“That’s horrible!” Sonia had said. “You can’t mean it.”

“Why not?” Howard had asked, mildly.

“But Howard…” Sonia hadn’t been able to understand him.

“Do you want me dead?” she had asked.

“Certainly not,” Howard had said. “I am speaking of a population, not of individual people.”

“But Howard,” she had said, making the obvious point, “what do you think the population is?”

By the time Sonia told Loveman, she was already worried about Howard’s mental stability. “But I don’t think his stability has anything to do with it,” she had said. “I think that was what eh really believed.” Loveman, for his part, was horrified by the personal betrayal. Loveman could no longer support Howard or his work, not even in the form of a used book. I, too was horrified. From Luiza, I knew that the Germans had used a cyanogen gas in Auschwitz. There might have been a big gap, an enormous gap, between wishing the Jews dead and actually building the gas chambers, between the words cyanogen gas and the barrels of Zyklon B that the Nazis put to their inhuman purpose, but I didn’t see it. From that moment on, I could only think of Lovecraft’s work as evil, and I was ashamed that I had ever admired him.

The Night Ocean~ Paul La Farge

In 1966 Graciela and I went into the Etruscan tombs and saw the paintings. There were lovers enjoying one another in all positions, people eating and drinking, scenes of music and celebration.

I had been trained for pain by Catholicism and my eyes popped out at this cemetery which was joy.

Days and Nights of Love and War (Eduardo Galeano)

It was easy killing me. I had only the protection of God. And I don’t know about you but I can’t really figure that guy out.

Why, you ask? Why did he kill me? I had to die. I had to die because the coffin, in a twist of bad fortune, fit my exact dimensions. Who would lie in the coffin otherwise? The alternative was throwing the coffin out, which would mean throwing out the work of a decade. Who in his right mind would do that?

You guys probably think all this is in bad literary taste. But it’s not so bad. It is comfortable. That’s the most important thing people miss about being trapped inside a coffin. Some coffins are built for comfort. Some coffins are inherently superior.

You guys must be wondering how I am doing all this talking from the coffin if I am dead. Well, the answer to that is I am not sure if I am dead. Living inside coffins befuddles* the mind. I really can’t tell anymore if I am dead or alive.

Do I want to come out, you ask? Of course not. What if I am dead and half rotted to the bone? That will ruin your day. I will not do that to you good people of this country.

My only complaint with this whole enterprise would be perhaps that my coffin is excessively well-sealed. So much so that that even my dreams are insulated from light. Next time one of you guys decides to leave your friend inside a coffin, do him a favor and leave an LED on. It costs 20 bucks on Amazon.

*I am not sure what befuddles means. Please forgive me if I am wrong. I don’t want this error in articulation to reflect on the vocabulary of the general coffin living public.

Ranju Mamachan got his Masters in Thermal Science from the National Institute of Technology, Calicut, India. He is an Assistant Professor in the Mechanical Department of Manipal Institute of Technology. He sometimes resurrects dead writers in his class to the amusement of his students. Previously published in 1. Rigorous mag: https://rigorous-mag.com/v4i4/ranju-mamachan.html 2. Cabinet of Heed: https://cabinetofheed.com/2021/11/07/our-finest-moment-ranju-mamachan/ 3. Story titled Killing superman published in Chaicopy: https://issuu.com/chaicopy/docs/ripples

Nothing on his blog will ever be behind a paywall. But if you want to support this kind of writing, consider subscribing using this link. You might need a credit-card for the transaction. https://buy.stripe.com/fZe2cb370aVogU09AA

If you are not in a position to help monetarily, you can always help by sharing the joy and recommending the blog to a bookish friend.

1.

Chuck Yeager, the first man to break the sound barrier, had always known how to fly. At the age of twenty, two years after enlisting for Army Air Force, he shot down two German fighter aircrafts. Shot down over enemy territory on his ninth mission, he travelled from France through Spain back into England, and was sitting inside a P51 Mustang during the allied invasion of France. P51s had piston engines, which were nothing more than relics, to the jet engines which the Germans had started putting inside the Messerschmitt 262s. 

Imagine sitting inside your Tiago parked by the side of a road watching a Ferrari run by you at 200 km/hr. That’s what it felt like to watch a Messerschmitt 262 fly by you at top speed when you were in a P51 Mustang going at top speed. Yeah, P51s should have been at the mercy of Messerschmitt 262s.

And yet Chuck Yeager shot down a Messerschmitt 262, while flying a P51. He was twenty two. 

2.

In the Mojave desert, where the Americans had been trying to break the sound barrier, a deep pessimism had entered the minds of the engineers. “The sound barrier” was just a scientific name for this pessimism. I mean, who could blame them. Pilots had lost lives in the planes they built trying to reach Mach 1. 

The first time Yeager was behind the controls of X1, the aircraft which would later break the sound barrier, he stood it on its tail and launched it up vertically at 0.85 Mach. This had not been authorized.

3. 

Sunday, two days before the Mach 1 test, Yeager drank a lot, as was the traditional evening past time in that desert, and decided to horse-ride deep into the desert. While returning, he missed the gate, slammed into it at full speed, flew, and landed on his right side. 

There is a price to pay for flying.

That little adventure cost Yeager two broken ribs. They were broken on Sunday and were still broken on Tuesday when he climbed into the X1 without informing the command.

In the plane, Yeager complained about the Machmeter going screwy and on the ground they heard the sonic boom.

4.

Yeager was never well known outside the fraternity. The proof is that the name conjures up images of anime genocide and not aerial dogfighting. But there is nothing like flying, and a thing that can fly will always fly.

Ranju Mamachan got his Masters in Thermal Science from the National Institute of Technology, Calicut, India. He is an Assistant Professor in the Mechanical Department of Manipal Institute of Technology. He sometimes resurrects dead writers in his class to the amusement of his students. Previously published in 1. Rigorous mag: https://rigorous-mag.com/v4i4/ranju-mamachan.html 2. Cabinet of Heed: https://cabinetofheed.com/2021/11/07/our-finest-moment-ranju-mamachan/ 3. Story titled Killing superman published in Chaicopy: https://issuu.com/chaicopy/docs/ripples

Nothing on his blog will ever be behind a paywall. But if you want to support this kind of writing, consider subscribing using this link. You might need a credit-card for the transaction. https://buy.stripe.com/fZe2cb370aVogU09AA

If you are not in a position to help monetarily, you can always help by sharing the joy and recommending the blog to a bookish friend.

1.

This small piece-of-shit town,

By a succession of legislative decrees,

Is now to be the ruin of an empire,

only historians know the name of.

2. 

The eastern walls of the government ward,

Where my mother gave birth to me,

Practically unassisted,

Had actually been disembarkation points

For the Mughal rappelers.

3.

I go around the ward every day,

Informing screaming unmedicated mothers,

About the Mughal rappelers.

4.

I assist the young surveyors trying to find the ruins too.

I sell them three bottles of cheap rum,

And massage their backs

As they down the bottles in gulps.

5.

You see,

the old empire is visible only to good alcoholics,

And bad poets,

But definitely not to alcoholic poets (no one keeps the truth from their kind).

6.

On the verge of cirrhosis,

Your mind will clasp the nationalist utopia,

the old empire,

Which if you ask is a marked improvement in stature,

From the cesspool I spent my life in,

Where the only imperial thing that happened around me,

Was watching Shyju punch the shit out of a stray dog for stealing our only leather ball too many times.

Why do I talk of the sacred? Vivekanada was once asked by Paramhansa to ask Kali whatever he wished for. He went inside the temple knowing he would ask her to end his poverty. But standing in her presence, he forgot the world. When he came out, he felt stupid for not having asked her for money. Paramhansa sent him in again. But he forgot, again. And again, and again, and again. This is the perfect time to remember the sacred. A thing that inspires awe stands apart. It stands above us and it is an important time to rediscover the act of looking up.

The sacred makes sacred everything that enters its abode. As an artist, they ask you to trade in your aesthetic for an anesthetic that will keep you asleep for decades. I will not float dead on the Ganga. I will cross the threshold of the sacred, and then let Kali call forth the river of self through me.

Is it easy? The difficulty isn’t because I am alone. I am not alone. The difficulty is in being the only man to know he is not alone. There is so much fear that the small murmuring stream feels coming out of the Himalayas. But how does it matter that it is afraid of losing its path in nameless forests and being lapped up by the burning sun? It wills to be the Ganga, then Ganga it is, and Ganga it will become.

Those who want to know the self aren’t interested in the answer.They are more interested in the certainty the answer would bring. If you want to know the self, you should make friends with paradoxes. To fishermen returning with a catch, Ganga is nourishment. To a cartographer, Ganga is a shifting course, an arcing line. To a flooded village, the arc is of unmitigated suffering. To a historian, Ganga is unsubdued chaos.

In a true democracy, only numbers matter and the smile we talked about has only one customer. By making true equality the only virtue, we sanctify all forms of democracies. A democracy is sacred, regardless of if it is one of cannibals or one of lovers. To a cannibal, a lover is an ascetic. To a country of cannibals, a lover is a threat to be nailed to a cross. Muck in large quantities is still muck.

Doesn’t this muck call forth a self too? There are other rivers in the world, I know. Like the tame Danube, flowing through European valleys silent with the death of God. Danube, as we all know, starts from a water tap in the middle of a field. It’s shores are lined with the pulpits where intellectuals intellectualize pleasures of many kinds. Entire villages of cannibals live in adobe houses on its shores.

Maybe I will have enemies. Maybe I will have students. Maybe I will learn to turn off the tap.

When Kali calls me into being, the strength of the universe will be in my shoulders. If I fell from the Himalayas, as the pure matter of pure will, I will drown every inch of this planet in the ceaseless violence of the galaxies. Shiva himself will have to offer his locks to pacify me.

Ganga, you are not other rivers. You have many friends amongst the dead poets. Your son sleeps on a bed of arrows. An ancestor paints boar hunts in caves to awaken you. Your path is sacred. You make sacred her smile which I love and from that this world I begin to love.

Ranju Mamachan got his Masters in Thermal Science from the National Institute of Technology, Calicut, India. He is an Assistant Professor in the Mechanical Department of Manipal Institute of Technology. He sometimes resurrects dead writers in his class to the amusement of his students. Previously published in

1. Rigorous mag: https://rigorous-mag.com/v4i4/ranju-mamachan.html

2. Cabinet of Heed: https://cabinetofheed.com/2021/11/07/our-finest-moment-ranju-mamachan/

3. Story titled Killing superman published in Chaicopy: https://issuu.com/chaicopy/docs/ripples

Nothing on his blog will ever be behind a paywall. But if you want to support this kind of writing, consider subscribing using this link. You might need a credit-card for the transaction. https://buy.stripe.com/fZe2cb370aVogU09AA

If you are not in a position to help monetarily, you can always help by sharing the joy and recommending the blog to a bookish friend.

I am so afraid of death,

I fear being dead.

2.

In a small coffin,

I am ready to spend an eternity,

quiet and still,

legs bent uncomfortably,

6 feet under the ground.

3.

But I make no promises about my fear of death.

4.

It will wait on my grave,

with bated breath,

like a leaked bio-weapon,

waiting for first contact,

like it sits right now

next to me.

Like I am bad for my body.

Someone in a three-piece suit is always available to

explain to us why the high tonnage of leaking nuclear waste

is actually a good thing for humanity.

Benzodiazepine helps me go to sleep.

So STFU and stick that needle right in my veins.

Sure, there is the UN, also the climate summits,

And yet there are Palestinian kids breathing under collapsed buildings,

And polar bears standing forlornly on ice floes.

I use the same trick when I am shaving.

Use a mirror.

Don’t look in the eyes.

1.

The street, I am talking about, does not show up on Google Maps.

2.

The big highways like big businesses,

Are saved by yearly bailouts,

And greasy wads of bills being slid into pockets.

3.

In contrast, my street is filed in the government records

As “too small to succeed,”

And in a few weeks,

will be cut open

and sold for parts.

4.

It may not have seen gun battles and strafing-runs during the two European wars.

But there are smoking cannons: the Charminar cigarettes

the weeping man chain-lights trying to remember the face of his mother.

5.

The twilight is for the boy and the girl,

Who held hands for the first time

On my gully.

6.

In the 5 AMs, somedays bullhorns blare Tamil songs,

To coax the sun out of sleep,

only the village clown is coaxed,

into the small street,

in the still-dark,

and dances drunk only on Illayaraja.

7.

Evenings belong to a gang of boys,

With a large concrete slab for wickets,

Fighting over the batting order.

8.

The royal motorcades might have all passed over highways,

Flanked on both sides by loyalists waving small flags,

But the gully is the one the king ran into

When fleeing insurrection.

9.

People get speeding tickets along numbered highways,

Driving the pedal of their cars to the floor,

Rushing without a fight towards the wide open mouths of cities,

where they are busy making and handing out trophies.

10.

Only the chosen come to the gully,

and are shown the named road that stretches onto a mud road,

Which then disappears namelessly into real adventure.

Only they hear the haunting silence of the dead ends,

which lulls to sleep whatever is on the other side.

Nothing on his blog will ever be behind a paywall. But if you want to support this kind of writing, consider subscribing using this link. You might need a credit-card for the transaction.

https://buy.stripe.com/fZe2cb370aVogU09AA

If you are not in a position to help monetarily, you can always help by sharing the joy and recommending the blog to a bookish friend.