Morgue (Chapter 1)
Posted on January 23rd, 2006 in Fiction | No Comments »
This world is a Morgue, we all dead bodies. We do not exist. We tread these forsaken paths carrying these lifeless corpses and many unfathomable burdens on these shoulders. We yield to a proud life, ignorant of the truth – the truth that has seldom been told. I am alive not because I breathe, I think, I feel. I am alive because I can lie, I can pretend, I can deceive. The dead are too honest; they almost always speak the truth. I am alive for sure, but I am not living.
I have, for long, pondered over this question. What does it mean to be alive? How do I really differentiate between Life and Death? To me, death is as imposing as life and though I might not be able to explain life to you, I can very well describe death – the obvious, predetermined end of every creation. But then, don’t they say that we all pass on to some other world from this, after death. The Soul of the Earth, they say, remains the same. Some one else is born at our cost. The whole always remaining a constant. It always reminds me of Energy. Energy changes its form. However, the whole always remains a constant. Energy, just like Soul, can neither be created nor destroyed.
Medicinal sciences tell me, I am alive till the time my brain is working and keeps issuing orders to all of my organs; irrespective of whether they are alive or not. However, if my brain stops working, while all other organs keep working, am I alive or dead? What would lack in me in such a state would be rational thinking. Hence, at times I comprehend that Rationality is life. But then I contradict myself. I know numerous people who are alive, but certainly not rational. How do I, then, really differentiate between Life and Death? To this, I have not found an answer, yet.
Being oblivious to the very affairs of the world is a wrong thing for a man to do. It almost turns him into an invalid. But, what can a man do in this regard if he is preoccupied, his mind a hive of queries. He must be excused. I have dedicated my life to the study of life in all its forms and so I hardly have any time left for worldly affairs. Be it studies, sports, entertainment, I consider them all as means to attain the untold truth. Hence, I must be excused too. I spend my precious time in dialogues with the self. I try to understand my self. I have heard them say, Within the Self lies the whole Creation. Thus, comprehension of the self is very important, or so I perceive. But, I am not a lunatic. I seek people, wise men, who can satisfy my curiosity. But, all I have managed to learn is that Curiosity is a Sin. No one could tell me, answer me, and satisfy me. I am still thirsty and the Sea of Truth still evades me.
My friends have taken a special interest in mocking me. They deem it their rightful duty to instill some common sense into me. “It seems you have just landed from Neptune, Ram.” They usually tell me. “Trust me, Ram. You are One Hundred Percent alive and there is no threat to you that will push you into the nether. So, stop worrying about death. OK?” said Mohit on a fine Sunday morning. But they don’t understand. I am not preparing for a quiz show or I am not writing a research paper on the issues of Life and Death. I don’t think I would like to take up the career of a Swami or a Preacher and give religious sermons about Life and Death. It is just that every morning when I wake up to a crimson sky, I wonder what it means to see this splendid sight. Whenever I think about the way I live, I also think that there are a million other lives going on with mine at the very moment. Some one would be happy at this very moment, some one must be crying. Some on has just been born and some one just died.
They tell me, many animals can’t see color. For them the world is Grey-scale. They tell me, the sky is blue because blue light is the one that is reflected the most. They also tell me that the colors that we see are just what we perceive. Some cells in my retina or my brain or my cornea (I don’t know, I am not a doctor) could have been faulty and then I would have seen red as green, green as black and black as god knows what, and I would have assumed it to be the true color of the object. I could have been color blind. Therefore, what I see does not depend on the object and its real attributes but on how I process that information. The revelation stunned me.
Once, I watched the movie ‘Men in Black’ with my friends. The idea that the world is full of aliens disguised in human form fascinated me. In fact, I was so fascinated with the idea, that I once spent an entire afternoon checking the skulls of my sleeping friends, expecting at least one of them to open up and expose an alien in hiding. Raj, who was fast asleep, dreamt of a thug mugging him and in reality, it was me checking his skull. He was so alarmed he slapped me before he jumped onto his feet and became aware of the reality.
“What the hell were you doing?” he questioned me. I had realized what a stupid thing I had been doing. I started thinking of some excuse – there was a king Cobra, hooded, on your head. No, that wont do, too much of exaggeration. Raj knew, seeing a cobra would make me flee not wrestle with it. Hmm… I was just swatting flies. Nope, you don’t knock the skull while swatting flies. Raj had me cornered that day and like all other fateful days, those that I always repent, I decided that ‘Honesty is the best Policy’ and I told him the truth. I still remember how his face changed textures. He was first stunned, then shocked and then… he rolled over laughing. I knew I had been stupid but being laughed at, in such manner, was something I despised.
“Knock it off, will you?” I retorted.
“Oh sure, why not?” he said, surprisingly, straightening up.
“Well, don’t you understand Ram, that’s just a movie – a science FICTION?” He laid so much emphasis on the last word that I branded almost every movie as a work of fiction only for about a week.
“Now, don’t you go babbling about it, please?” The last word had a lot of effort into it. I would not have liked all my friends to have something very exciting to gossip about and deciding how eccentric I am.
“Oh, just have some faith in me”. Raj grinned broadly. I grinned back, sheepishly.
I took a sigh of relief, later that day, when I found that Raj had kept that event as our little secret. Nevertheless, I never knew, he had something hatched, up his sleeve’s to catch me unaware.
That year, on my birthday, Raj gifted me a DVD. It had three movies crammed into it – the Matrix Trilogy. “On the third day of the third month of the two thousand and third year after the year of the lord, I award you this artifact, Ram Kumar,” he said, in the fashion of a king bestowing some honor on me.
“You are the chosen one and your destiny awaits you.” His words made no sense at all. That day, we all went to a hotel where I treated them to a fabulous lunch.
Next day, when we met, they were all quiet - an expectant look on their face. The silence surprised me. My friends had a din almost always about them. “What’s the matter? Did something happen? Did I miss something?” I fired a volley of questions at them. “Well… er… umm… we are all right.” replied Ali. I could see it on their faces; they all were waiting for something, but what? “Did you see the movies?” asked Mohit, hesitatingly. Oh! So they wanted to know whether I liked the gift or not? “Well, I am sorry, I could not find some time to watch them.” I replied casually. I could see disappointments on their face, which they tried to hide. They soon became normal though. Surprisingly, this became almost a daily affair. Instead of disappointing them everyday, I decided to see the movies as soon as possible, at least for my friends’ sake.
Next day, when we met, my friends noted that I was a bit excited and eager to blurt something. Their dim faces lit up. “So, did you watch the movie?” Ram asked eagerly. “Oh! They were fun.” I replied. “The concept is cool. I lay awoke all night thinking over it. If, indeed, we were to live in the matrix, we would never know the truth. This also explains why we are so inquisitive and spiritually inclined; perhaps we have some trace of the truth. It might even be so. The Watchowski brothers are a genius.” I spilled it all and glowed in satisfaction.
For a fleeting moment, I saw relief on their faces. Then, they doubled up… laughing. Raj, Mohit, Ali, and Thomas - they all were laughing and I stood dumbstruck. “At least he didn’t say he is the One. He is Neo.” chuckled Ali and they all snorted. Waves of shock hit me as I stood there. They knew I was a cranky fellow and they just had an amusing way to show it. I will never forget that day in my whole life.
But, my friends are not as bad as they seem. They are good human beings, good at heart - good to the core. We all have our whims and fancies, we all make fun of each other, but we all stick together. They were not bullies and I was not the one bullied. We were friends, true friends and the best of pals. I was good at studies and so were Mohit, Raj, Ali and Thomas – I was the best of the bunch, though. Ali and Mohit were part of the school’s soccer team and were good at it. Raj was in the drama team and had already won many accolades over the years. Thomas, was the most revered singer in our school, the most handsome of our bunch and had the largest female fan following. We all had our flings with the girls, we all would run into problems and we all would laugh about them. We all were normal people who would hang out together. We all were very different, but still had somethings in common. What?, I never found out. We all came from decent middle class families and were the best of the best in school. We were the favorites of everyone. We were the ‘Blue Eyed Boys’ of our school.
Life was fair to me. Still, every passing day made me aware of some emptiness within me. There was a void, which was not yet filled. A grade Tenth student is not a child yet something made me feel like one at times. I tried to make myself feel that I am a normal boy, like any sixteen-year-old boy, but every passing day reminded me, I was an exception to normalcy. I did not look at the world as all normal people did. I was impractical, I had created a world of dreams, a Utopian land full of principles and ideals, which I strived to follow in real life and, which mostly landed me in situations I could never get myself out of without help from my friends.
I was not as normal, as normal means. This was an untold truth, I held as impossible to be proven false.
