Book 3 Alternate Journeys

Book 3 Alternate Journeys

Chapter 15 Prithvi the earth 281 Chapter 16 Le haute couture 302 Chapter 17 The leather-bound journal 318 Chapter 18 The immigrant 338 Chapter 19 The report 355 Chapter 20 The thesis 374 Chapter 21 The bank 396

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Chapter 15 Prithvi the earth

The parturient Maya was with her mother in the backseat, the car rushed towards Sejals nursing home, her father was sitting in the front; chauffeur was driving. Karma of zodiac decides fate of the child, year-month-date matters: two thousand and one years had passed, it was September, ten days and one had passed. The nurse noted in admission form: ElevenNineTwothousand-one. In matters of birth and death you cant be so fickle, time matters: It was half past five in the evening. Fifty and Four years past the Midnight, Thirty and Two from the Morning of Moon; its no longer enough to say the time, it was no longer funny its morning in the city of Bigappala. World has changed, time has a time zone. It was half past five in the zone of Karma. But is it enough? No! Time of time zones is time of the Queen. To save the sun in a land where it didnt burn, man changed time an hour ahead to save the light; but cant change Kismet imagined by god. Freedom had a tryst and had come hidden in the stealth of darkness; tyranny came unannounced in the audacity of daylight. Reversal of logic: midnight became midday, light became darkness, freedom became tyranny, tryst became sudden. The final wheel disconnected from earth; arms of UTC dial of AA Flight Eleven folded in fear. Eleven-Nine became 9/11. The pain became unbearable; she was encouraged to push. On the wall, clock of the Queen; hands joined palms in respectful greetings to welcome Prithvi!!! The planes flew towards Bigappala, Big Apple of the City of New York. They saw the Towers, ego-alter-ego of man. Salvation is dissolution of consciousness, to become one with the supreme, in name of god, for sake of deliverance, the planes attacked the skyscrapers redeeming the world. After four hours of shock of terror and pain of labor the fight back began; she started arriving. At the exact moment when crew and passengers of AA Flight Ninety-three stood against tyranny and terror to start the retaliation with blood sacrifice: Prithvi was born to honor their struggle. She was born at Nine-thirty in the evening, breaking free of the handcuff of history imagined by gods, arriving to fight back, to create the future envisaged by her. Conceived neither on Earth nor in Heavens, conceived in the dreams of the oceans; born in real and illusion, and born no farther; born of multiple fathers and of no father; bourn of energy borne only by mater; born to reclaim the Mother Earth.
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Umbilical sheared, Prithvi cried in arrival; Maya cried in happiness; Mothers world over cried for their dead in the crash; the day of infamy became history; History of the second millennia ended in Clash. Transitions in heavens which had started the fall of the wall completed. New gods stood in ovation to welcome Prithvi; Old gods looked in horror and dismay; stuck in a nightmare trying to awake from crater of the Towers; hole in the Earth of what was imagined. ********* Gods called a conference in heavens to decide upon the imagination of new millennium and to review the state of mortals. Brahma presided. This is vile, collective failure of ours; the sanguinary Mahisa has brandished again to berate the Brahmand. He said fidgeting his peaceful beard. Previous administration was taken to task, Indra, it was your responsibility to preserve the throne of heavens; your Indira was such a false start! Yes My lord, neither she nor I estimated the powers of Mahisa, he just refuses to die. Indira even tried being Durga, but the bugger keeps cloning himself, defying death he devoured her up. Yes it was bad; she did not have Kali to prevent the cloning; drinking the blood spilling. And Vishnu, you are the preserver, what about you? My lord, I reincarnated as Godford, gave the mortals means to kill Mahisa, but they used it to create weapons of war to fight among themselves, Looks like the struggle will go on. Mass production was the revolution; man became god; Godford was born. He made the war total annihilating the battlefields of Europe. And Shiva, at least your energy should suffice to kill the monster. My lord, I reincarnated as Godeinstein, gave the Mortals my energy, but they created weapons of destruction to destroy among themselves, Looks like the struggle will go on. Atom splitting was the revolution; man became god; Godeinstein was born. He created the power melting the cities of Japan. Brahma was perturbed. Yes, the mortals are not helping us to help them at all. Its a disaster for everyone involved. Its sad they just dont understand. Even I reincarnated as Godcogito, gave them light, yet they would rather die than think, Looks like the struggle will go on. Enlightenment of reason was the revolution; man became God; Godcogito was born. He created the identity of Nations for fighting perpetual wars.
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My lord, help us! Help us! We need the order in cosmos restored; we have to have a resolution. Everyone pleaded to the protector, Mahisa has entered the core of every mortal and usurped the blessings of Gods. I became the Mahatma of Ahimsa, taught mortals nonviolence, but Mahisa became violent, and ate away its Atma. This Krishna chap is a snob; never bothers to come to our conference, just plays his flute in Goloka herding cows and cowgirls alike. We have no choice but go to him; only he will have a solution. In Vrindavan the music of melancholic love flowing through the flute of Krishna, Radha sitting beside him, blue cows grazing lush green grass, was disquieted by the clattering crowd of gods, Trahimam! Trahimam! Mercy my lord! Save us from Mahisa; did you see what was done? Gentlemen I have told you before; last time I went down there it was such a mess; I am now retired, he continued with his Lila. Gods knew he was merciful, they waited patiently, he was bound to help. They squatted around him on the grass and listened to the music play. No longer able to fain disdain Krishna started to laugh, Its foolishness of men; Hubris of Gods. The gods looked at him perturbed, not able to make out what was meant. Krishna continued, Dont you learn from the past? You need the feminine energy to get rid of him. They came out of their hubris-induced amnesia remembering the last time Mahisa was defeated they had all channeled their Shakti to invoke Durga and Kali. Gods all joined together to pray; praying to the Goddess to once again be the savior; they prayed for her mercy, prayed for her love, prayed to Shakti. Krishna played on the flute, music creating backdrop of the prayers. Silence of the evocation was broken by the loud echoing roar of the lion announcing the leonine goddesses. Durga mounted on her Vahana, Kali walking by her side, Gods prostrated welcoming her Shakti; relieved they will be saved. Brahma described the situation, gods again in counsel. It is a battle that the Mortals need to fight; we had had enough of going out there to solve their problems. They always create a mess again. Krishna complained, making it clear that the times of full-blown avatars is a pass. Mahisa has learnt and overgrown that technique; the only way to contain him now is that each of the mortal becomes capable of fighting his curse. We can only facilitate the process. This has already been started with the incarnation of trinity of Godcogito Godford Godeinstein; but what is missing is the Shakti. Let Durga and Kali become Arpanod and Dolly; way to defeat
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Mahisa is to catch him by the net of Durga and Kali mutates his clones of Demons into clone Armies of Gods. But beware; this is a war for mortals to fight; to rage the battle in every heart and mind; and stand for a millennial struggle. But what do we do to sustain so long, my lord? Indra will incarnate as Hope; make mortals believe they need to fight Mahisa and not to fall for his lure; let him audaciously keep the solitude of hope alive for one hundred years of hassle. The mother of all deals, the deal of deals, the deal of gods, was made. Gods finally satisfied and assured left Vaikuntha to get on with their evening soma and preparation for jobs assigned in the celestial combat with Mahisa. Krishna got back to playing his octaves of love tunes, charming cows and cowgirls alike, Radha sat beside him in euphony, deep in fluty love, unbothered of upheavals in worlds of Mortals and Gods. In the year of our Ford, One Hundred Thirty and Eight, in the Brave New World, after Twenty Hundred and One years of our Lord, the Kali Yuga entered its Emerging Adulthood. And the unending storytelling of eternal struggle of good and evil, celestial battle of divine and devil, cosmic collision of order and chaos, continued. ********* Back in the world of mortals, in repeat of infamy the giant awoke once more, but found itself in an awkward situation; the actors were non-state. The war had been frozen; it didnt know an answer to the stateless tyranny. The wall had fallen, degenerating neat divides of borders. The Frozen War being heated again didnt realize that the world had changed while it was in the freezer. Violence has no logic, violence requires retribution, war has its own logic; war needs states. Lines were drawn, declarations made, question asked. You are with us or against us? The mullahs in caves decided to be against, the General across border decided on his favorite double game. War finally had a state and the new great game started; War on Terror Enduring the Freedom of Infinite Justice. The days started adding up, Prithvi started growing up; the war started heating up. Refrigerators were no more a luxury, there were plenty of them to buy, but still, all the kings counsels and all the kings friends, all the king's solders and all the worlds refrigerators could not freeze the war again. ********* On the sixth day, it was Prithvis christening ceremony, the first in a series of rituals a Hindu undergoes in her life to inculcate the proper
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Samskaras. Guests were all sitting around the Yajna fire; priest was incanting hymns designated for the occasion. It was a small gathering, some relatives and close family friends. The ritual was to be completed in the afternoon and there was a small party and baby shower arranged for the evening, nothing grand, very unlike of Mayas parents socialite days of Delhi. After the Puja, the priest calculated position of the stars and planets referring to his manuscripts of charts and numbers, he finally spoke drawing a horoscope on paper, Its a very auspicious birth. The stars are all aligned in a way she can move the earth. She has the Rajyoga, a Royal birth. My calculations suggest naming her starting with P, reflecting the alignment of earth and heaven. Maya didnt need astrology of the priest, she already knew her daughters name, She is Prithvi, she announced. But isnt that supposed to be a Boys name? her father protested. No it is not. Earth is mother and is feminine. That is the proper usage also in the ancient texts. The usurpation of society by patriarchy in service of imaginary fatherlands has made the usage masculine. Pandit Ji, correct me if I am wrong. Yes the lady has a point. The Sanskrit word Prithvi is feminine. The priest concurred. She will be called Prithvi because her destiny is to reclaim the Earth. Maya declared in front of the Yajna fire on the day of ritual of penning down destiny of the child. She was her daughter, no one argued; her name and destiny became Prithvi. In the evening, guests came for the baby shower, they brought with them useful gifts and nice comments; everyone said she looked like her. Maya wondered whether it was so, or because they didnt have anything else to say, no other face to compare. She felt the invisible questions of twisting tongues forced to say what was not thought. She had learnt not to heed hidden opinions, she had her Prithvi; she was in heaven. Sonia came towards late evening along with Priyanka and Rahul. It had been some time since Maya had met the family. Rahul was working abroad and had a girlfriend; Priyanka had completed her college and mostly stayed at home helping her mother with her Hindi speech writing. Sonia had finally given in to the pressure of flies of Congress brownianing around Janpath, moreover she felt sad that the legacy of her husbands family was dwindling down to a mockery, whatever bad may be part of that legacy, it cannot be denied that on the whole it had been a force for good for a reborn ancient nation, howsoever hard she tried she couldnt negate the fact that it was hers too; transcending identities is a fact of human life, Sonia became a Gandhi not just by virtue of carrying the
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surname, or by ritual of marriage, or accepting it as a gift of love; but of a more basic drive, of apprehending the nature of ones destiny, ones duty to live up to it. She had become the president of Grand Old Party of India, and the Family was once again ready to claim its rightful position in public life of the Nation. The Congress Party, created by the lovers of land, lawyers of Bombay, Brits and Babas, was hijacked by the Half-Naked Fakir to bare the reality of hinterland, making Oxbridge members of Bar burn their Gowns weaved in Manchester, spinning destiny of a Nation on wheels of Charkha, and the daughter of destiny burning her doll not-yet called Barbie, she went to Shantiniketan and United Kingdom to study, but still couldnt graduate out from adolescence of incendiary marionettes, becoming an adult leavening it behind, a sense of insecure complications conjuring dark forces by rituals of white robes, to penance sins of a generation, banishing thought for action, killing morality for power, Durga swallowed up by Mahisa, and then a Gentlemans dream of boxes and future blown away by batons of Karma, to be reclaimed by the dowager of destiny. Sonia blessed the child on the auspicious day of her destining and naming. She had become Hindu enough not to question the ways of Karma. She smiled when Mayas mother told her about the controversy of naming earlier in the afternoon. She endorsed Mayas notion of Prithvis destiny. And this is for you. Priyanka gave a set of costume jewelry to Maya after passing on gifts that the Family had brought for Prithvi. I have been doing some designing lately; I designed this one especially for you. It mirrors your indomitable spirit. This is really pretty! Maya liked the crafted necklace and pendent. Sorry to make it suddenly sound businesslike, but whenever you want we can hire you as a designer for creations. After the guests left it was time for Maya to feed Prithvi. Every time she fed her, she felt the sacredness of her gift, gush of life in her bosom; she had found her love and freedom. Maya had never felt so happy before, her happiness climaxed when Prithvi started smiling at her, mother and daughter connected in the eternal smile; the baby started her journey of learning to perceive the world. Every moment of Prithvis growing up became an event in Mayas life. Every moment was captured forever in her imagination and memories. ********* Elsewhere also events and imagination prepared for the onward journey of mother and daughter. The now not so far away land of Europe integrated into Euro preparing to welcome Prithvi and Maya. Mayas maternity leave was for six months. She was with her parents,
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she didnt need to worry about job or home; she was completely immersed in Prithvi. When Prithvi slept she worked on her French. Maya had taken French as a course in college, but her spoken French showed lack of practice. She bought a multimedia kit for basic French speaking. She wanted to be prepared when she lands in Paris. Days passed fast. Decade of the nineties started receding in memories, fall of the wall was history. Internet, mobile phones and uncountable channels of cable T.V became the reality of Prithvis times. The hyperpower was challenged by a bunch of fanatics sitting in the caverns and crevasses of Afghanistan. There was a war, regime collapsed but the Taliban disappeared in the caves of wilderness carving frontiers of the subcontinent. Khyber, the Gateway to India, had always been a violent place, tribes from across the world have come there to test their strength, the history of continual war goes back more than five millennia. In December there was an attack on the parliament, the honor of honor-less politicians was hurt; a country with the ability to absorb bombs and mayhem in countless forms reacted when its very center of existence, its symbol of nationhood was attacked. Not many citizens have high respect for what goes within walls of the parliament, but attacked by outsiders it became a rallying cry for revenge. It might be a mess, but it is our mess, lest we let anyone else mess with it, it need be nobody but us. There was huge mobilization on both sides of the border; the subcontinent was again at the verge of a nuclear war. A crazy general on one side, a wise old man on another, both sat ready with buttons in their hands. In an earlier time the buttons were not pushed for the sake of another generation; winter of two-thousand-onetwo the buttons were not pushed for the sake of Prithvi. While armies fought in hills and caves, and stood in standoff in plains and deserts, Prithvi spent her first few months in peace of her grandfathers home. Craziness of the standoff passed, Karma conspired to create the craziness of Gujarat. Seeing the rioting live on T.V, living in the backdrop of mushrooming buttons; in gaze of invisible questions; Maya was glad that she will run away from the craziness of Karma to the sane world of Paris. It came as a rude surprise to them when Maya told her parents of her decision of relocating to Paris. They were horrified by the prospect of their Maya living in the big-bad world alone with an infant child. They didnt doubt her capabilities, were supportive of her career choices, had accepted her choice of single parenthood, melancholically but without questioning, they had forgotten all their questions seeing Prithvi grow. But for them it was not a child and mother but two little women who will be staying alone in the city of Paris, far away from Delhi.
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It was sad, but there wasnt much discussion. Her father pestered her mother to talk sense in their daughters head, but not broaching the topic himself. Mayas mother failed to convince her, she was following the waves; the seas had done its convincing. ********* It was a touching moment, parting of the grandparents from their lovely Prithvi. Maya was sad, but she didnt dither from her decision. It was a direct Air France flight from Delhi to Paris. Sejal, Abhinav and Mayas parents came to see them off. Tear drops in Mayas mothers eyes, Maya struggling to control hers, Prithvis eyes wide in curiosity of lights and sounds of the airport, her lips curving, smiling the joy of novelty. Prithvis reaction to any new experience was always a welcoming glee. Her smile was contagious; it mixed with tears painting the parting. Mayas mother struggled to hold her composure; the Child became Mother of the Woman. It was an overnight flight, at Delhi Airport the check-in, immigration and security were pains as ever. The enhanced security since 9/11 had created even-larger queues. India was changing in an accelerated integration with the world ever since Manmohan unleashed his reforms a decade ago, but the airports were still publicly run by a hand of government which didnt know that the other hand had changed gears. In a frustrating lagging behind from aspirations of an awakening nation, Delhi Airport was a nightmare. It had been okay in an earlier time of splendid isolation, when only travellers were hippies and diplomats, but times had changed, hippies disappeared and no one bothered for diplomats. There were scores of professionals, businessmen and laborers skilled unskilled dispersing around the globe, and there were enthusiasts, tourists, procurers and market-diggers from around the world who were flocking in. And there was the occasional single parent who traveled either way. But the airport was singularly ill-equipped and ill-prepared to handle the avalanche. 9/11 had dampened air travel elsewhere in the world, but the airport in Delhi continued being at the receiving end of crowds of illusion. Maya negotiated her way through the suspended animation of the airport pushing the baggage trolley along with Prithvi swaddled to her shoulder in a baby backpack staring intensely, trying to make sense of sights around her. Maya had flown to-and-fro the Indira Gandhi International Airport before. It was a familiar place and she had never felt paranoid, she wondered what happened; the protective instincts of a mother changed the perception of a familiar airport from the friendly chaos into a deathly paranoia. She finally boarded the flight. She had a business-class ticket and she left the herding illusion behind in the cattle class; to be back in the world of sanity safety space; Peace.
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Maya was worried how Prithvi will take to her maiden flight, but to her surprise she enjoyed every moment of it. Her eyes widened and lips rounded as the airplane accelerated, in an expression of intense curiosity she broke out in mirthful laughter as soon as they were airborne. Maya felt she understood more than what the world of adults would grant her; she was born Global. Prithvi was an instant hit among the young women of business-class crew. The ladies took turn to hold her, cuddle her and play with her all night, Prithvi obliged each of them. Maya got slightly agitated not knowing what to do. A child is supposed to have a sense of familiar and strange, it is good for safety; she worried about Prithvi while the subject of her worry was busy playing peek-a-boo. Maya knew Prithvi was safe; she tried to catch a nap while her daughter mutually entertained the cabin crew. The plane landed at Charles de Gaulle Airport next morning. Prithvi and Maya had few hours of sleep. CDG was huge compared to Delhi, it was a modernist structure, avant-garde and high on style, the terminal made in curves, buildings connected in shapes of eight; there was a huge underground parking and exit to the city from below. The TGV train and Paris bus terminals fused together with the airport in an architectural experiment. Maya liked the style; it was certainly more appealing than other airports she had seen, although she missed the convenience of linearity of Dubai Airport. Paris Airport was a maze that needed alertness to signage to negotiate her way out. She collected her luggage, larger and numerous than what she normally travelled with. She was relocating long-term to the land of fashion gods, and she had stuff for the baby. Despite utilizing the extra allowance of her business-class ticket she had excess. The lady at the check-in counter in Delhi had allowed it without charge in exchange for the infantile charm of smiling Prithvi; she was the earth, she needed her baggage. It was ending winter and early shoots of spring in Paris. Jean-Pierre had ensured that everything was perfectly prearranged to welcome Maya and Prithvi. There was a car waiting at the airport to pick them up. An apartment was already rented. Maya had long discussions with the admin team at creations; they had searched an apartment based on her preferences. The lady handling it wanted her to come to Paris and finalize, but Maya didnt want to check-in in a hotel, unpack and move again. The world had changed since she moved into her first apartment away from parents, everything had become virtual. She had checked the streets around, distances, facilities, the pictures, the three-sixtydegree scopes and videos; she had picked up an apartment in Paris from Delhi, peeping through the windows in her Mac. The headquarters of creations was off Avenue Champs-Elyseess western section. Mayas apartment was midway between shopping area of
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the Avenue and creations building, in a by-lane north of the main road. Both were a walking distance. What she liked best was the Carrefour Superstore close by. Her apartment was on the fourth floor overlooking the Avenue and adjoining park. It was a nice apartment in a Haussmanian building, two bedrooms, a lobby and a kitchen, very well furnished. Contrasting to architecture was the style of interiors and furnishing to her newly developing taste of avantgarde. She appreciated the thought put in by the team of creations in setting up her home, she was glad for their efforts, someone had also done some basic grocery shopping, she found the refrigerator well-stocked, she made a mental note of personally thanking everyone involved. Prithvi continued her journey of curiosity inside the apartment. It was time for her to be fed, but she didnt feel hunger, new sites kept popping up for her to be engrossed at, accumulate and then laugh off. With some difficulty Maya was able to feed her and make her sleep in the stroller. She didnt have anyone to look after her while she unpacked. The first thing she did was to reassemble the crib; she now had a safe place to put away the devil of her daughter. Other bags were opened, Maya wanted everything out and in wardrobes, she wanted to feel settled and start her new life of single working mother in the city of fashion; she stowed her baggage. It was her choice, it was her destined journey, it was her love and freedom promised by the waves and seas, she felt bliss, she reflected on start of her new life, Prithvi smiled in her sleep in the crib. ********* The group headquarters of creations brands was a self-owned eightfloor building in Elysees arrondissement of Paris. The first four floors were studios and design shops that churned out designs for creations brands worldwide. Next four floors were offices of the group. The top floor was Jean-Pierres office, boardrooms, other directors and key executives of the company. Mayas track record in India and Dubai had earned her a top-floor office. The crche was on the fourth floor. On her first day at creations Paris, Maya went straight to the top floor with Prithvi in stroller. A lady was waiting for her in the vestibule when she came out of the elevator. The receptionist was expecting her; she showed her to her room and buzzed Jean-Pierre of her arrival. Jean-Pierre walked down to Mayas room, he nuzzled and kissed Prithvi, then hugged Maya; they kissed on the cheeks. A group had gathered in the boardroom for a small reception and introductions. All the key executives and designers were present. A serving of croissants and breads was laid out for breakfast. Maya was welcomed by everyone; she shook hands and said hellos. Some of them she had met before in person, most of them she had talked to on phone. Prithvi, as
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usual, was the center of attention, stealing the limelight away from Maya. Maya was introduced to Barbara, her assistant. After the pleasantries and short welcome speeches Maya thanked everyone. The gathering dispersed. Barbara and Maya went down to the fourth floor to the crche. Maya liked the crche, it was spacious, looked professional; the caretaker seemed experienced and expert in handling toddlers. Prithvi immediately connected to her and comfortably went into her hands. Maya was glad, she kissed Prithvi and thanked the caretaker and came back to the eighth floor. Barbara and Maya walked into Mayas office. It was a small room, stylishly furnished. Maya plugged in her Mac and logged in using IDs and password arranged for her by Barbara. Barbara fetched two cups of coffee, they chatted about Mayas first impressions of Paris and creations. Barbara explained basic working of creations administration, the access passes, logins, parking etc. Mayas access pass had permissions to the design floors and studios; this was a restricted area for most of the office employees. After finishing coffee Barbara showed Maya around the office floors, more introductions and familiarization happened during their walk. Back in her room she checked emails and settled down. In a couple of hours she was due for lunch with Jean-Pierre. He was to take her to the studios. A series of meetings were scheduled in the afternoon for Maya to be inducted in her new role as the Global Brand Custodian of creations brands. The lunch was simple, lettuce salad with sauted fish garnished in classiness, the executive dining hall was lavish, dcor of mahogany wood in dark wooded curves highlighted by exclusive varnish. The butler in a bowtie talked in English to Maya, she replied in French. She had been practicing for some time, the words were correct but her accent still needed to be polished to pass as a true-blooded haute couturier. Jean-Pierre smiled and encouraged her efforts, he was proud of her. The butler asked, Will the lady like some wine? Maya chose lemonade; it was freshly made not poured out of a can. She liked the drink and food; it tasted well, was good for an afternoon full of work. Jean-Pierre ate little, no one had ever seen him eat a full meal, he was more of a taster and appreciator of food and beverage, an epicure rather than an eater or drinker. So what do you think? First impressions? He asked the familiar question. Maya smiled. I dont think anybody has a first impression of Paris when they come here. It is already a place in the mind, in perceptions, in dreams; everyone has an impression even without visiting. I can say, at least the first day the dream continues. she was pleased
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that Paris was living up to it. This was in no small measure because she was working and staying around the City Centre, boulevards of bohemianism and high culture, art and fashion, wealth and shopping, dining, recreation. She was completely and rightly disconnected from the other Paris, which did not live in glory of its history and art, but in reality of suburban ghettos and immigrants. Jean-Pierre and her other colleagues found it convenient to not mention what did not exist. For Maya, Paris was out of her dreams, from novels of her adolescent world. She was glad for it, she shared her impressions with Jean-Pierre, he was glad for it. Unlike the sophisticated French meal and meeting she had envisioned, the lunch and conversation turned out to be quick and professional. JeanPierre was always the elusive boss on other side of the phone, an enigma appearing in person only on occasional creations event to lend his personal brand; she will now be working closely with him, physically in the same building on the same floor. She noticed his businesslike professionalism, far removed from persona of the eccentric designer cultivated in the outside world, and till a day ago by Maya. He talked about global sales of brands in Mayas portfolio. She sensed the emotion of cold numbers replacing the passion of hot brands. She was slightly taken aback by this version of Jean-Pierre; it was totally alien to Mayas perception; the frosty business brain that drove figures at creations. How is Prithvi taking it? Jean-Pierre asked a personal question towards end of the meal. Oh! She is enjoying the new sights and sounds; you should have seen her excitement in the flight. A streak of happiness glowed across Mayas face as she remembered and talked about her daughter; she liked that JeanPierre asked about her. She felt an urge to go and check on her again, she had done it just before lunch when her feed was due. Maya was still rattling quietly within herself with thoughts of her boss when they walked down to the studios. To Mayas greater surprise JeanPierre changed again completely as soon as the special access door of the studio floor opened. His movements, modulation of his voice, expression of the eyes, were all different after he crossed the divide and the door closed behind them. He had grace and firmness in his walk that could only be described as transcending sexuality. His stare on the work in progress at various boards of artists and designers trying out concepts on paper, was intimidating and awe-inspiring. It put even the most experienced designers in an intense anxious wait, for slight change in expression of blankness of the stare, which will suggest direction of opinion of the god of creations. Maya could feel the persnickety tension, the fastidious following and
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love in the air; the master with his disciples, the god with his apostles. The designers, by instinct, had learnt to respond to the slightest blinks of his facial muscles, they connected without conversations; they knew exactly what Jean-Pierre thought of their progressing work. He transmitted by telepathy of twitching nerves, alterations that will make the work a perfection. Maya was awed; the sway of his hands touching the transparent fabric. The dresses, samples of latest accessories, all lying around, urbanely mixing with soft music. Maya wondered which Jean-Pierre is real, one that explained her sales numbers over lunch or one who stood in front of her; his being becoming one with the work in progress of creations brands. Jean-Pierre introduced Maya to the designers; they briefly explained her about their projects. It was a grand design, the vision of future of JeanPierre, aspects of new, disruptive technologies and progressive values that were changing the world, society and fashion, fused together and presented in elegance of time immemorial. Everything around was avant-garde. Maya wondered how will society react on these designs, she felt tensed, it was her job to ensure the reaction was right, those were big numbers Jean-Pierre talked over lunch; it was her job to package the haute to be palatably popular; to achieve the utopian amalgamation dreamed by every artist and designer. Is the idea itself an illusion, she contemplated, she couldnt pursue her thought further as Jean-Pierre continued with his tour of introductions. They walked down a spiral staircase to the third floor, it was another workshop, multimedia and high-tech equipments, a large photo-shoot space with more variety of lighting equipments than Maya had ever seen. There were some models and few photographers, busy clicking away; there were people sitting behind computers with sprucing screens. As soon as Jean-Pierre stepped, there was a momentary drop of pace in the work. Maya felt the same emotions in atmosphere as the floor above. They moved around in similar pattern of introductions. He walked up to the photo shoot, Jean-Pierre kissed the models and shook hands with the photographers, Maya was introduced, there was more kissing and shaking of hands. Jean-Pierre asked them to continue, stood in the corner intently observing. Maya stood with him, trying to soak in the process of all that was going along. She had her studios and workshops in Delhi, but this was different league, these were the artists not customizers who would tweak global designs of creations to sell well in their local markets; she was finally amidst source of creations. They walked down another floor. Equipments on the second floor were more for physical creation rather than virtual, people working on
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sewing machines of various sizes, work tables with carpentry and metalwork tools, working with fabric leather wood metal cutting twisting turning stitching pasting. The whole floor buzzed with energy surpassing the above two floors, but emotions were the same; Jean-Pierre and Maya did the rounds. The lower most floor had practice ramps, there were models practicing with samples, another shoot going on, music playing in the background, some kind of electronic music which Maya didnt recognize. Another round of introductions and conversations later they took the elevator back to the top floor. Top executives and designers assembled again in the boardroom next to Jean-Pierres office. Maya noticed the change in Jean-Pierres demeanor as soon as they stepped out of the workshops. He was again the cold chief executive presiding over a company meeting. His movements markedly masculine, timbre of his voice reduced again, feminine grace of his swing and passionate gaze of his stare turned into efficiency of spreadsheets and slides of presentations displayed on screen of the boardroom. He didnt need to see the screen or refer to notes as he spoke, he knew the numbers and content of what he was presenting as an artist knows his art. First few slides were market trends and sales analysis of major brands of creations. He highlighted his ambitions of multiplying sales, yet keeping creations exclusive. He introduced at length, past achievements, future responsibilities and targets of the person he had chosen to achieve the apparently contradictory and impossible goal. Attendees felt the daunting challenge of Mayas exalted ante. Its a tradeoff in high fashion between value associated with the brand, its exclusivity and sales. Increasing sales makes the brand commonplace, losing its charm and ability to fetch premiums in pricing. No one had figured the magic formula; the optimal branding, pricing and designing that served both art and business. Maya knew it was an ambitious vision that Jean-Pierre showed in his slides. She knew it will be challenging for her to meet his expectations. But she was excited, she was elated of importance her role will have in the world of creations. She was the Brand Custodian of creations brands, all designs, all campaigns, would need her sign off. She will be responsible for perceptions of each brand and revenues it generated worldwide. The marketing managers at one end to the designers at other will all work under her overall coordination; she will be the conductor of orchestra of creations which will play the symphonies written by Jean-Pierre. It was a long and tiring day, there were too many faces, too many introductions, projects, plans, it all mixed up in Mayas mind with perceptions of her boss. She shut down her laptop and prepared to leave. Jean-Pierre walked towards her office, I had a thought, he said, to
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indulge my princess to a cup of coffee at my favorite caf and walk her home. Thank you for your gesture, My Lord! I am honored. Maya replied continuing the pretense of Royalty, they both laughed. So he actually does occasionally laugh too, Maya smiled wondering. They went down to the crche and collected Prithvi. You have an amazing daughter. I have been taking care of kids of all age all my working life, you rarely see a toddler to be so independent. The caretaker praised her adaptability, You are lucky to have her, she said. Maya didnt need to be reminded, she thanked her. Jean-Pierre and Maya walked down the boulevard, Maya pushing Prithvis stroller. They took a detour, a longer way back. She was soaking herself every bit in the streets of Paris, in by-lanes of her dreams; letting activities of the hectic day settle in her mind. It was slightly nippy; she checked on Prithvis clothing, her baby jacket was properly zipped up. In one of the by-lanes Jean-Pierre stopped in front of a caf. It was a small caf, unlike the ones on Main Avenue bubbling with tourists. There werent many guests, few who were there recognized Jean-Pierre; they exchanged smiles. Jean-Pierre chatted with the barista and suggested Maya the choice of coffee, an espresso of select Ethiopian beans with a tingly lingering bitterness that played on her palate after every sip. He talked a bit about Paris; He made faces in exchange for laughter of Prithvi; he sipped his coffee in between entertaining the mother and daughter. Maya was observing him and other people around in the caf. They did not stay long and left as soon as they finished their coffee. The three of them walked down the avenue towards Mayas apartment, the circle of le Concord a little distance off, it was still not peaking tourist season, but even in early spring the Avenue had its fair share of sightseers and shoppers. Paris is one of those cities that dont need a season to be appreciated. Maya and Prithvi watched the young-and-old walking by. Maya took Prithvi in her arms outside the stroller; Jean-Pierre pushed the empty stroller along. Mother and daughter looked into eyes of each other and laughed. Their infectious happiness was carried around and passersby all smiled at brightness of their laughter. At entrance of the Apartment building Maya invited Jean-Pierre to come over to see the apartment; he Came up to make sure that admin team of creations had taken care of things properly; he need not have checked; he knew his word was the word of god in creations. After Jean-Pierre was satisfied about the Apartment, and more importantly that Maya was satisfied, he readied to go. Maya offered tea; he politely declined and left, letting the mother and daughter to be with each other.
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He left them in their own private world. Maya reflected on the day, start of her new life, start of Prithvis life. She decided not to wonder how things will turn out; to live in the moment presented. They looked into each others eyes; no longer mother and daughter but two little girls enjoying the dreams of their fairyland. ********* Kalki watched with an expressionless face, others in the cafeteria watched in stupefied horror. News of the Trade Center attacks spread like wild fire in the UN building that afternoon. People gathered in conference rooms and canteens, wherever a television set was available. One of the towers was hit and burning in higher floors, videos of people jumping out in panic from the pain of heat to the death of gravity; shocking sights everyone watched stunned. Then suddenly, live on T.V the other tower was hit by another plane, creating a twin inferno. Kalki stood for hours in silence staring at the skyscrapers collapse in rubble and dust. The world was shaken into a rude awakening. Slowly the information started building up, names of the hijackers, their nationalities, the conspiracy, the plotters truth false real imaginary all mixed up and served in tidbits of multiple breaking news. Things changed at UNHCR. Some of the attackers were immigrants in Europe. A dark cloud of gloom and suspicion descended on the whole business of immigration, economic or political. Crash of the Towers created fresh divides, imaginary and real, across the world and in UNHCR. The whole of United Nations, all its offices, soon became a scene of intense jockeying and politicking. The effrontery of American intelligence bestrode everywhere, demanding information and grilling everyone. UN officials, especially of nationalities not favorably disposed to Americans found it an uncalled for meddling in their work; blatant disregard of protocol by American arrogance. They wanted requests to be made through the UN bureaucratic hierarchy. The Americans didnt have time and patience; they operated in the framework of with us or against us. They interviewed Kalki, they had heard of the Indian agent who was building a network of informants. Kalki didnt have useful information directly related to the attacks, but his insights in workings of the dark side, its channels of trafficking drugs, illegal immigrants, women for prostitution, were of great help to his questioners. The official who interviewed him sent a confidential report to his bosses about Kalkis deep knowledge, and a possible source deep within the immigrant community in Europe. The Americans sent a special request to their Indian counterparts to have Kalki work with them on anti-terror espionage. Kalki received a call
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from RDS informing him about an officer from Indian intelligence who will contact him for some purpose; He has my blessings. I want you to seriously consider the suggestion he has. Mr. Shah was a RAW liaison in the Indian embassy in Geneva, he very coldly started; The September 11 attacks is a boon for India. The world has woken up to the dread that we have faced for quite awhile. It has solidly placed the civilized nations in a camp together to fight and root out the menace of terrorism. The war on terror has multiple fronts. He continued his explanation, Clandestine cooperation between erstwhile at-bestarrogant and at-worst-hostile to each-other intelligence agencies, to decipher the secret world of sleeper cells and networks, to gather intelligence for proactive protection from future attacks, is one such front. He concluded before posing the proposition of Kalki working with Americans in Europe, Of course you need to file all intelligence with us too. Kalki didnt think much about the scheme, he simply said yes. Kalki was recruited by circles of espionage for penetrating the immigrant community as an insider, to gather potentially useful intelligence to be shared among the circles. He will work with American handlers. The Indians didnt have an infrastructure in Europe. Events unfolded by the 9/11 attacks conspired to drift Kalki deeper into the indiscriminate world of espionage and immigrants. He already had a network at the grassroots; his mission now was to climb the pyramid; hierarchy of the dark side, to reach its depths, to see the invisible. Meanwhile in the war, the General in Pakistan, despite being threatened to be Bombed Back to Stone Age, was in two minds about the tumbling level of support he can render in smoking out the perpetrators; in carpeting out his erstwhile closest allies. In Wiowin a backhanded deal was struck to attack the parliament and escalate tensions with India, It was in everyones benefit, Pakistanis can claim they cant fight a war in Afghanistan in middle of an Indian mobilization, India will not be left behind from the renewed great game by flexing muscles in plains and deserts not far off from the caverns, the General will have no choice but to listen to the Biggest Brother with Indians sitting ready to slit his throat. It was the Deal fit for Gods: three different antagonistic purposes, all fulfilled by a simple attack, the gods knew that few deaths are a mere collateral for such achievements, of course they agreed no one will push unnecessary buttons. After the Parliament attack India mobilized; it became a hot topic conversing in United Nations. The world shuddered at prospects of heated nuclear conversation. Despite his multiple lives and adventures of days and nights, old ghosts reappeared to haunt him. Kalki saw the attacks on
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television. He read of the mobilization, panic in the world community of imminent nuclear war in the subcontinent. The UN office was abuzz; being from India his opinion was sought at coffee corners and in conference rooms. UNHCR was worried of millions to be displaced, nobody knew or was prepared for what was going to happen. In his deepest desires Kalki wished for the decisive push to happen, to cleanse the subcontinent of its sins and cowardice of past, to release its two people from entanglement of destiny in the holocaust. He longed to be on the nonexistent battlefield. He was deep enough in parallel worlds of politics and diplomacy, shrouded in conspiracy of entrenched interests, to have seen the colors of power on all sides of divides. He knew that messages were passed in cryptic conversations, hyperpower will not tolerate violence of terrorism; hyperpower will not tolerate states against us. If you are with us, then we have friends who will listen to reason. He imagined the invisible deals of precipitous events that make poker players show their hands in the game that the master player plays; puppeteer playing puppets. Kalki had travelled far enough to know there will be no wars; long enough to comprehend the game was fixed, results set. He smoked his joints longing for the nonexistent war to bring his soul to peace. Kalki wasnt bothered by the airtime CNN and BBC wasted on the India-Pak standoff. He was finally realizing the truth of sermons of RDS, he had previously just failed to appreciate, he was getting inducted in appreciating the Big Picture; he was slowly connecting the invisible dots of visible world broadcasted on Television. Similarly, some months later, sitting in Geneva thousands of kilometers away he did not bother to feel emotions of shame or horror of carnage of Godhra and Gujarat, seen again on CNN. RDS and Karma have a method to their madness; who was he to challenge it in his naivet? He simply continued on his triple life wandering around cities of Europe. During the day when social face of civilization was awake, he was a UN rep trying to help communities and governments solve the problems of refugees and immigrants teeming across the world in multiplying magnitude. By the night when darker side of society woke up, he was a frequenter to brothels, pickup joints and dope dens, where he became the ferocious animal, king of the jungle uprooted from his kingdom, trying calming his anger among fellow creatures of darkness. And subtle underneath the two lives was an observer which made notes of both day and night to be neatly filed with the boys of intelligence of circles of espionage. Kalki was given a dossier that detailed secret gatherings at parties of creations, of guests of Adnan the Arab, of salacious hostesses hired to entertain in these surreptitious rendezvous. His target became to decipher
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the ulterior world of Adnan the dealmaker. A bottomless pit of funds available to him, he started calling escort agencies suspected of providing women at these parties. He became their client; once again, cover was the discreetness of a respectable gentleman. Among other things 9/11 changed in Kalkis life was his graduation to the higher ladders of respectability of the oldest profession. ********* Armageddon unfolded in downtown Manhattan; the Towers got hit one after another, columns of steel burnt into melting metal like the plant of Botala. Three thousand memories wiped out in collapsing dust and rubble, the City became a canvas of panic and chaos. Krishna had seen enough life riots mutinies wars bombings, but standing amidst crowd seeing the skyscrapers collapse, his ability to be shocked again in future with anything whatsoever was wiped out. Iyer stood next to Krishna, both flabbergasted, staring the buildings no longer a building, the very building where he had gone to work till yesterday, where he would have worked today, staring in shock of disbelief. They had thought they had fled Karma and Mahisa, they had landed in the land of dreams; that day the dream was tainted askance by the black-holed doubt forever. That day the meaningless carnage, the continual mayhem of violence of India had a new meaning, a retrospective meaning of comparison. Mahisa danced his dirty dance of basilisk blaze of horror in heart of the land of gods, and no mortal was safe anywhere anymore and the world changed beyond recognition forever. Finally they broke out of their trancelike stare when a policeman came asking them to move back. The whole area was evacuated till multiple blocks. They walked along with the crowd, radiating outwards from Ground Zero. Everything halted in Downtown, traffic was gridlocked; sirens of fire brigades, police cars and ambulances hurriedly negotiated their way in and out of the horrid site. Metro was closed, buses were stopped; people needed to walk out of downtown before any kind of transport was available. Iyers apartment was in midtown Manhattan; they reached his home after several miles of walking. The City was a pandemonium; people were standing on terraces of buildings watching the rubble dust rising in a mushroom-like cloud mixed with fire and smoke. The city started returning to semblance of social order next day onwards, the spirit of New York is not the skyrocketing esthetics of its grand architecture or the neatness of its street layout gridded at right angles of mortal perfection, it is the million commutations, million office workers, million other workmen, from all over the world, the City where Indians and Pakistanis are business partners, where Israelis and Palestinians make
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money together, where Africans join Europeans in their art of hustling tourists from Europe and Africa, where millions every day shovel coal in engine room of the ship called Earth, its a misnomer to ascribe the attack of high deaths and higher symbolism with dampening that spirit, because the spirit of New York is not its symbolism, but a continual strife to earn a living and pursue a dream, the dream of New York is bigger than what all the gasoline of the world can burn; that day and the coming days the spirit of New York became its firemen; The United Nations is not a building but it is the streets of New York. The trains started but air space remained closed next day, all planes were grounded. Krishna took an Amtrak back to Boston, back to the school away from the madness unfolding in New York. Back in the school time passed and months passed. Soon the darkness of 9/11 became a memory for Krishna. His energy had once concentrated to become forest of the source; a new forest was growing in perimeter around the school. Events happened, America attacked Afghanistan, President promised smoking them out from their holes, patriotism blew in the wind across States from coast to coast. But it could not smoke Krishna out from forest of the school. Walmart made a killing on selling Stars and Stripes, textile manufactured in Bangladesh, dyed in Thailand, printed in China, delivered in a package of patriotism across the shelf in your friendly neighborhood store. But Krishna did not bother to fly one in forest of the school. The share markets further collapsed with the greed of Enron and horror of attacks. But the ticker did not tell Krishna depleting value of his stocks inside forest of the school. South Asia was at the brink of nuclear war; Armies of the Subcontinent stood in standoff after the Greek Columns of Karma shook. But the news could not pine the redwood columns of forest of the school. In Godhra and Gujarat people were killed and blood spilled. But for Krishna it was a far-off land from forest of the school. He did not bother to think whether the Chief Minister played flute in appreciation or meditation. Krishna was happy in forest of the school, his second Vanvas to decisively settle matters of passages and daemons once-and-forever. He had completed the mandatory and elective courses to get required credits to start on his thesis. His basic sciences and math brushed-up and ready for the arborous plunge in endeavor of his childhood dreams. He had submitted a plan for attacking the question of the universal theory. He will go down the road of quantum gravity. Lot of work was already done down this path, like various other ways that physicists were
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trying to approach the solution. The Quantum Gravity mode had shown some initial promise and enthusiasm among the brethren, but soon ran into irreconcilable mathematical results and loss of fervor for later fashions of string theories, loop gravities and other esoteric formulations. In Krishnas opinion, sheer complexity of these trends suggested they were not in the right direction; he believed: if ever the true secret of nature is revealed to the comprehension of man, it needs to be elegant in its obviousness and simplicity. His weaker mathematical skills (edges blunted in frontiers of abstractness a toll of age) added to his conclusion in no small measure. He pursued down the less fashionable path. His plan for the thesis was approved, he was wished best by his evaluators. Krishna was now left with his own program, no classes, no courses, and gracious funding of the department by Vinod also ensured minimal teaching-assistance hours. He had never felt so happy before, he alone with his books and computer against the incomprehensible chaos of nature, the contest of making sense. He loved the contest, this will also be his decisive personal battle to oust the daemons and get his mind at peace for once and for all. Krishna started in the traditional format by drawing out an outline of what is known; the theories that have been established; forbidding inconsistencies which need to be removed in the grand combination of Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity.

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Chapter 16 Le haute couture

Fashion (apparel and intellectual) continually turns, fed by the interplay of two basic but contradictory human instincts of defining ones identity, by the energy generated from the conflict, of being an individual, and the desire of belonging to a larger aspirational group. The trick of fashion trendsetting and marketing is brand positioning to balance this contradiction; to imitate the deep-rooted desires of identity and expression in dynamic seasonal variations of styles and designs. The top end of the hierarchy is the Haute Couture official formal exclusive appellation is of the marquee label, of select few who constitute the official Haute Couturiers. It is the exclusive abode of gods of dressmaking; making custom-fitted dresses which very few people will see, even fewer will wear; but seeing is not the purpose; god need not be seen to be worshiped; purpose is to create the divinity that dribbles down in an official sanction from heaven to the ready-to-wear categories; comforting the wearers, of security of identity and belonging; a sense of cultivation of rightful taste; making the rightful aesthetical choices. Jean-Pierre was a member of the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture. But for creations as an organization the custom-made high tailoring was a small part of the business numbers, its importance was in driving other numbers, it maintained the mystic of brands and the designer. Custom part of the business was for celebrities, the dresses to be worn on red carpet of Cannes, for occasions designated for being seen. It was handled directly by Jean-Pierre; Mayas business was ready-made clothing, accessories and perfumes; not exactly mass-market but still mass-produced to feed the global affluence and its aspirations. The cycle of global fashion-apparel retailing starts with customdesigned clothes made in workshops of creations in France (wore by models on runways of fashion weeks in Milan, New York, London and Paris), sold in exclusive boutiques, bought by celebrities, clicked and pictured in monthly fashion bibles in Vogue; creating the traction that moves manufacturing to Sanjays factories in NOIDA and sales to Main street retailers (still premium, still fetching prices of aspiration); next season next year (leftovers discounted with labels removed) increasing pirated production in sweatshops around the world, sold in big numbers in backstreet shops of not only the big cities of West but also the small towns of hinterlands (the nonexistent world of nemesis Mahisa); sold to the aspirations of girl on the street; designs becoming sufficiently mass-market and low-brow to be scoffed at in the cocktails of society profanity that girl on the street is wearing it; once again turning the cycle of creations as collections for the new season is already up on the ramps of fashion capitals
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of the world; comforting the security of wealth. Maya learned expertise of the game fast, bigger in scale than what she had encountered in India or Middle East, she was selling and ensuring balance of the complicated cycle, meeting the numbers yet being exclusive; understanding emotions inspiring trends of the season; she was enjoying the challenge; she was on a high, the high of high fashion. ********* Paris in summer was shinning in sheer joy for Prithvi and Maya. The long walks on boulevards, the artists, tourists, the pageantry of color, museums, street shows, were all treat to the senses of mother and daughter. They took frequent strolls up and down Avenue Champs Elysis imbibing in history of the city: Place de la Concorde freshness of fountains and gardens blooming in spring, opulence of shops on Rue de Rivoli, the river flowing in emotions under numerous bridges, art in the paintings of Tuileires Garden, history of an ancient civilization in Obelisk, the darkness of occupation hidden deep within and invisible in the buildings of Rue Royale, and in the square Guillotine of the Revolution long removed, invisible even to stones of the square, struggling in silence away from gaze of all the tourists, to remove the stains of memory, and all the way down to Place Charles de Gaulle Arc de Triumphe; Maya felt the exhilaration of liberation; flashes of India Gate appeared in her memory. Mayas favorites were the cafs of the by-lanes. She was inculcated into them by Jean-Pierre who became a frequent company to walks of Prithvi and Maya. She was yet again surprised to see another side of Jean-Pierre, he was neither the chief executive nor the designer, but turned into the mostneeded friend as soon as they were out of creations. Maya felt complete and at home in streets of Paris, yet company of a friend was always welcome. Jean-Pierre and Prithvi connected like acquaintance from past life. Maya was surprised to see Jean-Pierres patience with Prithvi; he found the most amazing of toys for her; he put her on his shoulders on their walks around the parks while she pulled an empty stroller; carrying the satchels filled with gems of satiation. Jean-Pierre showed Maya an alternate Paris, by-lanes of Bohemianism; he was well known in these areas, he was a kind of godfather to many who struggled with their own creations in parks and pavements of Paris; he was always recognized in cafs of these districts. Maya saw a facet of his social life outside creations. The mystic of Jean-Pierre continued for Maya, but for Prithvi he was easier to figure out. Maya felt a twinge of envy when she refused to cross over to her arms from Jean-Pierres. Maya wondered about the magic of the man. Maya found more friends, mostly among staff and designers of creations. She befriended some of the artist friends of Jean-Pierre. Her circle soon expanded to include business associates of creations echelons
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of high fashion, wealth and power the guests in creations events. She soaked in people, bohemian and elite, her work at creations, growing up of Prithvi, spirit of Paris. Time passed fast and life took a routine. Her work required travel, especially when new designs were being launched in fashion capitals of the world. She booked hotels with crche and daycare facilities. Airports and flights always made Prithvi very excited, Maya wondered what went on in the tiny brain of her daughter. Travel and events outside Paris were difficult; she left Prithvi in Hotel daycare, but a burden of guilt hung all over her during the work day. She finished work and rushed back to the hotel to be with Prithvi, to overindulge her to expunge her guilt. Sometimes there were evening cocktails and dinners. Maya normally turned up with Prithvi in a stroller or hanging from her shoulder harnessed in a baby backpack. Initially it was awkward for Maya and the guests, but smiles of Prithvi soon removed the discomfort, for her the novelty of seeing new faces and new places was always welcome. Maya excused herself at earliest possible pretext after having polite conversations with most important people, and rushed back to her hotel to be alone with Prithvi. She pampered her through the night to compensate for carrying her to unfamiliar parties. But Prithvi did not complain; she sampled all possible indulgences for a one-year-old. She was a globetrotter in stroller and enjoying it. She grew up in ramps of London and New York though Maya kept her tours to minimum. Jean-Pierre was cooperative, he never insisted on Mayas plans; she had the freedom and flexibility to run her life and job as per her convenience. Maya traveled only for the most important events; she tried to get most of her global work done on conference calls and videoconference. The videoconferencing room was on the executive floor, similar to the boardroom next to Jean-piers office, but contemporary and high-tech. The wood was not mahogany but bold brown lacquered ply-boards of spruce wood; VC screens were paneled on walls and cameras embedded above it. It was Mayas pulpit for conducting the symphony of creations. Regional marketing managers on the screens talked from other sides of the world; Maya reviewing numbers, sorting issues, stirring her stole sitting in Paris; firing encyclicals from the high altar of the VC room she felt an exaltation of papal power, of achievement, of challenge to cross all frontiers; to break all ceilings; fumata bianca. ********* With passage of time Maya became more familiar with creations and its creator. Time peeled off layers, revealing to her the mystery sides of her new world and her enigmatic boss. Barbara fed her the chutzpah of gossips and stories which circulated about Jean-Pierre. His sexuality was a major
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theme of conversations in the grapevine. It was rumored equally strongly that he was homo-hetro-bi-asexual. There were stories of his relationships with models and friends, men and women, there were speculations, there were revelations of people claiming to be his lovers, but facts eluded. Jean-Pierre brushed aside these stories as stunts people do to leverage his popularity to create fame for themselves, he denied the claims in a most matter-of-fact tone and then smiled letting the world know, there is more to it than the media knows. Jean-Pierre had never married; nobody knew for sure whether he had an offspring. His past was not well known, other than stories he told about himself; mix of fact and fiction presented draped in design and style. His rags to riches story, his talents in arts and aesthetics, his pulse for culture of haute and popular, his legendry business acumen and connections with the rich powerful famous, were all folklore that built his enigma. Jean-Pierre lived his persona, a creation of design, the work of art presented to society to be recognized as the perceivable spirit behind the stuff they buy of creations brands. Jean-Pierre was the branding; mystery of the spirit that was carried in stuff sold by creations. He loved the media, he was their darling. Maya discovered a yet-another Jean-Pierre when a reporter or camera was present; the businessman, friend, designer all metamorphosed in to the performer a charmer the model le supreme for creations. The clothes he wore in public, women he wore, the clothes they wore, phrases he used in interviews, all became fire to spread and influence tastes of the time. JeanPierre loved being the showman showing off his creations. Even his age was a matter of speculation, it was generally agreed he was in his mid fifties; thats what the official story said. It was known that he was born of a Moroccan mother and a French father in Morocco. Nothing much was known about his parents and childhood, legions of tabloid story-diggers tried finding out, but the self-story of Jean-Pierres life was a florid self-portrait rather than a study by destiny; the prospectors knew only what he wanted them to know. Maya also discovered the other illusory side of creations, side with the ominous presence of Adnan the dealmaker. Adnan had an office next to Jean-Pierre but slightly smaller. Maya had rarely seen him in creations building; he operated mostly from Dubai and travelled to creations events, his role limited to adding people on guest lists, conversations on cocktails, and entertaining the after party. Some events were held at locations and budgets which didnt justify the branding strategy. These events were requested by Adnan. The models were not from regular agencies, but a contact of Adnan, the guest lists were private. Maya recognize few names, but mostly unknown people, mostly unconnected to the world of fashion. But the list always had an evasive aura
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of power and conspiracy. There was no media, no grand build-up, no JeanPierre obliging with his presence. These were small events held in remote places, generally luxury resorts in offbeat locations of extreme natural beauty. Guests were siphoned in by chartered choppers. Maya was not involved, Jean-Pierre sometimes attended but few knew that he left Paris. The only reason Maya knew about these events was because expenses were booked under branding budgets; she was the owner of worldwide branding budgets. These expenses were not routed by design or marketing department, but were approved by Adnan and send directly to accountants for processing and perusal of Maya. Maya checked with Jean-Pierre; he smiled, These are for designs which create history. Maya got the hint; she didnt ask more but approved the expenses. Maya tried hard to ignore, but she found it difficult to keep her eyes and ears shut. The accountants told her stories of invoices of chartered jets, chartered boats, flying guests, beautiful women, dresses and jewelry worthy of royalty, generals rogue and otherwise, arms contractors, oil barons, Arabs, Russians; stories shrouded in cloak of secrecy. She remembered the after party of Adnans guests in grand launch of creations Dubai. She was getting worried, she was approving the expenses, she hoped for best; she thought to confront Jean-Pierre at an opportune moment; she needed to know the truth; by signing off she was involved whether she liked it or not. She had good memories of her fathers association with Adnan, but she knew how the story ended; shame of a national scandal. The labyrinths of illusion went deeper in creations than she wanted to know. She was tied down to its deepest anchors. On days she approved Adnans invoices she left early and immerse herself in games of Prithvi to get rid of thoughts of unknown games of creations. ********* The colors of fall created the high point of Mayas impressions of first complete cycle of seasons in Paris. The days were shortening; temperature fell gradually; greens turned to red and brown and then floated down in declaration of coming cold. Leaves in various stages of withering painted a spectrum on pavements like on canvasses of artists who stood on it. Tourist density dwindled, romance of Paris appearing with the fading of facade put up for the teeming millions of summer. There were still visitors, romantic types who came to experience the autumn of Paris. Darker nights and still-not-freezing winters, backdrop for the waft of romantic nightlife; cafs and clubs bursting with the energy of fall; autumnal romance in the air, not touristy but of the type in poetry, young couples lining banks of the river, kissing in the foredrop of falling leaves. The
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atmosphere was so seductive that she couldnt help but think of Jean-Pierre, moments of her life, relationships in Delhi; there were still unmentionable names in the groping darkness of memory. She thought of rumors and stories about Jean-Pierre. With passing months she had come closer to him. He often walked her and Prithvi to their apartment and stayed back for a cup of coffee. He continued being the perfect friend to Maya and her daughter, but she couldnt break through his layers of personalities; nobody knew Jean-Pierre beneath those layers. She visited his apartment, generally for social evenings which he hosted for friends. Jean-Pierre had a large apartment in the City Centre, where he lived and entertained. creations also had a small chateau fortykilometer north of Paris, near the town of Chantilly, where he hosted larger parties and corporate events for select guests and senior executives. He was a perfect host; everything about his entertaining had the same style, mystery and surprise by which he conducted himself. Guests were always impressed by his ability to astonish. His apartment was a large duplex penthouse with an internal staircase, occupying the top two floors of a luxurious residential building. Lower floor of the duplex had a large lobby cum drawing room with an elegant bar, a collection of vintage wines personally selected by him. It had few bedrooms sometimes used by guests who had a drink more than they could get back with. Upper floor was private part of the apartment; he generally avoided people getting there. It had the master bedroom, personal and minimalist, and a large studio and workshop, he fondly called it the Factory, but unlike its inspiration in New York, Jean-Pierres personal factory was off-bounds for most of his guests. It had large canvasses of half-finished paintings, parts of them still drying. Maya glimpsed what her boss does to occupy his leisure time; she had known he was a painter but hadnt seen any of his recent work. She was suspicious of it as another of his branding stories. His older works were displayed in the entertaining floor of his apartment. She asked him about paintings he did recently, Why dont you exhibit them? He smiled and replied cryptically, I will, one day, when they are ready. Jean-Pierre hosted Prithvis first birthday, it was postponed by a few days to let it fall on the weekend and to avoid association with the abysmal events of a year ago. Celebration was at the chateau of creations, Maya was moved by this gesture. Senior staff of creations and Jean-Pierres social circle in Paris was invited along with families and children. All efforts were made to make it a memorable day. Maya and Prithvi drove with Jean-Pierre to Chantilly. It was more than six months Maya had been in Paris, but it was her first occasion in outer
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circles of the city. Her life revolved around the Centre, her travels, creations and Prithvi. Jean-Pierre was driving, Maya sat next to him; Prithvi was enjoying the sites well-buckled in a baby seat in back of the luxury sedan. Maya stared out, car leaving Pariss central districts through its northern and eastern suburbs; romantic ornamentation of buildings, its character and history, slowly disappeared as they moved out. Paris like all great cities of the world lost its individuality and turned into any other large city. The buildings resembled less of palaces and museums of Paris and more of continual characterless functionalism of housing projects of Delhi and Mumbai repeating ad nauseam. To her great surprise even the pedestrians were mostly Arabs and Africans. Jean-Pierre noticed her bewilderment of discovering an alien land in midst of her dream city. These buildings are HLM projects, subsidized government housing; a fair number of people are of North African origin in these areas. He ventured an explanation. Maya continued to watch, her impressions of Paris trying to reconcile sights of continual maze of cloned buildings. Farther north on the A1 highway she was relieved back to her reverie, the metropolitan started turning into the greenery of country on both sides of the road, trees in various stages of losing leaves in the multicolor canvass of fall. They took the exit to Chantilly; she was once again back to her imaginary world of perfection and daydreams. They passed the chateau of Chantilly, its courtyard with equestrian statue visible from the street; the beautiful gardens and fountains were a roseate reassuring sight of a familiar Paris. Another few kilometers of drive later, they reached a smaller chateau. Creations chateau was built by the Rothschild Family, but over the years had passed on as an inheritance to a branch in relative decline. Purchase of the property by creations was the final stamp on crowning of Jean-Pierre as the mantle keeper of high culture. creations chateau was turned into an amusement park. Temporary rides were assembled in its lawns, guests arrived by late afternoon. It was a different creations event, not about wealth and glamour, but another side of creations and its founder; of families, of children of all ages, of happy parents becoming kids themselves, leaving behind the games of money and power, playing the games of their brood, unwinding from the rut of world presented to them every day. Adults forgot they had left their childhood behind, every one, child and adult, was part of the games of Prithvi; everyone enjoyed; undiluted pure innocent fun. Guests left after dinner, Jean-Pierre dropped Maya and Prithvi back to their apartment. It was already late. In the journey back, darkness hid the HLMs behind continuous stream of twinkling lights of windows and street lamps. Prithvis birthday party further sucked Maya into the charisma of her
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boss. She wondered what he thought of her aside from creations. She felt, he must be feeling something to put such a show for Prithvi. ********* Autumn turned to winter; short cloudy days and long dark nights covered the city in gloom, but life in Paris went ahead normally. And so did the sideshows of Adnan. On Mayas persistence Jean-Pierre replied, The most crucial thing in creating civilization is that people talk. He took a deep breath and continued philosophically, But there are social walls that divide people, Adnan is the bridge that connects divides of the world and let people do business across walls; this makes everyone better off. Maya wasnt sure whether she understood or bought the explanation, but she continued tolerating expenses on her budget codes. She was slowly deciphering the guest lists; she found most outrageous combinations of people attending. These will be howling headlines if press knows, she thought. Winter gave way to spring and sprouts of green started shooting again across the city. creations was doing well, numbers grew. Sales increased yet there was exclusivity about the brands. It was a successful and wonderful first year in Paris. The next years passed in same cycle of trajectory, only the orbits and energy larger. Prithvi became more active and mobile, learning independent locomotion; she started in playschool, learning language, a fusion of English, French and Hindi. Numbers on the target slides for Maya grew, actual sales followed. She was thankful of the economic recovery happening around the world. New media of communication and new definitions of community were being created. She was targeting a new generation of buyers, whose purchasing power was greatly more than what their parents had in their age, and tastes vastly different. The distinction of old and new, popular and haute, were blurring; trend of the day was fusion, of retro and avant-garde, of modern and ethnic, of style and function. The workshops of creations churned successful designs one after another. Maya had made her reputation in Delhi as the pulse keeper of fashion, with a changed time and at a global scale she kept up with her reputation reinventing herself. She was driving Twenty-first century trends. Her repute along with the sales and aura of creations grew. There were events, there were vacations, and there were combinations. Cities and boats were in the Mediterranean, catwalks in Milan, in New York and London; windfall was Prithvis. Maya became a face for creations in her own right; Jean-Pierre was slowly withdrawing from media attention, it helped in having an alternate presence; it made his appearances even more enigmatic. Fashion shows,
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product launches, in store promotions, around the clock around the world. Prithvi was now old enough for Maya to unleash her full energy onto the world of culture. Prithvi was enjoying her playschool, sometimes she travelled with her mom, which she enjoyed thoroughly, sometimes she had to stay back which she didnt. Maya had hired a fulltime governess; creations was glad to fund her the perk, it got much value from Mayas unhindered travel. Maya stopped taking Prithvi to short trips daylong overnight couple-of-days but she still took Prithvi along when she was travelling for longer periods. ********* It was the summer of Two-thousand Three, time of the year when worlds glitterati descends on beaches of South France to walk the red carpet of Cannes. Among the many private luxury yachts anchored in Mediterranean was creations boat. A colossus, custom fitted for magnificence and glamour under personal supervision of Jean-Pierre. It was a five-deck sumptuous whale; uppermost deck was the steering and bridge. Below it was the upper terrace with a swimming pool, a party area beside the pool, lower to that was the ballroom, fitted with latest light and sound gadgets, one side of the hall was a lavish bar leading to another short terrace for evening cocktails. The lower decks had luxurious bedrooms for guests and officials, along a well-equipped gym. The lowest deck had crew quarters, a large kitchen and stores. dawn was a fully stocked floating luxury of creations; in typical Jean-Pierre style, name on the starboard bow was conspicuously not capitalized. Prithvi, Maya and Maureen took the TGV to Nice to join dawn; an archaic route of gentry moving south to soak in the sun and swim in seas, travelled in phenomenally new speeds. After zooming past the beautiful French countryside in alacrity accolading the achievement of man in taming the beasts of distance and time, they reached the Rivera. The train terminated at Nice Central Station. Maureen was holding Prithvi, they got down; a car was waiting to take them to the harbor. Prithvi was comfortable with her elderly governess. Maya liked Maureen and entrusted her with Prithvis caretaking. Hiring Maureen had created space in her life; she enjoyed and relished the help she got. The chauffer helped in unloading the luggage at the harbor and from there on it was taken care of by the crew of dawn. Prithvi and Maureen had a bedroom for them; Maya had a separate one for her. After basic unpacking they went to the upper deck where Jean-Pierre was with some creations executives reviewing arrangements and preparations for the filmfestival week. He smiled seeing Maya come up, hugged her and kissed on the cheeks. He took Prithvi in his arms, chatted with her for a few minutes, and then put her down to let her immerse herself in sights from the terrace of dawn.
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Bright soothing Mediterranean sun reflected on the multicolor of the city on one side and the blueness of the sea on other. Maya stood at the terrace in her jeans and T-shirt looking around, hair riffling her vision in levanter. She felt being sucked in oneness with dawn floating on water anchored to bed of the harbor. She saw Prithvi equally engrossed in staring onto the horizon, water meeting the sky distinguished by changing shades of blue; Maureen with her watchful eyes watching Prithvi, making sure she does not venture near the railings. The two weeks floating in Mediterranean for Maya was a curious concoction of work, entertainment and art. Watching screenings in the Film Festival, parties on the deck of dawn, bathing in the Mediterranean sun, swimming in the pool, water of sea, soaking in Prithvi, pleasure of her smiles, answers to her questions. She alternated between business and personal world. It was hectic, it was fun, it was tiring, it was joy. She had partied with celebrities before, she had hosted Bollywood in India and Dubai, but Cannes was a different league. she was in midst of the biggest faces of the world, biggest names, wealthiest individuals, It was a world that till now she had comprehended only in dreams, but it was real for her that summer on beaches and theaters of Cannes floating in dawn. It was among most memorable days of her life. She was rubbing shoulders floating in the sea of her dreams with the most glamorous people; they were anxious of what Maya thought of them and their work. She politely praised everyone, she made sure she watched the movies, heard the songs, read about the companies she commented on; it was reassuring for the guests to know that they were liked by the new diva of creations; Jean-Pierre made it visibly apparent that creations was also Maya. He in turn spent a lot of his time playing in the pool and deck with Prithvi; most of the entertaining was done by Maya and conversations by Adnan. The climax was the onboard party on the final day of Cannes; JeanPierre had invited the whos who of the festival and its attendees on his boat. It was a pageantry of black tie and seductive cocktail dresses. The red carpet was laid on the pool deck and ballroom. The baroque of illustrious artists floated away from flashes of Cannes to the privacy of dawn; media with their cameras left behind. dawn left the dock once all guests were aboard. After few miles in the sea, more guests came in on a smaller boat. Exquisite wines swirled around the deck under canopy of the starry Mediterranean sky. There were comments and criticism of winning entries, language was burdened by heavy and dainty adjectives critiquing the art of filmmaking, attempting to emulate inspirations of the artists; the practitioners directors actors composers cinematographers reflecting their emotions in echoing vocabulary of expressions; washing down of conversation by wine giving it
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a palatable meaning in plastic smiles. Wind blew in kissing and hugging of congratulations and thank-yous. Star appeal of the evening was Aishwarya; both Maya and Ash were glad to be with each other again. Ash was one of the central attractions for the festival; she was also in the jury panel. Maya was happy for how things had turned for her. Among the familiar and annually repeated conversations of American versus European sensibilities in cinema, was also included the colorful discussions of discovery of the new genre of Bollywood musicals by critics of the festival. Maya tried evading the irony when talks steered around Hindi movies as the newly discovered art form in Cannes, continuing the tradition of Sound and Music in crossover productions of Hollywood. No one noticed the edges of her smile; defining aesthetics not unlike discovering or inventing a country is the prerogative of writers of history. dawn docked back in the harbor late at night. Most of the guests thanked Maya and Jean-Pierre and disembarked. dawn once again moved out into the sea, a smaller boat docked alongside and the last-remaining guests hugged, thanked and congratulated Adnan. Maya recognized some faces, familiar from the Dubai opening. They were all pleased with Adnan, It was the week of movies, she didnt know of any reason for such visible congratulations, Adnan didnt dabble in the business or art of moviemaking. Finally the hosts (creations top-management team) retired to their bedrooms on the lower deck. Maya thought of checking on Prithvi and Maureen in the next room, but she let it go, she will unnecessarily wake them up. She was slightly high of all the wine through the evening. In her room while she was changing out of her cocktail dress into her sleeping gown she switched on the T.V. There was another sea, there was another ship, anchored in CNN, it was similar to the ship she had heard so many stories about while she grew up, but no, it was not the Enterprise, it was instead the Abraham Lincoln, larger mightier than even the Enterprise, the correspondent on deck is describing the ship, she holds more than ninety airplanes, Maya remembered Enterprise having only seventy, an earlier footage of a plane landing, the President in a fighter-pilot jumpsuit, now in a more-formal suit, addressing the crew, a banner flying behind him across the bridge, the climax of Shock and Awe in the Desert; Mission Accomplished; another country invented in an ancient land. Maya switched off, tried sleeping; tried not to think whether congratulations to Adnan on the deck of dawn had any connection with the banner flying behind the President. After a week at Cannes the boat cruised around Mediterranean, guests came for different durations from different ports and left. Adnan, Maya, Jean-Pierre and Prithvi stayed through two weeks. There where parties
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during evenings and sun worshipping during days. It was a classy and luxurious trip, which like every other good thing in life finally came to an end. ********* Maya had occasional visits to India and Middle East to review operations. These were closest to her heart; she had created them from scratch. They were also the fastest growing, proving the prophecy of JeanPierre, of future going east. Her India visits were short; an evening was spent with parents and another with friends. Prithvi was the star attraction, her grandparents elated. It was after two-and-a-half tiring years of driving creations that Maya took a long vacation away from work, away from Jean-Pierre, away from Europe. She was getting tired and needed to recharge, she decided to spend the summer of Two-thousand Four in Delhi. It was a well-deserved rest for her and a well-deserved treat for Prithvi. Spending her vacation of playschool with grandparents, she had stories of her global friends and language of multiple nations, to share with nana and nani, tons of questions to ask, variety of stuff to break. It was a welcome interval for Maya. She was driven by sheer tenacity and determination in trajectory of her life of last few years, raising a child, high profile job, globetrotting travel, sweet taste of success, recognition. Rest put her on reflection mode, her loneliness in city of the world, her loneliness among scores of friends and associates, her complicated relationship with the person who was a friend, boss, inspiration and she didnt know what else. Her tiredness of juggling work and raising a child, a shade of guilt for her daughter having only one parent who too wasnt available all the time. She dreaded when Prithvi in her superfast exploration of the world and continual questioning, will come to a point when she will ask the daddy question. When you are in the game you are in the zone, only after the play, when videos are watched over, that the choices made are analyzed; sometimes it becomes a difficult analysis even if the game was won. Her interlude in Delhi was a sobering experience. She purposefully kept away from her emails and work phone. Prithvi was busy with grandparents. Maya passed her time visiting old friends. Mayas parents were the happiest in the bargain; they got undiluted time to spend with Prithvi. The retired couple for those weeks relived their childhood and their adulthood of bringing up their own daughter. They didnt tire of telling Maya how Prithvi is similar in mannerism to what she was at her age, and Prithvi didnt tire showing them a new side of her every day. She was enjoying being pampered; she was enjoying being queen of the household. Pace with which she upgraded her little Hindi vocabulary surprised everyone. Maya had carried a set of toys with her, but they were
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all discarded as nana and nani got her new ones. Even more interesting than toys was the physical game where nana became a prancing horse for Prithvi to ride. Maya was surprised to see her fathers energy at his age. Added to the grandparents, Prithvi made more friends, the housemaid was her favorite among adults; she also got a chum of similar age. It was a pleasant site, Sejals son Sonu and Prithvi playing together. The parents wondered on how well the children communicated even when their accents and languages were mutually incomprehensible. Prithvi spoke a language of her own creation, only understood by Maya, a babel of French English Hindi. Even at her tender age she understood when to switch words, to other than Maya she spoke languages of the world. Simple French was for playschool back in Paris and pidginized Hinglish was for grandparents and Sejals son. But for Maya it was Prithvi, the name that Maya gave her funny mixed idioglossia; she sang to her daughter, Prithvi speaks in Prithvi, and both of them laughed. Sejal and Maya had long conversations about their children and work. Abhinav and Sejal were doing well, their practice growing consistently, which along with their son kept them completely busy. Sejal was happy to hear Mayas success and her stories, excited to hear celebrity news firsthand, especially stories of Cannes. Another activity that occupied Mayas time during her vacation in Delhi was her leather-bound journal. She had had got very little time in past years to visit her feelings and articulate it in her secret diary. There was a lot of updating to do. She wrote as her life played out in reverse, like avantgarde movies screened in parties of Jean-Pierre. Writing made her talk to herself; sometimes she was engulfed by doubts, sadness mixed with jubilation and pride. She chronicled the perceptions and choices of her journeys. She didnt want to write a book, just wanted to jot down her thoughts, lest they become lost in the maze of her mind in ever repainting impressions and images. She wanted to be able to read her journeys as it went in her head, as it went in real was for the world to see. The chronicles were of her private journey; her alternate journey. She was not writing a travelogue, she did not spend much time on in it. Whenever she wrote, it was a languorous exercise, always ending in unanswered questions. She decided she will religiously write, she will find an hour every day to jot down her thoughts and questions, she wouldnt worry of conclusions. She closed the leather-bound journal and her mental window from which she peeped into herself as soon as the allocated time was over. Her tourney was still not complete; it was not the time to drastically reexamine premises. She can do that at a later day, for now she will
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continue in her journey; she will continue in her soar, she will discover what waves and seas have for her; what she has for Prithvi. She was recharging every day, filling up her leather-bound journal, getting new ideas for the next wave of designs, she jotted her imaginations on a sketch pad; designers at creations will have busy days when she was back in Paris; she smiled at her sketches; she knew they will be trendsetters. Another means for keeping her occupied was television; she had a lot of catching up to do. There was a drastic revolution in style and content of fast-globalizing Bollywood. And an election was announced with audacious declarations of India Shinning on screens. Maya thought of the slogan. She knew she shone in malls of Delhi, but the airport, slums and traffic all continued depicting a different picture; an older depressive picture. She knew she shone in charging bulls of the street, but the farmers in parched hinterland still continued to express their intense violent private violence against nonviolent public violence of the system. She knew she shone in factories shipping stuff in real and virtual, but there were still very few ships to bring meals for the tribals in remote hills around the cities of dreams. Seeing the adverts reflecting the shine she self-interrogated, Is Maya shimmering? India Shining slogan was made a plank by the government as a referendum on their successful policies and economic growth, international prestige and prosperity. People at large did not see the shine, and those who shone didnt show up to vote. The government was voted out of power in a yet-another peaceful transition of administration, after a yet-another national exercise of phased election, proving once again that it was the rare occasion when machinery of the state turned generally in the right direction. India was shinning despite its scorching darkness, it shined in its breaking dawns; it shone in its peaceful transitions of power. The land of thousand mutinies was simultaneously a land of thousand blooming flowers. People decided by voting and nonvoting on question of shining India; who will answer her question of shining Maya? Sonia the Gandhi had long come out of her mourning clones took no time the old and dying were kicked out to be old and to die. She declared in irony that the palm of Indira was with the darkness of India and the shimmer of lotus was an illusion. The story was bought, but the irony was invisible like the shine which didnt come out to vote. The party at center, which had once panicked because it didnt have an issue to panic, created the issue of shinning India in darkness of her people and won the general election. The new Madame proved beyond doubt revealed by Karma itself she was married to destiny.
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Clones of AICC prepared their gears of self-immolation and hived around Janpath, after Karmas revelation a lesser god was not acceptable again. On other side of the fence, Sadhvis and Sadhvis to be declared they wont be left behind in playing of private violence; there was talk in the air of cutting out hair. The Family didnt have a straight majority, the Left and remaining jokers of Janata joined the chorus of crowning the rightful heir to her destiny. Manmohan the Sardar, who was Manmohan the economist, who was not Manmohan the leader, was blessed by Sonia the Gandhi, like Gandhi the Mahatma had once blessed tryst and destiny, and Manmohan the Finance Minister became Manmohan the Prime Minister. He limped in his Left foot; the jokers of Janata gave him a crutch. There were celebrations public and private; Maya visited her old friends again in a very changed situation in a very changed illusion; in circularity of destiny in the land of Karma. Maya smiled and Prithvi laughed with her. Yes! Yes, I know you understood it all. ********* Despoilers of cabinet settled down to their regular plunder and ponder of moral corruption; Mayas vacation ended and she flew back to her creations of illusion. Cycle of time continued to turn, world boomed in an unprecedented creation of wealth, sales of creations grew. Prithvi was admitted to Kindergarten section of the International School in Paris; it was an Englishmedium school for expat children, some distance away from their residence, but Maya thought it apt for her to start there rather than continue with the neighborhood playschool. The headmistress wanted Maya to wait for the next term; she thought Prithvi was bit young to start. On Mayas insistence she agreed to talk to Prithvi. One conversation was enough for Prithvi to convince the headmistress her hunger and eagerness to grow up; her faster-than-normal grasp of the world around her, her trilingual vocabulary, all mesmerized the headmistress into admitting her. She had dealt with children all her life, she had rarely seen such intelligence; she immediately recognized a prodigy. She counseled Maya, You have a gifted child. You need to be careful in bringing her up. Maya retained Maureen who drove and picked up Prithvi to and from her new school every day. Maya, post her vacation became reserved and less aggressive at work. Jean-Pierre noted the change and tried cheering her up. Maya continued to write her leather-bound journal, letters to her angel of waves, she made sure
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her work went on normal; her reflections remained personal. Prithvis growing up was a boon, they talked for hours; they went to amusement parks, rode rides like two little girls. Despite her reflections, Maya didnt feel the need for a relationship, she had Prithvi, but she was worried whether she was enough for Prithvi. As time passed, and novelty and excitement of her initial years in Paris settled in a routine, her relationship with Jean-Pierre also settled into a predictive pattern. Prithvi started having friends of her own age and Maya and Jean-Pierre were no longer her best playmates. Maya was the mother who she told her stories, and Jean-Pierre continued to be the source of her interesting gifts, but most important people in her life now were her friends from the school and her list of teachers she liked and those she didnt. A completely new universe of hers was building up, in which Maya was allowed a peep, but not to the deepest areas. Maya remembered her childhood, her angel of waves, she wondered whether Prithvi has her own secret friend, she realized she wouldnt know, it was hers and only hers to know and cherish, to dream her own dreams. Seeing her daughter grow up was a poetic realization of cycle of life, she reflected it in her letters to Sunday. For the first time she also started reading her old entries. She was reliving her life in her leather-bound journal and stories of Prithvi; she was expressing her emotions in the latest designs of creations.

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Chapter 17 The leather-bound journal

Christmas of Two-thousand Four was another high point in life of the mother and daughter. A special party was arranged at Jean-Pierres apartment in the city; he had become the Santa Claus. All of Prithvis friends along with their parents were invited. Gifts were numerous; Prithvi was the star of the occasion. She became the most popular girl of her class; loyalty won by gifts from creations and comickery of Santa. It was truly an international occasion; children of different nationalities. Diplomats and business executives from over the world among parents; nobody wanted to miss attending a personal family party of the god of fashion; these are invitations which will be stories repeated back home. They were glad for their children being friends with daughter of the queen of fashion. The children played with Santa whose energy was of a child rather than elderly man he was. There was a beauty, innocence, about the whole affair; parents admired from sidelines sipping their champagne. People wondered about the enigma of Santa; talked about their homelands and vacations at seas. Santa and the kids sang along with the jingling music. Jingle bells, jingle bells; jingle all the way. the whole jingbang of children and an adult lilting in courante circles around piles of gifts lighting the Christmas tree. Entertaining of the parents was done by Maya. The Thai embassy official was a dedicated person; he couldnt stop selling his country as a welcoming tourist destination. This time of the year beaches of Thailand is paradise. All of you should visit some time. Others present from Southeast Asia couldnt let it go lightly; the talk soon centered on deciding the best holiday destination in the Asian oceans. The host for the occasion was from those parts; she was soon sucked into the deliberations. Maya found it funny; if only they knew her connection with waves of the ocean they were talking about. She tried a diplomatic answer to avoid controversy. I prefer the Mediterranean. The Indian Ocean is too familiar for me. It is home rather than vacation. ********* Next day she remembered the virgin beaches of Andaman and Nicobar Islands, pristine peace, pure nature, inside the islands rain-fed canopy of dense evergreen jungle, people unaware of civilization outside, a fragile piece of prehistory protected savored, all off-limits for tourists; circling navy boats their only sight of an alien world; protecting them from the flood of destroying civility.
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Memories of her ocean made Maya jot down her thoughts in her leather-bound journal. Mayas diary entry: Dear Sunday, I thought about you in yesterdays party. There were friends of Prithvi and their parents. I felt sad for her; she just has a mother. I wish magic is real; you will make a good father. Jean-Pierre is really good to her. They connect very well. Sometime a feeling crosses my mind whether he can be a father for Prithvi. He is everything I can aspire for in love. He will be a perfect father. I know he is a bit senior; but is not age just a number? Of course not! It wasnt for me when I wanted to become a mother. In retrospect it is the most wonderful thing to happen in my life. If only I can get over the issue of having a father for her. Do I love Jean-Pierre? Of course I do. But what is love? Love is attachment, an intense attachment. Can it be defined or experienced independent of its corollaries: jealousy and possessiveness? Is this an apparent contradiction? Does it necessitate it to be discrete? Possessiveness of the object of affection guarded at well-defined bounds by jealousy. Is love and freedom irreconcilable? I think it need not be like that. Man has created artificial institutions that bind the freedom of love. The purest form of love is of mother and child, protective but not possessive. The mother is not jealous if the child is loved by another, or also loves other, because her love is not a give and take, not a social arrangement defining boundaries of propriety, but is natural and basal. All other forms of love unfortunately come with its baggage of poisonous dilutions of passion or patriotism, bringing in the corollaries of possessiveness and jealousy. Pride results in prejudice; love gets demarcated by hate; Institutions and culture entrap love for fear of freedom. True love is true freedom, freedom need not be feared, freedom is opposite of fear, love is opposite of fear. It is pure and unadulterated by cultural perceptions of institutions created to propagate entrapment of freedom and love. This is true of all intense human emotions of which love is the base. It results in extreme opposite; hate and violence of dedication to a book of religion or popular patriotism. I am not a social philosopher. I dont claim to know these things. What I know by experience and personal thought is the truth of interpersonal love, when it takes the form of a romantic relationship. Friendship, its love is next only to love of mother and child, even love of siblings doesnt live up to it because it is diluted with competition for love of the mother.
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Friendship is pure. What makes a friendship convert into a romance popularly perceived as love? Is it physical intimacy that creates progeny? That is what culture makes us believe; that is what institutions are created for; to enforce perceptions of what love is not about. Love is not physical intimacy to create progeny. That is copulation. Love is the willing relinquishment of freedom to one self for sake of the loved. It is not and cannot be to the lover; freedom relinquished to another is no longer free. Fear of losing love usurps freedom instead of willing surrender. Fear of losing love creates jealousy; it presupposes possessiveness. Love creates a single consciousness of multiple beings, mother and child, friends, romantic lovers, patriots and nation, devotees and god. It extends the consciousness of participants to encompass the other in the one. Tragedy of love is that our fears, and cultural programming of institutions created out of fear, create an identity opposed to the one consciousness of love. Individual identity wants to be together but not one; corollary is: freedom of the other is usurped for the fear of loss. Multiple identities is jealousy, not love. True love is only possible if consciousnesses of lovers are surrendered willingly into an extension of each other. Love devoid of freedom is pretension; love and freedom are one. Fear generally is a useful emotion. Fear makes us protect ourselves from harm, fend for food and security. But I fail to understand what people fear in love. Fear of loss is falsely perceived; if you love, your consciousness is merged, you cant lose yourself. The basis of irrational fear in love is a mystery for me, but it remains the foundation stone of our culture and social institutions. Love does not know bounds, it cannot be restricted. Real happiness is love of the moment; when I work I dont because I earn my living, but because I love creations, I become one with its designs and numbers. When I feed or play with Prithvi it is not because of my responsibility as a mother, but because she and I are one consciousness when we are together. Happiness is being in love with the moment, to love the beautiful picture, wonderful friend, grand city. Happiness is being one consciousness with everything around; to surrender self in love of the moment. This is profane for society and its institutions. Enslavement of freedom of love, its entrapment, has one genuine question; that is of human progeny, continuation of civilization by means of the institution of family. The fear of general anarchy and promiscuity that leads to dysfunctional society is real. Therefore romantic love of intimate nature that can create progeny is the worst victim of social censure. Its a reality I face, many single parents face. But how real is it? Is there a way this fear can be addressed without
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enchaining the purity of love? Without binding its freedom? Unbounded love? Passionate love, union of bodies, is an even higher form of freedom. It facilitates the union of consciousness. Connection of kiss is the bliss which connects souls. Then from where does jealousy creep in; why does love fall? A bounded love is essentially incomplete; humans are incomplete; god created man in his image, not a singular man who is his image. Complete love essentially needs to be the love of god supreme personal impersonal multiple facets in multiple. Only by losing identity in love one experiences its true beauty. Prosperity, liberalism and the bloody history of Europe have made people contemplate; social institutions and culture around relationships may not be adequate. Instead they might have been the basis for hatred and violence. Entrapment of false identities needs to be broken. The human identity is a fountainhead for fulfillment, not a constricting noose. Its the foundation of freedom and ability to love boundless, not jealous garments of spurious notions and prejudices that creates violence real and emotional. The Institution of family is social-evolutions triumph over biology, making human civilization progress in ways faster than biology can imagine. But what is the nature of this evolution? Feminist? Masculinist? Humanist? The bargain of social order enforced by threat of wrath of god constructed by religion; what is sacrificed by whom, of the evolutionary nature of man and woman? How did the bargain go for humans? Why do we want to break out now? I have watched with some curiosity, developments and experiments with alternate models of family. Children being raised with multiple fathers and multiple mothers, but I must confess these are only of interest to me, I dont have the expertise to have an opinion. My thoughts are limited to whether these models answer my questions or are generally packaging the unknown archaic fear in new formats. A family of two parents, if there is love is one consciousness. It may be a possible idea to include more to become part of that consciousness. But where will be the line drawn? How will the framework operate? It cannot be a boundless anarchy, and as soon as it is demarcated, it is a commune which creates its own identity and the cycle of fear and violence is not far off. I hope I had answers to these questions. I am not an expert, but I realize that with the rate of families breaking, shattering of old definitions of love, children of multiple parents, a social evolution that answers these questions is due. How will be the relationships of future communes families singles single-parents; what will be the role of state and community in bringing up the children of such relationships?
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In the past the Maxim was simple: happy families are all alike, every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. But that was a simpler time. Happiness has evolved to become a much complicated and sophisticated emotion. With the way society is changing (discussions and issues around abortion sexuality relationships family institutions) I think it is more apt to say for our times: that every family will need to find its unique reason to be happy; its unique structure and dynamics of interpersonal relationships, shared responsibilities and joys of raising children. But that is for the society to evolve, for me selfishly the immediate concern that keeps me awake all night is the dreaded day when Prithvi will ask about her daddy. ********* Maya was exhausted, she closed the leather-bound journal, it was already late evening, she went to check on Prithvi and tuck her in for the night. Prithvi was awake, there were tear drops in her hateful eyes, and an expression on her face of extreme anger; Maya felt the violence of the seas, gushing of the waves, Maya tried talking to her, Prithvi became aggressive, her replies were screams and shouts throwing her gifts, she had never been like this, something harsh must have happened; Maya tried talking to her, It was a difficult conversation for Prithvi, in between her sobbing and screaming, and expression of violence on her toys, Maya collected the tidbits, she figured that during the afternoons play at her friends house children were comparing their gifts, there was talk about their daddies and how great they were to get them such nice gifts; questions propped up, What did your daddy get? Where is your daddy? and about things Prithvi could not express but shriek. Maya didnt know how to react; her moment of dread was suddenly real. She said, I am both your daddy and Mommy. Prithvi shook her with ferocity, berserk that created complete disbelief of illusion. Bewitched by demonic ghouls, the energy of three-year-old shook the adult so vigorously that the world turned upside down. The deepest anger of earth beneath the oceans shaking up the seas; waves rose to touch the sky. It was extreme violence. Maya had never known such violence. She tried pacifying her daughter, it was no avail, the house became a mess, toys broken and thrown all over, Maya stood in the corner and cried, her tears flowed around the world to drain in her oceans; waves rose to touch the sky in violence of the earth demanding an answer; waves rose to crush the illusion drowning the world in a lachrymose flood of tears. It was anger of the earth; it was violence of the gods; freedom of love became tyranny of destruction. Concussions of screaming and crying, connections of shared sadness and violence, empathy of each others tears, made the mother and daughter hug each other, they fell on the bed to sleep in a drained drowsed embrace.
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They woke up late in the morning; it was holidays, no rush for school or office. Maya was glad that the macabre night was over; an irritant Prithvi was tranquil after her boisterous behavior. They pretended to forget what happened. Maya started fixing breakfast and switched on the T.V. The disaster was all over the place, the Great Indian Ocean Tsunami had wreaked havoc in the whole of South East and South Asia. Every channel had the tsunami story going on; the visuals coming in were very disturbing, the talk of death tolls was in hundreds of thousands. Prithvi quietly collected her gifts dispersed in ruckus of the night of magical epiphany. Maya watched the television in tremors of shock. She watched the visuals of her waves, it was difficult to imagine what happened; she wondered of all the beaches she grew up in, she recalled the fishing boats that littered the horizon of dawn and dusk, but were beyond sight during days. She remembered her relatives friends associates whoever she knew; she was worried. She called home and checked with her parents, What is happening? Their source was also television. Her father was trying to track down relatives and friends to check if anyone was affected. His colleagues in the Navy were mobilized for the rescue. The news was still hazy; television said that the satellite pictures suggest: parts of coastline in the Bay of Bengal and its islands have changed forever. Maya wondered about the off-limit islands and boats circling them, she wondered about the island of her birth. She knew the old base was closed down; its runway and facilities were too small for the ever-expanding might of the India Navy. She checked on people in Delhi, it was time of the year when people in cities flock to the beaches. She was glad that Abhinav and Sejal were not on vacation, busy in their hospital, other colleagues from creations were also in Delhi and Mumbai, no information of anyone holidaying in the affected areas. Having been assured of safety of family and friends, Mayas th oughts wondered to comprehend what happened, what was happening. She saw faces which she wanted to check on, she did not know where they were, she had an illusion of being told of faces being in the school and United Nations; illusions dont have addresses, but Illusions do take vacations; Mayas heart longed for reassurance; she got none. The tsunami was massive violent public violence, logic of nature, expression of scolding of an irritable earth which changed the maps of her Oceans forever. The off-limit virgin isles of prehistory and unwomanned naval base of men were submerged in wiping out and redrawing of the world; rebirth on paper by upbraiding aqueous imageries. ********* The days of winter were gloomy, Prithvi began growing up faster, she
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started having her mood tantrums, she was receding from being the sweet smiling child to become a difficult demanding little girl. She was developing her likes and dislikes; she was learning techniques to get what she wanted. Maya became more reflective of her life and stuff around her; she became more aware of profound changes that were silently happening in the society. She couldnt get out of the tsunami images hung in her mind trying to find meaning. The vacations ended, life became normal routine again. Her desire to find old faces grew, her desire to get into a serious conversation on life with Jean-Pierre grew, reexamining of her dreams of love and freedom, and its contradictions grew. She lost something of her connection with the waves after violence of the earth shook the seas. Sunday became more of a day to pen down reflective letters, rather than her friend who sailed with her; nevertheless she continued to write to her archangel who had hid himself from her and from violence of the waves. Mayas diary entry: Dear Sunday, Paris continues to be my city of dreams, city of love, expression of art. Expressions of artists describe love, a beauty which cannot be captured in rational narrative of human language, it is beyond. Its an ideal of human form and expression. Man is a creature of love and beauty, molded in expressions of the artist, incompleteness passion, in itself beautiful. Is it possible to have the artistic perfection of love in an individual human being? Can beauty and perfection of reason, passion and friendship of compassion, coexist together? Is it possible for a human to live essence of love and life together? Or is being incomplete the essence of humanity? What is the reality of Jean-Pierre? Is it a facade of multiple personalities? Is he real? What is the real persona of a person anyway? Is it not a facade which is also for self? Do I love Jean-Pierre? Is it that I am incapable of love? Are notions I write, and dreams of waves, just illusions created by Maya to justify the lustfully naked ambition? But ambition of what, If not love? Maya thought about family, about social trends in western Europe in experimentations of different types of families; she knew Jean-Pierre was also lonely, she did not know for sure whether she loved him or he loved her, to be able to commit a life together; to Make it Real. She started doubting whether she even knew what love is; when she was younger she felt love in emotions, there was no need for rationalization, she longed for the Maya who knew not by reason, but by what the waves told her what she wanted and needed to do. The waves were gone. Maya was left behind alone to sort out and rationalize. She thought of convenience, she thought of Prithvi, she decided its
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worth exploring a more-committed relationship with Jean-Pierre. At least they will be a complete family; with or without love; it will be good for everyone. She wanted to broach the topic with both Prithvi and Jean-Pierre but she didnt know how. Inertia of life took control and days passed. Spring flowered in parks of Paris, summer returned with the tourists, creations closed another successful season and launched the range for winter. Everything appeared normal for Maya and Paris; bubbling within invisible. Tourists flocked, models walked, retailers displayed the latest ranges, wealth continued to grow. One large unending party hiding the boiling anger of migr youth left behind in ghettos of the suburbs. ********* That autumn, pretense of normalcy in Mayas life was destroyed; she finally encountered Jean-Pierre with her idea. He said, I love you. You are also a good friend. I love Prithvi. She brings Joy in my life. He became melancholic and continued. What you see is not the complete story. I am too much in love with myself. I doubt whether there is place for a second person. He examined the practicable aspect of the proposal. I am an old codger. Important benefit of having a companion is living together through old age. I will die before you become old. Jean-Pierre became a friend who counseled her. You are having a low time. It will pass. I am sure in due course you will find someone, not an arrangement but love. Maya was not sure, she thought she loved Jean-Pierre, he loved her. He left the discussion open, asked Maya to think through, not in the ebb of low tide but in the prospect of long life ahead. He didnt like the idea of being in a family-like arrangement with a girl decades younger. Maya couldnt comprehend whether it was confutation or practicality; all these years she had failed to apprehend her boss. She left the conversation at that. She also wanted to explore Prithvis feelings before she pursued the course any further. Prithvi was a shock. When Maya broached the topic gently with her, seeping a comment in otherwise regular conversation; Do you think JeanPierre will be a good daddy? Maya could not believe the reaction; Prithvi grasped the question and its intention beyond Mayas wildest thoughts. He is French, my daddy is Indian. She spoke avoiding eye contact with Maya. I dont want any French daddy, I want Indian. Maya had never talked to her about nationalities and identities; she wondered how she managed to learn this at an age of four. Maya was afraid of the hatred she saw in Prithvis eyes when she declared her identity and
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that of her daddy. Maya was global, she was born amidst the high seas; she had never felt an overpowering national identity. Prithvis four-year-old comment shook her out of identity of the sea to the reality of land. Maya was completely confused, she felt alienated from the world of her daughter, she felt her daughter was becoming a stranger; she wondered whether she was reading too much in an innocent comment; or was it her subconscious that spoke through Prithvis tongue; or the world out there where Prithvi went to school was not as innocent as Maya thought. Maya couldnt make any sense of Prithvis comments, the conversation ended brusquely. Maya longed for her waves which were gone. That autumn, not only Prithvi declared her identity as being not French, but suburbs of Paris burnt in the expression of another angered identity as being underbelly of the party of Paris. Cities of France were engulfed in riots of burning cars. Prithvi demarcated her identity from JeanPierre; Jean-Pierre from Maya; and Mayas illusion broke in public violence on the streets of Paris. She was not unknown to public violence, she came from a land where rioting is entertainment in the kaleidoscope of wheel-turning Karma; rite of riot, ritual of violence, right of democracy, writing of history. But Paris was different. Paris was the city of love, city of expression of art, city of consciousness of human culture; she couldnt believe it was happening in Paris. She knew Paris had a bloody history, scene of expression of human anger against injustice and oppression; the revolutions that changed human societies began in violence of Paris. But the Paris of Twenty-first century was different; it was the ideal achieved for which people died and fought for hundreds of years. The riots of Paris were a rude awakening for Maya from her world of make-believe of Paris and creations. She didnt know what to make of the riots; even in the chaos of India riots were always across well-defined divides religion caste government political-parties social-class geographical-identity languages there were always divides that were comprehensible; one can easily put herself in the proper slot to know which side was in the wrong and which side to hate. But Paris was different; she could not comprehend what the riots were all about, she did not know her side of the divide. The news channels and newspapers said: they were immigrants, they were French of African origin, they were Muslims, they were youth in the suburb, they were no one, they were scoundrels, they were the cult of rappers, they were the underbelly, they were the dark side, they were the left-behinds; there was a conspiracy, it was spontaneous, it was brewing for years; lowlifes. Nothing made sense to Maya; she longed for the time when T.V showed familiar violence on streets of the hinterland; she at least knew the
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context. After four years in Paris, the shock of riots made her realize she did not belong to a divide; she felt a lack of identity; she couldnt sympathize with people trying to explain the riots from different perspectives. She had thought freedom was breaking out of identities; she loved Paris because it was an illusion of her global identity; an expression of her love; her illusion burnt in the television screens as car after car became an inferno in Paris and other cities of France. Soaring of Maya to the world of utopian identity and love was grounded by declaration of Prithvi and the rage of rioters. She wondered which side of the divide Jean-Pierre belonged. She wanted to run away from the facade of reason and passion of Jean-Pierre. She longed for reason and passion of her memories far away from Paris. Mayas diary entry: Dear Sunday, last week had been pretty eventful. I could not make any sense of the mindless rioting and burning of cars in the streets. It was surprising. There was no demand, no articulated issue for protest, but just a spontaneous outburst of anger. I shudder to think of the resenting simmers of rage that is being carried in the bosoms of so many young people that such madness can be expressed. But I should not be complaining. We did our bit of bus burning in our days. I guess it is an internal struggle that every individual needs to reconcile within oneself. Unfortunately vehicles become razed victims of the spillover of rage of common perceived social victimhood. I wonder what Jean-Pierre thought of it. He was born in Morocco, his mother was Moroccan, but he surely does not belong to the suburban HIN. He is the toast of central Paris. I wonder whether ones identifying to a class of self-created mobility is more powerful, or the deep-rooted call of belonging to roots dominate all other form of identities. Even more bizarre was Prithvis comment the other day. I dont remember telling her anytime anything about being Indian or French; only god knows from where she picked up the idea. Perhaps its her vacations in India where she feels more loved amidst her nana and nani, where people look more like her mother. Or maybe its because of the tremendous diversity in her International school that she has become conscious of her nationality. Its really difficult to say what goes on in a childs mind, what is picked from where. It is fearful to comprehend such a fearsome violent notion of self-identity in a four-year-old. If only I knew what goes in her mind. I just have to live with the thought that in time she will grow up. In time she will be able to reconcile her lifes context, create her own unique identity and be at peace with it. *********
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Meanwhile the world was busy creating its own virtual identities in stealth of the silent revolution of possibilities of the Internet in World Wide Web. Maya became interested in virtual social networking and lives of netizens as an emerging alternate channel for marketing and branding; force multipliers for mainstream promotions. The silent revolution was being talked about all over in business and professional circles; it was her job to heed to threats and opportunities of coming avalanche of media possibilities. Maya got the website of creations revamped; it became completely interactive, consumer-focused cutting-edge multimedia and design, a showcase keeping creations on the edge of social trends. Soon she realized the power being unleashed; the sections on self-design, customer feedback, consumer communities, blogs, designer interactions with wearers of their designs; forces of change that hooked her to the avalanching bandwagon. creations became pioneering force in social community branding, and customer co-creation of designs, the short-circuiting of delivery chain to bring wearer and designer of the clothes in one close conversation, making designs more intimate and personal. It was a whole new way of creating. Maya was impressed, she instinctively knew that the virtual world will one day reconcile the Holy Grail of real world of fashion and arts; amalgamation of popular and haute. Mayas diary entry: Dear Sunday, I have always wondered, does art need to be exclusive to be worthy? Does expression of an artist merits the mantle of high aesthetics only if it is comprehended by few? I feel this should not be the case. It is due to partially comprehension of sophisticated expression does require some cultivation of refined taste, but it also comes partially from old undying identities and prejudices of class. It makes us justify the distinction between popular and haute. The distinction should be of genres and within the genres between aesthetically good and sophisticated versus mundane and common. A good rock star is as much as a true artist as Mozart, while a bad classical musician is as inconsequential as an ordinary band. It is generally wrong to say that classical is better than rock or otherwise. The genre is a matter of choice (which of course does get influenced by ones identity of upbringing and class) but we must be precautious not to discard expressions of equally genuine art in other genres under the all-encompassing garbs of popular and haute; to have enough self-respect to not to judge others. Coming back to the ideal art, is it possible for an expression to be independent of identity of the artist and admirers, to transcend all barriers,
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just a creation of esthetic beauty? Is aesthetics separate from culture? Is its source evolutionary biology? Carnal Desire? Cradle of creativity and Inspiration? Art is the beauty of filled spaces wholeness harmony symmetry. Are these concepts independent of human identity? Is beauty more fundamental than its perception, expression and attempted descriptions by epitomic cultivated sensitivities of high-standard aesthetics? High claims of discernment in meaningless jargons of heavy adjectives? Is there an underlying simulacrum? A fundamental consubstantiation in expressions of beauty across cultures? Across similarities and differences? Convergence and divergence? Original Sin? Evel Enchantment? Immaculate Conception? Is it possible to have a global culture based on these fundamental aesthetical aspects? Is a globally recognized and appreciated common culture across all dimensions (similar to popular culture of music and films) going to be the reality of future? I dont know the answers. What I know is that individuality of the artist and admirer will always be there, which is fine, but what I find difficult is that it is the collective of the group rather than individuality of a person that influences the process of creation and appreciation. First time I am seeing this process being reconciled in the world of virtual dialogue; its amazing how much power of expression is being harnessed by individuals in social revolution of the Internet. Television, radio, all other media of past were a connection of one-way communication, building and enforcing the common stereotypes of various groups, generating the cycle of fashion and opinion. But now it is different, there is no more a mass being addressed by an all-knowing screen, the communication is a dialogue, interaction is two-way, the individual need not follow stereotype of the celebrity; she is the celebrity, she is herself the expression. In this new world of million possibilities there is no haute, there is no popular, there is the individual, her expression and her admirations, creation is personal. I think this is profound, I dont know where it will lead to. But it will change the society and our perceptions. By the time Prithvi grows up, I am sure her world the world of future will understand aesthetics very differently from what we do today, although I cannot hazard a guess what it will be like. Will it be like Jean-Pierres favorite Coca-Cola quote, the President drinks it, and Liz Taylor drinks it, you can drink it, no amount of money can get you a better Coke, the bum on the street is drinking it, a Coke is a Coke? Jean-Pierre is ambitious of creating the Coke of fashion. Is it possible? Can there be a Coke of art? A global haute fashion of the virtual bourgeois? Kinship of Coke across Cultures and Classes? ********* The forums of creations soon expanded to include more than clothes,
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accessories and comments on them. It became a growing community of women, discussing issues ranging from child rearing and home making, to challenges in business and economics of investments. Maya was a role model for many of them; she was very active in the communities. There were other single mothers, all of them unseen, known only by their pseudonyms, connected in a community of sharing, a community of virtual faces with bonds so strong that Maya was left wondering of its incredulity. (Of the Coke, Buy the World, for the Art; Catch the Wave! Blind Taste!) The faces on Mayas facebook page kept consistently growing. She soon was connected to her colleagues from Dubai and India. The list expanded further to include her college friends. She was happy to reconnect and learn about their journeys. The big surprise was to find so many of them in cities of Europe; conversations soon steered to arranging gettogethers and reunions. Slowly her list included school friends; the magic of connections, friends of friends; searches on Google started unearthing ids of her classmates from schools before Delhi, the Navy schools. It was a whole new experience of undiluted unending excitement; seeing pictures of children of classmates, the next generation, in various stages of growing up, remembering the past in nostalgic posts of memories, remembering long forgotten incidents and gossips. Sejal and Maya started streaming videos of Prithvi and Sonu across countries and continents. It was surprising for both mothers to see how comfortably the children took to recognizing each other. The mothers chatted about the childrens reactions in the side-window while kids stared at the screen. Prithvi was inculcated in virtual world of across-sea time-zone friends even before she was in grade one. For kids, the laptop, screens, cameras were not awesome pieces of high technology to be revered, but a normal part of their environment of growing up. Mayas diary entry: Dear Sunday, the world is not changing, what is happening is even more profound; a separate parallel virtual world is being created. The new generation is going to be different; you just need to see Prithvis ease of handling technology to believe what I am saying. Its precursor of things to come. If we of the real world dont change, dont adapt to their ways, dont discard our obsolescent notions, the parallel world will not be bothered. It will just ignore us to irrelevance. The revolution of the coming generation will not be of violence to enforce change. They will just change, be themselves, and discard whatever refuses to change to their ways; its going to be a revolution by irrelevance and not of obsolescence. We will still have our aristocrats to celebrate their faces on our T.V screens and on red carpets of Cannes; we will also have our proletariats to be alive so arts and literature continue being inspired to create movies for
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Cannes. But make no mistake, other than these, those at the bottom and top will lose their relevance; the identity of bourgeois (not the hated capitalist of Marxist literature but stock-owning professional) will become the new trans-civilizational identity of class of future. The socialist, liberal and libertarian utopias will be possible when the Working Class (not the exploited proletariat of class struggle but free-thinking professional) realizes their true identity in connection of the net. (And And Also the clergy in the towers of ivory to blindedly proclaim the non-obsoleteness of correctness.) Wondering on profoundness of the revolution, fearing her irrelevance in future world of creations, Maya continued browsing her online community; connected to mutual friends she saw profiles of unmentionable faces with comforting pseudonym handles for names; segueing sobriquet searching in sophistic cenotaph. The logic of her life started falling in place; she tried to peep in the gasping black hole of memory to reconcile the violence of an irreconcilable reality. Mayas diary entry: Dear Sunday, today I saw the profiles of Protagonist and Alterego on facebook. I realized I will never be able to love. In all my relationships I have been trying to find the elusory missing piece of memory. I am not in love with Jean-Pierre, but protagonist of his rational side, the businessman, and alterego of his passion, the designer. Sunday, I know you have abandoned me, you have stopped coming to my dreams, but I want you to be with me one last time. Sunday, for Prithvi, I want you to muster enough courage in your Maya, so that Illusion can send friend requests to Protagonist and Alterego, so that the virtual can reconcile what real could not. Maya closed her diary as she finished her entry; she was surprised that her leather-bound journal still remained one connection of her past, that she still used a pen to write in it (other than some formal signatures and notes in meetings, and writing her letters to Sunday, she could not remember using a pen any more). She was already in the last page of the journal; she decided she will not buy a new one. It was her last entry; the leather-bound journal will be locked forever, to be inherited by Prithvi when she is old enough. For her chronicles of present life Prithvis growing up she was already making a video log of all Prithvis activities and her comments, on her Sony Handicam. Prithvis story will be written in the technology of her times. It was time to end her journal of the pen; it was time to start reconciling her life in world of the web. Maya had a very nostalgic melancholic feeling about her decision of
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not buying a new diary to continue her entries in pen and paper. Maya reopened the leather-bound journal, her best birthday gift ever, and she started reading randomly her past, before locking it up for Prithvi. ********* Mayas old diary entries: Dear Sunday, We final all the unpack in our new house in Colaba. I like Bombay. It is so modern. The building are so high. The road lights looks nice in the night. I go to my new school in Navy Nagar in standard three. I miss my friends from Vizag from class one and two. There are nice girls in my new school also. In evening Mom took me to the Gateway of India. It was made for the England Prince. The Taj Mahal hotel is very nice. It is Five Star. We also go in. Mom did marketing and by pastry for me. There are very much foreigner there. Dear Sunday, daddy and mommy and me went to see Bombay. The aquarium was very good. I saw a baby shark underwater. We also went to the planetarium, it is like magic. It looks like you are sitting under the sky. It told us all about the universe. I did not understand everything, but I liked the Milky Way. You know gods live there. Daddy told me our house was first sea then they filled land there to make buildings. I dont like putting mud in sea to make land. If sea get angry then land will fill with water. You please ask sea not to get angry. All my friends live in Colaba. Dear Sunday, today we went to Elephanta. From the boat daddy showed me his ship. It is really big, it is so big that daddy flies planes from it. I saw from a long telescope the island and also the whole of Bombay. Daddy told me a secret. Dont tell anyone in the baba plant which look like an egg, they make atom bombs there. It can destroy the whole world. The elephant caves are very good. There are lot of monkeys and old statues. We eat ice cream there. Dear Sunday, today we went for picnic in Powai. We did boat ride in the lake. We also went in the jungle for lion safari. You know, we were in a cage and lions were free. I saw father lion, mother lion and baby lions. I was very afraid but I also wanted to touch the baby lion. They are very nice. Dear Sunday, we have shifted city once more, I remember mostly everything of our three years in Bombay but not so much of Vizag. Now we have come to Port Blair. Daddy was posted here when I was born. We went to see the Cellular Jail on class trip. It was great fun. The boys are so naughty, they were all shouting inside the jail. There were so much of echoes that the teacher had to scold them. The freedom fighters were all brought to the cellular jail and they lived in Kala Pani because we were slaves of the English. The freedom fighters wanted our country to be free. We have a free country because many people died for Mother India. Dear Sunday, today daddy took me and mom on his boat to the trip of
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the islands. The sea is so good, you are lucky that you live within the seas. I also went to the small island of my birth. Daddy showed me the dispensary where I was born at the moment of moon-landing. He told the story again to the other officer who was with us, about the loudspeaker. From the boat we also saw the islands of old tribes. No one is allowed to go there. I have seen photos of these people. They dont wear any clothes and have very poisonous arrows. You will die even if they scratch you. The islands have very dense forests and venomous snakes. You also please dont go there. Dear Sunday, I won the fancy dress prize today. The Flag-officers wife is the chief judge, but Mom was only judge for the Junior and high school, because I was participating in the middle school, so no one can tell she did partiality. I had become Admiral Nelson. Mom had made a very good uniform in red white and black colors for me. The hat was really large, but I liked it. You know what funny thing happened, I mixed all my dialogues. I got confused between lame of hand and leg, so instead of Nelson dialogues I said some of Long John Silver. Everybody laughed and thought it was planned. I did not tell anyone of my mistake. Giving me the prize they said I was half Nelson and half Silver. Actually I had thought both are the same. Dear Sunday, we have shifted once again. This is the first time I will not be staying in a coastal town. Delhi is so huge. I had been in Bombay but I didnt go out of Colaba much as I was very young then. But Delhi is really big, even my new school is very big. It has more than two thousand students. Our new house is very nice. Its really good if you are a senior officer in the Navy. I dont know how will be my new friends at school. I dont want to shift any more. Daddys transfers are sometimes painful. I long for Port Blair. It was so peaceful and nice. Dear Sunday, I will tell you a secret, the girls in my school are very modern, they are not like Port Blair. Most of them have already started wearing bras. I will ask mom to buy me one now. Some of the girls in the class are like senior girls already. Even the boys are funny, half the time you cannot make out what they are saying. Everyone is so snobbish. The competition in Modern School will be tough. There are so many brilliant students. I am afraid I will not come first. Dear Sunday, we came back from our holiday in Europe yesterday. It was great fun. It was my best holiday. Daddy had an official trip and he took us along to combine it with a short vacation. We stayed with Adnan uncle in France. You know half the women on the beaches were topless. Mom was so embarrassed with my looking at them, I found it so funny. These women dont have any shame at all, but I liked their guts, they behaved as if there was nothing unusual. France is so beautiful, I will go back there when I grow up, but I will not be topless on the beaches. We also went to Switzerland. They have made tunnels in the hills that go all the
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way up to the peaks. Daddy was so impressed by the trains, it was so neat and clean. People are very good. They have really fat cows in Europe, and very good cars, and no poor people. I like Europe. It is like a fairyland. Dear Sunday, it was a very bad day today, I was crying throughout the day, the results of the annual exam had come. I came fourth. There are two girls and one boy in the class who got more marks than me. Daddy tried cheering me up, but I could not stop crying, it is the first time I have not come first. The competition was less in the Navy schools. In the Modern School everybody studies so hard. Next year I will have to put more efforts. I will also tell you another secret. I cried so much that my periods started. I know about these things so I was not afraid, but I started crying even more. When I told mom, she thought I was crying because of the blood, but I was crying because I didnt come first. I am not afraid of blood. Mom bought sanitary pads and explained me how to use them. It is no big deal. I need to come first again next year. Dear Sunday, I came first in the board exams, dad and mom are very happy. Rajiv uncle and Sonia aunty called up to congratulate me. I finally beat all the hotshot girls of the school. I had a discussion with daddy about what subjects to take for the plus-two. Dad and Mom want me to take biology. They want me to become a doctor. I think I will become a doctor. It is a pity I cannot join the Navy. Its a pity they dont allow girls to join the Navy. It is not infantry where you might get into a hand to hand combat. Navy is all about strategy and tactics. I can very well captain a ship at war, but I guess no point in pondering over this, I will become a doctor instead. Dear Sunday, we came back from vacation. I was so glad to be with the sea again. I left Delhi completely behind. We had gone to Kerala and Goa. The beautiful backwaters of Kerala are so mesmerizing that I didnt want to come back. We took long boat rides to go to the villages. You can only reach some of them by boats. The people were very simple, I talked to the villagers, and I really liked it. I liked the Church in Goa very much. It was so quiet and serene, the normal crowds of religious places in India was missing. Maybe we were just lucky to be there on a less busy day. It was not a Sunday. They have Saint Xaviers body there. I was wondering whether it is a nice thing to preserve ones body, to bury it or burn it. What happens to someone when she dies. I dont want to think about this, it is so depressing. Dear Sunday, Last few weeks I had been wondering whether I should really prepare for medical. I think I dont want to become a doctor any more. I know dad and mom will be upset about it but they will not tell me anything. Dad has always encouraged me to do what I want. I want to travel, see the world. I think I will do something in the fashion industry. I really like clothes. All my friends say that I have a great sense of clothes, they always ask me for tips, and want me to come for their shopping. I
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enjoy doing this. Maybe I should get in a regular graduation and then do a course in fashion or join some fashion company. I will talk about this with dad after my birthday party. I hope he is ok with the idea. I know mom will not like it too much. She really wants me to be a doctor. By the way, did I tell you dad had planned a really big gala party for my eighteenth birthday. I am eagerly waiting for it, I got a very pretty dress made for the party already, and I cant wait to wear it. Dear Sunday, LSR is great fun. It has the smartest girls from all over the country. I feel really proud to be one of them. But now coming first is impossible. I will of course still try, but it will be highly competitive. I like the girls in my college, they are all so sure of themselves. I have become an office bearer of the fashion club. I am organizing the fashion show for the college festival. It is going to be tough work, but I am looking forward to it. I love doing this. Dear Sunday, I have a secret for you. I dont want to tell it to anyone, no one knows, only Sejal knows. I told you about my Rocket Scientist. We are in love, but that is not the secret, last week I started on the Pill. Sejal arranged it for me. She is in the medical school so she knows how to get them. I am really afraid of what will happen if Mom comes to know. I have to be really careful to hide it. I was afraid even to write about it to you, but I know you will understand, you will not judge me. I really love him. He is so nice. He is so intelligent and good looking. He loves me even more. Dear Sunday, the results of the annul exam came. I was not even in top five of the class. I am very upset, but not crying like I used to do in School. I think I am spending too much time with Krishna, it affects my studies. I will take care. I have moved to my own apartment as dad got transferred again. There is so much of freedom now, thats why I have slipped on my class rank. I will take care in the next exams. I will make sure I come in the top five of the class. Krishna is so sweet. We love each other so much. I dont mind spending more time with him even if it sometimes means a little less of study time. Dear Sunday, sometimes I get Jealous of Kalki when Krishna chatters so much about him. Sometimes I think he loves him more than me. Kalki is a nice guy. I have started liking him now. I have overcome the awkwardness of his staring eyes. There is something about his eyes. They are so passionate and mysterious. Dear Sunday, this V. P. Singh is such a pathetic chap. He started a witch hunt against all of Rajiv uncles friends and people close to him. Even dad got transferred. Now he has opened the Pandora box of reservations for backward castes. I think there will be a lot of agitation. The students are very angry. Dear Sunday, I know I am writing after a gap of several years. Certain things happened about which I cannot talk even to you. It is not that I
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dont trust you, but I cannot make myself write or talk about it. In fact I cannot remember anything now, sometimes I feel that by reading my old entries I can at least relive a bit of memory. I cant even muster courage to look back the pages. But life goes on, so I will tell you about my new life. Dear Sunday, I am glad that I took up a job in creations instead of doing a post-grad. It is real fun and I am enjoying it. Ronit is a real good friend, he is such a darling. He is not an archetypal man, he is esthete and sensuous. I think he understands women better than any guy I know. I have to be careful really, not to fall in love with him. Who wants the complications of an office affair? Dear Sunday, Today Sanjay proposed. He had bought a really exclusive solitaire ring, and we had gone for dinner at a very nice restaurant. I knew he loves me a lot but the proposal came as a surprise. I feel sad for him. I really dont want to get married now. There is so much to do in life, and I have just started. I will miss the solitaire though, just kidding. Dear Sunday, I have arisen in a bad hangover from Yesterdays party. It was great fun. It had been the most important day of my professional life till now. We did the mega launch of creations with Ash and Sush. Persis looks so pretty and graceful even now. I will also tell you another secret. I discovered that Ronit is gay. It was funny. I was all over him, literally trying to seduce him. I had so many drinks that I stopped bothering that he was a colleague. It must be difficult for him to keep pretending otherwise. I hope the society was more tolerant. We just pretend to be liberals and educated but our prejudices are so deep rooted. But I am fine, and our friendship has become even deeper after yesterday night. Dear Sunday, I really like Abhinav. He has everything a woman wants in a man. But I dont think I can spend a life with him. He is a deep-rooted conservative. I know he respects every individuals space. But love is not only about respecting others space. It is also being the other in their space. I cannot feel that kind of connect with him. Sejal and Abhinav have started dating. I really wish they fall in love. I think they will make a perfect couple and a very happy family. Dear Sunday, I came back today after almost a week continually in office, it was the millennium, but I feel bad about everything. I dont know, but I feel guilty promoting creations amidst the hijack. What else was I supposed to do? Wasnt I just doing my job? Life is more complicated than we can comprehend. Dear Sunday, it was a very happy day today, Sejal had a baby boy. I felt an emptiness; I need a child. I need to be a mother. I hope you were real. You could become the father of my child. I have decided to move on in life. I will be going to Dubai, and then Paris. The world is waiting, I will become the queen of fashion and we will have a child, we will be a family. I am not taking the Pill anymore.
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Mayas eyes were overflowing with tears as she finished reading her old entries; mentions of unmentionable names. She took out a blotting paper from the drawer and tried soaking the teardrop that had fallen on paper to smudge the ink in blurring memory. She once again closed her journal and locked it away forever. She returned to her laptop and with her overflowing eyes spilling on the keyboard she finally clicked on her facebook page; on the button saying, Send Friend Request.

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Chapter 18 The immigrant

Kalki was haggling with the immigration officer in Rome Questura; in medias res Telemachus wrangling with Proci in Ithaca; suitors suiting for the prize. He had a list of migrants who had landed in Malta perched for their lives in besmirched Patera boats across few hundred kilometers of Mediterranean Sea from Tunisia; fighting travelling floating to reclaim the love of Penelope, crossing through the wrath of Poseidon. It was the most difficult phase of their Homeric journey from SubSaharan Africa to Europe. But it was not the first life-threatening phase. In fact the whole journey across refugee camps of Somalia and Ethiopia, then oasis hopping across the vast emptiness of Sahara in one after another illegal crossings of nonexistent borders of shifting sand dunes, to come to Tunis, and then attempt the several days of floating in sea cramped in small boats, was a test of perseverance, and more importantly, luck; but the journey if ended in the dream of European Asylum, formal or not, was worth taking. The migrants were not the poorest of people the camps in warstricken countries of East Africa brewed, they were also not among the victims of marauding genocides of inter-warlord wars, instead they were the ones who had choices; a small savings to pay for the passage, basic education to communicate in an alien land, they were among the actively wooed by militias for an employment of safety and power, of the gun barrel of the baton; they were among the privileged in the vast underbelly of the world, the darkness of inaccessible incessant un-incandescent Africa; they were the clones of Mahisa who were ready to move, to mutate and disseminate into their respective destinies waiting outside the meaningless wilderness of impassive poverty and unsettling bloodshed. In an irony of immigration laws, in a lampoonery of liberalism, these were the immigrants who will be denied privilege of asylum because they dont have the privilege to prove that they are victims of genocide, because they had the choice to become murderers. Fleeing from murder if you are an intended victim is refuge, fleeing from murder if you disown the choice of committing it, is economic immigration. Kalki had been continually travelling, mostly between Africa and Europe, source and destination of the emigrating immigration. Most difficult part of his work was to establish the nature of flight, political or economic. Political flight from despotic regimes was a legitimate game in his world for UN intervention, but economic flights of people looking for survival from hunger was not, it was individual countrys concern, with no UN mandate to interfere. This was a very tricky situation, completely hypocritical in Kalkis
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opinion. How can one say that the tyranny of despotic warlords and death of excruciation is greater than the tyranny of bedeviling hunger and death of deprivation? Those fleeing to seek asylum always had stories to support both sides of the argument. Sitting at border-control police check-posts of Europe it was difficult to distinguish the hypercritical differences between these two classes of immigrants; if at all there was a distinction. The Italian officer said, But these pictures do not give me any evidence that these people were being persecuted, or their lives threatened. Kalki and the UNHRC lawyer were showing the immigration official pictures of war ravaged countries, explaining the victimization of camps, of poverty and death. Kalki himself had travelled the whole migration trail. He was sharing his own experiences, trying to convince the official: if the arrested people are deported they will face a situation of abuse in Tunisia, will further be deported back to the original countries, and in all likeliness, states squabbling to disown them, they will end up in Trishanku prisons, a fate worse than death. Kalki knew of several such ostracized nation-less inmates in detention on both sides of Mediterranean in ethereal existence; Aeoluss winds blowing them back to the captivity of Polyphemuss Island, lotus eating in nowhere. (In the class of people Kalki dealt with (unskilled and low-skilled manual labor drifting like un-owned livestock in search of survival and pasture) the distinction was meaningless. They were not middleclass professionals migrating for better prospects (category of high-skilled knowledge worker, the class of expats Kalki belonged to).) Kalki made few phone calls from the immigration office and continued his persuasion. Sir, I am telling you these cases are genuine. I have records from UNHCR to support my contentions. Even Deputati Lucio knows this. He visited with me to some of these camps as part of the EU fact-finding delegation. Deputati Lucio was a conservative Parliamentarian (vocally anti-immigration in Italian Politics); a certificate of authenticity to the claim of refuge from the MP would surely make it credible. Kalki had done his homework in working out the modus operandi. He called the Deputatis office and passed the phone to the Questore. There was a conversation in Italian. Kalki had realized that within the divide of local and foreigner there were also divides among immigrants drifting-labor skilled-professionals entrepreneurs. The worlds on various sides of divides connected in complicated conflicts and collaborations. Living in white neighborhoods, the professionals and entrepreneurs pretend not knowing their skin color. There is a devout conflict of guilt and identity, expressed and calmed in extreme religious devotion inside the house and public participation in the mainstream host society outside; credence of localization firmly established by buying their way through
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political contributions of green to colors of left and right. The choral politicos, opponents to immigration, are also funded by businessmen who benefit from cheap labor. Most vocal of them appreciate economic advantages of consciences of refuge to victimhood. The restaurant owner hates the waiters; he hides them in dungeons; risks taken for financial feasibility; captivity of love in Calypsos Ogygia. After the short call with Deputatis office the border-police official agreed for asylum. The stranded men held in Valetta can travel to Italy from Malta on official papers. Kalki felt happy, he left with the paperwork endorsed by the Italian Questura. It was another of his small victories in the continual game of migrating merry-go-round. Kalki flew to Malta taking the next flight out of Rome. He wanted to bring the good news to the detainees as soon as possible. He knew it was the most important step in their journey, entry into European Union with some legitimate papers. But he also knew it was just another beginning, a new phase of continued legal and illegal search for pasture. The men will take a boat to Italy; will be sucked into the demand and supply of labor economics, to various corners of Europe. Those with families back home will settle at the first viable opportunity, and start the long scheme of sending money back and negotiate the maze of migration to get wife and children to Europe. Those with lesser baggage of liabilities will continue their journey of emancipation to riskier flights; they will drift north to France, then below the Channel, to squeeze the essence of life between axles and wheels of Lorries crossing the tunnel, to be borne out in a new life in their final land of dreams, the Island of the Queen. Ending their Odyssey by crossing over death to reach the Promised Land, Skirting the Sirens of Immigration control, concealed below Lorries between the cusps of monstrous containers of Scylla and whirlpooling wheels of Charybdis; but the incorporeal journey does not end, instead it gets trapped in a maze of legality and morality. The trickiest thing of being an illegal alien is not being an illegal alien, what does not exist should not exist. Existing in nonexistent state, in contradictory nomenclatures, the alien needs to delineate himself, to finally break free of his entrapment, to be a proper resident, to make the final crossing to a non-alien existent world of reality. Morality of conscience and expediency of economics persuades society to see illegal as not amoral. Scrupulous probity of the restaurateur bringing exotic tastes to European palate convinces him that the problem is mere paperwork and he conscientiously hires the servile to be hidden in rustle. The cycle of legalization takes ages before the migr has an official identity, his labor recorded in a file and wages deposited in a bank, but till then it is the invisible trail-less cash economy that feeds the outcast cleaners
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cleaning the sour aftertaste of oriental delicacy left behind in soiled plates. Banking regulations around the world in response to the ugly shame of revelations, that 9/11 and other terror strikes were plotted and funded in defiance of the wide gaze of official financialdom, had become so difficult that it started following the deftly ridiculous logic of denying banking to people who did not exist; but families back home need to be fed; repatriations need to be made. Kalki had discovered the elaborate money changing and transfer mechanism, developed as a loose global network of small dealers, to cater to needs of the money that wasnt allowed to ride the blips of official wiresand-wireless of banks of the world. Money going out from Europe to Africa in small changes, becoming big when changed, was easy to understand. But he had hit a hot trail when he found monies coming in, in large denomination and changing from worthless paper to Euros and Dollars; direction defying belief flowing invisibly in network of the dealers. The Plane took off from Rome, Kalki saw the vast unending blueness of Mediterranean, ships and boats of all dimensions slowly becoming smaller; on decks of cruises, parties of powerful men and beautiful women, invisible deals disappearing as specks in the sea shining in the bright sun of cloudless skies. The plane climbed cruising altitude, sky and sea became a vacuous canvas of blue, Kalki came back to his thoughts, his game. He will ensure the freedom of men on his list, tomorrow he will take another flight back to Rome, to the recondite rendezvous Home Run, Closing Shot meeting with Ahmed in darkness of the night, where another list will be elicited; Circes exchange of love and magic, Hermess Moly. Kalki had connected to Ahmed by finding out the mode of prostitutes sending money back home. He was introduced to him by one of his favorite girls in Rome. Ahmed at first was wary of an official meeting him; he balked the regular chore of being a legitimate small-time Pizza vendor, but Kalki knew he was the kingpin of money-exchange franchise of dealers spread across southern Europe. Ahmed, I work for UNHCR. Financial transactions are not my concern. In fact as a humanitarian, I feel it is a service to help repatriate hard-earned money; hunger does not wait for paperwork. You need not fear anything from me; I can keep secrets. Ahmed gained a little confidence, he opened up slightly; they started meeting in back alleys where the trade of flesh was conducted. Ahmed did his homework; Kalki was a trusted and helpful official. But who sends in money to Europe from Africa man? I fail to understand! Over a glass of beer in a red-light watering hole, Kalki finally treaded the question both had been waiting for.
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I dont know. My job is not to ask questions. I deliver Euros or Dollars or whatever, and just keep my legitimate commission. Its just a fair business. It is not my concern what one does with his money. Ahmad said hesitatingly. Kalki was happy; the conversation was going in the right direction. You are right. You know I have some connections; I can help in expediting paperwork for refugees. Let me know if someone is in a difficult situation and needs help. I am always happy to help brothers in need. Kalki changed the topic from money transfers. Ahmeds brain was running, But the problem is always, that people are asked to prove political persecution for refuge. How can I prove it to you? Ahmed, I know you are an honest man, I can trust you; you know the situation of these people back home. If you say someone needs refuge, you are the best judge. You mean you will get my list passed through immigration in Europe? Yes, if I know other things that you can tell me. Ahmed was quiet, he completed his beer and ordered another one; he was contemplating. If he gets into a deal with Kalki and the folks know that he is spilling, he would be dead; but he can make a lot of money, also keep the folks happy, if he can get a sure channel of getting people in, there is a lot of moolah to be made. After a few more sips he spoke again. Ok, I will give you a list, get the guys in, and I will give you the names of those who collect incoming monies. We need to become nonexistent for each other; we meet only in the brothel as strangers, co-customers, and exchange the lists. I think thats a fair arrangement, the Deal was done. It turned out to be a perfect win-win arrangement, the outgoing trails of incoming monies, properly informed to circles of espionage, revealed active terror cells, stopping violent designs of simmering sinister plots. No one on either side knew the source of leak and disruption. Standing in the detention center in Malta, handing over papers to his list of detainees and congratulating them on their freedom, Kalki thought, These are the men who arranged the largest sums for Ahmed to buy their status; who of them is a plant for a future sleeper cell?; circularity of the incredulous game; he jerked back his thought to the present, from the notso-distant future of sleeping cells, to the list of money flowing to waking cells; the list that he will get when he touches base with Ahmed tomorrow. It will be properly filtered and reported, in different versions to different agencies; in a way that no one can figure its source. *********
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Kalkis other source were communities of radicalization. Cauldron of aliens encountered by him was diverse, it confused him; he always found it difficult to assess the self-identity of people he met. He felt boiling emotions beneath the surface of quiet paperwork and everlasting waits. It made him interested in sniffing out the boiling; follow the alienating trails to where it surfaces in hot springs of relief furnishing warmth in coldness of alienation. These radical springs pretended to know the answers, always a logical causation of grief; policies of wealthy and powerful, decadent centers of power, selfish self-interest, race driven hate; the status quo of inertia. Conversations providing relief, security from fear of loss, explaining the tragedy, comforting and indoctrinating; multiple layers of misplaced real-and-imaginary identities all mixed up in hot streams creating Molotov cocktails of intoxicating fashion of faith. Most complicated were the radicals of generation born in the foreign lands. Their parents created an illusionary homeland within walls of the home, outside was the reality of dreamland to which they had run to. Not knowing the horrors that made the flight, which was left behind, knowing only the serrations created in nostalgia of home in the non-homeland, dreams became hated; complicated arithmetic of illusion and real. Kalki was the perpetual migrant, a crosser of divides. He had crossed from the mines to school, from Botala to Delhi, from Parivar to UN, from local to global. He felt the pain of tangled identities trying to entangle a hopelessly complicated wool ball. During the day he was one of them, he resonated with their emotions and anger; in the night he didnt want to know the reports he sent. He was in the darkest corners of cities, lit in darkest parts of the night. He was experimenting with multiple drugs and women of nationalities, coquetting streetwalkers and peddlers of streets, his peace, voices of dark, making his reports interesting, rearing his reputation in parallel darkness of espionage. In the towers of ivory they argued whether it was pot that melted or salad that marinated, but in the invisible backstreets of Europe, it was the cauldron of hinterland that bubbled; and Kalki boiled within for his own peace. The hotbeds were port cities and transit points; people came hidden in containers; made dashes in dingy boats; in the middle of nights in the Channel; crossed suspended in axels. Kalki wondered what make men so crazy to do such risky things, to get to a country where they will live in permanent fear of an illegal alien; what devilish hell life must be from where they flee? He couldnt imagine what it was like; but he understood the power of information. He started collecting trends in radicalization, another parallel world of complicated conspiracies was opening up to him, the stakes here were not trivialities of religion, but geopolitical power, access to energy,
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ability to blackmail; the secret world of journeys of weapons drugs women. Harlots continued to be his most important source. He was sleeping and entreating from the regular streetwalker to elite escort. The women connected with Kalki, not as a client but a confidant; he treated them well, took them out to cafs and movies; paid them for sex. In turn he was provided with what was paid for; and stories in return for friendship and respect. Kalki filtered information, slotted it according to agencies to share with; he soon was dealing with multiple organizations Americans Europeans Russians Israelis and he continued filing with Indians who were glad he was their man. But Kalki was no ones man. He became source of European espionage; his source, fleshpots and drug-dens. He was treading in dangerous terrain, the complicated web of religion weapons oil crime terrorism; he was enjoying the high of double crossing, and intoxication of narcotics and erotics. He had at disposal secret funds for unlimited expenses, no questions asked; he was the best bet for his handlers across countries. Slowly the bigger picture was revealing itself to him; there was a familiar pattern of names that cropped up in his chitchats with escorts of Europe; the illicit parties, scandalous rendezvous of sworn enemies, organized by a Fashion House, the ubiquitous presence of one name, Adnan the Arab, Adnan the dealmaker; he wondered how to get to the real source. ********* Kalki and Sofiya paddled the twin-seating kayak in a constant rhythm of strokes, hands moving in unison with rest of the body and movements of the other paddler, boat propelling forward like mechanical automatic precision rather than human rowing. The narrow cold water gorge enclosed by steep vertically rising rock faces reflecting in the low sun history of glacially polished surfaces of the cliffs of fjords of Norway. Amidst the hallucinating winds whizzing past the canyon, sucking in the souls of individuals into hollowness of the gorge, the two Kayakers were paddling not like regular tourists trying out some fun in the Scandinavian summer, but almost-professional athletes. The closely following boat of the instructor was impressed by energy and rhythm of Kalki and Sofiya. Rare words were spoken between minutes of paddling, slightly left or farther right were the only sounds that broke the silence of oars cutting into the water and pulling out without a splash, fiber whooshing on the surface leaving behind a silent ripple, making an occasional sea bird launch into flight, human souls in rhythm of the exercise and beauty of the fjords becoming part of the conversation of mountains and seas; overlooking overhanging boulders trolls turned into stones
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creatures of darkness cursed by light. It was several weeks ago when Kalki had called his favorite escort agency, told the coordinator he wanted a companion interested in adventure sports for a weeklong vacation in Norway. Within a day the agency sent him a few profiles; he didnt blink before he decided on Sofiya, her picture as soon as the attachment in his email opened told him that it carried a story he wanted to hear. Sofiya and Kalki met at Geneva Airport, she was waiting for him in the lounge of Scandinavian Airlines. She had taken an earlier flight from Paris where she stayed. Kalki recognized her form the photograph, greeted her in Russian; she replied astonished, but the introduction could not continue for long in Russian, Kalki hadnt advanced in his verbal capabilities of the language, ahead of the basic words he had learnt on the streets of Botala. I am sorry, I think I have already exhausted all the Russian I know. He finally said in English accompanied by a wide smile. Oh, its ok! Good thing is you tried speaking whatever you can. I am surprised you know a bit. Sofiya said with an equally wide smile. Kalki felt a genuine cheerfulness in her, not the pretense of a job trained for pleasantries. Actually its interesting; I learned these words back in my childhood. There were several Russian engineers and families in the town I grew up in India. He knew Sofiya was Russian, her profile said so; he masterfully slipped in the information of his own nationality. But the innocent introductory conversation suddenly took a twist he had not expected, a sudden sadness emerged on her face for a still second, then she smiled again. Kalki had seen enough to instantly spot the semblance. He let go, changed the topic to what will not suggest any hint of anyones past; he started talking about adventure sports. His plan was to spend a week doing kayaking and skydiving in Scandinavia, enjoy the beauties of North with the beautiful hassle-free companionship of Sofiya. He needed a break away from his multiple lives; he will take his week of refuge of adventure in the scenery of ice-cut valleys of Norway and sensuality of Sofiya. On the airplane along conversations they started becoming friendly. Mention of the town of Russians in India was left behind at Geneva Airport. He noticed the return of cheerfulness and excitement; he was pleased. They heard the instructors whistle from behind as they reached a turn in the fjord that bloomed in a wider lake-like body from narrowness of the last leg of their rowing. They stopped paddling, the kayak slowly decelerated to a floating halt at entrance of the lake surrounded by peaking walls of hallowing hallucinating cliff faces. It was penultimate day of their vacation; it was an energetic
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rejuvenating five days of kayaking paragliding skydiving. Kalki and Sofiya had become good friends, talking of past was no longer out of bounds. You are a funny man. I have never been with such a client. Its like a vacation with a friend. She had said sipping her drink on the third day in the bar before they ended their day in bliss of the bed. Well! Why do a client and friend need to be mutually exclusive? I am pretty friendly with my Lawyer and my Doctor. He replied with a cunning flirting smile. I guess you are right, but not many people are like you. She wanted the conversation to go on, he was a patient listener. You know, my father left me and my mother when I was two. He was a hotshot metallurgist in the Soviet Steel Industry. He had gone to India, a place called Bokaro Steel City, for some technical work with the steel plant there. He never came back. He defected to America. It was all planned in advance. Kalki suddenly remembered her sadness on mention of his childhood town in Geneva Airport. My mother was furious. She was a dedicated communist. They had met in the University. I think my father outgrew her, communism and Soviet Union. I dont know what made him leave his two year old daughter. We never heard of him anymore. KGB haunted us for rest of our lives. Before the collapse it was rumored that my father was a spy. My mother remarried after the collapse. I completed my school and left Russia to come to Paris. I had some small-time modeling assignments, but I found good money and occasional fun in this business. Among all the women Kalki had, Sofiya was special; he liked her love of adventure. She loved the kick of being on edge, she challenged him to compete on duration of freefall before pulling chord of the parachute; Kalki was always the one to pull first; he admired her reckless guts and endless energy. They started to row back to their starting point in the gorge, after a few minutes of rest and nature. The row-back again was in the same silent rhythm. Kalki sitting behind Sofiya, just seeing the back of her water suit, her natural blonde hair peeping out in a ponytail from the Kayaking hat; in the whole day of rowing they had hardly seen each others faces. They returned to a small jetty where the agency collected the boat. They removed their gear hats wetsuits life-vests gaiters to be back in normal tourist clothing. Kalki was in a T-shirt and cargo pants. Sofiya was wearing a spaghetti-strap tank top over faded blue jeans. She removed the band from her hair, jerking her head, fluffing it back with her hands to flow around her statuesquely chiseled face. Her deep blue eyes teased Kalki in anticipation of the evening. Youthful suppleness of her skin glowed blending with tan of summers spent on beaches of France. They got in a
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car parked at the jetty and drove back to their hotel. Sofiya was an adventure-sport freak, she had used her healthy income to do classes and be licensed in skydiving; she had her own double life. Kalki had noted her pride; she boasted about having very selective clientele, only crme will do. Then what made you come with me? He had asked. Oh, that! I was impressed when the agency told me about this unusual request of adventure-sport vacation; I was completely taken in by the line, Experience in skydiving will be a plus. She told him mixed with her mild laughter. But to be fair, I am glad I came. Thank you for the wonderful time. My pleasure! Its I who need to thank you. I had a fantastic time. Days and nights! He had quipped back. They drove into the parking of their hotel. It was already evening. They showered, changed and went out for dinner. It was a somber meal, both knowing it to be the last dinner of their luscious vacation; tomorrow they had a long drive to Bergen in the day and different flights to Paris and Geneva in the evening. Later they went to a nearby bar for postprandial drinks, soft music was playing, it was not crowded; Sofiya ordered red wine, Kalki his regular beer. Sometimes you behave as if in love or something. She hesitatingly commented and then silently cursed herself for saying it. She had heard Kalkis imaginary stories of past girlfriends and painful breakups. Oh yes, I am. He looked into her eyes and smiled, I love people. You know, the love of fellow human being. It is not as grand as other notions of love, but sometimes its simplicity makes it more beautiful than literary descriptions of other varieties. He blubbered, not himself sure what he meant. It was enough for her, for Now. After more conversation and drinks they went back to their room. They slept in a satisfied release of energy, to recharge to face the world, end of a fulfilling vacation, both in their separate dreams of hoping a repeat of the encounter in future. ********* Mahisa floated in Odysseus trails across deserts of Africa, caverns of Hindu Kush, tunnel of the Channel, to terrorize the tubes of land. The war in Afghanistan cooled, conspiracies for continuing it elsewhere hatched. Inaudible whispers of invisible women reached Kalki about parties of a fashion company organized by the Arab, whispers not shared with anyone; no report was ever made of stories of the Arab. These were locked in his head in side of the divide which he didnt want to know, for he knew that in these parties were the handlers of his handlers, and he didnt want anyone to know that he knew. He was indurated enough in the game to understand it was a good deal the world gets its energy, the Biggest Brothers security will guarantee
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prosperity, prospects of a tyrant having capabilities of mushrooms will induce fear and reason for all to see the logic, a repressed people will be freed and in the bargain no one will mourn the war and death of the dictator; dealing with immigrants he had figured the jargonized indifference of illegal and immoral. Yes! It was a good deal. Smell of the mission touched his olfactory senses of night before it was declared accomplished by the President on the Ship, before the Arab was congratulated on the Boat. But he couldnt see in the darkness, smells alone were not the complete depiction, he didnt report the incompleteness or existence of the picture to any of his handlers; he wondered how to get to the real source. ********* Kalki frequently traveled to the Benelux, working on representations with the EU offices in Brussels, and on cases in the EU Court of Justice and the International Court of Justice in The Hague, regarding various petitions and requests on behalf of the refugees. Can you get a carton of Marlboro Lights, its finished here, It was in a grocery shop in The Hague, that Kalki heard the familiar language, one that he had not heard since he had left the mines; the language that touched deeps of his memory. Kalki had dropped by to buy a packet of cigarette. The shopkeeper apparently of Indian origin was passing instructions to a young woman assistant who seemed to be his daughter, but the accent was very unfamiliar to Kalki. In a reflex he asked the shopkeeper in his broken Bhojpuri; Where in Bihar are you from? The shopkeeper smiled at ignorance of his nave customer; No, No! Not from Bihar, but from Suriname. Kalki worked for UN, he was supposed to know countries of the world, but they are in hundreds, he had not encountered cases of Suriname to be dealt with in his work. It was a peculiar name of an unfamiliar place in the familiar language in petulant accent. The shopkeeper seeing him baffled, asked; You know Guiana? Yes, he had heard; Guineas Guianas Guanos all mixed up in his memory, new-and-old, of French Dutch German English varieties. He vaguely remembered these names from back-in-school geography classes, something to do with bird droppings which were sold to profit of fertilizer and gunpowder; he struggled to remember where these countries were, he was confused between Africa, South America and Pacific. He felt ashamed of his ignorance; Bloody European Colonists, made a nomenclative mess of the world. Seeing his consternation the shopkeeper ventured an explanation. Suriname was previously called Dutch Guiana; it is a country in South
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America on the Caribbean Sea. Kalki gave him a look that conveyed, So why the hell do you look and speak like a Bihari? The shopkeeper ignored his looks and ignorance, continuing the story in a monologue. Our ancestors were from India, mainly Bihar and United Province, I believe they call it Uttar Pradesh nowadays. They were Jahajis, shipmates on ships full of indentured laborers, exported from the Gangetic plains to the European colonies around the world by English. He was descendant of the indentured migrants, brought from the floodplains of hinterlands of North India to the shores of the New World, to work as plantation workers, because the liberal conscience of colonizers had outlawed slavery without written contracts. Kalki listened to his story in amazement, the shopkeeper added as his satire, a footnote to history, The Negros of Africa couldnt read or write, so the trade in slaves stopped from Africa to become the trade in indentures. In India the Empire produced Babus who could draw up contracts of slavery. (Babus who wrote in Language of the Queen and spoke in languages of the natives, conveyed dreams of the far-off shores of liberation from tyranny of hunger and humiliation, and got thumb stamps on contracts, from another people who also could not read-or-write.) Kalki noticed the mans deep irony of black humor, his complete disregard for political correctness in using the N word. (It was his prerogative for claiming the mantle of exploited side of the divide; his negritude.) Babus and Pundits came along with the Jahajis overseers priests gang-lords. They brought records language religion which in previous waves of unwritten contracts of trading people, were lost in the decks of darkness crossing the oceans. It was all a dark fairytale for Kalki to connect with a fellow brother in tongue through a two-hundredyear divide in history. He liked the way the gentleman laughed and mocked about it while he explained him the turning wheel of destiny. He told him about the mixed societies and languages of the Guianas in Caribbean, of the English, Dutch and French variety; the social divides, castes of Blacks, East Indians, Red Indians, Europeans, mixed races, castes within castes; languages, different languages of trade, of religion, of social communication, accent of intra-group and intergroup communication; It was all a complicated Maze. Kalki noticed that the shopkeeper no longer used the N word for his black brethren of Caribbean lowest in the social order. He was proud of
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his language, he was proud of his religion, he was proud of his identity; It was the only thing that saved us from a fate similar to that of Africans. He said as his narrative moved him from the exploited side to become the entrepreneur of the colonies. He used the more correct word in sympathy of knowing the providence which could have been theirs. (The irony of political correctness is that it depends on the mantle you are wearing, of an apologist for the exploiters or a representative of the exploited; stickiness of historical prejudice is such, that it changes the nomenclature of political correctness from time to time, from mantle to mantle, from context to context.) For Kalki it was more than a story, it was a personal connection, a dimension to his perpetual wanderings, a perspective to his work with the modern migrants in the world after two hundred years of liberalism and four hundred years of enlightenment. The shopkeeper was impressed, his Bihari customer from real Bihar the land of legends which his ancestors had left behind, worked as an official with UN. Kalki thought about his own crossings, his own Bihar which his parents had left behind. The gentleman introduced him to his daughter, they chatted for a while. They had already exchanged their first names, but he was eager to know more; he wanted to know the family name of Kalki, he made it sound as non-consequential and polite as possible. Kalki immediately recognized; the guy and all his stories are real, two hundred years in the jungles of solitude and he still wants to know the caste of his customer. What Kalki didnt figure in his naivet: he had a daughter of viable marriageable age, and a good marriage is of a proper caste; the tricks of Karma are much more potent than the dampening prowess of all the Waters the Ships of the Raj crossed. Kalki was invited to a small community get-together of Surinamese in The Hague; he joyfully accepted, he was excited to meet brethrens of immigration and history of two-hundred years; roots of tongues, birthmarks of castes. The party was another surprise, it blared Bhojpuri Nautanki numbers, same ones that blared in the scorching darkness of the mines of Botala; production was Bollywood, distribution global. Kalki was happy, it was the rare occasion when he wanted to nourish the story of migration, rather than to file it with his handlers and place it in an area which he didnt want to know. He felt the beauty of pain of the decks overfilled with indentures, papers stored in captains cabin in luxury, migrant livestock in the hull. For the first time he felt proud of his music, raunchy and loud, maidens swaying waist shaking Ara Chapra Balia, shuddering heart on pulsating music systems of the Hindoestanen of de Nederland.
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Kalki in an earlier time would have disowned the music as his own, he had left it behind, it was no longer his, but in clubhouse of the community who did not leave it behind, and imported it freshly packaged from the land of dreams (No-No-No Not on the wrong side of Atlantic but from dreams of history), he owned it; it was finally his. He did not feel the need to pretend, he felt the beauty of brutality of the bygones, the naturalness of uprootment. He was one with his source and creation. It was an occasion when he did not hate his existence, he loved the world; he loved his tongue. He left the party late and thanked his hosts, promised them a revisit and took to Centre of The Hague. He was in love with the genealogy of his roots. He was in love with the Dutch; you dont need a dealer to find dope. He walked into a coffee shop and selected a strong skunky joint. He was in love with the ship-makers of the marshes, who made ships that flew. He loved the tyrants of East India Man, made in Holland, which sailed in the service of Company and Crown. He inhaled deep on the joint; he was teleported to nasty-stormy tempestuous seas, pirates beleaguered on Hollybollyship-o-wood, cargo of indentures corralled livestock live-spiced gold besieged in the hold, where slaves previously used to be. Storm getting strong, ship-rocking keel turning in obscene angles splashing down in freefalls, joints holding it together floating above water, captain at the wheels responding, begging for mercy rather than steering, to demands of the waves, masts fluttering in obedience to fury of the winds, at edge of the world large-and-flat, a tidal wave of tears, the ship fell over, overturned to sink, transposed through time-and-space, reality and imagination, sinking deep in earth to surface again, an excavation beneath the sea breached by collision of the surfacing sunk ship, water flowing in through the cracks on railway tracks carrying lorries below the Channel. The crew men cargo livestock all transported in leaking waters, spilling over everywhere, the officers turned in suits of London, passengers clung between axles and wheels of trucks in the tunnel; Register at Lloyds declared the Cargo Delivered. He loved the Dutch; they continued draining their marshes and building ships, and developed an attitude that talked in a tongue of boiling spit. He loved the farmers, canal-diggers, shipbuilders, sailors; they kept draining and building even when the ghost-prince of the nearby land haunted the darkness of their marshes asking echoing, Zine op neit zine? they did not heed the vraag and kept sailing; pardon, alstublieft! He loved the Dutch; dope is legal, hookers pay tax, land is below the sea, and the best you can choose to die if you are dying. It was the trip inverting history. He visited Amsterdam; he relished in
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paintings of various museums; he spent the whole day gazing at canvasses of van Gogh; a memory trip, deepest of emotions surfacing in connection of the paintings. He pretended to himself that he was a passerby tourist, an amateur art lover far removed from the fires burning red black whites of Botala. But the paintings were screaming touching his heart telling him the stories of beauty and violence beauty of violence frilling beauty of sunflowers, stuttering emotions of self-portraits, stroke of death in smoking skull. The paintings pushed for more but he controlled himself, admiring an arms-length connection-less vision; he didnt want to know. He got out of the van Gough museum, despite his efforts deep inside interrogating; If ever I feel compelled to cut a body part, what would it be? Kalki took a trip down history again in a boat trip around the Amsterdam canal network, concentric circles of waterways, inter connected by radials, water locks regulating the flow in a direction desired by man, opposite to the wishes of nature, human ingenuity of centuries, a city created out of draining marshes, a population living below the level of sea at the brink of disciplined damned flood. He got down the boat to take a closer look at buildings where it all started, the beginning of modern-day trade and globalization, by the canals of Amsterdam. Historical violence becomes glamorous; textbooks of history are about rise and fall of empires, but beneath this amoebic expansions and contractions of cartography, occur the real silent catharses that change the world. Kalki was in midst of such historical revolution, the first exchange, trade of the Dutch East India Company shares, the birth of mercantile capitalism. He saw the warehouses first overseas cargo of spices auctioned staring at the gables of buildings cantilever beams jutting out ready to haul the merchandise from floors of the godown. History was made not only by generals and admirals, but equally by the traders speculators profiteers racketeers; And Also the carpetbaggers and Looters. Clives and Hastings of the world, impeached by the shame of their impeachers, are the ones who created our world; energy that fuels the power of history is greed. He loved the Dutch; they created the spicy tulipy bubbly trade creating the cycles of capitalism, and better still trading New Amsterdam for a large patch of Sugary Solitude. He loved the Dutch; they celebrate the birthday of their Queen, everyone gets drunk, everyone trades, continuing the history of trading junk on the streets in Carnival of the Queen; ones secondhand junk of utility to another. Kalki wanted to sell his priceless baggage baggages of past, baggages
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of tongue of accents and identities no longer needed; is there a buyer in the floating reality of fantastic Tulip manias? Stowed baggage of Love? Allegories of life, alliterations of civilization, accelerators from alcohol to zest, everything in between, all kinds of intoxicants that flow in vain; free-radicals in-stain; periodic table of history, telescope of myth in Hinterland and Europe; lines of control, geographical for armies, physical for lovers, mental for daemons, physiological for addictions; emotions of chemicals, drugs of love; love of fall. ********* Kalki was not normally a reflections man, but his trip to invisible marshes of the lowlands disturbingly made him face the reality of grays of the divides. He could not sort out his Holland experience in his neat blocks of knowing and not wanting to know; Ignorance is Bliss, Knowledge is Frustration. It was an uneasy eeriness appreciating the elements of art and irony in the violence and tyranny of history. Is the chaos and its outcome imagined by god? He knew of something he didnt know but wanted to know. He didnt have neat answers to file either in his divides or with his handlers of darkness and light. After his Holland trip Kalki developed an X-ray vision of clairvoyance; he saw tamped images wherever he travelled in Europe. His fascination with the pristine beauty of prosperity increased as metaphors concealed beneath cobbled streets and cathedral walls revealed their gargoyle colors of red and black; the mines of Botala were not to leave him, he saw them in the streets and buildings of Europe; in the trampling of tanks and the choking in chambers of death; purloin of the world metamorphosing into the prosperity of modernism and peace of liberalism. Kalki could not reach to the bottom of messages images of Europe were trying to transmit him, he just learned to live with his reflections of bricks of history and continued with his multiple lives. His reputation in the United Nations and intelligence of nations continued to grow. He continued to file well-filtered reports, useful and insightful nevertheless, written crisply with conclusions the reader wanted to hear, the chaos and confusion filtered away to stay hidden in his mind. Kalkis nightly journeys to the dark side of European cities reduced. He already had an operational network; incremental gains from increasing the breadth of his source did not justify the risk of blowing his cover. He kept his interactions limited to a loyal group of informants he had patiently developed across Europe. What was required was the deepening of source; his network was still not able to get him to the gnarled dubious deals Adnan was doing. Kalki continued to struggle with stratagems to penetrate Adnans network.
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Reasons for reduction of his nightly adventures were not only professional, he was also getting tired. He no longer longed for women of the streets and brothels; his calling of escort agencies was also fast becoming limited to requests for Sofiya. Kalki continued his dates with Sofiya, their mutual friendship and attraction deepened, they took vacations together. Sofiya had few minor modeling breaks in Paris; with more vacations with Kalki, she reduced her escort work. Both of them understood that their companionship had a large proportion of convenience and concupiscence, it was not something which could be naturally described as love; but still, slowly they meandered into a situation where their intimate encounters with other human beings were substantially reduced. Within months of their first meeting the agency was no longer the go between; they just called each other to fix their plans. Sofiya no longer wanted the money, but Kalki insisted. Sofiya realized that he needed to pay more for himself; to keep the foundation of relationship secure; she didnt jib and took the money. Living in different cities they could not meet very often, it was only on vacations when they holidayed together, and some weekends, when the wait of separation got desperately heavy, and either of them traveled to the other city. It was an arrangement that worked well, they enjoyed their time together. There was an exuberance of energy in their activities and a blissful satisfaction in their lovemaking. Meanwhile in the UNHCR hierarchy, Sashi was steadily climbing the ladder. Along with him, his chosen lieutenants stepped up in the organization. Sashi was elevated to become the Deputy High Commissioner; he included Rebecca and Kalki in his new team. Both of them were promoted to senior representatives. Their travelling reduced, working more at strategic level in the world of report writings and ceremonious filings. Reduced travelling and pretentious paperwork as an excuse for work, and reduction of undercover activities, gave Kalki spare time. He had always lived a life where his sustenance was the challenge that kept him busy enough to control the fancies of his mind. Added to the medley of visible and hidden images and embedded messages, availability of time urged him to reflect on the world and his individual life. Kalki didnt like this; he always ended in uncomfortable confusion, his body demanding its clarifying drugs. To keep his control, he focused his energies on stuff he liked, activities that released him from pathological compulsions of useless thoughts. He substantially increased his participation in adventure sports; he spent a lot of time with his sky-diving club and skiing in the Alps. And he longed and waited to meet Sofiya; to ski down a slope with her, jump out of the plane with her.
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Chapter 19 The report

One afternoon in the spring of Two-thousand Five, Kalki was called for an important meeting with Sashi. The department was asked by the Secretary General to prepare a report on contemporary human migrations. The United Nations was working on a series of whitepapers on major issues confronting the global society, and possible ways forward. These included things like, reforms in UN, next stage of global governance and cooperation, nature of national sovereignty in the new millennium, globalization and its management, global financial system, free trade, free flow of capital, free movement of people, impact of demographic shifts, sharpening of multiple identities and its violent manifestations, energy and resource requirements of future and its fulfillment, climate change, poverty, diseases. It was a long list, the most ambitious attempt of UN in recent times to get hold of the changes globalization and technology had unleashed. It was an attempt for the organization to find and maintain its relevance, to try comprehending controlling channelizing the forces released, lest they have their own chaotic course and the world enters into another period of civilizational cycle of violent disruption. Question foremost in minds of think-tanks of history and future: has the human society evolved enough to influence the momentum of history? Or despite all our efforts, we remain imprisoned to the cycle of collective Karma, the inertial wheel of events that repeats itself in the familiar pattern of violent rise and fall? The significant peace of world, since end of the World Wars, brought about by the standoff of Cold War and then the asymmetric power concentration with United States, is like the past periods of pax of great empires. Question for the history of future is: will Pax Americana become peace of the world? Or will it descend into violent sliding fall? Is it within the grasp of collective human wisdom to foresee and influence the future of history? This was at the heart of UN soul-searching, which initiated at an unprecedented scale, intellectual activities to produce verbose reports, well written and ceremoniously filed. Sashi was responsible for one such report, Impact of demographic shifts, technology, and globalization on movements of populations. Sashi wanted Kalki to take the lead; he wanted him to present it to the General Assembly. It was Kalkis career-defining opportunity. Kalki was not an academician; he had gained an experiential anecdotal adroitness in issues of migration felt and stored in his emprise of compassion and anger, but he never read or bothered about theoretical
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constructs and statistical data. The biggest hindrance for him to prepare the report was that it needed to be thoughtful; he struggled to think; he hated to think. Kalki nevertheless, without blinking an eye accepted. He had never made decisions in life based on plans, he drifted into whatever destiny offered, and crossed divides whenever he was at an edge. He agreed to drift into the world of theories and data, to fuse it with experience to write the report. (An intelligent observer can construct conflicts of identities, and imagine causation of his actions and choices of life. But that would be that and no more, because Kalki never consciously bothered, he was a man of action; his will to action was not driven by a conscious stream of thought sponged in logic; his was simply a conation of the will to power; his Amor Fati.) He just knew what he did and what he did not. Kalkis life suddenly descended into another abyss of darkness and confusion, memories and illusions, as he embarked on his fourth parallel life of the thinking man; he tried to analyze his experiences to find causation and logic. It was taking its toll. He did have enough energy to handle another dimension of existence; he still remembered the rote theories of politics of social contracts and materialism of dialectics from his UPSC days; but it was not natural to him; it was a dreadful dark zone of avoidance of what he did not want to know. He felt a painful absence of his mentor his guide in realm of philosophy, his engine for sorting the world he felt a longing for RDS to help him with his report. But Kalki was not in frequent touch with RDS he had drifted away from him he had no choice but to struggle with the report himself. He had long conversations with Rebecca and Sashi. They advised him on familiar grounds. Collating stuff already known, suggest what can work within the given system of bargained position of global governance. They advised him to steer clear of drastic and unrealistic propositions. But Kalki found it difficult to skim the surface; to be blind to the deeper issues screaming in his head to be heard. There were multiple groups working on different reports across the UN labyrinth subjects not independent of each other and workshops were organized in New York (the main UN office) for collaboration. Kalki and Rebecca travelled to New York to attend. Kalkis frustration with the process kept growing as he attended the sessions. He didnt talk much, kept his opinions to himself. Rebecca felt his discomfort. You dont need to take this personally. You should not be so disturbed, she said to him one evening after the session. I know what you mean. I am not taking it personally. But its not
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correct. We are supposed to be the United Nations; the reports should be what is best for the collective human society. He expressed his annoyance, This is more a forum for international bargaining. Is that the purpose? That may not be the express purpose, but that is how it works. UN is not an independent sovereign, but an expression of the collective will of nations, often expressed in a bargain. She tried solacing him. I understand that. It may be the case when it comes for nations agreeing on a report or signing a treaty. But we are just preparing a document, trying to find how things should be in an ideal world. And not what will possibly be accepted by powerful national interests. Thats one way of looking at it. But then we will come up with useless recommendations. You may just say, The solution for all problems is a global democratic state, but then its dreaming. Kalki wasnt convinced; he found the workshops to be an exercise in international hypocrisy, garbed in mantle of righteousness, supported by footnotes of thinkers of past and present. Real issues were not discussed; if raised, were carefully skirted around, draped in excuse of practicality and realism. He was getting frustrated and angry; more he saw of the UN bureaucracy, more disillusioned he became. He was part of the organization in Geneva, but he had mostly been in the field busy with his multiple lives. He had never encountered the skeletal inner-machinery of the complicated monster from close quarters. Kalki witnessed the helplessness of edifice of the organization. It had its buildings and offices, but inside the rooms it was just a collection of interests. United Nations is the largest talk shop imagined by man, a conversation club for honing and practicing skills of rhetoric, producing reports of leaden bureaucratic verbiage laden with intellectual-sounding jargons. But its prime purpose is to preserve the perseverance of status quo of an old international bargain of victors of the past war. The Security Council, subtle subterfuges of suits and seating tags underneath the high ceiling, artifices of arguments of obstinate power at the curving center table, enigmatic blue of the globe in backdrop, impassioned historicity of the wreath, the counterfeits creating a facade of relevance for the fanciful susurrations; protocol for attending the Durbar is to acknowledge its realness; the Security Council is Collective of the Emperor Without Clothes. Every cell within Kalkis body was screaming with innocence of the child who gave away the secret of Kings nakedness; he kept cynically sullen and reticent through the weeks of workshops, doodling squiggles in his notepad. The only solace in his superciliousness was Rebecca. She managed to keep his sanity; he didnt pick up fights or arguments and pretended to listen. Evenings spent together with her soulful company having a beer in
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the New York bars, kept him sailing in the high abode of surly hollowness. ********* Back in Geneva after the workshops, Kalki continued down his struggle with the report. The divides of his brain started dissolving; the no mans land which was filled by his experiences in Holland started getting crowded; his existence getting clogged by questions he wanted answers to. His trysts with drugs became frequent. He struggled to sort out the mess of identities, sovereignty of divides, its breaches. He struggled with his own senses, experiences and memories. He struggled to belong; continual sense of an outsider. He tried writing his thoughts, he was surprised with extreme positions and contradictions he jotted down. One day he wrote with hate percolating for immigrant minoritys disability to abandon virtual baggage of imagined persecutions. Other day he wrote in hate dripping for exploitative world which had traded in people, created colonies of poverty, require natives to clean the streets and airports, hating the color of cleanliness. He wrote with national fervidity, he wrote about illusionary identity of nations. Whenever he re-read he saw the absurdity. He didnt have answers the department wanted. The report turned out to be more complicated than activities he had done towards sharply defined objectives. He drowned his frustrations in increasing dosages of variety of drugs. His trips to alleys of nights reduced to a mild trickle. His vacations and adventure sports disappeared. He met Sofiya occasionally. Their undefined relationship had already taken a turn where money was dropped from consideration of the equation. She was worried for him, his increasing intake of drugs. She tried soothing his feelings internal violence of contradictions without much success. Rebecca was also getting worried by his frequent absence and late coming to work, she saw the hangover lurking in his anomalous eyes. On confrontation by her Kalki realized that he was carrying desperation in his abnormal expressions; he made a resolve to get over it, I will be OK soon, he assured Rebecca. That evening Kalki went to his dealer and collected the injection. He hadnt tried it since fiasco of the Hijack. He could no longer control himself. His body and mind demanded the soothing flow of solace of illusion in stream of his blood. Kalki prepared the solution, injected himself; he sat on his work table in the study room of his apartment; the window overlooking the dusk of Geneva settling over the lake. Drug flowed in his veins; his heart pumped into his brain. His mind blew up. His body accelerated in vain in speed approaching light colliding with life. His existence split smattered in pieces, body parts drenched in
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blood detonated and splattered exploded scattering inside his home and then flying outside dispersing in darkness of the city. His hands landed on his laptop, started typing, his legs carried his baton to the peaty redness of backstreet brothels, inuring incontinence studding around in exploring bodies of color, his torso flew to the drug dens and vegetated in ordure pheromones of junk of multinational junkies, his head spun around the world leapfrogging along migrant trails of Africa, and over immigration checkpoints of Europe, his heart pumped the energy of itinerantly migrating Mahisa, masses of un-owned livestock, human beings floating in search of pasture, his eyes flooded in pains of nostalgia, his tongue stammering the identity of immigrant. His hands continued typing, unconnected with rest of the body, undisturbed by disturbing signals of the brain, it wrote in its own accord, it carved in its own consciousness, in ghostly incompleteness of striking fingers on the keyboard; the wrists dangling from arms ending in elbows hanging in congealing blood floating in the unsupported air. His fingers typed the report. Excerpts: Men fight for two reasons, one is simple enough, to survive and ensure survival of progeny. This includes among other things, exploitative violence for amassing wealth and power. But the second is more complicated, for propensity upkeep propagation of identity. The first kind of violence is generally crime for profit which historically includes legal acts like slavery. It also includes revolutionary violence of starving exploited masses which ushered the world into modern liberalism. This type of violence is still largely present and a major threat. But the good news is that it has a solution. Over time prosperity and freedom will cure the curse of hunger and exploitation. Establishment of functioning states ensuring rule of law will take root around the world; no longer a sole preserve of rich societies. But will this happen? The answer is not simple. The very notion of state is steeped in identity, the root cause of second type of violence. More often than not, manifestation of public violence cannot be categorized neatly under either category. They mix into a cocktail of inseparable ingredients with its own unique intoxication. The basic question for state of the world, its ideals, its evolution, is the question of identity. What is identity? Why do we need it? What is real? What is imagined? At various times in the story of ours there had been different identity types clashing to be the claimant of mainstream definition of existential divides. An essential aspect of civilization is human identity surpassing the individual and taking a plural form of families clans tribes religion
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language shared sense of geography or history or both; negation of the hunter-gatherer, settlement within demarcatingly defined boundaries, as opposed to rootlessness of perpetual migration in search of game and pasture. States formed by the overlap of geographical and tribal homogeneity became the bulwark of human society to provide stability within and wars at fringes, fueling the flowering of civilization. But humans are not trees; movement is essence of animal existence; roots of identity, is a misnomer. Movements of populations disrupted the neat overlap of tribal and geographic identities in cycle of conquests and defeats, migrations and persecutions. In this boiling cauldron of history, the need for belonging, the fear of meaninglessness, security of familiarity, created the biggest hoax of human imagination of our times; The Modern Nation State. A hoax which has become more powerful than all other form of human identities today, it surpasses religion or ideology or any other aspect of identity that humans have created by thought rather than natural association. Because it is the prime claimant of sovereignty, enforcer of currency, source of power coign of vantage; because it pretends to be a natural identity rather than imagined. This pretension is farcical. World is not a map created by god, boundaries drawn on paper are drawn by men solely as a result of cyclic events that does not have sanctity higher than simple historical causation. The nation-state today competes for being the claimant of primary identity for justification of violence, with the greatest hoax of human imagination of all times, Religion; Demarcated religion which is a social organization rather than means of an individual expression and experience of divine; the hoax of organized proselytizing evangelizing religion. Nation and Religion, pillars of fallacy that holds the sanity of the world are its insanity. Both these are intermixed with the most toxic form of identity the greatest hoax of nature satire of evolution played on spices coloring races in gradation of heat of the land they drifted into. In pre-technology era the human drift was a generational activity entrenching geographical identities. Advent of technology destroyed the delicate balance. In a chaotic formulation of causation, the advantages multiplied into dominance of others, ushering the world into the cycle of rise and fall of civilizations. Men began to fight not as individuals, but as belonging to identities; geography and technology worked cross-purpose; the wheel of history started to turn. Borders were drawn by men to prevent the status quo collapsing, to continue in familiar existence. The immigration gate of our airports, ports, roads and railway crossings of the borders is the physical symbol of all that
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is wrong with our world today. All other imagined human identities are in the mind and can change at will of the individual, only imagined identity of man which has a real enforced dimension is the nation-state; the Passport Control its manifestation. All identity violence, whatever form it is packaged in, is a result of the artificial Nation. The imperious implacable state has the monopoly of violence; it is the arbitrator and creator of law, the sovereign to which societies voluntarily relinquish their natural rights. Sometimes it is packaged in non-state formats, in garb of religion; cross-border camaraderie of imagined and real oppressions; imagined and real Nations. The Passport is the Shame of Human Existence; it is the arrogance of man in defiance of nature. Then why does the nation-state survive inviolably in its unnatural state? Its the equilibrium of balanced tyrannies, self-reinforcing, preserving the status quo. It serves the purpose of powerful. It serves an international system of demarcation and calibration of powers; Its duplicity of rules duality of sets of self-centered righteous view of the world, the selfexonerating righteousness of a set for me and a set for rest. Societies and nations with less bargaining power are playing games on the fringes to extract best for them within the system. Historically the equilibrium of international affairs had been disturbed when weaker party of the bargain has enough power to rock the status quo. The very nature of historical cyclicity will result in weaker countries of today to have enough teeth in future to demand their place in the sun; once again to demand their Lebensraum. The big question of our times is: how will the cycle play itself out this time round? Will repeating of history be independent of human ingenuity? Will unprecedented technologies capable of complete annihilation of humankind on one hand, and capable of connecting multitudes creating like-never-before prosperity on another, alter the obvious cycle of history? To understand this historicity a new dialectic is required; a struggle of human society to consciously control its collective destiny vs. an evolutionary development comprising summation of congeries of reactive forces. Evolution of religion and politics can be analyzed in this light. Human institutions have evolved as interplay of these forces. Is there a possibility at all of a collective rational consciousness? Is it congruent to the nature of reality? Whatever may be the truth of reality, a human identity extending beyond the individual in some form is a must; else societies will degenerate into chaotic struggle of individuals striving for their own wellbeing in an animal existence. But does this identity need to be constrained by the
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concept of nation-state? The crucial question is how will the hoax of nation-state evolve? Will it wither in its destiny of chaotic violence? Or will there be a social evolution to replace the prime identity of our times without catastrophic disruption? What will it be replaced by? It is the wish germinating out of arrogance of power and fear of history that the powerful today wish to end the history of man in culmination of community of liberal democratic nation-states. It is the arrogance of power and fear of the coming clash, of rise of the underdog, that the powerful today propagate civilizational thesis to save the status quo of nation-states. History will end when nation-states will end, and till then clashes will continue between nations, whatever form of drapery the violence and war is presented in by the propagators and thinkers of either side. What will the nation-state be replaced by? Global-state? Civilizational-state? Do humans as a species have a shared identity strong enough and cumulative wisdom of years of civilization wise enough, that this process can be nonviolent? The current international arrangement for most part does good, globalization, free trade, liberalism etc., It has helped in creating better and more-prosperous societies in the erstwhile wretched lands, but strictly within the pecking order of nation-states. Prosperity also brings power and ability, along with the will and propensity, to bargain harder, pushing the envelope till it challenges the status quo. The multitudes in torturous poverty having been fed will aspire for living space. The Ideal course for the status-quoists is to maintain the power of nation-states and existence of boundaries till the miraculous prosperity of global liberal democracy makes states and borders irrelevant. The opportunity divides across precincts are no longer large enough for the teeming multitudes to crowd the sanity of better side. That would be the glorious end of clash and history. A belief that its the destined outcome; sanity of the system is to maintain the edifice of its catholicity till this utopia is reached. It is a matter of waiting rather than politics or economics; a European Union of sorts replicating in the Global Union. Liberal democratic states conjugating in the grand bargained proposition settled sans great violence. There are two problems with this wonderful conjecture, which needs to be addressed if we want to preserve sanity of the system to not drift into destruction. The first is the nature of liberal democracy, second is the nature of war; rest all is subaltern. Assuming all states competing in the game of world do become liberal democracies; will that mean an end to violent cycles of history?
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Liberal democracy has empirically proven itself, beyond doubt, the best form of government of all forms tried and experimented by human societies, but the reason for this is not some ideal energy or a perfect philosophical formulation, it simply is that it establishes in the national society a social bargain, a contract for peaceful transitions of power, an ability of self-correction without resorting to violent means. But self-correction of what? Correct to what? Correction Of the Nation, By the Nation, For the Nation. Correction of visible and acute pain felt by the national society, corrections to sustain the status quo; but can this correct or change the international status quo? True, famines are corrected by liberal democracies and people dont die of hunger amidst enough food; but could the democracy of England prevent famines of the Empire? Can democracy of America stop famines of Africa? Liberal Democracy does not guarantee the correction of an oppressive state or the oppressive international system when gains to the incumbent societies are significant and any correction is at the cost of pain. Democracy at nation-state level turns out is not an ideal of humanity but a practicable mechanism of optimizing perceived gains of democratic societies within bounds of bargained peaceful transitions of power. The dream of Liberal Democratic International Peace is a preposterous proposition. True, it is supported by the limited evidence of continually warring nations of Europe no longer at war. A tunneled interpretation of empirical facts, because it is equally true that despite bitterness of the Cold War the totalitarian and democratic states did not enter into a direct violent conflict. Equally absurd position is that people fight because of inherent civilizational differences, again based on empirical premise of European peace of recent times. Ludicrousness of faith in the hypothesis ignores the bloody path of intra-civilizational violence that Europe took to reach its current peace and prosperity. The reason for war or peace is not the presence or absence of democracy, or difference or sameness of culture. What decides it is the absence or presence of logic of peace or war; constricting expansionist Weltanschauung. The most potent of all battle innovation was not the gun, nor the deadly weapons of modern technology, but the simple-ancient Drill Greek phalanxes marauding around the world creating greatness and empire the innovation that created the combined consciousness of soldiers, which made war an astringent tool for extended interaction between identity-based communities. Ethic is entrancing euphemist exigency for pulverization and pillage.
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Politics is pluralization of ethics. The Doctrine can be equally truly stated in reverse, Politics is Continuation of War by Other Means, both ways are correct True Wisdom is Palindrome politics is nonviolent war, war is violent politics, both serving the same purpose, to achieve the objective of power; warriors of each side striving to extract maximum benefactions for their imagined identities; what means is deployed when is independent of theories of wars and politics. Propriety of battle depends on logistic calculi of making intelligent bets. The judgment of one state or non-state group sharing an identity that perceived upside of waging war is commensurate with risks incurred. The day this criterion is met, countries and people will fight, its irrelevant whether internally they are liberal democracies or externally they share a civilizational heritage. Prosperity and ability to project violence are related, but its not a perfectly linear correlation. Within the available technology after a threshold of prosperity means for military power escalates to match the much-more-prosperous nations; prosperity stops being the defining differentiator. Military planes, instruments of large-scale death produced in assembly lines (each worth more than the value of businesses which can employ thousands of people to provide livelihoods) is what sustains power of the powerful; the unreal propagation of the nation-state. Technology adaptations and improvements have lags which reduce with passage of time. The continuous lead can only be maintained if fundamental scientific breakthroughs enhancing drastically the ability of projecting violence and dominance of military power substantially more than rival states continue to happen. Will military game changers of historic nature continue to happen? Will they happen on side of the present dominator? How fast will it be replicated by others in the equation? Premise of development is: laggards need to follow the leader, not reinvent the wheel; but what after the wheel is copied? The field is leveled? Is the premise correct? Is the leader in the right direction? Are alternate paths possible? Can a society skip the wheel? What if a Nation erstwhile weaker and poorer amasses enough power militarily to challenge the status quo, demands to accelerate the process of a fuller formal equity with members of the club who dominate the system presently; If the multitudes aspire and the state has the power? Or if the question is of a limited resource whose division is a zero-sum game technology has not created an alternative for win-win bargain examples in current context: Energy and Water. Then we simply find that the system is inadequate to affect the momentum of history in anyway.
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Did not the demagogue monstrous of a painter translate the pretense of art to paint history in black and red to create the Does-it-Exist Chambers of Death? The current Great Power geopolitics and global governance do not make one optimistic of possibility of historical changes without bloody wars and revolutions that will rock the nation-state equilibrium. This creates a mistrust of the global system that it is incapable of in any significant manner serving the declared purpose it works for. All the successes it has so far is just the timing of being on the side of history where violent rearrangements are not taking place, rather its just the context being set. His hands hanging over the keyboard typing the report, his legs jumped from a plane suspended in a parachute, his baton in the club playing the game of Lathis and Shields, his torso at work at UN creating an illusion of presence, the head reaching heavens accelerating in speed approaching light. His head split and spilled in altered worlds of alternate realities. Souls dancing in clothes, clothes filled with chemicals, soul of the drug in dissolute degrading orgy of the sex club; Bacchuss revelry; no nationality, no religion, not even gender and no fucking caste, every one fucks everyone else; No-No-No, in there they dont fuck, they are making love; Aphrodites blessings, Eross infatuations, Psyches wanderings, Adoniss restorations. Sex club, darker side of the dark side, within it hidden deep, the darkest side; Casteless fuck-less identity-less love; transvestites, corporeal love of strangers; Its out here that everyone fucks each other; wanton debauchery. Kalkis hands hanging in air unaware of journeys of other body parts typed in stupor: Setting of the context is not violent or visible enough to make news. Still it is evidence to be analyzed; an obvious multisided failure of human wisdom in the post-history world. History is prone to repeat in familiar cycle of increasingly destructive energy shattering the sham of pretensions of liberal thinkers of the modern world propagating theories of ends and clashes from their towers of ivory providing the cover and justification for leaders to act. It will be revealed as another White Mans Burden Trick. A reactionary white-mans-burden trick at best, superiority of white race in a war of races at worst. All designed for one purpose, sustenance and propagation of the farce of nation-state. Played at a mass scale, consciously subconsciously, perpetuators the perpetrators, liberal face of the global society is the facade that covers the underbelly of inability to reason, worse than uneducated teaming in poverty, the differentiator is not the ideals but wealth.
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American exceptionalism is of a historical causation which will become what it is; History. Its a facade of lofty ideals; liberty, equality and pursuit of happiness; but for whom? It required a bloody war to settle the question of applicability of ideals for lesser mortals. Why should we be optimistic that it will not be a similar bloody struggle for equity across borders? The international system will fail because the very edifice to protect which it has been created is the enemy, is the problem, is the shame; the very concept of the nation-state. What of the state? Is the solution then a doomed utopian anarchy? State has its purpose; sophistication of social evolution has made us Homo Organizationous, state is an organization; nation is an Identity; foundation of evil, keeper and perpetuator of the artificialdom. The concept of nation-state is a dichotomy, a necessary evil; State is a Necessity, Nation is an Evil. State is the essential mechanism of sustaining civilization, a critical social innovation, a force for good that survives civilizational selection. It provides the basic bulwark of social existence. How should the state of future be? The sovereignty split between the day-to-day affairs of running communities, and ability to wield trans-state powers. The operational sovereignty should shift to towns, villages, and local bodies. These micro states will operate with high flexibility till the time they dont overstep defined bounds of liberalism set by the transnational sovereign. Between the two extremes, layers of sovereignty and state power can devolve; strictly an administrative convenience as per the state of technology of a given time; a new world utopia where everyone is an immigrant; a new society with rootlessness as the only route. The agenda for United Nations therefore (if it has to serve any fruitful historic purpose other than a chatting club for diplomats and global agency for feel-good charity) has to be a Transnational Liberal Democracy slowly replacing the system of nation-states and conflicts of identities. For modern world not to collapse in violence, it needs to dismantle its immigration control in silence. The only savior is the destruction of an entrenched geographic identity, replaced with evolving dynamic multiple identities, geography being a part of the package. A world predicated not only in trade but undistinguished by sovereign borders, a social predominance of shared human identity where a trans-individual consciousness is not only the result of violent agitated mobs but has evolved to a consciousness of reason.
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If this is to be achieved sans great violence then the community of nations needs to slowly devolve power aspects of sovereignty to a global governance model. This will be painful to entrenched interests; it needs to be achieved in a gradual way where the threshold of pain is not crossed to breakdown the process. Etymology of identity is likeness. The only real nonsingular identity of a person is of a group familiarity of which is not imagined. Most social of humans do not intimately know more than a handful of friends, associates and family. Any sense of identity encompassing a group bigger than these kinships of intimately shared relationships, however shared, howsoever deeply entrenched in notions of geography history language religion philosophy is illusionary, created in imagination; violence of identities is violence of illusions. But is dismantling of the present system possible by nation-states themselves? Nation-states are reflection of the larger collective consciousness of its citizens. Way forward is only possible when individuals realize the fallacy of illusionary identities. The prime purpose, the most basic function of life, is survival; an animal grazes or hunts for food, human beings as civilizational entities are distinguished; they earn a living. Earning a living, Work, is the most natural basis of human identity, it creates survival, it feeds the family; it is biggest part of the waking day. It is your work that feeds you, Not God Nor State, Its the Money earned that sustains you. If it is, then so be it. Let Money be the New God, a Universal GOD, BUT let it be same everywhere, not bounded by borders. Let the denomination of colors of purchasing power of passport control dissolve into the greenery of the unified world. This simple essence of human existence was well appreciated by sages of the ancient world the profession of man was his prime identity unfortunately professional identity was usurped by powerful of the society to create an oppressive caste system. The prime oppressiveness being: one is born in the mantle of caste; its not a conscious choice of a profession, but a guildy repressiveness. The second oppression is the indignity of labor, creating segregation. But only if the tyrannical usurpation had not taken place, a more-just society could be created, where my primary identity is my work, my gods are the gods that give me knowledge and skills to earn a living. The ancient Hindu gods of professions are a manifestation of this concept; my identity is my guild. Let there be as many gods as the types of work man has, as many as activities for pleasure or survival. Who needs the forced benevolence of
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monotheism of god or state which takes care of an afterlife or provides a sentimental security of illusionary identity? Can a global shared liberalism make it possible for an International coalition of individuals supported by institutions to have a new paradigm for liberty equality and pursuit of happiness? A charter cognizant that equality and equal are not synonyms; equality is equity of opportunity to create probability of equal over a generation; a declaration not out of a bias or revelation but of rational thought of shared humanity. Yes, it is true that working and earning a living is not the complete manifestation of human spirit, but what is left is an individual experience, what is required is to find the god within, god that transcends the basic need for survival, connects the soul with universal spirit, creates the identity of fellow human. The fundamental requirement of the new society then utopian world of future is the primacy of identity of individual followed by the identity of work, and after it can stand the whole baggage of real and imaginary predications. Only then a collective social consciousness of reason will be strong enough that the current system of identity-based states will wither to create the state of future. The haze of experiences and crossings started clearing in his mind. Kalkis body parts started returning from the explosive dispersion, slowly he became a full un-ghostly human being again, but he continued to type. He no longer needed the aid of dissolution; he could clearly see. His typing took an audacious note; the report became pronouncements: The good news is that we are living in a time where geography is fast becoming fluid, we have the technology today to create world and communities outside the boundaries of a map, create identities of choice stronger than identities of birth. Why do we worship the gods of millennia ago? Why do we revere the epics of ancestry? Let us have our own gods, new epics; let every trade find its own deity, let every man find his own goddess, let everyone live in his own Maya, let identity not be born, let it be chosen with an equal right and opportunity for everyone else to choose. In rhetorical reflection of call to arms for salvation in the past, he typed: Professionals of the world unite to throw away the tyranny of boundaries; you have nothing to lose but borders of highfalutin identities that stop you from breathing the skies and drinking the oceans. Let million clone armies of liberated professions bloom in the social contract with self in the state of nature; a new humanity, supermen and
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women, homology of Homo Superior; Neo-medievalism; chivalry of clones. The world needs to cleanse itself of all its isms, let the spectacular collapse happen, let us destroy the old to create the new. Accelerated in imaginations of the clones let the nation-states collide to create the END of the CLASH and the beginning of HISTORY and CIVILIZATION. let ingenuity of man and his technologies create the new Durgas and Kalis, let our children be enlightened rather than indoctrinated, let reason and thought create identities, let there be a million Identities to defeat the identity of Mahisa. It is time that the spineless Labyrinthviathan of UN gets the teeth of fairness of contract of nations in original state to drop its sham to become the with-spine Leviathan that keeps the contract of society. His remonstrance concluded and in the audacity of declaration he typed: We the People, Citizens of Individual Identity, Sovereign of Self, Hereby Declare the Independent Nation of I. Kalki woke up after completing his nonviolent conversation with violence with an intense sinus ache accompanying a spaced-out loss of sense and temporal distortion of time. Feeling a bad hangover after a binge night; he tried remembering how long he had been locked in his house, what date and what time of the day was hidden in haziness of his vision. He prepared a mug of very-black coffee and popped in a bunch of headache pills. With coffee still brewing he dragged his heavy head to the shower and felt the biting chill of extreme-cold water slowly bringing his senses back. He remembered he had promised Sashi he will share the draft of his progress, he remembered he had promised Rebecca he would be all right. He knew he will keep both the promises, he will share the draft; Sashi will not like it. Kalki did not bother; he knew Sashi was already working on his contingency plan: letting Rebecca do the report. It was good for all: he will be relieved of his struggle and drugs; Rebecca will have a great professional opportunity; Sashi will get a proper report. He came out of the shower, drank his coffee and once again got below the water; he increased the temperature getting back to his senses of bearable chill. It was Monday afternoon; his phone had several missed calls from office colleagues checking on him; he wondered if they can comprehend the absurd events of the weekend. Kalki reached office. He emailed his draft to Sashi, and got busy with clearing up regular work. That evening Kalki met Sashi, he was not surprised of the bewildered expression Sashi carried on his face after perusing through the report. It was like two people well known had by some trick of magic suddenly become complete strangers. Sashi had no idea how to react. He suddenly
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had no idea who his colleague was. He kept his composure and said without mincing, Do you seriously mean this to be your draft? I could not make it in any other way, I am afraid. Do you think the General Assembly is a bunch of anarchic speculators? What? Is it a congregation of Maverick Fakirs and Sadhus? The intension is not to demean the right-meaning folks of UN. But I just couldnt pretend to believe what I dont. I wrote in fairness to myself. Fair enough, this surmise may get you a prize for peace or something, but mind you, United Nations is a serious business, not some kind of a Mystics & Conjurers Club. I am sorry for this, but I cant do what is expected. He said with a self-disrating smirk. Ok, it is your choice. You are the one who will miss the lifetime career opportunity. I will ask Rebecca to take over. You can hand over whatever work you have done. The reprehensibly stringent reprimand conclusively ended the ephemeral life of Kalkis report on the irremediable future of Nations; Achilles heel healed. ********* Kalkis life started changing after fiasco of the report. His aggression in his multiple lives considerably reduced, life settled into routine around continued trickling information to intelligence agencies, and paper pushing with various governments. His nightly activities of drugs and women were completely disposed off. Sofiya remained a close friend; their relationship of client and professional was past. They met whenever they managed to spend weekends in each others city. They strolled on sidewalks of the lake in Geneva and the avenues in Paris like a romantic couple. An abstrusely simple relationship lacking definition, other than the fact that they liked being with each other, they liked each others touch. They were two adventurers uncomfortable in settling down in routine of lives, seeking the rush of adrenalin. They talked about stuff they could do together, some audacious challenging project, perhaps some business, or some wacky thing like circumnavigating the world, or just pure wandering around the globe, recreations of libertine life, or maybe a Machiavellian scheme; Why Not a Bank Robbery? They laughed about all the outr schemes they imagined, good fun of conversations. Slowly over spread-out weekends Sofiya became familiar with Kalkis work with intelligence, it was exciting for her. She wanted to know everything, she wanted to be a part of the action, she dreamed of being on the edge under cover; she was an adventurer. But Kalkis excitement with his parallel world was dwindling; he was not able to climb up the ladder to get to gods of the underworld. Disturbing feeling of
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complicated conspiracies concealed from the world driving events of history brewed in him. His challenge was to get to the core of Adnans network; howsoever hard he tried he couldnt get close enough to hear the conversations hidden behind entertaining of creations. His mind continually worked on the predicament. May be I can use you for some assignment, he told Sofiya one day; You need to focus on creating a cover first. Take up a job with some fashion house. Build a completely normal unsusceptible middleclass life; at an appropriate time we will place you undercover for some big assignment. Oh! Wow! Will do boss. She was a willing recruit. Kalki knew he needed to wait, he needed patience, he knew time will throw an opening; he needed to be prepared for the opening. ********* Kalki and Sofiya were driving back from the Centre of Paris to Sofiyas apartment in the suburbs. The traffic suddenly became unduly heavy. Kalki saw smoke rising in vertical black clouds from multiple places, he instinctively knew it was a riot. He didnt expect a riot in the middle of Paris, in the heart of Europe. They couldnt see much hidden behind traffic and buildings of the urban conglomeration, but Kalki didnt need to see, the rising columns of black were too familiar for him, they always told the same story; it didnt matter that it was far away from the hinterland. Mob started collecting around the cars. Kalki couldnt believe his eyes, same savagery, same frenzy, same illogical violence transported in time and space, but same maddening manifestation, juvenile adolescents, rambunctious young adults, delinquents, complete control of the collective identity by the consciousness of the mob, gasoline jars and lit torches stopping vehicles about fifty meters ahead of them, shouting in craziness, passengers of the car pleading for their lives, fleeing, and then in a gusto of involuntary motion, boys impetuously spilling the anger of gasoline over the derelict vehicle, someone lets a lit torch touch the wet car, within minutes another fire ball, another column of smoke carrying the anger and alienation sky-high in frenzy of the mob. I hope you ticked riots in insurance papers of your car, Kalki said trying some wit to keep Sofiyas nerves, Just get out of the car and start walking away, dont run, take out any valuable stuff. They abandoned the car to mercy of the mob, walked away briskly in quick steps, the whole atmosphere soon became a litter of fireballs and black smoke; air filled up with piercing sirens of police vehicles; Police cars arrived along with fire brigades, the mob become a crowd, rioters disappeared, identity of the crowd dissolved to become individuals; to connect again to bloom into the mob in another part of the city.
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Deathly deserted roads of suburban Paris; they couldnt get a cab or public transport; block after block streets were littered with fireballs. The crowd and mob contracting and growing in hide and seek with police sirens to appear where cops had yet not reached, gut a few more vehicles before disappearing again. Kalki and Sofiya walked for kilometers in quick steps, neither waiting for rest, nor waiting to stare at the burning madness of Golgotha popping along the road everywhere. Kalki knew about riots, he was worried, he knew any moment the frenzy of vehicle burning can turn to killing. He just wanted Sofiya to be safe, he urged her to walk fast. Sofiya silently followed instructions, rushing for life on the cold pavements of Pariss dark winter. Kalki was finally relieved; they entered Sofiyas apartment building, tired of their long walk amidst sites of mayhem. Inside her house Sofiya lied down on bed to get rest. Kalki went up to the terrace. There were few more onlookers, building residents staring in disbelief and amazement at the devil that had suddenly gripped their city. Sight from the terrace, a panorama of concrete jungle of suburban Paris dotted with fireballs spitting smoke into the sky in long rising columns. Mostly vehicles were burnt, but few buildings also bore the brunt of the rioters. Kalki turned a full circle on the terrace, he saw around the horizon, the redness of flames of the burning city rising in blackness of the fumes mixing with darkness of the dusk becoming night. He watched in awe, he watched his full-circleturning life; he watched riots of India seeping into the conflagration of Paris. But he didnt long to be out there, he was amazed that the whole afternoon he was afraid, he was terrified for Sofiyas safety, he was afraid for himself; he was amazed that his body in reflection of the burning city was not demanding its dampening drug. He did not understand the violence; burning of Troy by the Greeks to reclaim the illusive Maya of Helen Hijacked by Paris. He did not feel the connect, he did not feel the rage, he did not feel the urge; he stood as an outsider, as an admirer of the fractious painting the riot was creating, seen from security of the terrace. Circular horizon with rising buildings amidst columns of smoke reflecting his life, his memories exploring the dark holes of names, of faces, of riots where he was not an outsider, of riots which were not paintings; he felt the urge to remember, he felt the urge to belong. For the first time after he had burnt his paintings of red and black of the mines of Botala, he felt the urge to paint again, at that moment on the terrace he knew he will buy colors, all the colors, he will once again paint, he will paint in peace, of peace, his paintings will have rare use of black and red. He will finally be at peace with his memories; his paintings will find a meaning in the meaninglessness. His paintings will be his love, his soother, calmer.
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He went down to the apartment after a few hours, the last bit of dusk had disappeared and he could not see much in the darkness of night other than fitfully dancing flames, and the visible outline of rising smoke in haziness of the city lights and moonlight spilling from behind the clouds. Sofiya had rested. She had a short nap. She had prepared dinner. They sat down and ate in silence. They watched T.V for some time; news of the spreading riots, across Paris and then spilling over to other cities; France and the world watched in baffled horror, the dream and romanticism of Paris going up in flames of anger and alienation. That night they slept in embrace of security, of emotional bonding, of the gift of life, of being alive, they did not make love that night, but slept in a satisfaction deeper than orgasmic pleasure of any lovemaking; satisfaction and security of being alive, of being together, of LOVE.

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Chapter 20 The thesis

An apprentice squirming in the seminary of truth, Krishnas world had become a mental battlefield; he was meandering like a listless stream in sands of thoughts among his daemons in pitched battles of endless haze. The first daemon war was won in trenches of the entrance exam, the second was settled by the blitzkrieg of dialectic mushrooming in rules and pact, but he was not able to settle his third and final war in any decisive way. This was to be the war of complete settlement, complete victory, conquest of the core of existence, answers to all unanswered questions, destruction of the daemons, or he loses his sanity to be gripped by the daemons forever. Things change and remain the same; extended adolescence games were the same but stakes higher, pains sharper, no innocence of childhood left to fall back upon, a higher circuit with the same motion; the divine rule oscillating preserving growing. Earlier in his confrontations with daemons he had wondered what was he destined to do with his life. He had feared the mundane taking over a death in mediocrity lamenting the lack of ability to create works surviving posterity. Flashes of inspiration had given him hope, but outcome of a variety not creating legends. Question of a more fulfilled life; when fortune doesnt smile, misery is not glory in behest of creation; and other side of genius, labor; but to what goals? To what direction? In a mesh of confusion only thing of value are bold speculations testing them with available observations and opinions. He had started his thesis on a well-structured path, examining the standard models, framing equations to explain the stream of data generated by accelerators underneath the school and the telescopes in space. But soon he started running into conflicting results, unexplained data deviations complicating his equations to encompass inconsistencies, making the formulations overtly obscure. Forces and particles in the zoo of Standard Model were too many for describing the fundamental truth, technicolors of supersymmetry too furtive to disclose the natural secret, dimensions of mathematical speculations of String Models were too numerous to reveal the divine plan. His veracious efforts all led to dead-endings of ever-growing variables and functions in ever-expanding attempts of fitting observed data into attributes of speculative models. He started losing track of time. The accomplice for his grasp of reality in his loneliness was the stray cat that became his companion. He zestfully called it Schrod. His senses struggled to perceive whether it was black or white, while his mind excogitated on unresolved problems of modern
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physics. He talked for long hours with Schrod in between his readings and typing. Seeing is believing, evidence of wireless communication and electric motor proves the merit of the phenomena of waves and electricity, nuclear blasts of mass energy. But do we really understand the nature of reality? He pondered seeing the color of Schrod change from spotless white to pitchblack; always an instantaneous switch, from one moment to another, not in a continuum of change but a quantum leap of pigmentation; psychic flipflop. He wasnt able to reach an insight to break the dead-ends of quantum gravity formulations, despite all his attempts, theories at edges of human understanding, relativity of largest scale and uncertainty of minutest world, remained incomprehensible and inconsistent with each other. All combinations lead to mathematics of diverging equations. Reality of quantum entanglement, if wave-particle duality holds across large spaces, possibility of instant communication piercing limits of light, a speck of energy, a drop of information Heisenberg Bohr Broglie Pauli Plank Maxwellian exclusion floating in the universe of thought experiments, his own state of mind reflecting the duality, interchanging in a beam-me-up-Scoty, he pored over the evidence, or lack of, dark matter, Higgs particle, dark energy, god-not-god, life and consciousness, thinking and language, cosmic microwave radiation showering energy into his existence, his impulsive thoughts accelerating in electrochemical firing of neurons, and from the sane-structured start, his dissertation slowly degenerated in half-lives of decays into increasing uncertainty, into the direction of time, thermodynamic arrow of life, enhancing entropy of the universe towards the ultimate steady state of nothingness; perfect randomness. But what about the light cone, existence of real time, gravity large enough to bend it, to connect it to its own tail. What is real? What is not? What about entropy? Sinusoid fractal waves of Preons limiting to ab intio particles, gene-like inherent information manifesting as observance creating perception of transference in slit experiments? But sanity needs to be anchored, cannot let it dwindle in irreproachable wilderness of no return; anchored to the bedrock of the baton; Beam! Scot me back! Schrod are you black, or are you white? Dead or Alive? Schrod stroking, baton rising. A Point, an explanation, a concept, A Line, collection of points, Parallels dont meet, trinity of meeting, Triangle, Area in real, point in collapse, concept in space; A quantum of space in continuum of time; Entanglements Ejaculated. He came back to his senses. He wondered: are the complications hiding simple realities, simple insights waiting to be seen in full glare of obviousness hidden in the web of equations; forest may have the answer
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while we keep counting trees; lying in beautiful simplicity. The multidimensional equations mutated in ugliness of force fitting human mathematics on an arcane mystical reality of nature; despite all his attempts, he couldnt converge the equations of nature in its completeness and glory. He consulted the savants of the faculty. He was attacking the problem from various views; he talked to experts in the school of those subtleties. But to his horror what he encountered was beyond imagination; the pedants had such impassioned intermixing with their preferred positions that any hint of dilution by incorporating another thought from a contrary path was always met with stares of extreme violence. He tried meeting the high-flown highbrows of other faculties to get their reactions on his crossbreeding of ideas and get their advice, but at best he was greeted by grueling glances, or at worst outright rejection of meeting requests, always done in most polite and sophisticated language. Violence of debate of schools, cocktails of egos fighting for the fussy flavors of truth, their weapons specialization super-specialization you know more and more about less and less till you know everything of nothing and guard your intolerant dogmas with the zeal shaming indoctrinators of crusaders and jihadists. There were no academicians, they were not scientists, not even physicists or mathematicians, but loop theorists, string theorists, and that too strictly divided in camps of counts of dimensions zero one three four five six seven ten eleven twenty-six thirty-six sixty-four and whatever else you may want to imagine your finicky identity as. A gutting claustrophobia trapped in parallax of reviews from peers of imagined dimensions. Journey of the peers, of long-ago left-behind notions of destination, he had once succumbed to the thought; journey is the destination; he saw the irony. He saw it in the truth hidden by robustness and rigor of the process, the essence of peer review; intransigence of Super Specialized Clones. Realizing the folly of super-specialization, reacting to violent glances of the faculty on his attempts to crossbreed ideas from competing domains, lost in desperation in musing jungle of thought experiments and complicated equations, he overreacted. He not only crossed boundaries of schools of theoretical physics but flouted the bounds of the subject itself. He knew the normal and preferred way of doing this, correct and accepted way of deviating from the agreed-upon route of his research, was to get permission from his guide, but in his quest and eccentricity, pride and confusion, he completely disregarded the protocol and heuristically proceeded on his journey unguided unaided ridiculed over paths less travelled; over forbidden tracks he drifted. He burned the manuscripts and prints of his writings till then.
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His new treads of crosspollination and astute searches could still not lead him to simplicity of insightful revelations. Frustrating turn of his dissertation slowly destroyed the structure of his thoughts; his quest for physics mixed with thoughts from beyond bounds of science, dabbling in realm of philosophy bordering mysticism; metaphysics of epistemology, ethics of politics, aesthetics of logic. After disappointing feedback from the faculty the only remaining inspiration was his baton. But the mental haze and depressive dead ends also took its toll on his baton. In increasingly difficult strokes he struggled to keep afloat buoyed to his baton, but soon his manhood became ineffective in ejaculating his haze and depressions. No longer anchored he started to sink, grasping the straws startled he challenged the whole notion of science, of what can be understood, of what can be reduced to the beauty of its methods; of what is possible to know. He straddled to reexamine his own life, his assumptions, ways of the human world, the natural chaos; is there a pattern? Is there causation? What makes it all happen? Formulations of physics are equations that describe observed natural dynamism, but what do they really mean beyond mathematics of science? Do we really have a perception of their meaning in a natural context? Can we really perceive their meaning in any nonmathematical sense by perceptions framed by bounded rationalism? Can such formulation be explained in human language? Struggling with formulation of the universal equation, qualitative assessment and consequence of such equation, he postulated possible manifestations of reality. Can complete integrated consistent relevant school of knowledge be constructed? Confused, struggling in losing battles, his countenance changed, he became quiet and mendicant, seldom spoke to his fellow students or faculty and stopped social contact. He went out of his apartment only to buy living necessities for himself and shriveled scrods for Schrod, and during middle of the nights for his quirky quotidian walks in forest of the school. He lost track of time and day, calendar and watch became nonexistent. He was written off by inhabitants of the campus as another of their gauche eccentrics; nobody bothered him much. His world reduced to his laptop and books creating a multicolored patterned reflection of his thoughts shared only by existence-nonexistence of white-black dead-alive Schrod purring silently in corner of the room. He soon found himself reading more of philosophical texts than science, in parallel he started writing his own life story, he didnt know what was fact and what was fiction, his writing blurred at borderlines of art and
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science, his speculations interposed philosophy with mysticism, he typed pages but whenever he read them he found a senseless garrulous rambling intensifying his confusion; he edged towards insanity. In his sinusoidal depressive state, he examined the relevance and reality of life; he considered killing himself in a nihilistic tendency for suicide, to release his sensorial existence of ontological meaninglessness. His exegeses were not able to exorcise is quintessential existential doubts. He expostulated the premises for his reasons to die. He examined the essence of being human, contrasting it with being divine or animal. Animals dont have questions, divine is having answers. Questions which dont have answers define humanity. He wanted to live, he didnt want to die, he wanted to convince himself of the self-apparent truth of life and living, he wanted to create an illusion of rationale to live. The first principle proven a priori, which comes from both western and Hindu philosophical systems, has various manifestations, the existence of self. Trained to think in English language and Western tradition of knowledge, he articulated the cardinal axiom, his new anchor to keep afloat. Cogito Ergo Sum Deep vacuum in abyss-like emptiness of unexplained un-understood thoughts and emotions; to think is divine, existence is doubt; thought that does not doubt its divinity is Brahman. He accepted the existence of thought, of self. But what is beyond that? The principle does not in absolute certainty accept the relevance of corporeal life. Beyond this we need to look at perceived realties brought to us by senses, described and ordered in great details by scientific methods. And our own set of emotional experiences felt as our own realities of existence. And what about the idea of selfish gene trying surviving in perpetuity? Creation of progeny? Can work create progeny? Can the natural desire programmed in genes to propagate in flesh be replaced by leaving a legacy of non-genetic work? A non-genetic legacy of the selfish gene, a work, an idea, the meme similar to progeny in flesh that has potential to survive in perpetuity; is a work conscious? Is an idea conscious? He wanted to live because of cogito, body is the seat of self, bodily mechanism of evolution is designed to persevere for self-preservation and propagation. Is there an afterlife? Rebirth ? Being in bodily form is temporary, experiencing or not of beyond body is a matter of patience. Leeching metempsychosis of eschatological doubts is death soluble.
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He wanted to live because he felt attached to his parents, his family, friends, he thought about them; deep emotions. He did not want to die. He continued his thoughts of death and life, individually his reasons to live were not absolute, could be challenged if doubted sufficiently strongly. But all put together did make a strong case for existence. He concluded: I think, I am, I will live; simple set of principles. He ascertained that volitionally ending of bodily life is not an option; it once again anchored him, but it restarted the complications of living; to live by what parameters? To be guided by what principles? The magnificence of technology makes us believe that science as it exists today has answers we seek; scientific method is panacea of all doubts. But practitioners know, it is merely an arrangement of perceptions and postulations in a way that is able to explain and predict some bounded phenomena. By virtue of its very nature of being grounded in observed realities brought to us by our senses, it leaves scope for speculations that demonstrate the non-sufficiency of theories. Seen in the light of this tradition, science as we know today, including natural and social, is the grand continuation of knowledge generation of which even religions are also part of. The arrangement of sub-atomic particles, its descriptions in human languages rooted in perceived realities shared across perceivers, has the same insights and force which for some descriptions of gods, transmigrations of souls and other religious beliefs carry. We fail to appreciate this and as generations before have done believe in absoluteness of what we dont understand. Humanity is an attempt to understand the bounded reality of animality and unbounded undefined divinity, its differences, its similarities, and where in this scheme the concept of humanity fits in. Being human is a process, a process of development of thought, of finding patterns, of being conscious, of definite understanding. This is the historical process fueling civilization growth; we keep advancing, keep building more sophisticated models, harness more resources and apply it to more productive outcomes, in the process history manifests in form of conflicts aided by technology. Human thought continue to produce advancements, forces of social and economic interaction become more complex, manmade aspects of evolution surpasses its natural sister. Cogito creates certitude, the only absolute, but it is the quest for knowing that describes consciousness. Sense and reason create experience of knowledge; language and logic are tools for common perceptions. The unique ability to transfer thought, preserve the results to be build upon, social cooperation not only in an instance of time but formalized in a way to be carried in perpetuity. Societal knowledge is the sum total of recorded and retold experiences and opinions
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having a common way of perceiving among a broad range of people. The uncertainty principle of knowledge: absoluteness is impassable till the tools for knowing are also its subjects. Language, the tool transferring thought is also the means for its manifestation, even perception of self, expression of cogito, are function of language; canceling certitude. If language then, is the most fundamental aspect of knowing, than is the absoluteness of cogito flawed? Is the question of existence beyond language undefined? Is it some perception of self and the world which can neither be described nor understood? But language need not be constraining. It enhances, with evolving human experiences, its capacity to describe in more erudite ways the perceptions of humanity. The sophistication of accumulated thoughts, heritage of ever-evolving language, pushing the boundaries of sheer knowledge, creating a tool cutting at edges of human thinking, a tradition of live think create communicate shear preserve. Success of human civilization in our age is the outcome of the scientific method, differentiation of the observer and observed; but is this method sufficient in observing the observer? Can there be a robust way of observing the observer? Are we capable of understanding the greater scheme of things, to formulate it in a language of communication by means of observation and speculation? Relativity makes all observations relative, quantum discreteness and uncertainty principle makes it hazy and statistical. The universe, world and life, may be following well-defined rules, but still incomprehensible because of chaotic interactions of these rules and magnitude of the interactions. The randomness required for input in the chaotic system, sufficiently provided by uncertainty caused by blurring of the observer and the observed; innate limitations of perceptions. Can these rules the fundamental function be formulated by human though? Can this formulation be mathematical? Or will it be verbal? Inductive? Deductive? Will it define the concept of God? Is it the absoluteness of the universal function, the rule itself divine? Or is there a divinity beyond rules; an ultra-perception consciousness, a freewill being source of the apparent randomness? If divine is infinite then can it be perceived in any closeness? Climbing the ladder of infinity in unexplained undefined. I think therefore I am, I perceive therefore I live. Thought is free;
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Perception determining. There is action therefore reaction. Action is free but reaction determined. But the action itself is reaction of a previous action, a chain of causation; Where is the beginning? Where is the end? Where are the pauses? The moments of freedom of action He couldnt make any sense of his own writings. He continued writing. He meandered further away from his quest of scientific formulation of theory of nature. Somnolent days and nights became a continuum; he stopped shaving and bathing, his hair and beard hermitical; his existence transcended spacetime. He stopped bothering of facultys reaction to his thesis, he just wanted to continue his journey, to see where it ended, he lost interest in the end, he no longer knew what was his quest, it remained a churning of thought which he hoped will at least light some meaning if not the grand revelation. His interrogations increased; he challenged all premises. Is technology more important than science; its development independent of subtle formulations and nuance arguments explaining it? Is social utility more important than moral and ethical postulations expounding it; derived from syllogistic constructions, build on metaphysical positions? Is welfare and happiness of society and individuals independent of philosophical theories explicating it? Is there a plural consciousness? Amidst the plurality of reasoned positions is there a uniqueness of truth? He was wondering of his writings, direction of his dissertation having a life of its own, sometimes in parallel to the stated objective of physical theory, while at other meandering away in fields far removed; he wondered what force is guiding its course; is it desperation, or is it the sublime beauty being revealed in course of its progression, that makes it take the path most beautiful. But what is Beauty? Beauty is the splendor of truth. A beautiful argument, a splendid statement, a truth; but do we understand it? Does it mean anything? Moreover, is this understanding the same as we move to different actors judging the matter? Is it independent of metaphysical and ethical positions? Truth is the splendor of sophisticated argumentation; all is true; Satyameva Jayate! Als het goed! He was dissatisfied of what he wrote; he drafted, redrafted and discarded pages; he was agitated, his thesis had meandered far off from his
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quest of theory of everything, he was angry; he felt like a coward skirting the fight, deserting to the cusped comfort of easier paths; feeling his thoughts, thinking his emotions. The contradictions empowered the daemons, he heard in his head their loud cries, he wanted to continue his wonderful journey into the beauties the world offered, his daemons shouted in abuse and ridicule, demanding him to abandon the feint and come back to the confines of narrowly defined battle, back to the incomprehensible equations of nature. Are they right? Does the insight really lie in the detailed equations? Or have they missed the big picture? Theory of Everything encompasses everything; can confines of analytical bounds trap everything? Is he right? Or is it his inability to solve the problems of physics that makes him meander? Krishna was desiccated, in a fit of anger he impetuously threw open his clothes, stark naked he forlornly walked out of his apartment in ascetic cold of the night approaching dawn, it was freezing, he was gripped by a force beyond his control; he didnt feel the chill of the headwinds and kept walking into depths of forest of the school. Barefooted on the frozen pathway amidst barren trees lined by slowly dripping snow, he walked in sway of a tropical beach, non-cognizant of existence of the world, walking in an automatic suction to the endless denseness. Some magical force guided him on invisible trails. He walked benighted in darkness without bumping into trees; blackness on occasion grayed by reflection of snowflakes in filtered whiteness of moonlight; primeval persona free of pretentious propriety; praying of passion in agony of Gethsemane. He did not know how long he walked, he did not realize where he was walking; the first rays of dawn broke creating a motif of light in patterns of fractals clothing the branches; red rays reflecting in the shinning white snow. Krishna was sucked into the mental singularity of space-time as he heard the cacophony of chirping birds welcoming the dawn. It all mixed up in his head, sounds of various birds and insects welcoming the daybreak. Sounds transcended his existence to the meditative plain of clear vision of blinding brightness of insight. He sat down naked, entranced in lotus position on the frozen ground; his senses numbed of cold, not feeling anything he meditated. His mind, emptied of all thoughts, was filled up by the chirping of birds echoing in varying pitch inside his skull. He felt the infinite, lungs filled with breath of infinite, sensing the smell sound sight touch taste of infinite; catharsis of psychic doubts; drive for living, lust for life. Chirping of birds in dawn of the forest, chaotic and noisy in listening,
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beauty revealed by God, Sublime if in meditation, Religion and Science if Punctuated by Commas, Chirping is real, Commas are imagined Chirping articled by periods and capitalization; The Fundamentalism of Man, Chirping is divine, commas are human, articles animal Krishna started seeing the beauty in his meditation, he realized the follies of his pursuit of conclusions; he realized the mistake of punctuating the chirping of divine. He felt one with the universal energy assimilated in supreme consciousness; animal becomes human when it acquires an identity; human becomes divine when it loses it. In serendipity of connections he started to see the patterns, in a state of nirvana of mysticism and reason, the birds revealed to him the secret weapon of comma; the weapon that will destroy his daemons. He was no longer afraid; Ignorance is fear, out of fear of ignorance man created religion. He was no longer frustrated; Ignorance is frustration, out of frustration of ignorance man created science. Now armed with the greatest weapon the destructive power not known to man he unleashed the might of comma in holocaust of the daemon war. With the full shinning sun rising above the horizon, light filtering through the denseness of forest, birds no longer chirping, Krishna broke out of his meditative trance. He got up and calmly walked back to his apartment, embarrassing and shocking the early risers and morning walkers of his nakedness of biting-cold winter. Back in his apartment he started typing prolifically. Typing thinking reading being not-being, everything melted into everything else, his being becoming one unending continuous stream of thought, life suspended in singularity of existence, lost sense of passage of time, sitting naked in his room he typed with vengeance pouring out his chirping, his daemons took human shape and danced around him in their gymnopaedic corybantic dance, his beard grew longer, as did his hair on the scalp and rest of his body, he stopped eating sleeping defecating, souls of Rishis in penance in high Himalayas descended to be around him, to witness the culmination of the great daemon war, scientists of past, philosophers, prophets all descended in their soul to witness the revelation of chirping birds, but he did not notice, he kept typing, outside days passed, weeks passed and months passed, while he continued ostentatiously on his tumult of agnostic anathema.
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Chirping of birds, revelation of divine, prophets and sages punctuated it with commas to create faith and religion. Chirping of birds, insight of nature, scientists and philosophers punctuated it with commas to create science and philosophy. Civilization, a story interpreted by commas; world is a chaos created by god, knowledge is the pattern imposed by man. His typing endless meaningless comma-less capital-less period-less un-punctuated the outpour of internal chirping trapped behind the dam let loose in the flood of insight by the dawn. He drew diagrams, he wrote equations, he typed letters, he was creating a symphony of words in sentences, he observed in physics, he expressed in math, concluded in logic; but mostly he typed in Word in Windows of Memories of Sand. Time passed in days, weeks, months and years, his fingers started swelling, insects started creeping on his body, lice infected his hair, termites started nibbling his Baton; vivisecting thoughts. He did not feel the pain, he could not smell the stench, all he was aware was the staring screen and stroking keys of windows through which the chirpings poured. He no longer cared for publishing his thesis, he no longer cared for review of his peers; he wasnt stating truths; he was not looking for answers; he just typed what he knew what he did not; the revelation of birds. He typed in parallel windows, in one he rewrote equations of physics, quantizing space-time, in the second he wrote philosophy to ravel the nature of humanity, contrasting it with animality and divinity, and in the third he wrote his biography untangling the context of his memories. He was creating a symphony of keystrokes in triple windows of his screen, he was writing the triple concerto of Ego Alterego Illusion with words spilling over mixing in windows; he wrote literature; reason unbound by punctuation of commas. Culture and cultural ethos of a society is largely its stories, art of storytelling in multiple mediums. Comma creating a quantum of literature; stories of facts and fiction, myths and history; real has no beginning and end, imagination is just pauses in between. He quoted in text, wrote in subtext; text is real, subtext translation; life is text, literature subtext. Matrix of known unknown: animality is unknown ignorance, humanity is known ignorance, divinity is knowledge; Brahman is the not known unknown. Continuum of time and energy is Brahman, discreteness is Maya, illusion of discreteness creates the reality of space and matter, the discreteness of Brahman creates the individual atman, illusion of multitudes, realizing the immanent Maya of Brahman transcending the discreteness to be one with the continuum is the realization of unity of self and supreme in the Omni-dimensional Omni-directional Omnipresent continuum; the Indiscrete consciousness of continual existence. First it was nothing and not known, a slight touch of originator finger,
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antecedent flutter of wing creating the initial disturbance, Big Bang of creation, singularity of time, touch of Brahman creating the illusion of Maya, bounded reality uncertain discrete exclusive starting the dynamics of the universe, expanding to collapse in increasing entropy, climbing the ladder of infinity, waves in field of oscillating energy, light traveling relative to gravity, particles spinning in conserved momentum. Oms law, divinity of Maya, souls path to supreme potential, Atma striving to merge with Parmatma; Prajnanam Brahman, Ayam Atma Brahman, Aham Brahmasmi, Tat Tvam Asi. The minuscule Plank, the mighty Light; manifestations of Maya, discreteness of numbers to count the world, COUNTING is PERCEIVING; Platonic world of ideal perfection. Is the definition of number possible independent of perception? Is perception possible independent of language? If counting is perceiving then what is number? Beauty of numbers, Cartesian order of numerator denominator, Infinity of primes, fractals of chaos, formulations of surfaces, competition of games, incompleteness of sets, wonders of apple pie served with the identity of I; bits-and-bytes of memory. His thesis was creating a pattern of perceptions, ideas sprouted and flowered in shapes and colors of which he had no control; he smiled thinking of his evaluators, imagining the shock of peers. He didnt mind, They are not going to give me the prize for physics anyway, faculty of philosophy will disown it as fiction, languages will argue whether it is pulp or literature. Unbothered he continued his journey in worlds far removed from physics philosophy literature. Is man creation of evolution, consciousness created of extraordinaryllian mutational errors, the resulting sophistication of arrangement of chemicals sorted out in cells of living breathing life, an arrangement that survives the natural selection, and components that propagate it further are manifested as life, non-divinity of Consciousness but an evolutionary tool to evolve further. BUT but then if it is all then look at the patterns of energy-waveparticles in standard model, look at the maps of radiation emitted by the universe, an arrangement as sophisticated as the electrochemical neurons firing in human skull, an arrangement that survives the entropycal selection, duality of nature creates the entanglement that connects pieces of the arrangement, components that propagate further manifested as large universe throbbing in neural firing of connected quanta of energy, nondivinity of God but rules of science to evolve further. Then is the universe conscious? Is the subatomic arrangement of energy conscious? What is consciousness? Consciousness sub-consciousness supra-consciousness
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sophisticated arrangements of energy-mass wave-particle space-time? Arrangement of letters into words, etymology in spellings, words into sentences, sentences into literature, grammar in discourse, creating the fiction of consciousness; is it defined by language? Or is there an extralanguage consciousness? But language evolves, ideas evolve, surviving the social selection, lexicographic arrangements as sophisticated as human brain and Mother Nature, etymological associations, components that propagate it further, memes manifested as culture, non-divinity of Thought but rituals of identity to evolve further. Is language conscious? Is culture conscious? Is identity real? Is The Book Random mutation, natural selection, bottlenecks and propagation, sexual selection, species of animals, animal is a white box that has memory and perception, evolving into humans, homo sapiens, primitive man, bipedal walk on the catwalk ramp, out-of-Africa time-immemorial adnauseam migrations, hands free for creating technology, the art of clothes, language of black screens connected via routers, tools of levers, ancestor of batons, wheels turning civilization, fire creating violence, identity of man, domestication of animals, taming of nature, surplus producing agriculture, barter of idle time for an enlarged mind, bills of money, exchange of primal power; anthropomorphizing of literature. Writing religion and science, advent of language and storage of memory, machines with windows, QWERTY Keyboard, legacy of not jamming, hands fluttering in typing; playwrighting Simian Shakespeare. Insights of the clerk sitting in the patent office; metaphysics of mysticism understanding the spiritual experience; ego is consciousness; consciousness devoid of ego is self-realization; Incomprehensible human consciousness attempting to comprehend an incomprehensible humanity; illusion of pride, reality of ego. Perception of context is the alternate journey that the self travels, enlarging insightfulness, continual search of meaning of the chaos perceived, shaping experiencing the bliss of divinity, an alternate story since Primordial man, the beginning, end and essence of all knowledge is storytelling, most of the work of a human life is an effluent waste, manure, a matrix for the real flowers to flourish, but you dont know what; accelerating journey framing meaning. Objective and uncertainty principle of causation, reason is not reasoning, redundancy bug is the key aspect of life functioning, bits-andbytes of alterego, clones of illusion He was reading literature, he was reading science, he was reading religion, he read his typing and wondered how will it be perceived by his evaluators, the contexts were his, he was writing of his alternate journey, to tell the story to be understood it needed the context of the readers; truth of the journey, perception of context transcends the contents.
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Creating the mother of all audacities he typed, all the world is a mere reading note to a Journey. Every life a journey, six billion odysseys currently proceeding, since ages actors playing in stages, a count of hundred billion till now, reported with uncertain accuracy by knowledge editable by anybody, verified by Nature; he smiled imagining evaluators reading it for a hundred years. He reflected on the times, on human achievements, consolidation of thoughts in the structure of schools, super-specializing the curse of clones, insights of forests and chaos of chirping missed for the proportions of tree and melody of individual bird singing; Politics of Peer Review, methodology of reason. He speculated on possibility of a collective consciousness of Arpanod, social consciousness and self-realization, plural consciousness and choices. Can man breakout of it all to evolve into the protean polymath of enlightenment? To become the Homo Superior? To find the Theory of Everything? Renaissance of Humanism? Ubermensch! Superhuman of freewill floating in the spectrum of determinism. Ubervrouw? Proof of evidence authenticates the truth, evidence is revelation reason observation. Telltale miracle is the leaping foundation of faith; we believe in god because we are conscious, we believe in religion because the world exists, we believe in science because cell phones talk and airplanes fly. His body heated up as he typed, a bright light started blazing out of the effulgent ugliness of his unkempt hairy smelly existence, heat of radiating light riding on the stench in stopped time, reflecting in red, blood bespattered on ground and furniture, his fingers bleeding of cuts of violent keystrokes, his naked body bleeding of wounds of insect bites, blood dripping all over the floor, red shining in the radiant light of his heated being. The heat and light started melting his daemons, the all-destroying holocaust obliterating the gladiators. Termites growing in his hair in his body in his groin, were eating away his baton, they slowly painfully nibbled away his manhood, Purushartha, but he felt no pain; a BIT is left, the last drop of his SHAME; Nothing Ejaculated. He saw pride die, he saw ego dying, in burning of vanity he felt a cleansing within, he felt his identity dissolve, he could no longer feel his body, he felt his corporeal existence melting in meditative insight, he felt close to Krishna in blinding brightness of radiating light, he acquired the vision of Sanjay granted for the blind king to see the vendetta, he saw the great battle of Mahabharata in his own daemon war, and one by one warriors on each side fell dismembered kissing the earth in release of their
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soul in catharses of the world. Krishna steering the chariot of Arjuna, battle with the grand patriarch, Bhishma the ego denouncer, a manifestation of self that could be killed only by its own volition, Bhishma fell on the bed of arrows not to die but to witness the tragedy, to see his descendants who were not his descendants die, waiting for the release possible only after the soul is absolved of all earthly sins, catharsis by witness of horrendous outcomes of dutiful acts, witnessing the twist of logic of dharma; full play of tragedy in pyrrhic victory revealing the meaning. Great guru Drona fell on face of a lie, trusting the truth his head exploded in death of the not-dead son, The son Ashwatthama, deranged with rage, all encompassing rage of hate, Karna, the crosser of divides, the wronged disgraced, fell to the treachery of righteousness, And then, amidst the depleting armies the rant of pride ambition greed of the Kaurav brothers, fell, Krishna saw his daemons die. A hollow deathly silence descended in the battle field of Kurukshetra, the war had ended in the genocidal revenge of carnage and infanticide in the deadly darkness of night. Ashwatthama the furious son, hell-kite at one fell swoop burned the enemy camp, killing in spree all in sleep, including unborn fetuses in wombs of the Pandav wives. Cruelty of the end cursed Ashwatthama with the unending life of ignominy, to roam around in the jungles of solitude age after age, Yuga after Yuga in search of the nonexistent repentance In Immortality of his Shame He saw churning of the oceans with Gods on one side and Ogres on another, curdling what was thrown out of poison, the imperishable jewels of the Samudra Manthan. Finally the war was won and lost, gods were satisfied by the sacrifice of blood, and age changed to welcome the times of Kali. He broke out of the trance of his ancient vision; he touched his baton reduced to the last bit of flesh feasted by termites. He saw Ashwatthama, last of the daemons, cursed with the blessing of undying, next to him straddling smiling, Sage Vyasa sitting, uttering Mahabharata to the Elephant-god Ganesha, dictating in a dueling duet of diction and perception, Ganesha recording the Epic oblivious of the pain of uprooted tusk, Condition of continuity without breaks, counter-condition of
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following the verses, a competition of sage and god of creating interpreting wisdom, Godeinstein spoke, I told them I dont play dice; Zarathustra sat and smiled; Suddenly the blinding light disappeared; Apparitions of Vyasa Ganesha Einstein Zarathustra vanished, The termites departed exhumed in the burning heat, Ashwatthama remained the last irritant; he refused to wane away, the last connection of magic and real. Ashwatthama remained silent, sat next to Krishna glistening in his painful smile; Krishna ignored his presence, focused on restoring his sanity and coming back to reality. Breaking out of his trance, getting back from transposed space he felt the restart of time, he felt the pain of the insecteaten body, he smelled the stench of his cobwebbed hair. But he did not get up to clean himself, his mind still burning with insights, he typed. He was typing at furious speed, structure-less goal-less typing, keystrokes chirping like multiple birds, capturing the words pouring out of his head. Along with the dying daemons had died his ambition of formulating the theory of everything, he no longer cared, he just typed. Life is a game, a prisoners dilemma, to be or not to, daemons unreleased had played in the Colosseum, vanquished by fire, vanished in haze, annihilated in two tits for a tat, the mathematics of violence, memory of breasts; I know that you know that I know that you know that I know that you know that ad infinitum, Cycling in the infinite chakra around the Wheeler Labs, the beautiful mind of the beautiful game, You and I will not kill I and you, equilibrium of interaction, delicate situation, disturbance in balance, No longer equilibrium, dissipated in the flash of violence, World is real, reality is dual, is it a wave, is it a particle, it is an illusion, Question is relevant, no yes no, question is irrelevant. The non-dual nature of reality is the non-real essence of illusion. Weaving time in the triple concerto Ego Alterego Illusion; Ingraining life-like spontaneity of notes, in the prewritten music of classical tradition Sleeping in slumber of meditation, waking in awareness of illusion, a continuum of nothingness, specks of disturbance, origin of Maya selfcontained in the nonbeing created in quanta of illusion, existence of energymatter in countable perception of space-time; Mutation of freewill in Maya,
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evolution of soul by moral selection in determinism of Karma. Conclusions are carnivorous, theories sharp the bite and kill of peers but his teeth were blunted by chirping of birds, his baton shrunk eaten by termites toothless birds and teeth-full termites. He was not concluding, he was not writing answers, he was just grinding cud; chewing the forage of past in the manger of thoughts. He did not have any theory to construct, he did not have any conclusions to state, he did not have any teeth cutting the edge of human knowledge, he did not have any bite for peers to review, with chirping of birds and shrinking of baton his tongue had lost its teeth; he was not biting not eating but chewing regurgitating ruminating extrication, grinding words in meditative typing, words already cut in parts by knife of life, shrillness of birds, teeth of termite. His thesis was no longer answers, no longer foraging, but it still remained a promise, the self-promise, a quantum of promise, of not of any truth, not of any revelation, but the simple promise of an interesting conversation, an exciting journey. He copied from here and pasted from there, sentences in windows compiling meaning. Reflecting his life and perceptions, reaping results of education and upbringing, experiences and trainings, accumulated reflections of human society and history, literature as a compendium of intense feelings, love hate spirituality et al., science as lab-rat experiment of hormonal chemistry; neural electro-physics of biology. The weaver of winds winding orbs of Maya, existence of energy in a short space of time through short time of space, and beyond all this the unknowable Brahman. Wheels, cycle of history, circularity of logic, logic of confrontation, cycle of time of men and gods, orbits are higher but motion circular, momentum is higher and circumference larger, transition of power, violent and nonviolent, utopia and dystopia, anarchy and order. Blowing up of whole, bestriding up in parts, to grow and become whole again, every drop of fissiparous Mahisa; beauty of heights clad by distance and theory, beauty of heights naked in icy barrenness. Speed of his typing increased, clatter of keys became louder, presence of Ashwatthama hidden behind, the words appearing magically through window of the screen, noise of the striking keys, smile of the impending inevitable, pain of endless cycles of life circling in the immortality of his shame. Words in black, Windows of color, backdrop of white underlined by lines, Capital White, Period Black, change of sentence in black and white and in between the comma in gray; he thought at the speed of light and typed at the speed of thought.
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He intermixed everything he thought and wrote, he was typing the spaghetti of words, equations of nature in deciphering politics, jargon of power in understanding mathematics, analytical series to reveal the truth of religion, theological terminology to construct physics; Packet Switching and Cloning across Dimensions of Quantum Entanglement. He was not in control of his conscious self, fundamentals of balance, he remembered his father teaching him skating cycling swimming driving stuff you dont forget, stuff for which you cannot recite the instructions to do; stuff that gets wired in the weird invisibility of subconscious mind. Quantum entanglement in nerves of the brain, several levels of instant connection, information exchange in connections of alternate realities, extreme experiments, thought experiments of science and literature; and Schrod the shoddy cat, neither black nor white neither dead nor alive; Schrod the stray cat, straying fast between subsuming polarities of life-anddeath. He was typing crazily, the Windows power to precept the furious speed of keystrokes was being pushed to the falling edge, on white backdrop of screen words appearing in font of black, underlined by blue of unity and disunity of meaning, green of grammar and red of spelling, Krishna continued typing ignoring the warnings of language underlying in his sentences in codes of color, he did not wait or pause to review or correct, he kept typing, a rumble rose from the frantic keystrokes, the screen shook in waves of losing hold, lines in yellow appeared across the window warning the impending. But lines of colors and sounds were of no avail, Krishna ignored it and continued hammering the keys, swollen fingers, blood dripping from edges of their tips, blood in multicolor errors of his typing, dripping on the tired crumbling keys. While Krishna struggled to entangle the equations of Maya, elsewhere in the school in the full gaze of Windows, with Bill behind unable to see, blinded by power, a younger generation generating the energy of Arpanod and Dolly, unperturbed by the illusion of reality, unbothered by incomprehension of nature, seeding intelligence in algorithms of hyperlinks, creating communities of faces, writing collaborative encyclopedias of knowledge, building a new world, germinating the earth with the culture of future; continual cycle of cloning to create the clones of FUTURE, the gene that is cloned is VIRTUAL. Nature and nurture, genetic imprints and social programming, human point of historical inflexion, evolving the combined consciousness of technological singularity, Neural firing in entangled circuitry of connections, children of the Routers, heated soul, boiling brain,
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Expanding Universe, Doppler Shift, Big Bang, Tabulation Errors, Relative Quanta, Deviating Predictions, Information preservation and transfer, lost in quanta of time, Lost quanta of memories in quintessential darkness of gasping black holes His soul eighting in accelerators speeding light, His vision perceiving in telescopes the darkness beyond night; Furiosity of his typing shook the earth, deep within the ocean, a large quake and a larger Tsunami, The planet wobbled, earth shook, oceans parted, mountains sundered, Pralaya occurred, land flooded, But the flood could not Exodus to forest of the school. Till finally the world could take no more, gods gathered in heaven to ask for the end of destruction, The window of time was ordered to close. Krishna ignored the heeding of gods and typed, but the Windows could not take the violence any more, In the third war of daemons, the collateral was windows of grammar and language, In the moment of weakness of Gates, Windows unable to comprehend crashed! Blueness of Death draped the screen, before it got colored in Death of Black. The thesis unsaved un-backed-up disappeared in the memories of sand; the discarded desecrated dissertation. The windows crashed and closed the divide between Moksha and Maya. Abracadabra, he was released from Karma of the thesis, he and his daemons united, Atmaparmatma. AND he was released from feeling thinking being not-being. He sat stunned, his expression colorless reflection of the crash; concepts of singularity: Physical laws of nature undefined; Technological knowledge becomes conscious; Spiritual soul realizes its identity with supreme. He smiled at the sarcasm of it all and said, What the heck! And neither-white-nor-black Schrod mewed in gray. Ashwatthama suddenly made his presence felt, It was a Bit of Bull Byte anyways! He said and disappeared out of sight, snapping the last link of transitive magic, leaving behind his last bit, leaving him behind to the reality of lost thesis; tranquility of tiredness of life; crash of the Windows was his Peace; Baton reductio ad
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absurdum, itching in Private Shame. AND, genitives of Semicolons? Idiomatic asyndeton, copular of unconnected; Partliners lex aeterna (brackets infusing brickbats); Antithesis Q.E.D.! ********* Krishna woke up from his endless repose free of his encumbrance, his inflection completed; he dragged himself to the bathroom and turned on the shower keeping the temperature knob to cold. Standing beneath the cold chilling water cleaning hard to purge the cumulated pungent filth, scrubbing his overgrown body hair from head to toe, to make it presentable enough to be entertained at a respectful barbers shop. He expunged with frenzy, his head already cleansed by the crash of Windows, no longer meandering in thoughts of the thesis but working on structuring a plan for life and living. Bathing and thinking, planning mundane activities of the day, to clean the remnants of his extraordinary journey from his life, much-needed cleaning of the apartment, eating a nourishing indulgent meal, bigger aspects of continued living. In clean clear reflection in crystals of water droplets pouring in shower, he saw his life ahead, it was certain that his tryst with the school was over; his daemons were killed, along them in their pyre burnt the quest for his theory. Cleansing the soul of tormenting daemons is peace, but to live a life peace doesnt top the list of essentials. He needed to get back to a paying job; he needed to get back to the mainstream reality of life, his wondering sub-streams had run their course to dryness, disappearance in the desert of magical thoughts, sinking in the well of surreal epiphany. Krishna had enough wealth in the form of source shares for not to worry about livelihood, existence was not what bothered him, what he needed was a clear involvement in life in all its intensity, to never again meander back in vicinity of the vortex of attempting to find meaning beyond the practicality of existence. He needed to get back to a straightforward corporate job, to the life led by objectives, challenging but measurable, mundane but fulfilling. He felt the urge of sales target to be met, the profit calculations of deals, quarterly declaration of earnings slightly higher than managed expectation of the Street. The cleaner he got under the chilling coldness of the shower further he was repelled from throes of the school and deeper was he sucked into attractions of the Street. Still scrubbing the last drip of shampoo remaining in the earlier almost filled-up bottle, Krishna made up his mind; he will find a job at the Bank. Containment of his life will be the size of his bonus, not physics, not god, But Money will be his Theory of Everything; measurable countable
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depositable usable money; money which is the manifestation of Brahman; the human articulation of divine. Money, not of the variety that seduces endemic greed in men, but money which inspires the awesome epidemic of worship, money will be his god, not because it can buy his necessities or desires (he had enough for that), but money will be his Moksha, not the deceiving demonstrations of frivolous hazy mystical Moksha of either religion or science, but the soaring satisfaction of tangible purposeful measurable Moksha of contentment and happiness. He will follow the Oms law of drift, souls path of least resistance in the web of Maya to traverse the difference of potentials; Mammon is God. With his thoughts well sorted out, activities of the day well listed in his mind, soap and shampoo emptied of their respective bottles, and the scrambled loofah sloughed, a clean slated sweet-smelling but-still-hairy Krishna walked out of the bathroom, fiercely scrubbing his hair and body with an oversize towel to the urgency of getting along with life; vengeance of making up for the lost time. He saw in his nakedness the towel hovering around his magically shrunk baton, his last bit of manhood remaining in the slight itch, dangling in its past glory of phallic power of ejaculating thoughts, he smiled and wondered whether his manhood can ever recover from feasting of the termites, he did not care; he no longer needed it. Still naked, wrapped up in the scrubbing towel, he started making phone calls; he ordered a lavish meal from an Indian takeaway, he then called a cleaning agency to send in cleaners prepared to encounter a very dirty apartment; finally dried down he called Iyer in New York City. I will be coming to New York tomorrow, would be staying with you for a couple of days before I find my own apartment, I am leaving the school for good, I will explain when we meet. He said in un-paused multiple sentences in hurry. He didnt give Iyer even a chance to acknowledge, let alone ask the reasons for sudden change of course. On other side of the phone, from beyond forest of the school, from City of the Street, Iyer smiled, the smile was carried all the way back to Krishna by understanding sympathetic routers. Krishna got into a fresh pair of jeans and T-shirt from his wardrobe, he continued his calls, his laptop had crashed beyond salvage and to make his bookings he switched back to the old ways of calling the travel agent, ordering his one-way ticket to New York City. After making the final call to the hairdresser for an evening appointment, Krishna got down arranging his scattered stuff in the apartment. He made two heaps, one mostly of books journals notebooks stationery, stuff that he would throw or give away, and second mostly of clothes and personal belongings that he will pack up during the night for his
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relocation once again in life. The meal came. Krishna paid hurriedly and opened the monstrance like a starving carnivore pounding on a freshly killed pray. Smell of the spices of India made him remember the hunger of days without food in sharp pangs of gluttony. He had ordered portions enough for three people, mutton and chicken in different gravies along with multitudes of richly buttered Nan breads; food familiar tasty food and Coke nourishing refreshing vitalizing the Real Thing Real-Real One, smiling feeding the starving soul champing furiously. Krishna slept in satiated sloth after ravening the Eucharistic host, dreams wringing away the final drops of languor stuck in his mind; Cant Beat the Feeling. In the evening he walked up to the hairdresser, got his hair cut short, his beard and moustache shaved away, the ugliness of his body hair removed, the hairdresser tried hiding his shock the experience of turning an animal into the man the shock smothered by receipt of generously crisp cash after presenting a humongous bill, and a large tip over it. Returning back to his apartment that evening Krishna stood besides building of the school, in light of the dusk he saw the accelerators and telescopes reflecting in walls of the Wheeler Labs; the train making continuous tracks of eight, binoculars peeping back in time. It was like one long day, more than a three-yearlong day, he wondered whether it was lost time, he smiled satisfactorily at the answer, it was a journey, it was the passage, it was the school that silenced his daemons forever, it was the speck of time which made him see beyond space-time into the circularity of meaning-meaninglessness-and-meaning. He was glad he lived through it; he was glad he will leave it behind; Vini Vidi Vici, And It Crashed. Exorcised of the daemons, with remaining last bite of memory of shame, a Brahmin in Boston took the flight to City of the Street to become an insider in the Bank. A bit of his baton remained and it itched. Krishna abnegated the school recuperated rejuvenated revitalized cleansed, living behind shambles of the thesis and his abstemious life as a memory from past. He crossed back the Rubicon, ready to don once again the silvery magic of pinstripes in backdrop of expensively worsted darkness, draping around the sanitized snowy seriousness, supporting and flaunting the knot of suffocating scuffling boldness.

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Chapter 21 The bank

Entracte of the school over, Krishna found himself in a familiar building, on a familiar street. He was working as a senior vice president for the Bank. His associations within the Bank from source days, reputation of source IPO, and stint at the school were his advowson which granted him the good landing consecrating him into a complete insider. But he was still an outsider. He was on floor of the Bank he had never been before; it was a very different bank. It did not have the stripes of pin but streams of logic build to prick. While stripes of pin picked on emotions of people who sat on the funds of others to invest in the Bank, the investment products were engineered in increasing complexity on floor of the quants. Krishna had become a quant of the Street. They were a bunch of physicists, mathematicians and economists all buried deep in their computers trying to decipher locations of obscured treasures in the maps of time series of prices and economic data of all kinds. They had varied reasons and motivations for ending up in the quant floor. Some were like Krishna who started in academics for the search of unattainable and their own private crashes had landed them on geek floor of the Bank. Some had completed their theses and then realized that pressure and politics of peer review was a pain that didnt pay well. Some were simply attracted by the dollars that run the engine of the streets. And there were quite a few who had simply drifted into academics as a way to immigrate into the land of dreams, and then came to the Street to dream the dreams. (Nuclear physicists bred in institutions of the evil empire, mushroomed in the heat of cold war, war freezing to an employment-less prospect, disbanded cleverness drifting them to the dreams of the Street.) (And closer home, the leftovers of Sputnik-triggered avalanche of scientists, which ran out its course of sliding down slopes of the Cold War which froze to irrelevancy descended into valleys got heated up and melted to spread unemployed opportunities.) They all landed in the Wall Street temples of high finance became bankers its priests. But once inside the Bank although they looked and behaved different from stripes of the Street they were part of the clones. Krishna noticed a lot of familiar sounding names in complicated tongue-twisting Sanskrit vernacular. He noticed both among the stripes and quants a fair bit of brown skin. He had thought Indians in the Bank were all from source writing and maintaining code of the Chakra, but to see familiar faces from
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the land of Karma in the inside of the Bank was a revelation. The unmistakable burning-browning of soul in the heat of Karma expressed in the splitting of time was enough for him to know that they were the clones of IIT who had drifted into the Bank riding on their business degrees or PhDs of unrelated topics. Seeing the familiar clones around, Krishna realized that his wasnt that unique and adventurous route to building of the Bank; the clones of IIT descended on the Wall Street and mutated into clones of the STREET, the gene that was cloned was GREED. It was another insight, seeing the clones in the Bank he could see as he had done before joining source the cloning logic; he had thought IIT to be the ultimate factory, but that day on floor of the quants the vision revealed itself in its entirety; the school was the pinnacle of the cloning line, and he Krishna, had finally attained the epitome, though he didnt get his degree, yet sealed and delivered to the Street; CLONING is a force for GOOD; Good is GOD. The greatness of America is neither its wealth, nor the fire-spitting flying machines of high technology, not even the fantasies churned out by the Hollywood contrivances, No-No-No Not even the pretense of lofty ideals. BUT the greatness of America is its Universities; The SCHOOLS of CLONING; Eugenic nurture of Civilizational Wisdom; universalized perennial cloning of the Clonal Conscience. The schools produce elitist of the clones, in multiple varieties, in global scales, they are everywhere, they are in politics, they are in business, clones on the left, clones on the right, clones who run the world, clones who make the money flow, clones who train more clones, he could clearly see the world, a large machine, multiple parts, all running in smooth unison, run by hordes of clones, each knowing exactly their part, a perfect symphony, a world of parallel life, the essence of human civilization, toiling at the machine, ridiculed, unbothered un-acclaimed, toiling in worship of their particular gene, making the whole greater than all the toils added together, making the whole a separate consciousness, a global consciousness of connected clones, a consciousness suppressed by chimerical interjection of parasitic benefactors, lying not separate but injected and stemmed in cells within each of the clones, the falseness of identity reinforced by false facade of rhetoric, not letting the clones see the gist of themselves, lest the clones get enlightened and take over the world, but if only they can see, if only they feel the connection, to overthrow the pseudo-beneficial yoke of the diabolic benefaction; Atma separated from Parmatma by Maya, connected only by the gene that is cloned. But Krishna could see, he could feel the connection, he no longer felt his identities separate from what he is, what he does, what he has made himself. And, not who he was born, not where he was born, not what color
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he was born in, Not Even the Caste he was born in; his transformation was complete; he identified his self-identity. Whether you like it or not the clones are coming and are coming in droves, whole armies marching; let them march, or you will be trampled by the Juggernaut of the legionaries. ********* Krishnas first brush with finance and accounting was during the IPO of source, he had learnt the basics of capital markets and capitalism, but to be a true-blooded quant of the Street he needed deeper insights into mysterious workings of the god called money. The Bank regularly hired physicists and mathematicians who cannot spell money, but the Bank knew the fundamental truth of money, it is just a number, whether printed on paper or stored in the bits of sand, and the quants know their numbers, they know the divinity and mystery of numbers. However, they didnt know the divinity of money, the world of ivories falsely made them believe that the number on money is tainted by creation of man, is satanic rather than divine. Divine or satanic, animal or human, numbers are imagined by man, and once quants had this insight, the same devotion was brought to the matters of money which was used to pursue the matter of god. The essential aspect of indoctrinating in cloning of the Street is faith in the divinity of money. The Bank had a crash course in economics for the newly on-boarded quants to reveal to them the omnipotence omnipresence of the invisible hand. Krishna ironically found himself in a classroom again; he escaped from the school to classroom of the Bank. His second brush with mechanism of money and markets was very unlike first, this was deeper, theoretical, complicated models built in mathematics that man has devised to ravel the mysteries of nature. Krishna had never realized that the simple-looking dollar note in his wallet carries the weight of such gigantic academic punch; he felt heavy in his pockets. Krishna learned about supply and demand, not as actions but equations, he learned about risks and rewards, not as emotions but variances. His first great insight into the physics of economics was that economists started where physics gave up in desperation. The doom of physicist is the uncertainty and variance of the world; quants of the Street instead of bothering about it start with the premise that it is source that needs to be studied for taming rather than knowing. Krishnas world was turned upside down once again: Markets are efficient, no one can make extraordinary money; markets are efficient because inefficiencies are immediately arbitraged out. The arbitrager makes a lot of money. Markets are efficient because the Street makes a lot of money.
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In the sweeping circularity of syllogism, Krishna understood the world on the Street. The arrogance of Adam had erred; Price is created by men, an interaction of actions of supply and demand, interaction of emotions of risk and reward; The quants rectified the error; Price is the god that creates actions and emotions of men, Price is the signal of the intention of divine. Chirping of birds in woods of the school had revealed to Krishna science and religion; Street is the cult that surpasses both religion and science. Fruit is the price of Adam no longer prohibited; plucking it, the destiny of man sanctioned by divine. With membership of the cult Krishna mutated from Homo Sapiens to become Homo Economicus. He learned how his life was nothing but for the blessings of self-interest and benevolence of greed of the butcher baker brewer. A hedge was no longer the bush that bounded his home, but the line of control created of options and futures to demarcate territories of swaps. He learned about leverage of levers long enough and fulcrums to place them to move the world. In patterns and statistics of distribution of Karma, the clones of IIT mutated to become clones of the QUANTS, and the gene that was cloned was MODELING. After the course completing the indoctrination in ways of the Bank and Street, Krishna settled into the regular life of a quant. He was paid well, and above the well was the bonus, prize of the price. He rented a decent-sized apartment in Manhattan. He no longer carried the burden of his daemons. He had an agreeable social life comprising of colleagues from the Bank and IIT alumni living in the City. Krishna wasnt the typical quant nerd of general Street perception. He had destroyed the internal fights that make a nerdy exterior in accelerators of time. He was both a regular Streeter, and a regular quant. This was his advantage. The language of quants and stripes are mutually incomprehensible. Krishna had once created his destiny by being the translator of codes of bits of different machines of the Bank. He once again created his destiny by being the decoder of conversations of different floors of the Bank. He became the most important link between back office of the quants producing incomprehensible products, and the front office of sales guys, who couldnt comprehend the instruments, but Krishna could still explain them what was to be sold. He became the channel that converted the equations and variances of supply demand risk reward into actions and emotions of sale purchase loss profit.
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It was only he who knew the trick of translation; it was only he who knew the redundant bits, alterego clones that lay concealed in duplication of conversations. Krishnas unique edge made his star in the Bank rise along with his remuneration and bonus. ********* It was once again a house-warming party; Krishna had shifted to his newly mortgaged apartment in lower Manhattan a three-bedroom condominium on John Street as large and luxurious as the approaching couple-of-millions mortgage tag that came with it. The financial district had earlier not been a place with many residential buildings, but 9/11 changed it. Property prices had gone down as banks and other corporates moved out of downtown in cloak of increased risks to reduce costs, setting up offices in cheaper areas, moving even to cheaper cities. Doomsayers had predicted the fall of NYC after the attacks, but nothing of that sort happened. The vacuum was lapped up by residents whose numbers had dwindled in sequester of suburb-ward exodus of the Great American Dream with aging baby boomers. The Wall Street too had largely migrated to midtown, but Krishnas office still reliced in the vestigial furlongs of the Financial District. The resident warriors of the Street were an invisible minority, a residential minority in the floating droves of population of lower Manhattan. Some of the office buildings were converted into luxury apartments attracting the wealthy singles and young couples riding on their Street bonuses back within a few years of the bombing. A slight muted reaction to the suburb-headed movement, the younger generation in search of creating their own identity separate from the baby boomers; the identity of downtown wealth, everlasting youth, stylish mix of work and play. The newly built or converted residential complexes of the financial district were an exercise in aesthetics of style and convenience; the style of front desks and lobbies with reflecting pools, and convenience of a mile walk from offices of the Street. The luxury of penthouses and posh sea-view apartments, and handiness of downtown, differentiated them from more familial neighborhoods of Upper East Side and suburban mansions where bosses of the Bank lived. A bold statement egged on the face of doomsayers of NYC; spirit of the Street lives on, twenty-four seven in financial district, in style, in defiance, in confidence and security. For Krishna it was a win-win, the premium for uptown neighborhoods was for being perceived as better places to raise families, not something on his immediate agenda; he was happy to live in luxury within a walk of his work. His apartment was a few blocks west of Water Street. It was a corner apartment with full-wall windows. From its tenth-floor lobby window it had a marvelous view of the Brooklyn Bridge. On days when he woke up early,
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he saw lights of dawn breaking over the bridge to wake up the neversleeping city, announcing in silence the soon-to-descend daily avalanche of humanity, in bee-lines on the roads and ant-lines in the subways, crowding the face of lower Manhattan. The financial district during the day belongs to the world; the residents can claim it to be theirs only in the nights when the population dwindles to less than a quarter of peak daytime numbers. Seeing the dawn break over the bridge Krishna was haunted by the ghost of Gatsby; emotions of East and West Eggs longing for Gatsby; the ideal pure love slowly receding to the other side with the rising sun. The condominium building had its own parking floors with marked slots, in the one marked for Krishnas apartment was parked a shining-ofmetal silver Bentley convertible. The car was more for him to drive uptown, upstate, upcountry and cross-country, because for his daily office commute Krishna preferred to walk. The car was a choice, a recreational choice, downtown Manhattan was the last place in U.S that remained a reminiscent of an earlier urban civilization where one could go on with regular life without a private vehicle; tunnels of the subway with trains wheezing every minute, streeters of both kind mixing their suits and hoods in clinging to the hanging hand grips, the yellow cabs back to back lining the streets in accents of English from Lebanon to Pakistan, the NYC buses, all creating a very usable though overburdened network of public transport, and more importantly in contrast to the miles of suburban living, everything a few blocks walk from everything else. It was Saturday evening, guests had started trickling in; the list wasnt too long. Krishna had invited some close colleagues from the Bank and alumni from his class in IIT Delhi who had landed in NYC, other than this, his circle was still limited in the melting cauldron of the great city. He knew it will change; He will soon have parties at his house where faces of the city, the celebrities, the powerful and wealthy would be present. This was just a start, the start of his post-thesis social debut; the start of his soar, in world of the Street, in society of the greatest city of the world, in the world of wealth and power. Iyer was among the first to arrive with his wife Hema and two year old son Moulik. Hema had quit her job to be a fulltime mother to raise the child. Moulik was his full two-year-old inquisitive self and went running around in Krishnas apartment as soon as he became comfortable with the new surroundings. Iyer and Krishna chatted about India, fondly remembering their days of IIT. Though they met frequently, they knew once other guests arrived they will not have their private nostalgic moment; the conversations will be hijacked by NYC real estate and slowly-upwardsteaming stock market. It has become an incredibly different world. Iyer said reflecting on
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momentous changes in their lives since the days of hanging around in IIT dorms, struggling with quizzes and projects. Yes, it had been some journey. It is a pity that back home we have a crippled government, dependent on communists. The only silver lining is that wisdom prevailed on Sonia Gandhi, to make Manmohan Singh the PM. But what can the poor chap do with his government dependent on left. At least he can make some decent airports. Iyer was smiling at his own raspy remark in self-denigration, accompanied by a melancholic sadness for the state of affairs left behind. The doorbell rang, more guests poured in, bringing the reality back to the tenth floor of the downtown NYC luxury apartment, not haunted by communists, not even by ghosts of 9/11 receding fast from psyche of the city in soothing comfort of rising real-estate and stock prices, the once-ayear remembrance and deaths in Iraq were buried in far-away in-depths of the Television, properly wrapped in adverts of look-beautiful creams, prescription medicines, compensation lawyers and quick-fix no-creditrating-required loans. The impending mess in Afghanistan was not even seen by cameras of the screen cluttered by stories of unprecedented global growth, increasing homeownership, booming economy on foundation of second mortgages. A nation borrowed to fight a war to secure the oil, a people borrowed to live a lifestyle to guzzle it, the borrowed dollars printed by the strength of global sovereignty of power flowed around the world creating the prosperity of printed wealth, converting into increasing international consumerism, declaring the arrival of true globalization, cemented by explosion of technology shrinking the world, hiding the simmering discontent, hiding the multiplying Mahisa in multiple screens of the television. The bell rang again, Krishna opened the door; it was Sarah. Sarah was a Managing Director in the Bank. She headed the institutional sales for fixed-income instruments. Krishna and Sarah worked closely at the Bank to create and market new products. They had developed a close working relationship along a personal liking for each other. Why didnt you bring Kyle over? Krishna asked. Kyle was Sarahs Seven year old son. He had sleepover at a friends place. Sarah explained. Sarah was a single mother, divorced from her husband Brandon when Kyle was about two years old. Brandon was a lawyer in one of the Street law firms. Brandon and Sarah had met as young people with promising careers on the Street, during work when Brandons firm was advising the
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Bank for a transaction in Sarahs department. They had a happy life for few years, perfect careers, complete match, high incomes to spend, but the honeymoon started breaking down with coming of Kyle. None of them were willing to slow down their growing career graphs, a third over-fulltime job among two people was becoming difficult to handle, they were not prepared for the child. Despite the ability of multiple zeroes in their combined paychecks to hire a nanny and other sorts of help in an expensive city, the marriage started breaking in trying to piece together a life of multiple priorities. Romance got buried deep in piles of files and nappies. Sarah being forced to take the larger share of responsibility of Kyle thought it insensitive of Brandon to not help her have enough time to manage her career. The friction led Brandon to seek solace from Sarahs scoldings in a relationship at work, a single women lawyer at his firm, it was not a very deep involvement but the whiff of infidelity was the last straw for Sarah, and in a fit of anger she decided to end the marriage. Brandon tried apologizing and talking her into withdrawing her decision, but within themselves both of them longed to be single, to be free, to be friends, to be released from impediments of a demanding relationship, to be free of possessiveness; an amicably settled divorce was executed. Sarah was a couple of years older to Krishna. With her flowing brunette hair, tallish features, well-maintained body, skin shining of care, knee-length tank-topped frilling dress and designer stilettos, she had an air of sophisticated attraction, a cocktail of power and beauty laboriously cultivated to blossom like the aroma and taste of the vintage full-bodied wine she was carrying. Sarah kissed Krishna on the cheek and handed him the bottle of Bordeaux. He introduced her to Iyer, Hema, his other IIT mates and their wives. Colleagues from the Bank were already known to Sarah. Among the two groups of guests, IIT alums and bankers, few belonged to both; the whites in the party eagerly listened to the stories of introductions; the haphazardly drifting journeys from the hinterland to the Street. This IIT thing kind of psyches me up. One of the bankers was joking, In my Business School the competition for the rest started after the Indians had their roll call in the top lists. Oh yes! The Chinese too, someone added, What do they feed you there? There was laughter all around, Krishna took a call for drinks and went behind the small bar at one corner of the lobby. From the counter Krishna laughed and added his bit to the fun, They have a factory there, which in secret is preparing an army of aliens to take over the world.
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The banker, not wanting to be left behind in the guffawing magic advised, You guys should register a company for this factory, call it The New India Company, East-and-West, and we will IPO it on the Street. We will all make millions by completing the circle of capitalism. The other banker pronounced. It is crazy, all my clients routinely ask for investments in India and China. Sarah said bringing the discussion back to realism, The BRIC thing has made everyone jump to ride the train. Everyone nodded. Emerging markets are great investments. Different births, different stories, but in an apartment in NYC the conversation always drifts to the unifying identity of money. Yes, they are. But if you want to stick to the States, then real estate is the best thing now, one of the IITians said, Krishna, you did a great thing by buying this apartment. I tell you, downtown will rise again. The drinks were served, a whiff of Scottish country emerging from the aroma underlining the conversations, Americans, Indians, cowboys of the Street, creatures of Davos, Homo Davosius, strung together by lassos of English and Scotch, singing in praise of the Universal Global God. The whisky deepened the plain of conversation, Do you think Greenspan will increase rates? A series of protests rose against the blasphemy, No! Why should he? Asset prices are rising, so what? The general inflation is low. Yes! Thats because the flood of cheap Chinese stuff that we have. Low price levels might be hiding an asset bubble. The recalcitrant retorted. It was too much of a challenge, a devils advocate is good for beatification, it makes saintliness genuine, makes it look better, but to challenge the whole premise of divinity is unacceptable. Who says its an asset bubble? It is the recalibration of economy to the vast technological advancements of our time. Asset prices will go up further. They are still underpriced. The potential of technology and globalization is still not completely factored. The heresiarch was shouted down. Ok man! I give up, was just trying to check all premises. Dont get me wrong, I myself am long on all classes of assets. Its just that this thing makes me little jittery sometimes, looks like too good to be true. The defendant confessed. Whats too good to be true? Cant you see around you? The world has changed so much. Is all the technology, all the prosperity, a trifle? Never before has human civilization progressed at such speed in so less time. Its a fact of our times. We are lucky to be alive now, lucky to make good the opportunity. The Inquisition passed the verdict. Lets toast to times, Krishna passed another round of drinks, To be
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alive, and he raised his glass. To be alive, others raised their drinks, To the Street. To your wonderful apartment in this wonderful city, Sarah joined the toast. ********* Time passed by on the streets of New York and trading rooms of the Street. Krishna became a part of the Manhattan society in pecking order of glamour and wealth. The crash of windows and victory in the daemon wars had made him a very different person. He enjoyed his wealth and success; he didnt feel the emptiness that had accompanied wealth and success of IPO of source. He was dating beautiful women, he was living in style. He didnt have complaints, he wanted to be in a relationship; he wanted to share the small joys of life with a partner. He was no longer ambitious of bigger things. The fact that money flowed in his account as markets continued rising, and his complicated financial products created wealth for the Bank, was a good byproduct of work. He loved spending the money on good things of life. Krishna and Sarah dated. They went to art shows and theaters together, dined in the gourmet of New York. Despite the underlying flavor of romance that transcended their relationship beyond friendship of colleagues liking each other, they were not passionate lovers of youthful love stories. It was a relationship of shared happiness, of companionship; love blossomed slowly, building on like low notes of a great symphony, passionate climax pushed back to later movements after the audience is completely sucked into the enrapture of flowing music. In relationship of Krishna and Sarah the currently playing notes had a sound of confusion, vibrating strings of hesitation accompanying the resonance of romance. Sarah lived with Kyle in her apartment with the wonderful unhindered grand view of the Park, on the Fifth Avenue in the Upper East Side. Krishna spent a fair bit of time with them. Kyle took a liking for Krishna who had stories from the orient complementing his imagination, careful patient answers to his questions, and ability to pitch the ball perfectly lobbed for a wonderful short, added as a bonus. Connection with Kyle for Krishna was the note in his life trying to soothe the flip side of his choices, the choice of singleton, choice of singleminded pursuit of goals in an adult world, in a world devoid of the innocence of childhood and growing up. In the multimillion-dollar world of Upper East Side parks and sports clubs, he tried reliving the dream of Botala. With Kyle, Krishna was exported back in space-time to the unadulterated joys of Botala club, the undiluted world of imaginary possibilities. From back in time he brought the jedis and sith, taking avatars of Japanese-sounding names; collecting
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trophies of Pokmon in private world of boy bonding. He had lived the American dream in Botala; he was struggling to live the Botala dream in America. For Kyle it was a long-desired friendship, of a bond missing, of the bond only known by cheers of dads on school Ball Park. A filling of space demanding more, a desire left unfulfilled by occasional visits of Brandon, which with passage of time had dwindled to more formal occasions than regular weekends. For Sarah, it was another string of confusion in an already entangled relationship. Krishna and Sarah avoided talking about themselves, about their relationship, the unsaid understanding was that of patience, of letting time do the clearing of haze, living in joys of small pleasures of life, living by the day, unencumbered by complicated questions with devastating answers, living in flowering of love that controlled the urge of asking for more, which controlled the urge of jealous possession. Neither Sarah nor Krishna was dating other people; they behaved like couples in a normal relationship. They liked each other, felt a tender passion in each others touch, in their genteel lovemaking, yet they were prevented by their own unique perceptions from defining the relationship; from calling it love. ********* While the relationship of Krishna and Sarah did not have a defining logic; stock markets across the world continued defying all logic, living by the day, by small pleasures of daily gains, pushing to a not-mentioned future, questions with devastating answers. Everything became two-dot-oh; the new-sayers came out from hiding and ravaged the naysayers, declaring themselves vindicated on newness of the economy. Technology was finally the panacea that will create an evergrowing affluence. Globalization and unparalleled wealth creation around the world once again raised hopes of ending history in an upsurge of increasing opulence. Millions were being removed out of poverty in Asia and Africa, developed world moved to the next level of civilizational attainment, engineering of wealth from thin air enabled ownership of houses by the poorest. Mass prosperity and popular culture were the utopia the world headed towards in accelerated speed fueled by the magic of numbers created by quants of the Wall Street. Civilization blossomed in booming multiplicity of networks, distinction between virtual and real blurred further. Krishna found himself for the third time doing a presentation in room of the Bank. Bug of the millennium was past, it was less than a decade after the disaster that did not happen because Chakra turned in boxes of the Bank, and IPO of source was declared in newness of the world. The world
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had changed beyond recognition for Krishna, but surprisingly his first impression of the room was of an unshakable permanence. The van Goghs were still original, Chippendales still old. And the Gentleman in the picture still smiled, shined and polished like new. Krishna was early and alone setting up his presentation, he reflected on the room, the theater of his greatest performances. He wondered what really changed in the world and what is fundamental to strength of the room that does not change. He noticed the new screens of high-resolution videoconferencing. Technology had evolved to sit along with van Goghs, Chippendales and the Gentleman. The Gentleman seemed to be pleased. His worries of doom and crashes had not come true. He figured his kids were smarter than him and knew their thing. He had become a bit relaxed towards the scandalous propositions being presented to torment his spirit because despite his discomfort the Bank kept growing. Over the years he concluded that his jitteriness was of his ignorance rather than errors of judgment of his children; did he not do gigs in his life which send shivers down spines of old gentlemen of his time? The Gentleman recognized Krishna. He remembered him to be the guy who saved the Bank from doom of the millennium, he knew him from the skyrocket technology stocks which he pioneered. Krishna was now also his child; the Gentleman in the picture welcomed the outsider, who was now an insider the prodigal son who always belonged to the Bank, to take up his rightful position; the Jumping Morgan winning insurmountable heights. The father-son conversation was interrupted as others walked in. Audience for the days presentation poured inside. Krishna was relaxed, unlike previous occasions when he had stood up to speak in the room. Several factors comforted him: no one was a client everyone was an insider his familiarity over years, consent of the Gentleman, destruction of his daemons. Over the years participants of his presentation had become younger, their pins of the stripe less sharp. And among them sat the girl who Krishna loved; he felt proud of Sarah, sitting in room of the boys set above the ceiling of glass; she felt proud of Krishna, the only non-white among members of the room; they felt connected in their achievements of claiming their seats in the echelon of wealth; they were the poster boys of change in old room of the Bank. Krishna stood up, first thing by reflex a leftover habit of earlier occasions he looked out of the window to ground himself to his Towers of strength; in the gasping moment reality struck, he saw the haunting hole
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in painting of the city, devoid of anchoring of ego-alter-ego he momentarily panicked, faltering he looked around in nervousness to find his new sheet. Sarah looked at him in pride, her eyes wished him well, acknowledging wish of the eyes he felt secured once again, clicked the remote in his hand, first slide slid up on the screen. A general survey of the economy, its current trajectory, he explained the rationale for why the world is entering a phase of unmatched globalized prosperity. He knew this part was known to the audience, not very interesting for them, he made the prelim crisp, short and rhetorical. Then he dwelled on results of the prosperity, direct increase in homeownerships, people freed from poverty into dreams of the middle class. He then explained the magic of value creation by risk reduction, creating portfolios less volatile than individual assets. Having set the context of social prosperity, homeownership, and value creation by risk mitigation, in his first few slides, he hit to meat of the day for which boys and girl had gathered in the room. Gentleman in the Picture smiled approvingly anticipating continuation of the story. Second part of the story was a different context; capitalism of the twenty-first century ironically is socialism of the bourgeoisie, run by camaraderie of intermediaries communities mutual-funds pensionschemes insurances banks local-organizations municipalities wealth of the world belongs to the middleclass savers in trust with the trusties of socialized capital. The institutions had exhausted their investing limits for equity; their mandates required portfolio diversification for securing savings of the society from volatile encyclical whims of the market. Treasury and corporate bonds do not pay enough. He showed that there is a demand for debt securities that paid more, if investors are convinced of risks not being high backed by tangible security, secured in real estate. Krishna then jumped into details, the third part of his story, the magical bringing together of supply and demand, people want to own homes which they cannot pay for, people want return on their money without risk. Individually and alone the two propositions are a study in absurdity. Magic of joining them together in securitization of quants, it became the glory of financial engineering. Krishna explained his scheme of buying mortgages from banks, combine risky and safe ones, securitize it into bonds with stable credit ratings, sell it to returns of hungry institutions, the Bank will make a welldeserved profit, ingenuity of intermediary, a win-win for all, fueling further future prosperity of the world. Boys and girl in the room were impressed, the insiders knowledge of outside was impressive. One of them finally said, It was good that you left
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the school behind, for such genius they may have given you the prize for economics, but we will make millions of it. There was applause; they unanimously decided to go ahead with Krishnas plan. He felt a disturbing itch in his termite-eaten remaining bit of his microform baton. He felt his ego soar; he felt an urge to scratch, not knowing why he felt a sense of shame. Gentleman in the Picture was at loss to decide whether to panic or smile. He remembered time of the Crash and Depression when they had come flapper to him. He wondered where will they flipper to now? ********* Summer of Two-thousand Six was a climax of sorts for Krishna cruising across the American Dream in his Bentley convertible with Sarah. They left NYC along with Kyle for an upstate drive where Kyle was to attend a two-week summer camp in Adirondack National Park. The urban conglomeration of city slowly started fading away into the suburbia of Westchester County, communities with large red houses, picketed gardens and treed streets off the main highway, a fleeting glimpse of suburban wealth, of the fortified civilization of perfected clones, abode of the Brahmins of new age of Boston raising the new generation in peace and tranquilness of whiteness of their neighborhoods and prosperity of the communities. Drive on the interstate in shining country summer, passing by the mammoth lorries transporting imports from China to the sprawling Walmarts of suburbs and inner cities, spasmodically throttling hives of black leather and shining steel of cross-country bikers, Harleys in magical existence of Hell and Angels, on beelines of gas-guzzlers, boats and bikes on roofs screaming blithely of vacations; and an occasional Gray Hound carrying a bit of underbelly not visible from inside the Bentley. And after every score-odd miles the interchange, signaling an approaching country town, on both sides of the road signage templatized in civilizational perfection, like the right-angled grid of Manhattan streets, blocks of gas stations, motels, food joints, warehouse retails, replicated in a perfect order, in same proportions, in the same colors and names of consistent branding, in town after town, only a name on the map to distinguish before the town promptly fades again into the highway cutting through the greenery of fields and forests, yellow arches, I am loving it, waving goodbyes, before the next set magically reproduces itself in a mirror image after another score miles; repeating ad nauseam the bigness of Big America, larger-than-life size, America Size; and also sporadically a trashy trailer park, canopy of white, wheels of black; and who might be living there? No-No-No Not possible, Not Here, Not in the Heart of America. Krishna had grown up in the land where a drive through highways
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celebrated the riot of chaos and colors. He felt an air of artificiality in the ruthless corporatization of non-corporate America. The American Dream perfected standardized packaged and delivered at drive-ins of the interstate freeways. The stereos of Bentley played, We are all going on a summer holiday. Three of them sang along in gaiety, along with the chorus of whistling winds blowing over open top of the convertible. Once inside the Adirondack National Park, standardization of the country was left behind to welcome the verdure of wilderness in forests and streams of Mohawk country. It had been a long drive; twilight was slowly setting in; disappearing rays of summer sun singing the Mohawk song of the disappeared antiquity. Before nightfall they reached the camp. There were arrangements for night stay for parents dropping their kids late. Kyle was bundled to a group of arriving children guided by the sweetly whistle of the comely blonde young lady chaperoning in a baseball cap, sweatshirt and jeans, bubbling the energy of arrivals. Sarah and Krishna checked into their tent, stretching backs and legs of sitting through the state of New York. Next day Sarah and Krishna drove to another location of the park, a trekking trail separate from Kyles summer camp. They went for a hike in the forest. The long walk amidst flora and fauna undisturbed by tickers of markets, undiluted by signage of McDonalds, far from the madding crowd, filled in by fresh air and sound of flowing streams, was a serene relaxing rejuvenating experience. In the evening they camped at a small site deep in the forest. There were a few more hikers in the name of human presence, which dissolved as night grew in sounds of the woods. From insects to big game, all ignored the sore of human presence and went on with their natural lives. Under the canopy of stars in clear summer sky, two successful bankers sat on a boulder by their small tent, quietly staring into the small fire hikers had prepared to heat food and boil water. They wanted to talk, to talk about future, to talk about possibilities, relationship, but the natural serenity was too profound to be disturbed by human complications. They kissed. The conversation instead took a turn of sharing memories, stories from lives left behind. In their bivouac beside fire in night of the forest they shared a meal of nostalgia, recreating reminiscences of growing up families siblings friends. The nostalgic trail of conversation around fire symbolizing the crossroad where before lunging into a decision of the turn to take consciousness zooms back on memories and choices of the past to process data for the decision at hand. Next day they hiked back to where the car was parked, and started on the next phase of their vacation. The plan was to take a week-long sojourn
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at Hamptons; they were invited by a big guy of the Bank who had a sprawling beach-front mansion in South Hampton. After the week, Krishna was scheduled to fly to India for the rest of his vacation. After towering scrapers of the city, drive across suburbia and country, and wilderness of the park, Hamptons was a yet-another alternate universe Krishna encountered that summer; sandy beaches, beautiful women, seductive bikinis, wealthy parties, art and music, all mixed in the lavish list of summer cocktails. Krishna suddenly discovered in the evening parties of Hamptons that he was already a celebrity among the vacationing Bankers. Everyone wanted to meet the chief, the genius behind subprime securitization. The instruments created by Krishna and sold by Sarah were by now a fire at the Street and security markets around the world. They were sold in tons to institutions of all stripes; everyone wanted a piece of action. The success had made Krishna a fast-rising star, and just before he left for vacation he had his promotion along with the large bonus. Bankers from around the world, guests in Hamptons, conversations revolved around congratulations and investments. Added to his fame of innovative instruments, his being an Indian, the story of source IPO, all combined to become a Street folklore. Everyone asked him for tips about investing in India. Krishna blabbered some advice without disclosing he was nor an expert neither working in emerging-market space. The conversations aroused Krishnas interest, he felt important, he felt proud; he felt good for himself and good for his country where everyone wanted to bet their money. He made a mental note to research, be more prepared. There was another circle of bankers, their trade some distance removed from Krishnas; commodity traders. Conversations in their group revolved around oil and rising prices of everything being sucked in by China; giant appetite of the Chinese Juggernaut, deteriorating situation in Iraq, unwillingness of Iran to open up its oil to full potential of international markets, were the flavor of their chats. Someone introduced Krishna to an obviously-wealthy and influentiallooking Arab. He felt a restless vibe talking to Adnan, who told him he was a director in a fashion house, and smiled to reveal he was much more. Yes, I have heard of creations and Jean-Pierre. He designed the name and logo of an earlier company I worked for, source. Krishna politely acknowledged Adnan after the introduction. We didnt have a capital letter in the name. Adnan smiled. Yes, it is Jean-Pierres trademark. He likes movement. He likes running letters. He says its more dynamic. He continued the acknowledging ritual of mating power, I have heard so much good stuff about you; the genius who created the magic of mortgage bonds.
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Oh, it is just an application of a well-established theory in practice. But to common folks like me, it is simply brilliant, secured high returns. I have just introduced your colleague Sarah to some Europeans interested in buying this stuff. The crowd of wealth in bungalows and beaches of Hamptons gave him little private time with Sarah. Vacations of bankers in Hamptons are times for networking, to oil parallel channels of information sharing, to cement bonds of the old-boy clubs across banks, across professions of wealth and power, across the world. The competitors on streets are friends in Hamptons; the China Walls of banking departments that run across the Street do not extend till Hamptons. The political differences that spill blood on streets of the world behave in such decency in Hamptons, that not a drop of drink is spilled from any of the glasses. Krishna was shocked at times; conversations bordering ethics and legality which can make the toughest of bankers shriek were gulped down with ease over exotic cocktails of the beach. He had finally arrived; boardroom was the inside, Hamptons is the insider. On the last day of his short stay at Hamptons, Krishna dared a long swim in the sea, not parallel to the shore but jutting out in the vast loneliness, he didnt know why, he felt possessed, the horizon inviting him, he doused to wade through the foamy crowd of surfers and bathers, to swim beyond the fun and frolic, not thinking much he just went on stroking his limbs, in a line receding from the sands of shore, he passed the regular swimmers, he passed the aerialing surfers, he covered more than hundred meters, the waves were strong but had stopped breaking in surf, his motion in two dimensions, one controlled by his will of stroking limbs, another undulating up-and-down determined by the waves as he crossed them oneafter-another, boats littered around, including ones with the lifeguard flags, giving him the comfort of human presence, he continued swimming outwards. After another hundred meters and more than half an hour of continuous swimming, he felt languor in his limbs. He slowed down to a float. Krishna was fit but not athletic, swimming was like any other recreational activity, he had never swum so far into the sea before, he felt a deep happiness in floating loneliness watching the horizon suspended in rhythm of the waves. He looked back, he saw the crowded beach, people in water, all appearing small, he felt the distance covered, he felt a tinge of fear realizing he is far away from shore and tired, he tried avoiding thoughts of fear and enjoy the waving relaxation, his limbs regaining strength, only mild strokes required to keep him steady in his float, floating backwards, staring in the cloudless morning sky. Krishna once again turned towards the horizon, slightly paddling to
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maintain his position, he saw waves approaching, lifting him up, pushing him slightly backwards and then ignoring him on their onwards journey to meet the land, and before he is stable again, another one coming back, pulling him forward towards vastness of the ocean. Paddling to stability in motion of the waves Krishna speculated in his imagination, a larger-thanlife wave that can strike him to drown in its power, his limbs felt an anemic helplessness of imagination, fear ran in his nerves for a moment before he convinced himself of un-realness of the thought. But is it unreal? Is it not possible for waves turning their emotions? Yes, true, man has colonized nature, but does not nature on occasions remind him of his folly, the trifle nature of his powers. Yes! Despite the boats, despite lifeguards, if the waves feel like it, it will all be over in an unknown moment. The thought of drowning in a moment of time, sucked into waves in the power of nature, away from the meekness of man, made Krishna relax instead of being afraid; the thought by magic expunged his fears. His Karma, his Destiny, was to swim; the swimmer does not decide destiny of the waves. For the last time he stared at the clear vision of circling horizon, sea melting into sky, sucking his soul into singularity of the union, his vision of an unending journey, journey to the destination of ever-receding horizon. Krishna felt relaxed; reenergized, his limbs once again ready to stroke, to swim back to the crowd of Hamptons, to the world of swimming, a world with its own waves. That evening Krishna drove back to the City. Sarah stayed back to complete the rest of her vacation. When they were planning the summer, Krishna had mentioned that he will go to India for a week to meet friends and family, and to attend the wedding of a cousin; she wanted to come along, he wanted her to come along; but neither did Krishna ask nor did Sarah suggest; it was left to that. That evening in Hamptons they kissed and said their byes till time they resume work again in the Bank, and once again things were neither suggested nor asked. Krishna reached his apartment in financial district; he called Iyer to check on the plan. Iyer, Hema and Moulik were flying to Delhi next morning along with him on their own annual trip to India. The family was all set to go. Krishna unpacked his stuff and repacked it for the third leg of his summer vacation. It was an early morning flight; Iyer picked Krishna up on way in a predawn taxi drive to John F. Kennedy International Airport. There was some traffic on road but the early-morning speed on streets of New York completely hid reality of the city which will bubble with crowds and bumper with cars in few hours. It took less than half of the hour-and-half long drive from downtown to JFK on a busy day; flying over in darkness
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lined and lit by street lights of Brooklyn Borough sleeping in peace of repaired windows and homeownerships; the lights reflecting emotions of the artists in graffiti on walls of the neighborhoods. JFK was a different sight, a twenty-fourhour time, hobbling with people, activities of all kind, ignoring the pre-dawn peace outside. The Iyers and Krishna went through the tiring ritual of air travel check-in immigration security and finally found themselves settled in peace of the business class of American Airlines direct flight to New Delhi. In the last decade when Krishna was a frequent flyer to States for business of source, there were very few direct flights to choose from, he mostly changed planes in one of the European hubs, but with emergence of India as a leading business destination, fast-integrating with the world, many airlines had started direct flights. Krishna found an unintended pun of history in this aviation-industry trend; finally the land of Karma and the land of Dreams were connected without the European hinge of the Queen in between. Sipping champagne, enjoying the business-class hospitality, cattle herded behind curtains, Krishna felt a nostalgic excitement of homecoming. It had been few years since he visited India. The last time he had met the extended family and cousins was at Golys wedding, already six years back. He had visited when Golys daughter was born, five years back, and the last time he had met his parents and Goly, was four years ago, on vacation during his early years at the school, when his niece Shruti was one year old. It was another wedding in the family, Krishnas first cousin; it will once again be a large gathering. He felt the excitement of stories of journeys shared among siblings and cousins, Indians from over the world, the ritual remembrance of summer vacations in Patna; drums being beaten to put adults in submission of peace for buying candies. Last few years in the school and the Street he had read so much about India, the magic of its growth, the stock markets tripling in value, everyone crazily attempting to jump on to the bandwagon of future. He imagined all the changes, he imagined the excitement. He longed to know, he was getting impatient to reach, to see his India, to meet his family, to meet Shruti; he felt sad for the four-year gap of visiting India, the thought of his niece not recognizing her Mamu troubled him. He knew he will make good all his absence. His life now was back on track, he had left behind the days of craziness of the thesis, he was now established in the bank, he was a managing director, he will take more frequent trips to India, to his family; he will make it a point like Iyer, to do at least an annual trip. Seeing Hema and Moulik play in aisle of the airplane made Krishna imagine Shrutis growing up. How did she look as a four-year-old? He
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longed for family, a family of his own. The thought stream of nostalgia and longing was broken as the plane touched down declaring arrival at New Delhi. His excitement of an emerging India seen through the editorials in Western Press died down as soon as he entered the terminal of the airport. Suddenly the world was transformed to another reality, the reality of endless crowds, serpentine queues, foul stench, peeling walls, chaotic noises and colors, shining bright colors reflecting the heat waiting in welcome outside the terminal. Four years of being away, of flights of nostalgic imagination, was trampled to oblivion by the reality of Indira Gandhi International Airport. Welcome back, find the shine, find it in filth, go through birth pangs of the airport before the land reveals its beauty, no, not revealing as in a show, but a beauty to be felt, felt in the deep connection, beauty underlying in the craziness of singeing chaos. Krishna and the Iyers took transit to the domestic terminal, from where Krishna was to take the flight to Patna, and the Iyers had their flight to Chennai. Both Iyers and Krishnas parents had moved out of Botala to settle in their respective hometowns after their retirement from Botala Steel Company. Patna flight was an hour after the Chennai flight; after waving goodbye to Iyers, Krishna spent his time browsing covers at a small bookstall, the latest business bestsellers from America, Cosmopolitans and Forbes, their desi sisters, all announcing the arrival of a nation, subtleties of change, Fortunes concealed in crowds of continuity. Patna Airport was better, it was much smaller, only a couple of flights daily, quieter and less crowded. The Karmic shock of entry in India faded as soon as Krishna entered the secured air-conditioning of his parents house. There was huge excitement, Krishnas mother had prepared a whole range of delightful food; she could not stop insisting on his trying the next dish. It was an emotional moment, a proud moment. Congratulations, for becoming a managing director. His mother said beaming in pride. Thank you. Not to dampen your excitement but just to let you know, it is not that big deal in the Bank. A MD there is not like the MD of Botala Steel who is the supreme boss. We have hordes of MDs at the Bank. It is not a board level position. Its more like a General Manager in Botala parlance. Yes, I know. His father pitched in with a researched awareness of his sons career graph, I have already told your mother, but at your age, even a General Manager equivalent in such a big prestigious bank is very commendable. We are all very proud of you.
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Yes it is good, decent pay and a nice life; I bought a house in NYC, damn expensive. You people should plan to come over next summer. You can have a trip to other places in the States. Goly and her husband Aman along with Shruti arrived the next day from Kolkata where they had settled. It was still a couple of days left for the wedding. Cousins started pouring in from over the world. Most of Krishnas family had houses in Patna, those who didnt, stayed with one of the relatives. Everyone gathered at his uncles place as the long-drawn formalities of a Hindu marriage began two days before the actual wedding. The rituals were an excuse for family gatherings, reams and reams of conversations flowed amidst continual singing and dancing. It was a gathering of varied professions lawyers accountants bankers professors but most of all engineers and doctors. All spread across the cities of India and world, all with their unique story of success. Krishna felt a daunting feeling for the combined power of the family. Other than catching-up stories, two themes underlined the discussions, nostalgic and cynical arguments of the India story, and cornering of the yet singles of marriageable age. Krishna found himself stuck in the middle of both set of conversations. Its India where the future is, cousins who had not migrated stated. Well, it may be, but the airports still suck, the ones who did, countered. That will change. The government has already floated global tenders for building new World Class International Airports in all major cities. It will take ages. You know how the government works here. No longer like the old days. Things get done if there is political will. Look at Nitish, even Bihar is changing. You can be out in Patna after dark. Nitish and Bihar were the genuine miracles in making, it was one thing where arguments converged, cynics conceded to hope. Yes! If this can happen in Bihar, then there sure is hope. Shine of the shining may not be all that long, but is still far away. Yes, we have waited in democratic patience for ages. What is few more decades? One thing is certain; our children will be grownups in a very different country. But modernization does not mean westernization. Look at Krishna here, why does he not get married like a good Indian boy? An aunt bumped in to steer the conversation more towards her taste. I know he is a rich big-shot banker, but why single at this age? Good question aunty. So, Krishna, tell us, what are your plans? Do you have a firang girlfriend? The cousins all joined in chorus. Krishna thought for a moment and replied, Not exactly, actually I
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had been too busy with work. Why dont you let your good aunty find a nice Indian bride for you? You can give the specs and she will find an exact match. Someone joked. These days who bothers about Aunties expertise? They either do love marriages or arrange it through this animal called Internet. The aunty protested in her disgust of changing times. It was fun, food and family, doses of Bollywood DVDs, all sprinkled around an elaborately rich Indian wedding, filled up with singing and dancing, flowering in expensive saris and chic kurta Pajamas. After the wedding, cousins left, Krishna had a few days at home with Goly, Aman, Shruti and his parents. Krishna spent most of his time playing with Shruti, and long conversations with family over multiple meals; food being stuffed down his throat by a mother refusing to take cognizance of his age. Why should I? She counter-protested to Krishnas protest. First you take cognizance of your age and get married, then ask me not to insist too much on eating. Everyone laughed. Like most good things in life Krishnas vacation finally came to an end. He flew back to NYC with a heavy heart, saddened by the parting, but as soon as he landed in JFK, his bearings changed once again; he was rested and ready, prepared to join work next morning after a good nights sleep in his multimillion-dollar and still-rising apartment in downtown Manhattan, to resume his life in the Bank on the Street.

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