Friendship

I have just one friend. So this should be pretty easy.

I haven’t spoken to her for one month now. Not one word. No texts, no Facebook pokes, nothing.

We go to Uni together. She is what makes my college bearable for me. Before that, she made school bearable. Hopefully, she’ll make some shitty work place bearable some day.

I am not a very social person. It’s not that I don’t have people being friendly to me. It’s not that I find it difficult to open up to people. I just find it difficult to socialize. Always have. I can’t follow social norms. Or rather, I can, but refuse to. I don’t like gossiping. I don’t like bitching. I don’t like meeting up in cafes, all dressed up, and making eyes at cute guys. I don’t like the endless stream of posing and Facebook-profile-mobile-photo sessions. I absolutely detest being fake. I don’t like nailpolish and fairness creams and hair irons and...you get the drift.

However, we don’t always get what we like. So since I was 3, I was best friends with this girl who was the complete embodiment of all of the above. We were in the same class and our parents were friends. So lots of exposure to each other. I grew up with the knowledge that girls HAVE to gossip, manipulate, and back-stab.

When I was in the tenth grade, Nim joined my school. She was the daughter of my father’s college best friend. She was kinda weird. Different from all the other girls my age. And proud of it. Her dad traveled a lot. She only stayed in my school for 6 months before being shipped off to Delhi. Those six months, however, changed my life.

I learnt from her that it was ok to be myself around others. That it was ok to maybe read a book in the corner during lunch break, rather than participate in the gossip sessions. That I could, perhaps, direct my camera towards other things, rather than those which so obviously made me hate it. That I should stand up for myself and my beliefs rather than partake in such ridiculous hypocrisy. And hypocrisy, I definitely don’t like. In my little hometown, whose rules I knew to be law, she showed me change.

And I did.

This is not the reason I continued to be friends with her after she left for Delhi though. Nor the reason we somehow both needed up in the same crappy college in Kolkata. This is just what I am most grateful to her for. That and the anime.

Eleventh and twelfth grade was a revelation to both of us. I flexed my new wings amidst old territory. She gingerly stepped on the rocky precipe of having an unrequitable crush. We talked 5 to 6 hours a day. We laughed and we cried and we choked while trying to do both. We missed each other terribly. We met once both those years, and we went nuts. We had fun. That was our mission throughout, and I’m proud to say we are still sticking by it.

So, is friendship really about opening your heart and soul? Is it about support through thick and thin? Is it about constantly keeping in touch? To some people, maybe. Perhaps because of the family I was brought up in, I never looked for those things in all the people I looked at as friends. Which is good, because I never found them either. To me, friendship is having someone I can laugh at and laugh with. Someone I can be so complete comfortable with that I can go a month without talking to her and know that when I come back, we’ll go back to whining about exams. And sneaking off for film festivals and plays. And tramping about the city we love. And having an obscene amount of fun. And being happy.

On second thoughts, this wasn’t as easy as I expected it to be. Huh.

Faith

A few days back when I was on the brink of losing a friend, I asked Rosie about faith. She said I would find mine eventually and it would come on its own. To give it time. Well, a day after that I asked my dad what his version of faith was like. And he described it. And I realized I had already found my faith….a long time ago.

He said his faith was like a great big hand cheering him on for his every rise. Cushioning him in his every fall. Always there, sometimes, the only thing there. Giving him strength to face everyday. I always thought my dad was admirable in the way he handled everything alone and took charge of his responsibilities facing grave pressure; now I know he wasn’t alone. God was with him.

Despite being Indian, my family has always had a rather lax and cavalier (and oh so cool) approach towards religion. My father performs his own private prayers every morning. My mother is into Buddhism and has chanting sessions with a large group every Sunday. My brother…I don’t even know what my brother believes. But I know he does. And me, the agnostic. We all do regular routine Indian ceremonies and all. But that is custom and tradition, not actual religion for any of us. Maybe that is why I grew up with a screwed up sense of what faith was. My father set me straight.

No, I still don’t believe in god. Or the existence of a higher power. But I do have faith. I have something that gives me the strength to face everyday. I have something that cushions my every fall and cheers me on always. And I always know I am not alone. I have my family.

So I have faith in…..my FAMILY? Sounds kind of ridiculous when you think about it. Not to mention juvenile. But the moment dad described his faith to me, it just clicked. My mother, father and brother to me aren’t just those titles. They are more, oh so much more! All three of them, individually are three of the most incredible people I have ever had the opportunity to get to know.

My parents faced a great deal of hardship when I was a kid. I know this because I was told later. I was told at one point, after my dad lost his business, we were poor enough not to be able to afford milk. I was told that my dad spent a night in jail after a couple of goons from his business came after him subsequent to his company’s failure and beat him up. I was told that they came and took all of my mother’s beautiful wedding jewelry; not to mention our TV, car, AC, and everything else of worth in the house. I was told all this because they didn’t let me feel a thing. Not one thing! They took loans and kept me and my brother in our ridiculously expensive private school. They borrowed from our relatives to keep the house. They begged favors from friends and we still got our toys and dresses and everything else. They begged and they pleaded and they borrowed to keep our lives the same. And 10 years later, my father is still paying those debts. All in order to keep our tender childhood unmarred by sorrow of any sort and our studies unaffected. My father bore the brunt his burden by himself. My mother…well I can’t even begin to describe what my mother did.

My mother made up in creativity what we lacked in funds. My birthday parties were the BEST in town. Period. Girls who weren’t invited used to die of envy. There were richer girls who threw huge expensive bashes with expensive watches and imported toys as return gifts. But they were floored by the gifts my mom made. My mom made personalized masks. They were so pretty, covered with sequins and feathers. Some were of animals. All of them were completely tailored to fit the tastes of the kids attending. Mine was a tiara. She made handmade gifts, which cost nearly nothing, but were everyone’s prized possession. She decorated our dead and decaying house to make it look like a castle. She made all sorts of goodies; golguppas, dahi vada and of course her famous chicken sandwiches. My favorites. She made me feel like a princess always. She still does. And she did all this for every single event that came our way. She adored me and my brother to death. It is a miracle we didn’t end up utterly spoilt brats.

I remember this one Christmas; she was with me on our Verandah when Santa Clause came. We lived in a Christian-Muslim locality. All around us lived Christians. On Christmas Eve, nearly every house would have that telltale star hanging in front of it, signifying to Santa that this was a house worth his time. There were tons of visiting Santa’s who would drop by these houses with gifts and songs and well, happiness. That was a particularly depressing Christmas for my mother because that was the year those goons had come and taken everything away. But that’s not why it was depressing; it was depressing because now she didn’t have a vehicle to drive us around town and show us the lights. So when Santa came next door, I remember her getting up and running downstairs. She had told me to wait. She went to our neighbor’s gate and approached the guy. I could see them talking. I sneaked downstairs and hid behind a tree and eavesdropped. My mother was asking Santa to come visit our home for a little while and play with her children. No she wasn’t asking, she was BEGGING. I stood behind that tree and I heard my mother beg this random stranger dressed in a red suit to come say hi to me, to make my day a little brighter than it already was. I could hear the desperation in her voice, he could too. He snubbed her with disdain. I was 10 I think. I cried. I cried for my mother and for how much she loved me and my brother. When I think of that night, I still do. I don’t know why.

My brother, now that is a whole other ballgame altogether. He was my best friend. He was my mentor. He was my hero. Ah screw the ‘was’es. He still is. I always hero-worshipped him. We were like equals though. He told me his secrets, I told him mine. We went through thick and thin together. The four years age difference between us never made much difference. There was never any jealousy between us or rivalry for our parent’s affection. Not that we needed to fight over that; that was provided to us aplenty.

All my life I have known the worth of my family. All my life I have seen them as the strongest and most powerful force in my existence. For me, they are a religion. For me, this is faith; knowing that there is somebody out there for you no matter what you do. Holding your hand tight as you try and figure life out. Never letting go.

Bugs

I have always had a very intimate acquaintance with bugs. In India, it is hard not to. Since I was a wee baby toddling about my house and gardens, they have always been there to escort me. My own personal convoy of buzzing, biting, tickling little freaks. Many a solitary, rambling walks have I taken over hills and meadows and well, noisy trafficy roads, with them as my constant companions. I won’t say the relationship we have built over the past twenty years has grown to be particularly fulfilling; in fact there are times that I am very tempted to outright squash them, those annoying little midgets. But then again, isn’t that how all relationships work out?

Growing up, I was always by myself. Not that I didn’t have girls who wanted to be friends with me; quite the opposite. I just didn’t particularly like their company. Playing with dolls and doing makeovers and painting each others nails…bleh. Oh and the worst of the lot – gossiping. I never got it. I still don’t. What pleasure could these people possibly get by picking someone else’s life to pieces? So I boycotted them and went on long excursions to places wild, something I am always going to be eternally grateful to my country for having. And that’s where my true friends played with me. Dancing with the butterflies, crawling along with centipedes, chasing spiders and following them to their webs. It was fun. In my teens, I would often sit on the edge of my terrace, surrounded by the reassuring drone of chirping crickets and think. Later still, could any girl ask for a more fascinating model to practice her amateur photography on? One who would stay so obligingly still always; waiting till I got the perfect angle.

I never had any pets but if I did, I think I would adopt the whole of Insectdom.

Seas Incarnadine

The blade cut across guts. Liver, stomach, bile duct. Blood oozed. Blood leaked. Blood poured. All forgiving, hiding the crimes of yesteryear with its leisurely flow. Washing away sins committed in the sands of time. No hurry. All the time in the world at its disposal. He wiped the blade on her shirt and stood back, allowing the body to slowly slide to the ground. A streak of red marked its progress.

His knife was stained.

“On thy blade and dudgeon gouts of blood,
Which was not so before.”

His hands were stained.

“Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood
Clean from my hand? No; this my hand will rather
The multitudinous seas incarnadine,
Making the green one red.”

His heart…where was it?

They took it away. They took away his childhood. They took away his innocence. They took away all the beauty of the world. They took away his heart. They cut it out from deep within his barely breathing body and they left a hole inside. Empty and hollow. A hole he had been trying to fill for the past twenty years.

He looked down at the bleeding corpse at his feet. Her dress was soaked in blood. A little trickle made its way out of her mouth. Such beauty. He looked down at the orphan waif. Tattered rags for a dress. Palms scratched and torn. Such innocence. He looked down. She was smiling. In death she found peace. He looked down till he could bear it no more. And then he walked away, the hole where his heart was to be, a little less empty.

Sunita

I grew up like a princess. My childhood home was a huge rambling mansion. It was on this elite street behind the main road. It had an enormous field in front of it which was used as a cricket ground by the neighborhood boys in the summer, and was transformed into a beautiful shimmering expanse of water during the monsoon. It was used as a dumping ground for garbage at all seasons. At the corner of our street, a thin alley led to a land of magic. This was the slum; the place where all our servants hailed from and led their fascinating lives. I loved running about there, tripping over stray chickens and tied up goats. Everyone knew me there; our family was well known all through the city, let alone that neighborhood. I was greeted with Parle toffee wherever I went.

We had nine servants. I used to keep count very carefully. It was a matter of pride, a thing to be boasted about throughout nursery and kindergarten. There were my father’s three henchmen – the brain, the brawn, and the lovable old man who ran errands. The rest of the servants fell under my mother’s jurisdiction. We had a maid to clean the house, a maid to wash the clothes, a maid to cook, a maid who would do household chores like making the beds, and a nanny. And then we had Sunita.

Sunita was ten years old when she joined us. She was two years elder to my brother, six to me. I don’t know in what capacity she was hired. Probably as an extra, to fill in for any absent maid. Or maybe she was the maid who did the household chores. I don’t remember and I suppose it doesn’t matter.

I do remember that she was always laughing. Always. I remember running about the streets and picking flowers with her. Sneaking into neighboring gardens and throwing stones at trees till they unloaded their precious bounty. We had mango trees, jackfruit trees, custard apple trees galore back at my home. But the fruit just became tastier when we had to crawl through barbed wire to get to our reward.

We were very good friends. Not best friends of course; that precious title was reserved for my brother all the way up to high school. Besides, you couldn’t possibly have a girl from the slum as a best friend. The very idea of it! But she was a good friend and a much appreciated ally against those dreaded monsters with their constant berating – the parents.

I remember Ma storming about furiously and demanding, “Who scribbled on these freshly painted walls?” Me – blubbering, copious cheeks wobbling – “Su….Sunita!” Ma – “Who played with water balloons inside the living room?” Me – with more assurance – “Sunita!” Ma – “Who broke Grammy’s precious vase?” Me – angrily – “It was Sunita! I saw her do it!”
And then I stood and watched as Ma slapped her. It was painful, and I was dying of guilt – but I won’t say I regretted it. It was better than facing Ma’s wrath myself. And then again, Sunita was from the slum. She wouldn’t mind a slap much would she? She didn’t. Afterwards, she winked at me. And she laughed.

We had lots of fun together – Sunita, my brother and I. We played such happy games! Hide and seek in a house that big was tons of fun. And when it was raining and we were confined to a few rooms, we devised our own games. I remember this one time on a particularly gloomy monsoon, my brother and I were having tickle wars. He was winning. Sunita came to my aid and helped me fight my him off. He didn’t like that much. And as I was his best friend, I didn’t like what he didn’t like. So we both turned on her and we tickle attacked! And then my brother pinned her down and I took off her frock. She didn’t even have proper underwear – just some cloth wrapped around her private parts. My brother and I found that hilarious. We took that off too. Such fun! Sunita scrambled to a corner and wrapped her arms and legs around her, trying to minimize exposure. And then she looked at us, and she laughed.

She got back at me for that though. Sunita was always a spirited person. A few days later, I was changing clothes and she slipped in through the balcony while I was in the nude and started laughing at me. For a six year old with a growing awareness of private parts, this was the height of mortification. I covered as up best as I could and started crying. Ma came and shooed Sunita away. In her eyes, peace was restored. But I needed my revenge. So after my parents left for work that day, I grabbed hold of the big bronze vase in the living room, emptied it of its contents, and then went and started hitting Sunita on the head with it. It made a resounding GONG every time I banged it against her head; a sound very gratifying to a six year old with vengeance on her mind. It did occur to me that I should probably stop, especially when a thin trickle of blood ran down her forehead. But she was from the slum right? They were used to pain. Besides, look at her! She was laughing. So I hit her some more and then got a bandaid and stuck it where it bled. And then we went looking for new flowers to fill the vase.

When Sunita turned 13, she told me she was going to get married! She proudly informed me that her future husbands name was Arjun and that his family had promised hers four cows and several goats as dowry. He was a lot older to her but she was of marriageable age and her family needed the dowry. She told me about her future dreams with shining eyes while she mopped the floor. I sat on the bed, wondering when I would get married. It sounded such fun. “Oh it is! It’s like playing house…but forever!” Woah. I listened wide eyed as she described what to me was heaven. We had tête-à-têtes aplenty. My brother was cut out of these conversations. Besides, he was too busy playing cricket nowadays anyway. Sunita and I looked at the boys on the field with disdain and tossed our heads; how childish of them. We were mature women of the world now.

Soon after, Sunita left. I saw her no more for a very long time. I searched for her in the slum but they said her husband had taken her to a different part of the city. So I went my way and forgot about her. I moved on. My brother and I were slowly starting to build the roots of our addiction towards books at that time. Our library grew; the cricket field and the magical land of the slums lay unattended.

It was years later, when I was nine, that I heard of Sunita again. It was a quarter to ten one wet monsoon night and I was cuddling with my parents when there was a knock on the door. It was some men from the slum. I recognized Sunita’s father, but the rest I did not know. They looked wet and rather angry. I hid behind my mother’s voluminous sari and peeked out. “Go back upstairs” Ma said. I ran to my brother and held his hand and gave Ma a defiant look. She caved. The men were talking with father. “They are looking for Sunita”, my brother said, “She ran away from her home! And they think she may have hidden somewhere in the compound.” Father went upstairs and brought down torches. They went outside. We made to follow them but Ma waved us back.

My brother took consolation by peeking out of windows and tracking the progression of the search party. I was peeved. There was a huge game of hide and seek going on and they wouldn’t let me play! I knew every nook and every cranny of the house. I would show them. All those times Sunita and I played. She was never very good though. Rather predictable. Her favorite hiding spot was on the top of the back staircase leading to the first floor from the outside. That staircase was never used and the grill door it led to has been locked for as long as I can remember. There was a jackfruit tree growing right beside the staircase and its thick, overgrown branches barred the approach of any enterprising adult looking to take a stroll that way. But as kids, we used to jump and crawl and reach the top landing. There was a small depression in the wall beside the door on the landing. Like a cubbyhole. If anyone squeezed themselves in there, they would be utterly invisible and virtually unreachable by the world below. But I had devised a trick to find out if someone was hiding there. On a hunch, I tried it now. I ran upstairs and grabbed a long-handled broom. Then I inserted the stick between the grills of the locked back door, aimed it at the cubbyhole, and poked.

The broom must have been longer than I expected, or I had misjudged the growth in my own strength since the last time I had done this, for instead of the tiny “ow” this maneuver was usually rewarded with, there was a loud started yelp from the cubbyhole. The search-party must have been nearby for they heard the noise over the sound of the rain and came rushing with flashlights and yells. They clambered over the branches and from my vantage point behind the back door, I saw one man, an especially nefarious looking middle-aged goon, drag out what looked like a shivering ball of hair and limbs. He hit her. I watched from behind the grill as he hit her again and again. I watched her take blow after blow with barely a whimper. I watched tears mix with rain mix with blood. I watched her precious Arjun as he griped her hair and started pulling her down the staircase, dragging her over branches. She made no struggle. Near the bottom she looked at me. Our eyes locked. And she laughed.

Apocalypse

On Monday, the 31st of December 2012, Shubhanan Sen takes his last breath. The explosion happens at twelve noon. The target is the Nizampura Petrol Pump. The blast hits Shubhanan approximately one and three quarter seconds following the detonation; the windows of the three oldest buildings in the lane behind the Petrol Pump all crack simultaneously. Shubhanan’s house is shattered. He doesn’t notice though, on account of being an integral part of the debris by this time. He isn’t the only one of course, but being my brother and all, I think he deserves a special mention.

This is not his story.

In a tiny sweet shop in Arpan Complex, Panna Ben is talking to one of her oldest customers. As she hands over the old lady's Dhoklas, she notices the flour on her hands. It wafts off her fingers and is caught suspended in the light streaming through the tiny window in the back. The little particles hang in the golden air and then, as the shock hits, they sway in one fluid motion and Panna Ben’s glasses break. The blast stops her customers pacemaker dead.

This is not her story.

A little way to the west, near Fahtegunj, three children witness the sky break. Baraf gollas are dropped, as is the dirty red bike, as they watch the clouds form. They surge upwards and then billow out as force meets atmosphere and the sky dims. The force that hits the three children is not harsh; it causes the little toddler to stumble and the solitary tyre they were playing with to roll away down the street. All three pairs of young ears pop simultaneously and in the sudden quiet that always follows huge events they hear the cracking windows. The cloud hasn't finished growing and now races towards them, shooting over their heads and blocking out the summer sun.

This is not their story.

It is mine.

As I stand and watch the chaos explode around me, I wonder for the first time if what I did was really a good thing. I'm surprised; the thought has never crossed my mind before. But my house is wrecked, and there are bits of my brother stuck to the ceiling and the walls around me. There's smoke everywhere. There's blood everywhere. There's even blood on my bookshelf.

The visitor would never have let blood get onto my bookshelf. The visitor has always been mild. Amiable. Inconspicuous. Well apart from the bright blue cloak of course. The visitor never actually did anything. For a long time, the visitor was just... there.

Until one day, when he wasn't.

When the visitor first made an appearance, I was twelve years old and bored and sitting in the school councilors office for having punched Neeraj Mohan Pandey in the nose because he tried to snatch my Terry Pratchett away from me. ‘Night Watch’ had just been released a few weeks back and I had finally managed to get my hands on it. Everything was dandy, right until Pandey decided to put on a particularly puerile display of inanity and walked up to me during recess, making his usual remarks about me being a chashmish, moti, “rosogolla” Bengali who ate non veg and all sorts of snakes and lizards. And then he made a grab for my book. It wasn't my fault. If someone doesn't understand that Pratchett’s world can NOT be interrupted, that the selected few chosen to be immersed in this phantasmagoric world are a respected people and that you don't tease them about anything, then they deserve to be punished. And because I hadn't mastered the art of using Sorcery yet, I had to resort to punching him.

But punching Neeraj Mohan Pandey landed me an appointment in the councilor’s office, and this meant I had nothing to do for the entirety of the next couple of hours. The councilor in our school was an extraordinarily busy woman. Normally this would have meant two hours of utter boredom, without even a book to relieve it. But this time, it was different. This time, the visitor was there.

He first appeared to me when I was in the empty office, trying to keep myself occupied by stretching myself and holding on to the houseplants on one either end of the sofa. One moment I was playing twister with domestic vegetation, the next there was a figure dressed in shiny bright blue standing ten inches in front of me. I flew two feet up into the air, slipped on the polished floor upon landing, and kicked the visitor in the shins.

"Watch it!" said the visitor irritably.

Then he waved a hand, and I was pulled to my feet. He waved his other hand, and the potted plants, which had fallen during all this, uprighted themselves and sat back innocuously as if nothing had happened. He then adjusted his hat which was blue and had yellow stars on it. And a sharp point.

"Sorry," he said, as an afterthought. "We Wizards have a knack for arriving at the most inopportune moments, you know."

I stood. I gaped.

It would be the first meeting of many.

The visitor was my only friend. In the real world, nobody knew the ways of Sorcery, or even the difference between a Golem and a Gnome. Nobody cared. Well, almost nobody. My brother was my one sole ally until the visitor came. We were outcasts, scorned for believing in what people were sure was high fantasy. I had my head in the clouds. My brother, on the other hand, was intrigued by fantasy. Not obsessed. I knew someday he would end up betraying our passion. I was right. I never told him about my visitor. He didn’t deserve to know. By the time I was fourteen, he rejoined the mundane and chose to be an engineer. He went off to Himachal Pradesh to study Computer Science. By the time I was fourteen, I could lift a desk without touching it – but I had sworn never to reveal my abilities to the outside world. The visitor had made me promise. By the time I was fourteen, I was alone in the world.

I spent hours inside my room, listening to the visitor's tales of the Discworld. When I wasn't listening to stories, I was training – sourcery, rune reading, archery. The visitor told me that my Split-vision Barebow aim was much better than that of any native Ankh Morporkian of my age. I was less a citizen of the star system I lived in than the one I only ever read about.

As I got older, the visitor stayed longer. I would ask him question after question after question. Sometimes, he would bring friends, but only if he was staying for a short time.

Once I asked, "How do you come over here? Onto planet Earth?"

He said, "You'll find out soon enough."

I found out soon enough.

He told me I had to strengthen my mind. As I sat staring at illustrations and listening to stories, the Discworld became increasingly real to me. And as it became increasingly real, the visitor brought an increasing number of friends with him into my bedroom. I shook hands with a History Monk, an Auditor of Reality, an Orc.

"You're getting stronger," he told me. "Your imagination is powerful. You will someday bring the Discworld alive." It wasn't until almost a year later that I found out what he meant by that. By then, I could focus hard enough to bring a whole army of characters onto the planet.

Now the time has come. The Earth cannot exist as long as the Discworld is to be made real. The banal inhabitants of this world need to be annihilated. Their departure will make way for the grand arrival of the creatures of the Discworld. I'm sure when the general population of the earth imagined the End of the World, they never expected archery and swords to be involved. Neither did they expect magic wands or walking rocks or pixies. But this is because their imaginations are limited. This has proven to be their downfall. They will not survive the apocalypse of the imaginary invaders.

As I watch the flying carpets descend and the broomsticks soar, I feel glorious.

But beside glory there is doubt.

As I stand and watch the chaos explode around me, I wonder for the first time if what I did was really a good thing. I'm surprised; the thought has never crossed my mind before. But my house is wrecked, and there are bits of my brother stuck to the ceiling and the walls around me. There's smoke everywhere. There's blood everywhere. There's even blood on my bookshelf.

Would a Sorcerer really have let the blood of innocent people stain their walls and robes? Would a Sorcerer really have stood back and watched as the creator of the universe that has become their own was murdered by the objects of her own imagination?

I know the answers to these questions, but somehow, I don't care. Because the world is ending, and a new era is dawning. And in this era, it will not matter if I am a true Sorcerer or not.

Because in this era, I will me more than an outcast. In this era, I will me more than a lunatic.

I smile slowly at the wreckage beneath me. This is just the beginning.

In this era, I will be Empress.