Apocalypse

It was 11:30 PM last week when I just reached home driving through this bustling city lit with the halogen lights. I opened the car door when my mobile beeped. An sms from her - "Come over my place, let's spend some moments." A slightly tired me turned my car and drove an hour through the road to knock her door.

She welcomed me with drowsy eyes and her trademark charming smile. Stepping inside I closed the door behind.

The drawing room was lit with three amber colored lamps each fitted on three walls; a bottle of Grey Goose, a bottle of Glenlivet and two big glasses were neatly stationed on the center table. The classic thumri "Yaad piya ki aaye..." in it's original rendition by Ustad Bade Ghulam Ali was getting played. Windows and balcony door were open through which humid august breeze coming in. She, dressed in a royal blue colored spaghetti, stationed herself in a mustard color leather couch that was absolutely below one of the amber colored wall lamp. Bathed under that lamp light she appeared as a magical drink of some ancient times that could be taken by a person who wants a temporary, deliberate obsession with nostalgia just to have a change of mood from the daily life. And the room appeared as if placed in a sunset lit warm glass coffin where all things were lying in leisure for years. Entire room had a feeling of quirky laziness that was making the senses almost numb.

Initiation never required preamble these days. I said - "I think it was ail of age."

She poured Grey Goose in one glass, Glenlivet in another. The glug of those liquids and the clinkers of ice dropping inside the glass broke the brief silence that prevailed after I uttered those words. She offered me Glenlivet and replied - "But at the end of the day it was arrogance and nothing else. Ail or pinnacle or... Don't know; I don't know what it was."

I said - "I remember he was in search of a fetish face to put his heart out on the screen. He wanted to make a movie on the inner feelings of the heart of an artist which would be his last movie and he will bid good bye to the movie world. Right?"

She nodded. I continued - "I think he was searching for a certain fetish-like face that is not over-expressive. And more importantly he wanted a new face in his last movie to create a hard hitting statement of extreme pride both to himself and the people that he's still capable of giving birth to new lives. I was actually a little late to get to know about the three day audition program for this film; by the time I told you, you were already aware of it and in preparation of it. How did it go on after that and why he had chosen a woman to portray himself of what he is?"

She took a deep sigh and said - "After three years of modelling at that time I did want to get into silver screen but that audition was one of the rare chances for me to make it big in debut. Although I was not taking it as a way that I have to do it, may be because some of the recent failures of not been able to give myself a break in movies and failing in couple of auditions was playing at the back of my mind, yet I was treating it not less than an important break for my career. After the auditions I waited for the results half in anxiety, half in disappointment. But I think sometimes good things happen when we expect it the least; this proved true to me for that audition. My first question was also that why did he want a female to portray him but got no direct answer at that time; only thing he said was that I will get this reply in due course of the shoot of the film.

"When he was explaining me the script he told me this - 'It's an atmospheric mood piece. It's difficult to capture an artist's spirits in any story, so I decided to make this movie that will rely on the ambiances rather than twists and turns of a plot.

" 'A film maker wanders from place to place, in the rushes of elite cities, in the crooked streets of slums, in lonely, scenic hill tops, in the high-brow conversations of superfluous people, to find subjects for her films. She makes films on these subjects where sometimes subject remained same but it's face is different. In the making of films she always wants that people soak her works in deepest of their lives and understand them and relate with the sentiments which she tries to portray through these subjects. And in this journey she falls in love with few of her creations that touches her intimately and stays closest to her heart. And this journey reaches a stage where she finds that the creations that stayed closest to her heart were never acknowledged and accepted by people and finally she realizes that this world has not enough compassion for artist's creations and not worthy of her work; she better propagate her thoughts in some other world. She prepares a final speech for this world and starts to throw them in the streets of all those places from where she derived subjects for her films so that people finds and reads them and understand her legacy. She then takes a seclusion to lonely hill station where she ends her life in a dark room lit only by a candle.'

"As I listened to the narration of the script I was amused by the fact that I will be the central character of this movie. After a moment of silence, he forthrightly told me the date when we needed to began the shoot.

"Within few days I understood that the idea of this script was indeed his own inner feeling towards the world; not too later he acknowledged this also. This happened when one of the cameraman was suggesting to shoot one of the scene in sunset whereas he was bent upon in shooting it in sunrise; at first he gave a soul stirring, aesthetic explanation of the difference between sunset and sunrise and why he wanted to shoot it in sunrise. In spite of his explanations the cameraman kept insisting to shoot it in sunset by making him understand the color difference and it's potential effects on the mood of the scene. He then charged the cameraman up arrogantly that he should not try to overpower an artist's imagination when he's not the one who can understand what this artist is trying to achieve.

"At night on the dinner table when I said that I have a feeling that this story is somewhere connected to him; he without any expression acknowledged that this movie was indeed his journey till today. And then with a stony face he rightly declared that he don't care even if this fact of this movie comes out in the media before it's made."

By then the track was "Yaad naa baalam..." also in it's original rendition by Ustad Bade Ghulam Ali. I decreased the volume of the music slightly to restrict the ambiance from getting louder as the night had fell more silent. I coughed to clear by throat and started- "As far as I feel it was one or two days after this incident only that I received your mail where you were saying how mysterious the artist's world can be; he was a media shy person who got uncomfortable in spotlight but how at times he desired to be out in the world flamboyantly, without caring for he worldly glares, to dedicate his life to the teaching of art if this world wishes from him so. I guess that was where you got a glimpse of the reason why he wanted a female to play his character in the movie because he knew he was complex at the core for the world to understand and he harbors both rigidity and softness inside himself."

Again that glug of vodka in her glass and poured orange juice to mix with it; it looked like a watery thin blood getting mixed in a clean fluid. A short sip and she replied- "Oh no, that mail had a different backdrop. There was a scene where I needed to roam through the streets of the bustling evening of the city and camera showed different lives inside the households of that city - a lonely old man recalling his youth of vintage days, an elite businessman going through the balance sheets with a glass scotch beside him still untouched, a newly wed couple making out love passionately in blue light in their drawing room, a group of young college boys and girls partying and raising toast before they bid good bye to their college days. He looked quiet serene after the shot which suggested that it was accomplished well. After the dinner we were sitting in his room on 21st floor of the hotel when a service boy brought a few flowers and few affectionate notes that the public left for him while shooting that scene on the streets. He, for few minutes, adored those flowers to the utmost with his cheeks as a lady does upon receiving them from her lover. And the next moment he opened the window and threw them on air from the 21st floor with an expression of rage. I was bemused at this extremity of his reactions but at the next moment my heart throbbed to see the beautiful flower beads floating in air, each one separate from each other.

"He then sat on that window; entire city was glittering with scattered specks of light. noise of the traffic was not so continuous. He said- 'I don't need these affections any more. I understood the irony, although lately, that people want me to read their lives and depict them to the masses so that this world holds compassion for them.'

"He banged his fist on the frame of the window by saying - 'Who are the other masses when they themselves are the only one.'

"His voice then calmed when he started to elaborate this- 'Creativity is absurd, creativity is a profound desire of an artist to make his audience inebriated. And here I find myself merely a smoke who originates from the burning desire but goes no where and vanishes in air. Since few years a fear is creeping me; fear that how much my viewers understood the depths that I wanted to give them? And if they have not understood will I need to bid adieu to this world half understood?

" 'A few years ago I was in a hill station - a rain forest. On a day that started with drizzles we were able to complete few portions of our shoot. By the evening rains came down heavily with thunderstorms and soon the electricity went away. By that time we were in our hotel; people had formed small groups chit chatting in different rooms. Only light in that pitch darkness were the frequent lightnings in the sky giving us glimpses, through a mesh of rain drops, of, sometimes, hill tops and sometimes only the fading away threads of the after-lightning flashes in the sky. Just when a delicate thought crossed my mind that how strong can be the walls of our hotel against that torrential rain lashing it, one of person from the group I was part of that night started out a discussion on the love affair between Sahir Ludhyanvi and Amrita Pritam. The few ethereal, passionate anecdotes of that affair that he was sharing began to create an ambiance of fluffed out candles at the mercy of life. He said whenever they met, they always met without uttering a word with him smoking and throwing away his cigarette butts; she used to collect them and later smoke them with the hope that after his death the smoke from her cigarettes would meet him in the other world.This particular description ran down a chill of fear through my spinal cord... I scared and questioned myself that will I also be a half understood, inarticulated love affair; will my works also remain like those cigarette butts for people?

" 'People on this earth, I see, loves to view this world through red glasses that excites them, maddens them and in one of the sunset of this earth they'll lose themselves like those flower petals that sailed out of this window today. It's not a good sight to see but it's not frightening to me either because they are never worth this world. But also in all these years I have become an obsessive dreamer of a wish that I go out and explain what my works say, what art is while the world watches me with it's own arrogance.'

"That night returning to my room I didn't sleep for hours remaining half inebriated by his words and half baffled by his revelations."

I said- "Unbelievable !!! Is he a creature of this earth? I think due to these complexities of his inside he considered a part of his inner self as a woman."

She nodded and replied- "I too think so. But beyond these also I had seen him due to which I never asked him why he had chosen a female to portray himself in the film. He had an uncanny caresses for world although most of the times it was wrapped in sometimes in misanthropy, sometimes in arrogance. Once in a sunny afternoon when the crew is having a brief rest I saw him after a butterfly with spurt. It was a strange sight - he caught hold of a butterfly and then set it free and came back to relax in his chair wearing a relaxed smile. I couldn't quiet grasp the doings of his neither I understood his smile. All I could visualized at that warm moment was a bright sunny day and his eccentric fondle for a living creature.

"He only liked the smell and the dark sepia color of alcohol in the glass but never liked consuming it. In those days I heard he became a compulsive pursuer of human misfortunes; and he was never moved by them but only grew more conscious not to express anything. There were many theories prevailing that time about his transformation as a person, as a film maker; some said it were the agonies of an artist whose last few films failed in the eyes of his viewers, some said it were the ails of an ageing film maker in his twilight days and some said it was a mindlessness of an intellectual whose is realizing a loneliness in this world due to his own sins."

The music track by that time had been taken over by Begum Akhtar's thumri "Ab ke saawan ghar aajaa...". I put off one of the amber lamp to make the room little more dark. Sound of a speedy bike outside interrupted me just when I was about to speak. When it faded away, I said- "Was he aware of those theories about him? What do you think can possibly be the best theory to describe his state?"

She adjusted herself in a more cozy posture and replied- "I feel he was aware but I was too new at that time to ponder on any theory to reason out his state."

"So what do you think today?"

"I think it was a mix of first and second. There was no doubt at that time few of his last films had failed but it was difficult to believe he was transformed into a misanthropist due to that. During a lunch break of a day's shoot when I asked him why is he retiring after this film, he smiled and, to an extent, gave reason for this transformation in his own words- 'Everybody has to go some day; this is my time now.'

"I asked- 'Not a while longer? Don't you feel to make a few more films before you retire? I know this can be a never ending itching temptation but still?'

"He replied- 'I do not want to waste my work on this comatose world. For all these years I walked through an illusion; a severe illusion of affection and connection that was lousy and blitzed I came to know today. Since last few years I have heard many talks about me - my senses have been coerced by a self-deceptive conceit, I am at the twilight of my career, I had also been made a case study as a classic example of rise-and-fall; everybody seems to have an explanation for myself. As I turn the pages of my journey I find that the movies that were most intimate to me had never touched...' He paused and then resumed- '...they were never accepted them.'

" 'I remember a few years ago I made a film where a boy, as he grew up to become a man, gradually became nostalgic for his childhood days. His nostalgia soared to an a state that began to make him disconnected from the real world and obsessive wisher to re-live those days. And from this state he resorts to alcoholism to lose his senses to create an imaginary world of his childhood days around himself and experience it virtually. The response to it was the "forgettable weirdness" tag by my audience and "a befuddled artistry that seems search for a meaning in it's own tale" tag by critics. A few days later I came across an article in Sunday times. I was touched upon by his wisdom in understanding my legacy. I remember one of his line-"You had carved out human hearts in it's raw form; you had brought about the inner loneliness and dark spots of people and everybody of us has this; everybody of us decides not to pronounce them in world but somewhere inside they do wish to glorify these. People get uncomfortable by those of your movies that present their inner themselves in larger-than-life form. Forgive them sir, they do deserve to be forgiven."

" 'Touched by that I had sent a personal note of thanks to him at the newspaper's office but strangely it returned to me undelivered. But I neither tried to find out why; I didn't want to fade away his respectful thoughts by finding out the real him. But today I am no more able to forgive people, I do not want to waste my work on this falsely altruistic world. If this is the twilight of me let it come and let it take me away as the sand on the shore when the sea wave goes back.' "

We both got turned into inanimated objects by this mesmerizing anecdote. To get back to the senses both of us took a sip from their glasses.

I said- "I didn't get that; what was he trying to say by that?"

She replied- "I think he was talking to self, it was beyond my understanding also."

I then said- "But the transcendence to such heights of the person from who was so media shy inspite of being from glamor world his is incredible..."

And she gestured to pause me on the line from Bade Ghulam Ali track - "baalam mohe chhod ke na jaa, main tose binati karat hoon..." and then she signalled me to continue. I couldn't quiet get her; I finished my toast bottom's up and looked up at the clock; it was 2:30 AM. As I got up to bring a bottle of chilled water from the refrigerator, I felt a mysterious bliss of a life-time as if I go into the balcony and strip apart the muteness of that night scream for my new found independence.

Grabbing the bottle I came back and sat down to prepare another charm of Glenlivet. And I continued while she prepared for herself another glass of Grey Goose to dive deeper into this esoteric moment.

"As far as I had seen him he always gave a gentle smile in front of camera flashes giving an impression of an ocean of forthcoming mysteries; he rarely spoke on the microphones hel by frenzied reporters. Actually he always harbored a wish that his works touches the wisdom of a refined class of people that becomes the subject of talks for them as intense as the burnt oak colored furniture appears under neon lights. At the same time he expected the entire world to realize and recognize the art work that he poured in every of his film. Although the later expectation never surfaced until lately since a few years but I heard stories of his self alienation owing to this from which he got rid only with time."

But by this time the conversation was getting drab and ceasing to be amusing. I dropped 3 big ice-cubes in my glass, poured 60 ml of Glenlivet. To give time to ice to melt with the warmth of scotch I got up to take a stroll of the room. Head was giddy with cockeyed arrogance; I clenched my fists and I closed my eyes and for a moment a swarm of red lamps dazzled. I opened my eyes with a sudden exhalation and walked back to my couch; ice had melted by then and I drank down the chilled liquid to calm down the breaths.

Easing on the couch I asked - "That was the premiere day... Right?"

She began - "Yes, it was the thursday premiere night and next day was it's release at box office. But what happened that day was getting scripted as we were reaching the end of shooting; he too realized that which he spoke of quite frankly the next morning. As we were approaching the end of shooting an awkward reluctance was strikingly visible in him; it felt to me as if he was in a precarious state of mind of his desolation; he appeared, most of the time, unsure of what he is upto; seemed lost in a cobweb of thousand desires lunacy of which will get melt one day when he will bath under thousand moons.

"On thursday night he didn't came to the premiere show neither he responded to the numerous calls that were made to him that night before beginning the show. The premiere show began and ended without him but left a snoopiness with everyone of his absence. I decided to visit him on the way back home; it was around 01:00 AM when I reached his home and found that the door was not locked from inside. I pushed it and stepped in.

"The drawing room was head-heavily smoky and lit with a green color night lamp; air was dense suggestive of intense exhalation of cigarette smokes; he was lying partly unconcious clearly suggesting under a heavy dose of alcohol on a couch wearing olive green colored t-shirt and black colored lower raised up to knee level; there were two scotch bottles with lower halves broken by falling from the table and the liquid from the third bottle, lying horizontally on the floor beside the couch, had flown to the entire room which seemed to have caused by the stroke of his palm after he fell unconcious and an innumerable number of cigarette butts were seen on the floor, some floating in the liquid and some dried, sucked out.

"The chilling sensation of a scare ran down my spine and a world of sorrow clenched me when I encountered the scene. When I touched his hand he woke up and greeted me in an inebriated, husky, entangled voice and murky eyes . In a flash he pulled me to sit on his lap and was moved his palms on my face; his eyes was reflecting an utter deprivation of strength and filled with innocent tears; he kept repeating the words "It was not me who made this movie" in a desperately pleading tone.

"I didn't see the clock when we fell asleep in that posture with his head resting in between my neck and heart hugged by my arms. I woke up first in the morning, he was still aslept and the dawn was beginning to kiss the earth. Another inevitable scare waited me in the morning when I saw that the door of the home was left opened since past night; with much efforts I came out from his embrace and closed the door immediately. I went into the balcony, the morning coolness was driving me into a ruefulness that arises coming out from the wrap of the warm sheet of the first one-night stand. And suddenly he arrived with two hot cups of espresso; he pulled two easy chairs and for few minutes we sat muted.

"He broke the ice in the lightness of morning's fresh air with these- 'My obsession too grew larger than life like my films. I made movies and I continued to do so as I continued to receive admirations from critics and people. My thoughts explored wider panoramas and I shoved my cerebration in rather emphatic ways. As I look back to that moment I feel the obsession began from there only; somewhere amidst all these I was seduced by an idea to hunt for columns/pages that critcized my work and when did I binge on an uncalled for keenness to find such groups of people who didn't fall in taste of my movies. I galloped sleepless nights studying on such people's expectations, I brought in journals, papers that claimed my movies distasteful and not worth enough to watch. And the more I led myself to believe with every movie that I conquered at least a handful of such people, with terrible unease I seemed to find new flavors of distaste and odds against me. This marked the beginning of a kind of mental malaise in me and shaped an obsessesive world for me - a world where that was hallucinogenic, a world where I labelled people as dunce who don't want to understand my might, a world where the arguements, judgements and opinions were entirely mine. With years that passed I grew mawkish at heart and misanthropist from mind.

" 'This movie was a burst out of this obsession. The day when I shared the anecdote of my note of thanks that returned to me undelivered, I felt a random ache, a void of his absence, a fear that I will have to live without any words from him ever and an impromptu hope that I might again listen from him. The next day those mingled feelings went away but left scars that continued to put me in dilemma about every thing of myself and this world. In the following days these scars and my aim to complete the movie fought hard to gain the upper hand; and I continued to get tormented amidst all these. But the fear of never receiving any words from that man ever again continued to soar in an unbounded manner. It continued to heighten and unfortunately on thursday I was getting devastated by that fear, an irresistable compunction was drilling the convulsions of my heart. I needed something to heave my pain and somebody to groan.'

"He freezed for a moment; sun had risen full by that time. He looked up in a surrendered expression of despair and utterred with still head- 'I might never get those words.' "

Both of our glasses were as filled up as before the start of this revelation. She put a finger at the corner of her eyes to confirm that it was not wet. She got up from her couch for the first time in that night, placed her glass on the table and appeared reluctant to finish it. She went up to the player where ghazal singer just rendered the line "bikhre hue maazi ke auraaq chunoge tum..."

She said - "After that day he left film making. He read and heard that his movie made public touched with tears; when I told him about the brilliant box office reception of his movie he gave an expressionless smile. He no more used to meet anybody, except me, and limited himself to watching his works repeatedly. His moroseness was making him a life-less creature as if available only for post-mortem or medical studies. Owing to my busyness the frequency of my visits to him alse getting lessoned and whenever I visited he always appeared in spirits of forlornness since centuries. Dim yellow and white lights had taken the place of chandeliers. Only respite to his senses it appeared were the sunrise and sunset because whenever I used to visit him he, with a serene face and pleasing eyes, talked about those a little more than anything else. The news to the world by that time was that the hyper-depression swept away one of the most admired and successful artist that once again gave birth to the enormous number of stories about fierce and unfair competition of glamor world.

"On one fine evening when I went to visit him, on my way back home, after a gap of a fortnight I found his flat locked. There was a bunch of white lilies kept beside attached to it a green card on which written "Good bye" with blue ink addressed to me."

She paused for few seconds absolutely frozen and took a deep, laborious sigh and then continued - "I didn't try to find out why he went away, where did he go. A few months ago I heard he started making movies again, he is working on a small film with no stars; this time not for any world, not for any class of people and not for anybody but only for himself. His white lilies dried up but his good bye note on green card is still there with me. He's an artist, he has a penchant of his own and may be that's why he had chosen green color to bid good bye - conveying hope of a new beginning.

"Now I am waiting for his film to see how that hope looks like."

She spoke standing behind me a little far away where the music player was there. I put my glass down on the table, turned up to her and said-

"Few months ago on one such evening when we met in this home of yours, I noticed a letter from him placed beneath that black lady statue. While you were in the kitchen making food arrangements, I desired a number of times to glance at the letter in your absence but I resisted myself thinking that you will tell me someday about it but you never and neither I dared to ask you ever. Today with all my courage I am saying that I wish to read that letter but with your acquiesce."

She wore a casual smile for a moment, opened a drawer to take out the letter and handed over to me with a resigned body language by saying - "I didn't pronounce anything about this letter to you solely for the reason that I didn't want the media, this world to know that the artist in him is trying to relive. Let this world know the artist in him once again from his own work rather than through a private letter written to me. Apart from this you will find nothing in this letter that is hidden to you."

I opened the letter and it read as follows-

"____________,

Hope you loved the white lilies. I went away without telling you; I am sorry for this. But I couldn't find any reason to let you know. May be if I told you, you would have hindered me with numerous questions for which I had no answer at that time.

After that night I felt my life froze and came to a stand still as if the water on which I was floating had suddenly transformed into a pale blue ice. As the days were passing the smell of that night grew so inviolable that I wished to spend the nights of remaining years of my life like that way only as the flame of a diminishing candle gets put off as the candle finishes. But the world, you and everything kept on moving. And I let that night be the only owner of the odour and the savor of that night -an inimitable night; there's no need to make the remaining life the owner of it's expectation. And I realized that the night showed me an endearing moment of life and will never burn out that will always stay for me, within me. Even if I can't return to that night ever, the moment will always be mine.

You will be glad to know that I began movie making again with a hope that I might once again start getting words like the one from the never found columnist; but this time not from many, I will be blissful even if I get few or one. And when I will get none I will write to you.

This small world will bring us to meet each other someday somewhere but not in any premiere because I have grown slightly more media shy.

_______"