RK Koul
A man, who has never seen me, never heard of me, has never come across me; the man- whom I’ve never seen, never heard of, or have never come across in any distant past; how did it come to be, that our whole and sole purpose in life, leaving all else behind, has become an ever craving hunger for each other’s blood!
Our meagre familiarisations’ occur only in our dreams. When we are not killing each other on most nights, on few rare ones, we chit chat. We never care to ask of each other’s names for it doesn’t matter. Accusations or arguments are of no interest to us either, for the fate of the other has already been decided by our cynical un-budgeable self righteousness, and we ourselves have chosen us to be the most competent self appointed executioners of the other. We don’t waste time in trying to learn of each other’s past, as what’d be of interest to us would rarely go beyond flaunting each other’s taxi dermal heads, from our guest rooms introducing it to be of a terrorist we so bravely managed to hunt in the wild.
This reminds me somehow, what similarity we share despite all the differences. Each one of us, firmly believes the other, to be, a terrorist. I try looking up the definition of one online the next morning. To my surprise, there’s not a single one that could satisfy my objective soul. Its revealed that somehow each religion/country/ organisation has come up with its own in order to blame the opponent and somehow with a discreet partiality has managed to prove oneself to be the victim of an unending torment. Hence, in return, giving rise to the Messiahs of justice like ourselves sent exclusively by the different higher powers that we separately believe in.
Terrorism is a blooming and the second richest industry in the world after data mongers. If a Geenie popped out of the magical lamp and asked for your three wishes, they could rarely be something beyond Money, Power and Love. Join us, and they come for free. However, just one tiny unimportant thing we are required to keep at stakes for the same. Its our meagre irrelevant mortal lives which our young hearts so vehemently desire to “live fast & die young”, rather than choosing to face the odds of an old age. We hope to someday become immortal, in hearts of those many unimportant ones who we might never ever be able to see.
It wouldn’t be odd, to confess the same in reality – our first words that we speak to each other in this dream – had we ever gotten a chance to interact face to face with each other on a rather peaceful day somewhere away from our responsibilities. “In a different world, under a certain different circumstances, we might as well could have been best of the friends”, we say at the same time. Confused at first but laughing together after the following moment.
What appears next somehow in this weird dream, is our drained mothers gone pale from wailing, standing right behind each one of us. They are staring us squarely in the face with their now dark circled teary eyes. Their eyes have questions that we brave hearts just can’t dare to listen. They seek answers that we know we won’t ever be able to provide. Suddenly the environment is dark and full of guilt. We look at each other and the mutual dilemma that just the two of us seem to have fallen into, breaks over us a realisation like never before. We seek the king, who’s pawns we’ve been playing as, all this while.
The king was nowhere to be found, but his booming industry with all its cashiers, advertisers, lucrative offers, deals, scams, inventories, promoters, preachers, salesmen, marketing staff, etc opens our eyes unlike reality. The answers are still nowhere to be found but the right questions, start framing in our minds now.
“Would you walk a step too brother, if I walked one, towards you?”, he asked.
“I’ll walk 10 bhai Jaan, aap ek Kadam badha ke to dekho!”, I smile.
