Song

The night was velvety blue at its best, darkness rained from the sky, dark, moist, wet with solitude, known only to vagabonds of the city streets. The woods smelt of decay and damp rot, yet, life harboured under some stone, or the hollow of some tree, somewhere, in some hovel or burrow, life celebrated its own magnanimity. Life is indeed generous, or rather, greedy and pompous, it transmutes itself into a million forms, in places unseen and unheard of, simply to celebrate itself.

The path I trod was sick with mulch and the wastes typical of woods, after a heavy downpour. A groan of disgust escaped my lips, as I walked barefoot in ankle deep mulch and natural rot. The irony couldn’t have been more subtle. Here I was, walking in filth and natural slush, on a cool, windy monsoon night, and just hours ago, my kinsmen and I had celebrated the first rain of the season, with hopes of it washing away all our miseries and reaping a bountiful harvest.

The air was aflame!

Tiny golden sparks danced away, content and overwhelmed with the advent of the seasons very first rain. Their aurum glow was as eerie as evocative. It inspired in me the desire to set myself alight and pirouette away in the agonizing ecstasy, in the deep, dark, damp woods, burning it with my sadomasochistic desire for pain. I could imagine myself, with the golden lights all around me, looking like a dark, fearsome god, the embers of my rage, dancing menacingly around me.

I had no idea why I was traversing the woods at this unholy hour of the night, when humanity rests and the dark, violent, volatile and tempestuous side of man gallivants and struts with the air of evil enterprise. Perhaps, I too, had surrendered to my Freudian id, my hidden, inconspicuous and clandestine alter ego, for I had decided to walk among the ancient dead. My fingers, dark, long and bony, looked evil and macabre in the queer glow of the flying sparks that hovered around me.

As I walked onwards, inwards, deeper into the anatomy of the woods, the mulch had begun to discomfort me; I felt obvious and pathetic remains of his once alive creature squish and pulp between my toes. The venerable dead, apparently, were only us humans, whose remains deserved to be treated with a severe and unflinching respect. The rest of life, or rather death was a matter, which rarely, if ever required place in our thought. Our death was burnt with all religious sincerity and customary mourning, their death, was being pulped and crushed between my toes, under my feet as I walked (a bubble of insanity, it seemed had begun to grip me )

A clear, warm female voice assaulted the silence of the night. I turned towards the voice and walked through the soggy mulch, almost mesmerised. There was a mystical, poetic quality about that voice which attracted me towards it. I suddenly knew why I was there. It reverberated of a certain ungraspable essence of life, alien to the deadly woods in which it resonated. I sought the voice more fanatically than ever as I begun to hear it louder and clearer, but was unable to pinpoint its source.

The sound began to encompass the periphery of the woods, it seemed that there wasn’t a single source for the voice, but rather the whole forest, every tree, every jasmine flower, every little insect had joined that multifarious chorus of poetry. I turned sideways, round about, ran forward, retraced my steps, went off the forest path, yet the sound ceased to be located. It was permeating every pore of my heart and soul, it felt like ice cold needles, piercing my very skin. I spun around, maddened and frenzied by the noise, it was driving me insane. I spun around, showering dirt and mulch everywhere. I felt possessed by that voice, but I felt wonderful, ecstatic, overwhelmed, bursting at the seams of my soul.

“I shall dance, sway, swirl and whirl,

I shall laugh and cry,

Tear out my hair;

Scar my bodice with his mark,

Brandish myself with his love,

Live with his name,

Die with it, capsuled in my heart.

I scream and delight,

My heart pumping in all its furious frenzy,

He is mine,

And mine alone,

My sweet heart,

Dark as the night sky above,

Marked like the eon moon.

I burn and burst,

At his mere touch,

I love him more,

Than I can bear.

I shall dance and sway, swirl and whirl,

I shall laugh and cry…” she sang.

I fell on the wet forest floor, mouthing the cursed song, every bit of my soul and body was on fire, it devoured me, burnt me, scarred me, the fire raged furiously in my heart and soul, yet blisters appeared on my body, it was as if the cursed song had decided to possess me, burn me with its passion. I writhe on the forest floor, agonized, excruciated, every bit of my body, screaming in protest…

And then it stopped.

The song, the voice, the woman, ceased to exist. There was nothing but ice cold silence, broken only by my silent sobs. I was bleeding profusely from my leg. I was paralyzed with pain and fear, the hurt and agony was mixed with an unreal joy, and ecstasy unknown to me before, I laughed and cried at the same time. I was covered in the forests excretion all over. I writhe and twisted and turned in agony and ecstasy, my whole body shrieked in heavenly pain. My hands, legs, back, thighs, chest, head, lips, all rejoiced in bloody celebration of my mortality. The pain felt like a release of a thousand years of euphoria.

“I shall dance, sway, swirl and whirl,

I shall laugh and cry,

Tear out my hair…

I scream and delight,

My heart pumping in all its furious frenzy,

He is mine,

And mine alone...”