A Piece

I stepped out from the bright lights of the metro station, into the deep, dark shade of the pavement. Fighting through the hordes of rickshaw-waalas offering to take me anywhere within a 2 km radius, I started walking home. The leaves had begun to come down in large numbers and as they crunched underneath my boots, I looked up to look at the pitiful orange sky peeking through the bare branches of the trees.

There were surprisingly few people on the streets that night. The Old Man in the Beret seemed to have skipped his evening walk. The two Kheera-Waalas sat behind their carts, sharing a cup of tea by the light of their customer-free stalls. Even the pan stall was empty that night, something that so rarely, if ever, happened. I needed a new lighter, but I didn't feel like stopping. It was one of those nights when my feet just kept going. I kept walking.

I tucked my hands into the pockets of my jacket and picked up a pace for no reason but the chill that had started to bite me a little. I breathed a little harder and my breath condensed in the cold night air. 

At the end of the street, I turned into my lane and I instantly saw a belt of smoke rising up in the distance. 'Some bastards are having themselves a bonfire', I thought, at first, but as I got closer, I realized that this huge swath of smoke couldn't be coming from even a large bonfire. This was someone's house going up.

'That poor bastard', I thought, and I crossed to the other side of the road and kept walking. It had been too good of a day and I wasn't going to bother myself with some other idiot's sorrow.  My heels had begun to ache from being on my feet all day, and I couldn't wait to get home and soak them in a  bath nearly hot enough to scald my skin. 

So I dug my hands deeper into my pockets, kept my eyes on my feet and I kept walking. The air had started to smell like acrid smoke, and the sounds of the crowd got louder and louder till I realized they were coming from the house above which Leo lived.

I stopped completely short for a second. A strange horror came over me, the eyes widened and I had to remind myself to keep breathing. Suddenly, the fire engine/ambulance sirens that had been mere background noise a few minutes ago became a loud, raucous screams. But I kept walking.

As the sounds drew nearer, I broke out into a run till I was at the outskirts of the huge crowd that had gathered outside the house. I pushed my way through all the neighbours and jumped over the fence to see Leo sitting on the lawn, knees up, face in his hands. I ran to him and put my arms around him, but he just wordlessly curled deeper into a ball. I didn't know what to do. I wanted to comfort him and say soothing things, but something told me it was wiser to walk away.

I unwrapped myself from around him and walked to the edge of the lawns.  The firemen were putting out the destroyed wreckage of the house, as Leo's landlord watched with blank eyes. I turned to him.

"What happened?" I asked.
"Heater short circuit" he said.
"I'm so sorry" I said.
"It's fine. I was insured."
"Not for the memories."

A tear rolled down his cheek and I mentally kicked myself.

"No. Not for the memories."

"You know, your friend wasn't insured for anything" he said.
"I don't think that's what's going to hurt him, though." I said.

"He's sitting there, crying about his shirts." The Landlord said.
"His... shirts?" I was baffled.
"You know those concert shirts he's always wearing. He had dozens, from dozens of concerts, he says, when anyone asked him. It's just shirts. Jai shri krishna. These kids."



"It's not the shirts, uncle. His whole life was in that room. All his music, his guitars, his journals. Everything was there. And maybe the idea that he's lost everything, all his family photos, the books his father bought him, the memories.... maybe that's too much right now. For some reason crying about the shirts is easier than crying about the utter destruction of so many things of sentimental value. Who actually thinks their house is going to burn down? Did you? Try to imagine yourself dealing with the fact that the things you once cared about so much were nothing more than ash. A life's work is wasted. So maybe Leo is crying about his shirts. But maybe Leo is actually crying over being completely, utterly lost. Shirts might be the easiest thing to admit to, instead of pure devastation."

I could have gone on with my rant, but at that moment, Leo looked back at me, with a glassy stare that made me feel like he was looking right through me. I walked over to him, crouched down and put my arms around him again.



He put his head on my shoulder, and I put my hand over it. I ran my fingers around his head, through his hair. His breathe was warm and short on my neck. I stroked his back, and he looked up.

"I can't believe it, Trillian."
"So don't. Just close your eyes right now."
"No. I need to find a place to stay."
"No, you don't. Come on. Let's go home."

He looked at me for a whole moment, at the end of which we got up, still wrapped up in each other, turned around and started for my flat. The Landlord looked at us with his blank eyes, but we kept walking.

I didn't know what I was going to do. I didn't know how my tiny 9' by 9' room was going to fit the both of us. I didn't know what this meant for us, or how the sleeping arrangements would work. I didn't know what I was going to tell my own landlord.

All I knew was that for the first time, someone needed me. For the first time, someone needed my help and support. For the first time, I had to take care of someone and I was damned if I wasn't going to do it.

So we kept walking. 

Eight Miles High

Acid is a strange drug. Everything you've heard about acid is absolutely true, and it's true because everyone trips in their own way. Acid lowers the perceptual filters of your brain, but it lowers different ones to different levels for different people. 

The first time I tripped was almost unknowingly. I was at a friend's house and the five of us had been talking about dropping some acid. Unbeknownst to me, JD had put a couple of drops in my drink. It sounds very rape-y when I write it down, but he'd tripped before, and he thought it would be more interesting for me if I didn't expect it. 

For what I judge would have been about a half hour or so, nothing happened. We sat around, listened to some new music that one of my friends had recorded, and talked about it. Soon, I started to feel a slight body high, like being slightly tipsy or having like the slight buzz from the first two tokes of a joint. I was drinking just plain coke that night, and smoking classics, so I thought it was a little weird. I told my friends as much, and JD said 'ust you wait. You're going to love it.' and I realized what he'd done. JD had taking a dose before me, and Candy, Slash and ANM took a dose each soon after. We decided we wanted to go to the park, so we got up and left.

On the way to the park, it was beginning to hit me. The first thing I noticed was that my shoelaces were moving on their own. I nudged Slash, and pointed as my shoes and he looked at me weirdly. By that time, the shoelaces were changing color too. I nudged Slash again, and he laughed. 'It's started', he said. 

'Oh, holy shit', I remember thinking to myself, 'This is really happening'.

We got to the park soon and sat down, facing the pond. Candy had a guitar, and he was idly strumming it. No chords, nothing, just running his fingers up and down the strings. He wasn't tripping yet, that was obvious, but he wasn't all there. 

I was just sitting there, watching the water. Some of the ripples would rise up to about four feet high, and suddenly disappear. The water would split into two, and take on different colours. It would swirl like a whirlpool and suddenly stop. I took my shoes and socks off and decided to put my feet in the water, ignoring the fact that it wasn't the cleanest of ponds.

I dipped a toe in and suddenly, the water bit me. I backed away and crouched on the floor for a while. Slowly, I calmed down; the wind was in my hair, and I felt hands caressing my cheeks. I got up and started walking around. The grass felt wonderful between my toes. I felt ticklish, but in a good way. I stood where the grass was highest, where it was reaching my ankles, and I dug my toes into the sand. I started feeling like I was going to dissolve into the earth, but in a good way. Slash came and stood next to me. I said 'I can feel the grass, Slash. Can you?'. He said 'I don't know. Listen to the wind'. So I listened to the wind. That was the most unreal part. It sounded like music. I couldn't put a finger on it then, but now, when I think about it, it was like a very slow, Chopin waltz. Something in C sharp. 

'The wind is beautiful,' I said, and I said it again, and again and again for the next half an hour or so. We talked about the beauty of nature and how we wanted to be a part of the grass, and dive into the earth and live in a garden under the surface and love the soil and the plants and the animals and how we'd ride fish and sing with the deer and have a family of rabbits. That's almost exactly how our thoughts went, from one topic to another, not really needing a connection, just letting out imaginations run wild. 

Slash took out a cigarette and it looked bigger than his head. The word 'Classic' around the filter looks huge, and then, tiny and then, all different shapes. When he lit it, the smoke started forming letters in the air. They didn't form any words, it was just a Y here and a J there are a B in the middle and so on.

JD was starting to come down, so he suggested we go back to the house. So we started walking back; I was still barefoot. We walked on the pavement, and I could feel the rocks under my feet and I thought I was going to die. I cried and I cried and I told my friends to leave me and carry on, to save themselves.

JD picked me up and carried me piggyback the rest of the way. I felt like I was flying. For a second there, I thought I actually could fly, and I let go of JD. He caught me just in time, or I would have fallen on to the road.

We got to JD's house, and we got in the elevator. Someone pressed five, which was the number floor JD lived on. The little screen on top of the board showed a red 5, and it grew till it was as big as my hand, and it caught flames and soon, the whole ceiling of the elevator was aflame and we were all screaming, even JD, and my arms were around ANM and I could feel her fingernails digging into my skin and Candy was crying and suddenly, the elevator door opened and we tumbled out. We couldn't have been in that elevator for more than about 40 seconds, but it felt like an hour. 

Anyway, we made our way into JD's house, and sat down in his room, and turned on the tv. Guns n Roses was on VH1. Patience was playing, and the lyrics were all skewed. Axl was talking to ANM, and she was talking back. For a moment, he looked right into my eyes. I didn't know how to feel. 

So I just sat there, and watched Axl sing to ANM. After about two more songs, things started to look a little more real. The comedown was like any other comedown - slightly disappointing. But unlike any other comedown, it was also slightly relieving.

Acid makes your mind do push-ups, and mine had been doing one handed ones with a 50 pound weight on my back. 

I dropped acid a few more times after that, each time stranger than the next. Why did I stop? Life moved on. I wasn't going to sit back in an LSD haze and watch it go by. About a year later, I dropped acid again, with a different friend. It was different, strange in a strange way. Would I take acid again? Now that I have so many hallucinations I'm always trying to prove to myself are fake, I don't really feel the need for more. Would I suggest you take it? Absolutely. Acid is a strange drug, and what is life without strangeness?

I'm With You In Rockland

Blue put down his old, battered guitar down next to the amp, as Leo started unplugging the many wires.
I sat, cross-legged, on the table in their tiny room.

"So what did you think?" Blue asked.
"I'm not sure. It felt like confusion. Was it confusion?" I mused aloud.
"Almost exactly" said Leo, as he grinned his almost sheepish grin.

"Anyway, I'm going to play football. You coming, Leo?" Blue said.

"Nah." Leo shook his head. "I don't really feel like it." He turned to me, as Blue closed the door behind himself.
"You gonna stay?"
"I could"
"Good." And he smiled again.

His smiles made the colour come into my cheeks.. Although they probably weren't, I felt like they were somehow meant specially for me. I watched his nose crinkle slightly and his eyes both squint and light up and I had to stop myself from fluttering my eyelashes. There was just something about this boy.

Maybe it was the slightly curly hair falling down on his forehead. Maybe it was the way he didn’t really enter the conversation, not in a socially awkward way, but in a way that suggested he was content merely to observe. Maybe it was just that damn smile.

"You okay?" he asked.

I snapped out of my reverie and shook my head a little. 

"Yeah, of course." I hopped off the table and went over to the two mattresses that served as his bed.


He was rummaging in his cupboard, I suspected for a jacket, because he was shivering.


I sat down and started looking through the pile of books beside it; most of them looked old and battered, and a few new, and well, battered. He seemed to be on a Beat kick. The Subterraneans sat atop Dharma Bums and Naked Lunch. Fear and Loathing was lying open and face up. "This is bat country!" the first line on the page screamed.

Leo came and sat down beside me, sans jacket. He had a small pouch in his hand, which he dropped down next to him, and took out a small bag of pot and some papers.

He looked at the book in my hands; "Have you read that?"
"More than a few times."
"I'm only just getting into it. You'll laugh, but I've only just gotten into the Beat Generation."
"Hey, each to his own" a smiled. "So what were you into before this?"
"This and that. Last book I read was If On a Winter's Night a Traveler. Have you read that one?"
"No, but I plan to. Do you have a copy?"
"Somewhere here."

He finished rolling the joint in his hands, handed it to me and held out his lighter.

"Thanks" I said, putting the thin joint in my mouth and leaning forward to light it.

I took a deep drag and closed my eyes as I exhaled. The silence was immense.

When I opened then, he was taking off his belt. I must have looked a little puzzled, because he smiled his sheepish smile again.

He pulled up his sleeve and looped his belt around it, holding it taut with his teeth. I'd figured out what was going on; Blue had told me he was a junk user, but I'd never really seen him do it. I didn't want to seem like an idiot and stare, but it was almost as if I couldn't tear my eyes away.

I took another toke.

Out of the corner of my eye, I observed him slapping the inside of his elbow, I assume to expose the vein.
He picked up his syringe, already loaded, and stuck it in. I winced a little; just watching made me nervous. As he drained the contents of the needle into his arm, he let out the breath that I just realized he'd been holding.

As he started to sit up, I grabbed the nearest book and opened it up to the first page. I blew softly on the end of my joint and took another drag.

"What have you got, there?"
I found the title. "Howl and Other Poems." I said.

"I've been meaning to start that. Everyone always talks about Howl and I've never read it."
"Really? I can't wait till you do. It's an amazing poem."

He looked at me and smiled again.

"Read it to me."

"I... what?"

"Read it. Out loud."

"Um... okay. I guess."

I opened the book to Howl and looked up.
I knew the first few lines.

"I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by

madness, starving hysterical naked,

dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn-"

"-looking for an angry fix."

"I thought you hadn't read it!"

"I lied!" he giggled, his eyes wide with delight.

He lunged forward and grabbed my joint out of my mouth. Inhaling deeply, he said "Read it."

"angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly

connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,

who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat

up smoking in the supernatural darkness of

cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities

contemplating jazz" I read. I was beginning to enjoy this. It sounds stupid, but I love reading aloud.

He grabbed the book from my hands and read.

"who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and 

saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tenement roofs illuminated, 

who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes 

hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy 

among... the scholars... of war"

I took another drag off the joint.

"who were expelled from the academies for crazy & 
publishing obscene odes on the windows of the skull,
who cowered in unshaven rooms in underwear, 
burning their money in wastebaskets and listening 
to the Terror through the-

And he kissed me.

The Sun is Up, The Sky is Blue

If it's true what they say about life - how it's a journey, a path, a road - I'm sort of lost.
I'm somewhere in the by-lanes of a town far away from anywhere I've ever been and I have a road map and I know where I am, but I'm still sort of lost.

I have my green lighter and 24 rupee pack of my favourite cheap smokes. I'm not even alone; I have a lot of new, exciting people surrounding me, and some from my old path.

The Boyfriend isn't here. Well, he isn't The Boyfriend any more. One could say that might be why I'm in this new town, but the truth is, this town is just too far from the town he's now in.

Edge is here. He's right here with me, in the passenger seat of the strange chariot that I use to traverse these streets, helping me navigate, sometimes even taking the wheel. I ride in his chariot sometimes, because though our paths aren't the same, they often cross.

There's quite a few new people, though. Prudence's throaty, jazz-y voice is a mirror for her low, relaxed demeanor. She has a few shrill tones too, as we all do. I've known her for a little over two months, but every day, I find something interesting about her, something congruent with my own thoughts and opinions or just something new and fascinating.

Then, there's Red. He's new too. I think this several times a day, and I feel silly each time, but he's like The Boyfriend except better in every way. He's a fantastic writer. He's very well-read. He's constantly witty, and even when he's playfully ribbing me, it doesn't feel cold and petty like it does with The Boyfriend. And he has none of TB's bad qualities. In fact, he's the exact opposite in so many ways. He drives his chariot right next to mine, because our paths are almost parallel. He knows how to ever so subtly guide me, though, and support me when I skid. He knows just the right things to say. He's in love though, so that angle doesn't really enter into it. A lovely girl, she is too, and she makes him so very happy.

Then, there's Violet. I see myself in Violet in so many ways, and in so many others, I wish I was more like her. She and I have found each other so weirdly, so suddenly, but so very rightly. I guess she's filling a void in me that was previously occupied in parts by The Boyfriend (I should start called him The Ex now, I suppose), by Esh Dec In, and a little by A. Violet's the first person I've opened up to in a long time. We talk about feelings. I haven't talked about feelings in so long. She's the first person in a long time that I've felt comfortable sharing the bipolar and my episodes and fears and all with. It's almost as if she's riding in the back seat of my chariot. Sometimes, I guide her along. Sometimes, she supports me.

I cried in front of Violet. More than once, about more than one issue. I haven't cried in front of anyone but The Ex (X?) for almost three years. It's strange, but not unbearably so.

Esh Dec says she looks up to me. I hardly think so. She's such a free spirit, but like me, she's a little lost as well. She's an adventurer, though, so she'd find her way without me too.

Truth be told, it's quite comfortable, this town. It's new, but it's exciting. It has a transcendent quality to it, like it's just passing by (or rather, that I'm just passing by it), but I have a feeling it leads to something amazing. I quite like it here, but simultaneously, I can't wait to see what comes next. There's a lot I miss about the old path, but there's still a lot I can't wait to leave behind.

Here's hoping.