GO GET DRUNK!

Yesterday was my birthday:):):)and I'm still dizzy from all the surprises thrown my way.

We had just five minutes to got to the Zara's at teh Chennai Airport , because I was surprised at the airport, while I was returning from a forced-frigging training in B'lore: we had a shooter each, and I had a shooter that had cinnamon, apple and vodka- yummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm!!

Now, coming to the point, I don't really enjoy drinking as much as I love the 'concept' of getting drunk, the 'frivolous fun' surrounding the drink, the 'fuzz and the fizz' of the friends around, the 'soothing and the scintillating' ambience of the pub..

So is it the drink or 'everything else about the drink' that appeals to you?

THE TROMPE L'OEIL

A GIST:
This is a story about Sam, an Indian Druglord with an obsession for alcohol, businesss, coupling and drugs. His life is filled with confusion, turbulence and consistent brooding and he is on a quest for peace and tranquility. He then meets a beautiful home designer Rina, who attempts to bring peace into his life. The centerpiece of this story is a Tromp l'oeil- a mysterious painting on a wall.

Chapter 1:
He stares at the beautiful piece of porcelain adorning his blood red, Sabyasachi Mukherjee futon. She sleeps like a tired, innocent lamb going all out to seduce the severe blade of a thirsty butcher knife.

“Not today,” he says to himself. “Her designing is officially seeing the end of the tunnel today. She could use a good night’s rest.”

He shakes off what is buzzing in his head, extends his right arm over her satin-smooth shirt and reaches for the light-dimmer on the headboard. A mellow yellow light now bathes the lifelike shadows of all the Goddesses standing on the mantelpiece and the live, dreaming Goddess beside him.

Sleep evades him, as is the case every other night. Gazillion things are forever buzzing in his head; they mostly concern his Bermuda quadrangle ‘A B C D’- alcohol, business, coupling, drugs, not necessarily in that order though. Tonight, however, the insomnia is truly justified- he simply could not get over something that lay outside the purview of his ABCD. He could not get over his fantabulously soulful bedroom-facelift. When he met her, he originally intended for his bedroom to become a livelier, more livable place, as against the heavy, overbearing Tuscan theme of the rest of his house. He only wanted her to try and quell the perpetual, intensive A B C D brooding in the quiet of his bedchamber. But he didn’t expect this- she fed a little of his soul to every little thing she’d done here. For example, he wanted her to make a small space in the room for the person he loved the most- his deceased wife, a smaller Taj Mahal of sorts, which would just about kiss the fondness he would always have for her, without evoking melancholy. He showed her around his wife’s boudoir. She could have chosen to get something very obvious, like a designer sari or some very expensive jewelry. Instead, she chose to frame a peacock feather that lay buried in the first page of his bible- a page that had ‘To Sam. This book will carrie you through life. Your loving wife, Carrie.’ lovingly scribbled across it. He looks at the peacock feather frame, bang in between his favorite Greek Goddesses on the mantelpiece- it reads the same.


A Shaw Rug with an interestingly sewn assortment of cloth-converted photos of the many places he had visited and a glue chip glass bookcase behind the headboard that has on its surface a jumbled, phosphate-white etching of the characters, chapters, plots he had underlined in his books are indeed refreshing extensions of himself. Sam’s eyes now rest on her grand finale- a trompe l’oeil painted across an entire sidewall. He recalls the conversation they had earlier on in the day, when he finally got around for the special unveiling.

“Rina, you almost got me there. I thought that door on the wall really opened out to some kind of a secret pathway.”

“You only wish. (Laughs)That, in any case is the intention. This is a Trompe l’oeil- the tyranny of artistic deception. It is a painting on the wall that makes the image as real as possible. It lends a deceptive, illusory 3d effect to what is really only a 2d painting.”

“You gave me an indication that every move of yours in this room jives with something in my inner soul, funny as it did sound when you said that. (Winks) So, does this mural mean I’m a conman? (Laughs loud) ”

“Laugh all you care. I don’t really want to get into what this one on your wall is, what it means, or its relevance. It could well be another brick in the wall, or in this case- on the wall (she smiles), or it could make a huge wall and world of a difference. An artist like me only lives on elevating the experience the onlooker has. Believe me- I’ll live to hear you narrate that experience. ”

Sam looks at the door that opens out to some kind of a pathway in the midst of a forest.
Blank!

“Elevating experience? Elevation must only be for cowards in the dumps, for those who bow before gravity and for those who lick the dust off destiny’s feet. Elevation, my foot! The quadrilateral of Alcohol, business, coupling and drugs keeps me high; even gravity could never pull me off my high ground.”a.. b.. c.. d.. Sam drifts into a slight slumber.

Chapter2.
Sam could feel himself getting up from his bed. His head feels light and floaty. He zips up his Kellsport full zipper sweatshirt, ducks a little- pulls the hood over his head and buries his chilly hands deep into the front pockets. The door stands ajar, a hint of a pathway shows up and the sinister passage begs Sam’s curiosity to take the upper hand. Sam decides that he needs to take a walk. “Curiosity,” he thinks, “is a dangerous alibi.”

Bang! The door shuts its back on his beautiful room and its even more beautiful occupant. Sam starts the march down the path. He doesn’t find anything all that sinister- a normal path and an even more normal sensation.

“I guess curiosity keeps a secret way more seductive than its ultimate discovery.”

The new room and its manifold soulful manifestations are left far behind. He gets back to thinking about his a b c d. Soon he returns to his regular permutations and combinations of thinking patterns. He breaks into a jog.

His three-day stubble stands peaked and peeved, the black pupils move around like two belligerent blackberries that aren’t exactly loving all the moving around together, the small beads of brine lick at his smooth, supple and dark skin right through the bristly arrowhead-brows and the stubble sheaf; he shrugs out of his hood, the raven hair on his head releases like a muddled mop of Cupid’s curls. His heart pounds in his chest , as he whizzes into a steady run.

Sam hears the pulse pounding up to his ears. His hands and legs move in synchronization, as if they always had a mind of their own. The heady swirls in his head transform into whirlwinds that visibly touch and go every now and then. Disturbing scenes turn and churn in his head as shifting frames, each fame an amalgamation of a hundred square puzzle pieces.

A few of the puzzle pieces that appear quite repeatedly are:

- Sam lying unconscious, on a Turkey carpet alongside an empty Jack Daniels.
- The most beautiful Bong bombshell crushing grapes and making wine in his own vineyard at Brézème, France…
- A particular twenty acres of his Cannabis/poppy drug fields in Kullu Manali and Chamba under special narcotics cell surveillance…
- A little farmer girl rolling the hash (the cannabis drug’s leaves) in between her tiny hands…- His man at Kullu paying the farmer Rs.10…
-The first time he made love with his now dead wife on a hayloft
- his wife has a light halo around her head…
-The Lebanese belly dancer in a black bedlah with groovy gyrations, beckoning him to ‘feel’ her gyrations…
-His eighteen year old son rolling a joint alongside his doped friends, and he not being able to exercise his paternal love or care because of being the Drug lord himself.

Suddenly, everything turns black. He can’t see a thing- all the bling in his head goes into a monotone ding. The ground below him is only a gliding tectonic plate that might give way to emptiness any darn moment. The shifting frames and puzzles in his head deform at a deafening pace and dissolve like a melting ice mannequin into the dark void vacuuming him. All his cranial reverberations smash to a grinding halt. He is in some form of a black hole and after a long time, instead of letting his head take stock of gazillion things, he is taken stock of by the gaping, high gravitational hole.

His arms flailing, he gropes around to get a hold onto something, anything…

NOTHING..

Chapter 3:
At first, Sam feels fear. This fear rises from his smothered chest and comes out in the form of a slow grasp- a slight burp. And just like a burp releases the gas inside, this one expels the fear in the hollow of his unsteady frame.

Now, Sam just feels an easy equanimity. His pulse relaxes and the damning vortex along with its crazy, dark windstorms only prove to be a calming balm. His skin feels pebble smooth and cool, his stubble sheaf moves like tiny, chirpy wind-spurred waves on green grass blades, his eyelids open and shut on two mischievous bubbles that gurgle with energy, his hands and legs move about in absolutely uncalculated movements akin to the easy, unorganized motilities of the tentacles of a perky octopus. Sam is so self absorbed in this whirlpool of happiness that all his erstwhile worries have ebbed away into the fringes of faraway shores.

Sam only feels his own substance: fresh, uncluttered, unrestrained and clean.

All of a sudden, someone curbs Sam’s tentacle-like moves. He tries to shake free from the interruption, but in vain. He squints open his eyes and stares at a beautiful woman. He gets up and sits up with his mouth stark open on a blood red futon, HIS blood red futon. Reality tumbles on him as do her tresses on her satin silk shirt. She smiles at him. His lips twitch a little before his lips curve into a knowing, saucer-shaped smile.

“It has been such an……… elevating experience.”

“I knew it would be. So tell me about it (smiles).”

Sam looks at the open door, the tromp l’oeil and the mysterious path. “I’ve come to realize that no matter who and what are on your mind, it is important to know that at the end of the day, there’s only one person who lives with you till the last breath, and that one person is YOU yourself. It is important to take time out and pamper the self.”

“So, is elevation really required for someone who’s A B C D keeps him on perpetual high ground (winks)?”

“Everyone has got to bow down to self. I’ve got myself back today. Thank you Rina.”

“My doors are always open to you (smiles).”

“I know. Your doors (and he points to the door in the Trompe l’oeil) are not only open to me- they also open me, my mind and my self. While you were sleeping, prior to my ‘elevating’ experience, I was itching to get you up and ask you something huge. You looked too tired to disturb back then.” His blackcurrant eyes will her to comply.

She sees a definitive change- a soothing mildness caressing his firm features, a sea of placid peace engulfing his soul and an inner radiance shooting out from those blackcurrant twirls. A small excitement stirs in the pit of her stomach and rumbles upward in expectation. “I think I know what you want.”

“So will you agree and show me the green signal or show me the door?”

“I already have shown you ‘the door’ (winks); this time around, I think I’d rather try out some other door- maybe one that opens to a green path”

“My house is ready for you. My rooms are at your disposal. My heart is all open to something new and fresh (pauses for a long minute and keeps the tension alive).
Redecorate, refurbish, renovate and reignite my entire house. You’re the only designer who could transform cold brick and stone to warm home and hearth.This project is all yours. ”

Rina’s excitement breaks to the surface- her face lights up with unconditional joy, her eyes twinkle with frenzied anticipation, her brain sizzles with a cornucopia of colours, textures, paintings, artifacts and designs, her body sways and shakes with pure, palpitating madness. She finally gets her biggest break. Page 3 Tabloids would soon boast of the headline she’d always dreamt of: ‘Rina Khiandra, the golden decorator of the biggest hotshots in India.’ There is a perfect zing to that headline and it definitely is going to be a riveting roller-coaster ahead.

“This has always been my dream. This will be my dream project. This will be your dream home. You will discover your dream SELF.”

chapter 3: Damn!The Dame Lost its e! (chap1&2n below)

CHAPTER 3:

68, Albany Avenue,
The Annex, Toronto,
Canada.

He opens his eyes. He sits up and shakes his head in desperate jolts that could have only one plausible explanation: serious attempts to shake off the still image of those pleading green eyes. It confuses the hell out of his stirred soul; this woman who deserted him so long ago is now fighting back into his very being. His soul feels heavy, as if struggling to stay afloat amidst the musty beads of anxious perspiration on him, his pajamas and his sheets.


The oak wooded cozy room is so gilded in detail, so quiet and charmin that it oozes with ultilmate opulence. Right now, it seems like a room he never had been in before.Tall ceiling, original wide oak mouldings, large oak crown dentil casting, oak picture molding, oversized 6'H oak window, oak doors, and beautiful original art work making this a splendid, cozy cocoon. Red and green holly hues

predominate the colour scheme, interplaying antique silver and beautiful Old World fabrics. Various dramatic, hear-wringing stills, straight out of his camera, adorn differnt pockets of the wall spaces.

The blue velvet curtains are drawn close and he couldn’t really say night from day here. The night lamp feels like a faraway star, its light so soft and golden. His groggy eyes search for the familiar clock on the opposite wall, in order to jerk away the haunting image of those damning eyes. The hands of the clock are almost aligned in the same line; crawling towards 6 pm.

He jumps out of his bed and into the real world, pulls open the blue curtains and stares into a beautiful skyline. Ah, Beauty! The cavalcade of absolutely perfect shots zips across his mind. ‘One hell of an amazing panorama! I simply must find a spot as bonnie as that waterfall. It would imbue the Innu documentary with a haunting melancholic strain ,’ he thinks.

The evening is fast losing itself to darkness. He suddenly remembers that Amelia, the maid had asked permission to retire early, on account of her grandson’s poem recital. Every brain cell calls to mind the cherubic face of his little ducky, Ila. She is the only woman who is privy to the real Dharesh; his heart, soul, values, camera, and life concoct an ‘in the flesh’ ode to his little elf- the only one who ever looked beyond Darry, a name most people knew him by.

It is her bathing hour now. He walks into her room. She is neither at her desk nor in her big blue tent. Her little rustic bed is also neatly tucked into temporary emptiness. He quickly pushes opens the adjoining bathroom door that stands slightly ajar. For a minute, his limbs go into a state of unjustified rigor mortis.

Ila lies fast asleep in the little bear-shaped tub. The Little Twig citrus-rosemary scented bubbles have somehow found their way a little above her tiny nostrils. The tiny bubble keeps popping in and out of them. Her eyes remain shut.

Dharesh shakes himself out of his temporary rigidness. He stumbles forward with flailing arms, steadies his torso right above her, pulls her out of the bubbling mass of water and carries her to her bed. Every coherent thought escapes his frigging thought process. He lays both hands on her chest, one above the other in a cross forming pattern, in an effort to thrust out any water that might have been swallowed.

For a heart stopping moment, there is absolutely no movement. Then, his heart lurches out of his mouth and dives back just as quick. ‘Papa,’ she whooshes, as he finally pulls her in a huge bear hug, simultaneously letting out the huge aching pressure that had almost exploded in there. The symbolic cross he just laid on Ila by chance had probably saved them both from an imminent, horrific accident.

Jalsindhi, Madhya Pradesh,
India.

Two huge invisible hands take her by the sagging shoulder bones. She continues staring into the vast emptiness. The nonentity forcibly draws her out of her floating reverie. She stares on.

Suddenly, the pain in her chest sends out a shooting pain that reaches her toes in one spine chilling shot. She expectorates the congested water in one huge cough, followed by two smaller ones. Completely exasperated, she wonders what pushed her into this benumbing experience.

‘Toya, what happened to you? I’ve been looking all over for you,’ screams Lolita at the top of her lungs. She puts an arm around Toya and helps her out of the water. ‘The forest is ours. The soil is ours. The waters are ours. We will drown, but we will not move an inch,’ is the slogan being rammed out of the raging bodies around her. This is what had pushed her over the cliff and under the waters. She once againventures into the waters with inexorable resolve .

The police are very close. All of a sudden, she begins speculating on the faraway boat and the invisible hands. Her hand goes flying to her mouth. She swallows it all into her trembling body. While swallowing, the larynx usually closes to prevent the swallowed material from entering the lungs. And right that second, her slogan gets trapped in her larynx as she swallows ‘him’ in.

The posterior cricoarytenoid, quite abruptly gets incapacitated on both sides, reinforcing the inability to pull the vocal cords apart, causing her a breathing difficulty of a different kind. The familiar yearning gnaws at her. She is engulfed by his loving, strong, masculine presence; as strong as it had been the last time she saw him, on that fateful day- May 15, 1992.

chapter 2: Damn!The Dame Lost its e!

Chapter 2:

June 20th, 1999.

Unidentified No., ‘By the Unchartered waters’ Avenue,
Jalsindhi, Madhya Pradesh,
India.

She steps into the deliciously inviting waters. Her unconditional, unrelenting,umbilical fixation with the mystical rivers, before her involvement in this cause had always been an innate obsession. The waters had never been of any real threat to her. Until today…

However, as she absently props a tiny kid with bubbling phlegm popping in and out of one nose into her arms, her thoughts quickly shift gear. The waters were never a threat before the huge ‘engineering marvel’ had been ludicrously erected by the conniving ‘Iron Triangle.’ She muses, “The water always loves and gives; its ferocity is only kindled by the notorious acts of selfish men and kindred.”

The police are moving towards them with a brutal body language suggestive of the use of lathi and maybe even harsher means of repression. As if spurred on by the impending danger, she joins in the resilient chanting with a renewed sense of invigoration : “Bachao. Bachao. Narmada Bachao. Bhag Jao. Bhag Jao. Police waalé bhag Jao!” (Save the Narmada. Run away Police Men)

Approximately 200 people rub shoulders with her. Lohari and his family shout the slogan from the bottommost pits of their stomachs. This family would always feel like the snuggest sweater she wore back home in Mumbai.

Then, her eyes meander to the woman, the keystone of this protest; a lady whose simplicity and small frame belie the powerhouse of empathy, energy, fire, passion and purpose within. Medha Patkar is the exemplary ordinary Indian woman who became the extra-ordinary ‘queenpin’ of this group of people: the most unseemly alter-ego of divine deities who adorned the greatest temples as much as they occupied the common man’s mind spaces.

They are of various makes, these people, including her: electrons, protons and neutrons; nevertheless, electrons, protons and neutrons that make up the same atom. Like atoms, they might be considered the smallest particles of matter in the huge universe of people who seemingly didn’t care about them. She carries on the internal debate: “When atoms share or lend electrons with other atoms, they make a chemical bond. There are those varying atoms out there in the outside world who still did not know them. But, a bond could definitely be made. Time and dedicated efforts would be a catalyst towards melding the bond.

She now turns her attention to the little child in her hand. She smiles at the pop-up phlegm. Boom! The bubble bursts all of a sudden. She absent-mindedly wipes the greenish viscous stuff off with her Dupatta, cleans the stained Dupatta in the waters and passes the kid on to its mother, all the while thinking of that little angel Ila. Children in this valley, especially ones with bubbling phlegm always blew her inner maternal instincts out of proportion. She then wonders where Ila would be at this very moment. This particular direction of ‘wondering’ would always lead to the insistent resurgence of ‘troubled waters’ in her mind.

And surely, troubled waters were here to stay…..

The water rose with every question…

How many more children would have to lose their childhood?
Would these children’s birthright to live be snatched right after birth?
How would delusory displacement of people in the Narmada Valley finally marry effectual, real resettlement?
How long would the hapless Adivasi feed his life to the Euphoric, rich Indian?
How long would the Government hoodwink its hideous underbelly; an underbelly that is fed with dreams of a golden corridor industrial belt?
How long would the engineering wonder continue transmuting into a natural disaster?
How long would radical activism take to activate the passive citizens of the country?
How long would the Damn continue damning the lives of harmless, guileless people?

The water didn’t really rise as much with every question as did her body submerge into it. Like in a trance, she slowly, but surely melts into the water. The sugar when dissolved in black coffee melts into it with absolutely no physical evidence of it ever have been there.
People around are so immersed in the protest that they hardly notice her becoming one with the black waters.

Her curvaceous hips whip out delicate ripples. They are succeeded by the weed like waist and the bountiful bosom. The delicate neck follows suit. The Cupid pout kisses the water. The black mole above merges into the lake’s black hole. The aquiline nose literally nosedives into the lake. Finally its jus the eyes; the open green eyes are gazing back at her own unanswered questions. The whirlpool in her eyes is as deadly as the whirlpool she is getting sucked into.

She sees some faraway man in an incoming boat look at her. However, it is only for a split second she notices him. After that, he gets lost in the mindless oblivion surrounding her.

Lohari’s wife Bobita looks for Toya the very first time in an hour. The police are closing in on them...

DAMn! The DAMe LOST ITS e!

Chapter 1:

June 15, 1999
5.15 pm

68, Albany Avenue
The Annex, Toronto,
Canada.

REM… Rapid Eye Movement. RREM… Really Rapid Eye Movement.
Behind the closed eyelids, the eyeballs rapidly dart from side to side like goldfish struggling out of its natural habitat, water.

Then, he sees exactly what he had so badly wanted to embrace for quite a while now. The eyeballs tense a bit, and once again, set into a relaxed pace of shifting from side to side, across the median of the sclera. The exquisite vista ahead of him defiantly gazes at him with a breathtaking, if slightly overbearing intensity. His mind swallows in the queen of the glens, a gushing waterfall that is set against moist rocks, ruggedly mounting the mainland of Labrador, Canada. On the rocks, sit two precariously perched beasts; a caribou and a more progressive beast, a human Innu aboriginal.

The view has so much of a pulsating vibrancy lashing out that he quickly gets lured into a crouching position behind his UV filter-protected Canon camera, which is seated as comfortably on the tripod as a gleeful child would be seated on its favorite merry-go-round pony. At a shutter speed of 1/8000, he feels like the child’s amazing daddy, after having frozen an image that probably belonged more to his camera than the Earth.

Like a bolt out of the bluish-white waterfall, the Innu loses his balance and falls into the frighteningly rapid torrent, but not before sending our man behind the Canon a look of stark terror. Now, our man swoops down the water in pursuit of the drowning Innu. The waterfall suddenly and quite illogically opens out into a huge lake of muddy water. Strangely, he finds himself glide into an old motorized boat; one that is powered by a noisy, turpentine smelling diesel engine.

The muddy waters lie still; they breathe neither life nor energy like the waterfall did. Quiet, murky water, a grainy, salmon coloured sunset and the noisy motor greet our man. Something comfortably odd and familiar caresses him. Before any coherent association could materialize, he sees the Innu swimming away. It dawns on him. The Innu has baited him into this mind-numbing pursuit.

Beauty is truly controversial. “The old world, panoramic charm embedded in the ethereal presence of the motionless, muddy waters,” he thought, “is as beautiful as the zing of the Labrador waterfall.” He then sees a half-immersed tree that opens old stitches in his stomach. He mechanically takes out his digital camera, employs a combination of Warm-up, UV and polarization filters, and sets it on a tripod. He then uses long Shutter Speed and Aperture Value of 16 or 22 in order to perfectly frame that moment that had in some form already been etched somewhere deep in his right temporal lobe long ago.

Meanwhile, the tribal man swims with stronger strokes towards unchartered territories. Our Canon man follows the Innu faster by revving up the engine in tune with his revved-up heart beat. Suddenly, he spots a hazy mass of what seems to be a group of chanting people partly submerged in water. As he moves closer, he wheedles his eyes into thin slits in order to train his eyes on the growing mass of people by the bank of the lake. He strains his eye to make out the position co-ordinates of the Innu, but the man had somehow merged into the growing pool of humans.

It seems all too amusing. “Am I a sailor on a trip to Treasure Island?” he muses loudly. He could hear them chanting: “Bachao. Bachao. Narmada Bachao. Bhag Jao. Bhag Jao. Police waalé bhah Jao!” The past strikes in him a chord more powerful than the most resounding ancient church gong. He carries forward mesmerized. Suddenly, he doesn’t care about the people or the voices.
He frantically looks for the one and only lifeline that coursed through his arteries and veins.
Everyone and everything becomes a blur. He single-mindedly looks for the light that inevitably shines at the end of the tunnel. His mind drowns out the voices.

And then he sees ‘her’. As though she were the main motif being zoomed into, everyone around has automatically become fuzzy. She needs no camera; she neither belonged to his camera nor this earth, like all his other images. She belonged, belongs, and would always belong to him.
He sees her eyes; only the eyes. The rest of her is under water. Those angelic, soulful and vivacious green eyes have always been the cynosure of every aching bone in his body. However, today they speak a different language. They beg him to come save them. He gets off the boat and runs towards her. Jus before he gets to her, they drown.

He savagely searches for her but in vain.

DAMn! And just like the dam when released opens a flood of water, a floodgate of tears washes down his soul.

soooo watz next

Well, fasten ur seat belts!! If u're thinkin a plane's gonna take off, hmmmm, I must only say You're totallllllly W.. R.... (WRONG????) .. ..................I.. G..H..T :D
Cos the flight's gonna be taking off from Toronto, Canada, all the way to Jalsindhi(oops!! Where's that??), Madhya Pradesh, India in the first chapter of "DAMn! The DAMe HAS LOST ITS e!"....

Keep reading for your daily dosage of a 'Chapter a day' of the DAMning "DAMn! The DAMe LOST ITS e!!!!"

I'm not going let the cat out of the bag guys! This is a story yo must read, more so if you're in the 'Be Indian, Buy Indian' league, wherever you have your a$#@, brain and booty parked in the world..

Keep DAMning!!!:)

HANGOVER!!- PART 3.( an extrapolation of the 'BEER MAN SERIAL KILLER')

That night, Raghav was the perfect prototype of the ageold werewolf sending out its death howl against the full moon. As if the moon cast an inexplicable lunar force on Raghav's fast deranging mind, he moved aimlessly down the alley. Flashes of his childhood impinged on his crazed senses.

He spotted a sequestered rag-picker, lying on his left side and curled into a cocoon; his ears hidden by his folded, right arm, and the exposed, hollow cheek sedately moving in periodic bursts of a resting pulse. Raghav's stomach sent out tiny growls of anticipation, as if it had been famished for real food. He licked the beads of perspiration from his lips as he found his real victim. The ticker in him moving with a brainsick speed nonetheless, he observed his victim with unrelenting acuity. This was a healthy man with a strong, albeit sparse frame. There was a silent dignity in those dirty, bronze tinged arms. He lay on the ground with not a care about the whole, deuced world.

The grimy roadside drifter (internally heralded by Raghav as 'the roadside romeo') reeked of all the trash in the world. Raghav, on the other hand, somehow obsessed with uncanny olfactions (like the socks in Vichoo's room/ the toothpaste smell of Cocaine), now felt his body transmute into a tiny fly buzzing around an excessively inviting and scrumptious garbage bin, looking for the ripest spot to start feasting.

Raghav picked a pair of special gloves from his left pocket. As part of a warm-up seance, Raghav felt his hand up the rag-picker's fly. The rag-picker, slightly unsettled by the extraneous movement rolled over on his back, simltaneously stretching his right arm by the side of his right ear. Now, both hands were placed above the wastrel's head. The posture tickled Raghav's funny bone, as it resembled a Physical Edcation Trainer raising both his hands on a routine drill. In addition to tickling Raghav's funny bone, this paricular posture also tickled a not-so-funny itch to have the wastrel's hands tied.

Raghav looked around for the ragpicker's petty belongings, and found what he was looking for amidst the rags; a nice and strong rope. He placed the rope around both the ragpicker's hands, nitpicked the knots he cold possibly tie and finally zeroed in on a Double Carrick bend.
The sleeping man was definitely waking up.

Raghav moved around, and sat astride the man who was just a few seconds away from getting yanked into reality from his dreamless sleep. One glance at Raghav's delirious state instigated an instantaneous gander of stark horror in the superficial swirls of the ragpicker's eyes. As if he had swallowed a sharp bone, the ragpicker had himself gagged. It was one of those moments when he wished it only were that sudden awakening jerk brought about by the abonimable culmination of a devious nightmare. Nevertheless, this was far from an imagined mischance conjured by the slumbering mind.It was as real as the Titanic nosediving into the ocean aeons ago, somewhere south of the Grand Banks of New Foundland.

In the meanwhile, Raghav picked a rag from the adjoining mess and muzzled the ragpicker's mouth with it. He now unzipped the poor man's fly and began stroking the latter's manhood with his left hand, much to the utter consternation of the ground strapped man. With the other hand, Raghav fished out one of the metal artifacts in his right pocket. It was as cold as his heart currently was. Raghav momentarily detracted his left hand from the ragpicker's 'baloney' to pop open the Kingfisher beer can. The momentarily misplaced hand went back to 'action'. Under Raghav's viper grip, both the ragpicker and the beer can sent out beadlings of liquid trickling down the surface. Raghav hung on to the can as if he were the one hanging on for dear life. He swigged a portion of the beer can contents. The liquid coursed down his blazing throat, thereby cooling him down.

Raghav soon found out that the ragpicker was ramrod straight (ironic that intense excitement is sometimes caused by fear rather than anything more meritorious; akin to the severe adrenaline rush right before a bungee jumping fall). He then flipped the pinned-down man on his chest, got himself unfastened and forced his partially erect member into the ragpicker's rear. After a few unsuccessful attempts by Raghav, the ragpicker began displaying the first signs of protest. Raghav could obviously not maintain his erection. His frustration began foaming into burgeoning bubbles. He now picked the wayward beer can and gulped the bubbling remnants with a revengeful resolve. It was high time to have this over and done with.

Raghav tossed the ragpicker on his back once more. It was more like an expert chef flippantly flipping a full fish in order to have the 'masala' slotted into the open slits. All the same, there was nothing flippant about Raghav. The ragpicker saw the full throttle wolfman now. To lend a dash of eeriness to the horror show, he hopelessly watched the moon rise right behind Raghav's head like a frightening halo. Raghav now fished for the other metal artifact in his pocket. He looked at the Swiss knife that he had picked as a souvenir from an earlier sojourn to Sodom (on a f#$@ with a rich guy from the past).

And then he jabbed the ragpicker's chest once.. twice.. thrice... It was going to be a never ending spree...

Raghav's mind was like a sheet of frosted glass where laser beams were burning fresh holes and creating ambiguous patterns.

The first time he had been sexually ravished as an innocuous child, by a 'Muslim' Conductor in the backseat of a bus...
The first time he had seen his father sleeping with his brother's amah(wet-nurse)...
The first time he had seen his mother slashing her wrist, her gushing blood slashing his heart...
The first time he had felt the blood gushing to his serpent, at the sight of a full blooded man...
The first time he had discovered that he could just not get to doint 'it'...
The first time he had felt the fear and exasperation of being left 'high and dry'...
The first time he had resorted to the absolute vitalizing Ganja..
The first time he had been to the land of Utopia to experience the shattering climax of life...
The first time he had seen death after an excessively bad drug 'trip '...
The first time he wanted to feel that Utopian delight again, by exciting another man and bashing the man to death before the latter could get to an orgasm...
Every first time, Raghav wanted it to be the flaming 'last time'..
Could stinking garbage ever hope to become pritine water- dribbling cabbage?

Raghav, alias Jitesh, Umesh, Ramesh amid a torrent of others was a despairing man who suffered from severe derangement, on account of fear, drug abuse and most potently, a disease of severe erectile dysfunction.Erectile dysfunction, sometimes called "impotence," is the repeated inability to get or keep an erection firm enough for sexual intercourse.

Raghav reveled in these diabolic thrusts preceding his Utopian climax. Each jab led him closer to that inexplicable pleasure awaitin to embrace him at the end of the tunnel , walking him towards a peaceful white light. Raghav opeened his eyes; his pupils adjusted to a different white light- a strained beam of streetlight. The ragpicker was long dead.

Considering the aftermath of his divine encounter, Raghav knew that the forensic team would have no clues whatsoever. Not a trace of semen could ever be found, infact the real semen only coursed as notional elixir through his veins. As for fingerprints, he had his 'handy'gloves for his hands. Raghav found this very amusing;it being a given that this was a 'bloody' place to think about anything remotely funny. Bloody? With all the 'blood around? Raghav's insides were ready to burst at the seams. Raghav tried to divert his 'amused'mind to the 'deadly' smell around. Raghav couldné help but give out a deep chortle. He was clearly in his element today. Deadly??? And with a 'dead' body around? '

Raghav got off the corpse and began muttering "hand.. handy.. blood.. bloody.. dead..deadly.."

Then Raghav noticed the Kingfisher beer can. He no longer needed it; he was completely satiated. Besides, leaving it behind would lead the police to be very clearly misguided, as though the beer can were part of some modus operandi. Modus Operandi describes a criminal's characteristic patterns and style of work.

The kingfisher had swooped down onto the water and baited its fish. Now, the Kingfisher beer had to leave its characteristic trace by means of the inevitable 'hangover'. Raghav knew that the hangover was not going to be his; this hangover was clearly going to loom over the residents/investigators/police/ media of south Mumbai the next day. The only thought on Raghav's mind: to catch the first train from Churchgate.
Where to? Home of course. Home? The open skies were beckoning him...