Out of mud

He came, rising from the mud.

First his mouth, filled with razor sharp teeth, then his neck, bloated and long, snaked across the cracked, fissured earth. He rose, fashioned from the bones of the earth, a skeleton of stone. He reared his head once, and the water drained from the nearby rivers and ponds, a swirling mass of water filled the spaces between his bones. He reared his head again, and this time, the leaves fell off the strong, straight orchard trees. The trees withered and bent, spines, once straight, now supine, hunched like old men over their roots. Fruit fell, from their branches - heavy, ripe fruit fell....but withered, dry skins touched the ground....all the succulence and flesh sucked out.

Threads of flesh coiled around his bones, weaving and layering into a multi-coloured, dazzling skin. Now complete, he smiled, white teeth flashing, putting the sun to shame. He took his first step, and the earth bent, shook under his enormous weight. He reached the edge of the cliff and then bent low to observe the realm beneath. Fields of green flecked the landscape, filled with tiny black figures, scurrying industriously through crops of rice and wheat. In the distance, black clouds of smoke hovered over a city, a soaring, dark city.

He laughed. And as he laughed, his body shifted and changed - grew smaller, tiny, transformed into the shape of a man. A handsome man, with flickering red eyes, and tiny, pointed teeth.

He spoke now, for the first time, a language of war, words sounding like the thrust of bayonets, the sound of bullets racing through darkness, the squelch of blood, the crying of women.

He spoke quietly, but the tiny, black figures, hard at work in the fields, stopped to listen. The city stopped too, cars braked, lights flickered off and on. In a dark alley, between piles of garbage, a criminal, a young, hunted boy, stopped and listened. A few yards a away, a plump, perspiring policeman, hot on the trail of the criminal, paused and dropped his gun. In a room that overlooked the dark alley, a pair of lovers, burrowing and clawing into each other under white, sweat-stained sheets, stopped their fierce lovemaking.

They all stopped, and listened.

The words of the newly born man on the cliff, borne by the wind, filled their ears and wormed into their brains.

He spoke, and then stopped.

The policeman looked around for his gun, but it was there, in the tiny hands of a young child. The policeman smiled at the little girl, pretty in her blue frock, and gestured towards his gun. But she frowned, and shot the policeman. The bullet tore through his chest, and embedded in his soft, fleshy heart.

He died, a look of surprise frozen on his face.

In the room over the alley, the man stared at the woman, dark and sweaty, hovering over him . He gazed at her neck, at a mole on the side of the neck, a loop of black hair curling over it. He frowned, something about the mole disturbed him, repulsed him. Without thinking, he reached out his hands, and caught her neck in his strong grip. She gaggled, she whimpered, she tried to scream, but he strangled her.

The man on the cliff, with red eyes and sharp teeth, smiled. He strode off the cliff, into the air, towards the city.

He is coming.

Another story that never went anywhere

He awoke, the scent of sweat heavy in his nostrils, the taste of cigarettes lingering on his tongue. Awakening again, here, in this small dark, stuffy room. He rubbed his eyes, blinked, hoping that the darkness would fade away, dissolve into something else - a woman, a bollywood mansion, trees...something else, but not these grimy, crumbling walls.

Anything else.

He turned, and grimaced. The pillow still smelt of her. He traced the wrinkles on the greying sheets, imagining the curve of her hips, the twist of her lips as she smiled at him.

But she wasn't there. She had left days ago, stuffing her clothes and cosmetics into a battered, grey suitcase. She had paused, and they had stared at each other, minutes dragging by. She stuffed her last pair of panties into a sequined handbag, and then turned, curls cascading over her shoulder, and marched out the door.

Or had she? He frowned. Had she been less than a memory? A figment of his imagination?

His cellphone was ringing. "There's a story - you better get there at once, the van's waiting," the grating, nasal voice on the phone informed him. "Some big car accident. A big actor too, don't know who as yet...he's been rushed to the hospital - could be dead." The voice paused, speculating the outcomes death could bring . "If he dies," the voice continued in an awed, hushed tone, "it could even be a headline piece."

He pulled on a shirt, a pair of trousers, slung his bag over his shoulders, and headed out to the van.

On the way, he leaned out the window, feeling the wind whip through his hair. The clouds were gathering over the sea, and he spied a tall, slight, figure, negotiate the treacherous rocks of the Bandstand Beach. Her white sari flapped in the wind, a radiant, blinding white - the dazzling, ethereal shade of detergent commercials. A smaller figure, a child, waved to her from further off. She smiled warmly, tenderly, back. He turned away, as the van wriggled through the throng of traffic. But he still felt the brilliance of her smile, her dazzling white smile, warm on his face.

He dozed, and dreamt of his own mother. He had always been embarrassed by her - by her gaudy nylon saris, haphazardly worn, splattered with sambar and chutney stains. By her bra-strap, poking out underneath her ill-fitting blouse. By her feet, rough and callused, and her thick, ungainly ankles. He had been relieved when she had died, finally, after a long illness. Even then, she died indecently, clinging onto life - long after any decent, self-respecting person would have. She had been stubborn, for his sake, she had whispered, on those long hospital nights, as she lingered on.

He awoke, as they arrived at the destination, and quickly clambered out of the van. He spotted a fellow reporter, puffing on a foul-smelling beedi. "No headline story here, yaar," the reporter informed him, "actor is expected to make a full recovery. Page 4 or 5 news, at the most."

Damn, Veeru thought, just my luck. A headline piece, almost, on my hands, and the bugger decides to live. Damn it.

Later at home, he dreamt of his imaginary paramour, of her wicked hips and bee-stung lips. He awoke, sweating and hot. It was time to start hating her, she was taking over his mind, he thought as he opened the door of the ancient fridge, but there was nothing there, save for a solitary milk bottle, half-full of curdling, yellow milk. Instead, he lit a cigarette, opened his notebook and began to write.

A story that never went anywhere

I sit here, alone, in a coffee shop. All about me, pairs of doting lovers engage in the business of flirting and wooing - the business of love-making as it exists in India. Because that is all it ever amounts to - stolen moments in coffee shops, furtive touches in parks, purloined kisses in the dark recesses of some alley or shadowed doorway.

I watch these lovers, cocooned in my own loneliness. I watch one girl, beautiful in a fleshy, opulent sort of way, bat her long, glitter-lined lashes at her male companion. She wears a gaudy, floral-print shirt, and her long hair carries the tell-tale signs of having been subjected to some rough, chemical straightening technique. An office worker, probably corporate. Her lover leans closer, murmuring, I imagine, something flirtatious, stretching the fabric of his cheap suit. His crew cut glints red under the coffee shop lights, the result of a heinous, tasteless dying technique. It looks like an office romance - an attraction birthed among the cubicles, flirtation near the printer, and finally - thrown together in the narrow, steel-and-glass confines of an elevator - the discovery of their shared love for brash hair-styling.

You get the idea.

I imagine the matrimonial classified - female, 24, well-placed in boring, monontous office job invites alliance from similar background. Must have bad haircut and a taste for vulgar dyes. Cheap, tasteless dress sense preferred.

Another couple near me sip their coffee placidly, darting occasional, lust-filled looks at each other, over the white porcelain rims of their coffee cups. They sit in silence, filmy music blaring through the silence that hangs between, like a corpse. No conversation or banter. I watch them, and their furtive romancing, and wonder where the attraction lies. They are dessicated husks of people - dry skin stretched haphazardly over thin, rickety bones. In simultaneous, mirrored motions, they unpin their BPO office badges. Voice accent trainers? Do they pretend foreign identities during night shifts? Basvaraj or Bill? Naina or Nancy? By what names do they call each other?

I can imagine their matrimonial night, when they clasp each other in a rigid, clinical fashion, skin barely touching, and he thrusts (just the smallest, littlest bit) of himself into her. He murmurs her name - "Nancy," he cries, forgetting her real name, her birth name. Afterwards, as they lie apart, on the white sheets, smelling of disinfectant and plastic, her eyelids drift down, and just before she falls asleep, she wishes "Bill" a good night...

"Bill" and "Nancy" look up, catch me watching them. Ashamed, embarassed I look away.

A new song blasts overhead, a shrill-voiced songstress screeches -

"This is a hip-hopper...
Come Hip-hopper, come and love me."

I gag, over the sheer horror of the lyrics, which sound even more atrocious in Hindi. I look up, and catch a man ogling the song-stress on screen, shaking her derrière to the fast beat of the song, so fast that her short skirt, barely covering her ass, rides just the teensiest bit up. I watch him, nursing his expresso, salivate and crane his neck, hoping to see just a little bit more - even though the image is a flat, recorded image.

I laugh, and he whips about, surprised and panicking, offended at having been caught.

Another voyeur, like myself - except I prefer live objects to observe.

I look away, searching for a fresh object to observe. I catch a woman beside my table, in the act of twitching the pages of her newspaper open. The front spread obscures her face, as she holds it up to read.

And then it slams into me.