My novel excerpt featured on Heart-Bytes

A month and a few weeks have passed since the day I jotted down the basic plot for my novel. The name is yet to be decided and the ending needs to be poured down onto paper and once these two things are done, I guess I can finally call myself a novelist. And since the end of this enriching task is fast approaching I find this time ideal to publish an excerpt from the novel that has taken pretty much all November. The excerpt has been featured on Heart-Bytes, The Sacred Heart College Blog and here is the blog’s link Heart-Bytes

Now a word or two about Heart-Bytes which since its inception a few months back has received good readership from across the world. Heart-Bytes has also hosted a few creative writing competitions (online) on an international level . That means that all you people who love to write should definitely check out the monthly competitions. 

Order Less-Part 1

The sky turned red, the clouds yellow, crows white and clouds black. The green grass no longer green as it was the water that took up that soothing colour. So was the world and everything we call real turning un-real? No, that wasn’t it.

Would it be better this way, would it mean that Satan now wore a white garment? Would it mean that a slithering snake was now the international sign of peace? This morning did all these absurdities and oddities turn less odd and absurd? May be this was the long awaited paradigm shift everyone talked about, the long awaited shift which we all knew but could hardly describe. From Theo-centric to Anthropocentric to Eco-centric and now to the absurd-centric. A time when symbols were no longer symbols, cats still meowed but today, no it bowed. The crows they cawed but today what I heard was the voice of nightingales

I sat on my chair watching the splendour of this order less world. Today if some animal decided to re-work the Genesis I bet Eve would be more respected. She wouldn’t have had to come from a rib for I see no justice when one comes from a bone and ends up just like the ones that come from dust. Today she wouldn’t have been tricked by the evil one with a fruit, in a garden filled with a million other fruits. Today I think those primitive creatures would have struck up a conversation with the beast, turning it a friend and less of a foe. Eliminating evil once and for all to the dismay of good, who was rather jobless and un-needed if his enemy were to be annihilated. I think malice lies not just in the hearts of the wicked but also in the hearts of the righteous in far larger sums. Was Good worth being good in the absence of bad?

Deep down I knew that this was a day of revelations. Not the kind where the tale gets extensively abused by supernatural whores and many-headed dragons. There were no towers of Babylon nor where there going to be any temples of Jerusalem in my revelation. What I saw before my eyes when my love wore no make up was not her wrinkle laden skin nor was it her ugliness that complemented her age, but the fact that she was free; I was free, from the clutches of signs and standards that were to dictate ones existence. Right then, in the haste of the moment I realized the baselessness of good and bad. If such terms did exist I suggest it to be the material for a fairy tale. What existed was something plain, something simple, something so simple that we tend to make it un-naturally complex: Action. Yes there wasn’t anything more to it there were just actions, if it was considered good then may those naive souls remain naïve and if bad well then I remain un-affected as my un-belief has reached un-imaginable heights.

A little girl, I saw playing in the fields. She was happy; yes there was happiness in the absence of good and evil. It was now that I felt truly happy. How loathsome were the ones that for centuries professed about being rewarded with happiness for a lifetime of virtue. If one was to experience happiness I think it should be experienced within this realm. Or else it would be like trying to savour a steaming cup of coffee in a desert. She ran quite as fast as the wind that was grazing my hair, in her hand I saw a truck, not just any trucks but the ones with riffles sticking out of it on all four sides. Where is your doll? I asked. For I had seen her play on all weekends with a worn out doll with blond curly hair which looked rather scary and disturbing to me, but for her I guess that was what her mommy wanted her to play with, dolls for girls, guns for boys-the perfect formula.

I sat there sipping my glass of water. For me I found it amusing yes the change in colours, but the fact was that I couldn’t really digest this long unknowingly awaited shift. I wondered why such changes failed to affect my soul. Was I really that hopeless? Or was it that all hope (if there was any such thing) rested on my hunched time trampled shoulders?

May be I was someone special; my randomness was the one quality that outshined the rest. I felt a feeling I imagine very few feel, like Christ and Buddha. My realizations may be they were to be noted down as proof of my enlightenment. Nobody would find any worth in it, for they believed that the world had not changed a bit, for them the skies were always red, the clouds yellow, crows white and clouds black. I held the key that disguised itself as a revelation to the future of mankind no humankind. I felt empowered.

Greener beyond comprehension

Beneath a cloudless sky a man in grey walked, his feet trying desperately to adapt to the sandy path that stretched for miles and miles merging with the distant horizon. He looked as old as the ruins, a wrinkly gaze. His olive green eyes looked eager to tell a tale, maybe ones of kings and queens, conquests and failures, unfortunately his audience were all dead and gone, their only memories lay in the brick walls that time sought to destroy.

I saw him approach, the road lay empty and so paying no heed to the left or right, he crossed. I stood there, my glass of tea in one hand and the other kept wiping my temples clean of the sweat that formed instantly thanks to the unforgiving heat of the desert. “Are you a seeker?” he asked, undecipherable at first, but on his second attempt I sensed a slight Europeanized accent.

I maintained silence, not knowing what he meant.

I guess now I had turned into his much awaited lone audience.

“They say the grass is greener beyond the mountains.” He pointed east.

“Its war ridden area you point towards wouldn’t say there is any grass there at all.”

“Are you calling The Great a liar?”

Yes a delusional, no just any delusional one that was starved to eccentricity.

“I’ve seen him look over the mountains, his horses where the size of elephants and for him beyond the mountains laid the land of redemption.”

“Are you going there?”

“Yes. The grass is greener. He feared that His horses would turn into asses with so much luxury, the green grass.”

“Oh”

“So where do you come from?”

I pointed.

Our jeep was now fixed. I heard the engine roar back to life and so I decided to go take a look. The old man however remained under the merciless sun, drawing on the sand with his fingers that looked like twigs that were about to snap. I asked him if he needed a ride, but his focus remained un-wavered from the sand. During the remaining two hundred miles that was covered that day I hardly broke the silence. I couldn’t help but wonder what that old man wanted in life. He sure had a good accent, a bit un-original but good enough to pass off at any airport. Was redemption that important? For me such concepts were as real as the carrot that dangled in front of the donkey from the masters stick who sat on top of the poor animal. May be he would get shot down, or one of those missiles that poured down like rain would blow him into a million pieces. He was blinded by faith, I guess. I too felt blind but didn’t know what blinded me. May be he knew just as I knew his secret.

I would ask him if I ever got another chance, not in this life time surely. No, to find the answer I would have to swim in an ocean of sand, six feet under, losing a piece of myself in each motion to arrive at the truth spoken from the lips of a delusional.

**********

Suitably Warm

The day outside was perfect, inside however the imperfections surfaced. Bright blue skies with crisp clouds loomed over the ones outside begging to be noticed-they went unnoticed as the inhabitants were the perfect mixture of arrogance and ignorance. I stood, digesting the stillness of the air that had occupied the room-my room. Did I invite it over? Or did it shove its way inside, unable to resist all the other elements of gloom in my box of a room.

My liberator’s odour kept getting stronger and stronger, muskier and muskier. It was time to bid adieu to the wonderful world that I found too wonderful for me. If there was a god I would beg him to come show me the splendour of his work which I had failed to notice. No he wouldn’t come, maybe because my liberator was in the vicinity or maybe he wasn’t capable of coming. I think he was lost in an un-ending game of hide and seek, where he was to hide and seek He had hidden himself so well that the hider now forgot where he was, and the seeker, well he was just too naïve.

I patted the emptiness that surrounded me, first on the back, then on the cheek. It smiled, I smiled back.

“Take me”

It continued to smile.

Out in the corridor I could hear agitated footsteps that grew louder and louder in perfect synchronization with the odour. A rap on the door, I turned with no intention of even answering. A more desperate knock which I think was more of knock down the door knock and not a let you know I am waiting knock. A dozen of Is anyone in there’s followed, then the open up’s came and a few moments later I could hear my land lady’s all to familiar curses that always ended with you lunatic.

The one I waited for had now slipped into my room amidst all the confusion outside. I was glad to be in its presence. Its eyes showed greed behind a veil of darkness and void. Its voice was silence and its fragrance intoxicated me. I was now ready. I took out a cigarette (the last one) that was on the dresser and placed it between my lips. It felt good, rejuvenating almost.

“There is a fucking gas leak you lunatic.”

I really don’t know when the stillness of the air was disrupted. Was it when I lit the match or was it when I lit the cigarette? The air around me, impatient to resist any further scorched the skin that clothed me. An inferno broke lose eager to caress me. It was a warm summer’s day outside, but inside-yes it was suitably warm.

                                              

                                                                   *********

Preface of Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray

Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray is one of those very few books that I find hard not to re-read. The beauty of the text that comprises the novel is stunning right from the preface till the very last page. And hence I have decided to make this piece of writing my 11th post for Clocks and Crystal Balls. Enjoy!

Preface

The artist is the creator of beautiful things. To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim. The critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things.

The highest as the lowest form of criticism is a mode of autobiography. Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault.

Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only beauty.

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.

The nineteenth century dislike of realism is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass.

The nineteenth century dislike of romanticism is the rage of Caliban not seeing his own face in a glass. The moral life of man forms part of the subject-matter of the artist, but the morality of art consists in the perfect use of an imperfect medium. No artist desires to prove anything. Even things that are true can be proved. No artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style. No artist is ever morbid. The artist can express everything. Thought and language are to the artist instruments of an art. Vice and virtue are to the artist materials for an art. From the point of view of form, the type of all the arts is the art of the musician. From the point of view of feeling, the actor's craft is the type. All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril. Those who read the symbol do so at their peril. It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors. Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex, and vital. When critics disagree, the artist is in accord with himself. We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely.

All art is quite useless.

OSCAR WILDE