Hell - I

I should have refused, probably torn up the cheque and walked out, maybe even told Loyana to sod off and never come near me again, maybe I should have had the sense and the foresight to realize what I was getting into, but I chose to enter hell because like Dr. Faust I believed that hell was a make believe world that man has always had the supreme power to control. I’m not sure why I reacted like I did; I just didn’t want to have to walk away from my dreams that held the promise of reality.

I didn’t know then what I was letting myself in for. If I had known would I have gone ahead and done it anyway? That’s a question that I ask myself often but don’t answer probably because the answer would not only surprise me, but also reveal a facet of my character that I’m not willing to confront, much less acknowledge.

Every day we learn something new about ourselves but then invariably we forget that piece of knowledge in the quest for survival. I’ve lived with the knowledge that I’m not the person who I thought I was ever since I accepted Loyana’s coffer. I learnt that day that I was willing to go to any length to protect my dreams from the dust heap that they seemed destined for and that I would be willing to redraw my boundaries as well.

It’s disconcerting to have to realize that the person whom you were is gone and the person that you are now is a stranger whom even you don’t know. It’s even more confusing when you think that the person that you are now is someone who might not want the dreams that the old you wanted, might want something more out of life and would probably have dreams that are different from those of the old you. It also means that duplicity and lies were to be a part of daily life, something that I would never have accepted in my earlier avatar but was ingrained as an inherent part of my being in the new life that I had chosen for myself.

I felt like an impostor in my own skin, a person who was familiar yet unknown, a distant memory and a new factuality, two banks of a river that are essentially one yet forever separated. I thought I knew who I was but what had I become? I am still looking for the right answers. The only thing that I know for certain is that my dreams came true but not in the way I thought they would. But since then my sense of identity has been my very own private hell.

At the Gateway to Hell Pt. II

I don’t remember what happened that day until the time that I met up with Loyana at the Coffee Bar. I’ve heard people say that when you look back at things then it’s the little details that you remember but I can’t remember anything of what I did that day. May be because the mundane routine of daily drudgery did not really leave an impression worth sustaining, or maybe it’s because I’ve come so far since then that now that part of my life seems like someone else was living it for me.

I divide my life into two water tight compartments, with labels that say – Before Loyana and After Loyana. Perhaps I should have labeled them as – Before the day I entered hell and after.

Loyana was on time as usual. Lush brown locks falling over the soft curves of her shoulders, a white silk shift that was shapeless yet emphasized every inch of the body that she’d acquired or been blessed with and her constant uniform of black slacks and heels. Her favorite black diamonds completed her successful attempt to create a vision of beauty both terrifying yet alluring. I had absolutely no idea what was going through her mind, but then knowing wasn’t going to do me much good.

“So, your’re late. As usual.” More of a statement than a reprimand.

I couldn’t contain my incredulity at the brazenness of the statement, “I don’t think that you mentioned any sort of time. I would have remembered if you had.”

“Let’s get down to business. I have a proposition for you. But whether you accept it or not you don’t breathe a word of this to anyone.” That was a promise that I did not keep.

“Does your proposition involve any kind of illegal activity?”

“It depends on what exactly you mean by illegal.”

“And how am I supposed to interpret that bit of information?”

“You’re not. You’re supposed to listen and make you’re choice.”

She picked up an exotic black silk rucksack that had been lying underneath her chair and put it on the table. With the air of a magician performing her favorite trick she pulled out a cheque and placed it on the table facing me. The amount that was mentioned on the cheque was much more than what I needed to cover the cost of my tuition.

Very softly Loyana outlined the deal. I would encash the cheque. Once the money was in my account I was to make myself available to the benefactor for what she termed as nights of unbridled passion and what I prefer to call as sex. Devoid of all kinds of trappings, in simple words I was expected to sell my body.

I didn’t say anything for the next ten minutes. When I did look up I, looked straight into the eyes of the devil who’d come to welcome me to hell. They were taunting me and yet were uncertain about what I would do. I realized than that I had no courage. No courage to see my dreams crumble into dust. To allow all my hard work to go to waste.

I did what even I didn’t expect I’d do. I picked up the cheque and said yes. When I looked at the devil again, it was looking at me with something that can only be described as surprise mixed with awe……..

At the Gateway to Hell Pt. I

I’d always thought of hell as a place where my worst nightmares would come true but then when I finally stood looking in at it I realized that your worst nightmares simply mislead you. They don’t prepare you for the reality that is much worse.

It had been nearly a fortnight and my dreams spun of gossamer and light had begun to acquire a darker tint. I began to feel the imminent despair that begins to creep into your soul the day that you realize that the race you have been running is now outrunning you. Being faced with a Hobson’s choice wasn’t new to me; it was the content that left a metallic taste in my mouth.

Slowly as the days wore on and the harshness of winter settled into the marrow of the trees, I began to envision endings that I’d kept locked away for a very long time. I dusted off the scraps of courage that I’d left lying around in the furthest recesses of my mind and gathered them to me like a miser grabs pennies to himself, bits of clarity and light that questioned the very necessity of existence and the folly of human life. Clarity that would be necessary for the courage to follow, the courage that I needed to break the cycle of despair that had become a reality of my life.

Loyana called the day I had begun to have my old nightmares again. The same ones that had the power to make me break out in cold sweat. Where the beatings never stopped and the ranting grew louder, where I’d look desperately for ways to escape and the only way out was death, where the darkness was the suffocating black that gave off the stench of fear, I’d fall through the abyss of memories intertwined with the tricks that my head played on me and woke to the sound of my cell phone ringing shrilly.

Warm relief washed over me in waves. I picked up the phone and never have I been so glad to hear Loyana’s voice either before or after.

“Hello desperado, how’s the treasure hunt going?”
“Not very well I’m afraid. All I’ve found is a couple of old boots and a rusted nail.”
“Well looks like I’ll have to bail you out.Pathetic attempt at humor by the way.”
“I don’t accept charity Loyana.”
“And I don’t offer it my dear friend. I have a legitimate business proposition for you if you’re interested. Meet me at the Coffee Shop when you get off work. Then we’ll talk. Bye”

The instrument felt stone cold in my palm. I put it down and got out of bed with more energy than I possessed. Somehow things were going to work out. I should have listened to the voice in my head that said, ”Oh really?”

Digression 2

When things start to go wrong then they really go wrong. What starts out as a minor problem snowballs into a huge issue and occupies your mind space to the extent that the phrase,” There’s an elephant in the room,” takes on a new meaning altogether.

It had been almost a week since I’d spoken to Loyana and she’d acknowledged my problem but it seemed more like seven seconds had ticked by faster than the grains of sand in an hourglass. Isn’t it strange the way time seems to move at a fast clip when ever you want it to move slowly and moves oh so slowly when you want it to slow down.

There haven’t been many occasions to ask god to make the moment last forever but in the blighted landscape of my life there are few patches of color that stand out in my memory and now I want to relive them forever. Snatches of memory that seem to have been plucked out of the swirling waters of the thought processes that occupy my mind and lie shimmering in the kind of completeness that only pearls and diamonds are able to achieve.

The day I saw my mother for the first time as a person, the moment when I stepped into the hospital to see her for the first and last time, the day I walked out of my father’s house sure that I would never be subjected to that kind of abuse again, the moment when I learnt that life was beginning to fall into place and that split second between the time that Loyana first walked in and settled cat like onto the table and she settled her gaze on me – that tiny millisecond of bliss, of knowing her as just an exquisitely beautiful creature and little else, those are the emotions that I want to relive again and again and again…….