[ WP ] Man with an emotional disorder sees everything as flat and lifeless

Sobek! Imbue me with apotropaic shields and elevate my thoughts and flesh with the strength of a crocodile jaw slamming shut. Thoth, move my neurons into lands of milk and honey! Osiris, assemble my distortions to coherency, and keep liquidity of purpose at bay! Isis, mate with me and carry my seed to the gardens of sapphire abstractions! Horus, unhorse the outdated chariots of ego and let loose the hounds upon the hunted melodies of society! 
 
 But the gods remain silent as I walk the wide pavements of the shore along Marine Drive. The sea is like poured porcelain, the color of a diseased, wormy eye aged by decades of pathological observation of filth and the iconoclastic dissolution of thousands of idols of the god Ganesha. It does not reflect the dull sky, still hesitating to set up the awning of a summer night. It does not reflect the tall edifices of offices, residences and hotels. It does not even reflect the half heartedly lit Air India building, which is still a few minutes away from where I am. 
 
 I look at my watch. It is now three minutes past seven in the evening, 18 minutes since I crossed the urine soaked Charni Road railway bridge for my quotidian walk. I am stained with sweat, my hair is matted, I am already sensing the impending ennui of this exercise, and my mind refuses to divert itself from reflecting upon the online conversation I had with C. 
 
 Her words made her seem broken in the way that a diamond might claim to be. It had been weeks since I had conversed with any human being and it was always an operatic experience to interact with C. 
 
 *I am cruel. * She said. 
 
 I had never met the woman, and my only image of her features was the solitary photograph on her Facebook, and it morphed in my head, reshaping her features sharply and transforming her into a leather clad dominatrix. She wore stiletto heels, and a leather corset denuded her innocence. Her lips were caked in blood red, smeared slightly below her lower lip on the right; an imperfection that humanized her insanity. 
 
 *They believe I can love. * 
 
 Her right index finger traced a sinuous line along her leather thigh. A teardrop of sweat appeared from under a strand of hair and whispered down her temple, pausing at her cheek and freezing into an icicle. 
 
 On the chat screen, she quoted the lyrics to a song I had never heard. C. was a mistress of music. Her barren Facebook page was cratered with YouTube links ranging from the reverie of Smetana ’ s Die Moldau to the harmonies of Cannibal Corpse. 
 
 *I crush their hearts and abandon them. * 
 
 The dominatrix smiled submissively. Her eyes glistened. A hum groped the strands of her nymph hair. The frozen ball of sweat melted, slid, dripped from her chin and fell upon the very thigh favored by her sorcerous finger. It collected, and formed a globule of semen. The leather corset stretched and moaned. 
 
 My member trembles. The fragile memory collapses like an impudent wave function. I realize where I am. I can not walk here with a hard on. How would they explain it to the worshippers gathered outside my gold plated and gem encrusted stupa, a hundred years from now? I look at my watch. It is four minutes past seven in the evening. 
 
 The pavement hungers beneath the feet of a crowd of people liberated from their daylight regimes by a mandated end to duties. There, between a group of facetiously exhilarated scholars, barks a dog ruined by millennia of abject slavery. There, a man and a woman exchange perversities with sacred overtones. There, a silver haired woman led by sympathies and blood heirs dreams of decapitating every one of her ancestors back until the reign of Pulakeshin II. A man sits on the seawall, reading an upside down, week old newspaper in the sickly orange glow of the streetlights. I can hear his feet tap on the concrete. The rhythm is Brubeck ’ s Take Five. 
 
 I recollect one of C. ’ s favorite quotations. She recites it vedically whenever the time in her geography rings 2:51 pm, so long as she is conscious and alert. 
 
 *Thought is paraphilia of a mind tormented by nature. * 
 
 She says it was revealed to her at 2.51 pm on a coarse day of familial slander, on the dirt covered terrace of an abandoned office of a chartered accountant who had killed himself by self starvation. She was drawn to the arcane secrets infesting the floors of the building. A cyberpunk Buddha appeared and ejaculated a string of pearlescent memories in her pineal gland and she had to bite her lip to contain the ecstacy as the memories coagulated into the quotation. 
 
 I have learned to picture the scene at 2:52 pm daily. 
 
 Some distance ahead of me, I see an old man. He is bald, wrinkled, and seemingly toothless. He holds a tattered notebook and a blue Diwali lantern in his hands, even though the festival is still months away. He looks at me. His eyes are grey, and the fossilized remnant of a primordial scar decorates the rough texture of his skin. 
 
 He opens his mouth wide. His gums are as black as the lungs of genocide. In his throat, I see an eye, despite the darkness. It is bloodshot and dilated. The tiniest bulb of blood erupts from a corner and spreads on the old man ’ s tongue. His corporeal borders shiver tangibly. 
 
 Behind me, I hear a feminine gasp. The beginnings of a scream imprisoned by terror escape lips covered by sweaty palms. Undoubtedly she sees the eye. Or is it the vibrations that now surround the old man? 
 
 A great invisible yawn pulsates within the air, unseen by all, observed by all. A sightless chasm seems to gloat in the space between the old man and the thick populace surrounding him. The dog stops barking. The old man is gone. 
 
 After years of experiencing my emotions staid as the placid waters of a dead lake, I feel the upsurge of something overwhelming. In a last ditch effort, I rack my thoughts for the right reaction to play, the right character to become in the theater of the soulless. But I do not have to. Where a sandstone colossus once sat, covered with sand and the cracks of millennia, now brewed the microbial lifeform that is the ancestor of us all, and it is gigantic beyond reckoning, and its voice booms in a thunder that silences all other senses except a delicious Darwinian delight. I am now Ravana slaying Rama on the battlefields of Lanka. I am now Sishupal ravishing the Ganga in the blood of the sons of Ikshvaku. I am now the bastard son of Vritra, breaking the gates of Indra ’ s home with my fangs and poisoning his jugular with my toxins. I am now the lobotomization of time and the derangement of a living nebula. 
 
 And as it came, so did it pass. The serenity of a schizoid psyche summons itself back with an apathetic gravity. My senses rise. 
 
 The dog is barking again. 
 
 I see the man with the upside down newspaper collapse, but his form never hits the ground. It ceases to exist. 
 
 The birthing scream emerges from the womb. 
 
 A young woman mere feet from me stumbles. Her earphones fly and fall upon the pavement even as she disappears. 
 
 The umbilical cord of the scream ties itself like a noose around its neck, choking it. 
 
 Behind me, I hear a roar. In front, I hear the mating call of death. Cognizance dawns upon the populace. Their horizon is pink with realization. The sun of understanding unveils. 
 
 The scream tears its own cord and opens its eyes, viewing the new world in its entire glory. And its hymns echo across the road as the inhabitants of passing vehicles conceive of the event. 
 
 And the dog barks. 
 
 And the people are in pandemonium. They sing their songs of spinal instincts. 
 
 I look at my watch. It is five minutes past seven. The Air India building is only a few minutes away. I walk on, and around me, the world witnesses the god of madness incarnating on the planet of the most glorious initiates of his discipline. 
 
 And the dog is silent. 
 
 And the sea is still as melted porcelain. 
 
 I dream of elaichi tea, and C.
