The End of the Line

Talguppa, a town that appears confused by its own name, gathered from the different ideas painted on the yellow station boards, lent us its serenity for a few minutes as we took the only train that makes the long haul to town through the picturesque Malnad region.

The trip to Talguppa was conceived out of a need to relive the erstwhile metre gauge romance that once played itself out amongst the forest and hutments of this rural line. Burdened with an unnecessarily long train, the locomotive rolled its way over the winding rails and overhanging branches, whistling not just at crossings but at everything in general as though in a hurry. Hurry, I can assure you we did not, doing the 100 kilometres in over 2 hours of old world railway travels. This line is diesel operated, a visual treat to the passer by, who haven’t seen a proper train on the line for over a decade now and the passing of the train is an event in everyday life. Even the shepherd wakes from his mandatory siesta to wave his staff in a hopeful goodbye.

The train trudged over the golden green landscape, skipping over the rails, barely shifting fallen leaves that settled on the ground in their final abodes, although at times it careened over bends as if searching for its tail. The locomotive drivers didn’t push hard, knowing that the empty train is just an extension of the solitude that invaded the countryside. Such idyllic surroundings, with the weather gods playing nice, and the perverse idea of sleep in the daytime penetrated the minds best intentions to gobble up the passing scenery.

During a moment of hard reflection, my concentration was broken by the shrill voice of a child and I half turned, to see what the commotion was, because it was almost as if a ghost had slid into the seat behind and screeched into my ear. Then, from the vestibule came another train, a train of school children barging along the aisle, a song on their lips, in varied states of completion, about a score of them and at intervals punctuated by portly school teachers. Undoubtedly a school trip to Jog Falls. They marched on, and turned straight back as though the world had just them in it, and all it needed, was for them to run and run like the wind. They created an awful din, and just when I thought that my trip of solitude was burnt to the ground, the line of pigtailed girls and excited boys disappeared into the billowing saree folds of the teachers.

Another idyllic lull followed, broken here and there by the hard braking of the locomotive and the strong smell of brake dust, although on a line such as this, there are no reasons to stop. We didn’t, and with a lurch the train picked up speed again, cruising through the dull day, cutting a swathe through the heavy wind.

Up around the bend came a station straight out of a postcard. As if, stuck, into the world while it was sleeping, the buildings seem lost in time. A face here, a limb there, a chicken sprawling on the dusty platform, a dog lazily brushing up his yawning skills and a sounder of pigs welcomed the train as it approached like an intruding stranger. It is not possible I think to generate a more serene surrounding even with the onset of the steel giants. Talguppa, whose only claim to fame, is probably the Jog Falls nearby seemed more ghostly than anything else. The signal masts stand sentinel to a timeless event, heralded by nothing more than the gentle tug of the brakes and the train comes to a slithering halt, bludgeoning over a dip in the tracks and then finally becoming one with the enveloping silence. A small cemetery at the corner of the station yard bore home the fact that this is a quiet place, destined for solitude.

The line man appears to be the only employee the railway here possessed, for he did everything from man the level crossing gate to switch points to de-couple and couple the locomotive and everything else in general.

Exiting the platform, one is dumped not into the badgering sleaze of the auto drivers syndicate, rather the gentle, swaying lull of a “Jog Falls Sir?” type of atmosphere where the taxi drivers are almost sure to know that you’re not going, yet it’s polite to ask. Step outside the station boundaries and a vegetable and fruit market is built around the arrival of the only train here. For a hundred meters on either side, the market stretches out under makeshift shelters with the produce neatly stacked under each stall with a paan chewing seller quietly eyeing business. The Western Ghats are still pure, and you can feel the cool breeze of the fresh produce penetrate the almost silent throng of people. We on the other hand, had no such time to sample the variety, but given the absence of food stalls on the platform or at any station en route, had to make do with a few oranges.

Everything here is reminiscent of the heyday of the metre gauge, the platform, the buildings and even the rails seem to say that they miss the good old days.

In a few minutes the train took on its only passengers who did the whole hog, the return, us.

The locomotive driver, although did not seem to like the local gate man much, for he  noisily spat into his wireless set and reprimanded the dilly dallying of the gate man to shut the gate for the imminent departure. Such is the Indian mind, that the locomotive driver, himself chose to glide the train over the only level crossing in the area and saunter to a stop to conclude some business with the gate man while vehicles on either side did neither honk or even raise an eyelid to get things moving. And then with an impatient whistle and a rasping purr, the locomotive threw up a twirling cloud of smoke, lurched uncomfortably and sent the train hurtling through the forest at a trot in its wake.

The sun was in shadow and the few farmers out in the fields ran up to the line to wave their goodbyes. Then, the sleepy clickety-clack of the rails sent me into a reverie of old times spent driving through the region.

Then suddenly, almost like a whisper, I felt like I was spoken to, and sleepily I turned to note the advent of a beggar, but unlike his cousins in the cities, he was polite and quickly shuffled when I nodded my head in annoyance.

At one of the larger stations on the line, Sagar, the train took on quite a few people who were probably making their way to Shimoga for the evening. The train suddenly seemed to rattle with the high pitched blabbering of women and the excited screeching of children, overshadowed here and there by the authoritative blast of a man’s voice. How they managed to find and occupy one particular compartment is a mystery, but it is very Indian, and it appeared that the “reserved” status on the train between Shimoga and Talguppa is a mere formality, as is the case on branch lines. From here on, I slept, partly in annoyance at this unruly invasion and partly because I had been travelling continuously for the last sixteen hours. I awoke a few kilometres before Shimoga and was quickly reminded by the conductor that from this station on, the train became a “reserved” train. Try telling that to the locals.

Such is the beauty of the Indian railway, the rural branches, the ones away from the hustle bustle of the cities and towns that greatly exaggerate the already perforated pockets of oxygen and seemingly effortlessly melt the smells of unwashed armpits, uncombed hair and the sweat of the tropics into a pot of suicidal tendencies. This is the unwanted India, the unquenched thirst, the unbroken promise and the hopeful tomorrow. The line where time stands still, where the railway is still a welcome stranger, where the passengers are a theatre of dreams, where the train runs its own course and where the simple folk weave their evening stories.

For now, the sight, smell and feel of an old world railway line, lost in time, alive in a ghostly reincarnation envelops me and I must try and relive those magic moments before I ride these rails again.

The Slow Train To Mysore

The train rumbled on through the night, the black smoke from the diesel locomotive at the head of the train painting a wisp through the moonlit canvas. Outside the train, black fields passed in uncounted minutes, the steady clickety-clack of the wheels and the occasional whistle of the engine lulled the senses of the train’s passengers to deep slumber. The overnight slow train to Mysore had wriggled its way through the tenements of Bangalore and was now well on its way through the dotted landscape of sugarcane fields and barren lands.

Ram, the tea-seller sat on the steps of the general compartment, his head bowed between his hands in a tired nap, with his tea container crammed between his legs. A half empty roll of plastic cups hung loosely from his arm. Ram’s wife had left him in the search for a greener pasture, as she called it and went away to another town. With her went all his savings and his belongings. All he had now was his tea container, about ten plastic cups and an over-shirt. Ram wasn’t unhappy even though his countenance suggested otherwise, rather he was happy, because now he didn’t have to go home to nagging, slapping and constant insult. He wouldn’t have to deal with his wife or her parents; he wouldn’t have to part with his daily earnings nor his dignity. Ram was in fact, for the first time in a very long time, at peace with himself. He stared at the disappearing ballast beneath his feet, and images of a life lived in shame flew through his mind’s eye. Intermittently, a stone would rear up and hit his legs, but Ram would just stare on, in an apparent stupor.

This was the night train to Mysore and there weren’t any buyers for tea on the train.

Most of the passengers who got in or off were regular peasants and small time vendors. Young lasses from the villages boarded the train at various points bundling their sarees in with their luggage into the already full compartment. But Ram had no eyes for them, for he believed he was one of those gifted men who’d find an already experienced woman. In between his intermittent fits of sleep, Ram thought of other women, and he felt a strange exhilaration and a longing for a real woman. He wanted her arms around him and not just her lashes. He wanted a woman to feel him and to respect him for who he was. In his dreamtime as well Ram dreamt of his mythical Sita, he dreamt of going home to a hot cup of tea and a rice meal, he dreamt of laying his head down on her lap and drifting away to sleep, he dreamt of the things they’d do when the rest of the family slept. Like the train he was on, life too seemed to be taking him away to a dream world.

The train rolled on, oblivious to Ram or any of its passengers, like a machine leading those searching souls ever onward to a final destination, with the answer as always, unknown. Here and there, the driver would let out a shrill blast of his horn, warning livestock and people by the line that here, in the open heartlands, life hung by a thread. Like Ram, the driver too was an ordinary person, a man of steel, dust and grime who had lived his life on the railway like his father and his grandfather before him. At the rear of the train, Hari, the guard, let out roaring snore after roaring snore, safe in the knowledge that this was the slow train to nowhere and nothing was going to get out of hand. His mouth hung open, and a few bugs of the night had a field day in digging out what they could off his tongue. Hari wasn’t married and didn’t care much for women, although he did care a lot for alcohol. Day in and day out, Hari was on the slow train to hell and he knew he wasn’t getting off it anytime soon. Hari was one of those men who didn’t think too much about life, he actually didn’t think too much of anything at all and he had found the cure for boredom and insanity a long time ago. He became a railway guard only because he knew he’d start on the slow trains and no one would need him to energise himself when an emergency arose. It was a safe bet, a government job and a daily staple diet. Hari didn’t hear the engine whistling, nor did he hear the wheels over the rails, all he heard was a deafening roar of silence.

The slow train had a mind of its own; it meandered through the moonlit night, romancing the moon as it danced through the clouds. Here and there, it’d stop at a signal or a wayside ghost stations with the distant green or yellow signal lights the only signs of life on the line. The train was practically one long bed, with a mix of people, insects and animals scattered throughout. In some coaches, goats were tethered to the berth handles and in some coaches; people seemed to have formed human pyramids. The smells that emanated from these coaches were mildly intoxicating and appeared laborious. For that Ram was glad as he had the fresh night air all to himself. In a few hours he’d be back home in Mysore, and he’d be back again the next day on the train to Bangalore.

Traversing the Cauvery bridge, Ram saw beneath him the sparkling flow of water between fleeting steel girders. The waters seemed to be silky smooth and calm, calling out to him in death whispers. He felt a strange sense of calm and sensuousness and he drifted into a momentary loss of time. The bridge appeared to be never ending, and Ram could still hear the vast empty noises of the train going over a hollow space. Time stood still and space seemed all around him, he felt himself letting go of the door handles, his fingers gradually slipping off their grip over the steel. He felt light, uncontrolled and unruffled. The wind tore through his hair and his shirt slapped loosely around him. Suddenly he felt as if he was falling, and in a moment he saw the silvery snake of the water below, the moon glistening in reflection. Ram thought he’d seen paradise, a land where troubles did not exist, where he was among equals. Then in a flash, he was back on solid ground. The steady thumping of the train on the tracks was back again and the night grew longer. Again he was lulled into a deep sleep by the rhythmic sounds of the wheel with the distant thunder of the engine and the wisps of diesel smoke that drifted by every now and then. Ram was once again the slave of this world. His mind fell to thinking of his neighbour, a well-rounded, loud mouthed, married woman. He had fantasized about her for many months now, but the instinct of self-preservation and cowardice left him with his hand for company. In a moment of uncouth carnal urge, he made a mental note to show her how he felt when he got home.

Through the fields that once served as a battleground to the legendary warrior Tippu Sultan, the night train rattled on, like an snake in an apparent daze, trudging through valleys and hills, steaming over bridges and harmonizing man and machine. Hari was still asleep, in his dreams, bottles of nectar floated by, him in a white suit, and the nectar oozing out of the bottles found its way into his open mouth. Somewhere in that sleep he heard a cracking bottle…

Where Ram and Hari dreamt, the train went, where they awoke, the train stopped. Such is the beauty of the night train to Mysore.

The Goods Train

Trains come in all shapes, sizes and lengths. Not to mention colours. But there is one particular type that signifies the railroad, the engineers who work them and the people behind the scenes. This is the goods train. Those long, brooding, grumbling brown wagons of endless length, of wizened drivers and of sleeping guards. This is the goods train, almost like the unwanted son of the railway. A song without its chorus if you may.

The goods train is awfully boring to watch to the ordinary man, so often it gets cursed for its snail like speed and it’s almost snake like appearance, it gives many a motorist the nightmare of an ever closed railway gate. But to me, a rail fanatic, the goods train is the epitome of the railway. The dust, grime and glory all combine to make the running of the long goods train the most emphatic sound, sight, smell, taste and feel of the railway.

Winding its way slowly over the undulating terrain of the single line section, where the blades of grass are as lazy as the shepherd that walks over them, is a long goods train bound for the city of Bangalore. About an hour from its final destination, the train’s drivers and guard should be looking forward to time off and a meal at home. But instead they’re lazing around in their respective cabins, discussing the latest political potboiler of the Indian government and the latest Bollywood belle, sans her clothes. Why do goods trains and women without clothes go together you ask? Well the train is not a woman, it is a man…and men will always figure out a way to find women in the most unthinkable of times. What say?

Anyway, the grubby drivers, tired from their long shifts on the snail train, chew gutkha and spit it out of the engine window, without a care in the world. Thankfully for them, there’s no excited young child with his head stuck between carriage window bars that gets this full in his face. Instead, the stain is pasted for eternity onto the sides of the cabin, and like devil and daughter, they are now together for life. The drivers lazily pull out a magazine and begin to scan the contents, one with his finger up his nose searching for lost gold, the other with one hand adjusting the ever adjustable Indian VIP underwear and the other hand stretched out the window, perpendicular to the train, as if it was some left over thing that no one needs. The throttle is yanked forward, at full steam, the twin diesels roar into overdrive as they thud along the long steel rails with their load behind them. Working inside, the pistons fire like the insides of a volcano, spewing forth power and a surge which ultimately drives these wheels of steel.

The guard is in the caboose, at the very end of the line of wagons, with a lonely, brown and locked snake of life between him and his nearest human companions, 58 wagons away. All he has for company is last week’s newspaper that both serves as toilet paper and reading material. On the cover page, torn of any shred of dignity, is the belle in question, with her body spread far and wide at every angle possible, the way only a much touched, read and re-read newspaper can. Quietly, he scans once again the possibilities of the failure of the print media to recreate a wardrobe malfunction, and just as quietly resigns himself to the fact that his fat, ugly and disobedient wife will welcome him home shortly.

Nonchalantly, he garbles into the walkie-talkie, talking to the drivers in local dialect and enquiring, more absent mindedly that with any intent, how far away they are from the next station. Just as incomprehensible and illogical is the reply although the next station can’t be more than a few kilometers away.

No one wants to leave the serenity of the goods train, clanking its way noisily across the barren lands, snaking its way through the many curves and twists the line has to offer. The trees, boulders and winding roads all seem to will the train along, egging it one just one more mile, back to civilization.

Suddenly, with a great show of smoke, sound and sight, the train grinds to a halt. The brake dust settles over the belle on the newspaper, now covering her tattered saree in a fine film of silvery powder and she herself settles on the solitary commode that at the end of the train. A cursory glance out of his cabin tells the guard that they’re at a wayside station, on a loop line, undoubtedly waiting for a crossing. The crossing – that fatigued, wearied event that could happen just about anywhere, anytime and anyhow on a single line stretch is a welcome break for the weary drivers and their heavy bladders. Quickly settling the throbbing diesels into a hushed sleep, they jump off the locomotive and head to the nearest bush to spray it with the urine of distance. The urine has seen so much, been through so many places, if only it could talk.

In the far distance, midway through the loop line, on a platform the size of vegetable shop, the sleepy station master is just about trying to get across the goods train and onto the other side to wave off the crossing train with the flags in his hand. No help here, this is a one man station, a one man army. Even the dogs at this station are fast asleep, the thunder of the steel giants do not trouble their ecstatic dreams one bit. The only living things awake appear to be the monkeys up in the trees, but soon their enthusiasm of finding food on this train takes a nose dive, for a goods train is that hollow, empty bringer of nothing for them. Resigned to their fate, they take to a more lucrative past time…making babies.

The guard stifles a yawn as his wax filled ears distinctly pick out the whistle of an approaching train at full speed. It will be a few minutes before that powerhouse of diesel, dust and smoke comes roaring up the main line, making for its next stop without a care for the machinery beneath its skin. Moments of boredom pass, he walks up to the railing of the caboose, puts one leg up on the railing, lifts the tip of his trouser a little and proceeds to eloquently scratch the tardy, broken skin of his leg. This activity completed, his hand moves to his crotch, quietly first cradling his manhood and then scratching it in all its glory. He barely has enough time to wake up from this dream when the monster train on the main line is almost upon him like some angry, snarling beast of smoke, belching fury with every step and honking furiously looking for the flags that signify a successful pass. He pops the flag out, almost into the face of the driver of the passing train, who himself is half out of the engine with his hair covered tight in a shiny bandana. With an orchestrated honking of a million horns, the diesel passes on, with its mass of humanity all packed tightly into its carriages, with the lucky few in air conditioned coaches, into the unknown, the smell of the passing train lingers for many an hour.

Up ahead, the drivers wipe the mists of sleep from their eyes, sip water from their flasks and pray fervently for the “proceed” signal instead of yet another crossing or an overtake. Thankfully, the rail gods oblige and the goods train rumbles on, on its own journey, with no apparent destination with two short blasts of its horns, the locomotive rumbles to life, strains at its leashes to power away from this restraining load behind it, but makes its peace with man and machine, and majestically waltzes out into the mainline, with the goods train tearing at its chains and groaning under the weight happily, lazily and never endingly beginning that journey.

Django, The Anglo-Indian Custard Apple Picker

I’ve always been an intrepid traveler, more so because I enjoy train travel, and train travel in India is definitely not for the faint hearted, let alone the sane.

Train travel often puts you in touch with the most interesting characters you could ever hope, or hope never to meet. Strictly speaking, I met one of these not while on the train, rather off the train on one of the most interesting trips I ever had, but that’s another story. This chap was a middle-aged, Anglo-Indian chap living in Bangarpet, a few kilometers from Bangalore and teaching English at a local school. He had a messy appearance about him, one you’d attribute to a beggar, dressed in torn denims and the universal Bata ‘chappal’, with a tooth or two missing, obviously at the hands of the better male at the local town bar and restaurant with a fancy name like “Bangarpet Paradise” or “Paradise Gardens” for sure, with the paradise and garden both being as elusive as the promised land. He had a long mane of graying hair, and looked more like one of those mentally imbalanced scientists who’ve spent a lifetime navigating the seas of madness and have come out obviously stoned from their exploits and such was my initial perception of this most unlikely personality.

The chap appeared as if from nowhere. Like an apparition, he crawled up the railway track embankment from the wasteland some distance away, appearing in a hue of sweat and blue. I was revolted at his very appearance and quickly checked my pocket for my knife which I always keep at the ready. Well, what a surprise I was in for. He did not want to commit suicide like so many of his friends, but rather slithered over the rails with a silken gait that belied his appearance and came over to me. He was most frighteningly friendly and courteous, even shaking hands with me and asking me varied questions about train movements. Not wanting to sound very knowledgeable or anything of the sort, I feigned ignorance and instead asked him a few questions about trains, and damnit!, the man knew a thing or two. Apparently he’s a regular traveler to Bangalore, as is the norm, as the ‘call-center revolution’ finds its way into people’s lives like the child they never wanted but love to have.

Of all things, he was looking for custard-apples amongst the trees that grew on one side of the railway line, custard-apples. Mind you, I came all the way from Bangalore to watch trains, nearly got bitten by a cobra and I meet this fellow looking for custard-apples. I might have thought he was a murderer or even a homosexual at that and I was prepared for anything except custard-apples. Now, the denim clad Django asks me if I’ve seen custard-apples anywhere here. Yes of course I have as I am most interested in these unique fruits and have come all the way to pick them. So I said ‘yes, they’re there’, pointing a nervous finger in the general direction of some trees that I hoped to god, bred custard-apples even if they were mango trees. He smiles, and at that moment I cannot help but notice the enormous gap between his front teeth and I inadvertently compress my face into a frown, but manage to keep my nerve. I’m telling you, you could shove a custard-apple or two right between that gaping hole without him having to unhinge his jaws to eat them whole. Anyway, his eyes are blood-red, whether from the effects of the local alcohol or from lack of sleep I don’t know, as I tactfully keep my nostrils closed as I do in most cases when dealing with such people. And then he drops the most used line of the decade…’I’m looking for a call-center job in Bangalore’. Another man, another forced job, another lie, another life, altogether he doesn’t know the fuck just where he is. But that’s the state that our country is in now, everybody, from the fruit-seller on the battered pavement, to the taxi-driver, they all want to be part of this revolution of the computer age. So I quiz him on his life, apparently from a seemingly happy life while the mines at Kolar were working, he’s now a teacher in Bangarpet, lecturing English to a classroom full of students who hope that this is what shapes their careers. Alas, how mistaken are they. I ask him why he harbours this dream of being employed in the city and the answer is as expected, and as tragic as ever…’that’s where the money is’. Sadly, this is the mistaken dream that a lot of us Indians are following, we’re forever hoping that learning English and a call-center job leads to healthy employment and so often, so many of us, are lost in that journey, to never arrive at the destination. More so for the people from smaller towns, these dreams are distant, not unreachable, but they’re a distant reality and it takes the most focused of them to achieve. And to those individuals, I raise my hat and glass for they are true Indians, sons of the soil, burning of the toil, reaching the stars they only read about. Slumdog Millionaire I hear you say?., not in a million years, the true beauty of resurgence lies within, in homes and huts where covered feet have never tread, where the only use of petrol has been to burn the unholy and where a commode would be used to sleep on rather than defecate on.

Suddenly he takes off across the railway tracks, inviting a series of horn blasts from the oncoming train’s drivers and for a moment, my heart stops. Is he, after all, just another suicide solution, another statistic? My heart is in my mouth as I wait for the train to pass and it seems like forever, is he on the other side or is he strewn on the rails? The train passes, and with it, the tension. He’s over on the opposite side, fighting like a dog with a shepherd who he insists, in spite of the latter’s vehement claims, has stolen all the custard-apples. It’s a sight, a shepherd whose life is around his sheep holding court against this fanatical, radical person who accuses him of fruit theft…I tell you, it happens only in India!

As I listen to him drag on and on about the losses the state has suffered, and they have with the closing of the gold mines, about how life in the slush and filth covered streets have changed from one of a family dinner over the duties of the day to the subdued whispers of the who ran away with whom. For a man who has lived his life dispensing duty in the noblest profession ever, a change to embrace the new world, a jump from a life of torn underwear to spotless shirts, from “chappals” to laced shoes, this man, he who looked like Long John Silver himself, brings home the ugly truth.

From the oil fired lamps of yesterday, that set up an eerie glow against the dark wilderness around, a few incandescent bulbs and even some LED’s spruce up the town’s frontier and in that passage of interplay of light from the old to the new, I see across the road from me, as if strangely welcoming home it’s lost son, the “Bangarpet Paradise Bar & Restaurant”.

Human BINtelligence

Most humans I can do without. They are nothing but a disgrace to humanity as a whole and I’m not talking about politicians and world leaders. I am talking about the average human…and here’s a list of who and why:

The local colleague: because he / she blabbers in a regional tongue and consumes his / her food and beverage with a cacophony that closely resembles a malfunctioning flush tank;

The chauffeur driven woman: because her car holds up traffic for miles together while she fidgets with her bra strap and her driver’s too busy noticing that in his rear view mirror. Result: a barrage of abuses from other road users but just a snobbish smile from the back seat bitch;

The policeman: because his efficient handling of traffic ensures my bladder is at bursting point anywhere and everywhere;

The sob story person: those loser people who keep on and on about their sob stories should be collected and stored in a museum for the brain dead;

The plumber: because even though I set out a carpet of newspaper for him to walk on, he still insists on placing his garbage wrapped feet on my clean floor;

The electrician: because he wires plug points to multiple switches, wonder where his brains are wired;

The parking attendant: because with a parking space as wide as PA’s valley, he still insists I park my car in a space as far away from there as possible;

The relatives: because they keep saying that I’ve grown up…yes of course, do you want to see something that’s grown bigger as well?

In general, the average human being that I am privileged to come into contact with is a fool and a disgrace altogether. How I wish I could cook their brains and boil a broth for the world’s hungry. The average human being makes it necessary to irritate me as much as they can, to bring me to my knees. To beg before their ignorance that ignorance is indeed, bliss. How very fucked up. Take for e.g., the other day a pair of loving drivers on the highway crawling beside each other, one at 15Kmph and the other at 16Kmph and not an inch of space would they give. How I wish I could have tied one by his genitals while the other stroked it with a hot iron.

The average humans intelligence can be found everywhere….just like a dustbin…somebody please sponsor me to rid this planet of this scourge – brain dead slipper eating transgender pigs.

A Sinner's Epilogue

Forgive me father, for I have sinned. And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.

Today, as I stand at the gallows pole, I answer the questions that life has posed me. When I go, I go in the knowledge that at the threshold of my end, I have answered life and it's doubters.

Why did I commit murder you ask...but you do not question the death of innocent thousands that die at the hands of governments, that I suppose is a necessary evil. I kill because I am left with no option, I have no choice, and killing is my business and I kill in the name of honour. I am a mercenary, for the poor against the rich. I have only taken the lives of those who kill for false glory, and I stand by my judgement that to free this world of such vermin is my legacy. I gladly go to the gallows knowing fully well that the pain that a thousand felt at the hands of these few murderers are at least slightly avenged. I am a mercenary for the unarmed and the innocent, yet you condemn me to my death, then pray, tell me where is justice for all?

Tell me, should I forgive those who trespass against us? War and famine in Sierra Leone - tell me who sponsors this blood feud? Why do we watch the media glorifying soldiers in the Middle East? Are they not fighting a war that is not theirs? And in the end, when they return home, killed by a soldier who only defended himself, they are given a hero's salute...why? What about the orphaned child who picked up a broken rifle and used it to survive in Iraq?

Today I will be on national television, I will be a national disgrace and I will be condemned to hell by my own flesh and blood. I will die as I lived, by the sword, but will you care about me after I am gone? Do you know the truth of my life? Do you remember the thousands who die in Asia fighting governments? Do you know what it is to have shrapnel lodged in your skull, but you cannot die because no one is alive to pump in the last bullet? Tell me then, that why you've accepted that I'm a sinner while you let the blood-seeking so called warriors of peace carry on their massacres of millions?

When I go, I go in peace for I know I have written a book of the dead for the innocent, and their faces are all that give me salvation, for it is for the weak that I stand against the strong, for the myriad children decapitated in the name of national security, for those who stand at our borders and give their lives so that we may live another day.

So as I go now, question your government, people should never be afraid of their governments, governments should be afraid of their people.

The Politics of Ecstasy

Why is that after a night of awesome sex the question is raised as to “what next?” Or, why even a question? Or why even a thought of a question? I did not sign a contract that says “have sex and answer me”…almost like have ten beers and don’t piss!...

But I believe that’s its some kind of phenomenon that even the most learned psychologists haven’t figured out yet…nor will they, coz when they end up having sex, they’ll probably ask “what’s on your mind”… A way better question than “what’s next?” .

I remember one particular affair, where the sex was cool, but at the same time it kind of fizzled out everytime a question would arise…”where are we”, “where do we go from here”, “what’s to come”….questions that actually get you to imagine ‘doing it” with someone else rather than the one you’re doing it with!...But I think its some “cool” talk, you know, like “whats up dawg?”…you’ve heard that before I’m sure!

Funnily enough, there are some cool answers that come to my head (you know which head I mean right?)…some of the answer’s I’ve blurted out are:
Q: where are we?
A: well if you’d had the brains to steal your dad’s credit card, we could be at the Playboy Mansion, couldn’t we?
Q: where do we go from here?
A: well, what about, you go to the freezer, and I’ll go to the nearest bar and find a chick who can’t speak English?
Q: what’s to come?
A: perhaps a marriage on Venus, if you can afford it, that is…and find a way to get there?...oh, you’ve got your head in your arse…sorry, might take some getting out of there…
Q: will you do this again with me if you love me?
A: sure, bring your friends along, the more the merrier right?

Why, oh why, do people need to complicate the simplest of things in life…start up, insert, download and shut down…the world runs on Google, Yahoo and the like…so where is reality? And oh, I almost forgot, some people haven’t ever seen an ice lolly being eaten have they?

Sex was never meant to be complicated, in ages past, it was a pastime, now it’s a talking point, a talking point that’d drive most men up the wall, we’re here to respect you and to be there for you, but not as a question and answer session. Didn’t you know that there’s an unofficial track and field event that is run by men who run away from “psycho-ill-logists?”…yeah, it’s a real Olympic event…no wonder the Greeks invented the “pole vault”…

Fine, I admit, I’m an opportunist, I found a weak spot, I hit it, and for unlawful carnal knowledge’s sake, I said I liked it. But it’s the case of what lies beneath that makes me wish that my manhood was a magnet attracted to brains rather than beauty…well that’s the weakness of man and he accepts it, at least he doesn’t ask “where do I stick it?”…