Earthworms and Masks: Arcadian Driftwood

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Geetanjali Shree

THE time was my childhood. Till recently it did not feel so very long ago, but, suddenly now, it does. Not because I have come a long way but because I feel I might be at the other end of the spectrum, near the end!

In that childhood would come a rare sound, a whirring, in the skies, in those days quite blue still. We would rush outdoors and look up. A machine with wings, flying far far above, flying far far away. To lands remote. To lands longed for. To lands never to be reached.

Hawaijahaz hawaijahaz, we children would shout.

It was no whirring. It was the stirring of our dreams and longings.

Today. A whirr in the skies. The whirring as rare as in my childhood. The skies as blue. I don’t rush out but trudge with some weariness to the window, or to the balcony, my access to the outside during this lockdown. I look up, a wee bit sadly, longing somewhat still, but dreams feeling a bit quashed. It is the same machine with wings, flying far far above, flying far far away, to places which had all come within my grasp, but, may have gone out of my reach forever and ever.

There was magic when the horizon was far. Possibilities were the stuff of dreams. But man was fast and capable and confident and driven. He forged ahead. Became too fast, overconfident, ruthlessly ambitious.

The collateral effects suited my pleasure. I got on to planes and crossed the horizon. I wandered in unknown lands. Dreams became reality.

Everything became possible. Everything opened up. Everything lay under me. The trees of my childhood which gave shade to my house were now trees over which my apartment in a multi-storey block, towered. 

Them the dwarfs now.

Man, the master of all and friend to none. 

In the market. In global competition. In barrier-crossing. In the country, in the countryside, in the centre, at the margins, in the skies and the waters and ready to be so in Space too.

We shook up everything and felt good about it. I did too as a collateral beneficiary of this glittery, overhyped, overactive world. Ever increasing our pace.

But shaking up everything meant Everything moved.

That Everything was alive. We were not making an inanimate world move. We were shaking up the Animate. Earth. Air. Water. Planets. Mountains. Worms.

Warnings came. Everything is shaking and us too with it and it will speed up. Speed thrills but also kills. 

But we believed in our immortality. 

It struck. The virus.

In a flood a scorpion climbed up a swimmer’s shoulder and was being safely ferried across. Midway it stung its saviour, the very being saving it. But the scorpion was innocent. Stinging was its Dharma.

So too the virus. It is merely fulfilling its Dharma to leap borders and infect bodies.

Innocent.

But man? His Dharma? 

A question.

The question.

And what of me? For I am, willy nilly part of that erring man. A collateral beneficiary of his lack of self-control and love for speed and have spun out of control myself.

Now, how and how much to slow down after getting addicted to speed? After flying galore, rending apart the atmosphere, how and how much, to fold up my wings?

We were hypnotised by our inventions. Our machines. Thrilled with the virtual world we are ever expanding.

But something has gone amiss. The world had to run at our behest. We planned on gagging others, not ourselves; and that too gagged by a virus.

So are we the aliens and robots we thought we will make of you and control? Hey you, in front of me, behind that mask and in that three piece protective suit, are you human? Am I? No seeing each other smile. No hug, kiss, touch, love. 

Move over humans, for the aliens and the Robots are upon us and are we them!

I wish to escape even if you can’t.

There was this earthworm which raised its head from the mud and stared at the disaster all around. He saw another earthworm doing the same. And said to the other in tones selfish and arrogant like humans – you may stay stuck here, I am leaving for happier pastures.

At which the second earthworm, more reminiscent of the fewer humbler humans remaining, replied – idiot, we are linked, I am your other end! Where I stay there do you, where you go there go I. But where is there to go?

Here, he said, as if resolving anything, take this mask.

So – no place to go and anyway planes are not flying and when they do it is not safe and us a bunch of earthworms, some heads, some tails, all in the same mess of overkill and overreach. In masks.

Gandhi was not such a madman after all!

****** 

 

Geetanjali Shree has written five novels – Mai, Hamara Sheher Us Baras, Tirohit, Khali Jagah and Ret Samadhi – and five anthologies of short stories in Hindi. She has also written Between Two Worlds: An Intellectual Biography of Premchand in English. Her stories and novels have been translated into French, German, English ,Urdu, Polish, Serbian and Japanese as well as in other Indian languages.  She has received various awards for her contribution to Hindi literature and has been invited for many reading tours and residencies in countries such as the UK, France, Switzerland, Germany, Japan, Iceland, Korea, and of course in India. The English translation of Mai won the Sahitya Academy Award. Shree ‘s sixth novel titled Sah-sa is due shortly. Apart from her fiction in Hindi, her choice of language for literary expression, Shree also writes scripts for theatre, mainly with the group Vivadi, which is based in Delhi and of which she is a founding member. Her own writings too have been adapted for the stage by distinguished directors at the NSD. She writes essays in English and Hindi for various publications. She lives in New Delhi, India

Geetanjali Shree in The Beacon
Excerpt from Tomb of Sand/Ret Samadhi: Geetanjali Shree