A synthesizer clears its throat and other stories

The following is an account of what passed through me as I heard the song And the Darkest Hour is Just Before Dawn by Daniel Schmidt from the album In My Arms, Many Flowers for the third time.

I have heard that in Kerala there is a flower that blooms only every 16 years on the hills of Munnar. I have never seen these flowers but I imagine that they come in many shades of blue and for once blue is not something far and above and out of our reach - like the sky but blue is something we can pluck and peel and compare and this is what we do. We find blue flowers of many different colours - indigo blue, robin’s egg blue, navy blue, midnight blue, egyptian blue, ultramarine blue, swimming pool blue...we lay them out like books on the grass and study them until we fall asleep.

I wake up eyes squinting and see that the light has already begun to recede. We make our way back to the hotel through paths that wind like drunken conversations. In the hotel we ring the bell and wait but there is no response. Reluctantly we go up to our room but we find that there is no oil in the lamps.

I step out to buy oil. Even though it is late at night now, there are children out on the streets, playing. Except for the sound of children playing - there is no other sound. The only footsteps I have heard all evening are my own.

I pass by many stores, shops and restaurants - but they are all deserted, empty. Where have all the people gone? I finally find one provision store that has two children sitting on the counter - their hands stuck deep into jars of chocolates and biscuits. Relieved to have finally found someone, I ask the children if they could call their Mum or Dad or the owner of the shop but the children just giggle uncontrollably...all the while stuffing themselves silly with chocolates and biscuits, debris of plastic wrappers scattered behind them. I beat a pattern of a song I have no recollection of on the counter and ask the children again if they know where the owner is. This time they pretend not to have heard me. I reach for a can of oil and a bottle of toddy and leave some money on the counter - with change to spare. As I turn to leave, the children burst into peals of laughter, their lips smeared with chocolate.

A full moon rises - yellow, like pages from a library book that hadn’t been taken out in years. I start whistling to keep myself company - Clair de Lune.

Even though I am by myself, It soon seems like the entire world is watching me, that the trees, rocks, shrubs, streetlights and signboards are all watching me as I walk past them - I feel intensely scrutinized.

Soon after this, my footsteps, the wind whistling through the streets, the sound of the children playing, the waves lapping the shore of the beech, the crickets chirping - everything joins in a chorus of Clair de Lune and 10,000 voices loudly echo and parody a melody I had been whistling quitely to keep myself company..the discomfiting feeling of the world simultaneously creating me as I create it.

I return and find you up in our bed, curled up like a semicolon. I light the lamp and place it by the bed...a soft circle of yellow light spreads. There are paintings in the room but the paintings have no faces or places in them..only abstract geometric shapes. The longer you stare at the paintings though..faces appear and begin to wave and shimmer. I want to tell you what I have been through but I find no words so I lie down next to you...a comma within a semi-circle. I part your lips and we kiss and you run your fingers through my hair.

In the distance, bells begin to ring but the bells don’t ring all at once, they take turns - these are kutti temple bells not big, annoying Church bells and the music of these bells ripples and unfolds in waves like a stone disturbing a pond of still water. The room begins to undulate and sway like the hips of dancing statues in Tamil temples. The faces in the paintings are gone now and all that is left is the feeling of being borne away ceaselessly, like so much driftwood to be deposited on some nomadic shore.