Distortions

Lights. Yellow. Circles, triangles. Orange, red. Squares, rectangles. Blue, crimson. Ovals, stars. Pink and bright. It was a sunny night, full of small balls of fire, radiating, embellishing my path. I was wearing a red jacket with a candy in my hand. I was wondering if heaven looked like this. Small cutouts of stars and dots of lights pasted on a rough, corrugated piece of earthly canvas. I could see people selling used books, handcrafted items, dates, spices and it certainly seemed like a rummage sale. I could hear a distant sound. A lowly voice humming sweetly in a language that I could not understand but it felt soothing. Walking slowly in the milieu of those garish suns, I prayed to God to guide me through this incandescent future. Zap!

‘The scans show a minor amount of atrophy in the medial temporal and parietal lobe. But I am concerned about something else. I think you need to sit down and listen to this very carefully’, said the neurologist to my son, James.

‘When you first came here with her, I could sense that something was wrong with her disturbed sleeping patterns and frequent bruises. You see our body has a lot of proteins and there’s one protein called alpha-synuclein found in abundance in brain with smaller amounts in heart, muscle and other tissues. Now your mother, Clementine has clumps of these nasty proteins in her neurons.’

James, worriedly asked,’ So what are you saying? What are these proteins doing to her?’

‘What happens when there is a lot of dirt choking the sink? The sink doesn’t work properly, and the water doesn’t vacate the sink. That’s what these proteins are doing to her neurons. The neurons don’t work optimally and die. Death of acetylcholine producing neurons leads to degeneration of memory and death of dopamine producing neurons leads to loss of cognition, sleep, movement and mood.’

‘I believe she has dementia,’ added the doctor.

Before James could ask further, the doctor informed, ‘Dementia with Lewy bodies. Unfortunately, there’s no cure to halt its progression. She will need help in the coming days to follow.’

Slowly, caressing the air, the smoke vanished into oblivion. The sound of brook coupled with my mom’s ham and potato casserole and easily vaporizing smoke given to me by Youssef were today’s highlight. He seemed in a good mood today, but he’s always in a good mood with his flute and cigarette. ‘What do you want today Clem?’ he asked. I wasn’t one of his needy girlfriends asking for gifts or flattery. I put my head on his strong shoulders and chuckled. My little Youssef, silly Youssef. Looking at the flowers near the river, I said, ‘The truth isn’t much to be discovered now. You have known me for a while now and we have been going out just like any teenage couple would. We have an immensity to dream in, a few flowers to adorn our house with and a million stars to gaze at. The smoke runs out when you stop blowing through it, so stop asking me if I want something. Clementine blossomed just yesterday and there is no deduction necessary yet. Have a little faith in yourself, Youssef.’ Youssef looked at me with a look of perplexity and brushed me away jokingly. Maybe he just had more to learn in the coming days about the difference between faith and strength. I picked a flower which was stuck on my skirt and felt the shape of its petals blooming out of the mother stalk. Why do they wither away, these white little devils? Why do they grow in abundance, these white little devils? I took in a deep breath and smoked out a greyish haze engulfing the flower. Zap!

………. Instead of lessening, its propagating. Votaries of this religion which now being termed as religious terrorism have infiltrated into the upper echelons of the American society. Sluggish methods of commerce, slovenly structures of governments and insecurity regarding their God have marred the minds of the youth. Do give us a call on this number 16062016 to talk about your views. Zap!

A week after seeing the doctor, everything seemed fine. Clementine didn’t show any symptoms of worsening or losing her hold on normal life and James too was relieved seeing her mother resuming her daily chores. One night, while James was out watching TV, Clementine woke up with a jolt. She could feel some kind of itching on her neck. She was always afraid of insects in the house and could not tolerate small creatures creeping up on her. She started scratching her neck violently to stop the scratching, but it didn’t help. ‘I certainly might have some kind of brainy disease but surely not a skin infection’, gruntled Clementine. She stood up and went to the bathroom to wash her face and neck to reduce the itching. She switched on the lights in the bathroom and looked in the mirror to find the reason for her violent itch. She brushed her hair aside to take a closer look at her neck.

‘How can it be this? My little Jamie playing peekaboo with my long black hair. Oh! I see you Jamie, I can see your little white teeth through the flocks of my hair. Come here and give a kiss to your mama!  Stop pulling my hair, stop that mischief James! Its hurting mama!

James didn’t seem interested in the news and he kept on flicking the channels. His eyes too would just give up gazing at the ticker tapes. Just then he heard Clementine screaming from her room. The scream jolted back him to reality, and he ran across the hall to his mother’s room. He dashed into the room to see the bed empty. He saw the lights of the bathroom on and he screamed, ‘Mom, are you okay? What happened?’ He saw Clementine clutching her hair which was wrapped around her neck like a snake and she was somehow struggling to breathe properly.

‘Jamie, there are snakes in the bathroom. Maybe one of them came through a hole in the mirror and leapt on me. Help me Jamie!’

James took her out of the bathroom and hugged her tightly saying there were no snakes in the house. Clementine was shivering and crying. James looked at her and tried to calm her down by gently removing the dense coils of hair around her neck. His hands were shivering as he tried to console her mother from this sudden vision. He looked up with tears in his eyes while his mother hugged him for warmth. Clementine started kissing him on his cheeks, his neck, his hands and forehead. ‘Never leave me Jamie. I don’t why I saw snakes on my neck. I…I.. felt some itching on my neck and as soon as I looked in the mirror, I saw something grasping my neck. I could not breathe. I am not lying, I know there was something tightening its grip on me.’ James reinstated her belief that there was nothing wrong with her and she just needed to rest. He laid down his mother on bed and patted on her forehead. He went to the dressing table beside her bed and took out her comb from the drawer. He started combing her hair because she always liked the feeling of the comb teeth running through her locks. It made her feel sleepy. James, like a good son started combing her mother down while looking outside the window. Clementine may have felt the snakes on her body, but he surely knew that more surreptitious were to follow. The world outside seemed distant from the glass window, a world too weak for her strong mother. A world too refracted from the glass he watched through.

‘It is so difficult for me to explain to people what I go through. I wake up every day, feeling a little lightheaded and then everything is a struggle. Sometimes I wake up with a jolt feeling there’s a snake choking me to death with its grip. After the initial scuffle with my mental health, I open Twitter and express my views. I help people get some knowledge about mental illnesses and I post helpline numbers.

‘So, does it help when people sympathize with you on social media and appreciate your new art?’

‘Yes, it definitely does.’

And to all my loving viewers, that’s how we fight with the ongoing crisis. Stay tuned for more and surely give us a call on 16062016 to talk about your mental health. Zap!

There was dust all around the room. It was dark, dingy and smelled of moss. I don’t know when was the last time that Youssef had entered this room and cleaned his stuff. There were cobwebs on his bookshelf and determining by the amount of dust that had gathered on his books, it seemed that they might just have to be excavated decades later by some renown archaeologist. I covered my face with handkerchief to protect myself from any foreign particles this place was infested with. ‘Youssef, when was the last time you cleaned this place up?’, I yelled. Youssef didn’t answer. Just then something ran past my feet which made to jump all over the place. ‘Fucking rats! Be it a ship or a room, there are everywhere!’ In my moment of bedlam, I unintentionally disorganized his bookshelf, making the books and dust fall off from the organized structure of cobwebs and mire settled over time. Kicking away a few stray papers from the floor, I started picking up the books one by one. “The Adventures of Mr. James”, “Journey of the Cosmos”, “Great Tales of Mythology”, “Time, does it stop”. I kept on shuffling through the pages of these books, the books which made me wonder how beautiful the words in them were. Gold plated, irreplaceable and truly capable of transporting me to another world. Just as I was arranging them on the shelf, I heard a voice. It seemed like a choral voice with someone humming a weird, yet soothing tone. ‘What you wrote is what I felt. I wasn’t lonely everyday but whenever I felt down, I read your words. Sounds, textures, smells, colors, it was all in those words. I owe a huge debt to your words. Transporting me to another world for free, no hidden charges, always allowing to call shotgun. Be it mountains, be it oceans, be it volcanoes or some distant planets, I rode those horses without any vacillation.’ I was about to close my eyes when the door opened with a strong light on my face. Zap!

We are happy to announce this year’s Booker prize winner. With its modern writing approach to tackle the odious, misbegotten social framework of 21^st century, Joseph Arcana’s “Human, a flaw” has easily won over all the other novels this year. We congratulate Joseph Arcana for his deeply philosophical yet relevant writing to inspire us in these times of uncertainty. Joseph Arcana for you people!! Zap!

‘I am really sorry for the nurse’s improper behavior,’ apologized the doctor.

‘Judy, you can watch your news at home too! I have patients here with their families’, yelled the doctor. James had come to the neurologist for her PET scan. James had been extremely worried since that night incident regarding snakes happened and he was worried about Clementine hurting herself. He had come to the hospital to get some new medication or advice on how to handle her mother in the coming days. The doctor advised on starting Clementine with acetylcholinesterase inhibitor drugs to improve her cognition and alertness.

‘James, given her conditions, I would like to start her on AChEI drugs, but it might have some side effects of gastrointestinal issues. But you must trust me, this will take some time and you would have to get adjusted to her new patterns.’ James nodded silently at the doctor’s suggesting with his face glued to the PET scanner. The whites of the hospital, the whites of the equipment and the whites of emotions all around there. As the doctor was giving him additional instructions, James’s mind wandered off to someplace else. Injected into all of us there’s a certain faith system. Certain set of tracers which help us detect, help us distinguish. But how long can you wait? How long can you recklessly let it simmer? It would decay one day. Decaying, dying, releasing some other potent faith particles on its way. These whites of the hospital, these whites of people lurking behind me and these blacks of the tools that they carve me open with. These vicious little devils, riding on fast cars, with swords in their hands would hit some devils on its way, annihilating each other, scintillating the screen up. All we ever see on that screen are those scintillations, forming a concise, deformed image of the malformed faith that we carry. All around us, cahooting is that ring. The ring which catches our annihilations, manifests some new kind of religion, new kind of false truth and multiplies them into images thrown at us every day on our silly, sullen screen. Be it image reconstruction or attenuation correction, we tend to get sucked into its center of frame. All they say, we hear. All we say, correct. All they say, followed. All we say, sympathized.

‘James, are you listening to me? You seem lost’, asked the doctor.

They have surrounded us. The Satan sits atop the high mountain divulging his nefarious and dastardly commandments. The clumsy creature, hiding in that inner sanctum of the human mind, infested with abominable thoughts, that raging bull with no leash, marauding the innocence and truth of our kin. Manipulated minds, distorted knives and sharp results. As of today morning, I would like to inform you with a heavy heart and broken soul that Joseph Canara of Philadelphia has been murdered brutally in his own home. Police have caught the heinous murderer of our beloved Joseph. And we already have a caller on the line waiting to express his or her sadness. Do give us a call on 16062016 to talk about your views on this murder. Zap!

And his little fingers wrapped around my fingers just like any coquettish thread would wound around a needle. Eyes, brown, hair black like his father, he was my son. Running around me like a bee humming around a flower for its sweet nectar. I knew he was hungry, and I could see it in his eyes. ‘Jamie, do you want to eat an apple?’, I asked. Without waiting for his slow approval, I took an apple and knife to have his favorite snack ready. ‘Come here Jamie! Mama’s going to teach you how to cut a fruit so when you grow up you can have your snack anytime you want.’ With knife in his hand and my guiding hand, I showed him how to cut through the apple slowly, gently, without any fuss. There was a certain swing to his movement. Swishing through the air, gashing through his childish fear, he went through the procedure. But I didn’t put the apple directly under the knife. The sharp edge went through air like stroke of a fine player, unnoticeable, graceful. I wished him to practice more often to create the perfect trompe l’oeil. Zap!

And her soft, nimble fingers wrapped his fingers just like any thread hanging to a needle would. Tightly, confidently and certain. ‘Youssef, your face looks so unkempt. Why don’t you shave a little and clean yourself up?’, whispered Clementine. James holding her mother’s hand firmly had tears in his eyes as he knew that oblivion was near. The man holding her truth was fast leaving her and things she could express were just static here and there. After years of holding her hand, it was time to let go of the cable. The entity which taught him, nourished him and saw his growth from a baby to a delicate man was starting to lose her subscription to the package of life.

‘Youss…Josse.. Youss…Joseph?’, confusedly murmuring was Clementine. James put his hands on her forehead to calm her down and give her some final moments of peace. ‘Baby, there are bad thought in my mind, there’s no light. Baby, do you remember how we used to clean your room which was full of books and dust? And how I used to spy on you while you were working on something. Peeking through the wooden shelves to see a glimpse of your face. How I used to caress your hair while wrote down lines for me. Why can’t I see properly? Why does it feel that there’s some payment to be made? Why is my voice crackling? Baby! Jouss.. Yosep…I can’t even properly remember your name. Oh, I forgot to pick up Jamie from the school! I need to quickly pick him up or he would be crying. I will buy him a candy on his way home. I know you are working up there, I can tiptoe these stairs. There are too many stairs and I can’t find the switch to turn on the light. Why is my gait slowing down? Did we pay the cable bill? There seems to be some kind of bad reception. I lift my leg and I feel the next step coming but there’s no ground. There’s no ground, there’s no ground, there’s no step further……. Am I sick? There’s no step, its frustrating me, I can’t feel the ground, I can’t my voice, can’t feel myself. There’s no contact with the surroundings. I raise my foot yet again to find the step one final time and I stamp it down……………………..

Please wait while we recalibrate the environment for your entertainment. Sit back peacefully and enjoy the show. Text us on 16062016 if normal service isn’t resumed within an hour. Zap!

‘So, what happened to him?’, I asked with a lot of curiosity.

The doctor looking at him with a slight smile answered, ‘James had been here for the last 30 years. He was admitted to this facility on 16^th of July, 2016 with a severe bout of psychosis and violence. Since his mother was caught murdering Joseph Arka, James has been here with us. When he was admitted to this institution, it was Dr. Youssef Abdella who oversaw his whole treatment. Normally, these kinds of cases are usually studied for neuroscientific research and drug experimentation, but Dr. Youssef treated him like his own son. Poor James, a 16-year-old kid who had witnessed a gruesome murder of his father, the famous author Joseph Arka by his own mother was by no means going to be a guinea pig for science as Dr. Youssef said.

‘So why was Dr. Youssef so close to James?’

‘I have only met Dr. Youssef a couple of times, but I have heard that he had a mother who was a dementia patient. So, Dr. Youssef himself had to take care of his mother from a very young age and it made him sensible towards cases like this. The first few days were quite difficult for James here, but Dr. Youssef sat with him for hours and hours and told him stories about his mother and him. Slowly, James grew more comfortable with Dr. Youssef and started going to his laboratory to see new equipment, meet new patients and watch TV just like any normal kid would.’

Listening to all this made me feel quite sympathetic for James and his mental state. Poor kid, how cruel the world had been to him. To further the discussion, I asked, ‘So why is he still kept behind these glass walls with no outsiders allowed? And where is Dr. Youssef?’

The doctor looked at me with a deep gaze and sighed a little. I guess he didn’t want to indulge into that discussion anymore. He said, with a certain abyssal quality to his voice, ‘We trust what we see, right? We feed on information given to us by people. We turn a blind eye to the brewing volcano within the paper-thin façade of information. Five years after James was admitted, Dr. Youssef took him to his hometown in Morocco to meet his family. It has been reported that he took James to a flea market in Morocco. A place with beautiful colored lights, various smells and hundreds of people. A place with dusty old books, dates, fragrant spices and a perfect place to start your new journey. But alas! His heart ached with a thousand shocks and his flesh, an heir to consummation cut the mortal coil of Dr. Youssef Abdella. A quick stroke through air, sinning through all years of patience, sat atop that neck of his. No trompe l’oeil.’

Before I could ask anything else, he added, ‘Since that day, he has been kept in this room with no visitors allowed. His mind, a demented yet a beautiful mind is a byproduct of the evil which lurks so silently in our houses every day. He keeps repeating stories, he keeps reciting his hymns, he keeps broadcasting with no end to his imitation. He zaps through various channels, channeling his inner demons and counterfeit a million other souls. Sometimes he keeps repeating the number 16062016 as his helpline number. It was the day his father was killed. That static which keeps running all day, 24×7 converting placid being into slaughter animals, faking money, faking voices, faking democracies might have just obliterated us.’

Crackling sounds, black and white running continuously, cathode ray replaced by OLEDs, nonstop blabbering. Zap!

The writer sits down opening his laptop to write down his new story. He plugs in his earphones to listen to music, the only thing which stimulates him to write. He thanks Salman Rushdie and a thousand writers who have helped write. He thanks Coldplay and other music artists who have fed him with inspiration. He watches the clock on his laptop. It says 12:28 am. He closes his eyes and prays to God. He has faith, an important sound. He opens his eyes and looks around. There is a lot to be written about. Everyday life.