Morning Sickness

A wave of nausea swept over him but he remained in bed, curled under the sheets. The sound of the alarm pierced through the room, signalling the beginning of a new day. But he wasn’t prepared to face it, not yet. He pulled his knees up to his chin, locked his fingers around his ankles, and lay wrapped up in his own self. Bile rose in his throat and he swallowed hard to stifle it.

It wasn’t meant to be like this, he thought bitterly. Things could have been different, he could have been happy. He could have sailed through life purposefully and not wandered like an aimless vagabond. He could have been up and about right now, rushing to seize the day with fervour. Instead, he lay under the sheets, eyes squeezed shut, hoping the darkness within would blot out the oh-so-mockingly cheerful and bright light that spilled into his room through where the curtains on the window parted as they billowed in the gentle breeze.

But as the morning wore on, sounds from the neighbourhood began to pierce the tranquillity of his bedroom. The street dogs barked and yelped as the neighbours’ children came out to play with them. The children shouted and laughed and clapped, and occasionally, their parents yelled at them to keep the noise down. The parents themselves were mostly busy shouting at each other or pulling up housemaids for their slapdash jobs or haggling with hawkers over the prices of vegetables and fish. Somewhere, in the distance, church bells pealed. But right beneath his window, a toddler began to cry. Softly at first, but quickly gaining in intensity and soon the cries became alarming bawls.

He buried himself deeper in his bed to shut out the noises but to no avail. The tyke’s squalling wrecked his fragile composure and before he could pause to restrain himself, his hand shot out, grabbed the alarm clock from the bedside and hurled it at the window with great fury.

The clock struck the steel frame of the window with a clanging sound. Its delicate parts shattered and fell to the ground. But its silver-plated casing bounced back and caught him square in the forehead before he could retreat under the sheets. The shock of the injury was the last straw. He could no longer hold it all in. He barfed, a little at first and then some more. He dragged himself across the room and heaved into the sink. He retched so hard he thought he’d spew out his innards.

 He splashed cold water on his face. When he looked up, he caught sight of his image in the mirror, looking pale and washed out. His head spun and at the same time felt both heavy as lead and light as a helium-filled balloon. He felt half dead yet aware of his own wretched life and his failed attempts at ending it. The bottle of sleeping pills had barely sufficed, he reckoned. Tears of misery pricked his eyes as the enormity of his failure dawned on him. Even death had mocked at him.

“Oh, God!” he cried out piteously.

“Yes, my son,” came the answer.

He crumpled to the floor in a dead faint.

Barred Windows...

I wistfully stare

Through the bars of my window

Longing to join freedom

In her frequent sojourns on the road

She grips me by my soul

And we wander across times

Waking to a new dawn each day

Resting under a new moon each night

The change takes my world by storm

Exciting, overwhelming, finally exhausting

Till I can take it no more

And look for a home with barred windows

Monday Morning Blues

I die a little on Monday mornings, was her constant refrain.

But today she was unruffled, suffused with an astonishing sense of peace and tranquillity that comes with the knowing of what needs to be done and the mustering of enough courage to embrace a whole new way of life.

She had just arrived in Singapore after jaunting through the hilly tracts of Kumaon and Garhwal in the lap of the Himalayas for a fortnight. For two weeks she had ensconced herself in the midst of snow-capped peaks, overwhelmed by the magnificence of the cosmos, which mercilessly highlighted the inanity of her own humdrum life in the city. She had gulped great lungfuls of crisp, fragrant mountain air as though she had forgotten the art of breathing and was trying to learn it anew. She had worn flowers in her hair, bathed in the bubbling mountain brooks, and trekked five miles every day to her favourite vantage point atop a hill where she sat for several hours, transfixed by the green expanse of the valley below.

By the time her little jaunt came to an end and she set off for New Delhi on Sunday evening to board the overnight flight to Singapore, she had made up her mind to quit her job, wind up her life in the city, and retire to the countryside. Perhaps she would stay in Kumaon for a month, then set out on a long trek through the snowy tracts of Leh and Ladakh, then make her way down south through the deserts of Rajasthan and the mountains of Shillong to the beaches of Goa, wander in the mountain ranges of the Western Ghats, and finally sojourn on the pristine beaches of Rameswaram Island where the Indian Ocean and the Bay of Bengal merge into a unified whole. Her travels would soothe her restive heart and fill her days with adventure and her life with a sense of purpose, she hoped. She would keep travelling, isn’t that what she had always wanted to do? Perhaps, someday, she would even pen down her memoirs and share her exploits with the world.

Surely, this is what life is about, isn’t it? To be able to live passionately, to be able to live for yourself, and not spend the best days of your existence cocooned in little cubicles in towering glass-clad buildings churning out reports for which your company charges its clients a million bucks but pays you only a fraction of that. The more she thought about it, the more convinced she was. It was an idea that had flared up harmlessly within her but had now irrevocably engulfed her with its promise and potential.

There was a spring in her step when she left home for work, a little after nine. How unusual it is, she thought, to be happy on a Monday morning. Riding the train from Novena to Raffles Place, she noticed for the first time her co-passengers, all looking morose, and she felt a deep sense of pity tug at her heart. Why do we do this to ourselves, she wondered. She immediately rephrased her question. Why do they do this to themselves? Don’t they all have a choice? Maybe some of them don’t, but that’s a defeatist attitude, she promptly countered.

Some of her friends had drawn up long-term plans for their futures. Her best buddy, an investment banker, had long decided he would retire at the age of forty with a bank balance he was confident would last him another four decades. And that is when he would set out to travel, write poetry, compose music and donate to charity. But what if he were run over by a truck or stress clogged his arteries and he died before his fortieth birthday? she had wondered but left her concerns unvoiced. What are people waiting for? What’s stopping them? Fear? Are they afraid to defy convention? Do they loathe change? Do they have a coping mechanism that tells them it is easier to live with regret than with failure? Are they too frightened to live?

She exited the Raffles Place MRT station and sat for a while outside the UOB Plaza building beside the river, which shimmered in the sunlight. Her office on Circular Road was a short four-minute walk away from Boat Quay. She sadly remembered the evenings she had walked down this path, exhausted after a long day’s hard work, envying the guzzlers making merry at the numerous pubs and restaurants, while she quickened her pace, desperate to go home and plonk herself on her bed, willing sleep to overpower her until eternity. No more of that, she promised herself, as she walked up to her office.

She wondered how her boss would react when she broke the news to him. He would be furious, no doubt. He would need to seek someone to replace her. She had been a good worker. She had been an exceedingly good slave. Her colleagues would probably miss her for a while, but life has a relentless way of moving ahead aggressively and all would soon be forgotten. Nobody was indispensable, she knew.

Her heart excitedly hammered against her chest as she punched in the four-digit access code to let herself in. It was a little after ten, but the office was unusually quiet. She looked straight ahead and was shocked to see Annie, the friendly girl from admin, sobbing at her desk. What’s the matter, Annie? She ran up to her, but Annie buried her face into her hands and wept louder.

Confused, she left the sobbing girl to herself and turned to her desk, which was right next to Annie’s. Her desk had been wiped clean. Her laptop was gone, so had her files and notepads. She turned to Annie with a questioning look on her face. Annie, do you know where all my stuff is? But her words were drowned out by Annie’s weeping.

She looked around, a little lost, wondering where the others were. Soft whispers emanated from the pantry at the far end of the office, and she headed that way. Her colleagues huddled together, staring long faced at the LED screen of the wall-mounted Sony Bravia television. On the screen flitted images of a large aircraft skidding off the runway and crashing into a hangar, bursting instantly into a mammoth ball of flames and black smoke.

The overnight flight from New Delhi to Singapore, carrying 321 passengers on board, met with a catastrophic accident this morning, the news anchor was saying. Airport officials refuse to comment on the cause of the tragedy. There were no survivors.

A Tale of Tresses

         She had always had frizzy hair. She didn’t mind the waves and curls though they were unruly. It was the flyaway hair that always freaked her out. No matter how often she combed or brushed her hair, she could never tame the wispy locks that seem to form a disjointed halo around her head. No, it did not make her look spiritual. She only appeared unkempt. All the shampoos and conditioners and hair serums ever invented by mankind had failed her. Miserably.

         But off late, she was burdened with yet another problem. She was shedding hair like a dog. Each time she ran a comb or her fingers through her long mane, she lost about ten strands of hair. Another dozen or so, whenever she stood under the shower.

         Her grandmother recommended that she massage her scalp with a blend of warm olive oil and almond oil at least twice a week. After six months of this biweekly ritual, she abandoned it.

         Her hairdresser suggested that she come in for her monthly haircuts at the beginning of the waxing phase of the moon. Immediately after new moon is the best time, the coiffeur suggested. And no haircuts on Tuesdays, Fridays or Saturdays. Trimming hair in the evenings is a strict no-no, he added. She didn’t attempt to get started on this strict regimen.

         She suspected that her addiction to nicotine might have something to do with her thinning hair. Nothing I can do about that, she declared to herself.

         Her friends blamed it on the water that ran through Singapore’s pipelines. The water here is terrible, they claimed. They couldn’t offer a solution.

         She rang her mother and received some well-meant advice. Don’t fret, honey. Have you considered de-stressing? Maybe that’s what you need.

         And so she went about her life, the problem of her thinning mane soon overshadowed by more pressing issues at work and at home. The issue cropped up again one late summer evening when she ran into a long forgotten acquaintance at the beach. She knew Elsa from college; they had attended a Classics course together for a semester, more than a decade ago. Elsa was strolling on the beach, sporting a clean-shaven head.

         I see you’ve found the perfect remedy to the issue of hair loss, she bantered with Elsa.

         Elsa ran her fingers over her bald scalp. Oh this, she remarked.

         So did you go to India? she continued. On a spiritual journey of sorts?

         Elsa smiled wanly. No. It’s the cancer, she explained.

The Stalker

         They broke up on a bitter note. I still love you but I am no longer in love with you, she said. He mutely nodded his head, barely able to follow her trail of logic. It was never meant to be, she explained. He didn’t understand. She got up and left.

         That was four years ago.

         Comprehension still eluded him. But he had long ceased trying to make sense of it all. It took far less effort to live mindlessly, he had realized, knowing little and understanding even less.

         And then he saw her. At Trafalgar Square. Standing at the foot of Nelson’s Column. Draped in a red overcoat, she basked in the mild afternoon sun, defying the icy February wind that splayed her auburn locks. She waved at him, and he thought she was quite pleased to see him after all these years. He mustered all his courage and moved closer to her. She was laughing, he could see, as though he reminded her of an old joke that never failed to amuse her.

         He would have gone up and greeted her but all his memories of her, even the ones that he had painstakingly tucked away in inaccessible recesses of his mind, took that inopportune moment to grab him by the throat and remind him of that evening, four years ago, when she had deserted him. And now when he saw her waving and laughing at him, as if there was nothing to feel bitter about, he was gripped with an overwhelming desire to walk up to her, slap her hard, and leave a nasty welt on her face as a reminder of the agony he had been enduring ever since she walked out of his life that evening, four years ago. Instead, he simply slunk away, muttering under his breath, cruel fucking bitch, and hoped he would never see her again.

         But she refused to let go of him. She turned up at London Bridge, at Tower Bridge, at St Paul’s Cathedral, at the Kensington Gardens, at pubs and coffee shops, even in the innumerable back alleys of London, always laughing and happy. Stop stalking me, he cried, but she paid no heed. He ran away each time, but she seemed to outpace him. Sometimes she wore her red overcoat, at other times she traded it for more formal colours like black and grey. Her hair was mostly unkempt, sexily though.

When spring arrived, she discarded her winter wear and showed up in floral summer prints. She seemed to fill drab, grey London with vibrant colours that played tricks with his mind. The cerulean skies blinded him; the flowering trees reminded him of a life that was no longer his.

London had long been the city of his dreams. The city where he hoped he would stage his life someday. And she had seized it and made it her home, even before he had set foot in the place. She had usurped all his ambitions, built her destiny upon his broken dreams, and arrogantly paraded her life, mocking him with her victories.

He no longer pined for London, not as long as she dwelled there. They were continents apart, but he knew he had to vanquish her and reclaim what was rightfully his. He had already gambled away everything. All he now had was a past ruined by unrequited love, a present scarred by the painful reminders of the past, a future that held little room for peace.

In a meticulously worded suicide note, he blamed her incontrovertibly for his miserable life and untimely death. When the authorities questioned her, she shrugged nonchalantly.  

What an idiot, she declared. All he needed to do was delete his Facebook account.

Out Of Order

         The zaniest ideas always hit me on Friday evenings, even before I’ve sipped my first glass of Chardonnay, she mused. Sitting on the broad windowsill in their living room, from where she beheld a panoramic view of the ocean, she smoked a More Slims, expertly blowing rings that took on the shape of her puckered lips and floated away out of the window, growing larger and larger until the fumes could no longer hold on to each other and dissipated in midair, fourteen storeys above ground level.

         For a long time, she sat in silence, mesmerized by the duel in the crepuscular skies, awash with myriad colours, a melange of purple, orange and red that set the scene for a battlefield. It had become a daily ritual. The sun hovered over the far end of the sea, preparing to retire for the night. On the opposite end, the moon rose, pale and timid in the presence of the setting sun. There was a moment when the two seemed to be eyeing each other carefully, waiting for the other to make the next move. The sun, merely a shadow of his former raging self of the day, yet more than a match for the moon. Holding on, unwilling to descend lest the moon should take over. The moon, flimsy and shivering, unsure if she ought to rise further. Crawling upwards stealthily, waiting for the sun to disappear. For one fleeting moment, it almost seemed as if the sun would regain his rightful place in the sky. It was that moment of uncertainty that spelled his doom. He plunged into the bloody ocean, spilling the last of his rays all over the world, conceding defeat, having overstayed his welcome. As the sun bowed out, the moon sailed higher into the sky from the other end, gracefully, shining more lustrously with every ascent. Having conquered the sun, she rightfully claimed his light as her own. And then she covered the ocean with a silvery sheen, laying the sun to rest in peace.

She exhaled in relief. Dear cosmos, if I had a choice, I would be the moon, she whispered. The waxing and the waning moon, the full moon and the new moon, the restless shape-shifting moon, the one that makes oceans roar and wolves howl, whose light clandestine lovers seek out in the night, the one that drives men stark raving mad, frightening and alluring all at once, the blue moon, the orange moon, circling the earth until eternity, sometimes too close but always out of reach.

She lit another cigarette.

Night descended on her part of the world. Twinkling stars burst into view, Venus standing resolutely bright in the western sky, guarding the grave of the defeated sun. I could be Venus too, she thought. Venus, the evening star. Venus, the Goddess of Love. Venus, the Roman Aphrodite.

 Fantasies are so delightful, she concluded. But in reality, she was perhaps more like the princess trapped in the witch’s tower. Fourteen storeys above ground level. Confined in midair, in an enclosed apartment. Their lovers’ nest. Their first home, where she waited every evening for him to come back to her. He should be home any minute now, she told herself.

Her mobile phone beeped. It was a text message from him. Honey, just exited the MRT. Walking home now.

She leaned over the window and scanned the roads below. She squinted her eyes and saw him enter the gateway to their apartment building. Baby, she called out loud and clear. He looked up, not because he heard her but because he knew she would be waiting for him by the window. She always did. He waved out to her. She waved back.

She had to decide quickly. The moon, Venus, the princess – which one would she be tonight. The princess, she chose. The princess, whose knight in shining armour had arrived. Ecstatic, she punched the numbers on her mobile phone and called him.

Darling, I’ll let down my hair, so that you may climb the golden stair, she said.

He paused. Why honey? Is the lift out of order?

 

And now...

... why is the colour scheme on this blog all fucked up?

An absolute mindfuck

         I have forgotten how to write. I have been sitting here for the past hour, typing out elaborate paragraphs of nonsensical prose, only to delete them all in one go. I haven’t written much in the past four years, and I can’t fathom what prompted me to attempt it now. Perhaps it was the spooky thunderstorm that shook my neighbourhood on Saturday evening. But it rained again the next evening and the next, so now the novelty has kind of dwindled down and the gloomy surroundings are fucking my mind.

         The only good thing about today so far has been this: I was forced to get out of the house to buy me a pack of Marlboro Lights and on the way back I realised I had a credit balance of about SGD80 with a nail parlour. On a whim, I went in for a manicure and pedicure session – the moon is going to turn a violent blue today I predict. What tickled me to death was a client there who spent an hour trying to decide the colour she wanted her nails painted – she was still undecided by the time I left. And I came back thinking some people take their nails as seriously as I take my life. And it immediately put me in a dilemma because so far I had been under the illusion that I was taking my life far too seriously – enough to spend weeks moping over what could have been and what was not.

A tells me that I think too much and too often, he is right. I often ponder over abstract stuff. For instance, I often mull over corporate slavery and what – other than house rent and bills – compels people to ignore their fucked up lives at work and still trudge into their offices on a wet Monday morning. I’ll be following suit tomorrow, except that it will be a Tuesday morning, not necessarily wet, the sun may be out and the entire neighbourhood would be ablaze with colours and I’d wonder if I unknowingly OD’d on a narcotic that I don’t even possess.

Sometimes I behave like an armchair philosopher. I like to think of myself as a pipe-smoking fireside thinker who dispassionately rationalises and solves problems people don’t even know exist. Maybe I am just not thinking about the right things. Maybe I should spend more time worrying about the colour I want to see on my nails!

It rained at sunset today.

That it rained this evening was not unusual in itself. Least of all in Singapore, where the weather simply alternates between balmy and sultry, downpours provide intermittent relief. But today’s cloudburst was a fitting finale to the hot and arid week that just went by. Startling flashes of lightning and roaring thunderclaps rent the skies mercilessly. The rain poured down in torrents lashing the trees that swayed dangerously while the towering residential skyscrapers stood obstinately still. For nearly an hour, the incensed skies heaped vengeance on the land below where we cowered in the refuge of our homes.

And just as unexpectedly as the thunderstorm had started, it died away without any warning. An eerie silence prevailed. As the dark grey atmosphere of the storm faded, the neighbourhood was suffused in a ghostly golden glow of the setting sun. Had we been unconscious of the time of the day, it would have been nearly impossible to know whether a new day was beginning or the night was taking over.

I think, sometimes life is like that. At times it is hard to know whether one thing is coming to an end or another is just beginning to take shape. Sometimes there are no clear boundaries, no distinct demarcations, as one event segues into the next. Perhaps there are certain events or incidents that tend to divide our lives into before and after phases, but those are rarities. Mostly, it’s about bouncing along until we reach those defining turns. And when we do, we simply call them new beginnings and hope they’d be just that.