First cut, uncut. (A Short Story)

I felt like a car backing out of a driveway. I rather felt like a car that was parked in the garage of a stranger, had overstayed there and was making its escape. Her nails had clawed multi-laned freeways in my back, my teeth had plowed fresh pink wounds on her pale yellow Chinese flesh, and yet as I backed out like a car, my only though was to accelerate away. I felt like my ancestors, the notorious Japanese assaulters who had raided Mainland China and left as many corpses behind as their abacus counters could visualize.

Our escape from the Far East, from the tyranny of Japanese customs for me and from the Communist China for her had thrown us into the misty city of Amsterdam. We both had met just two months back, when she joined as waitress in the same Asian establishment that I worked for. Our Korean boss hated us both, her because his first wife who cheated on him was Chinese, and me because my grandfather's generation had bred more bastards in his country than his generation could in a lifetime. He was a bastard himself.

Xialong was a carrom-board breast; I, Hiroshi was a dwarf centerpiece in this city full of Redlight district display bodies. I am not certain what drew us together, maybe it was the sushi odor in her kisses that always made me hungry for her, maybe it was the soya sauce stains on my shirts that resonated with her memories of Nanjing. Our meeting or union was, as if, coming together of two exiles, two rejects, and of course, a limping horse and a blind mare can take the carriage only so far.

I pulled out, exhausted by the realization that I had ventured beyond the shutters that opened only for the privileged. "I wish to hold you so tight that you crumple like a paper," she said, while I made my retreat, as if on the percussion of my pounding heart.

"Seong Lee will kill me if I don't get there in six minutes," I said, waving my hand as I scurried away. Outside, the fog fell in thick plumes, while smoke from my lips dissipated like my thoughts about her.

Xialong wasn't expected till four. Right from the moment I got there, right from eight in the morning, I cursed the hackneyed slowness of the clock. I nibbled my finger flesh in joyous perplexity, from a spring of kissing blossoms, I had traveled to the monsoon shower of fleshy mangoes. Smiles flared on my lips, and in my eyes at every memory of my dark delights. "Hiroshi, don't work too hard today, for the evening may not arrive in peace," she had said in a cryptic sentence that made only half-sense to me. Her straight hair, lips that pursed every time she drifted into her fancies, the palms that were crisscrossed like canals on the map of Amsterdam, her voice that I had always thought of as funny and scratchy, all seemed as pleasant as was her nibble on my ear and breath was on my neck. Xialong did not come at four.

Xialong did not come at five, did not come at six, or seven or eight or nine or ten. My smiles scuttled away, Seong mouthed more curses than I could allow for my girlfriend. I figured that she would be introduced my girlfriend from that day, and I had responsibilities lined up for me. I was ready to break his jaws but for Hannah who cajoled my anger away. I wiped the dishes with all the temper, and cleaned the floor with more ease than I could use to sweep away my doubts regarding the absence of Xialong.

I reached her house at eleven. A bullet through her forehead was as fresh as my memory of her morning kisses. Cops came. I was arrested. Two days later a letter was found at Seong's restaurant. It read as follows:

Hiroshi,

Like a filament in a bulb, that appears brightest before like flickers and fades away, I wanted to kill myself, but only after tasting the glamor fruit of Eve's sin. My dearest friend, you supplied me with the joy that I wished to be mine before I bid goodbye to this dead world. I had deduced that my efforts to survive in Amsterdam were no different from my struggles in China. I was the undisclosed daughter of a family, who had a declared son, as their only allowed offspring.

I was a shadow being, who was declared dead at birth and raised like a parrot in a pigeon coop, a parrot who must act and behave as if it was a stuffed toy. I mean I did not exist for the world, and I lived with my family as a secret, safe as long as I wasn't found out. I had escaped in earnest, hitchhiked my way into Tibet and then Nepal, and was smuggled into Amsterdam with the contingent of Hashish by a Maoist woman, packed into sacks of that were supposed to be carrying Tea, with hidden Hashish and instead supplied me. A letter that she had given to me, provided me my first few days of residence and food, and you know my story after the time I started working, which was when I met you.

The gang who had smuggled me into Holland, now wants me to work with them. In two months, I have repulsed their attempts with a failing strength. My passport is fake, and they have announced that they will turn me in if I don't cooperate. Life holds no pleasure for me besides you. But you are too precious to be risked, and my friend, I say goodbye, wishing you well.

Let your optimism keep you afloat in tempests of all kind. My ship has designed to sink, and so it must. Remember me sometimes, and remember me well.

Love
Xialong

Seong carried this letter to the Police Station. When I came out he shook hands with me. He sounded as corrosive as always, but he made me a sign to follow him, and took me into a pub, and bought some whiskey for me. I gulped my bitterness while he asked to me in all seriousness. "Son, did you, or did you not, kill her?"

"What? Of course, No!" I was flabbergasted. "How can you ask me that question? You have seen her letter."

He lowered his voice, as he touched my hand, and said in a whisper, "Soon after you were arrested, I got a phone call from the Police Station, asking me if you were at work that day. I said you were. Then I was asked to appear at the police station the next day."

He drank his vodka glass neat, and continued, "When I went there the next day, the cops had found the revolver used for the killing, and there were no fingerprints in on the revolver. Since you were found on the spot, they had arrested you on suspicion first. There was no alibi for you, for you had left my shop precisely twenty minutes before the gunshot, and it usually takes only ten minutes to get to her house. They told me that they found your fingerprints at various places in her house, and everything pointed to the fact that you had killed her.

I told them that you had left my shop in temper, and that the reason for your anger was my complaining and cursing about Xialong's absence. Somehow it did not make sense to me that you will kill her after the tantrum you threw at the shop that day. The cops argued that maybe you over-dramatized things as it was a premeditated murder. All in all, I figured that you would be implicated for her murder. I had noticed how you both exchanged glances at work. Since I suspected you to be too much in love with Xialong to kill her, I sat down and concocted that suicide note and its story myself. I took care to post it from a post-box close to her house. It took a day for the post to arrive, and here you are, out in two days."

"Mother of hen!! If it wasn't a suicide, who killed her?"

He hushed me, and asked me to watch what I said. I understood.

For a few months, I was as morose as a car, dumped into a used car showroom, parked in a corner, unused and unclean. My attempts to find what really happened were as unsuccessful as Dr. Watson's guesses, and there wasn't a Sherlock Holmes around to deduce what happened and who did it. Then one day you arrived, or Seong, like a shrewd salesman, led you to me, and within a few hours, I was fueled and full throttle again. Xialong, like a dent in a wrecked car, remained embedded in my being somewhere. So what do you say to this story of my past? My first cut, uncut.

I love women as blossoms love the spring

A sonnet written in response to some comments on Pillowtalk, where some bloggers thought the protagonist, who they confused with the poet's self, hates all women.

Many a muse, wise or ruse, with benevolence,
give me my ardor, my color, my fragrance.
And wouldn't I be just a stem or a tube
if I weren't I, by their cares pursued?

The young like morning, like dew decorate me
and the old, like evening shawls lovingly drape me.
I waltz in their gossips, till they go out of breath,
and bathe in their torrents of sorrow and wrath.

Each season they bloom fresh fancies as me
and praise their ideas, they represent as me,
calligraph with my limbs, Rangoliyan reverent,
and present me to friends, as trophies gallant.

I love the women as blossoms love the spring,
Ah! my lonely winters make them more charming?

The Hunchback of Notra-dame by Victor Hugo

Victor Hugo, the French poet and writer, who wished to change how novels were written and read, wrote The Hunchback of Notra-Dame in the beginning of his career. In contrast to Les Miserables, which is his more celebrated work, and was written several decades after the Notra-dame novel, the present piece is not only laced with more humor and romance but also stands out as a piece where the young poet in Hugo pours out a ravishing range of similes. Just for the pure magic of his metaphors and similes that make all his descriptions so poetic, so powerful Notra-Dame is worth reading.

The story itself reads like a fanciful movie, an ugly hunchback, Quasimodo is brought up by a Priest Frollo, the archdeacon of Notradame. The hunchback is hence attached like a dog to his master to him. The English title of Hunchback of Notra-dame is a misnomer, for the original is called Notra-dame de Paris, and English title lets us assume that it is the story of Hunchback as hero, while the original title asserts it is story set in Notradame and has charaters who reside in it, or live in its shadows. The Priest Calude Frollo, leaving his pursuit of science and philosophy meanders to a path of unrelenting lust for the gypsy dancer, Esmeralda. A writer, Pierre Grigorne, gets into a set of bizarre circumstances, where a token marriage attaches him to the gypsy. Phoebus, captain of King's Archers is the object of the affection of Esmeralda herself.

Besides these characters, there is a madwoman who lives in confinement, pining for her lost child, who was carried off by gypsies, and hates Esmeralda. There is the goat Djali, who performs tricks with Esmeralda, Jehan who is Claude Frollo's irreligious brother, King Louis IV - who interacts with Claude on issues of science, and the most important character, who lurks like an existence all though, is the Notra-Dame itself. The romances criss cross through a series of interesting episodes and drama, and that forms the crux of the story that I won't divulge here. Readers will benefit by discovering surprises and mystery for themselves, in process getting enchanted by a story that has been a popular read for centuries now.

What makes this novel a masterpiece, besides the poetic descriptions, is Hugo's description of the cathedral of Notra-dame and the city of Paris, and his discussion of how the arrival of printing press signaled an end to the importance as architecture as the expressive art of intellectuals. The views of the author expressed in these pages and pages of delightful reading provide the reader not only with historical and architectural prespective on the buildings in Paris, but also gives us a word image of buildings, roofs, rooms, carvings, modernism, and more. In his commentaries and comparisons between writing and printing as form of expression in contrast to architecture, Hugo unmasks a wide array of issues that arrival of every new media (TV, Cinema, Internet, Digital Photography) bring. How existing precepts and concepts are revised, how adaptations occur, how each age has its own expression through any of these means- and all Hugo says so passionately about architecture or literature allows us to feel the essence of why we make monuments of stones or words in the first place.

Victor Hugo had great skill in developing characters, and describing their lives over an extended period of time, capturing how situations and people led to certain choices, behavioral changes and thought process of each. His ability of doing this, in a very detached manner, where narrative is like a camera floating into a room, and staying long enough for a distant observer to watch and identify traits of every person present there, makes him a great novelist. The novel, like all classic reads, looks formidable in size, but can be read at a formidable pace, especially after the first half of the novel is over.

Besides the merits of the novelist, and the beauty of his wordplay, the story itself is a charming one, and has been brought to screen versions many times. Reading Hugo's two major works allows one to get the same keen insight into French society of the respective times, as does Thackeray and Dickens novels for England and Tolstoy in Russia. Reading any of these masters takes time, but trust me, it is worth the patience and the effort. Recommended highly.

Maila Anchal by Phanishwar Nath Renu (Review)

Renu's Maila Anchal is one of the finest novels ever written in Hindi. The landscape of Bihar, the caste divide, Indian independence and changes in its aftermath, Maithali folklores and poems and multiple love stories painted on a canvas with highly perceptive descriptions of village life make it one of the most important novels written in and about rural India.

The novel was first published in early 1950s, in the post Prem Chand era, at a time when young, independent India was trying to redefine its identity as a Nation. The novel is set in Bihar, and incorporates the regional contexts and references into its theme, making it into a perfect example of Anchalik Upanyaas (Regional Novel).

A short synopsis of the story reads as follows (I won't serve you the details or the surprises for I wish you will read the story and enjoy the unfurling of events): Tehsildaar babu, by the virtue of his position in local administration, has acquired large tracts of land, and turned into a Zamindaar (landlord) himself. His daughter Kamla suffers from some disease that results in fits. Doctor babu (Dagdar babu) has left his city-life to work in these hinterlands. This is the realm where Malaria, Kalazar and numerous such epidemics run havoc, where people trust tantriks and pandits (witches and priests) more than they trust Western medicine, where poverty itself is the biggest disease affecting people, and besides the lack of basic amenities, people lack education and faith in government as well as in the doctor himself. The character of Doctor Babu is based on the life-story of Dr Alakh Niranjan, who was alive (and 100 years old) in 2003. The doctor babu makes special effort to fight disease as well as lack of belief in medicine, he battles both the ailments and the superstitions of people around him. Kamla, who is one of his patients, perhaps the only rich patient, falls in love with him.

Lakshmi lives at a Matth (a kind of monastery), serves an old Mahanth (a priest) (they have a scandalous relationship, for the Mahanth is supposed to stay away from all pleasures). The Mahanth has a servant, who bears all the insults from his master, and eventhough he is of low birth, is admitted into the Matth, as he is adept at playing the Khanjira (a musical instrument). A freedom fighter, S (I forget his name), comes in contact with Lakshmi, and is attracted to her. After Mahanth's death, the servant assumes office with help of Lakshmi, and because of her scandalous position, several people's lust after her, till she gives up her position in Matth.

The novel describes a whole bunch of characters who get involved in caste-based politics. Apart from S, who is a strict Gandhian (and makes speeches in pure Hindi, that most villagers admire, but never understand), there is a dwarf, who has had correspondence with Mahatma Gandhi himself. After Mahatma's death, the dwarf wanes away like a candle, celebrated in the darkest hours, flickers away unnoticed, once the power supply is restored. The village hooligans are lured by the Communist party, and the hooligans care about neither social justice nor communism. The novel describes division s between different castes and groups, the divisions become harsher as politics promises power and money. If you wonder about the genesis and the consequences of caste-based politics, Maila Aanchal has a perfect script that will assist you in tracing its roots. Renu in a manner of great story tellers lets the events speak for themselves: the episodes in the novel shed light on how Gandhi was revered in even these remotest villages and how his death was mourned by most who had no inkling of what difference becoming "free" would to make to them. For them the simile of being like a free bird meant nothing, for they were like wingless birds who knew not what wonders a flight entails, what sceneries lie beyond the horizons. The events reveal how Gandhians and idealists lost hope and direction after Independent India thrust itself into games of corruption and caste-based politics. The events prescribe the socio-economic condition of the villagers, the unequal sharing of crops, the inherited hierarchy of caste and money, and the family values or lack thereof.

Be it gossip or folklores, songs of tribals or cures by the Doctor; be it drama (nautanki) enacted on stage or the Akhara fights (the wrestling matches); be it dresses and ornaments of womenfolk or the idealism and corruption of men; be it the bhajans (hymns) in Matth or the lust of men who sought Lakshmi; be it the harvesting season or description of monsoon rain; Renu presents a masterpiece where each description comes with a perspective and perception as keen and humane as of Tolstoy and Chekov, as astute as of Maugham and Lawrence, as rich in local flavor as no English novel written by any Indian has ever managed to be.

If Renu were an author in any other language, in other country or tongue, he would have managed to be read and celebrated a million times better than he is by us Hindi speaking Indians. He shares this fate with Prem Chand, Ramdhari Singh Dinkar, Harivansh Rai Bachchan, Dharamveer Bharati, Ageya, Yash Pal, and Jaishankar Prasad, to name a few. His story Maare Gaye Gulfaam was made into a movie Teesri Kasam, though Maila Aanchal seemed to have been ignored by our Bollywood (they are most obsessed with copying Hollywood, and often ignore literature written in India).

If I were to suggest a series of books to any Indian about his country, I would, apart from epics of Ramayana and Mahabharata, go on and hand this list (Hindi/Urdu): Anand Math by Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, Gora, Geetanjali and Ghaira Bhare by Rabindranath Tagore, Godan, Gaban and short stories by Prem Chand, Maila Anchal by Renu, Short Stories in Hindi by Yashpal, Ageya and Renu, Short Stories in Urdu by Manto, Panchatantra, everything by Kalidasa (Hindi versions are not too hard to find), and Gunaahon ka Devta by Dharamveer Bharati. (The titles missing from this list (except for English fiction and Sarat Chandra) are a measure of my own ignorance, and hence I'll be delighted to get any recommendations.)

Language flourishes when people speaking it celebrate its richness, honor its bards, recognize the need for its evolution and admire scholarship. Hindi as a language needs more authors like Renu. But more important than that is the reader who can savor the delights offered by our language. Maila Aanchal, apart from its numerous merits in being descriptive and its range and depth of narrative, is a celebration of spoken Hindi language, the khari boli. The language as we hear and live it is brought to the page by Renu. While he talks about social change, and issues closer at heart to reformists in undertones, he also springs at us a well written marvel of the language, freely indulging, romancing as if, with local words and variations, and at times, openly mocking the bookish Hindi, that is the bane of our classrooms, certain newspapers, and self-styled authors. By the emphasis placed on the use of highly Sanskritized, defunct words, and due to importance of English as language of knowledge and erudition, Hindi literature and language have suffered enormously. Perhaps those among you who read the Russian authors or even the classical British novelists, perhaps you will notice how our approach to Hindi (or our Indian languages) is similar to Russians or Brits had for their mother-tongues in comparison to French. Perhaps likewise, an array of brilliant writers, a free dose of nationalism inspired by a new Napolean, is what we need for our language to flourish as it must. While Renu waits for you to admire his contribution, I urge you to pick Maila Aanchal, and enter his world and characters from not so long ago, from our own land, our own country. Maybe, like always, you will learn something new about yourselves, about us. Read it and you will find Doctor babu, Kamla, Lakshmi, S, Mahant, Tehsildaar, Socialists, the dwarf, the Panditji and other characters will live etched in your memory reminding you of one and many you have known.

Pillowtalk

The pillow talked to me through the night.

It said that it liked soft faces -
full of petty lies
and fragile, dreamy hair.

The problem with pillows is that they are full of fluff.
They are like middle-aged woman -
asexual cotton-bags, over-prized sacks of lethargy.

Of course, I only thought this to myself, and sighed aloud,
"I need a replacement," and I meant, I needed a silent pillow.
It agreed, conjuring an image, announcing, "an American one."

It continued, "I hate the coconut oil stains,
plus your South Indians always smell of Fair n Lovely;
North Indians of Ponds or Charmis, and Dabur Amla Oil."

"The Chinese and Korean breath rinks of beef and pork,
Middle Eastern, except belly dancers, are too exotic
and the Europeans use their foreign tongue too much."

I cut its monologue short, accusing it of racial discrimination.
I reminded it of its roots. The cover was Bangladeshi, cotton Indian,
and it came packaged in polyethene bags imported from China.

Just one travel across seven seas, and a position of privilege,
had converted it. It wanted to dust off the past, and wear the skin
of an alien sensibility; edging to extreme, to prove itself reinvented.

My head, heavy with thoughts and Indian spice, crushed it,
and grumbled into its wrinkling face. "Who was it talking about?"
I groaned. "Maybe my promiscuity. Maybe my alienation?"

We resent them the most who are an image of us, don't we?
And aren't they the ones that we find most easy to befriend?
The pillow warmed up to me, my compunctions sunk into sleep.

A Poem

Revising the poem:
Taking it offline indefinitely

Confessions of a murderer

Maybe I wasn't destined to be a murderer, but I became one. We are told that sin sits like a boulder on your heart. We are made to believe that blood clots stain your hands, and your eyeballs turn into the dark, insomniac districts of big cities. We are told that grief and compunction lurk like a phobia in the silent hours of your existence. We are told that killing another is hard, that it’s a brutal act. They have announced that promiscuity is a burden, a disease, difficult to live with, to live for. It is nothing but a thick pile of lies. Each one of us has a murderer within us, and if we train ourselves well, killing is a pastime like none other. I am talking about killing humans. Killing as a hobby, as an art, as a science! I will now tell you why I am both an artist and a scientist.

This is my true story. I write this to denounce the myths associated with murder. I am not here to praise myself or my acts. My anonymous existence points to the fact that I don't care for your applause or comments. I want you to listen to me. Suspend your prejudices and listen to me. I may come after you and kill you too, but there is no hurry.

Killing for pleasure is my hobby. Like a prostitute who enjoys the variety and the range in her customer base, who works not just for material pleasure, whose loins are like ravenous hearths thirsting for more wood, I am always fantasizing about spurting blood, slashed veins and strips of flesh peeled out like onion skins. But murder is the end of ecstasy; the real pleasure is in the foreplay.

First kill is like losing virginity. It introduces you to a new realm of pleasures. I was only fifteen when I discovered the essence of this simile. Rashq, my mortal twin, consider himself as the stronger and the smarter one. Our mother, the bitch, never figured who our biological father was. Rashq had arrived a few seconds before I did. I arrived in anger, and unlike usual babies, I arrived with just a single tear on my cheek. One tear for losing the race to Rashq, one tear to be christened as Ashq!

I tolerated him for fifteen years. I let his six feet, stout frame tower a few inches above mine slim, bone and flesh, dilapidated body. I let his scores at primary school overrun mine; I let myself bear sores after every battle we fought. I resented him with a bitterness that I openly flaunted. I tolerated him till the day I saw him extract a smile and blush from Rashmi. She sealed his fate.

I think I was a little inexperienced then. I did not know human anatomy enough. I choked him with a pillow, and he struggled like a horse trying to swim across a swamp. He fought hard, but in the end, his despair, his astonishment swamped him. I was much weaker physically, but my intent was as taut as my grip. We lived next to Yamuna, in a slum basti. It took me only a few minutes to wrap him in a bed sheet and leave him for the fish to feast on. My sweaty self was strained to the limit, and yet I felt an exhilaration one feels after scaling a mountain. What followed in Rashmi's room was like jumping off a cliff for paragliding!

I did not know enough human anatomy then. I did not know how erotic pain is for woman, how injury urges them on, how darkness turns them into a force that contain pleasures that bleed as they proceed, that soar as they swing, that flatter as they fetter you. I approached Rashmi, who was only thirteen then. She bit me, punched me, hit me, and writhed in my grip like a snake, trying to escape from a mongoose's grip. I hurled her down on the floor, and held her breasts so tightly with my fingers digging deep into them, that I feared my fingers would start to crackle. Before my fingers could crackle, her fierceness began to exude a fire that I had never thought possible. We both burned like turpentine oil, screeching and spurting as we exhausted every drop of our intention. When we stopped an hour later with teeth marks and bites all over each other, I rose with a freshness one feels after an extended bath. Ashq, the man, was born.

Unfortunately, Rashmi had to die next. The only murder that brings a sigh to my lips was hers. The murder itself was a fascinating affair; I have no complaints about the act itself. In fact, it was my first masterpiece. The sigh is for the body that was first to anoint me as potent. The sigh is for the teeth that first roused the animals in my languid flesh. I killed her one evening, of course, after pounding her with my exploding ego. I killed her, just at the moment, when she closed her eyes, moaning as she climaxed. Blood sprinkled out of her veins, as it does when suddenly someone steps on a garden hose and it just bursts out. The red liquid rose like a fountain, and drops fell like rose petals on her face. As I walked out, unnoticed at the early dawn, I left a raging fire to gorge her, to finish her with the last rites a Hindu deserves. Then I took a plunge in the Yamuna to clean off the stains of my first romance.

Rashq and Rashmi must have united in hell, for all I care. I was sending them more company. I worked at a garage owned by a Bengali family who had risen in fortune, through a series of shrewd real estate investments. They still kept the garage, as they believed it was their Kaamdhenu, the holy cow who ushered in all blessings and prosperity for them. I was sixteen, and the Maalkin, the Memsahib, the Mistress of the house was nearly forty. Some itch induced her to take a liking for me, and she started to insist that I learn a few things from her. She made me take Class X board exams, and ensured I spent enough time on my lessons to get through a five year gap in my education.

It was on the day my results arrived that I got my first chance to teach her a few things. I don't know what beast I roused in her, but she began to obsess about me. I patiently played in her hands for three months, then one day plunged her into her own bath tub; she shat into it as she screamed under water and left the world floating in her own mess. A servant, the only person who suspected me, for he knew of the hours I had spent in a closed room with the Mistress, found out a few days later, that his death was to receive him tongueless, armless and headless.

The Bengali babu fled to the banks of Hooglie in distress. I went with him. New language moaned at my advances, new bodies arrived at my table, to disappear like dreamt ideas do when the poet finally picks his tool. I learnt every means of dissection, I procured the cadavers I needed for this study by hunting them, I honed my knowledge of anatomy by practicing my touch, my bite, my thump on every specimen who interested me. Like a good experimentalist, I learnt from my every mistake and moved on.

This isn't Dostoevsky folks, so there is only Crime and no Punishment. Pardon me, for using the language of fools in calling murder a crime. It is a hobby. A hobby must be retained as a hobby, and then your pleasure is guilt-free. I became a homicide artist. Bodies would appear in drains, in Hooglie, in bathtubs, on rooftops, in heaps of rubbish. Bodies captured in their own state of ugliness, released from the slavery of breath! There is an erotic element to how the last breath oozes out of a writhing, alive being, from the same being, who minutes back, was writhing in sensual drunkenness as your master strokes filled her with color. But as I said before, murder is the end of the ecstasy; the real pleasure is in the foreplay.

You need to decide on how long the foreplay needs to be. Your start must be measured, slow. Did you ever watch how a tiger hunts? Prancing like a true hunter, noiseless and focused, you must pounce on your prey, and no matter what horns and what muscles embattle you, you need to hold on the neck of the prey in your ever hungry incisors, till you are victorious. No half measures. No sentimentality. Plane, simple act! Execution. Perfection is another name for carrying out a task to completion. Folks, I have sought and wrought perfection!

Here I stand before you, without face, anonymously. My lips are being licked by new desires, my hands are as eager for fondling you as they are for dismantling your intestines. I am as natural with the knife as I am with assuming the character of a weakling, a man of no importance, trying to fight big and small torments of life to survive the system. I am a Van Gogh, unknown to the mankind, a Picasso you haven't yet learnt to appreciate. I am a Casanova, who incarnates as Jack, The Ripper, and walks the nights as Dracula, without the flourish of the Count. No Gods bother me, I bother with none. We ignore each other. I don't subscribe to any cannibalistic tribe. I am a pure vegetarian (can you beat that?). I am no devil worshipper. I am just a simple man, with simple needs and a great panache for killing. I kill so elegantly that you will never suspect me as the killer.

Try it. The ecstasy of destruction, the ecstasy of death! Death is more profound than life. All men and women are born with a specter of death within them. We all can be Gladiators, the executioners, the Hangmen, the Knights who kill in name of God or country or dreamt up romances. Isn't it the ritual of survival that leads a man and a beast to invent all daily habits of existence? All this existential angst, and a lone warrior, a craftsman, Me, to release and relinquish it! A messiah is the one who leads you to nirvana. Am I not your new, anonymous messiah? I won't disclose who I am, for I have no urge to climb a cross, and be worshipped when I am gone. I do not speak to anyone, I mean no angels or demons exist for me. I will not be an identified prophet; I won't work my miracles in public. I will just do my public service; lead you to your demise, your freedom. In any case, I don't care about fame much. I don't believe in sinners and saints or Messiahs either. I do as I please. I reign supreme in my craft.

Is it going to be you next?