The final exorcism of the past. VI

Honesty.

Its difficult. I always come in the way.

Its complicated only because of thinking , which involves including others. Effects. Causes. Results.

So you make rules.

About what you portray. What your reveal. What you obscure , hide . Its about others. I could add fear but its not the fear of consequences to you, not about how you will be perceived. Those things are pointless because its someone elses indulgences based on perceptions that are not in your control. The real fear is something that will involve and effect another, through your thoughts, actions or words.

I guess you call that love.

So you must forgive if you perceive gaps. Treat it as things I don't wish to reveal. We do have choices.

Interactions are inevitable. You are never alone. You are shaped; and that always involves another.

I recall.

My father in Udupi. Looking for a restaurant that will serve biryani.

It was the twilight zone of restaurants. After 3 pm. The time between lunch and dinner. No place open.

We had left my younger brother's place. Now we were waiting for the bus to take us to Mangalore . From there , train to Kerala.

I wanted my biryani.

Achan found a place. I do not recall how he managed it.

I ate the biryani. The chicken pieces were not cooked through. I didn't say anything. I ate the whole thing. Effort require acceptance.

Train to Kerala.

One incident. Registered.

Me on the upper berth. Achan below , on the side that faces me.

A sadhu sits next to him. Old , clothed in saffron.

Iam smoking. I finish. I lean down and give the stub to Achan to toss out of the train.

Achan takes it and throws it out.

I lean back on the bag that I am using as a pillow. I must have been reading a book. I am not sure.

End. Memory over.

Years later, my father told me the rest of that incident.

Achan says to me that the Sadhu asked him why he allows his son to smoke in presence of his father. Achan had replied that he wanted his son to do what he wants , as long as he is not ashamed of it. If his son smokes, then he didn't want that to be something his son has to hide from his father. The sadhu replied that we all shit but we don't need to shit in front of our parents to show that we shit.

Interactions. Society. Flock. Rules.Conform.

I still smoke in front of my father. I dispose the stubs myself.

Nedumangad. Home.

Off medications. Voices are my company. They talk. They answer my questions. Mostly with more questions, until I arrive at the answers.

There are no questions that you have an answer to already. Questions are just answers that you have already derived that requires validation. Your questions are as limited as your experiences. Its all in your head. Just a mental masturbation. Affirmation of self.

I digress. That came from now. I am indulging.

Then.

I trusted the voices. 13 of them. Each distinct.

Nedumangad.

Shell. Empty. Hungry. Horny.

Nothing defined. Difficult to recall the state. Memory seems to require definitions.

I recall images.

Lying on the sofa. Afternoon. Alone. Reading? Perhaps.

I see a woman, standing by my side. She wears a black skirt, the one that Indian girls wear underneath their sari. Her blouse is black too. Hair untied but neat. She is dark. I find her appealing in a physical sense.

I watch.

She comes besides me. Lifts her skirt. Straddles me. Holds both my shoulder and looks into me.

I startle. Invasive. I am aroused . Shes no longer there.

Memory. Its there.

Voices.

We are now familiar. I am just ears and some sort of processing. Not sure if there was a me understanding. I remember , in a watching sort of way. I don't recall a me being there. Me seems to be different from I. Words. Definitions. Sorting. Memory. i.

Created. Not immortal. No beginning, no end, because it never existed in the first place.

Illusion.

Voices. I realized was me. Splintered. Observing a me that was no longer there.

Yet I must have been there. If not who is writing this? A memory? An accumulated , embodied garbage of experiences ?

I dont know.

Then.

Elder brother's marraige. Arranged.

Reception at the house.

Elder brother married. Trying his best to assure me that nothing has changed. Family is still his biggest priority. I see that he is assuring himself. It does not matter to me. I absorb.

They leave.

Achan and me. Home

Achan joins law. He is in his 50s. He studies.

I read.

I see my emptiness. I see it.

Its a sort of void that needs to be filled. It lacks the ability to exist in absence. It needs filling. With what? Every thing I believe is retained remains within like a collection of dead butterflies. Dead. Captured. Some stay, some blows away. I am not affected.

Panic attacks are no longer there. I stay in a silence that is deafening.

I seek answers to my state. I turn to direction. I look outside. I grab religion.

I devour it. I try on all the masks. I keep it on for long periods. I become the books I read. I become whatever anyone wants me to be. I see it now. Then, it was the only way.

No recollection of what or how I was before the shedding. I see it. I have no memory of the feeling. I know there were emotions. There had been laughter. Tears. Anger.Lust. I see it but I dont experience it . It is like someone else's life.

Then the voices started leaving.

I do not recall when they started leaving.

My dialogues with them, was dominated by one voice which seemed to silence the rest. I am not sure but I recall him the most. The voice was male, deep, calm.

I bestowed on him a personality. I made him Agastyan.

Religion had become my crutch.

I sought validation. Identity. I sought a reason. I sought for myself.

Religion, in its abstractness , gave me some more porn to wank off with. What attracted my interest became my reality. I immersed myself in it.

Companionship. Elder brother being married rose within me a need to get anchored. It seemed logical. Sex and a reason to exist. Anchor.

I told Achan.

Now to find the girl.

I looked within the recess of my mind to find an available candidate. An ex flame. During school vacation days. A neighbor. Christian. Nothing beyond great long prose written hastily on note book papers, passed between each other by my cousin in whose house I was spending the vacations. She was my cousin's friend. The engulfing affair flickered out with time.

I inquired after her. Spoke to my cousin. She in turn got in touch with her friend. I wrote a letter saying that I am back , explained what had happened and that I want to marry her.

She accepted.

Cousin brought her home one day. We met face to face for the first time. We spoke for the first time.

I was lost. I found no connection. I looked, tried to fan back some memory of what I had felt for her once. Nothing came. I pretended. When she left I was tired. The effort of feeling a feeling that is not there is draining.

I carried it on. There seemed no other way. I had wanted marriage and she had accepted. That was that. Anchor.

She had theories for my state. I listened. She was doing medicine and I became a text book case study.

I was PMD. Three alphabets.

I did not mind.

I was eager to know too.

Staying focused on something or someone that does not hold your interest is very hard. They talk and it goes through you.They stand in front of you and you see through them. Nothing registers. I sit in front of her and I am elsewhere. I recall a day when I was called out for some reason and she was with me in the living room. I left her there and went out. I came back in the course of the day , much later , to find her in the house. I had forgotten. If she was upset, she never showed it. That was kind of her. She wasnt registering.

She spoke to her mother about us. Her mother did not disapprove. Her mother brought it up with her father. Mother returned with a swollen cheek for the trouble.

I needed to get away. I needed to get out. I had spend the last few months within the confines of my house. I stepped out only to ride out to the market place. Video shop. Back. Book shop. Back.

Religion gave me the escape.

Enter Swami Tys.