The Bond Of Friendship

(As always blogspot doesn't like large images much, so if you're on the desktop and can't read the text, right click -> open image in new tab and then magnify. On mobile, just tap the image and pinch zoom.)

Locus Of Control

(As always Blogspot doesn't like large images. So click/open in new tab + magnify to read the text!)

Post-Post-Truth And The Man With The Umbrella

I am a hermit.

But I wasn't always one. In fact, I can pinpoint the day I became a hermit, seeking no pleasure but my own company. It was a fairly normal day and I was in a vacuum-sealed office space watching the artifical weather screen flash bright and happy images of the Sun and other imaginary things.

Very few people actually ever stepped out into 'the Fog', as anything outside of the vacuum sealed office spaces, the vacuum sealed living pods and the vacuum sealed government controlled entertainment lounges, was commonly called. I was one of those few people. Always excusing myself to use the restroom - because while I fancied myself a renegade going out into the Fog everyday, I still couldn't bring myself to advertise the fact to my colleagues. Pressing a scary looking bright red button, I watched the imposing ten metre door creak open outwards, letting in tainted Fog air into the 'airlock' that separated the soulless inside from the untamed outside.

That's all the Fog was. The outside. But an outside that was a smog-filled, ash-strewn vision of hell that the world had become in my time. It still wasn't poisonous or anything though - medical science had fixed that long ago - it's just that most people preferred to remain blissfully ignorant watching long forgotten images of blue skies and sunny summer mornings on their weather screens.

I watched the capricious breeze pick up pieces of rubbish and fling them this way and that. It was peaceful and relaxing. Presently though, two things happened that were somewhat out of the ordinary. One: it began to rain. Hot, acid drops the size of table tennis balls smashed against my face, stinging, and dissolved into a fine mist. Two: a man appeared in the distance.

This man, unlike me, was dressed for the weather. Not only was he wrapped up in a bright red poncho, but he also held a cavernous red umbrella over his head, hanging on to it against the suddenly gusting wind, with grim resolution.

He continued to walk in my direction, seemingly oblivious to my presence. Considering the momentousness of the events of that day, I find it curious that I don't remember the man's face at all. What I do remember is what I did next: I took a step towards the man and made an innocuous observation.

"It's raining."

You have to realize one thing. The workplace I worked in was very, very finely tuned for my and my colleagues sensibilities, as established by a government sanctioned pairing program. But the Fog was a scary place where anybody could talk to anybody else. It was very rare to actually find someone to talk to, and even rarer to chat them up, but the theoretical possibility existed. My trite observation actually bordered on recklessness.

The man with the umbrella looked up with evident consternation and without a word pulled out his handheld communicator and snapped a picture of me, turned and walked away. I looked at him neutrally as he made his way to the Verification Booth that was mandated by law to be installed on every street wider than twenty metres. The Booth on our street was only a few metres away from we were, and blinked blue and white in the grey air.

I knew just exactly what was going to happen, but something in me was different that day, and I stayed to watch the process play out. The umbrella man stepped into the glass cocoon of the Verification Booth and a helpful screen slithered out from under his feet. He pressed a button, and a flat, emotionless voice intoned that it recognized the man as affiliated to the Conservative Party.

The man pressed another button and my mug shot of exactly two minutes ago popped up on the screen listing my affiliation as a Green. Even from a short distance, I could see the man start. He would need the full spectrum of verification given that we lay on diametrically opposite ends of the spectrum. He pressed yet another button, and the familiar tring-tring of a handheld communicator being contacted filled the air.

The trings seemed to go on forever until it was silent. The man with the umbrella tried again because there was no way he could let an unverified Green's statement go. I smirked at his back, unnoticed. Something was different with me that day. This time, the sound cut-off mid-tring and the same toneless, colourless voice of the Verification Booth came back. Except it wasn't. It was just the government's anonymizer program smoothing the receiver's voice into a demographic-controlled neutral voice. The receiver would have been randomly selected by the Verification Booth, and the penalties for not responding to a Verification Call were fairly harsh.

"Is it raining?" The man with the umbrella asked. His voice too would have been neutrified for the receiver.
"Yes."

A number flashed on the screen. 60%. The Verification Booth was telling the man that there was a 60% chance that my truth would correspond to a coherent psychological state in his mind that would be his truth. This meant, of course, that there was a 40% chance his brain would explode from a cognitive break for believing a Green's statement. A bead of sweat appeared on his furrowed brow as the man, now looking mildly annoyed, pondered the odds. Maybe he had somewhere to be, something to do. I continued to smirk because I could see the gears in his head turn at glacial pace, making their way to the inevitable conclusion that was clear as day to me.

He pressed another button.
"Do you wish to begin the double blind test?" the voice of the Booth droned.

Now, here's the thing. While the first callee was randomly chosen, everything about the callee wasn't random. He or she had to be a Conservative, like the caller, and equally importantly, he or she had to be in a physical position to actually verify the statement in question. With the double blind test, a person of unknown political affiliation would instead be contacted, and the same question posed to that person. That person would of course not know anything about the caller.

"Is it raining?"
"Hold on. Let me check." The double blind callee was free to make a politically aligned verification call to hit a high probability post-truth. This particular callee was being meticulous.
"Yes," after a momentary pause.

The screen now flashed 87%. The man with the umbrella, while not quite jumping for joy, visibly relaxed and stepped out of the booth. His mind at ease, and in a psychologically coherent state suited to his political affiliation, he nodded and said -

"It is raining." And turned to offer me a spare umbrella. But I wasn't there anymore.

The same day, I quit my job, abandoned my government-allotted living space, and walked out into the Fog in search of conversation, and objectivity. I had had enough of the post-post-truth world and became a hermit.

The Reality Of Our Tortured Existence

While I've always had a thing for pretentious titles, this post has little to do with existential angst. Well, not directly anyway, so wipe that sad look off your face, you wannabe Sartre!

Have you ever noticed that the most mundane of things in everyday life seem to hold deep, dark secrets, hidden away in plain sight?

For example, consider the humble coffee machine foamer at work.
Poked, prodded, punched, and maybe occasionally gently pressed innumerable times in any given day, this inobtrusive gadget is a life safer for millions of sleepwalking desk jockeys. Typically packaged as an innocuous little button tucked away in one corner of the gleamy coffee machine, the Foamer watches processions of zombies struggling to coordinate their hands, legs and eyes while infusing shots of cocaine caffeine into their system, and sniggers.

Malevolently.

Have you ever heard the sound the coffee foamer makes?
Think Dante's vision of hell, with fire and brimstone and torture racks and endless suffering. Now imagine that you were one such unfortunate resident of purgatory, and to add insult to injury you - and your eternal companions, the torture racks and guillotines and coals and fire swords - have all been shrunk into a room the size of a matchbox, and put into a coffee foamer. Your wretched screams are miniaturized into the still horrific sounding riving groans that you hear when you press the harmless looking foamer switch.

Every time you're pressing that button, you're torturing someone! Now if that doesn't ruffle your feathers at all, hey, I'm a moral relativist for today, so you do you man. If that guy is in hell, even if a matchbox sized foamer version of hell, he must have done something to deserve it, so screw him? But the sound!

Now you know why I avoid foamers like hell itself. But that isn't the only thing I avoid. At my office, in certain corners of certain floors, under certain weather conditions, a certain sound emerges from everywhere at once and sinks into your very bones.

The desperate wail of a thousand souls as they're dragged, kicking and screaming, into the netherworld, is what it is.

You only seem to hear it in the corners of floors near the big glass windows when it's somewhat windy outside, but don't let that fool you! The Devil was always a clever devil, so it's as easy as pie for him to inject a little faux plausibility to cloak his devious machinations.  If somebody tells you that that heart-rending screech you hear is 'just the sound of wind rushing through gaps in the walls or the plumbing', you smile politely, because you know the truth, and make a mental note to live the good life because you don't want to be one of those faceless people sucked into hell and remembered only as a curious whistle through the pipes.

That's not all. Signs, signs, they're everywhere. The other world impinges upon this realm with urgency, and we don't see what's right in front of our eyes! Exhibit #3: the ubiquitous bum jet in toilets. As you count the seconds away on the toilet seat willing those last bits of erm.. intestinal ejecta to make their way out, an unexpected susurration tickles your unwilling ears. Unwilling, because you're in a restroom and you don't expect to hear anything other than flushing and bodily sounds.

What you hear sounds like a creaky, croaky whisper coming out of the.. bum jet. In your peripheral vision, you sense that the segmented snake that is the bum jet move just a little. You try to catch it out by swivelling towards it sharply, but there it lies, motionless as ever. You gingerly heft it, feeling a bit foolish, and get back to negotiating with your intestine to finish its job. And then you hear the sound again.

It is exactly what it sounds like. Like the voices of entities from the darkest recesses of hell that have crawled their way to the boundary that separates the living world from theirs, where the boundary is thin. All they need is a nudge and they can finally break free of the shackles of eternal torture, and they want you to do the nudging! Do not - DO NOT - consciously listen to the whispers, because you will be lost. Hum loudly to the latest Taylor Swift song, if you must, to block out the sound. If somebody ever tells you that the bum jet's eerie actions are only due to water pressure settling it down, chalk it down to oblivious naivete. You know the truth.

These aren't all the examples there are. Open your eyes and the world that you think you know will begin to yield its macabre secrets. But the question is: do you really want to know? And the other question is: can you really blame me for skipping work every other day?

Guns

This anecdote is a political allegory. To be a little more precise, this story is political and it’s an allegory. To be even more perfectly precise, an allegory is a representation of abstract principles by characters or figures. And the political bit is.. Well, you’ll see.

Anyway, this little tale is set in a parallel world where there are many, many people - way too many people - like in our world, but we’re only interested in four. (Why not seven billion, you ask? Because I’m the author and I like these four guys.)

The first is a man that is a fox. This manfoxthing is, at the commencement of this tale, engaged. He is in what appears to be a kitchen, and he is busy looking for something. His fox-sly face twists in a brief moment of befuddlement before it clears up in delight. A-ha! He pulls out a gun and proceeds to light the stove by shooting a bullet into it. This fox thing has a name: Mr. Metaphor.

In a different place, in a different time, but still in a kitchen, there’s another man. This two-legs is a non-descript looking workhand. He’s presumably hassled at the moment as an enormous frown creases his face. A naked side of toast is perched on one outstretched palm, while the owner of the palm is occupied looking for something. Like his sly friend from one scene past, he too finds what’s he’s looking for, and what he’s looking for is a gun, more specifically a Colt. He proceeds to use the muzzle of the Colt to scoop out a healthy chunk of butter from an open glass jar, and slowly and carefully apply it to the side of toast. This man is of Greek extraction presumably, because his name is Synecdoche.

I guess you’d say that this anecdote has a running motif - that of a kitchen - and you’d be right, because the third protagonist in this political allegory (never forget!) is also standing around in a kitchen. This person though is a woman, and before the traditionalists among you exult seeing a woman in a kitchen making a sandwich, this woman is somewhat incongruous as she’s a suit, and she’s most certainly not making a sandwich. What she seems to be trying to do is reduce a perfectly whole fruit into juice. She smiles and whips out a gun from a drawer. Placing a luscious red tomato in the sink, the suit takes careful aim at it and bullets it into healthy, if somewhat gunpowdery ,juice. This woman has a name too and her name is the seductive sounding Miss. Metonymy.

That about wraps up the tale. I say just about because it’s only the fourth protagonist that hasn’t been introduced yet, and he’s a smug bastard that only smarm-talks, but he’s a crucial piece of the puzzle here. The puzzle being of course that I haven’t made a lick of sense with the three kitchen scenes so far. Right, so the fourth man is called Mr. Irony and he’s actually a woman in a man’s clothing but that’s somewhat irrelevant to a surface reading.

Mr. Irony is a visitor from an alternate universe, where many things differ from the one that Mr. Metaphor et. al. live in, but only one that is of importance to this tale. In Mr. Irony’s strange little world, guns are apparently only used as weapons. There doesn’t exist a doppelganger for Mr. Metaphor in this incredibly perverse world that would use a gun to light a stove; nor is there an alter ego for Mr. Synecdoche that’d Colt his daily bread and butter. Needless to say, there isn’t a Miss. Metonymy-like that explosive-projectiles their morning smoothies.

Mr. Irony ponders the absurdity of using guns to do what our heroes do. Aren’t they designed to be weapons to kill? You have knives that chop vegetables and blenders that squish tomatoes into mushy pulp. Who would even compare guns to knives? Every time you see a gun you’re seeing a finely tuned life-taker. Every time you see a knife, you’re seeing something that’s an everyday kitchen tool. He smirks to himself and smugly makes a mental note to chalk off this universe as yet another universe that’s immeasurably more foolish than this own.

Now back home, Mr. Irony settles down in his couch after a long day of travel and proceeds to write a long and verbose letter to the Editor calling out the absurdity of banning guns in homes without also banning knives and blenders, that are, in his considered opinion, just as lethal.

The Great Equalizer

I occasionally have epiphanies. Maybe these aren't of the world changing variety, but hey, let's not start ranking everything by how world changing it is, mmk?

The Word That Means Everything And So.. Nothing At All

I'm sure most of you have had the exquisite pleasure of being accused of being immature at some point in your lives. I'm also sure that you've been left utterly baffled by the gallons of vitriol tucked away within that one innocuous little word. ('What?' you may have mentally ejaculated, puffing with indignation.)

My goal here, readers, is to convince you that your bafflement at being accused of immaturity isn't an unwarranted knee-jerk reaction to an unexpected affront. And I'm going to attempt to do that by arguing semantics - what is commonly known as the first refuge of the intellectually towering.

On the face of it, the word isn't complicated, meaning wise. Unlike the likes of that abhorrent word 'set' with its ~100 contextual meanings, Wiktionary has only one concise definition to offer for this word.

"Childish in behavior, not mature."

The rub, as that sixteenth century bard would have it, lies in the definition of the word childish. At least that's one of the rubs - maybe the first, but not the last, and I'll have to park this idiom in case it's getting a little too dirty. Anyway, here's an example to start you off.

Definition #1

"Someone who's liable to throwing tantrums is immature."

Fair? Simple? Where's all that semantic complexity you oversold, you ask. Hold your horses. Here's another definition of immaturity. (You'll have to take my word for this, but every definition that I'm going to come up with here has been paraphrased from real, true examples from the bottomless fount of human excellence that are Facebook comments. I don't lie by the way.)

Definition #2: Because I'm Definition #1 And I Cannot Possibly Be Immature?!

"Someone who doesn't express their emotions fully is immature."

Again, it might strike you that this definition is not really at odds with the first definition. DON'T BE FOOLED! It really, really is. When someone is talking about expressing their emotions fully, they really are asking for the hallowed right to tantrums. So what does immaturity really mean then?

How about - 

Definition #3

"Someone who still plays video games at the age of thirty."

I see you raise video games, and I offer you:

Definition #4: You Come For My Video Games, I Come For Your Goddamn Books!

"Books. Someone who still reads books that aren't verbatim histories are immature." 

Because the real world is complex and wonderful, and no mature members of homo sapiens would have the time for childish fantasies. Right?

The contrarian in the corner pipes up - 

Definition #5: No Dog In This Race, But I Just Want You To Lose

"Someone who has hobbies in middle age is really immature." 

Because you see, hobbies are for children and ergo, childish. Adults sex around, and end up producing babies, and are in most cases forced into tending to their output, leaving them no time for childish dallying. (This definition nicely dovetails into the biological definition of maturity, so that's a plus!) The implication of this of course is that all those bibliophiles who accuse gamers of immaturity, and all those gamers who accuse television show watchers of immaturity, and pretty much everyone who accuses anyone else of being immature based on their preferred choice of leisure activity, is really immature.

That's that right? We finally have hit upon the perfect definition of immaturity right? You naive fool, you. Because -

Definition #6: The Last Definition Still Loses

"People who hold strong opinions about things - like hobbies in middle age - are immature." 

Human beings - and their personalities, quirks and temperaments - aren't really classifiable into easy buckets. All human ideology is fundamentally on a spectrum, so if you call superstitious people immature - because only pigeons, infants and fish are superstitious - YOU'RE immature, because you know, human ideology lies on a spectrum. If you call people who're deliberately vapid immature, because they, as you see things, refuse to use their adult-sized brain for anything useful, YOU'RE immature, because you know, human ideology lies on a spectrum.

Definition #7: Because Definition #6 Is A Cocky So-And-So

The maturity of the aforementioned middle-ground is also immaturity because it's a sign of intellectual laziness. Because what kind of mature person chooses a fallacious middle ground over a reasoned out stance?

Definition #8: Recursion. The End

Perhaps, the inevitable smart Alec will respond, the true immaturity is arguing the semantics of immaturity itself. He smirks away, but I concede defeat because he's right. The meaning of the word immature has expanded to include any behaviour that's repulsive to the accuser, and since every behaviour is repulsive to some accuser (famously chronicled as LoneRanger's third law of meat and poison), every behaviour is immature.

Therefore, readers, exult. Exult, because when somebody is accusing you of being immature, THEY'RE being immature. Ha.

If blog posts had glossaries, this post has one, made up of a not-comprehensive list of definitions of immaturity that you can use for any situation in life! Forge on, O intrepid insulter.

How To Argue With People On The Internet When You Are Called Immature: A Hands-On Guide

"Only immature people play around with money!"
"You let money rot in the bank. You're immature, man!"

"Oh, you'll only date fit women? That's immature."
"Denying that humans have sexual preferences is immature."

"Arguing over politics is immaturity."
"Only kids and the mentally deficient don't care about politics."

"You still watch sitcoms after work. Grow up!"
"Not acknowledging the human need for unwinding is really immature. You aren't in class X anymore!"

"You think being an atheist is cool? It's just immature."
"If believing in a wish-granting sin-forgiving sky-fairy isn't immaturity, I don't know what is."

"Justin Bieber? Really? So immature."
"Signalling superiority by listening only to elitist classical music from two hundred years ago is immaturity itself."

"Arguing the semantics of immaturity is soooo immature."
"Ignoring the philosophical implications of ontology is dull-headed, but I'll tone that to just calling you immature."

The Five Stages To Spirituality

Would you believe me if I told you that the day I found spiritual bliss was the day I almost ended up murdered? Almost hacked into little bits, and by a would be murderer who didn’t know or care what he had done?

Probably not, but that’s because I haven’t told you the equally improbable tale of what led up to it. Like most days, well, most weekend days at any rate, this one started with a highly excitable Madan showing up at my tiny apartment door in the morning.

“Dude!” he burst out, but I can’t really tell you much of what happened next because I had checked out of the conversation. Until he punched me viciously in the shoulder and blurted out that he had found a cool new trek for us to do.

So trekking was this thing we occasionally did, not because Madan and I enjoyed sweating bucketsful while climbing leech-covered, moss-strewn rocks to get a view of a whole lot of nothing, but because we enjoyed the social status that being known as climbers gave us. I mean, apparently, putting up pictures of rolling hills, lush meadows, sparkling streams and all that jazz that was dime a dozen on the Internet was the ticket to social media stardom.

Even so, I hesitated. I had learnt to inversely correlate Madan’s excitement with the actual appeal of the hike.

“I.. have stuff to do.”

“Like washing dirty underwear?”

“Hmm,” I said smugly.

Madan was briefly dumbstruck that his witty jab actually landed, and like all witty jabs that don’t encounter witty repartees, he practically fell over trying to come up with something to say.

“Er. Isn’t that like the best reason ever to actually come on the hike? I mean who actually wants to wash dirty underwear? I for one, pretend that airing dirty laundry in the sun for a few days actually works just as well as throwing it into a washing machine. Chemicals, man. We think they’re doing the cleaning but it’s actually the sun, you know. So yeah. I have scientific reasons for not washing dirty underwear, but you need something you believe in. Ergo, trek.”

If you haven’t figured this out already, Madan talks a lot. I just said:

“Sure.”

And so it transpired that a few hours after the aforementioned cosmically significant mostly-monologue, we found ourselves in a really swampy section of a lightly wooded area, faced with a man who looked suspiciously happy.

“Good morning!” said this weirdly ecstatic man.

“Good morning,” we mumbled unenthusiastically. We couldn’t really push past him though because this guy was standing smack in the middle of a one-person wide stretch of hiking trail.

“Isn’t it simply a wonderful day? I’m blessed to be here experiencing the gift of this lovely day!” he beamed. I looked at his mud spattered shorts, moss-stained tee shirt, jiggling belly, thinning hair with what looked like fresh guano cooling the scalp, yellow teeth with bits of black something sticking out (naturally we could see it all because he beamed with all of his teeth sticking out for our perusal); I looked around just to make sure that it wasn’t my cynical eye that was blinding me to a day of astonishing beauty, and I saw rotting tree trunks, unidentifiable animal scat, shrieking birds, clucking insects, a smell that was a cross between cockroach pheromone stew and two year old bottled water, and I told myself that I’d like to have what he was having.

“I’d like to have what you’re having!” Madan naturally piped up.

I’m famous for my inscrutable face but even I cringed at Madan being Madan, but this strange stranger beamed even more if that was possible.

“You’re on the right track!” he pronounced, as if he were handing us the cure to cancer, and bounced off gaily.

There was about thirty seconds of respite before Madan found his voice and exclaimed, with his eyes apparently fixed in rapt attention at an ugly tree trunk that lay in our path.

“Wow.”

We walked on a little while longer and suddenly the narrow tree lined path opened up into a grassy valley that seemed to stretch on forever.

It really was a scene out of a dream. Or at least a dream of someone with high production values. Like if somebody from the Game of Thrones crew dreamed of the savannah. Yellow-green stalks of grass that stood twice as tall as I did swayed sensuously to nearly-not-there zephyrs. Their movement was seductively hypnotic, inviting us to detect sinuous patterns that weren’t really there. The very woodsy aroma of grass flowers invaded our nostrils, and two year old bottled water now smelled and sounded like running water from a sparkling stream just off in the distance.

My inscrutable face twitched half a millimetre by way of a smile, but stopped as my mind inevitably flitted over images of Children of the Corn.

Madan though hopped and skipped and flapped his arms and shadow boxed the grass stalks, laughing, shouting, and talking to me about everything from the political situation in North Korea to tales from the workplace.

“Did you know that my boss invited me for a coffee? I would have gone except he was an old, bald guy. And it turned out it was to discuss my promotion.” he laugh-cried as he swatted at a particularly evasive stalk, overbalanced, stumbled, fell and lay there as if it was what he wanted to do all along. I hemmed and hawed most impressively.

“It would be super cool to visit North Korea man. Imagine trying to find a vegan burger and ending up at a nuclear missile silo. Some fool is going to ask you to type in the launch codes, and you end up typing in the amount you’re to pay for that burger. In North Korean dollars. Or whatever their damn currency is. And then you end up blowing up China. And you’re upset you didn’t get your vegan burger.”

“Hmm,” I said impassively.

And so dragged on a couple of hours this way as we walked through the surreal savannah, waving unruly grass stalks out of our faces, until presently a faint keening reached our ears.

Intrigued, we broke off the path. Only a few steps into our new direction, it became clear to us that it was the sound of somebody crying. And judging by the voice - and here I am, the world’s foremost authority in detecting young, nubile women’s crying voices - it was a beautiful young woman, waiting for us white knights to charge in to save her.

“Let’s go! It sounds like a hot chick crying, dude.” said Madan, who I grudgingly concede was probably the second most well-versed man in the art of cry-onomics.

And it was. A beautiful young woman lay crumpled in the fragrant dirt, cocooned in yellow stalks. With her flowery summer dress and tanned complexion, she was almost a part of the landscape. Her long, loose black hair tumbled in waves over her face, and somewhere within that beautiful foliage was the source of the pathetic wail that drew us in. At this point, naturally, images from numerous horror movies and games that hinged on reckless idiots approaching just such a crying woman figure only to have their blood sucked out or something, flashed in my mind. I said nothing, of course.

She looked up. We didn’t die.

“I’m utterly useless,” she wailed.

“I’m ugly,” she blubbered. If we used a micrometre to measure her imperfections, we would fail and need a microscope.

“You’re not!” insisted Madan, in a familiar way, like the girl and he had been soulmates over seven rebirths. My impassive face twitched but internally I told myself that I was taller, fitter and cooler than the chronically sanguine Madan, so ha!

She couldn’t - or didn’t hear him. “I’m fat, “ she sobbed. If we scraped off every bit of fat off her body, we wouldn’t have enough to feed a baby housefly.

“You’re not,” Madan whispered in his best soothing voice, modulating his tone to ooze gentle compassion. I stared stonily. She continued to gibber and sigh, moan and keen about how she had done nothing with her life, and how she was a loser, and how she was responsible for the suffering of so many creatures, and how life was not worth living, and how death was too easy a way out, and how she was immoral, and how she was too uptight, and how she was too thin and how beauty was a curse, and how it was all completely hopeless.

Even Madan gave up on her an hour into it and we walked on leaving her there, slightly bemused.

I guess by now you know where this is going. Even if you don’t, I’ll assume you do and gloss over a bit of what happened next and skip ahead to the part where we found ourselves chased by axe wielding madmen. Right. So before we got to that bit, the savannah ended, and we found ourselves in what appeared to be a desert sandstorm. I couldn’t tell you for sure because I could barely see to the end of my hand. Madan naturally got really excited about a sandstorm in the middle of nowhere and began talking about his boss and politics. I too got excited for a second before thoughts of The Mist snuck in unbidden. Anyway, we made slow progress through the haze, aided by the still visible trail markers, but we kept running into these really insecure men who kept posing us the most inexplicable questions. Short guys would ask us if we thought they weren’t too short. We’d hem and haw and they’d go away as if satisfied by our non-answers. Rich guys with expensive watches would ask us if their watches looked tacky and would again go away satisfied. Even Madan learnt to not respond to this endless procession of questions. Eventually, the sandy fuzz cleared out of the air and we found ourselves at the entrance of a cave. A black vortex loomed like the maws of some dreadful Satanic creature. I hate to sound cliched, but the inevitable gooey monster shots from The Cave popped up in my head.

Madan’s enforced reticence evaporated like the morning dew in the Sahara sun, and he exulted.

“This is it, man. This is it!”

“What is it?”

“Whatever this trek is all about. I’d heard that there is something really unbelievably amazing at the end of the trek and the trail leads to this cave so that amazing thing must be in the cave right?”

“OK.”

“Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!” and he sprinted into the abyss. I crept after, cautiously.

A faint light glimmered off metallic veins in the cave walls, barely illuminating the path. We had gone in far enough that the mouth of the tunnel was a thumbnail sized square of light at our backs, when a bloodcurdling yell rent the air, and there was a loud clink as something big and heavy crashed into the cave wall near my head. I screeched inside thinking of rock falls and death by starvation, but my impassive face stayed impressively stoic. Madan though had apparently fumbled around in the dark for the offending object and found it. A strange tone entered his voice.

“I think it’s a bloody axe.” I had never heard Madan speak softer than this ever before. In fact it was nearly a whispering voice and Madan never whispered, as sure as girls like me better than him.

There was a split second of Roadrunner-like time freeze, before our legs clicked into gear and we ran, ran for our lives. It was one of those things: while clearly the facts were telling us that we were in mortal danger, the dimness of the cave, the isolation, and the whole feeling that we were in communion with serene, inviolable Nature meant that it was hard to muster up the flight response. But another bloodcurdling yell three inches away from my face put paid to that. The form of a tuxedoed man resolved itself in the dimness. We scarpered.

I lost track of time. I sprinted, jogged, ran, walked, crawled and even possibly fell into and half-swam through an underground lake of some sort for what felt like hours. It was only when the stitch in my side burned painfully enough that my fear of being cleaved in two by a flying axe was overcome and I slumped against the cave wall. That was when I realized that Madan was nowhere to be seen. I didn’t want to shout, so I emitted that shout-whisper hybrid that sounds like a hoarse croak. No response. As my eyes adjusted a little better to the dimness, I forgot all about Madan possibly having been murdered by a psychotic killer, as it slowly became clear that I was no longer in a narrow cave path. There was a vague sense of immensity in the direction away from the wall I was resting against, a sense of infinity that was disconcerting. That was when he spoke.

“Hello.”

I didn’t say anything but my phlegmatic facade broke and my face transformed itself into a gargoyle-like mask of sheer terror. If you could jump a foot while slumped on the floor, I did that.

“So you’ve come to see me.” the disembodied voice boomed, all bass and honey.

“No.” I told myself in my head, or so I thought.

“That’s what they all say. No!” the voice chuckled. If God had a voice, it would sound like this, I thought completely incongruously.

“I’m flattered that you think of me as God.” At this point, the voice changed. It was like a TV with someone flicking a switch to change the channel, so drastic was the mutation. The voice was bass and acid now.

“I’m not God. But I know that you’re a worm.”

I’m not one to get easily offended but I flinched.

“You’re a worm that thinks it’s a peacock. Tell me. How many times have you compared yourself to Madan and felt that all was well in your world because you were better off than him? Ten? Twenty. No.”

“EIGHT THOUSAND FIVE HUNDRED AND THIRTY ONE!”, the voice roared.

“Let me tell you the truth. You’re not as tall as you think. You’re not as clever as you think. Your face isn’t as angular as you think. Your muscles are not as well defined as you think. Your teeth are not as well-formed as you think. Your hair is not as thick as you think. Your belly sticks out when you walk. Your hands are tiny and wiggly. Your nose is too large. Your ears stick out. Your elbows are dirty. Your breath smells like your feet. Your feet smell like durian. You’re slightly hunch-backed.”

At the same time as this barrage of insults, something else happened to me. A montage of images and sensations and feelings tumbled end over end in my mind, as if injected from elsewhere. They swirled and pinged in Brownian motion, but eventually knotted within themselves intricately to do one just one thing.

Show me how the world saw me. All the faults that the Voice pointed out in High Definition video. Only one word escaped my lips.

“No.”

“That’s what they all say. No!” the Voice chuckled. Malice punctuated each syllable.

“And you know what. Your fake stoicism is a sham. Everyone sees through it and laughs at you. They think you’re affected and that you’re a buffoon for it and that’s why they keep you around. For laughs. And when you try to keep your face impassive in the face of overwhelming emotion, it gets all pinched up like you’re constipated. More laughs. Your cool nature shots from your treks? Muscle memory likes are what you get on social media. No one cares.”

“And that thing you do in your head. Seeing horror movies in every little mundane scene in your life, that’s the most pathetic thing. Even a three year old child would be embarrassed to fantasize the way you do. Madan laughs at you.”

“Girls laugh at you. Girls laugh behind your back. Your mom laughs at you. Your dad smiles sympathetically like a baboon family smiles at demented offspring before eating it for lunch. You’ll die alone. You’ll never amount to anything. You’re worthless.”

Again that fast scrolling sequence of images, sensations and emotions showed me exactly how the world saw me. Girls thought I was a worm. I am a worm.

The Voice tittered. If a basso profundo titters, it sounds like Hell’s door creaking open. Just FYI.

“If you disappeared today, the world would be better off. Madan is already cheering your absence you know. After a token microsecond of concern. What is the point of you?”

“WHAT IS THE POINT OF YOU?”

Something snapped. Like a child’s hand sweeping a slate clear, the noxious montages were wiped clean, and I said a little more forcefully:

“NO.”

The Voice faded and wasn’t heard again. I sat around for a bit, waiting for it to come back, and in its absence I grew braver and braver, so much so that I was ready to strike down the owner of the Voice in one fell swoop when it reappeared. For emotional trauma. I was judge, jury and executioner.

Presently though, I picked myself up and walked back through the cave system in a daze. The glowing metallic veins returned at some point but I barely noticed. All I could perceive was the bubbling cauldron of righteous indignation that seethed underneath the surface. I noticed that my fists were balled up, and the hair on my arms stood on end. Inconsolable rage sent shivers up and down my body like waves. Something had to give.

A sound wafted through the dimness and resolved itself into a laugh. I reached down and picked up a large rock that lay at my feet and threw it in the direction of the sound. I heard a wet plop and bared my teeth in barbaric satisfaction. How dare they laugh at me? I’ll show them. The tumult that my body held was not easily restrained. I seethed and boiled, but there were no more outlets.

The mouth of the tunnel appeared in the distance, and grew larger and larger until I found myself in a sandstorm. All my rage disappeared in an instant, leaving behind a gnawing void. I was missing something, but I didn’t know what it was. I trudged on wearily through the sandstorm for hours and hours and hours. It felt like I wasn’t moving at all. Despite its constant motion, the sandstorm had a static quality to it, and I was like a hamster on a wheel, marching forward but staying in the same place.

A face appeared in the distance. It was a man. He was in his mid-thirties and dressed for a party by the look of things. The shirt was midnight black and covered with shiny sparkly stars, and the trousers hugged his legs like they were afraid they would float away if they didn’t. His hair was once smoothly slicked into a fashionable Pompadour but the coating of sand particles somewhat ruined the effect. I ran at him and grabbed his arm. He started, nudged his pointless shades to the tip of his nose, looked down at me, and roughly pushed me away.

“Wait!” I croaked.

He paused mid-stride.

“Do you think that my hair is thinning at the crown?”

This was a man who was obviously used to a gregarious lifestyle of small talk, flirting and sweet nothings. But he couldn’t make a sound beyond a noncommittal ‘Hmm’.

I trudged on. Meanwhile, my brain was feverishly replaying every single event from my life. That time when my first girlfriend called me handsome? She was only being polite. Now that I think about it, there was a vague tone of irony in her voice when she said that. And Madan. Madan was better at everything than I was. He was funny, sociable and emotional. I was a colourless stone. And my work? I thought I was helping the world working in customer care. Who was I fooling? Melancholy washed over like a tidal flood. I was exhausted and not just physically. Tears streamed down my cheeks, dribbled down my chin, and dripped down onto my chest. I was in the dreamy savannah again.

I really don’t like sad stories so I’m hitting the fast forward button again. So what happened then was that I somehow ran into Madan. He was bawling like a baby. We hugged, told each other that we were never doing this again and walked through the slimy part-woods together. At that time I thought it was each other’s company that brought us relief, but it was deeper. Spiritual bliss I had called it right? I always had a way with words because that’s just what it was. I had somehow realized that everything that I thought was good about myself was an affectation. To truly be happy, I had to be myself. Whatever that was. Crazy dude who saw horror movies in every mundane scene maybe? I think Madan too found his version of Nirvana, but he still blabbed like it was his last day on Earth, so I suppose that part of him wasn’t an affectation. We smiled and egged a young Chinese couple on that we met on the way.

Just as we stepped off the trail’s entrance, and before we went on live long, successful, authentic lives, we passed a signboard that we didn’t see. It said:

“The Kubler-Ross trail.”