[It's been lying dead for a while now and it kind of pains my heart to see it thus. I am starting off on this. Please read and add.]
K turned the key into the lock and walked in. He chose the corner that was the least dirty and carelessly dumped his single bag there. A thick layer of dust covered the single table and chair. The matteress on the cot was ancient and probably was home to various bugs and insects. He would have to get a new one. Sunlight filtered in throught the wooden slats on the window and dust motes danced in the beams. The noises from the streets below - of hawkers crying out wares, taxis honking and people shouting in general - seemed muted and far away. He carefully cleaned a corner of the table and perched on it and began to think. He had clean slate in front of him - well, almost. He would have to make it matter, and he would have to be careful not to screw up like he had in Delhi.
Delhi, he thought, was far away. Diwakar had pulled strings and somehow he had escaped a prison sentence. He still did not understand fully what had happened, but from what little he could understand, he was in awe of Diwakar. Diwakar had faked K's death in an accident. They found a body in the mangled car on the highway with the right things on it. The coroner and the police had said that the face was crushed beyond any recognition. K was declared dead. In the meanwhile, Diwakar had arranged for the plastic surgery and since K was pretty much penniless, it had been decided that K would work for Diwakar and pay it off.
K became one of Diwakar's fixers. His job was pretty simple - whenever there was a problem, he had to fix it. With whatever means necessary. Violence was completely acceptable - a broken leg or an arm here, a missing finger there. And K did it well. It pricked his conscience sometimes, but he justified it with his continued survival and freedom.
Then one day, after about three years, Diwakar gave him an assignment that required delicate handling and trip outside Delhi. He was handed a fat envelope with tickets, money and vague instructions. Further instructions would await him at his destination, he was told. And that was how K landed up in Calcutta in that dusty room tucked away in the bylanes of Chowringhee.
[Tarun]
The room had come cheap from the cash-strapped elderly Anglo-Indian who lived there. "The city of Palaces indeed", he murmured to himself. Chowringhee had come a long way from its colonial glory days. The mansions reeked of neglect, with every elegant facade in various states of dilapidation and disrepair. He got onto his feet, and with a forlorn look, he surveyed the room. In a very apt way, the state of this room rather resembled his life at the moment. The room was nothing but a liability to the landlord. He locked the door and made his way to Sealdah railway station. The newly constructed Metro station was gleaming in just the way that the rest of the city was not. He got on a train to Kalyani, hoping his contact there would find him. The instructions Diwakar had given hadn't bothered to go further than this.
[Vivek]
The train ride was long and he killed time drinking tea out of little earthen pots. The beggars on the train sang out in rattling voices shaking their tins under his nose for money. He dropped some coins in. His good deed for the day.
[Tarun]
The man sitting next to him hadn't spoken a word since he had bumped into him at Howrah. He had just wagged a finger as if to say follow me. To K, he was the picture of the stereotypical Calcutta intellect. With a neat starched kurta, and his nose buried deep in "Shatranj Ke Khiladi", he would not have been out of place at the coffee houses. The train trundled into a station called Ghoshpara. Starched-Kurta got up and made for the door. K followed him. After an eerily silent train journey, K was more welcoming of what lay ahead. Not that it weighed on his conscience anyway.
Kalyani was a small town. Till very recently it was just another one of those towns that spring up near big factories. It was only now that Kalyani had woken up to modernization. Starched-Kurta walked out of the station and got into a cycle-rickshaw. K sat down beside him and the the rickety contraption lurched into motion with various creaks and groans. A twenty minute ride later, they were dropped outside the gates to a fairly-large sized park which was called Central Park since it was at the centre of the town. It seemed to be the main town centre with shops along the road that ran around the park. Starched-Kurta walked in and K followed him. Yet again.
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
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?"
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?"
Chapter 2 - Duty
K hated alarms. Those annoying bastards. He had decided a long back that when he finally found the people behind those hiding alarms, he would beat them with something blunt and heavy, just to take a long time doing it. The alarms were useless anyway. The honking of the BEST buses was the only thing that could wake him up. The move from Calcutta, he decided, was a good one. Living on the edge of the Cuffe Parade slum, the last remaining large anonymous shanty town after the "redevelopment" of Dharavi, He felt atlast the security felt from anonymity.
He uttered an expletive and then slowly got out of his bed, cursing. Six in the morning was an unearthly hour, but then he had a job to do - a promise to keep. A promise that was two years old, almost to the day. He quickly washed his face in the clunky basin. The cracked mirror on the wall distorted his face. It wasn't a bad face but the years of hardship were begining to show. The lines on his forehead ran deep giving him a brooding look - almost melancholic as if there was some pain deep inside that refused to go.
Although the events of last night were as fresh in his mind as the cigarette burns on his palm, he simply couldn't remember the sequence. Of course, there was her face. There was the machete, the dance and the blood. But what came first was a mystery. The Valium wasn't helping either.
As he looked into the eyes staring back at him in the mirror, there was a fleeting desire to get one of those fancy new face transplants. Like those his former employer, the Tsubaki Corp, made. The term employer was used lightly here. His work description fitted more closely to that of a hired gun than a formal employee. The Tsubaki corp, when they set up base in Calcutta, in a partnership with 1200Mics Nanotech, was hailed as the next Maruthi Suzuki or the next Hero Honda. The greatest of Indo-Japanese collaborations. Unfortunately for all, but fortunately for him, the rosy picture turned out to have more thorns than petals. A year later, the Indian arm sold its stake and moved on carrying with it the techonology that had single-handedly revolutionised the plastic surgery industry. It took the Tsubaki Corp ten years and many conveniently hidden shady deals to finally catch-up. It was his job to keep them hidden. It was just too bad that he had royally fucked up.
But just as the desire had risen, it fell out. He couldn't change his face. It was like burning your diary. The record of your life. But he sincerly hoped he could erase the memories of last night, whatever remained of them. He decided to make his way to the Statue of the Stoned Angel. It wasn't officially called that. But the name stuck in tribute to one decadent night, the single largest inebriated party started only via mass messages. The promise waited for him there.
The single dark room was dark except for the small lights that flickered on the giant screen and above the various tables. K could not see the face of the men seated around the table. The lone puddle of light from the ceiling fell on him like a cage. The twinkling lights and looming shadows of the six men made him feel hazy. Yet he was strangely awake. His hands moved surreptitiously and rested on the comfortable bulge of his Derringer. He knew he wouldn't be needing it. This was going to be quiet business - hopefully.
The Derringer was old and had seen many a battle. It was almost an heirloom. There were better pieces out there, but K preffered this one. There were memories associated with it. And for a brief moment, he thought about the past - so far back in time yet so clear - the first time he had picked up the Derringer in Calcutta. A friend had given it to him as a parting gift. There were tears in the friend's eyes that he furiously fought to hold back. They had parted under that single dim yellow bulb. That was two years ago - almost to the day.
The sound of chairs scraping against the rough cemented floor jolted him out back into reality. The empty chair at the head of the table was not empty anymore. The owner of the joint sat there. The Statue of the Stoned Angel was just one of the many places he owned. The Statue of the Stoned Angel was a timeless place, in the sense that no one really remembered when it actually opend its doors for the first time. It was a pub and everything in between. People came in for a drink, people came into look for buyers and sellers for various contraband. Many a deal was made on the tables. Countless sums of money had been exchanged under the tables. Hookers hung around with their pimps looking for prospective clients. It was a bazaar for the illegal. If you couldn't find it here, chances were you couldn't find it elsewhere in the city.
The owner spoke. He had a smooth gravelly voice. K had heard it before. A chill ran up his spine. It was indeed a bad day when a man like him forgot a voice.
"We have met before" said the voice.
"Yes" said K quietly.
"But you are unable to place me" the voice seemed amused.
"No" he lied
The silhouette came closer to the light. And K gasped! He felt the cold hard metal of the Derringer – his Derringer on his temple. The man had not lost his touch!
"So what do you plan to do now?"
"Think," said K in a whisper.
"Then think you shall!"
And the world went dark.
He uttered an expletive and then slowly got out of his bed, cursing. Six in the morning was an unearthly hour, but then he had a job to do - a promise to keep. A promise that was two years old, almost to the day. He quickly washed his face in the clunky basin. The cracked mirror on the wall distorted his face. It wasn't a bad face but the years of hardship were begining to show. The lines on his forehead ran deep giving him a brooding look - almost melancholic as if there was some pain deep inside that refused to go.
Although the events of last night were as fresh in his mind as the cigarette burns on his palm, he simply couldn't remember the sequence. Of course, there was her face. There was the machete, the dance and the blood. But what came first was a mystery. The Valium wasn't helping either.
As he looked into the eyes staring back at him in the mirror, there was a fleeting desire to get one of those fancy new face transplants. Like those his former employer, the Tsubaki Corp, made. The term employer was used lightly here. His work description fitted more closely to that of a hired gun than a formal employee. The Tsubaki corp, when they set up base in Calcutta, in a partnership with 1200Mics Nanotech, was hailed as the next Maruthi Suzuki or the next Hero Honda. The greatest of Indo-Japanese collaborations. Unfortunately for all, but fortunately for him, the rosy picture turned out to have more thorns than petals. A year later, the Indian arm sold its stake and moved on carrying with it the techonology that had single-handedly revolutionised the plastic surgery industry. It took the Tsubaki Corp ten years and many conveniently hidden shady deals to finally catch-up. It was his job to keep them hidden. It was just too bad that he had royally fucked up.
But just as the desire had risen, it fell out. He couldn't change his face. It was like burning your diary. The record of your life. But he sincerly hoped he could erase the memories of last night, whatever remained of them. He decided to make his way to the Statue of the Stoned Angel. It wasn't officially called that. But the name stuck in tribute to one decadent night, the single largest inebriated party started only via mass messages. The promise waited for him there.
The single dark room was dark except for the small lights that flickered on the giant screen and above the various tables. K could not see the face of the men seated around the table. The lone puddle of light from the ceiling fell on him like a cage. The twinkling lights and looming shadows of the six men made him feel hazy. Yet he was strangely awake. His hands moved surreptitiously and rested on the comfortable bulge of his Derringer. He knew he wouldn't be needing it. This was going to be quiet business - hopefully.
The Derringer was old and had seen many a battle. It was almost an heirloom. There were better pieces out there, but K preffered this one. There were memories associated with it. And for a brief moment, he thought about the past - so far back in time yet so clear - the first time he had picked up the Derringer in Calcutta. A friend had given it to him as a parting gift. There were tears in the friend's eyes that he furiously fought to hold back. They had parted under that single dim yellow bulb. That was two years ago - almost to the day.
The sound of chairs scraping against the rough cemented floor jolted him out back into reality. The empty chair at the head of the table was not empty anymore. The owner of the joint sat there. The Statue of the Stoned Angel was just one of the many places he owned. The Statue of the Stoned Angel was a timeless place, in the sense that no one really remembered when it actually opend its doors for the first time. It was a pub and everything in between. People came in for a drink, people came into look for buyers and sellers for various contraband. Many a deal was made on the tables. Countless sums of money had been exchanged under the tables. Hookers hung around with their pimps looking for prospective clients. It was a bazaar for the illegal. If you couldn't find it here, chances were you couldn't find it elsewhere in the city.
The owner spoke. He had a smooth gravelly voice. K had heard it before. A chill ran up his spine. It was indeed a bad day when a man like him forgot a voice.
"We have met before" said the voice.
"Yes" said K quietly.
"But you are unable to place me" the voice seemed amused.
"No" he lied
The silhouette came closer to the light. And K gasped! He felt the cold hard metal of the Derringer – his Derringer on his temple. The man had not lost his touch!
"So what do you plan to do now?"
"Think," said K in a whisper.
"Then think you shall!"
And the world went dark.
Chapter 1 - A dismal finale
He stubbed his cigarette out and called for a coffee. The coffee was, of course, lousy and it was by far the safest of all the bistro had to offer. The rain hadn't let up yet; the reflections of yellow street lights danced merrily on the puddles outside. He left the coffee untouched, left some money on the table and walked out. He felt restless, though he did not know why.
The monochromatic neon lights in the distance gleamed silently and eyed him warily. It had been two days since he had been fired from the Tsubaki Corp. A dog lay on the street waiting to die, its front, metallic paws making a scratching sound every time it tried to get up but couldn't. "Dumb fucker!", he thought as he saw the helpless dog. And as he was crossing the street, rage boiled inside him and he kicked the dog with all his strength. The yelping ceased. So did the scratching."There, I helped ease its suffering", he thought to himself as a wicked, asymmetrical grin distorted his otherwise beautiful model IV face.
He reached the other side of the street. For a moment, the light from a street lamp caught his face. There was something very strange about that face - you couldn't say what, but there was something missing - something inherently evil about it.He pulled the brim of his hat lower to cover his face. Perhaps, he feared that someone was watching him. He quickly ducked into an old alley - the darkness swallowed him up easily.
As his eyes got used to the blinding darkness, for a moment, just for a brief moment, he felt eerie, the kind that comes in late night horror movies with spooky music to accompany. The world was dystopic, he decided. It was just the way he liked it. He wouldn't have it any other way, not that he had a choice.
A dark deserted alley wasn't reassuring enough, he decided to walk through to the next street. He was wet from the rain and had not eaten much but those were the least of his worries. The recent turn of events had brought upon him an uneasiness he could not explain.
He thought about the past and as always, whenever he thought about the past, one face stood out. He wasn't sure when he'd met K. But it did not matter now. He was without a job and a man on the run. Darkness was his ally and daylight...a treacherous lover. He decided to remain in the cold embrace of the shadows and wait for a cab. He grinned mirthlessly when he ruminated about it. He had never known a life outside the shadows.
The black car appeared out of the darkness like a silent wraith. A large bulky figure dressed in rough clothes got out. Undoubtedly one of those many thugs for hire that littered the alleys like burnt cigarrette butts, he thought.
"You'd like to believe we lost track of you....Remember this-we lose track of nobody".
“Should I be impressed?”
A match flared and a cigarrette tip stared glowing. In that brief instance, he saw the thug's face. The face was remarkably hideous. Deep down, an appreciation for such deformity filled his soul. Although one could get a primitively beautiful face for a mere 5000 rupees, this streak of wild independence in his enemy held his fascination, as always.
The smoke swirled in and out of the windows of the car.
That angered the fool of that thug and he shoved him. It was a mistake – never show you anger – ever. All the same, it caught him by surprise and he fell back into a particularly large puddle. The door slammed shut, the engine roared and the car turned a corner. He picked himself up slowly his face reflected eeriely in the puddle. That was when he realized that things were anything but well. So it had come down to this at last. Too bad he had been fired from the Tsubaki Corp. At least, employment there would have guaranteed him a bargaining chip. He wished someone would put him out of his misery like the dog he had helped on the street. The tail lights of the fast receding car was the only colour in that grey alley.
The night was quiet again - almost. Another dog yelped somewhere in the distance. The dogs in Calcutta never seemed to sleep.
The monochromatic neon lights in the distance gleamed silently and eyed him warily. It had been two days since he had been fired from the Tsubaki Corp. A dog lay on the street waiting to die, its front, metallic paws making a scratching sound every time it tried to get up but couldn't. "Dumb fucker!", he thought as he saw the helpless dog. And as he was crossing the street, rage boiled inside him and he kicked the dog with all his strength. The yelping ceased. So did the scratching."There, I helped ease its suffering", he thought to himself as a wicked, asymmetrical grin distorted his otherwise beautiful model IV face.
He reached the other side of the street. For a moment, the light from a street lamp caught his face. There was something very strange about that face - you couldn't say what, but there was something missing - something inherently evil about it.He pulled the brim of his hat lower to cover his face. Perhaps, he feared that someone was watching him. He quickly ducked into an old alley - the darkness swallowed him up easily.
As his eyes got used to the blinding darkness, for a moment, just for a brief moment, he felt eerie, the kind that comes in late night horror movies with spooky music to accompany. The world was dystopic, he decided. It was just the way he liked it. He wouldn't have it any other way, not that he had a choice.
A dark deserted alley wasn't reassuring enough, he decided to walk through to the next street. He was wet from the rain and had not eaten much but those were the least of his worries. The recent turn of events had brought upon him an uneasiness he could not explain.
He thought about the past and as always, whenever he thought about the past, one face stood out. He wasn't sure when he'd met K. But it did not matter now. He was without a job and a man on the run. Darkness was his ally and daylight...a treacherous lover. He decided to remain in the cold embrace of the shadows and wait for a cab. He grinned mirthlessly when he ruminated about it. He had never known a life outside the shadows.
The black car appeared out of the darkness like a silent wraith. A large bulky figure dressed in rough clothes got out. Undoubtedly one of those many thugs for hire that littered the alleys like burnt cigarrette butts, he thought.
"You'd like to believe we lost track of you....Remember this-we lose track of nobody".
“Should I be impressed?”
A match flared and a cigarrette tip stared glowing. In that brief instance, he saw the thug's face. The face was remarkably hideous. Deep down, an appreciation for such deformity filled his soul. Although one could get a primitively beautiful face for a mere 5000 rupees, this streak of wild independence in his enemy held his fascination, as always.
The smoke swirled in and out of the windows of the car.
That angered the fool of that thug and he shoved him. It was a mistake – never show you anger – ever. All the same, it caught him by surprise and he fell back into a particularly large puddle. The door slammed shut, the engine roared and the car turned a corner. He picked himself up slowly his face reflected eeriely in the puddle. That was when he realized that things were anything but well. So it had come down to this at last. Too bad he had been fired from the Tsubaki Corp. At least, employment there would have guaranteed him a bargaining chip. He wished someone would put him out of his misery like the dog he had helped on the street. The tail lights of the fast receding car was the only colour in that grey alley.
The night was quiet again - almost. Another dog yelped somewhere in the distance. The dogs in Calcutta never seemed to sleep.
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