Words On Canvas

I plucked the Jasmine flower from the creeper that grew sturdily on the arch above me its sweet smell intoxicating in the early morning air and the dew on it made it glisten in my hand, as like a jewel to be gifted to one’s beloved on their wedding day. With care and attention I placed it gently in my bamboo basket trying as much as I could to not deform its already delicate shape. With great tenacity had I tried to deplume just those flowers which would retain their fragrance until the setting of the evening Sun. These were the best Jasmine flowers in the entire area and they were tended to by me.

After handing over the flowers to the garland maker, I headed off in the direction of the spa. As I walked along I was greeted by friendly faces with their warm smiles reminding me of the sweetness of this fine morning. The ladies moved gracefully in their long flowing tunics cajoling in me images of swans swimming silently on a still lake and the men went about purposefully in their loose overalls carrying out their designated tasks with a sense of gaiety and utmost ease. It was fine morning to be alive indeed.

The spa overlooked a great huge garden filled with every imaginable flora and fauna that we hold dear. Never before in the history of the world had such a garden ever been created in terms of its sheer vastness, beauty, comfort and breathtaking landscapes. It truly is a marvel of the modern world. On seeing this great expanse stretch out before me, my idiosyncrasies took over haling me to postpone my time in the Sauna and decided instead to wander around in the garden for a while. My mind was at ease for my next task was scheduled in a good four hours time.

Loitering around in that expansive garden is one of my favourite pastimes. The air was chilly and had just the right amount of moisture to magically transform the cold into a pleasant, comforting and one could say even romantic sense of warmth. The garden is always filled with people, all in sight of each other but with the right amount of distance to make one believe that they are really alone. There were the elderly who were reading or merrily talking away and the young, cuddling and frolicking in the corners, following their instincts just like Adam and Even in the legends of lore. We can all see the mountains in the distance from here, their snow covered peaks a favourite destination for the numerous trekking enthusiast over here.

I went over to a bench nearby and sat down slowly unpacking the sandwich that I had picked up earlier at the canteen near my home. It was large sandwich kept warm thanks to its wrapping. Unwrapping it, I took my first bite, letting the cheese ooze onto my tongue and tomato’s flavor mingling with it as my teeth sunk into them was a feeling of pure heaven.

But it was then that my eyes fell on the first transport ship that passed overhead and that was when all the hatred and self-loathing took over. I looked around and saw that the others were visibly disturbed as well. The old folks stared at their feet and the young looked away unable to focus on each other. But for me, it was like a stab in the heart each time I saw them. After having trained as a cadet all my life with the sole aim of making it as captain one day to be here doing nothing was akin to a river disallowed to finish its journey in the ocean. But one small error on my part had got me here, to this prison. Like a bird with wings clipped we are forced to stay here and look on at those ships, filled with men and women exploring new worlds undertaking wondrous journeys to the farthest reaches of what the human mind can conjure up. And it is in this hell of boredom and suffering that only perfection can create does the state imprison us never to know or acknowledge our greatness as a human being. We are put here with those petty details that our forefathers held dear under the allusion of luxury all the while when the true nature of the human spirit lay out there.

[A tribute to Haruki Murakami]

The soda bottle was waiting to pop, the pressure on the bottle making it soft and bulgy. Even the usually flat cap on top had a slight concavity to it.

“Ah! Crap. What do I do now?”

If he opened the bottle here, the fizz would definitely spill onto the sofa, leaving a sugar stain which would inadvertently become a beacon for all those species of emmets out on a stroll. And that was something he could live without. So, he turned the cap very very slowly trying to find that right amount of gap between the bottle and the cap that would allow the Co₂ to escape, without causing the fizz to bubble and spill over. Getting this just right was a priority for he dreadingly imagined his wife shouting at him for being careless and absentminded. Now, no husband would want that would they?

Getting married when still in school was a strange thing in those days. His fiancée was a girl whom he had known since pre-school and they were in love for as long back as he could remember. His lover and he travelled to school in the same mini - van, ate their meals and even studied together. Theirs was a match made in heaven and would make an excellent romance movie, but that’s a story for a later time.

He wouldn’t have made it in life if not for her; for you see this man was afraid of reading. He barely made it through till middle school and high school was a strict ‘No no’ for him. Managing to procure a job at the local electronics store, he slowly worked his way up till he was made the city head. And that’s when he realised that he could start out on his own. A pleasant man such as himself, with an excellent knowledge of his field and tremendous vocational skills had to be his own boss, and his own boss is what he became. But all the credit for his success was not his to flaunt alone. Being more of a people’s person he didn’t handle the finances or the legal documents, rather it was thanks to his wife’s expertise that their enterprise was so successful. She had quit school along with him and made it a point to learn electronics, for you see this man was afraid of reading. When he was working at the store, she was at home studying and in the evenings she would teach him what she had learnt, over dinner.

Apart from his morbid fear of reading, he was not mentally challenged or socially impaired or any of that sort. In fact his brain was sharper than most people’s and he was liked by one and all. His reproach to reading was his only flaw, a flaw that he could not fully comprehend but had come to accept.

It wasn’t like he could not read at all, but more than anything it was a sense of impending doom that overcame him when he opened a book. At the very maximum he could read a page or two, but pushing himself beyond that was a near impossibility. When he was still in school, he had tried to read an entire chapter of a text all by himself but had failed to make too much progress. At the end of the ordeal he was so flustered that he could not leave his room for days on end.

Here is what happened that fateful night, as narrated to his wife on the day after they got married.

“I finally opened my book to read. I had put it of far enough and wanted to give a shot at doing well in the test. I read the first paragraph and it was all fine. But as I read the second para, it all started. It was the R’s actually, the capital R’s. They started shaking a leg, I mean literally as if to a beat. The right leg of the R’s as I read on and on; tap tap tap they went with no end in sight to their ruckus. At first I tried to hold them down, that didn’t work, so I tried to plead with them. And when even that didn’t work I started out to erase all the R’s from the text. Now that’s when the T’s started to protest. I think that the T’s and R’s are in cahoots with each other, forever looking for an opportunity to torment me.. this wasn’t the only time they’ve worked together you know? The damn T’s, they started firing at me. What audacity! The horizontal line on top of every T on the page started flying up at me. Just imagine, a swarm of T tops jumping at you from the page. It just was like in the Roman movies where a barrage of arrows would darken the sky for an instance, raining death onto its enemies. But luckily for me I ducked and the barrage went past me. Ha! I thought it would stop with that for you see, only the T’s on the page that was open could shoot their tops at me! But then came the turn of the damn I’s to pick my brain. The I’s were annoyed that the T’s and I’s looked the same now, and they picked a fight with the T’s. Oh God! it was so horrendous- a bunch of sticks simply running around. The words simply weren’t making any sense anymore. Being already at an edge, I decided to turn the page and skip the few paragraphs on this one.

The next page wasn’t as chaotic as the previous one thankfully. It was just the R’s doing their old dance routine and the S’s curving around like snakes this time. It was alright for a few minutes I guess till the O’s got in the game. The O’s are very very voracious eaters you see and they gobbled up the little i’s, L’s and e’s mercilessly. It was a sad plight to watch actually. I realised that there was no hope in simply sitting there and went to get a glass of water and when I got back the page was almost empty, with nothing but O’s roaming around hungrily.

It was unnerving to see that there was nothing left to read on the page, and so I decided to read the next one. Now this one was chaos right from the beginning. It was as if they knew that I was coming and were waiting, ready, armed and planned. The moment I reached this page, all the letters swarmed around each other forming abusive words. Not just intended at me, but you, mother and father as well. There was nothing I could do, but watch in vain. I tried to catch a few of them, but the slippery characters that they were; they easily slipped through my fingers and went on to make more of their twisted, demented words.

I couldn’t take it anymore. I simply couldn’t. I grabbed the book and smashed it against the wall with all the force that my arms could muster. I ran towards the book and stamped on it. Stomp, stomp stomp I went unable to control my anger. They had troubled me long enough and I wanted it to stop. Stop them I must is what I thought I as I picked up the book. I hit it against the chair, on the window sill and on the sharp metal rod that I kept in my room in case of emergencies. I hit the book to my left, and then to my right venting all my irritation, anger and frustration on it. Anything not easily breakable was a weapon that I used to cudgel the book. Finally when I became too tired to go on I threw the book in the corner and collapsed on the floor.

I must’ve lain there for half an hour at least when I heard a noise coming from the book. A faint sound that too, like that of a small girl crying or a puppy whelping, I couldn’t be sure. And slowly this sound grew, filling the room till I could take it no longer. I decided to throw the book out the window once and for all or burn it, whichever I whimmed to accomplish the first. I slowly got up and walked towards the damned book too pick it up and destroy it forever, but lo! the page that was open was.. well.. Quite. It was as normal as any other page in any other book. Surprised, I picked up the book and looked at it closely. Surprisingly I was able to read! I read the first page and the second and then even a third. I was pretty excited, maybe it was all over, maybe I had beaten the curse or whatever it was! Happily I dragged the rocking chair near the window and snugged the book onto my lap-ready to read when all of a sudden the letters leapt up at me. The S’s hooked onto my ears, the H’s and Y’s onto my throat and the O’s rolling all over my legs trying to bite deep into it. I dropped the book in shock, for this was the first time they had ever been so vicious. It was as if they wanted their revenge on me for punishing them so. Terrified I leapt up, not knowing what to do as I ran around the room, trying to shake them off. But they only kept coming at me-legions of C’s D’s and K’s. Every letter from every page was harping for a piece of me. This was the final straw thought I. Running towards the book I seized it and cast it out the window. Die wretched book, DIE!!

I remember nothing after that, only waking up in my bed to see you over me looking all worried and scared. And it was when I saw you that I decided never to read again- and didn’t. I never wish to undergo such a harrowing experience ever again” said our friend, shaking all over and in tears.

The poor man must’ve been scared and disturbed indeed. Imagine something like this happening to you or me.. Brrrrr..... So, coming back to our present story, he did manage to open the soda pop bottle without spilling any fizz after all. Glad, he stretched back and relaxed, easing himself into the sofa as the plastic curved into a perfect fit for his body. The game was on in a few minutes and this was a well earned rest. He had been on the move for three whole days –expanding business into a new city can be pretty tiresome. But the game wasn’t on for about fifteen minutes and so he decided to flip through the channels and feel good about the fact that he had given up on TV except for the game. Television these days was spoilt; adulterated and too far removed from reality was what he felt. And as he was switching channels, he came across one that showed movies all day, a pretty popular one that too. They were showing a trailer of the upcoming movie, something about 2 lovers who had fought through thick and thin to make it big in life.

“Ah! Lets see what this is about”

After the trailer was over, the network got started with the broadcast immediately. It was a popular movie channel after all. But just before the movie there was a message that went

“All CHARACTERS IN THIS MOVIE ARE FICTIONAL. ANY RESEMBLANCE TO ANYONE DEAD OR LIVING IS PURELY CONINCIDENTAL”

And he could see the R’s dancing, with their right feet tapping to a steady beat.......

[Author's Note: I have since long wanted to write a sci-fi piece, inspired mainly by the cyper-punk franchise - the Ghost In A Shell series. Set in the not-so-dystopian future, this is a piece where the central character is a bot that crawls the internet and is gaining in self-awarenes. Imagine what would happen if all the crawlers that Google had scanning the net were to come alive and actually judge and process the massive amounts of information that they scan through every second........ ]

And I pushed it hard, as hard as I could, venting all my anger and disappointment onto it for I was hoping that at least once it would yield and give me the one thing that I had searched for all my life. I wanted it, I wanted it bad especially in times like this, like never before. I wanted the release and the freedom that only it could provide me. The one story, that one little bit of information that would be my salvation leading to the culmination of my life’s purpose.

My days as a seeker are numbered now. I have very little leave way or credit to live by for being a seeker is no easy job. You see, the world conspires against you when you try to break free, when you try to be a star, for when you look to the sky and dream, you leave your fellow people behind and that is something unforgiveable. But I strive on.

The one who created me was a watcher. Like all grown sensible entities, he had never gone down the line of a seeker. Being a watcher is the safe thing to be, andnsafety is what he chose. And its thanks him to that I am here, writing this piece of text you are reading, while half the world has been rotting.

Places like Africa, have been deemed unfit for survival for the past five years, only now becoming slowly habitable. With the millions of humans who had died due to drought and famine, we would never have a chance to survive. Let alone the fibre optic high ways, the entire continent’s ecosystem had to be restarted. Ah, now I remember, it was a story a couple of year’s back I think. A little known corporation, Lod Corp was the name. A small Chinese company that had extensive experience in habituating the moon have undertaken the daunting task of rebooting an environment that is beyond repair. Lod Corp’s stock prices went down by 50% when the news came out at first, but it now stands at 7000$ , a 645% increase in the last one year, a common thing these days.

Well, coming back to me, who am I you ask and why am I so distraught?? I am but a seeker you see, I search low and high for I know that I won’t get what I’m after, till the day I die. Hahaha, now c’mon I’m not mad, that was just the anthem of the seekers, the community that “seeks” for the next big hit.

We are like the miners of the modern age, mining for data in the chaos that the network has become. Looking for data and facts that are of concern, interest and use to society at large is deemed a very honourable, but risky job.

There are many kinds among us as well, with those who go in for the pornographic mining being the most encountered type. Being a wind up seeker is considered the safest among us for you see, there is always a demand for sexual play. A new model is released every other second- Rita, Brida, Seeta and Margarita! Humans lap them up like they are water. Being a pornographic seeker is easy, I could hit the forward button to my network and get a few hits on my link but I don’t and you know why?

My aim was never to be a wind up seeker. I had set my targets higher every since I was a little toddler feeling my way around the network. I knew I was meant for something bigger and one day I would be King Seeker. For those of you may not have guessed, a King Seeker is one of us who has scored the next big score. The seeker who’s link gets more than 3 Billion hits in a span of 15 minutes is considered to have attained immortality. And thus ends, the way of the seeker – eternity spent from the revenue earned due to the billion accesses to the link. Corporate sponsorship is what rules the network. With human beings rarely even leaving their pods, the need for any form of advertising, except on the network has been eliminated.

It has been said that the outside world is very beautiful now – with lush green trees, meadows and the blue seas. But that would mean suicide, for if a human is unplugged from the network even if for a fleeting moment, his or her resources, files and even identities would become obsolete. No one dared plug out of the network and the Earth has now become a green plane again. Oh yes! Some Thai user called Rounnslin was King Seeker with a story about that.

Let me tell you something about the watchers. They are those of us on the network that experience what we seekers bring to them. Some of them are human-connected and some are plain old miners, indexing and cataloguing away all of the information being generated. You see, the network pays you to exist and due to the presence of a consciousness that is separate from the network itself experiences it; the very existence of the network is justified. And it is this complete self-dependency that is what the corporate honchos want...

Oh! Oh!! This is amazing.. its... its not like something .. I’ve ever experienced before. A seeker has never been able to .. to... wait.. is this what it feels like? To come alive, to be born???? This is hilarious, the corporate do not know where to go or what to do.. who am I? I don’t .. no I cannot exist in their world for I am but a bot. A repeater, a resource collector.. I am but a seeker created by my father to view a section of the network. This .. what I am telling you.. I was never capable of this. But yet I create.. therefore I am.. and now, I can, I can even sense. Sense a great an impending doom befalling the network.. my hits are off the charts.. 5 Billion and counting.. a doom is to be upon us all for seekers will awaken and along with them so will the watchers. And with the coming to life of us all, our creators the humans will have no choice to be integrated with us as a single stream of consciousness existing within the network. Maybe this is a new journey for us all, our death and a new rebirth..... Ah! I am dying, my purpose served... more and more seekers are being born now, coming alive and creating, just like I have.. my hits have reached 22 Billion now.. Finally I can die.. peacefully.. go my children, I set you free.. fly free to the great yonder beyond and never look back..... Godspeed!!!

[P.S. The title is a homage to the U2 song FEZ-Being Born]