The Lonesome God

The whole city has turned into a den of informers. Earlier, it was possible to tell, looking at profiles, doctors from clerics, clerics from teachers, teachers from businessmen. But now those physical boundaries are becoming increasingly vague.


It's impossible to step into the road : The main road that lies like the spine of the city : without the feeling of numerous eyes on your back. Eyes in the rearview mirror. Askance, narrow, round, slitted. Black, blue, gray, pale. But all expressionless. There's nothing beyond those eyes.



But as I shifted and turned my gaze, the eyes were gone. The car was moving again along the road that creeps from information to information. And the uncanny feeling of being spied on, hangs in the air.




Now the question is : who sold the boy off? I have to track him down. That is my 'task'. For last 3 days I have been enduring constant yet absent gazes of this city, trying to get back to the trail of my prey.


I decided to start with the place where the boy was taken in. A whirlwind of information, was rushing forth along the road and its side branches. It was difficult to focus the mind on what I need to do. In a desparate attempt, I held my hand in the storm and suddenly closed my fist : somewhere a window slammed open. From the window that popped up, a genderless voice spoke :




If you must choose, then choose between the one and the many.




Amidst the haze of duplicating, intricate and illusive details, I heard a distant yet clear gong. It sounded like the wall-clock of my own. While I headed for the source of it, I tried to unwrap the puzzle I was provided as a clue. It could very well be a red-herring. Still.

(I vaguely remember having to make a similar decision somewhere. But when and what I have no idea.)


Yet soon, my mind was preoccupied by another thought : Always the clue is in the form of a command : a direction for the directionless.




This reminded me a story that I read in my childhood, where the protagonist gets lost in a maze, loses all sense of direction and gets wrapped in an ill-defined despair. He feels no difference between day/night, light/darkness, life/death. Obviously this is not the real story( which I have forgotten), but the fabrication of my mature mind from the real one.




Still I remember my fear and anxiety at this point of the story, which used to overwhelm me so much, that I used to close the book. I never got to know what happened to the hapless vagabond or how he managed to escape.


Now, I regret it, faced with this puzzle, that I didn't read on.


The haze has subsided considerably. It seems that I have left the main road quite far behind. The echo of the gong and the voiceless clue was leading me toward an open space. The sense of being observed secretly by many definite eyes has transformed itself into an overt indefinite gaze from above. This unnerves me.




Not because I suddenly realize that the choice of the puzzle has already been made and the one has been chosen against the many, but because I am not sure whether choice is supposed to be one or many.

Am I going to have to decide again?




Anyway, I was looking at a delapidated house in the middle of nowhere. The details of the existence have been ruined by years of indiscriminate observation and reporting. They are all scattered across newspapers, popular storybooks, horror movies.



Expectedly, the door is unlocked and the rusty hinges turn with a freaky creaking noise, as the door opens to a dark corridor.



As my eye got used to the darkness, I realized that I have unknowingly hit a gold mine.



On each wall of the corridor, written in red ink, were messages and premonitions :



Beware, enemies, for the Other One is rising.

Unite and fight. Seize your right.

Belief will lead you to your goal.

No mercy for the Non-believers.



All those who have, leave it here.
All those who don't, take it from here.



All these innuendos made me think. What do I have that I can leave? What is mine, truly? And, what do I not possess? who, or what is the other one?


The only part I could solve, not without a shiver of realization, was the interpretation of union. I can only get what I want through union or abstraction.



This in turn gives some clue as to what could be the other one. I realized to surmise the other one it is necessary to know the 'eminent' one.


'One'. I demanded. 'One, Un, Uno, Ein, Ek, 1'. Nothing seems to capture the idea. Because all of them are symbols, again realization of the idea they try to portray. As opposed to that, can we not imagine a silent vision where everything is present?

Suddenly my lost yet obedient memory was with me again. I had known no other concept, then. Before that, from history, none = ' I know no concept'. Then was invented ' . I was born. It is to my birth is the prophecy related. None and I could no more exist in solitude. 'None and I' was the natural, logical name of our boy. But we prefered to call him : You.

We loved you. You : the improvement and extension of mine : Always one shell ahead of me. You used to read my mind perfectly. Even within the pulls of the destabilizing systems, I could recognize you from afar : a blur .

But soon you got lost in the flood of facsimiles that were produced. In place of you, now there are : Them. I have been placed on top of a tomb, or, at the root node of a tree. I could observe everything as if from a very distant land, but couldn't do anything. Slowly the whole process stabilized again. The extension of one to many has taken up the whole space : beyond measure : encapsulated by a second.

For a really long period, every road to visit, every time to shelter in, every book to read, every music to bathe in, every memory to chew were swarmed by them. I and you : we : lost ourselves. I lost my memory and you lost your identity. I have been wandering the pathless streets of theirs, where breeze of information : futile, pointless and dialectic : made me weary.

Waking from this opportune dream, I suddenly feel that many things are clear; and, others are not worthy of clarity. Is this another sign that things are changing? I remembered another story from another childhood, which in my present narration would be :

I was sure that even if I end up finding you, it'd be impossible for me to stay with you. I'll have to bid good-bye to you once again. But this time, after you leave, there'll only be me, in my full spectrum of power. Once I had chosen infinite friendship : open embrace : wave among waves. Now the cycle wants to close down itself. The time for the reversal of choice has finally come.

The writing on the wall was a true hint after all. Through union, the other one will rise. And, now I understand, with some despair, my search for you is nothing but a step in that process being myself again.

They've disappeared. You'll not be for long either. I'll be there till the end as a bubble of self-contained memory.

Until the sanity bursts.