Chapter 3 - The Overture

The spanking new Chapter 3

The lecture ended leaving young K with other things on his mind as usual. He never really belonged in this maddening crowd. His eyes were fixed on Sana's fingers as they rolled through her hair. She was pure. She was clean. It was as if this revolting hideousness all around him would never touch her. She stopped talking to her friends for a moment to turn around and he looked away. Sana, he thought, was one of God's better creations. She was a dream.

"I think that K ain't that intense as he comes out", Sana whispered to one of her friends. Sana, easily every boy's dream date in that college, couldn't understand why she was so attracted to K. "He looks weird though. Almost hideous!", said her friend. It was the same revolting hideousness which would leak into his face in his youth and then consume him as an adult. But now, innocent children whizzed past him, with faces twisted by innocence into smooth blobs. K's nose twitched as he smelt the sick odor of incompetence trailing the whizzing faces of his classmates. Sana was his, he had no doubt that she was going to be his. The rest of the world was too ugly and grim for someone so virginal and pure as Sana.

His classmates' faces slowed and stalled into a drift as the bell stopped ringing. Their screams reduced to murmurs. The murmur sounded like nails on a blackboard. An ugly hum of decadence, a discordant, incongruous melody for Sana's beautiful exit from the stage. The dream of Sana tapered into reality. She left the school building, the last student and the last peon left too. Young K never followed her out. He always left after her and everyone else, waiting for the school to empty, so that he could savor the day's sighting of Sana in the absence of the world. In loneliness and silence. It was just after the turn of the twentieth century and Delhi was the home of the new generation. A generation disillusioned by the politicians and the wars of the past. A generation that wanted to rebel against the system and change it for the better. There couldn't have been a better place.

It was always the same cafe - Green Garden. The name was little lame, but the food was good and cheap. He parked himself on his regular table at the far end and ordered a black coffee. AC/DC, a relic of the past, played somewhere in the background about getting to the top. He lit a cigarrette and waited for his friend. At the entrance of the Garden, K dropped a 10 rupee note on the beggar's lap and the beggar held out a phial of a potent absinthe-like drug. Green Fairies were never so cheap, he thought. He heated the phial with his lighter and drunk up its contents to consummate the high he got from the day's sighting of Sana. It was the same thing every evening after school. As the burning embers fell from his cigarette, he pondered about things. Random, inchoate thoughts floated in his mind, like a turbulent fluctuations in a wake.

His face was a testament to his open rebellion against everybody. The present world could go fuck itself for all he cared. And then he tried imagining how the it would go about doing this. A smile found his way through his, by now, parched lips that had once known love. Or so he had thought. He saw Sana hurry by the cafe. He crushed his cigarette and strode out. Sana was late. She ran towards home. Her father wouldn't like it if she came back late. He wasn't the understanding types. K followed her at a distance. It wasn't too difficult to keep pace with her, even under influence. At last, she reached the house. He saw her running into the house and then heard the shriek, followed by deathly silence. He waited for a few seconds and then slowly walked to the wicker gate. For some strange reason he wasn't afraid. The door was open and he went in. What he saw wasn't a pretty sight. And that angered him.

Sana lay on floor sobbing. There was blood on her face. An obnoxious swine stood over her, solemnly glowering, speaking something that K did not understand. It sure wasn't something nice. The man hardly reached up to K's face. He reeked of cheap liquor and his addiction showed in his red face and massive belly. Sana had been touched, and bloodied by the big bellied toad. K would make him pay. The drug had kicked in. Green Witches danced around cindered coal in a dark, medieval forest. They spoke of revenge in his ears. In another level of consciousness, he saw the pudgy man's drunken face swell up. It was a macabre mix of drug induced hallucination and murderous rage. Anger and the Witches overwhelmed K's senses. The shrill screams of Sana sounded like the remote curses of murdered ghosts from his future. The red cinders caught fire and K rushed towards the pudgy man in a moment of exploding anger. He caught hold of the blue metallic vase, and as he struck Sana's father, a thunk muffled by the thick skin on the man's temple caused a moment of silence. The roses fell from the vase, painting the floor sanguine with their fragrant petal-brushes. The drunkard, in his turn, fell back and lay motionless. Sana has been avenged.

The sobbing had stopped. K turned and slowly looked at Sana. K, the intoxicated knight in shining armor, said "I am sorry but there was nothing else I could do." Indeed he'd never done anything else in the throes of the drug.

***********

K watched her helplessly and then walked out of the house. The cool evening breeze made him feel awake and refreshed from a physically exhausting nightmare. He didn't know how long he walked...or where. But he found himself standing outside the old and abandoned British cemetery. He walked in stumbling, like a zombie to the grave with the grey tombstone. Col Edward Smith Esq was an incomparable host. He served an incredible Cold Turkey. And vials of green liquid,guns and cocaine that the traders of dreams and destruction had cached beneath the tombstone. This was K's refuge. His sanctuary. But the sanctuary came with a price, of enslavement and K had already become a prey to its guiles.

"You killed my father! My father!!!" his dear Sana had screamed hysterically. As though on her command, his had mind wriggled out of the drug's grapple hold and had stood facing its other source of daily kicks. "You bastard, you killed my father!". A little distance away, her terrified mother had lain shocked on the floor, with her back resting against the mortar wall of the house, Sana's four year old brother was shivering in his mother's arms. Realisation had dawned when the landlord had arrived with a gang of men with machetes, screaming Sana's father's name. He had unknowingly and prematurely finished what the landlord desired. He took pride in reminding himself that he had done it better than any of the landlord's fawning henchmen. Sana's father had offended the landlord and the landlord had left just before K came, throwing Sana to the wall in his rage. He'd be back, he had sworn, and left through the back door.

As K had contemplated his next move, he suddenly realized he was going to lose Sana due to the last few moments of madness. He felt no remorse for the killing. Only, he didn't want to get caught by the police. A day in jail would mean a day without the comfort of sighting Sana. A day in hell. The courts were quick and decisive these days, and there were three witnesses. He had to get out of this mess if didn't want to lose Sana. He had run through the back-door, jumped out into the back alley and made a dash for the only place he could call home, the Garden.

He had entered the Garden through the fire exit, where kids blew smoke rings from their cigarettes and drank from green phials. They were too passionately dancing with Green Fairies to notice the few stains of blood on his shoes and shirt. As he had walked out, in a change of clothes, he imagined the landlord walking out too, out of Sana's house, disappointed that the pleasure of killing the father wasn't going to be his. K had just denied someone the sweet taste of revenge. As he kept playing over the events of the day in head, he sought the welcoming company of the dear departed Colonel. A few more hours of calm waited for him there. He was determined to turn the Green Witches chanting in his head to Green Fairies dancing. There was a phial available for every mood these days. And if it was available in a phial, the Colonel would have it.

As the euphoric dancing of the Green Fairies subsided, the Witches took over. They chanted spells of dark, damp prisons, of sadistic wardens and screaming inmates. They chanted spells of a lone barred window high above on a wall through which the sunlight feared to tread. Of nights spent sobbing in the absence of Sana. A cold sweat descended on K. He reached for another phial of Green Fairies.

He needed an escape. For the first time in his pathetic little life, he felt what it was to be truely alone. The days of him deceiving himself that Sana would be there for him were past. He wanted desperately to believe that he was not alone. He went through his mobile looking for people he could talk to, for people who would help. The cold sweat turned into a torrent as number after number was discarded. His friend list dwindling fast. Then he stumbled upon Diwakar. The two of them were partners in a marriage of convenience of sorts. He was the lieutenant of a local politician. He maimed and killed for his boss, for money. His boss liked him, and owed him many an election success. Politics had been very volatile of late, there had been as many as four elections in the last two years and every one of them was won thanks to Diwaker's resourcefulness. K called Diwaker, with something resembling hope.

"Diwakar, I need your help."

He had to pretend. He said in a hushed, remorseful tone, "I just killed a man."

"Okay. So what the fuck am I supposed to do?"

"There are three witnesses, and I don't want to hurt any of them. But I don't want to go into prison! I can be of more use to you outside than inside a prison." K was desperate.

"We have enough men in our little army, already! We don't need yet another cold-blooded murderer."

The phone went dead. K closed his eyes. The potion of the Witches was bubbling and frothing. They danced around it in the muddy grey steam. The grey of impending gloom. He needed Diwakar's help like he had never needed it before. The shaking hands made it all the more harder to press redial. The phone continued to ring. And ring. As K tried again and again. On the third call, Diwakar answered.

"How far are you prepared to go, K?"

K didn't need to reply. There was an uncomfortably long silence.

"What do you think about plastic surgery?"