Homosapien-ity

The Friend of a good friend. The Never-met-before person. That Much Talked-About Friend.
I was that, recently, and found my faded doppleganger and some minus points for humanity along the way.

I d blame it on the talk, if I didn't know better. Beacuse it was through all that talk that the goddamn love grew. That curious kind of love lavished from second-degree association. Through it all, I had developed into a doppleganger - someone they knew. And liked.

Like a long absent old friend, I had become a phony part of their universe of connection. Over many evenings, my doppelganger had matured from a ‘good friend’s good friend they didn’t know’ to a ‘good old her’. They had laughed and nodded along their gradual journey of assimilating me from an arbit ‘her’ to “she’s so that”.

But unhappily for this warm get-together, we don’t know each other from Adam.

Facts have an uncomfortable knack of getting in the way of mediocre make-believe. And so it was... as I burst upon the scene, in-the-flesh, so to speak... with an offensive alien air.

Shockwaves.

Here I was - a trespasser on their hither-to happy, make believe perception of me. My uncalled turning up in person was blowing it. I had intruded. And caused communal unrest in this happy, warm gathering of friends.

I was almost apologetic as I watched my doppleganger slowly melt like the snowman in summer.
‘She’s so tall’ I heard them whisper. They had certainly not expected it.

An abandoned rocking chair, on its last legs stood on the balcony and I tried to hide my abnormal span behind it. I hoped it presented a less offensive length of me for scrutiny.
It didn’t.

But they were large hearted and forgiving, as we ploughed ahead and communed, the doppleganger faded away.

But thats not the point.
The point is that I m quite sick of having to experience, first hand and repeatedly, that which makes us all so hopelessly human.

It’s categorically the vilest part of what makes us people. Connection at all cost. This depraved, urgent need to form a bond – of whatever kind. I can feel those eyes searching for a fix to fasten a belief. I can hear it: ‘yeah but she’s kind of bitchy, right?’ or ‘isn’t she sweet?’

It’s not so much them or me … the shame is in its need. Its thirst. In that solely human sensation to want to connect. I can feel it sucking at me like that goddamn Under Toad.
Like garbage on the road or exhaust fumes – a reminder of the intrinsic sham in everything we do and think - of everything that is so awfully human.

It kills me.

The diameter of the bomb

The diameter of the bomb was thirty centimeters
and the diameter of its effective range about seven meters,
with four dead and eleven wounded.
And around these, in a larger circle
of pain and time, two hospitals are scattered
and one graveyard.
But the young woman
who was buried in the city she came from,
at a distance of more than a hundred kilometers,
enlarges the circle considerably,
and the solitary man mourning her death
at the distant shores of a country far across the sea
includes the entire world in the circle.
And I won't even mention the crying of orphans
that reaches up to the throne of God and
beyond, making
a circle with no end and no God.

- Yehuda Amichai.

Heartfelt and then some.

The Solitary Reaper

So then that superhero bully brother of mine got married. I mean, good for him. People who want to get saddled should be allowed to. Freely. I’m for things like that.

But what I m NOT for is making something so intensely personal into this ‘come over, gawk at my family and interrogate them for free’. It’s a malevolent antithesis of everything a marriage is supposed to be - in the whole friggin universe.

So for 3 whole days, an army of relatives personally subjected me to an on the house back poking and cross-examination exercise of the worst kind.
What’s shocking is that these people have the time and the energy to swathe themselves in various saris and muscle their way across town for 3 bloody days – for what? To turn up and comment on why I should get knocked up right away and present myself with the token baby in tow for their viewing pleasure next time…and put on more weight while I’m at it. Killing 2 birds with one stone, see?

They chuckle, poke and ask me to recognize them at command.
Oh my god.

The whole thing left me foaming at the mouth, wanting to subject frail creatures to pain and express rage in short bursts of incoherent speech – for days. My faith in humanity would have packed up and left for good if it weren’t for this one beautiful moment of unqualified redemption.

I was at my weakest on the third day of this epic ‘coming together of man and woman’ … and among the assorted ghastlies that presented itself in a dizzying array to my dimmed consciousness – this one stood like a sharp wet slap of reality. A completely out of place Accordion player was belting out an incongruous rendition of The Blue Danube, while all around the fury of a south Indian wedding raged on at full power- a mass of fast talking aunties caught up vigorously. Small children, high on sugar, ran round and round, screaming at the top of their lungs. The bride’s friends giggled sharply and continuously.

What on earth was this guy doing here? In the middle of this merciless battleground, in a tux, playing a friggn accordion for cryin out loud? Will somebody please step up and explain?

Before another second passed, a few spare aunties bore down upon me and poked my nephew who screamed loudly and started banging his head against my shoulder in protest and almost by cue a wizened old man jovially asked me to recognize him and a small child repeatedly asked me for food.

Tears of rage welled, obscenities welled, impotent ire welled… I’d have thrown myself on the ground and cried in long bitter sobs and then died instantly if it wasn’t for that accordion player.

A sense of calm descended amidst the chaos as I saw him … in the background…playing away like his ‘song could have no ending’, alone and oblivious, while the wedding raged in deep red and furious all around him.

‘O listen! For the Vale profound, Is overflowing with the sound’.

God bless him, whoever he was.