The waterhole was crowded with the presence of the experimental polaroid photographers distributing the pamphlets of repetitive imagery to the poor children on the street, so that they can use the pamphlets as paper roaches in their evening sniffing session. sniff... sniff ... sniff...everybody violated newton's laws and now they all want quantum leaps. the waterhole wanted us ‘to burn’ and its mechanised hands spraying yeast over the pungent fumes, promising a transcendental ride. And before you could take this quantum leap, a few questions haunted the thrill seekers in their visceral sobrierity. How did you form such intoxicated notions of science? How did spirit of the rational merge with the ghost of a believer? No answers please. Let them be open ended like your posterior, often very subtlely clothed and bathed, massaged and raided. Let your hands embrace such ugly questions, so that you can hang them high and dry in your living room. The visitor arrives and he is perplexed. You show him the Waterhole after all some celebrated social norm said that waterhole was for the visitor. It is not for you so don’t even bother going further.
The waterhole was blessed with the symbolic linkages, and past participles served as conduits linking you to the nether world. And then there were thrill seekers stealing words (so that they can ride the quantum leap of their imagination). For the visitor, this was an old trick. And then these stares, blank or full of mischeif. Stolen or otherwise, these glances will not work here. Stolen glances are for the poor children eager to see you making toys for their sniff sessions. Long aquiline noses waiting for this ephemeral barbeque. The visitor makes a comment, but nobody gives a shit. Nobody knows the visitor. His name was stolen from the tragic death of a cat. Low self esteem was his middle name, even though others, the less subtle ones, the more pronounced dwellers of this realm imagined that low self esteem is a car with self ignition. “Where are the gods when you need them?”, the visitor questioned the damp ether around him.
There were no answers to be found in this Waterhole. The big black paradise subsuming every naked men and naked women inside it. They were naked because they are a part of this hole. The monstrous close circuit television cameras bled that night when these people contested their own nudity by worshipping phallus for the state-sponsored cleanliness drive. Their disregard for clothes had something to do with the security of the eyes keeping a close watch on them. They were brave and suffered from fake diseases on the weekdays. The Waterhole lived between photographic images, robotic moves, and the desolate young lover who experimented with social apathy. Such was the misery of this dull black city, coming to life whenever traffic lights blinked, whenever their were people reading horoscopes, and whenever there were echoes of phone rings or the beeps for the messages.
“Hi! The scene is on. It is called loneliness. It is also called contentment and success. There is nobody to bother you visitor,” beeped the Waterhole’s alarm system, as it recognised a familiar pattern of disdain on his face. It may have detected the brain waves that rejected the idea of buying a drink. The resistance towards public drunkenness, therefore the no scene of profit happening here. “I am not bothered. I just want to go home, sleep on my borrowed quilt, my filthy rented apartment. Somehow, locate my own sanity in this barter of services,” the visitor answered. “But you need to pay bills, you need to eat tall claims of vigour and exhuberance, chew them with your teeth, may be masticate so that all the emaciated thrill seekers may follow you in denial ... of their own selves. They need a follower or a spa but chances they would like you to be their spa, provided you have chewed enough of your bills and shat through your pockets. How about ambushing some meat? Flesh pleasure, skin-dipped for your soggy posterior that can actually burn when on fire,” beeped the alarm system of the Water hole. It could offer just so much in terms of words, as most of the writings were just calendar dates, event promotionals and fire-fighting with the law. Law was above all but the waterhole was above the law, so the jungle rules applied here as everyone succintly referred to them as club rules.
“Yes I can throw a fit, call the fire fighters but what’s the use? You would rather burn this place down, keep it shut for a few days, get back all the money from the insurance claim. What if it made to the news, there were enough of us to make you come back, sign a few papers and exchange carburetters for jukeboxes. The show must go on but with breaks for rehabilitation and co-existence,” blurted out the contorted face of the visitor to the spirit of the Waterhole, now almost unresponsive like a computer post its shut down.
But someone knew, what someone said, but someone didn’t know how to end all. To turn things upside down or not? The waterhole was upside down for sure. It was a bat, hanging from a ceiling, probably listening to your mindwaves. Everybody imagined this waterhole to be a chandelier surrounded by a deep biblical halo. The city of the visitors, of those who went for a spellcheck of their names. The mis pronounced versus the more pronounced ones. The newpaper writers scrambled for a spell check, but often trying their best to sex it up, even their names.
“Sex who up?” suddenly the dead alarm system came to life. The visitor never imagined that the waterhole would be..so...responsive to this thought of ‘sex’. But as long as sex was taboo for teeming millions secretly fornicating anyway, there was this mechanical excitement. The guess here would be that this excitement has been recently passed on to the machines by humans.
“The newspaper,” and the visitor swallowed his own spit. The waterhole’s cameras could detect spitting people and instantly evict them from their premises under the charge of spitting and public nuisance. Then, one day as a name like the visitor’s thought it would be nice to organise a vomit fest, the culture of spraying yeast over the fumes was suddenly mainstreamed. But spitting was not allowed, literally or figuritively.
“Ah! Now I see. You are with the resistance,” uttered the machine, that sounded like an imitation of a celebrity waiting in the queue to get her name pronounced. Resistance is the only one thing the Waterhole was scared of. What if the resistance came and took away all its pleasures, incestous or otherwise, exposing for what it was worth. The Waterhole, witnessed a protest last year, when other men and women desperate to get inside, suddenly decided to un-belong and burn a copy of the club rules. Waterhole immediately shed its sectarian shell, and a newer monster appeared in the span of six months, impressing every living being in the vicinity.
Men wanted to be hairier, women wanted grow more boobs and others wanted what other wanted and that would go on an infinite loop on this madness to try and hide ageing. The visitor could not answer such a question. The resistance, in itself, was a quagmire but somewhat larger, and perhaps a more realistic demon than this little Waterhole of intoxication. How would this visitor negotiate with the Waterhole, on the questions of selfishness and greater good if there was discussion on the resistance. The only way out of this mess, was to run. Run far from this city. Run and leave behind everything. The escapist’s route seemed the best here. The demons of resistance or otherwise were too big. Resting on imagination of a few. It was the blight, the disease of social evolution. The visitor could not confront this to be a reality. It was too time consuming. There was just one instance of life, he knew well. It was his. It was his only. The others were ghosts.
ENDS
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