Max Payne - Chapter One

Narrator: There are three things you are going to like about the future. One you are not alone, you are always with yourself. Two, Nothing would matter. Three, you will get to know Max Payne.

It was a sultry night as it always was. The rain seeds had failed to do their part and now it was overcast and torrid. Gushed with sweat all over her she ran to her room and locked it from inside. No one from the outside could get in and no one was there outside. She lived in the apartment all by herself. Locking her up was a part of her since antiquity but now is her predisposition. She looked outside her bleak window to see a barren outdoor.

It used to rain then. The rain seeds were never needed. And she would rush back home with the same jubilance as she would now and then she would lock herself up. But this time it was different. She walked home slow drenched with the torrential downpour. There was a fragrance in the air that was distinct, it was irritating and she didn't mind it. The dark thundering clouds had proved wrong the old adage "a thundercloud produces no rain" for that night it rained and she would remember it for the rest of her blighted life.

Narrator: It's known and it's strange how an overcast cloud makes everything below it lose all it's luster and shine. All the glory, the golden, the color, all of it lost in the uneventful takeover by black. And this black eventually takes over lives, people's lives.

She walked over to the door and there stood awaiting were pairs of torpid eyes glittering towards her. All of them moist with fresh pearls that may have melted off them. They were dressed in variations of white but deep within them was a black, a hole as big to annihilate all the pearls that had fallen in it. An anxiety grew within her and the only question that came to her mind was "who?"

Standing by the window she would often try and forget that night by trying and remembering that night. This was not possible and she knew it very well. But in the present day it did not matter much, for she was soaked in a world of her own. Enclosed by walls and a door, she was trying to escape from her and the only little amount of help whatsoever she got was from it. There lay in the corner with pages torn apart the graphic, Max Payne.

End of Chapter One.

Pair of lies

The Impulse:

It lasts just a moment long. You pause, you exchange and you move on. It’s quite strange that it happens the way it does for out of your whole preempted life, with everything in your life happening and not happening just the way it should happen and not happen, out of nowhere you exchange those glances. And there you go. Things pause, life pauses, you look up, turn back and you try and find where has she gone, but no you can’t find her because it was momentary and it’s over now. It’s like one of those electric impulses you might get while turning on an archaic switch and you go like “whoa! What what was that” and you are brought back to consciousness, an awaken state. You look at the switch find nothing wrong and get back to what you were doing. You don’t realize that somewhere within that impulse just brought back in you what you had lost! This is the journey of Javed.

Javed and Aali:

He lay there in the swamp, filthy, his heart in his hand, grimed with all the red wine that spewed across from it. His body had lost about a quarter of the red wine but his soul was lost forever in the most beautiful pair of eyes he had ever come across. Even the red wine couldn’t have brought Javed the happiness in seeing those eyes again and his heart kept growing weaker, but he had to live for the impulse had brought him to this bliss and he was just there.

He got up, he didn’t remember who he was. Vicarious memories of her flashed across him. Even more transcendent were the visions of the zombies grasping him, pulling him back into where he had come from; his past. She was beautiful, happy, dancing, fluttering and they were gruesome, horrific terrorizing his oblivious construct of her, Aali. But Javed was not aware of the reality. For him reality was a concoction of the real and the delusional with the only absolute being her eyes. Wonderful was his world that he had constructed with a mere exchange of glances. It started right there and ended right there with everything in between. And his only mantra for survival was to look into those glistering eyes, with just about three quarters of red wine and his heart still pumping.

The lies:

In those days people carried their heart in their hand. It was difficult all right, but one knew it for sure when the heart was beating! He nimbled across the streets, his impetuous eyes moving across faces, exchanging glances but none of them had the same impact as the one he was looking for. In through the lanes, several of them, imperative to find her and his thirsty eyes turning desperate, he turning outrageous, an ardent fire burning within, his desperate eyes turning sore and his heart spewing even more red wine. He had to find her. This had to happen. This could not not happen, it was written down in the relics and he knew it. And there; he saw Aali, in the most exquisite splurge of beauty, sullen, solitary, inadvertent there she sat around the corner. Happy, dancing, fluttering, these were the images that were meant to flash. But it was different this time. Her face covered with a veil revealing just that what mattered. The images, yes they did flash by......those were the most beautiful pair of lies.

We are all made of stars

"Do you see it.....coming?" She asked him. Sitting at the edge of humanity, quite possibly even reality, staring at a world away just by a few million years, dented, punctured with the burst of gentle streaks of white light from the other side, he looked into her eyes and had the same feeling. He could feel it, a similar hope emerging out those black eyes, like a ray of light piercing his heart, his heart tearing apart, his soul screeching out aloud and all this happening in the very single moment. The moment of question, of glance, the moment of being away from reality. Pain was relieved with the silence and the darkness around. No one would hear him cry, no one would see him sad. And she.....she was like him. "No", he said. She turned away and he kept gazing at her face. Her face just lit up by those streaks of gentle white light when a star broke and he saw it travel across those numb eyes from one end across the other.

"How close is it from here to where we gonna go? They say when people go far.....really far.....they.....they become one of those". She looked back at him hoping to hear without him uttering a word, of course knowing that he won't. He got up, stretched out his arm, pointed towards it and said "from here.....I am exactly six feet closer to the stars."

10 miles from nowhere (An answer to questions left unanswered in the above)

They stood under drizzling rain, hidden by the cover of darkness, illuminated only by the remnants of fading moon behind the cover of clouds - clouds that had a silver lining around them. She turned to him and said "See the silver lining? Its like a ray of hope - behind the clouds there is a moon waiting to shine. Do you think that the moon will ever come out?".

He stared at her face for a long time, then turned towards the clouds and said "Why does it matter? We both know the moon is there." She turned away and kept staring at the sky, her tears shielded by the rain drops on her face, watching the sky grow darker as the moon was engulfed by thick clouds. She asked him "Where do you think the moon is?". He just smiled at her and said "Ten miles from nowhere".

The above words are by a very good friend...thank you Shaiz

10 kilometers of life

I don't know what it means when I call this blog 10 kilometers of life. But I would like to know. Perhaps even you do not know the answer to this and perhaps a hundred or maybe even a thousand more people who read this, do not know the answer. But does this make it invalid? Does it mean that it does not have an answer? Can it mean that I wanted to ask something else which had an answer, but asked something which doesn't? Can asking this question lead me to the other question that had the answer? Is the answer important at all, or is it just asking the question, right or wrong, answerable or unanswerable, that matters? Of all the things that I have known, and I have not known and those that I have wanted to know, have always had one thing in common. I.

As long as the question is about something that can be answered logically, the I does not matter.
But when I ask you something about your life, say something to which I don't quite agree with, something to which you may try really hard to explain to me, but you will not be able to, it is this something where I need to forget the I. It may be paradoxical to say so, but in order to really understand somethings it is really necessary to forget the I. Maybe this is what being self-less is being all about. Forgetting one self in trying to understand somethings. After all I am not talking (of) logic over here.

I don't quite remember what she said when I asked her "So....how many places have you been to?". But I do remember that she didn't say much and I do remember what she said towards the end. She said "So thats about it. Ever since I have been born I have been brought up here itself. The same 10 kilometers had my school, college, everything. Never really felt the need to be outside it".

I couldn't say or even ask her much then, just like I am not able to write now. I don't know where this blog is leading to right now. Trapped in this self of mine which makes the I, I don't know what to say or ask her. So I ask you...what do you mean by 10 kilometers of life?

Assumed reality

It’s time. It’s time I tell you the truth. The truth that lay buried within me, not wanting to escape, that lay behind the mask I wore all this while and the mask you were not able to uncover. It’s time I remove that mask and show it to you. No, I wasn’t lying when I said “believe me”, for you did need to believe me then. You needed to. I wasn’t hiding this from you. I didn’t want to tell this to you, partly because I myself was not prepared to admit it and partly I knew you couldn’t take it, just like you won’t be able to take it now. Yes I was scared, unprepared, but now I am and so are you. It’s the right time. The truth is, I, don’t exist. I don’t know you. I never was a friend of yours. I don’t care for you. Who are you? I never loved you. It doesn’t matter to me now and so it shouldn’t to you. I don’t exist, not like you. I assumed it. You assumed it.

It was the Assumed Reality. And now I am not a part of it. But here right now, I know I was wrong when I said “you won’t be able to take it”. I was wrong indeed. It was you who left me alone in this assumed reality, making me still love those moments that never existed. I was left alone inside with those moments that lost their value with time. Yes they did have value at some time, or at least I did assume that they did have. We both did. Even you did. But then you left. Without saying, without questioning you left and I was unaware. And now I had to come out of it. To come out of it and not say a word could have been easy for you. I am trying hard to make it easy for me also, but even in this assumed reality, what remains true is that I am alive or I was alive, with feelings, or at least I did have at some point of time, when it was all assumed. But not anymore, because now I don’t exist.

A new world

Glass walls. Gust of fresh air, cold. Sweat, no longer sweaty. A feeling of honor almost coming, but lost somewhere in the crowd. Oh yes the crowd, more people like me or a lot better than. They speak tacitly in their vernacular. I don't understand them and even I speak in my vernacular with my brethren. Care less for what the rules are, in this space so enclosed with glass walls and air, as fresh as breath can get.

Surrounded by a circle of like minded people, or so I believe, a glance at the world outside this circle and I awe at the perfection with which this world has been created to perfection. I can still see the sun, can still see those streets flooded with people I once used to walk on, but I can't breathe that air and can't talk to those people. I can still see the world I left and yet not be a part of it. I haven't left it behind, can't leave it, it's still there right in front of me, but I am confined to a more limited space. A space quite defined by my ability to willingly be a part of it. I could have chosen to walk away from it, the glass walls, but no one would care less for my willingness to not be a part of it, or more for my ability to walk away from it.

I stand behind those glass walls and stare, less at the world without and but more at my world within.

Confessions of a People Watcher

I know that there are three guys or maybe more living together right across my house in the building in front. I wonder what do they do together. I know that the people living next to them come out every evening to have their evening tea. I saw a new face today in the house just above their's. She looked pretty good from where I stay. I know that there is a girl living in the floor below mine who entices me with her mini-skirt. I doubt that she is married as I always see her carrying vegetables or talking to the maid. Though she looks really young. I know that a group of three guys wearing summer wear and a bag go some where. I think they go to the swimming pool, but I dunno where the pool is. I know that there is a girl in my building in the floor below mine who is dropped quite often by a guy, from college I guess.

I see a lot of people and I know them by their face and the activities they do. But all this is going to change soon, hopefully or hopelessly.