When I Die

Honesty And Insanity

When you're half way beyond the gutter and into the cosmic chants of hyperion, soaked in on the drug of death, the amazing thing is you find the ability to laugh at things in a way you never could.

India is not a great country to be in. Read the daily newspapers, if you like. Any one will do. The headlines rarely change. A sample: 'Five killed in gangwar!' 'Politican accused of blah blah' 'Three dudes commited suicide!' 'Man kills father with their legacy sword. Said he wanted his Pop to live forever among his ancestors!'

When I used to see these things earlier, I used to coil away in disgust. Now it's like, "allrighty, one more goes to the wastebag."

And it isn't disgusting anymore; at least not on a conscious level. Maybe in my subconscious it freaks me out--maybe that's the reason I like horror stories so much. Why, the very first story I wrote (not just the first story at Stories.com; the very first story I ever wrote) is a horror story.

The very first story I recall being told (I couldn't read back then) was an Indianized version of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. And even though the story ended with the usual happily ever after, I was scared. Scared? Yes, scared. Maybe for the first time in my life. The thing I was scared of was the mirror. The mirror that told the wicked queen that Snow White was more beautiful than the queen herself. I was scared because that mirror talked. When my mother told me the bit about the mirror, she told me the face in the mirror opened its eyes and growled. And at that time, the only thing I knew of that growled were lions. And for a dead second before mom told me what followed, I was sure the mirror would eat the queen.

It didn't happen that way, of course. But what if it did? Hey, if it happened one way in stories, it could happen the other way in real life. What if it did? That question kept me in a state of near panic for a long time. Mirrors. I hated them. I was shit scared.

The other day, I gashed myself pretty bad on the left knee. Any other time and I'd be screaming my guts out. But no, I was actually pretty silent all the way home, even though walking felt like playing football (soccer, for fellow US brethen) with a blown up spongefish, barefoot. Thorny and bloody.

Amazing how death makes all these little things seem unimportant.

But death doesn't cure loneliness. No sir. That feeling stays; it stays forever once you've had it.

I wonder if my entries sound offensive. I wonder if they sound foolish, retarded, whiny, bratty, and generally repulsive.

The thing is, I don't care. Because the entries might be all those things, but they are one more thing. They're honest. As honest as a cornered and defeated man can be.

And I think as long as I'm honest, the rest doesn't matter. At least never has mattered much to me.