SURWAN STREET

The Toron bulb lights up the Lif Eq factory on Surwan street. Its light is strange. White nor yellow, flickering with a monsoon buzz, green borders that crackle into fuzz. The music across the street is a slow playing romadone playing old songs. Then comes jazz, slower and more complicated than its predecessor.

The pins pricks of light in the gray darkness light up , little red-yellow-green beans of alternating paths across the street. In zigzag, tied up, lengths of cheap celebration. They walk out from their parched wooden doors with knives in their hands, that had mud on them from slaying their Street goddesses. The inside of houses ablaze with the flame of candles that flickered along with the mercury buzz, yellow-white faltering of the world.

Some have nose bands and lip liners. some with wrinkstreamers and marrowscoopers. Others with chins on their chests like the first discovery of their proximity by a curious kid. Some shedding tears on the shimmering tar.

The ritual of Suthila is over.

They have fed the illusion of the eyes with a more than a timid enlargement of the iris spreading their feathered wings of white across the staccato street. It seems to blaze higher for them than the commoners lined up at their windows for a glimpse of the Illames as they tip toe out . The Ilams had a ritual they once carried out maybe a 36 days ago, the same they had conducted 467 days back, a novelty that amused them and kept the commoners well entertained.

Somewhere in the Naag Ages came a immense company of newt and blades that discovered the last rule of mathematics. With this came their enormous wealth and entire success. It was like they ruled the whole, even the Dream. Here was the equation that ruled the world. Singular and specific for each being, it was a conquerors pantomime of his own achievements. This gave them the power to spread tentacles across the Surwan street. There was nothing else, but this street. Nothing. A street called World. The life of the Surwan street was ruled. Then came the revolution.

That is where I come in. I of the Ilams.

Me , a sallow man with slack jaws and pockmarked skin. A refugee among the hallowed dreamers of the community of the Ilams. They were semi religious. I know you dont know what that means. I couldn’t understand at first too. A bunch of creatures that lived with the fear of Surima and the belief that he did not exist. They would worship him and deny his existence simultaneously, like a man I remember who denied saying his last uttered sentence; like it never existed. His memory was fine, a normal guy who however had an innate contradiction built into his cranium. A compulsive liar you would say, but hell no, this was odd , strange, a man who believed in this irony.

One stared at him with disbelief as it spewed out of him, the sick terms and covered up phrases. Maybe he would deny it, maybe he would just continue from where he left off. It was hard to imagine and ,I must confess, I questioned whether I just imagined the whole thing too.
It didn’t help that I was on Kurn most of the time. A perfect hallucogenic, no.. more. More of a Expander. I suppose you’re not familiar with that term too. Well, cant waste my time explaining the complicated stuff, but for starters it looked like Toy Slime, that Masina brought back from the Surwan market and smelled like bee wax. They found it on the Surwan corner, burning up and rejuvenating at the same time, static until we tapped into it. Then it started growing. The more we took away, the less burnt up, but it could never stop burning. It was not a degree of flame, or the amount it burnt but a more organic process that had no measure of volume or density or weight. More or less that is all we could see.

And being on Kurn was like that too.
More or less bright, more or less moving, more or less transforming.
Never one thing or the other. One couldn’t be sure.
Was it?.. or? Yes. Something like that . Maybe.

So one day I was on Kurn and the company passed by.. Or? ..Maybe . Well this is the story I saw. Never really know what happened, or if it happened at all. Is this a figment of my imagination?. Ok. No. lets not get into that. Let the clarity in, ease the shuddering diaphragm like pressure of uncertainty and speak.

The Company walked in with Spurds, their weapons that only worked in the East of Surwan street, each region had a weapon that worked on their people. But what if an Eastie went West. Well, one has got to take a risk haven’t they.? So the company walked in, or was it the Herders?. Maybe the Herders, but the Company is fine as an example. Ok then. The Company it is. Was it the Durbas?. Lets not get confused. I’m not on Kurn now dammit.

The tents that kill space are sucking it in. Rich magenta and rust, soft and elastic, putrid murderers of the most precious thing on Surwan street.

Space.

They rise and fall, like heavy breathing dragons, a vacuum pump of another dimension. I stand next to them, watch space vanish. I watch space vanish by the nanometer. Would I vanish too? Never tried it. These are the things one feels here, not sees or senses. The feeling that space is vanishing. How does one describe that?

All this cranium crunching is distracting me from my story. So here goes.

The company, they walked in. I could see their Spurds tensing as they detected fear. They never usually came to us, for we were the most obedient of functions. But something was wrong they figured and had come to wipe the virus out. He was hiding here and even I was sure of that . Some kind of higher bug that could not be grasped. This was the one creature who would change the fate of Surwan Street. This one would dilate it into a place where each being controlled itself, where the rule of the Company dissipated and died and Surwan Street lived another life.

The Prophetic burroots said that this being would be the only one who could send the Company into the 15th cycle without ever being able to come back out. The Ilam with the revolutionary bug, something that was never heard of, for the Ilams had the reputation of being the calmest, most obedient bunch of them all.

I never understood that, since I myself tortured the little burroots, the revered animals(the only ones with developed brains, close to being prophets for the Ilams), with the wrinkstreamers and marrowscoopers(the one weapon that could hurt the Company, hence was eradicated from the face of Surwan street.
I think I had the last and only one) that Surwan street shivered at the sight of. I just thought the burroots were sick creatures, like many a man that hates slime or geckos. All this I did in utter secrecy though. No one knew of my work (It is quite a hard feat to torture the little rascals, more like work than play). I did it in the 15th cycle. The very last of open day before it closed into a vacuum, this was a time where all the Ilams surrendered to the effects of the descending night and fell into the Dream, the one arena , the grand coliseum of the Ilams collective imagination. None was aware of the others real person.

Well, anyway it was during this period that I, though an Ilam by birth, fell into nothing. They never found out since they could never stay in the real world by the 15th cycle. They just assumed I had got back into Surwan street with them, maybe a little before time. I never had the heart to mention my abnormality. But there I was, a being who was strikingly different from any of the Ilams and they never realised. It was like a young dream of walking naked into the Collective but no one noticing you naked. They just walk on and talk to you like any one else. And after a while you stop wondering if you actually are naked. Soon the inhibition vanishes and you start running around and being, all of it hanging out there, yet you not caring.

So slowly I forgot my sense of separate identity and just never thought of it. The thought of being different after a while vanished, I felt one with the Ilam. Were they on Kurn all the time I think now, a permanent biological state of uncertainty or changed belief , were they just unsure if I was a part of them. Did I unknowingly forcedly accept myself into this clan? I will never know.

But that cycle when the Company rushed into our home burned like the Kurn on its strongest cycle. I looked around ,feverish. They were searching all our faces, slowly with their Spurds at hands, wriggling in hasty aggression. A daze started hitting me, my brain coiled at itself, almost trying to wrap around itself, a suicidal animal. As they searched, it grew and everything around me shuddered. I wanted to scream at them, tell them to stop doing that. But no voice was heard from me. I looked around to see if others felt the same way. Everyone was quiet, a perfect Ilam gathering. I still couldn’t find the virus, in that lot of Ilams, they seemed so timid and weak. I guess the Company couldn’t too, since they just stood there observing, straining.

The haze increased, a shivering mass of space( was I being space-vanished?) inside my head, but as I reached for the rest-slab it just shot up my spine into the back of my brain. A scourging fire it felt and then what happened was so fast yet so slow, it was over in a few instants. The Company seeing me dazed and rest back against the slab aimed their Spurds at me. One fired hastily and as it hit me I thought I would leave for ... where would I go? vacuum? or see the Dream finally? But nothing happened. They all started firing their excited Spurds and in a shuddering rage I reached into my berth, pulled out my marrowscooper, my only defense, aimed it at them and fired.

---------------------------------------------
---
The Lif Eq factory was shut as I looked at it from across the road. No more code, no equation that set your brain functioning. No more achievement pantomime. No more lights shined across Surwan street. There was utter silence.
A burroot scuried across. No one ran behind it with a worshipping candle.
The Ilams finished with their silly Ritual of Suthila.
This is all a pity , I thought.
To see Surwan Street like this, each being separate unto itself. And to think I was the virus.
I who never saw the Dream.
I who never fell into the cycles.
I felt like a new species, a different one.
I , who finally gave this world their pathetic independence.
ANd I who shall live to see them tear it apart.

For the beggar in the train at dusk-

Visit in the morning and do your thing.
Sell your act and we may be obliged to part with
some stainless steel coins.
Do not wait for the whole schmigeroo to descend on us,
with their whips and dholaks, lyres and ektaras,
strings on their caps,
blind, crippled, impostors of gods,
painted blue or with tails and monkey faces,
with brooms,
Acting like they wish to clean that T-shaped space under your feet,
with running noses and matted hair,
disgruntled eyebrows or vacant stares.
They swarm in hordes.
And then the elegantly garish, make-up laden eunuchs,
clapping at you in authoritative sexual blackmail,
reaching out to shock your senses and other things.,
reaching out , so only fear exists.
As long as your money in your pocket does.

That’s not to say that you don’t get the job done,
you don’t get the dirt off the floor,
but when you ask,
we are tired,
filing empty cups and open hands, spent coins.
Wishing none like you shall ever come,
And hushing you away with the annoyed flick of a hand.