She had never seen so many people together in one place since her childhood days when her Dad used to take her to 'Mela's' (Carnivals). She still remembered distinctly, the gigantic rides and coasters that she was always afraid of. She wasn't even fond of the comparatively smaller rides like the merry-go-rounds. She'd take them because the kids of the Verma's, and the Gandhi's, and the Chugh's, and the Makkar's always loved them; and she couldn't digest standing aside quivering alone while the others made the better of them, even as a kid. She loved the shops that sold ice-creams and candies that could only have been produced in dreamlands far far yonder, but she hated the fact that she couldn't have all of them at once so she'd ask for none. She remembered the enormous tents where wizards and magicians performed things that confounded her, like making money out of a garbage box, producing a bunch of flowers out of thin air and spilling water from a jug that never seemed to run out of it even without refilling. The tight-rope dancers, the heavily made up bozos and jesters, food from every corner of India and the world (at least every corner she knew then) and the cacophony of incalculable colors and people mystified her beyond description. She remembered vividly all the animals in the cages, roaring, pant-hooting and growling. The chimpanzees beat the floors and ceilings of their metal cages ferociously, and people teased them or enjoyed them squeal from a distance. Many threw peanuts and popcorn at the lions and tigers from a distance and laughed as they roared probably in disapproval. She also wasn't fond of the caged animals. They made her sad and uncomfortable for reasons that her puerile mind couldn't understand then. She wasn't too attracted to any of the individual segments per se, but she loved to hold her father's firm yet soft hand and gaze at everything like it was the last time she would get to look at it.
The place she found herself in right now was hauntingly similar in feeling to what she felt going to the carnivals when she was a child. There were multitudes of people crossing her every second, sometimes individually and sometimes in swarms, people of all races and ages. She was on a sidewalk; to her right were huge stores with items at display beyond a glass wall and to her left was at least a 200 ft. wide road, across which were equally huge stores alongside which ran a similar sidewalk full of similar people. The time would have been sometime around the dusk, because the LED's on billboards and the giant screens above had just started to show their true colors. But the sky was still blue and bright of sorts, coz the white cotton-ball clouds were still very much visible. She looked ahead as she walked in a state of semi-aware delirium, Tool's 'Schism' faintly playing in the background in one of the stores probably, and saw 'Virgin' written on a huge billboard on the beautiful modern building in the middle of the road, and the road diverged into two roads from that point ahead.
"Hey!! Poouuurrrr!! Lookie here!" came a voice from somewhere. It was her father's. She turned around and saw him walking candidly through all the traffic towards her from across the road.
"Papa!" she exclaimed and started to cross the road towards him.
The traffic on the roads started to diminish mysteriously, just like the crowd. But she couldn't care less. She had found her purpose in all of the choas, even if it was horridly ephemeral.
He started to smile at her as he was joined by a myriad of familiar faces, friends, relatives, loved ones, some even lost and forgotten. They all smiled at her as they took the road to themselves, and she smiled back at them.
"Upar dekho", "Look", "In the sky! Look to the sky!" they started to shout.
She lifted her gaze slowly, and saw confetti and frills flying halfway in the air. Fliers of bright colors came falling down and thousands of balloons went up into the sky from absolutely nowhere. March music filled the air as everything else fell joyously silent. She was overjoyed and started to interview her inner self as to what she had done to deserve so. There were trails of meaningless colorful exhaust near the clouds that suddenly started to make sense; it was shaped like the letters of her name.
Amidst this implausible and utopic euphoria, anxiety silently came and took the empty middle seat in her brain and started to buzz like a drone feebly. She intended to ignore it, as always, even as it grew louder, as always, and hoped that it will disappear as it did always. But this time, it grew louder than it usually did, and everything else fell eerily silent. The smiles on the faces disappeared, and a discomfited look took its place. She was savoring the fact that all their eyes were fixed on her, but now she wished that they'd just look away.
She turned to her right and looked up in the sky, and there she saw it! Right in front of her eyes, at some distance but constantly growing closer, was a colossal battle aircraft. It was bigger and deadlier and more lustrous than any jet that she had ever seen on the television. It looked more like a flying submarine than a jet, and it had two pairs of wings which were hardly 1/5th the size of what its wings should have been.
As it grew closer, the noise grew louder. When it had reached exactly above the buildings opposite to her, the noise had become so uncomfortably loud that it broke all the glass doors and walls of all the stores. Pieces of glass blew out of the stores and flew in the air like arrows in an ancient battle field. The ground trembled, and the tremors seeped through the soles of her shoes and inside her veins and shook every cell in her body.
An automatic door below the plane opened and dropped a missile onto the crossroads of the street behind the one she stood at. She saw the bomb drop, and everything fell completely silent again. She didn't move an inch though she wanted to run. She saw monstrous orange flames emerge out of the point where the bomb fell. Time had switched into slow motion, so she could savor the tiniest details of this horror that ensued in front of her.
The flames started to propogate in all directions from that point and melted everything in their way into themselves. Everyone stood still in their spots, looking grim and dissatisfied, and their faces contorted like they were hollering curses at her. She saw the flames coming towards them as they kept their backs to it.
"RUN!!!! THEY'RE COMING FOR US ALL!!!" she shouted as loud as she could, but only a whimper managed to escape her oral cavity.
She watched the fire flood the street and devour everything in her sight. It sucked each one of these people into itself. She didn't run, and she didn't know why. It was coming for her now. She expected her heart to explode just about then, but on the contrary, a calm swept her over. She felt a rain of tranquility drench her and soothe her nerves. She looked around her one last time and said to herself, "This is not it. This is Times Square. I know it. What the fuck am I doing here?"
The flood of fire was ten feet away, and she could already feel the heat burning her skin, but she was calmer than ever.
"This is a dream. I know it. This can't kill me," she told herself as the fire grew closer.
When the flames came so close that they were only a couple of inches away from her nose, she uttered, "Deflect," and the flames deflected away from her and drained away sooner than they came.
The place she found herself in right now was hauntingly similar in feeling to what she felt going to the carnivals when she was a child. There were multitudes of people crossing her every second, sometimes individually and sometimes in swarms, people of all races and ages. She was on a sidewalk; to her right were huge stores with items at display beyond a glass wall and to her left was at least a 200 ft. wide road, across which were equally huge stores alongside which ran a similar sidewalk full of similar people. The time would have been sometime around the dusk, because the LED's on billboards and the giant screens above had just started to show their true colors. But the sky was still blue and bright of sorts, coz the white cotton-ball clouds were still very much visible. She looked ahead as she walked in a state of semi-aware delirium, Tool's 'Schism' faintly playing in the background in one of the stores probably, and saw 'Virgin' written on a huge billboard on the beautiful modern building in the middle of the road, and the road diverged into two roads from that point ahead.
"Hey!! Poouuurrrr!! Lookie here!" came a voice from somewhere. It was her father's. She turned around and saw him walking candidly through all the traffic towards her from across the road.
"Papa!" she exclaimed and started to cross the road towards him.
The traffic on the roads started to diminish mysteriously, just like the crowd. But she couldn't care less. She had found her purpose in all of the choas, even if it was horridly ephemeral.
He started to smile at her as he was joined by a myriad of familiar faces, friends, relatives, loved ones, some even lost and forgotten. They all smiled at her as they took the road to themselves, and she smiled back at them.
"Upar dekho", "Look", "In the sky! Look to the sky!" they started to shout.
She lifted her gaze slowly, and saw confetti and frills flying halfway in the air. Fliers of bright colors came falling down and thousands of balloons went up into the sky from absolutely nowhere. March music filled the air as everything else fell joyously silent. She was overjoyed and started to interview her inner self as to what she had done to deserve so. There were trails of meaningless colorful exhaust near the clouds that suddenly started to make sense; it was shaped like the letters of her name.
Amidst this implausible and utopic euphoria, anxiety silently came and took the empty middle seat in her brain and started to buzz like a drone feebly. She intended to ignore it, as always, even as it grew louder, as always, and hoped that it will disappear as it did always. But this time, it grew louder than it usually did, and everything else fell eerily silent. The smiles on the faces disappeared, and a discomfited look took its place. She was savoring the fact that all their eyes were fixed on her, but now she wished that they'd just look away.
She turned to her right and looked up in the sky, and there she saw it! Right in front of her eyes, at some distance but constantly growing closer, was a colossal battle aircraft. It was bigger and deadlier and more lustrous than any jet that she had ever seen on the television. It looked more like a flying submarine than a jet, and it had two pairs of wings which were hardly 1/5th the size of what its wings should have been.
As it grew closer, the noise grew louder. When it had reached exactly above the buildings opposite to her, the noise had become so uncomfortably loud that it broke all the glass doors and walls of all the stores. Pieces of glass blew out of the stores and flew in the air like arrows in an ancient battle field. The ground trembled, and the tremors seeped through the soles of her shoes and inside her veins and shook every cell in her body.
An automatic door below the plane opened and dropped a missile onto the crossroads of the street behind the one she stood at. She saw the bomb drop, and everything fell completely silent again. She didn't move an inch though she wanted to run. She saw monstrous orange flames emerge out of the point where the bomb fell. Time had switched into slow motion, so she could savor the tiniest details of this horror that ensued in front of her.
The flames started to propogate in all directions from that point and melted everything in their way into themselves. Everyone stood still in their spots, looking grim and dissatisfied, and their faces contorted like they were hollering curses at her. She saw the flames coming towards them as they kept their backs to it.
"RUN!!!! THEY'RE COMING FOR US ALL!!!" she shouted as loud as she could, but only a whimper managed to escape her oral cavity.
She watched the fire flood the street and devour everything in her sight. It sucked each one of these people into itself. She didn't run, and she didn't know why. It was coming for her now. She expected her heart to explode just about then, but on the contrary, a calm swept her over. She felt a rain of tranquility drench her and soothe her nerves. She looked around her one last time and said to herself, "This is not it. This is Times Square. I know it. What the fuck am I doing here?"
The flood of fire was ten feet away, and she could already feel the heat burning her skin, but she was calmer than ever.
"This is a dream. I know it. This can't kill me," she told herself as the fire grew closer.
When the flames came so close that they were only a couple of inches away from her nose, she uttered, "Deflect," and the flames deflected away from her and drained away sooner than they came.
She was back in the busy sidewalk, just where she had started. Her lips curled into a quirky smile and she got lost into the anonimity of the crowd.
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