Dark folks

It’s 2.30 am. I, once again, sit to write something for my dear magazine, about my dear theme and on my dear laptop. I utterly cherish these dear trios as they come as a rarity, especially in the lives of people like me whose default mindset is some form of mental instability. Anyway, today I’m going to be a bit cryptic and travel another ‘less explored’ road as usual.

What is dark, darkness or black? For a scientific brain, it’s the subtraction of all colours. For a small kid, it’s the quintessential reason of fear. For a common man, it is something to be kept away from. But for some people, it is a way of life!

Normally, there are two types of people - those who are scared of darkness and those who can fight it. But what if there exist some who love it? There are people who have completely outgrown the stage of being scared of the darkness or even the stage of bothering to have the courage to keep themselves away from it. They share a friendly relationship with darkness. A normal man would like to keep away from any sort of darkness (now, you need not take the meaning literally) and live happily; but what about those who have outgrown the whole idea of happiness itself? Cynicism, criticism, pessimism are all causes as well as the effects of what I mean by the word ‘dark’. Everyone has them in some amount. But what if there are people whose emotions are purely based on these characteristics? What about the fate of the people who will have nothing left if these characteristics are taken out? Well, life comes rather cruelly at them.

These people are so tired of the unfruitful search for happiness that they start getting frightened of happiness itself. They are habitual to melancholy. Luminance comes so rarely to them that they get habitual to the dark. They dream at night, they imagine at night and they live at night. Their dreams, too, exude relentless negativity, restless fears and a sarcastic approach toward the way other people analyze things. They love the sunset way more than the sunrise. They love the moon (which signifies lunacy) more than the sun (which signifies strength and hope). They love the ‘bad’ more than the ‘good’. They simply love everything about the night and they, genuinely, hate everything about the day.

These ‘dark folks’, as I would love to call them, are generally in disguise. You would never know if a few of them are around you. Someday, you might as well catch a glimpse of such a person in the mirror. You never know! Many of the dark folks, themselves, don’t know when they surrender themselves to the world of darkness and become a part of a group, which no school text book will ever advise you to involve yourself in. Many of them simply walk around with their thoughts in the seemingly infinite territory of darkness. Some of them gradually start expressing themselves. A few of them start writing and share a word with those, whom they consider fortunate enough not to be along with them in the dark walks. Even fewer of them start a blogazine. ‘Normal’ people visit the site and kindly lend them a pair of beautiful eyes. Probably, just as you did today.



(Note: ‘Dark’ or ‘darkness’ holds a quaint significance in my life. It has always thrilled me with a remarkable consistency for various reasons. Actually speaking, it’s one of the fundamental reasons of my writing. Please excuse me if I could not do justice to the theme.)



- Mihir Chitre
mihirmumbaikar@gmail.com

maggie and milly and molly and might

maggie and milly and molly and might
went down to the cemetery (on a dare one night)

and maggie discovered the bell that rang
so glumly she had been scared for days, and

milly in peace found her mother sleeping
who she was told was in god’s keeping;

and molly was chased by a horrible dog
which raced sideways while blowing out fog

might came home with a white wispy clone
as small as a world and as large as alone.

For whatever we lose (like a ’gale or a lark)
it's always ourselves we find in the dark

[Based on the poem ‘maggie and milly and molly and may’ by e.e. cummings]



- Siddhesh Inamdar
siddhesh.inamdar@gmail.com

Demonic Darkness

It was rush hour on a Friday evening at the exquisite Concorde square. The traffic was barely moving. I could sense the irritation among my co-passengers. “Que faire?!” they shrugged to each other, shaking their heads huffily. It became a ritual for me to look at my watch every few seconds and wriggle my wrist restlessly.

“Damn, I’m going to miss her call” I scoffed to myself.

Music was pulsating in my ears. The buzz inside and on the sidewalks interspersed with music playing on the radio along with honking horns made for a rather noisy melody but there was no escaping it. On second thoughts, Silence would be frightening too.
“Excuse-me can you please lower the volume Robert?” I asked the driver with a smile.
“Sure...” he said with a questioning look on his face. “Peter” I offered. We shook hands. I’d been traveling in this bus for a week now. Finally we’d been acquainted. It felt nice.

I looked outside my window, to see the bunch of laughing fair heads walked past our bus. Eager tourists were busy clicking away while some couples strolled around. It struck me how private each of our lives is. We all occupy such different worlds and yet, here we are, put together in a mash. This feeling of alienation from the world around me had never clouted me in my country. It just pinched me hard, ironically in a place as beautiful as Paris. Probably I’m growing old, I joked to myself.

I looked at the empty seat next to me and quickly turned my face back to the window. This time I saw a vision. I saw myself walking hand-in-hand with her, discovering the beautiful promenades and street corners. Paris would have such a romantic meaning then. I saw myself buying flowers for her and her beautiful face lit with happiness. On impulse, her soft curls tickled by ears. I chuckled with warmth.

The traffic had begun to recede and steadily the bus began to move smoothly. I sighed, returning to her thoughts again. I never quite understood the mystery about her. I did not fall in love with her instantly. It was so gradual that I feared it would go away. But it didn’t. I found her vile at first and gentle the next and there were more and more layers to be unearthed every time we met. “My Mona Lisa” I’d tease her.

The bus was beginning to empty out with every stop and it was getting cold. I shivered with every gust of wind that hit me when the doors opened to let the passengers out. I decided to move my seat closer to the driver’s seat. It would be warmer there, I said to myself.
I got up to move towards the front seat when the bus jostled for balance. There were violent shrieks coming from outside. The driver had lost complete control. Before I could check myself, it rammed into a huge tree. The music had stopped.

Few minutes later, I opened my eyes to find blood splattered around me. My limbs were numb with pain and cold. A medical team was carrying me away on a stretcher. What was happening? What time was it? My watch was in pieces.

I noticed my glasses were crushed too. But my vision was unnaturally hazy. It was getting weaker and weaker every few seconds. It must be because of no glasses, I told myself. As I entered the ambulance, there was a black out. It felt like a dissolve, a slow fade out in a movie. “Switch on the lights” I screamed. “It’s cold and I need to find my glasses”. There was only darkness. “Someone switch on the lights, for god’s sake” I yelled helplessly again but only got hushed reassurances in return. I rubbed my eyes. Again and again and again! Then the tears flowed, sourly. The pain had been wiped out. In an alien country without help, or security, or sight I felt numb. “How long will the night be?” I asked in desperation. There was no answer. Perhaps, they did not understand my language.


- Janvi Gandhi
janvi.87@gmail.com