Chapter One

A lush green field, in middle of a densely packed forest. A sight that is quite unusual in Indian terrain. But this was no natural growth. The field was carefully crafted to be sitting between one of the thickest areas of a central Indian jungle. There were couple of monks toiling the small fields nearby. The ladies of the ashram were on their way for their daily morning ritual of fetching water from the stream a kilometer away. The weather was pleasant, and the wind was day. Birds chirping away with all their might. Technology of any kind was not in sight anywhere. Just then a loud noise shook the atmosphere, like a ripple in a calm pond. It was the gong from the temple.

The temple, though not being an inch over 20ft, stood tall as the highest structure in the ashram. At the northernmost end of the ashram. All the other houses were single storied humble residences.

Ban-ku was playing with his pet dog outside his house. He saw his father come out of their house. He straightened his robes, glanced once towards the direction of the stream. He knew that Shaam’i won’t be home for another 15 minutes or so. He looked at Ban-ku with a troubled eye, the kid is too mischievous to be left alone! He called out to his neighbor and asked him to look at his young one for the next quarter of an hour till his mother arrives. Thanking him, he hurriedly left for the temple.

The temple had a big and heavy wooden door, leading to a broad hallway which forked out to multiple smaller rooms. Meditation rooms, kitchen, dormitories for young disciples who wished to stay in the temple itself and learn the art. At the very end, the hallway emptied into a single large rectangular gymnasium. All kinds of wrestling equipment’s that one can imagine build with hands and basic tools were present there. All stacked neatly into their racks.

The gymnasium was uncharacteristically clean and sorted. It was due to the annual competition that was about to start in the next half hour. Slowly people started filling the empty spaces in the gymnasium as the time grew near. Ka-an too made his way into the first rows.

Behind the gymnasium was a door, which opened exactly on time. An elderly man walked out of the door, followed by three men and a woman. They all were dressed in purple dhotis and red angavastra’s, except the elderly man, we wore a robe as white as a swan. All the men bore long beards and equally long hair. The elder walked past everyone and sat on the middle chair at the far end of the gymnasium. The other four occupied the chairs besides him, two on each side. Above them, on the wall was the logo of their ashram. A Swan within a circle made by small red crosses. The Swan represented Elegance, and the crosses represented strike force. There was a nervous undercurrent running throughout the gymnasium. These were the five most powerful people in the ashram.

An announcer took this moment as his cue and announced that the tournament will now begin and asked all the competitors to stand and move to the room behind them.

Ka-an knew he shouldn’t be here. He shouldn’t have enlisted himself in the tournament. Shaam-I would kill him if she knew what he was doing in the temple. For her, he was a literature teacher to the students studying in the temple. She did not approve of the secret arts, having lost her father and brother to it. Ka-an bit his lip, he had enough, for too long he had practiced alone and now was the time to show the results of his training to everyone. As he saw his competitors, he could see why Shaam’i despises the art. There were hardly 20 other people besides him in the room. Ka-an was one the few of within the ashram who practiced the secret art. Not everyone could handle the pressures of the training. He wasn’t the most talented, but he had worked hard on it for the past 8yrs.

The announcer shouted out two names from a parchment. These were the first two contestants to battle and showcase their strengths.

The stage was set, both contestants took their marks on the floor, around 20ft apart, folded their hands in a namaste and sought blessing of their gurus. All five nodded simultaneously in affirmation. The contestants sat down in the designated areas in the lotus mudra, closed their eyes and chanted their individual mantras.

It took a minute but then a cold air blew over the gymnasium, and besides both the contestants, standing were two translucent figures. Both of average height, one the left holding a mace was looking pale yellow and the one on the right, was light green holding a sword. The audience gasped and both the astral warriors charged at each other. It seemed like a scene from a sci-fi movie. Two people sitting on corners while their astral projections fought amongst them. As the fight grew in length, the contestants started developing visible marks of exertion. Sweat, shortness of breath, etc. Just then the warrior with the sword pierced his counterpart in the chest. It was a clean cut. The pale-yellow warrior grew even more pale and then slowly disappeared just as he has come into being. The contestant controlling him fell down unconscious.

As the medics attended the visibly wounded and defeated contestant, the audience cheered for the victor, who got up with a bit difficulty, bowed to his masters and limped back into the waiting room. This one fight was enough for Ka-an to seriously doubt his actions. His fight had not even been announced and here he was standing soaking wet in his sweat.

500 meters away from the ashram, right opposite to where the stream was, Kaa-li gulped down from the canteen he was carrying. The 6’6” broad and well build man looked menacingly towards the ashram. He closed his eyes and chanted his mantra. A rustle of leaves behind him. Kaa-li smiled as he looked at a 10-foot green ogre standing behind him, with a club in his hand. They marched ahead. I shall have fun today Kaa-li smirked.

life

I got home

It was late

How late

I did not check

I was tired

And defeated

Threw the bag

And the keys

On the verge of shouting

But I did not

Loosened up the tie

Into the kitchen

The food was warm

But the appetite had died

Took a beer from the fridge

Sat on the couch

Surfing channels

Mind in a tizz

All kinds of thought

Roaming in the midst

So shattered and broken

Luck, had I any

I wondered

So pathetic and meek

Slipped into my shorts

Beer half done

Left beside the couch

I slowly got into the bed

As a tear 

almost dropped out

I twisted and turned

And turned again

Life's all shit

That's what a felt

Suddenly a hand

On my head

I turned to see her awake

She smiled and kissed

As I hugged her back

That's when I realized

Life's not the one

I'm battling 9 to 5

It's in these moments

These little moments

Note...

                                                    Aug 15th 2XXX

It seems so long ago. So long ago that we last celebrated India's independence day! Every year when the clock struck midnight, there would be celebrations across the country! But does it even matter now? Cities, states and countries have long been forgotten. Castes, creeds and races were forgotten even before them! 

In hindsight, if I think about it, it seems like yesterday we were battling Covid-19. At that time it did not seem such calamitous. It did take a good 2yrs to get it into control with the vaccine. It was such a moment of pride for the countrymen that the vaccine was provided by India! Being part of the research team, I was standing on the podium with my colleagues when we were awarded the Bharat Ratna by our president. The accolades did not just stop there, we were given numerous other awards. Those were such ecstatic days! We were all over the news national and international. Hailed as Saviours, Messiahs and what not. Some local news also ran breaking programs on how our team was actually sent by God himself. (Sigh)

Who would've imagined the catastrophe that were ro follow. The happiness, the elation lasted not more than a year I think. In New Zealand, the first country to control the Covid-19, a new virus was discovered. A completely new Adenovirus! The entire world was taken aback. My team was the first ones to be called upon. It was hard the first time. We had given up everything for it. Our personal and social lives. And it was proving harder this time! We were about six months into the research I believe when we heard that fateful news. Thinking about it still makes my body shiver! Another deadly virus was found in central europe! This time a Deltacoronavirus. Over 8 billion of us earthlings were thrown into a fit. No one knew what was happening. Our team was asked to focus on the Adenovirus and a new team of German researchers were tasked with finding a solution to the deltacoronavirus.

What followed was a chain of humans finding a way out and nature countering it with a bigger hurdle. 8 billion of us have been reduced to just over 10 million now. After the 5th virus struck governments across the world started falling. There was little time to do anything. People all over the world started huddling into colonies, which got smaller by the day. It has come to a point that we are now a single colony! 

One by one I witnessed my team members, my colleagues with whom I shared all the initial hardships, the joyous moments and conquered numerous invisible enemies, losing their individual battles. Everytime a piece of me died with them. I wondered why I was being left out of it. The entire focus soon shifted to figuring out why humans were bombarded with such high intensity viruses in such a short span of time. Never in our history had this occurred before. Well, the research is still ongoing. I'm no longer a part of it.

Two months ago I was diagnosed with the latest strain of the XRS. I would've gone into the details of it, but that hardly matters now. That feeling of being left alone also made me think that I might be part of some bigger plan where I figure out the cause of all this mayhem and reverse it. Alas, nature is indeed a cruel teacher. It teaches us lessons in the harshest of manners. In these past two months I feel I have humbled down. The ego that came with discovering multiple vaccines is all but gone. As I sit here in my isolation chamber, alone. I can sense that I won't be able to make it to sunrise. All I wish now, is, someone to retrieve this diary, read it and remember me. That would be all I want at this time. I am not sure what would happen to humanity, what the nature has in its plans for us. But well, in the end, who does?

In Progress..!!

Couple of years ago, I started writing a "Novel"... I had just began writing as an expression of my thoughts. This novel was a story that couple of us friends discussed about few years prior with manga as a base. The story was indian but the type of storytelling would be mangaish. So one fine day I put the pen to paper, or rather fingers on the keyboard.

I finished about 3 chapters or 30 - 40 pages worth in a week. I was motivated as hell and water to create something that I would be happy reading! Now, years later, it's still at the same point. What happened you'd think! Well, the story was about mythology and friendship and working together to overcome adversities. Your regular manga style. I still have the storyboard in my head. But I couldn't put it out as a story after the point I had to write about friends and group dynamics. 

I pondered a lot about it but never could find relatable material. In the end it boiled down to my own inability to be a good friend. It's not like I haven't tried, but I couldn't ever see myself as being a good friend to anyone. The more I tried the more I fucked up, one way or the other. But I also know a few times when I was honest with my intentions and it fired back. This I think manifested in me not being able to write about a friend group and how the dynamics would work. Because for me writing fake characters is one thing but taking their emotions is another. All my write-ups, though not being refined or superbly written, have one thing that I take pride in, that they are honest in the emotions that they convey and I would not want it anyway other than that.

Back then I was adamant to make it work like how I imagined. Now I think, maybe I'll need to rethink the entire approach. I was too stubborn back then. To change that thought process was very difficult. The novel is stuck. Because of my handicap. Will it forever be the same? I'm not sure. Will I try to approach it in a different way? Why not, maybe soon.

Rewind

So recently I went through dozens of my scribbled notes(doc files of course). The oldest being from the late 2000's! By someway or the other I've managed to keep them safe. A number of them are unfinished pieces of stories, few lines of a poem that I never finished and some that express my thought process during those days.

And I went ahead and opened the piece I liked the most in edit mode, to try and finish it so that I could post it up on the blog. I sat there, reading it and then simply staring at it for a good 15mins or so before I closed it. Those feelings, that point of view, was lost. I wasn't in the same phase of my life to conjure up the same thought processes. It was a reflection of me! And I thought best to leave it as is..

Writing for me, as I have always maintained is not a hobby. It's a release mechanism. So everything I write goes down to what I was feeling at that moment in time when I wrote it. That would also describe why my write-ups are so disparate in nature.

Anyway the point of this one was to leave one of such notes behind for myself. To come back and read. They have helped me a lot of times. To connect with myself. Especially when I was charting troubled waters. From being a personal note this is going up on the blog, for those who stumble upon it by chance or fate. We leave a lot of ourselves behind in trying to be what others perceive of us.

Going back a few years and finding out your perspective back then definitely freshens up the one's outlook of the current times. It might be old write-ups like in my case, or maybe photos or videos or a scrapbook. Whatever you used to bind your memories into. Something that will take you back to those older times when you weren't what you are now! And I'm not saying that you will a 100% find your way out of your mess, but that it will surely give you a fresher perspective on how to deal with things around you!