Amit Pokhrel (Sharma)
Unable to sleep he tolls his way to various parts of the city to feed his nocturnal habits. He sometimes is seen around the cemetery, talking— laughing and giggling, with undertakers. Every now and then he’s seen staring at the bright yellow city post-lamps. He usually is seen around various shamans, who usually occupy spiritual centers of the old city square, enjoying— lost in their Devine weed.
You could definitely tell that he hasn’t slept in ages. His eyes look sunken and it feels like he’s been lost— for centuries. You may award anybody who can say whatever he feeds himself on. He barely feels like he’s standing. God knows what’s troubling him or about his penitence.
During those days when I first met him he used to lecture us on our penitent heart and the human inability to lead a guilt-free life. “You could barely see from the outside,” he used to say, “they say we human are born off sin but that’s barely the truth. We are born off penitence. One can never tell when the absurd notion of worthlessness of life hits one. Then he’s done for. Then after— no matter how hard one tries to satisfy oneself and the animal dwelling inside his heart there’s always somebody, inside that very heart, who’s always judgmental of one’s every deed.”
He used to be a knowledgeable fella who was fun to be around with. He used to crack jokes. He was made out of his morbid sense of humor and a kind soul I would say. He often used to write poems for a local literary magazine and lived a modest life. One day, as I remember those days, when war had hit the city limits supply to the city was cut-off. The amount that paid him was barely enough for him to survive. But, what he did felt remarkable even for the ones like us who were paid several times more than what he was.
We knew the city was running out of supply and so were we. But, he was running out of supplies much faster than we were. He hardly had the supply left for a week or two. But, while walking down the alleys of city he saw several people on a queue in front of central department of national supply, poorer, who had already run out of their supply. His heart must have melted out of this sight— a setup of sheer poverty— as those in media said.
Off he went to his one room apartment and came back with all the supplies he had left. He then distributed his supplies to the poorer ones.
We could hardly tell if what those poor fellas got was enough to prepare a dinner for their family but what he did was heart-wrenching for us who were trying our best to accumulate much more to sustain the crisis. The supply was resumed after a week of struggle between Nationalist Government’s Army and the Guerrilla Warriors. But, God knows what he fed himself upon during the weeks that took to re-gain the supply into order.
“Look around yourself,” he used to say with a sense of pleasure for he could contort us and his ability to manifest the human notion. “Do you not see what’s going on? Can you tell of the eager put everything to an—or rather say the, end? How do you feel for to understand that we human— every one of us want the world to end within our lifetime so that we can feel certain about it? Man, wants to mourn for the destruction of the world— that be in his own lifetime. The destructive nature of human mind brings forth the violence one loathes.
But, alas, he loathes the ambiguity of life more than the complete destruction and the violence he’d like to put an end to. One could say we humans want it to come to an end so that we could breathe one last breath of pleasure—the pleasure of accomplishment— of decisive nature of us humans!”
“Oh! How measly we are and how gigantic the ambiguity that wraps upon us. Isn’t that why we want to build a shelter— a virtual one, a cocoon and surround ourselves by the ones alike us? Doesn’t it feel good to think that if and if the world would come to an end at once? Oh, thou measly human penitence, how deeply do I loathe thee!”
A good friend. The one who quite different and humane than what we were suddenly got lost off our contact. He was nowhere to be found. After a few years, a friend of mine met him at the riverbank on the outskirts of the city, around the late evening, gazing at the sky looking at the moon peeping from heavy and pregnant clouds.
“How often do I have to confess that I love thee— take me into thee and dissolve me into thy vastness!” he’d say muttering to himself. He had grown long beard and had dreadlocks on his hair. He felt feeble and could hardly speak.
We got him home later that night. He was calm and barely talked. Unlike when he used to lecture us on feeble human mindset. He used to sit by the window at the corner and gazed at the vastness of the concrete jungle under the vacant sky. “It’s absurd to even try to understand the mere mosaic of the existence. It’s to be lived and enjoyed— not to be fathomed!” he’d say often times. That was the last thing I heard from him.
He stayed at mine for a month or so. And, off he went again and vanished for a long time. After few months, he was found by a friend of ours talking to nomadic shamans at the outskirts of the town. “City isn’t the limit” they said and laughed and giggled on the weed they had just smoked or had been smoking. Tonight, is all the same.
He came to this shaman who was different from any other types. He had no weed to offer him or any morbid jokes to laugh at. He only had his dark-black cloth over him and long dread-lock knot of hair to be seen. He was sitting just by the river in the ancient area where dead bodies are still cremated.
They stared each other for a long time. They had nothing to say to each other I suppose. But, the tension was growing, in the silent stillness of the midnight. After hours of dull and cold silence the shaman spoke to him.
Like there are you seated, my friend, a sloth on the land who is incapable to calm oneself. I am the same way, I presume. Only because I experience something different than you, in a same way I say. Or, put it this way, given that we are experiencing same thing in two different ways yet we conceive that we are experiencing two different experiences just because our cumulative experiences start differing as we keep going through. This never made one of us master or another a slave. Yet, we fear what we understand of current time scenario. Or, you don’t?
Since you are here in this unduly uneven times I’m bound to ask whatsoever you are doing here. Regardless the fact that I almost know what has gone unto you doesn’t mean I can tell you that I’m of some sort of supranatural understanding. Because human understanding is potent of understanding what one sometimes fails to believe that he understands and that makes it like he barely understands it. So, would you still say consciousness is any problem or our understanding of it is? From the place where I stand, I see, you are a mere vertebrate trying to comprehend your mortality. And I’m a lump of cooked meat who has already lost his original smell and I defecate my own order in order to save myself from being preyed from the ones like you. For this very reason, it suits me to come here at this very moment of time to this very unlikely place where every human soul is bound to feel the plaintive verge of its existence.
I have definitely seen people strolling around here, kissing and laughing, as if this very scenario doesn’t mean anything to them but I do know that’s not the case. They choose to ignore every probable exhaustion of their over expressive soul until their real defecation of misery starts. Decay means nothing to them until they experience it for themselves. They are just like you are. You ugly inflicted coward.
I wouldn’t say that I haven’t kissed enough or made enough love in my life being a human soul. But that wouldn’t merely satisfy the being of a human existence. Here, we are bound to believe that we have to be here and live here but anywhere else. This wasn’t the case for me. The way of existence didn’t satiate my hunger for life. I wanted to delve more into it. And some more into this mystical existence.
To have loved is not enough for such petty human souls like yours, you need the essence in it. I wouldn’t have stand you being here if you were not weary of your nocturnal mortality. I here-by want to delve more into you.
People suspect that I’m cannibalistic in nature. They even suspect that if I ever got any chance to put even a piece of flesh in my mouth, of their ‘alleged’ loved ones or relatives they will fail the journey to their alleged heaven. I never believed in any of them. I in fact do not even care to buy their ideas that I eat their relatives. I barely quench my hunger. No matter what my eateries are. I fear my hunger just like you. I love it too like the way you do. Simultaneously. And besides anything, heaven is merely the summation of utmost proliferation of our best possible desires which we want to personalize with the resources available for dreaming, like provided by religions or utopian sentimentalists?
Men recently have been fearing cannibalism. A lot that they usually did. It didn’t really matter to us for real whoever the person once he has died. But on the first hand we’d always have tried to save them. No matter who they really are. Or she we were. Those good old days, when we had certain ‘rules-of-war’ these aren’t often seen these days. I suspect people kill people even for few pieces of paper-notes these days.
We counted on every ghost that entrails in us. We never have learned to fear what dwells within us. You my friend there, you sit quietly without even a word. Your eyes speak a lot. Yet I dare say not. Just because I comprehend your agony doesn’t mean I should tell you things. Here, this is the place everything reveals itself, all over the night. You fear not like the way you fear yourself. We are companions of the night now.
Understanding the life devoid any sort of relevancies or meanings you consider to be redundant is like interpreting your futile dreams. Consider this if you were bound to live this very life one hundred million times again. Or even till eternity. Your indulgence in vacant spaces of your potholed mind scares yourself. I’d, for this very reason, like you to walk on my shoes even for a while and consider looking at yourself again. This never nullifies your life. This simply projects that you have failed to make any meanings out of yourself.
Language, as a key way of expression, has been a boon for we human beings, especially on regard to our wanderings and self-understanding. We get to understand that from this very invention we have succeeded in procreating our own way of shouting at ourselves and everybody all around us. But there is no one else to hear.
Everyone here, just like we ourselves, is to talk their brain. We could barely hear anyone else than ourselves.
By now you might have already got to know the danger to be feared. We too could barely not fear what any man fears. But we were still taking orders as per our vows. There was nowhere to escape. Everywhere all that could be seen was bare handed, only full of skeletons, trying to clutch your throat and kill you. No feelings of superiority or even friendliness could have worked in these times. Because you are on war.
I always remembered a man who always used to say ‘life is but a war to be fought and I shall fight it till the end.’
He fought it so hard that he never really took anything seriously, what were really serious for people. He lived defying everything that society tried to impose upon him. At first, when I was a young man, I considered him as a jerk. He must have been 2 decades older than me, approximately, but though he was not the one of his times.
I understood this when I myself got into some real trouble. I thought ‘just because the society doesn’t understand him he drinks all day and speaks all that gibberish.’ I was wrong then. I wonder if I am absolutely right, even these days. But I don’t fear it now.
I tried to fight myself out of the situation. But this wasn’t only me. Nor was it only about me. This was about the whole troops and it felt like my country was a blind man walking on my left, with his right hand on my left shoulder. If I got myself into a puddle he was almost sure to be immersed into a pond. Or at least I thought so.
Only god knew what would have happened next. I never could tolerate the sense that we could ever lose. But it barely was only about winning. It was about keeping oneself alive and saving people.
One never could have imagined what might happen during the war. It seemed that the war is essential and winning the war must be absolutely necessary. But when you knew you have won it is not only meaningless but even worthless. Just like a mere act of vanity. One doesn’t really know what one is supposed to do the next.
You’d get lost within the light. It would feel like you could have better found a way in the darkness, but these lights are blinding. They are more than what you call is heavy. I barely could feel home anywhere afterwards.
Our troop divided into small groups of soldiers. We were raging war, on the full fledge, like packs of wolves.
Several of my friends were shot dead by the enemy. Several were injured. We managed to win that battle and got few more ammunitions and some prisoners for ourselves for we were victorious. Few of us were ordered to set a journey towards the nearest sore in order to make sure that further conduction could be attained safely.
The nearest shore happens to be at an approximate distance of 4 miles. The quirk was we were surrounded by shores from all sides and had no boats or ships to transport ourselves somewhere else. In addition to that enemy’s surveillance planes were hovering all over us. There seemed nothing we could have done other than to wait for further help.
I hardly could feel the time passing if it was passing. We were stuck on that tiny island where we could have been befriended the death at any time. In these times, I suddenly came to stare at his eyes. One wasn’t supposed to stare directly at someone’s eyes at those times, but let me tell you that one could have never feared staring any eyes during those war times. Especially when the question is about your own life. Maybe we were stuck in a sort of delirium. We felt completely numb maybe a sort of limbo. Then, we didn’t really seem to have any notion of time, that was passing-by, except for what we knew of days or night, or morning, evenings and noons. Maybe we were stuck in a limbo. That is how it felt to me all those days that we had to spend on that bloody island.
But these eyes I happened to look at were more penetrating than I could probably have stared at. His eyes were immense two black balls that seemed to be pulling all your soul out of yourself making you completely vacant.
And, you could do nothing about it. It won’t be a complete truth if I would say that I had seen no fear in his eyes but this won’t be the only case. He looked powerful, full of (I don’t know what would you say) potent venom that
he could shoot through his eyes! He was spiritual, I guess. I even suspect that my life changed during those days. Even though I am not a looney I started questioning over myself, every now and then, from that very interaction.
The help hadn’t arrived yet. Enemy planes were still hovering all over dropping bombs all over. This small island seemed to have nothing living left other than few plants, reptiles and a drying pond and we people. There was no way we could communicate except for we could setup a red flag at shore sides. We had already finished everything edible we had. The only things remaining were all the leather stuffs we were wearing. Technically, we were helpless. We ate those too, after there seem absolutely nothing we could hunt for, not even snakes or rats.
Those were done with.
We somehow had managed to remove bullets from our wounded friends and of course our dear prisoners. But their wounds seemed to have gotten worse every day due to the lack of medication, sanitation and proper nutrients. The temperature was weighing high and everything on the island seemed to be dying. Furthermore, help never seemed to be arriving. After all our fellow soldiers were busy somewhere else fighting for the country.
And we waited. For almost till the eternity, maybe, would also have ended. One could never had seen and felt the death any nearer. Every moment were bitter speculations and hallucinogenic trips to every nooks and corner of life. It would have been better if one had experienced an instant death than these over-life speculations accompanied by severe deliriums. Every 7 soldiers who were injured, among us 12 who were alive off that battle, could be heard moaning and panting out of the severe pain felt. Every second spent in that island felt like being imprisoned in the dungeon for centuries. You could feel blood rushing all along your veins. Nightmare it was— a nightmare in a vulgar way.
Eventually, our wounded friends had started dying one after another. All of them died in not much of time. We found no options except for eating them before they started to decay. This was a better way for the ones who were alive. This way we wouldn’t starve. Of course, not all of us agreed on doing things this way but no one else could have provided any better alternative for such food. We could have managed to burry our dead ones and build some sort of cemetery for them and their gallantry, if food could have managed. But we weren’t fortunate enough.
Talking about those days, even though I wouldn’t be able to talk much more than what I experienced, every single second we were putting those fleshes in our mouths of the very friends who died fighting by our side, it was the feeling you would get if you were dining with the death herself. You know she is cruel, yet you choose to live for her to choke the life out of you, ultimately. Be that be for just a bit more of the time. You would like to feel the air for a little bit more even if you would know for sure that this very air would care no more after you die. You would decompose and you are nothing more than a decaying body being eaten by worms. Or, people or scavengers for few cases, of course. But the only difference in you is that you could feel the decay before you are even dead, physically.
At times when we had something to eat our wounded friends showed some recovery on process. But once we lacked food again they became weak and even showed symptoms of death. Perhaps the most dangerous enemy of ours is hunger we feel at our mind. You do visualize everything but aren’t capable of doing anything than realizing your severe incapability. Eventually everyone wounded was dead, one after another, including our prisoners.
One of our prisoners wasn’t wounded much. I must say he was quite healthy. If I would have to talk to on mental matters maybe he was much better than how we people were. He never talked. He rarely reacted to anything. Apparently, you could say anything at him. For any reasons or circumstances. Even it was your own personal problems back home. He wouldn’t react or make face at you.
During those first months, every seven of us would kick and beat him for no reasons. Every other were wounded and it made no sense to beat the shit out of them too. Others of our friends who were unable to punish him physically, apparently for no reasons at all, scolded and yelled at him anything they wanted. Sometimes I would even laugh silently at these friends of ours, because it almost seemed like swearing at him is the only medication they had left to try. And somehow, it even seemed to have a sort of positive effects on them. They
were more cheerful, for the reason that he was our prisoner (no matter what) and they could effectively punish him the way they felt pleased. He would never react, except for few whimpering sounds he made when he was beaten. Eventually we had given up on such practices for it was no more interesting (for the fact that he barely responded) and we were growing weaker every day.
If you have known that hunger would have no reasons or excuses, you would know for sure that we weren’t completely wrong to have done what we had done. There was nothing to eat. The whole island was a burnt jungle. And there were no help coming. We couldn’t hesitate for much days. It was my turn to work on it. So, after a brief discussion with everyone I slit his throat. Perhaps that was the only time he responded much visibly to anything, when I was cutting his throat. He was barely moving. That doesn’t mean he didn’t responded. But, all he responded was through his eyes. As I put the blade on his throat he stared right into my eyes and I could see the whole universe in those eyes. I was taken back in time and shown the whole universe at once, in a single flash of light glimmering in his eyes as life was fading out of his body.
I believe that’s what they call ’soul leaving the body’ is. The vigorous desire to live had shown me a whole path into the meaning of existence. No matter whatever we were meddled in or spending our life for this was the very reason we live for. This very desire and energy, even when we can’t do anything on our own, we do manifest that the whole universe dwells within us in that very flash of moment.
As I had cut his throat he got unconscious. Blood was oozing out of his neck. His body was jumping all over.
And we tried our best to hold him tight for the blood also could provide us for 2 days. He was making an unusual whimpering sound. A sound I had never heard. Looking at his dead body making such sound felt like listening to a child being born. He provided us for 10 more days.
But, now we were only seven left, everyone on our side. That was more terrorizing than everything we have had done till the date. Well for every other than me. Hadn’t I had a sudden striking look in his eyes I also might have died alive off the up-growing terror of helplessness. Anyone among we seven could be the next if some help hadn’t had arrived.
We were brought back our country and awarded with medals. Our stories were told and heard by millions. We were taken to tour— to several places in the country. But, as the time passed-by it came upon my realization that I wasn’t really celebrated for what I did. None of us actually were. That very gesture was merely to show our obedience to the society. I could hear people talk about us. They often said, “They should never have been rescued, they were to be left there in that island to kill each other and feed upon each other. Such animals don’t have any space in our civilized society.”
I was taken well by my family and friends. But, they weren’t taken that well by the people. “Are you taking a lesson on cannibalism with him?” They’d ask mockingly. I’d hear several other things. I never heard about my six other friends who were rescued along with me. But, for me life was growing harder and harder. Eventually, I left home and started wondering. I have been to 59 other cities and where they cremate the dead. I often get my feed pretty easily, without much of a fight. But, sometimes it’s much harder. I have to get into a fight for life or death.
Even though we were saved on time I couldn’t spare myself without visualizing those eyes. I couldn’t love my family. Every medal I got felt like ‘medals of treachery’. Life seemed absurd and the society seemed horrendous.
Everywhere I would go people greeted me with their warm hands and open arms. Yet I was growing colder inside like a dying life. I, since then, quit everything to live like this ever-after. And all this got into the realization that we are mere canoes traveling in timeless eternity. Yet we feel ourselves loosing ourselves every second. We rush on and on to grab the fleeting time in a hope to get it back. But, it goes on and we lose as always. As always death is just a shadow of life. It follows you, always.
After telling his story the shaman stopped talking at all. He only sat there with his eyes wide open— staring at our friend. But, our friend stood up, quietly, and made his move from there. Ever since that night nobody has seen him. May he do well wherever he’s been to.
[Amrit Pokhrel is a poet and a student of philosophy based in Kathmandu. He has self-published collection of poems, Your Majesty Government, Let the Fucking Silence Speak for Me, & Other Prose Poems.]