Uncle

[A tale for children who grew up too soon]

Once upon a time there used to be an uncle. He had a house. But much more importantly, he had two nephews. They were born on the same day, in the same minute of a same hour, in split seconds. But they were not twins. They were born to two separate women. Incidentally, both of them were the uncle’s sisters. Therefore, the uncle had two nephews.

The uncle had come to know of the birth of his nephews a few days later when the two letters arrived…. Each from one of his sisters who proclaimed they had become mothers to a little pink angel. The uncle smiled twice in a strange fulfillment as he read the two letters. He found himself longing to take them in his arms but both his sisters stayed in far-off places. So, he decided to send them two of his best roses chosen from his garden.

Before the mail containing the roses would arrive in their respective destinations, a telegram reached the houses of the sisters. Telegrams were the harbingers of ill-fate. So, the sisters cried before they broke the seals of the telegrams that still smelled, freshly of their brother’s garden. They had to sweep off the tears to realize that telegrams are written by businessmen – someone had proclaimed their brother’s death as if closing a deal. One of the sisters, picked up her newborn son in her arms, held him close to her breast and cried. Miles away, at that same instance, the other sister did the same too.

“Your uncle was a clever man,” they said to their children “he left behind no clues to his death.”

In a few days after the telegram, two more envelopes followed, each containing a rose, to the two sisters’ house. The roses were dry. And yet, they were the most beautiful roses that one had ever seen. The sisters walked straight towards the room of their children to let them have the roses which their Uncle very apparently had sent for them before he had passed away. It was the first and the only gift from him for his nephews. They must preserve it well. But whilst they wished thus, they were stopped by the maids. They said the children shouldn’t be exposed to the gifts of a dead man.

“’Tis a bad omen”, they whispered.

“No, this is the blessing he had left behind” the sisters retaliated, caressing the petals.

The roses, ever since, were kept in two precious silver boxes on the right side of the pillow on which the infants slept.

The infants grew up as the roses dried further, crumbling into themselves. They learnt to walk, talk and silence others with their innocent gestures. All day through, the two neighborhoods would reverberate in their giggling sounds. Falling silent only when they went to sleep in the night. Times when they rendered their obstinacy to their mothers, whispering their tantrums into their mothers’ ears. They wanted to listen to no fairytale, no folklore. They persisted on listening to stories about their uncle who used to live in a garden. And in a house surrounded by all the different species of plants. A house in which you had to always keep the lights on, throughout the day because the trees ensured the shadows of darkness rolled through the walls. And uncle lived in a damp, damp room which had three windows on three of its walls, each opening to some trees nodding their head in the perpetual breeze. The breeze, it seemed, never stopped and the garden danced to its sweet melody. The uncle sat in his room, late into the night, taking notes. But he never showed what he wrote to anybody. Not even to his sisters.

And their mothers’ ignorance was the seeds of curiosity sown in the mind of the children. Questions that rose up like smoke and lingered as mist.

And mist enveloped the times in which the children grew further, every night trying to look more deeply into the petals of the ancient roses, kept in two precious silver boxes on the right side of their pillow. Careful not to touch them, else they’d scatter like dust. And what constituted the dust that often flew about their room? And why must flowers turn to dust on being touched?

One morning when the mothers woke up they couldn’t find their sons any more in any of the places they would have been.

10:30 PM,

Dreams have been falling since yesterday. My garden’s all wet with its colors. I hear them. Colors saddened by the hues of emptiness. I’ve mastered the art of promising. Insensitive. I still see the horse. Its martyr fallen. I whisper into my dreams. A fresh gust of air. Never understood. Like forever. I stand with a torn cloth. Rubbing the strains off. Strains on the bark. Centuries rose upon my dreams. Like towers. Unchallenged. Never compromised. Unlike. Leaves of an autumn tree. Oh my children! I melt forever into sounds. Become shadows of the voice. I can touch dreams. Hold infinity. My garden’s a premise. A Premise. My dream’s the argument I held up, above my head, to restrain it. There’s sense in everything since yesterday. Sense. Touch, hear, taste, smell, look. Essence. Feel. Dreams have been falling since yesterday. Last night, I realized that all the darkness I had collected was drenched. Too drenched. All my fault. But I had nothing to cover my garden. No blanket. And yet there was no rain in the garden inside. Left dry. Dying seeds. When will the two meet?

The two sisters were meeting after many a years. Breaking their vow of never meeting again. And there were tears in a corner of their eyes. A few dead autumn leaves rolled over their feet. The wind was something between a breeze and the storm. They could feel it in the salty tears that washed their eyes. A cold touch that groomed their loss.

Two mothers who had lost their children recently met in a place equidistant from both their houses. The exact centre where they had met the last time before they had disappeared in directions, opposite. They said –

“Our children have ceased to be. But we had tried everything. Done all we could. And yet, can’t we be anything more than helpless?”

Inside, deep down, they wished that at least one of the children would return. And each wished that it’d be her son. They watched with keen observation at the dead autumn leaves that rolled over their feet, trying to find out which way the wind had been blowing.

10:15 PM,

Yet into the unknown they went floating. The log of wood in the river. Carrying the memories of a fall. Disseminate me into you. Lately the promise of a few seeds has been forgotten. But for the replenishment. The replacement that’s natural shall follow. Hand in hand. Arms. And disarmament. The restoration of natural order. The eternal return. Nietzsche. Cyclic time. To satiate the fallen martyr shall the horse return. To remove the strains on the bark shall the past. To remove the strains on the dark. Light. Lightness. Undo detachment. Bring down the fire. Bring down sun. Religion. Religion. Legion.

The two nephews reached the fields exactly when the dusk began that day. They were frightened to see each other, for they looked alike – exactly like the other. And even though they had never met before, only having heard of the existence of the other from their mother, they didn’t find it at all difficult to recognize each other. And they each knew that the other was equally conscious of The Invitation.

The consciousness of The Invitation never had a beginning for them. It was like a strangely sweet breeze that had been visiting their room all these years, in the night, when they tried to sleep. The breeze played inside their room for a long while and later, invaded their heads. A few dreams would float in those canvases of winds. An undeniable silence would converge at its center. And nowhere was a silence they’d found denser than this. And then, their mothers told them the stories of their Uncle’s garden in which the shadows rolled through the walls and an Uncle who captured those shadows in his diary. Silently.

11:00 AM,

Lately, the ink shall disappear from my pen over and over again. But the night leaves back her darkness in my garden. I pick some of it up to fill pages. Darkened pages. The strangest hues of intangibility. The keeper of the weapons have hidden a few arms in it’s darkness. Thought I’d never find. Thought they were intangible too. They’ve filled their guns with religions. And filled my sacred darkness with flashing sounds. I know…. I know they’re here for the fallen martyr. They’ve planted mines in the earth. My innocent plants - they take in the poison everyday. I can see the scars running deep into their boughs.

My dear sisters, you’ve infected yourselves with bravery. Where shall the meek go?

The nephews were infants when the first telegrams had arrived. It carried the news of their fathers’ death. Both of them had died on the same day, in the war field. As heroes. Telegrams had become the harbingers of ill-fate for their mothers ever since.

When the last telegram had arrived last evening, they knew it contained the carcasses of their last hopes. The death of their children, proclaimed by a businessman. Both of them had died on the same day, in the war field. As heroes.

“Our children have ceased to be. But we had tried everything. Done all we could. And yet, can’t we be anything more than helpless?” they said, as they met this evening, after many years. Breaking their vow of never meeting again. They had tried to keep the two children’s past apart. They wanted no more soldiers in the family. No more telegrams. They had created an uncle for their children, made him live and die in a serene garden. Done all they could. Done. Completed.

Nothing they did was enough to take away the consciousness of the invitation. The presence of a religion they needed to fight for. The holy scriptures. The pride. The bullet.

10:30 PM,

Dreams have been falling since yesterday. My garden’s all wet with its colors. I hear them. Colors saddened by the hues of emptiness. I’ve mastered the art of promising. Insensitive. I still see the horse. Its martyr fallen. I whisper into my dreams. A fresh gust of air. Never understood. Like forever. I stand with a torn cloth. Rubbing the strains off. Strains on the bark. Centuries rose upon my dreams. Like towers. Unchallenged. Never compromised. Unlike. Leaves of an autumn tree. Oh my children! I melt forever into sounds. Become shadows of the voice. I can touch dreams. Hold infinity. My garden’s a premise. A Premise. My dream’s the argument I held up, above my head, to restrain it. There’s sense in everything since yesterday. Sense. Touch, hear, taste, smell, look. Essence. Feel. Dreams have been falling since yesterday. Last night, I realized that all the darkness I had collected was drenched. Too drenched. All my fault. But I had nothing to cover my garden. No blanket. And yet there was no rain in the garden inside. Left dry. Dying seeds. When will the two meet?

The Thriller Novel

1

The cops came looking for the summer breeze. They turned everything I had in my room upside down. “This place’s so dirty”, one said holding his handkerchief firmly on his scarred nose “don’t you ever do the dusting?” “Not since she left.” I said “What is it exactly that made her leave?” “I don’t know. She said she had seen me making love to the summer breeze.” “….. which is true?” “Depends.” “What?” “I said, it depends.” “What d’ya mean….. depends on what?” “On the circumstantial evidences. Are you going to arrest me now or should I go and finish the painting? I’ve an art exhibition tomorrow.”

2

Voices played inside her head even when she sat on the roof. Voices she couldn’t discriminate. Nor own. At times she wondered if they were the voices of all the people she had killed. “Is it you, Kelly?” she’d ask. “No. I cannot be there inside your head.” Kelly would answer. “Why?” “Because you’ve never killed me.” “Are you sure?” “Yes, I’m still alive. And I’m sure that I’m living somewhere.” “Oh Kelly, please forgive me. I’m so sorry. I just can’t seem to differentiate the living from the dead, anymore.” And then, the voices would disappear. What would follow is the terrific silence. The silence in which she’d wish she’d once again get to kill someone. “Who?” she thought. Moments later, she shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. Blood needs no calculation.”

3

In his childhood, he’d make exact errors on every mathematical problem he was told to solve. Even his teacher was baffled. “You need infinite imaginations to make such absurd calculations.” She’d say. And it was not an exaggeration. Each of his mistakes was carefully calculated. So well crafted that the possibility of any other error but the one he had committed would be nullified. His teacher would have to go through the heaviest of books in permutations and probability, and yet she had nothing to prove him wrong. It was impossible to be wronger than him. Because English had never defined a word called ‘wronger’. “One problem could have exactly one perfect error” he’d say, “nothing less, nothing more. Once you get to it, you can feel the beginning of all fallacies.” That is exactly how he had learnt to paint. “A painting is the mathematics of distances….. between the root and the tree, between the bird and the sky, between the color and its absence, between the river and that drop of tear on the man’s cheek. And you could infuse movement in it once you discover the perfect error in it. All of us were nothing more than a painting until god made the perfect error. He made Eve do the same too, to introduce the concepts of reproduction. There could be no creation without the perfect error. It’s hidden in everything to be discovered. It’s just that we never do so because we have been taught to be afraid of errors. When we land into an error, we are told to learn something from it so as not to return to it. Instead, if we were to delve deeper into the error we’ve made, we’re bound to find the perfect error. And we would find natural creations. All my paintings linger in the glory of the perfect errors.” He had written a book once called ‘Human and Fallacy’, but whoever started reading it said they couldn’t find its end. They said the book repeated itself with the page number being in a perpetual ascending order.

4

When your corpse was brought in my house, you had turned your head and smiled at me. So happy that I could recall you. “Well, I’ve to do something ‘bout you, else you’d start leaving your stench on my paintings. Where would you like to stay?” “In your garden.” “That place’s already congested with the trees you had planted last summer.” “Don’t worry. I’d find my place down the roots.” “Who did this to you?” I said looking at your wounds, “you’re bleeding profusely.” “Oh! Let’s not talk ‘bout that.” “I wish I had some medicines. I’ve also misplaced my first-aid kit.” “So….. you still care?” “I’m….. I’m just afraid of blood.” “Those are not your words”, you whispered. We both smiled. I could sense my heart beating faster as I did.

5

The cops came in the evening. They said they’d like to question her about the murder. “Murder! What murder?” I asked, taken by surprise. “Don’t you know, she was killed?” “What’re ya talking ‘bout?” “Yes. She was. And you are one among the suspects’ list. Now, if you don’t mind, can I talk to her?” “But I’ve already buried her.” “Don’t worry. Our men would bring her here. Where’s the shovel?” And thus, you were brought, still smelling of the wet mud that covered most of your skin. “Gosh! Didn’t he even think of giving you a coffin?” The cop asked you. Meanwhile, I thought of the rain that fell this afternoon. And the maddening fragrance of the first wet mud. The Frenzy.

6

Their first meeting was a mistake that repeated itself, ad infinitum, like the book he had wrote. He had been sitting that evening in the shade of the summer breeze. And he had been painting the summer breeze. For the last few hours he had been mixing the different shades of the colors. Waiting for a perfect error that would create the exact shade of the summer breeze. She came following the summer breeze. Since the summer breeze went right through his paintings, she passed through his paintings too. Later, when his painting was completed, since he didn’t know her, he mistook her for the summer breeze. It was a perfect error – The beginnings of the perfect love story. And the beginning, as she had told elsewhere, does not lead to an end, but create newer beginnings. Perhaps, there was never a first time when they had met. There was only a sequence of moments – each preceded by some and followed by the other. And each time, for him, she was the summer breeze. Each time, she’d pass away like colors on his drying palette. He wished his paintings were yet to be completed, forever and evermore. But time did to his paintings what a full-stop would always do to a phrase. For time was always the hole in both the barrier and the bridge to the accumulating moments. And then, to set them free, like birds from a cage, in a kiss. “Too much of a perfect error in there”, he thought. She nodded.

7

After you completed the bath, we all sat on the porch talking. The cops took the lead. “Do you remember the events that preceded the killing?” they asked you. “Yes, I was with him, making love.” You answered pointing towards me. “Okay. That sure is news to me. You never informed us of any such incident, sir.” I was given a harsh glance with that statement. However, I couldn’t make out if an answer was wanted of me…. And what exact answer was wanted of me…. And who wanted it. I fumbled a little. “I liked you a lot better the day before yesterday, sir. I thought you were much smart then. Which reminds me – how was your art exhibition?” I could sense the sarcasm flying in the air. A few drops of darkness were assembling in the horizons. It was much too silent in my garden. Exceedingly calm. I knew this atmosphere well. I knew she had wished to come. She had wished too long. And nobody stops her when she wishes thus. None. The summer breeze is coming. She had sensed the break in the rhythm of my breath. She had sensed my heartbeat as I sat with the cop and, more importantly, you. She had sensed that I was trying to defend your point of view. She knew I’d fall. Fall down the edges. Of my Frenzy. Our home. Frenzy. I had refurbished. Frenzy. With her. And I was about to stumble. To fall. If she doesn’t come. The edges were calling me again.

8

The first time they had made love to was to the fragrance of the approaching storm. Few of his paintings that were on paper, were fluttering. Creating a sound of liberty. They knew that they must cover themselves up before the storm. He knew he had to set the summer breeze free before the storm. And she knew she would lose to herself. The first sounds of the storm were unmistakable. The first dissociation, unavoidable. She left, you stayed. Still beneath the weight of incomplete recognition you lied. Looking into your blank eyes. Without the shine. Lifeless. You were never the summer breeze. You were her gown. The robe she wore before she came to meet her lover. They made love in the storm, that dusk. Dusts converging on their eyelids. Rain washing them through. Rain washing his paintings, too. “You must come back to me”, he said “for without you she’s faceless.” You had smiled, darkly. You will never be her but I shall keep being him. It was an error that never seemed perfect enough.

9

You never wanted to open the window to her, last night. “Own me, not her. Make me your soul”, you said while she whispered on your glass window-pane. Your closed windows trembled on her sweet, cold touch. “Let her in, Kelly”, I said moving my fingers through your hair. “Let her in, if you love me.” And I found your eyes becoming just as hazy as your glass window-pane. But tears always meant you’d listen. You got up and opened the window to her. And as you stood motionless like a shadowy figure in front of the window, I found the summer breeze glowing on your skin and the shine returning to your eyes. And I was once again becoming him. “Tonight, I’ll hide”, she said, “and you shall find me in the deepest of her chasms.” I accepted her challenge. Our love shan’t be confined to the shackles of skin. I slit your skin in the places she could be. You never made a sound – telling me she wasn’t there. Whole night long I kept on searching but couldn’t find her. I was losing my perfection in erring.

10

“Do you trust him?” the cops asked you. “Not half as much as he trusts me”, you said “But he had killed you, last night.” “No. He had killed her.” “Her?” “The summer breeze.” It was true. For even though the atmosphere had every sign of her arrival, the summer breeze didn’t come that evening. She was dead. You had made me commit the perfect error. I felt defeated. How I wished I would kill you, too. But I couldn’t. It was impossible. You were never there inside yourself. You always lived somewhere else. Inside me.

Narcissus

[This is anything but fiction]

Narcissus was born inside a mirror. Many people who came to see the baby were disturbed on not being able to take it in their arms. They didn’t have access to the other side of the glass and so was the case with Narcissus. What, however, frightened them even more was their own absence inside the mirror. As if the mirror was a barrier between them and the baby. They realized later that the mirror itself was Narcissus’ mother and like all mothers it protected the child from the big, bad world.

Time passed and the town grew up with Narcissus. And Narcissus grew up with the townsfolk. Some claimed they cared for Narcissus much more deeply than they did for their own sons and daughters. They had watched him smile, weep and celebrate. Silently. Narcissus was deaf, for there was no sound on the other side of the glass. But all the same Narcissus was a beautiful baby right from the day he was born. The townsfolk could forget all their incompetence and incompleteness as they watched him smile. When he wept, unable to provide him with the warmth of the human touch, they recognized their incompetence. And as he celebrated his personal world on the other side of the glass, they became yet more incomplete. And then, he smiled again.

But as he grew up, people realized that Narcissus had become more powerful than the mirror. His beauty had overgrown the space on his side of the glass and now spilled on to this side. He had imposed himself inside the head of the townsfolk and went with them to all the places they went. There were people in the town. He watched each other with their eyes; smelled how each had its own fragrance; felt each one breathing on the other’s skin; but most importantly, for the first time, he heard voices. Voices inside their head. Voices, undesirable.

Voices, undeniable.

In their growing frenzy, he found that each claimed that Narcissus was in their head. They also claimed that he wasn’t present in anyone else’s head. Each claimed that he owned Narcissus, now. At these times Narcissus wished he could speak. No, he couldn’t. But he had other powers. He knew all of them would have to slee……

I couldn’t complete the story last night; so, I slept. Or perhaps, I couldn’t complete my story last night because I fell asleep. It was a sound sleep. A sound that was unbearable. A strange form of silence. It crashed into itself a thousand times creating even smaller grains of silence, each of which was the mirror image of the other. And the only thing I noticed as I slept was that the silence became deafening. Even when I woke up in the morning the silence reverberated in my ears.

I woke up to find myself on my writing desk. The pieces of paper on which I had been writing were scattered all over the floor. They were the different parts of the story. I remembered that I had written the beginning and the end of the story; also, many of the parts in the middle. Last night, as I wrote I had been assembling the pages in their correct sequence. So that when I finished writing all the parts all I had to do was connect the separate pages with the appropriate verbs and conjunctions. But that was not to be. A wild wind last night had scrambled all that I had wrote. I got up from my chair to pick up the sheets and I saw myself in the mirror.

“Where is Narcissus?” was the first question I had to ask myself.

“Where am I?” I had to ask myself, then.

“Why was I present where he should have been?”

“Maybe, he is present now, where I should have been.”

Slowly, it occurred to me that the replacement was complete. I was Narcissus, now. The man whose smile was oblivion; whose silence was music and who was more powerful than the mirror. I was so glad with this revelation that I suddenly felt the urge of letting the world know who I had become. Narcissus, the almighty. I put on a dress and went out.

Once on the streets I started feeling as if I was walking through the mirror. I found Narcissus everywhere. I met thousands of Narcissuses on the streets. The entire town had transformed. They had turned into him.

I had, too. I had become a part of the collective him. Identity-less. Like ants. Not an individual anymore.

And yet I couldn’t hate that face. It was mine.

Then, weeks passed…… like soldiers, marching. In synchronization with each other. And in these weeks I found my story getting completed gradually. One of the Narcissuses would come and write a paragraph or two and go away. Another would come to pick up from where he had left. When the story was finished I suddenly realized that there was only one character in the story: myself.

And there could be only one reader: Narcissus.

Somehow, it all seemed so futile. I had written a story on which I had no control. It became what it wanted to be. But not what I wanted it to become. I wanted it to have all the beauty and the brevity that each of my other story had. But not all stories that are finished, complete. As for this one it became the more incomplete the closer it came to its completion. I sat down in my darkened room that night and wept. I have created a crooked child.

And in my crooked mirror the Narcissus that was me wept as well. He no longer had that common face. He looked different in every mirror of the separate houses. He would have to assume the face of the person who used to live in that house before he had transformed into Narcissus.

It is true that as Narcissuses we have all become creators more powerful than the mirror – We can steal the identity of the person living on the other side of the glass.

Amen.

The World

I realized I was going blind for the first time when I started seeing things in the dark.... Things that couldn't have existed..... Like a figurine of love, a dead eagle on my window-sill and myself in the mirror. It was a matter of time until I lost my sight.

When light came back on earth I went searching for a blind man. I found a woman, instead.

"Teach me blindness", I told her. And thus, in a grey, cloudy afternoon our lessons began.

"Blindness is nothing but an alternative to the world you live in", she told me. "You believe your eyesight is the best gift you have..... But you see, you never know what infinite options you have. Your eyesight is a limitation to your pursuit of these options."

"What do you mean?"

"Eyes attach properties to objects. Blindness removes them. There are no particularities in blindness. As a blind person, you can see anything in as many ways as you wish. Tell me about your experience when you felt for the first time that you were going blind."

I told her about the figurine of love, the dead eagle and myself in the mirror.

"Do you remember seeing them before your attacks of blindness? See, that's what blindness gives you: Freedom of sight."

When I returned home that night her words kept returning back. I remembered the number of times she used the word "see" in her words. It sounded pretty awkward in the words of a blind woman. But I couldn't understand her purpose of using the word: Was it a mockery or enlightenment? I couldn't understand the meanings of the things I saw in the attacks of my blindness….. Or if they had any meaning at all. Only my complete blindness could help me find answers to those questions.

The next few days, I kept waiting eagerly for blindness.

But the woman came back to me before blindness did. I told her that I was confused.

"Well, all of us are, sometimes", she said taking my hand in hers.

I found she was looking into my eyes, constantly, without her eyes blinking even for a second. It took me some time to realize that she was blind. But aren't blind people meant to see better than people gifted with eyesight? Wasn’t she seeing into me much more clearly than any normal person would do?

"Are you in love with me?" I decided to ask her.

She left my hand as I asked her the question. And moved a little farther away from me.

"What makes you think so?" she asked, a little concerned.

"You were looking into my eyes in such a strange way."

Even though she was standing turning her back towards me, I could see her leaving a deep breath.

"Maybe, you should stop imagining things." She said, as she tried to leave in a hurry.

"Why are you going away?"

"Because...." She shouted; then, fell silent. At last, in a much calmer tone she said, "because it's fearful how you...." She fell silent, once again.

I waited for her to finish. But she never did.

"....Is it how I see into you? Is that what you were trying to say?" I asked.

"Not me, but everyone..... everything." She continued, "Let me tell you a secret – We can see ourselves in mirrors. You don't exactly need to go blind for that. It's true that blindness assures freedom. It's true that blindness is much, much more powerful than eyesight. Blindness in never dark, as the popular belief goes, but is capable of colors unimaginable by a common man. Only blindness gives you access to spaces intangible..... But you see it's very, very difficult to come in terms with the fact that you are blind."

"But I don't think it would be difficult for me to come to terms with the fact when I do go blind. You've already taught me so much." I said, hoping that I was able to understand what she tried to say.

"No. It's you who taught me all these."

Unable to understand I kept looking into her eyes, vaguely.

"The doctors did indeed, find you blind from the very day that you were born", she completed.

And she reminded me what the world always would, that I cannot go blind ever again.

Snow

One evening when we sat by the distances, she told me of her wish to burn her body to see her souls catch fire, too. She said she loved the perfume of burnt-out souls. I realized that it was going to be difficult but decided to give her this gift on her nearest birthday, anyways. I asked her which of her souls she would like to burn.

"The wet one", she replied.

It had snowed last night. It had started when we were playing with each other's bodies. Fondling. Jostling. Mingling. In our silent apartment. I was drenched in her presence. I always was. Despite her perfumed hair, her ethereal nudity, the sentiments of her fragrant touch; her body was only an effigy. A mirage. Because she were innumerable women at the same time. In our silent apartment, her converging souls passed in and out of her body all the time. And in every parting moment, she fragmented herself more into the nooks and corners of my room. With every passing instance, my partner in the bed would change. I made love to all of them. It felt like a game of betrayal in which you'd stopped counting. And you had no idea any longer who it was that you were betraying. You betrayed each for all. And none for the other. Living inside a deadly turn-on.

I didn't notice the beginning of the snow until she pushed my body aside and ran outside. Into the snow. Trailing one of her souls with her. I put on some clothes and followed her outside. Snowflakes landed on her naked skin. I found slowly, that her color was changing. She was becoming a deep, deep blue. I asked her to come inside but she refused. I was worried both for her and the soul that she had brought for herself. Gradually, I found that her body had begun to glow so that the space around her seemed to be lighted up in a divine light. The light kept spreading until it went in through the windows of the people who slept. All of them woke up to find their eyes being washed in a light so deeply blue as can only be found in dreams. Thinking of the light as a divine purgation all of them started to pray.

She stood unmoving, in the snow until she fell senseless on the accumulated snow. I went near her and asked if she would like to come inside. But she wouldn't answer. So, I carried her in my arms and took her inside. I put a blanket around her. But before that, I took off her wet soul and put it next to the fire to dry.

It remained wet.

As days passed, we made plans for the burning. Even when we made love we spoke about her burning body and soul. It would turn us on. We started collecting matchsticks of different sizes and shapes. Ignite each of them to examine its flame. Our days passed like dreams.

At last her birthday came. She was apprehensive from the morning about the evening 'cause that's when, we had decided, we would set her on fire. She seemed excited from the morning. I had never seen her so exuberated ever before. By the time evening came, she had tired herself out of excitation. She quickly put on her wet soul. I, on the other hand, lighted a matchstick and set her on fire.

As flames started playing all over her body she started dancing in jubilation. First she set a few of my important papers on fire, then my beautiful Arabian carpet and slowly, my entire apartment was on fire. But we little cared for any of it because nothing was important beyond this moment.

"Come take me in your arms", she said at last, stopping "and see if I've started exuding the fragrance of burnt-out souls."

I went and took her in my arms, but couldn't find the fragrance of her burnt-out souls. I told her this. She seemed surprised. It was not some thing that we had planned for. I looked more closely at her. The flames coming out of her body seemed calm and composed. They were blue….. exactly the color of her snow drenched self.

Snows were nothing but frozen blocks of fires.

I realized that the fragrance that she was looking for would only be possible if she would burn in the snow, like the last time round. I realized, also, that I was on fire. Perhaps, I had caught it when I went and took her in my arms. When we stared outside, we found that the snowfall had started.

I took her hand and ran outside.