Waking Up

Most of the time, I can’t remember my dreams. I remember a lot, but I’ve forgotten a lot more. And each day as my life gets more and more complicated, I want to dream more and more, and stay in my dreams for longer. I don’t want to know that I’m dreaming. I want to fall into a dream and never wake up. No, I don’t want to die. I just want to dream… and keep dreaming. I hope tonight’s a good night. I hope I have good dreams. I don’t even mind the bad ones; as long as they’re dreams they can’t hurt me. But then… I don’t want to know that they’re dreams. And if I don’t know I’m dreaming, how will I know whether I can be hurt or not? You can feel pain in dreams. After all, pain is in the head, and that’s where dreams are, too. So I don’t want to have bad dreams. Good ones. Just good ones. Do I? I can feel pain. No, no I can’t. But I can. No. Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so/just fall asleep, deep, deep asleep/far away… now it seems as though they’re here to/ride, she’s got a ticket to/I’ve got to wake up early tomorrow/don’t worry about that, just go to sleep/ri-i-ide, she’s got a ticket to/have I set the alarm? Yes, you have/yes, I have/yes, you/I/you/I//\\*&what time have I set it for/gotten to set the alarm/no, Iyou hasn’t/far away into my sleep/into ky dreams, into ky ve#y own world/this pillow’s uncomfynamousli/ousli/ousli/what’s the w0rd>/pi/slllleeeeppp/22/7/’twas brilli)(&**&x~~~~/aaaaa/knaidhgohnn/alaaa/lkddogh/rm/slleep/sllep/dree-eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeEEm/oj0hkvnhdhoytakdhkkajdijkjfladjladkvnhfauejjfhdfiahdjgj/falafel/to hi~~~/shshshshhh/oh, I belie-/choolakdgehedbkbvkoiuythbaiedkvbdgaid-jahkjvgidfyafnlbvoiagfiaiefpodayg97t9843575hgoua86hdfifuf 86tq3hhfgv&&^&hog97f94h%&*^598h94tGIUGotOUIOHLHoihoiyueoiruoytrebleoihjoeojlajdffbasslkjo booecaoihdalarmalarmalarmalarmkhohovnboendoioieonv 98687923/I.//I.///I.//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// ///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// ///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// ///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// ///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// ///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////I.////////////////////// //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// /////////////I.//////////////////////////////////////////////////I./////////////////////////////////////////I./////////////////////////I./////////////////I.////////I. //////I.///I.//I./I.//



























////////////////aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Ah, Greece. The one place you won’t be found with an omelette for a wife. What I intend to say is… oooh, look, piranhas. Look at their sharp teeth. Sometimes sangitoniously that happens. Sangitoniously. Sangitoniously. The tree. I must get to the tree. The mangoes beckon. They say, come hither, little man. Eat us. Eat us. I’m so close now. I can see their lips moving. Eat us, they say. I can almost feel them, but the glass stands in the way. I must find a way to break the glass. Eat us, they say. Eat us, eat us, eat us, eat us, eat us, EAT US, EAT US, EAT US EAT US EAT US! AAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!!! I need something to smash this glass with. I must save my children. The chair should work. The tank is filling up with water. My children are inside. They don’t know how to swim. None of my eighty-five chil/mangoes/ know how to swim. The glass seems to be strong. The chair cannot break it. Wait, my children, I am coming. The fiery mangoes are falling into the water. EAT US, DADDY, EAT US! I have to save them. I’m pounding my fists against the glass. I tripped on a stone/[hey]/the ground is rising up at me. It opens its mouth/[hey]/ I fall into its mouth/[HEY!]/fall. Falling. Falling, falling, falling through an endless chasm/[where am I?]/what will break this fall?/[I must be dreaming]/I can see water below. A swirling vortex. The water is orange./[I’ve got to get in.]/as I fall the water seems to be falling towards me/[STOP! I don’t want this.]/the alarm!/I’ve got to/the orange waves wash over me as I fall/under me is a sea of alarm clocks[am I inside?]/ a sea that is distant. I keep falling[Steer the dream. Lucid dream.] I don’t want to die. I don’t want to fall into alarm clocks. I don’t want the hands and the bells and the gears and the batteries and the numbers to be sticking through me. I don’t want to die. Not that way. [I’m not falling.]I keep falling. No. No. No, no, no, no, no, NO, NO, NO, NO!!! [This is not working. Steer the dream. Try harder.] Suddenly I swing around and I am jerked upwards, the way I came [YES!]. My head jerked backwards and is ripped off my shoulders. [No! It doesn’t. My head is on my shoulders.] My head is still on my shoulders. Below me, I can hear the mangoes and the children and the alarm clocks sing. The black alarm clocks with the green hands and numbers that glow in the dark. Beep-beep-beep – beep-beep-beep – beep-beep-beep, they all sing. Beep-beep-beep – beep-beep-beep – beep-beep-beep. Beep-beep-beep – beep-beep-beep – beep-beep-beep. Beep-beep-beep – beep-beep-beep – beep-beep-beep// Beep-beep-beep – beep-beep-&beep – be^ep-beep-be$ep. Beep-beep-beep – beep-be@ep-beep – be#ep#-beep-be`ep.

My hand moves out and knocks the alarm clock off its stand and onto the floor. The clock stops ringing. The wind up clock. The display shows 5:30 AM. I get off my bed. I leave my clock on the floor. I don’t think I’ll ever wish for dreams again. I don’t even want sweet dreams. Next time, I just want to sleep. Plain old dark, undisturbed, undisturbing sleep. The clock starts beeping again. My wind-up clock. The black one with the green hands and numbers that glow in the dark. I move towards it to turn it off when I stop. Wind-up clocks go “TRRRRINNNGGG!!!”, not “Beep-beep-beep”. Especially mine, the one with the green hands and numbers on its face that glow in the dark doesn’t have a digital display that reads 5:32 AM. Or does it?
Wait a minute. Am I awake?/Or am I?

Bad Hair

My hair was bad. It was mischievous, arrogant, and disobedient. I’d tried every sort of shampoo they sold in stores. The ones whose advertisements carried the adjectives “Smooth and silky”, “Soft and Manageable”, “Strong and Supple”. They didn’t work. My hair still fell out, refused to be combed, changed colour, was dry and frizzy, and at times wet and oily, too. Nothing worked. My hair was incorrigible.

I wanted to discipline it my hair. Make it do the things I wanted. Stay combed, or even just be combed. I should be the master and it the slave. But now, I was running from place to place, taking the weirdest of advice (including a friend who told me to drink a solution of two drops of turtle blood in a bottle of whisky once a week), and shelling out all my money just for this rag on my head.

I had immense faith in dermatologists. They gave me medicines that I knew would work. I was, of course, eventually proven wrong. I kept going back to the dermatologists, knowing that sooner or later my hair problem would be solved. After all, the working theory with doctors is quite simple. Don’t expect your ailment to be cured immediately. The doctor doesn’t want it to be cured immediately. He wants to prolong it, but keep it from getting worse, so that you keep going back to him for treatment. After the doctor thinks that you’ve spent enough of your time (and money, of course) with him over this problem, he’ll cure it in no time. In this manner doctors do business and “an apple a day keeps the doctor away” couldn’t be more wrong. The truth would be something closer to “For a very hefty pay, health problems are kept at bay”.

This principle didn’t really bother me too much. After all, doctors did eventually solve the problem, and all doctors did work by the principle (at least every one I knew), so I didn’t have much of a choice. I had even less of a choice when the dermatologists didn’t help. I knew that they were stumped, and the solution had to lie elsewhere. If there was a solution. I believe that every problem has its solution, only that you may not find the solution in your lifetime, and the problem will die with you. This was what I feared was the case.

When I almost gave up hope, a friend of mine suggested that I go see a hair doctor. I laughed. I said that there was no such thing. But my friend insisted. Then she gave me the number and address of a hair doctor who lived nearby. She said it was awfully lucky and coincidental for me to live so close to a hair doctor when their type was such a rarity. After much persuasion, I finally agreed to go see this doctor.

His name was Crovon Vleebashq. Sounded vaguely Russian. I really wouldn’t know. Maria Sharapova didn’t sound half as strange. His clinic was small but well-maintained. There was a large hollow plastic board that held a tube-light inside, illuminating the words on it that said “CROVON VLEEBASHQ, M.D. All sorts of hair problems cured”.

With an air of scepticism, I entered the clinic, and took an appointment with the receptionist. There was no one else waiting. She told me to wait until the doctor could see me. I took the seat facing the doctor’s door, next to the stack of magazines. I picked up the September issue of Weekly Follicle. I flipped through it, not quite looking at what was in the magazine. I caught the glimpses of ads that said “Jeebo Shampoo: The tastiest shampoo you ever tasted” and “Let your hair feel the rich, luxurious, foamy lather you get only with Tuttlebluttle shampoo”. I flipped all the way to the last page, looked at a detailed diagram of the cross-section of a strand of hair, and then flipped back to check if Tuttlebluttle shampoo contained any Turtle Blood or Whiskey.

I didn’t find out, because just then, Dr. Vleebashq opened his door and shouted “NEXT!” looking straight at me. I put down the magazine and proceeded into his office.

I had made up my mind that this doctor would not be able to help me. He would first sit in front of me, ask me what my problem was, look at it, rub his chin, give me some advice, and then give me a prescription for a bunch of medicines that would not help me in any way, and then charge me my wallet.

But I was wrong (about some things). He wasn’t like a usual doctor. He didn’t even ask me what my problem was. Once I sat down in front of him, he leaned forward, and painfully (for me) pulled out a hair from my head. I made it quite obvious that I wasn’t pleased.
He took that strand of hair and he played with it. He looked at it in the light, he pulled it, he folded it, he ran his finger over it, and then broke it into two pieces.

“Did you see anyone about this before me?”
“Yes, I did.”
“What kind of a doctor did you go to?”
“A Dermatologist. Four of them, in fact.”
“Ah.”
I waited for some further comment from him. He just kept toying with my strand of hair.
“So?” I said.
“Well, dermatologists can only deal with your scalp problems. They think that since the hair arises from the scalp, all its problems should arise from there, too. Ha! Bhongu Thalayas! They think they know everything because of one degree.”
“Since that occurred, do you really have a degree?”
“Never mind that. What I was saying is that your problem has nothing to do with the scalp, it has to do with the hair. It is a completely different science altogether.”
“But hair is just dead cells.”
“You see, technically, what you say is true. Every cell is dead. But the entire mass of hair is in fact a very living thing. When people say that their hair has a life of its own they are not exaggerating or joking. Everybody’s hair has a life of its own. It’s just that some of these lives are more rebellious lives, so they make their presence more felt.”
“So, is my hair rebellious?”
“Oh, terribly. Your hair is so rebellious that it goes to extreme lengths to grab attention. It even does things like commit suicide.”
“Suicide?” I asked, in a very un-surprised tone of voice. This guy was trying to feed me more and more codswallop.
“Yes. It damages itself, it stops taking nourishment just so that it gets attention.”
“I’ve given it lots of attention. What could it possibly want? More attention? How on Earth and in what form am I supposed to give it more attention?”
“Aah, Hair Psychology. I did a paper on that once. A very interesting field… lots of new talent springing up in Hair Psychology.”

At this point, I thought that I ought to write a paper on Hair Doctor Psychology. This guy was psycho. He was mental. He was deranged. He was making me want to call the mental hospital.

I got up, shook his hand, ruffled his “lively” hair, and, much to his surprise and dismay, walked out of his clinic.

As I walked out of the clinic, I looked up at “Dr.” Vleebashq’s board that carried an “M.D.” after his name, and shook my head.
I also reminded myself to call my friend and thank her for her wonderful recommendation.
*
I looked in the mirror contemplatively, picturing myself after the process. I nodded and said “Take it all off.”
And the Barber began.

Joseph's Sick

Joseph’s Sick: A Play

By Kaushik Viswanath

Characters:
Robo: A Man – The victim of the play
Niya: A woman – Robo’s wife
George: A man – The mason
Joseph: A man – Nobody
Fromus: A man – Nurse
Lieben: A girl – Niya’s daughter of George

SCENE I – Robo and Niya’s House
Robo: I feel sick.
Niya (feeling his forehead): So do you.
Robo: “So do you”? What do you mean?
Niya: Joseph’s sick
Robo: Who’s Joseph?
Niya: How should I know?
Robo: I thought you knew.
Niya: The mason.
Robo: What about him?
Niya: His name is George.
Robo: So?
Niya: Starts with the same letter as “Joseph”.
Robo: No. “Joseph” starts with J. “George” starts with G.
Niya: So what? I love him!
Robo: What?
Niya: You heard me. I don’t love you anymore. I love him. I’m leaving you.
Robo: Who’s him? Joseph? And how can you leave me? We got married yesterday! Plus, I’m sick! You can’t leave a sick man… can you?
Niya: You don’t even listen when I’m talking. I love George!
Robo: The mason?
Niya: Yes!
Robo: For how long?
Niya: Since I met you.
Robo: Huh?
(Niya storms out of the house)

SCENE II – The Hospital
Fromus: Lovely.
Robo: What?
Fromus: You have a temperature of 310.
Robo: What?!?!
Fromus: Kelvin. 310 Kelvin.
Robo: What?
Fromus: That’s 37 degrees Celcius. Normal body temperature. We’ll have to move you to the operation theatre.
Robo: What?!!
Fromus: Just kidding. Oh, you know what?
Robo: What?
Fromus: You have a visitor.
(Joseph walks in)
Joseph: Hi Robo, I’m Joseph.
Robo: What?
Joseph (yelling, really screaming): I SAID, HI ROBO, I’M JOSEPH! I LOVE NIYA AND I’M GOING TO MARRY HER!
Robo: What?!?!
Joseph: Sorry, I didn’t say the part about Niya the first time. We’re getting married tomorrow.
Robo: What…
Joseph: … about your marriage? It was a fake wedding, so there’s no problem.
Robo: What?!!?
Joseph: Yep. Fake wedding. Fromus here was the priest. He happens to be a Satanist.
Robo: What!!??
Joseph: You’d better believe it.
Robo: What about George?
Joseph: The mason?
Robo: Yes.
Joseph: What about him?

SCENE III – Niya and George’s Home – 5 years later.
(Robo walks in.)
Robo: Hello Niya.
Niya: Hello Robo, nice to see you after so many years.
Lieben: Unkal, Unkal, come have some human kidney juice!
Niya: Oh, Lieben, stop being morbid.
Robo: Who’s this?
Niya: Lieben. She’s my daughter.
Robo: She’s so cute and chubby.
Niya: Oh, she’s not chubby. She’s obese.
Robo: Um… she’s just chubby!
Niya: Oh stop it. You don’t have to be polite. She’s got all George’s genes. More like George’s mother’s genes.
Robo: George? This is George’s child?
Niya: Mine, too. She’s only 50% George, you know.
Robo: … What about Joseph?
Niya: Who’s that?
Robo: Joseph. He visited me in hospital and told me he was going to marry you.
Niya: Tsk tsk tsk. No such thing. I don’t know any Joesph.
Robo: Oh. So you’re married to George?
Niya: The mason?
Robo: Yes.
Niya: Yes.

SCENE IV – George’s Room.
(George is cementing bricks in odd places in his room)
Robo: George?
George: I’m leaving.
Robo: Huh?
George: I’m leaving Niya and Lieben.
Robo: What?! Why?
George: I’ve just realised something.
Robo: What?
George: What?
George: I love you, Robo.
Robo: What!!??
George (yelling): I SAID I LOVE YOU, ROBO, WILL YOU BE MY WIFE OR HUSBAND?
Robo: … Does your name start with J?

--- Curtain ---