The Wild Rabbits

“Bow in the presence of greatness cause right now thou has forsaken us.
You should be honored about my lateness that I would even show up to this fake shit!”

My hands flew in multiple directions as I tried to emulate every verse Kanye dropped. My earphones dug hard and it was beginning to hurt a little bit. On my side were two big pillars that supported a roof over which “Hilltake Tank” reserved drinking water for the whole house. From my vantage point I could see many homes, most of them with the lights turned off. I looked at my phone, it was already 12 and pitch dark.

My fantasy however, did not cease. In fact, it took one bizarre turn after the other. It always started off like this — I walk into a hospital ward. Supriya has been sick and she has begged me to come albeit in real life she could not have cared less but in my uncontrolled reverie, she is in love with me to the brim and now I have been called. Deep in the unconscious part of my imagination, Supriya does not accept her feelings for me but I know. Apparently, I can see it in her eyes and everybody around her knows, even her parents. Deeper down my never-ending fantasy, even they want me to come and meet her and like her, they don’t accept to believe that either. Another false make-believe.
As I walk in, I catch a glimpse of the entire family. Supriya is almost asleep. The rest are around her, talking. From the door of the Hospital ward to her bed, is where most of my fantasy find its climax. Some times I walk in with shades looking sexier than ever. I took ample time to set up a fake outfit. Often times I even paused the playlist to think about it. Sometimes I have a leather jacket on and this one time, I was nude from the waist above, sweating like a pig. Of course, I looked hot.

When the family sees me in my dreams I get fired up in real life. The volume goes up and we both walk with overwhelming swagger, the real me and the fictional me, trying to find the perfect harmony with the beat. Sometimes, a ball just comes rolling to my feet. A little boy seems to be crying on a different bed little farther away from Supriya’s. He is sad for he has lost his ball. Showing my football talents, which I don’t have much of in real life, I hit it with my toes, which flies in a perfect semi-circle and lands in the kid’s hands. He lights up like a light house. I look around, all eyes are fixed on me.

My fantasy never goes further than that.

Panting and sweating hard, I sat down on the cold cemented floor. I snatched the earphones out. Tonight, the moon appeared brighter, diluting the shimmer of the stars nearby. In the shadows, within the realms of mortal men, sat me, forlorn and guilty. People are addicted to cigarettes, alcohol and drugs. I was addicted to this fantasy. When I think about it now, I can’t really tell if I ever loved Supriya but this made up simulation was my only connection to her and it took me a long time to get over my infatuation.

But it was not only guilt that I felt. It was not even about what I felt for that matter. It was about what I saw or who I saw. I had been seeing a strange silhouette of a man for some time now. It often showed itself to me. Never came close though. Just stood at a distance as if watching me, stalking me.

As I was about to go downstairs through the circular metal stairs, so popular in Nepali homes, thick dark clouds overtook the bright moon. I looked above; the sky was a vast lightless abyss. Then, I saw the Wight closer than ever before.

An immense sea of lava took over the city around me and in a matter of seconds, everything burned down. Houses fell and I heard heart-shattering screams from burning woman and children. A chilling stroke of lightening bought daylight for a second and that is when I saw his entire disposition.
Clad in an ancient roughspun, the creature was over-flowing in a large black cloak fitted with a hood on top. He carried a bow like scythe, almost a semi-circle until it arched forwards and formed into a sharp knife. His face seemed to have burned with the infernal fires. I could see the remnants of a human in there. It was expressionless.

When darkness returned, he was gone and so was the destruction that pervaded everything only a minute ago.

The next morning, I awoke later than usual. The memory of yesterday’s terrible experience still haunted me. Making my way to the living room, I looked for my parents. I couldn’t find them. I went to my brother’s room. Throwing his limbs all over the place, I could see he was in the deepest slumber. Better not disturb the little fellow I figured.

I found my parents in the balcony. Seated on a chakati, they were as expressionless as the ghost I saw. Something was wrong here; I could smell it in the air. Breaking the silence my mom posited in utter rage,
“Did you even appear for the engineering entrance examinations? The results are out. It’s all over in the newspapers!”
My father interrupted “All this idiot knows is how to bleed us money!!! What will we do with this?”

My days had not been spent engrossed in studies. Entrance preparation was boring. I barely attended. I spent the examination day playing snooker at a nearby joint. I knew the results were due today but had no idea it would be all over the news. Unusual drama, like I have never known before took hold of my home. It was like the end of time. My mom went to her brothers and did not come back. She wanted my father to deal with the problem that was me and so it was decided I would be packed off and sent to India for further studies.

When I got on the plane to Delhi, my mom often reminds me how she watched it take several rounds in the sky with tears in her eyes. I call that bull. I find all the love I have received from them comes with a humongous price. It’s just plain transaction. Pass the exam or you’ll shame us. Do exactly what I say or face the rain of my painful word arrows.

I figured it would feel sad and at least some form of nostalgia will grapple me as I bade farewell to this place, I call home. When the airplane trudged forward in the runway, I let out a sigh of relief. Feel sad, I didn’t, not one bit. When I was suspended in the air inside the tin can, I looked out the window at the cotton candy clouds and hoped for adventures.
Once again, Supriya began haunting my mind. I was in the hospital ward again. This time I wore a Chelsea jersey in which I looked particularly stunning.
My ruminations were broken off by an intruding air hostess. Wearing a traditional Bakkhu, her cleavage was tightly packed into the dress. It left a lot to the imagination.
“Sir, would you like vegetarian or non-vegetarian food?” She said with a glowing smile.
“Ah ah ah” I stumbled upon several words before saying “Vegetarian”.
“Seriously. You are a vegetarian?” She asked, the look on her face of total confusion. She was already hot, now she looked cute.
“Well, you want me to eat meat?” I inquired with the hint of a smile on my face.
“Oh no, not at all sir. Most Nepali guys I meet are not vegetarians. Besides you don’t have the face of a vegetarian.”

What is that supposed to mean?

I looked at my phone. On the screen I saw a fair guy with a unibrow and the eyes of a cow, ogling back.

With “One vegetarian food coming right back” she moved ahead. Her plump buttocks swayed gracefully as she went forward. This girl became a crucial part of my fantasy for some time to come. Supriya would be waiting for me in the hospital bed. I walked in with the air-hostess. I saw jealousy clear on Supriya’s face which I loved.

When I landed, a lethal smog almost shielded Delhi. I wanted to look at this new world on which I had watched countless Bollywood movies. Ever since a child, l was well-versed in Hindi and believed coming to this place will not seem so foreign but as I got out of the plane and walked into the Indira Gandhi International Terminal, I couldn’t feel more out-of-place. The familiar khaki dressed police officers seemed so different than I had imagined. I was confident I would speak Hindi like a pro but when they asked for my papers at the immigration, I had to resort to English. My Hindi was heavily accented and they looked down upon such broken language.

When I went out of the airport, a thick blanket of hot air came over me. I started to sweat almost immediately. I looked back at the AC controlled enclosure one last time. There was no turning back now, an unknown country, 100 crores strong, lay before me. 4 years of my life, I was to stay here. Black and yellow rickshaws littered the small pavement ahead along with a few ambassadors. The rickshaw-walas swarmed around me as each one offered outrageously-priced ride to the bus terminal.

“Meter main kaun chalega?” I almost shouted. The haggling with the heat was too much to bear. Slowly, most of them subsided except for a white bearded gentleman.

I’ll take you; he said and briskly loaded my luggage into his rickshaw.
Beside the steering handle, Hanuman tore the skin on his chest in opposite directions revealing the portraits of Lord Rama and Sita. The divine face looked straight at me and smiled a gentle smile.
“Bhaiya, are you a Hanuman bhakta?” I asked.
“He is lord Ram’s most trusted confidante and so, mine” replied the driver and looked on.
“Are you?”
“Of course.” But I didn’t really know. The deeds and divinity of the gods was permanently etched in my memory. Even so, when the ghosts came, I could never find them. When the seas of sorrow tormented me, my heart gave away and the only support I always had was of fear, anxiety and helplessness. Either way, I had no hate for lord Rama. He was more of a symbol to me. A sigil of hope, a constant remainder that things can get better.

In Delhi, I saw a world of polar opposites. Swanky malls and high-tech metros starkly contrasted by dingy tunnels and impoverished slums. And so many people. My god! You constantly hit a random person on the road. All kinds of people- tall, short, red, white and black, they go about the city paying their dues to the gods for birthing them. If it was not sot hot, observing them might have been fascinating.

After getting on the bus to Dehradun, I left the crowded city for a remote village. When I reached the campus, the sun had begun his descent on the horizon. Nervous and knowing not what to expect, I entered the premises. The first thing I noticed was a student dressed in navy-blue college shirt, yellow-white pants, tie and slippers. He was a young guy but the long beard made him look older. His moustache was pointed upwards at the edges like that of an average Indian Maharaja. A song blared out from the speaker he was carrying, or maybe it was just his phone.

“Yarr tera superstar desi kalakaar
Main putt jatt da mand ani haar”

It was Desi Kalakaar by Honey Singh. Yo yo Honey Singh to be exact.

“I am a superstar, young country artist.
Son of a jatt, don’t know defeat!”

Singing the viral song to myself and trying in vain to replicate the accent of the singer, I walked with quite the suave. The catchy rhythm along with an imposing beat, paved the way for somebody else inside me to come out and take charge. The bus ride in a foreign country, that too, alone. The overwhelming number of people. It made me homesick. This track said to me, don’t be afraid you idiot! Look around you. A new place. This is yours now. Try and make something out of it. Be somebody now. Nobody will interfere. Not even your parents. Had you ever thought it was even possible before?

“Which branch?” Asked the thinly-mustachioed accountant at the administrative department of the college.

“E. C. E” I spelled it out for him. “Electronics & Communication Engineering.”

When all the paperwork was done, I carried my bags and headed towards the hostel. Inside the campus, it got really quiet. The day-scholars had left. This place was near to the Rajaji National Park. It looked more like a man-made extension of the forest rather than a site where humans form societies and live. I went past the basketball court. A nice boulevard with a linear array of trees ran parallel to the basketball court. Further ahead I came across the girl’s hostel. Just a few feet ahead, across the football field stood the huge boy’s hostel. It was more like a high-rise apartment. The girl’s hostel was puny compared to it.

When I was about to enter my lodgings, a distant voice called out to me.
“Hey, you there. Are you Nepali?” It asked.
“Yes I am. You too?”
A dark-skinned guy, in full football gear came running towards me.
“From Janakpur. You?” He asked with a wide smile.
“Kathmandu.” I said proudly.
“Leave your bags in the lobby and come out to the field. The warden will take care of it later.” He said sweating from every pore in his body.
He was called Surendra, I later found out. I followed Surendra to the field. He immediately joined the game he had left before. A few guys were seated outside the stadium, watching the game idly. Some picked up the grass, played with it for a while. I sat down beside them.

The sky turned crimson. Crickets began creaking from everywhere and daylight only remained in one-half of the mortal world. The vista ahead of me found the football field completely dark and the sky above painted completely red. Far ahead, on the roof of the college complex I saw the sun dip to the ground. In the backdrop of the setting sun I saw the outline of a man, overflowing in a long robe, who seemed to be staring at me. Shivers ran down my spine.

I was assigned a room on the ground floor. The warden said I had a roommate but two weeks in, he was still nowhere to be seen. I heard tales about him. They said he was the greatest stoner amongst the freshers. He was able to smoke weed throughout the day, drink through the night and still wake early in the morning. Every room in the hostel had two beds, two cupboards, two tables and two chairs for the two occupants. My things were all over the place. One shirt on the chair, a trouser on top of the cupboard, an underwear hanging from a rope between the window and the wall adjacent to the bed. But in my room partner’s dwelling there was hardly anything. If a tumbleweed passed through his bed and into the night, I would not be surprised. Even his mattress had no sheets on top of it. He didn’t care at all.

But things moved around mysteriously in the room. The contours of my table and chair. An additional rope sewed in his own segment of the room. I really wanted to meet this guy.

I found the Nepali guys boisterous and arrogant. It’s a common human tendency to generalize things. I was afraid that everybody in the college would classify me as a common Nepali and think no further of it. I liked to think myself as being more. Somebody with his own brain, with his own sense of individuality. Hence, I kept my distance from the Nepali people and everybody in general. The classes started from 9 in the morning to 5 in the evening. I went every day. Didn’t miss even one class in the first semester. I was amazed to see how easily you could slip in through, without getting noticed. Other than the customary gestures, nobody bothered to ask much about me. When the classes ended, I was happy to come back to my quiet sanctuary. I studied, read the news and watched YouTube videos.

I found it really awkward to talk to girls. I invariably pulled something stupid. But I didn’t really care. In the silence of my room, behind closed curtains I went into my dreamland. Supriya was in the United states already by then but a figment of her lay in the hospital bed, longing to see me. If I still didn’t feel good after each session, there was always the ancient practice of beating one’s meat to solve the issue. Life was good. Or at least, I thought it was.

I don’t understand how people can stand it — The methodical way life moves ahead when a boring rhythm has set in. When the results for the first semester came in, I was over the moon. Not only did I pass, I topped my branch! I called home. Needless to say, they did not believe me.

“Spend 200. Give yourself a treat. But, don’t spend more than that.” That’s what my father said.

So, I am supposed to go to a dhawa, which does not serve much of anything and have a grand time thinking about the many sacrifices my parents made for me, which they didn’t forget to remind me of so fondly over the phone. The greatest delicacy the dhawa had was “aluka paratha”.

“Cheap person” I muttered in vain and decided to hold on to the 200.

The next semester, I began playing football. Go to the classes, come back, play football, have dinner, fall asleep and repeat. That is what it all came down to. I longed for that pure human connection or just a spontaneous conversation. You wouldn’t believe how hard it was to have that. Everything was a measured routine procedure. The teachers cracked a few jokes here and there, but even that was cyclical now. I could tell, when it would come. It seemed; I could guess what someone would do without them having to do it at all.

Engineering is a noble profession. No doubt on that. But it will suck the life out of you, if you are not made for it.

But I pushed through regardless. The books from the library littered my dorm room. I submitted my assignments on time and the grades were high. I was in shape and shaved regularly. It was a pretty picture I suppose, a charade for the distant relative who inquired about me back home.

Then one day, he showed up. On this particular day, we played soccer longer than usual. I fell down many times and hurt my knee. When everybody left, wobbling a little bit I headed for the hostel. The building was a huge rectangular block with a square badminton court in the middle. There were balconies and room all around the rectangle from which when you peered inward, you could see the badminton court on the ground floor. From the court below if you looked up, you would see the Republic of India’s territory until infinity through the universe.

As I walked painfully through the passageway, everything became very silent. There was always some sort of commotion going on in the hostel. This was not normal. Then it hit a halt and pin drop silence. I went around, trying to look for people. In the bathroom, other dorms. Nobody. I went to the badminton court and tried to get a wider view. I watched above and that’s when I saw him. A strange cacophony surrounded the gruesome figure of the reaper who stood on one of the balconies in the fifth floor. Ravens flocked from god knows where and flew all over the place. A large murder of crows came straight for me. I tried to block and find refuse but they swarmed in from literally everywhere. The harsh cry of their beaks and their unyielding screams filled the atmosphere. Dark wings blocked my visibility and the next thing I knew, I was in the air with them, being taken to the messenger of death. When on the fifth floor, the crows disseminated away but I remained suspended in the air. He looked at me straight into the eyes. His was hollow, an ominous maze which contained nothing.

I woke up in my bed late in the afternoon. For 2 days I remained there, shriveled up. My head hurt and an eerie feeling of gloom, of utter helplessness and unsettling melancholy hung over the walls like the cobweb I hadn’t cleaned up in a while.

How do you deal with something like that? Whom do you tell?

Nobody would care, forget about listening to my problems.

They say you should never stop hoping for hope is a good thing and good things never die (The Shawshank Redemption). But had you met me at that point and uttered these exact words, I’d have looked away and pushed my head into the pillow. The dreadful memory of that night kept coming back to me and certain memories came back to me in impulses, which had been lost in the encounter.

I remembered him holding an hour-glass which had almost no sand left in its upper compartment. It was like he wanted me to know that I didn’t have much time left. I wanted to feel better, I wanted to get out of the hostel but I could not bring myself to act on anything. Not a single thing in this world held of any interest to me. I felt like a stranded passenger on a boat, in the middle of the sea, with no rations left and waiting for the waves to swallow him forever into the blue oblivion.

On the third night, somebody knocked on my door. My room was in a passageway that did not get many visitors. It was ideal for those people, who liked to keep to themselves. Reluctantly after the person did not cease knocking, I got up, opened the door, came back to my bed and shriveled up into a ball again.

“Bhaiiiii, kya hogyaa tereko?” An unknown person spoke to me, in a heavily accented Hindi. Western UP I suppose.
“Let me be Bhai.” I replied. “I don’t want to talk.”
“Come on man, I ought to know who my roommate is at least, don’t you think?” He inquired again.

The prodigal roommate had returned.

I turned my head and looked at him. He looked like the Indian version of Harry Potter, the same glasses, smaller eyes though and with that same innocent face.
“What are you doing alone on Shivaratri man? Don’t you want to go have fun?” he asked me.
I barely kept track of anything anymore. I had no idea it was Shivaratri tonight.
“Well, I guess we ought to. But what do we do?” I questioned timidly.
“Leave that to me. Follow me, we’re going to the fifth floor.”

I had never been to the fifth floor. I didn’t even know we were allowed to go there. Outside, in the passageway, a thick layer of mist had blown in from the badminton court. As we arched our way towards the stairs, I could see the light on the fifth floor marred by the mist. The same where I had had my last encounter with the reaper.

We entered a dark room. A disco ball hung from the ceiling and about ten guys sat around in a circle. Deepawali lights crisscrossed the walls. An average song played in the stereo; you know the kind which you immediately forget after listening to it. Harry Potter beckoned me to sit in a distant chair. I wanted company and this was more than okay. I liked it. I welcomed it.

After about 10 minutes, the guy adjacent to me passed me the bong. “The bong” because I had never in my life seen such a big bong! It was made of glass and the cone, where you load the weed in, looked like it could adjust several large pebbles inside it, that too simultaneously. But I was in no mood to resist. I wanted to feel something else, anything would do, other than what I was feeling right now.

When I lit it and inhaled the smoke, a million pointy tentacles zoomed into my body. Some of them began pricking my throat while some messed with my intestine, churning up the bile inside. I felt like I would die. I coughed like a maniac.

Harry bought water and affectionately gave it to me. After the initial after-effects subsided, I sat down in the darkness, looking at the disco-ball and trying to think of something. I could not think of anything. My mind just did whatever it wanted. I could hear, listen and smell better. I did not open my mouth for a good hour. I legitimately wasn’t able to.

A song came up.

I’m waking up on Sunset Boulevard
Maxing out all my credit cards
Living my own LA story
Living it up ’til the morning

I felt my heart tap dancing to the rhythm as the piano took me into the song. When the chorus came, my lips widened into an endearing smile.

I fell in love; the streets got a glow
The city of angels is calling me home
And she said, and she said uh
I’m waking up on Sunset Boulevard
Maxing out all my credit cards
Living my own LA story
Living it up ’til the morning
We’ll be taking shots under the stars
Living off of hotel minibars
Living our own LA story
Living it up, living it up
We living it up till the morning

Light as a feather, I typed “LA Stories by Sammy Adams” on youtube in my phone and went dancing to my room.

“What is up with this guy?” Somebody was asking but I didn’t stay to hear the rest. I was feeling things I had not felt in a long time. It was like a calling which said to me, get out of there, come let’s live this moment and forget about whatever that may happen. Let’s be stupid. Let’s make mistakes. Let’s screw things up. So, what, we don’t have much time? Who does, anyways? Who knows anything about anything for that matter? But we’ll do it with the best intentions in mind, like how the little you would have done it. Come on, let us make that little you proud.

When in bed, sleep came early. I thought about why the messenger of death couldn’t come on a buffalo like we have always been told. Think about it. A jolly looking guy, with a nice monopoly moustache comes to you after death, on a buffalo, not to forget. Would you be afraid? I know, I wouldn’t. I would go willingly. If I got to sit on the buffalo, even better!

My grandma came to me in my dreams that night. It had been some time since she passed away. Everybody assumed I was close to her when she was alive. She didn’t talk much in real life but in my dreams, she went on an epic rant. Cursing everybody. She left no one out. Not my mom’s brothers nor a cow which had died in the village a long time back. When she was done, the dream just ended. I was left out of the bad blood but she didn’t look at me that lovingly either, when she was about to leave my subconscious.

You never think of the Pashupatinath temple that way, until somebody close to you dies and you have to attend their funeral there. What was a temple before transforms into the gateway to the afterlife and remains that way. When my grandma died, she was bought to the aryaghat, on the banks of the river Bagmati right under the temple to be cremated. I assumed I would feel immensely sad, but I didn’t feel much of anything. There was a boat in the river that day. Quite unusual it was when you think about it. You don’t really go boating on Bagmati. Bagmati is less a river and more a filthy drain. During the summer, it rages like anything but during the winters, in some parts it’d be amazing to see a paper boat float on it. I had asked a cousin brother then, “Why is that boat there?” right in the middle of the funeral when everybody was crying or at least on the verge of it.
With a look of surprise and a bit of disappointment he had said, “Does nothing happening here bother you?”

As the first rays of light made its way to the surface, my eyes opened. Immediately after waking up, I coughed and spit out a nasty phlegm, the remnants of the bong shot yesterday. After a long time, my head felt much lighter and it looked forward to something, which was going out to a “dhawa” and smoking a cigarette this morning. I looked around the room. Harry Potter was gone, just how he had come. No welcome. No farewell. I put on a trouser, grabbed a wind-seater, wore that too and patting the marvel corridor with my plastic slippers, I headed out.

They didn’t let us out of the campus without a written approval from the hostel warden but just like how water ultimately find its way, the students here overflowed from all sides of the compound. At one point, it got so out of control, that there was hardly any student who took the main gate out of the college.

At the fringes of the football field, there was a wall which separated the college from the outside world. We had meticulously taken every brick out, from the middle of the wall.

A light white blanket covered the grass below. The moisture from the grass soaked my feet and the cold sipped into my bones as I made way to the barrier. When I reached it, I removed a few bricks from the top and jumped to the other side. Thick shrubs brushed past my trousers as I began walking towards the main road. Before we reached the main road which when crossed took us to the dhawas, there came a large plotted land where only two houses had come up so far to offer lodgings to the students who didn’t want to live in the hostel.

I could not see a soul anywhere near me or even farther away. Maybe it was because of the milky mist that enveloped the environment. However, the Sun had penetrated to the Earth, signaling the arrival of a bright day later. The forest smelled fresh, much like a pine forest. But, not exactly.

Just then, pretty much out of nowhere, two wild brown rabbits waltz past me in all of Mother Nature’s glory. It was kind of like a race. One rabbit running to defeat the other and vice-versa. I had never seen such rabbits in real life but they bought back memories. When I closed the curtains of my room, locked the doors and watched National Geographic for hours. The hair on my body stood on edge and for no reason I could possibly think of, my eyes accumulated so much water that it began receding the excess to my cheeks. I stood there, even after the rabbits were gone, for five minutes without moving. Adrenalin rushed through my body, Serotonin flooded my Central Nervous System and yet, I did not move a muscle.

Just then I saw the reaper a few yards ahead. This was the first time he had shown himself at a time other than the night. My legs lurched forwards and I flashed towards him with the zeal of the rabbits. I was done with this premonition. If I was to live, he had to go. I did not feel fear or even anger. The time had just come.

The closer I got to him, he seemed to go farther and farther away while the tears coated my cheeks and temple with a sticky stain.

As I ran at the top of my ability, I realized he was not receding but his size was actually getting smaller. “What is this sorcery?” I thought to myself as I lowered my pace. By the time I reached in front of him, his enormous figure had reduced to a tiny grain. Still, I saw his puny head look at me in disrespect.
I stepped on the confounded devil’s body and crushed him to the ground until he was nothing more than a stain.

“Where’s your hour glass now?” I asked him. The bamboozled blotch could not even muster up a reply. I was still in tears. It wouldn’t stop at all. My life flashed before my eyes and everything in front of me, the trees, grass and the houses seemed to have developed a life of their own. Like they had their own story to tell. I thought of Supriya. As hard as it was for me to believe then, I couldn’t even remember her face anymore.

After what seemed like eternity, I moved on to the Dhawa. A goldflake waited for me there to be smoked.