were mesmerized by her voice.She was a woman of the world,rich in her ideas and expressive of her opinions.Her father was a poet,a man of great intellect and passion.His mention is necessary only to enunciate my mother's genetic inheritance.I know nothing about her mother.She was a fantastic woman and i loved her more than anything in the world.Not once did i ever tell her this.

She met her husband at one of the famous cocktail parties hosted by the literary who's who of Delhi at Le Meridian.Her husband was there by chance,he was neither an author nor a poet.In fact he possibly had never read a literary novel,the only books he read were pseudo imitations of Harvard returned good for nothing management blokes.I still wonder why she married him.Certainly he was rich,he was rich and a self made man,a rare combination but still he would never accept the fact that his mother married her husband for money.She was beyond all that,she was divine.

They married a month later.I was born a year later.Her husband dealt in some shady businesses involved in international crediting.He was insecure of my mother's circle of friends.They were an intellectual lot and always made him feel greatly insignificant.He grew angry and frustrated.He cut off my mother from the world she loved.She started withering away,away from her literary pursuits but she would not leave him.I guess she didn't want me to grow up without a father.I would have been better without him.I will not do injustice to her husband and claim that he did not love me or my mother.He did but sometimes love is not enough to sustain a relationship.Understanding is often the key to a happy marriage but unfortunately her husband never understood this.My mother felt incomplete without her traveling and literary socializing.She immersed herself in her reading and maintained a facade of happiness but i could always sense her unhappiness.She seemed distant and away from the simple pleasures of life.She was hollowed,hollowed by the society her husband gave her.She was my mother and she was rotting before my eyes.I was old enough to sense her discomfort.We lived a life of luxury,a life of unchallenged bliss but i knew the truth.The truth that my family was a hollow framework of broken dreams and mismatched love.

I was sent to England to study.It was my last semester and i missed my mother.I hadn't talked to her for a while and it constantly ached my heart.Two days before my exams were to begin,i got a phone call from home.My mother was no more.

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

My Cat

Oh i walked the pale meadows of yellow with her
i was gay and loved by the tears of distant clouds.
My spirits soared and the sky thundered
i lay upon the open fields,smiling all the way.

She caressed my leg
her whiskers tickling my gentle knee.
I chuckled and beamed in delight
Ah....ah...life was good,i mused.

She died a day later
my grief infinite.
I carried her limp body
to the graves of my fathers.

Now the sky is dark and my soul withered
i loved her greatly and now she has gone.
I may get a million felines
but i will never love another cat.

Sunday, August 23, 2009

Confessions of a Beleaguered Mind------Part One

He woke up around the same time his father left for office.His name is irrelevant for the story and hence shall not be mentioned.He then proceeded to go about his usual morning activities which included yoga,meditation and power running.He had a good body and he secretly liked to admire it,but today everything was irrelevant.Anybody who met him was instantly charmed by his well bred manners and eloquence of speech.One could say that we was born with a silver spoon,his wit and charisma were despotically alluring.His deep black eyes twinkled with a cold fiery look of hazy indifference.Loved and revered,he had everything.

He opened the door of his gleaming white Skoda Superb,gifted to him nine days ago on his birthday.The engine gave a grunt of captivated power as he pulled it out of driveway and mulled into the chaos of Delhi.He reached his father's office in a about a little more than an hour.He went inside and gazed at the gleaming Italian marble,the dark mahogany wood and the precise yet firm walk of his associates.Mrs Irani,his secretary of twelve years ushered him in his father's office.

"What is it?",his father asked,a bit irritably.He smiled.His hand slithered to the soft fabric of his custom made Belgian trousers and he took out a blunt,exquisite silver knife and with raw force pushed it deep in his father's neck.
A moment passed.
Blood,dark red blood gushed out.With a resounding thud his father's head fell on the desk.He sat down and waited.Bored he took out his phone and fiddled around.Then he reached over and pressed the intercom.'Yes Sir?",came Mrs Irani's voice.'One coffee,please',he replied.He waited.
Mrs Irani always came inside and prepared coffee from a modern,italian coffee maker tucked away in the corner of the opulent office.She had started screaming hysterically before the door had closed.
He smiled.

A Call To Self

The layers of deception seem sweet
Uncoiling,unraveling the inner conceit.
He is now lost in the abyss of the self
And as i look in his dark eyes myself.

I see the foundations of bubbling pride
sinned forever by the loss of divide.
Don't call him your own blood
I have seen him drown in life's dark flood.

Once upon a sunny time
he used to be mine.
Now he has untimely left
leaving nothing but an uneasy cleft.

Should i reach and call him back?
for it is my dark love which he lacks?
The gods will not forgive and move on
the lights of purity have now gone.

Call him back to my arms
failed lie the last of my charms.
In a void of hazy pain
i have nothing in this life to gain.