So it was said that the first anyone saw of him was on a
dark, windy night. He wore a thin vest, a
khaki lungi and a green chappal, they tell me. The moon rose above, crested and exuded a magical brilliance that you normally
associate with fairy tales. The tufts of smoke we exhaled gave us this vision
of a green, slender martian manhunter instead of another normal retard.
On seeing him
advancing towards us, somebody cried out ‘Fuck! We are screwed!’ and started breathing
fast. His breaths kept picking up tempo as the manhunter kept coming towards us.
My hands started waving frantically at him. You know, the We're-Not-stoned-Just-another-regular-bunch-of-guys-exhaling-smoke deal. After a moment or so, I realised I was no longer in control of my hands. It
kept waving. No shit. No amount of concentration or thought could provoke my
hands to stop the deed and retreat to its den. A being all on its own,
consuming the food I eat, the drink I drink. Thankless. I still remember tears rolling down my cheeks; not sure which it was for; the impending death at
the hands of a green monster or the hand coming off my shoulders.
At this point of time, I stop his narration and ask for a
pee-break. As I walk down the corridor I’ve gotten used to in the space of a
month, I start noticing things. Speckles on walls; brown, soaked rust; wings of
insects who lost their lives trying to reach the light; voices – clear and
muffled, petty and focused; faces that grin and wave, gauging the
sobriety . I clutch a pillar and slowly recede to the dark recess of the brain.
