The edge of the world

‘The edge of the world is where things happen,’ Ayappan told his lover Kalaivani under a tapped rubber tree one early, very early morning. She didn’t actually know what he meant but she squeezed his fingers in agreement. 

‘Where is this edge of the world?’ she finally asked after imagining the ultimate rock of a cliff, the peak of a waterfall, the last house in their village. 

‘I don’t think women can ever go but I’ll take you there when I’ve saved enough money. I’m sure when we get there they’ll forgive you for being a woman and let us pass’.

She twisted a clump of her freshly oiled hair and looked to the ground. The soil reminded her of cumin and mustard seeds pounded down in a mortar. She felt safe in the knowledge that it had rained last night. Everyday she prayed for it to rain at night because she could only sleep when it did. Otherwise, she thought of her mother’s sordid stick broom and the dust that it created, her father’s eyes which were getting smaller, she was sure, her sister’s failed elopement, Ayappan’s plans to rescue their lives from mixing with the rubber sap that their village churned out, slowly, slowly, into rusty condensed milk tins. But when she heard the rain crashing or caressing against the atap roof, her stomach stopped making sounds and she imagined that her mind had become a bowl that collected the rainwater.

Ever since Ayappan mentioned the edge of the world, Kalaivani has not been able to stop imagining what it looked like. She had some idea but she wanted something more exact than a space with no trees and no huts for homes. When she made slashes in the trees she thought that the edge of the world created an existence so strange from any human life that she didn’t have the capacity to imagine much more. She would have to go there herself to know. So every time she met Ayappan, she would ask more questions, but never too many. She didn’t want to make him suspicious.

‘Appan,’ she said, ‘you know exactly where this edge of the world is?’ Ayappan wasn’t prepared for her question but he was talented at shielding himself from the danger of exposition, something he had learnt from years of engagements with estate managers and his various domestic employers for whom he worked as cleaner, car-washer, gardener, weeder, plumber, fixer-of-(all)things, sometimes assuming all roles at once, sometimes merely a combination of them. ‘Of course I know. You think what? I sit around just dreaming about it? I’m not a woman, can’t you see? I’ve even drawn up a map. That’s it. I got a map to prove it,’ he said and Kalaivani, hearing this, was firstly proud for having secured herself the manliest man in the village and secondly electrified (she swore she felt something moving in her spine and veins) that she now had a definitive route to reach the edge of the world. She didn’t ask for the map at first although she had to hold on tightly to her mud-and-sweat soaked T-shirt to stop herself from blurting out, ‘So where is it? Go back home and bring it here at once’. For one, she could never have demanded anything of Ayappan. The other issue was of course the danger of him knowing that she really did care about this place and, most importantly, that she had concrete designs on it. She knew that if she ever did start her journey to the edge of the world, she would have to have him by her side, not so much for companionship as for security. She did once love him, months ago, but now she saw herself noticing how his mole protruded blackly, glisteningly, above his constantly moist moustache and she found that she not simply disliked but detested the taste of salt that she felt on the tip of her tongue when he plastered his face onto hers. She also wasn’t too thrilled about the way he held her arm as though he were leading a blind woman through the village. Lately, his eyes were beginning to get small, like her father’s and she wanted to ask him why but she knew that such questions couldn’t be asked. The answers had to remain as enigmatic knowledge: known yet unknown. 

But Ayappan was also her only means of talk and touch, something that she could never find at home or when she tapped trees or when she followed Ayappan to the next village to scrub the floors of Mr. Ponniah’s house of marble. Besides, Ayappan actually looked at her when he spoke. Her mother seemed to be addressing the walls or the air when she ordered Kalaivani to make dhosai at two in the morning (Kalaivani had to oblige her mother even though she knew there was something fundamentally wrong about this instruction but then again, it was common knowledge that her mother was mad). Her father was cock-eyed, not naturally but out of alcoholic inducement, and so Kalaivani never really knew if he was looking at her or at the miniscule fridge, the cracked ceiling, the scurrying cockroach. Her brother and sister always spoke to her in a hurry, talking as though they were dispatching staccato orders to the objects that they rushed past as they left to do their daily duties on the plantation, in the homes of the rich. And finally, less surprisingly, her employers looked nowhere near her eyes when they rattled out her job descriptions or when they questioned her about her mistakes. But Ayappan, oh yes, Ayappan, he looked right into her eyes and spoke.

In the nights when it didn’t rain and Kalaivani was exhausted from thinking about her family and the man who had proclaimed to be her future husband, she thought about a nocturnal sea. She knew exactly why she did this. On a very rare morning, two or three years ago, she had found her father weeping by the front door, sober, clutching his skin, talking to himself, swaying this way and that, even welcoming Kalaivani when he saw her. ‘Sit with me, child, sit,’ he said, ‘you know this night, there was no money so here I am sitting with the truth. You think I like the taste of that craziness? It tastes like rotten spit but it does things to me that make me go beyond all of this. Your grandfather was a clean man when he left. One armpit- smelling liar told him that over India, many, many miles over, he’d find a place he could not even imagine because it was so pure, so different. Then he jumped on the ship, he saw the black sea, he vomited in the black sea, he shat in the black sea, he cried in the black sea and when he finally arrived, what did he find? You tell me, child, what did he find? He found what he had already known. Don’t think it can ever be anything other than that. What you know is what you know and you just know it and know that you know it. Ok?’ Kalaivani nodded, scared to see her father so different from what she had known him to be. They never mentioned that morning to each other but Kalaivani found it impossible to forget the way her father’s face crumpled when he said ‘black sea’ or the fact that his eyes, for once, were large and hollow. She tried to imagine what her grandfather looked like, a man she had never met, but she only saw shadows. And now when she thought about the sea and the ship and her grandfather, she saw herself wearing a hat- she wasn’t sure where this image had come from- but a hat nevertheless she had on her head as she steered a ship, alone, through placid, uninteresting waters, over to the edge of the world where life was reconstituted from the start so that even imagination had no role to play in its formation. 

Days after he had first mentioned it, Kalaivani discovered that she didn’t actually have to ask Ayappan for the map that would lead her to the edge of the world. He simply stuffed in into her hands one early, very early morning, underneath a tapped rubber tree. ‘For you. Go and study it. Then we can plan our journey,’ he said. She pretended nonchalance but when she arrived home she locked herself in the toilet and screamed into a towel. This was what she had been waiting for. This was what all the cents and one dollar notes that she had stored beneath her mattress was going to be used for. There was no need for Ayappan, her fat-moled sweetheart, her mad mother, her toddy-sodden father, her alienated siblings. The edge of the world was beyond Malaya, beyond all of this, beyond the prospect of even breathing. It could very well be a place where you didn’t have to cultivate the strength to pump your own heart, to say things that would just melt into the air that simmers. It would be completely still, barren even, and there would be no creatures to be repelled or fascinated by. This was, after all, a world on the brink of things, when things actually happened. And being blessed with an actual map, Kalaivani hung the towel back on the hook, hummed Om three times and closed her eyes. She opened her eyes and the sheet of paper Ayappan had blessed her with. There was nothing on it. She rubbed her right eye with her right index finger. She looked again. The paper was blank. 

She reached for the towel on the hook, dropped her head into it and screamed. 

When she was done, she left the bathroom, crept towards her brother’s bed, snatched the pencil he boastfully used each day in front of her to parade his education, and went back to the toilet. 

She closed her eyes. She pushed and pushed and pushed to see the edge of the world. Then she began to draw.        

The serial chatter 

Secretly, Damian chatted with women on screens, in front of the artificial glare of his multiple devices. He typed on the toilet, inside cupboards, underneath beds in the guest bedroom. He could hear his wife’s noises: the clanging of pots, her burps, the shuffling of her feet. Each time he hit the ‘send’ button, he wiped his wife out of existence. He killed her in his chats, presented himself as a widower. It was easier that way. It calmed his mind. It gave room for the women on the other side of his devices to drench him in sympathy, attention, affection. Oh you poor thing you must be suffering. He felt good.  

His wife was too Wife. She pestered him, shone sharp uncomfortable lights on all the ways she claimed he hurt her. She had too many issues, too many needs, expectations, visions of their life together he frankly felt were dramatic and unrealistic. She wanted connection, union. Conjoined growth, of all things. He just wanted to be left alone, which is what his virtual women did. They were exciting, full of bubbling life. They were fun. And they left him alone. 

It’s innocent fun, he said to himself, the shower rain providing a good amount of pitter-patter to drown out his wife’s daily sounds. He used to love them, her humming, the clicking of her teeth, her nose-blowing, sneezes, snorts that appeared through laughs. The sound of her laughter had been his favourite sound on the planet. He had fallen in love with her smile, as corny as that was, but it was the truest thing he could say to himself at one point, two years ago, when their love was blossoming like a cute virginal flower. He’d been mesmerised. Captivated. 

So what happened? 

BuxomBabe24’s message sent a soft beep on his phone. She was his number one virtual woman. He went to her daily, unlike the others who were occasional but thoroughly titillating visitors (yes, they gave him their tits too, lovely pictures he stored in dark underground places on his devices). BuxomBabe24 sent only a single photo, a decent one of her face: haunting large green eyes (his wife’s were too dark to qualify as haunting), fish-shaped red-painted lips, a perfect chiselled nose a mountain climber could scale and feel totally satisfied with. 

“Hey! I’m feeling low today, Damien. How you feeling?” 

He never could understand how someone so stunning could have dark moods but he liked that she did. It meant he could help, he could feel needed. It was nice to feel needed by a woman. 

He typed the usual gems of advice, feeling a warmth exploding in his chest as his fingers grazed his mobile. Each strike felt like he was hugging this woman, keeping her close to him. She was asking him to save her and he was there, waiting for her, ready. 

His wife knocked on the bathroom door. “Are you done? We’re leaving in ten minutes.” 

He grunted. The shower drops were too loud for him to ascertain whether she’d hobbled off or if she was standing by the door, listening. There was nothing for her to hear anyway. Typing is a silent affair and whatever voice notes his women left he listened to on his headphones—headphones were mandatory in his life. The confessions and moans and whisperings of affection streaming in from his devices were for him alone. They were his special gifts, given to him by his own personal will. He made this happen. He made at least twenty women desire him, look forward to his company. They enjoyed him. 

Meanwhile, his wife demanded things from him he couldn’t or wouldn’t give: his time, discipline, attention, his private moral code, his presence. And now she was most probably waiting outside the bathroom door, ready to get him. “I want you, Damian,” she’d told him last night after complaining about his excessive phone use. “I’m here!” he screamed back, “can’t you see my body lying next to you on this bed?” She shook her head, one or two tears glinting in the dimness of their bedroom. She irritated him the most when tears started popping out of her eyes like sour sweets. “You’re physically here but where are your eyes landing?” 

He’d been deep into a chat with BuxomBabe24 whose name, age and occupation she revealed in the most deliciously secretive way two weeks ago.  It thrilled Damian to know he was getting private information from a gorgeous woman across town. They’d been discussing places they loved travelling to, something he used to talk about with his wife but when the chatting started five months ago, he realised he didn’t need to dump everything on his wife, he didn’t need her for every goddamn area of his life. He needed to breathe for fuck’s sake. He needed his own life and he was making it with his collection of virtual women.  He paused his finger over his phone, turned to look at his wife’s crumpled face and said, “What happened to you? You used to be fun.” That was when she ripped her side of the blanket in half and said, “I stopped being fun when you lost interest in me.” 

They didn’t speak until the morning when she brought him his breakfast tea and said, “I put extra condensed milk, just how you like it.” He appreciated her effort at reconciliation but the truth was he just didn’t care. All of this arguing, crying, apologising was a giant pile of rubbish dumped on him day after day and, frankly, it was starting to stink. He didn’t understand her. She obviously didn’t understand him and now, he was sitting on the toilet, hiding from his wife, holding virtual hands with five women at once but he has decided, yes, he has decided to zoom in on BuxomBabe24. Let him focus for once. The Wife would be happy. She was always demanding focus from him. Well, look at him now. Focused as hell. 

Nadine Muhammad, 24 years of age, a nurse at Sungai Buloh hospital. Father Malay, mother Caucasian, hence the green eyes. She was buxom, she promised. If they met, he’d find out. He didn’t know what to type back, if he was ready to actually meet this woman. In all honesty—his wife loved going on and on about honesty—so again, she’d be proud of him. For once the wife he married in the most romantic loved-up beach ceremony (there were fairy lights and scented candles and fountains of pink champagne) would be proud of him. In all honesty, he’d never physically met any of his virtual women. Technically, nobody could catch him. Nobody could accuse him of infidelity. That knowledge allowed him to sleep next to his wife each night and to accept the little offerings she gave him: piping hot meals, pouches of chewy caramels on his writing desk, fruit cut in the shape of animals. He hated the fact she loved him in this deeply tangible way. It was hard to escape how her love materialised and paraded itself all over the house. He couldn’t understand it. Frankly, he wanted it gone. It was too difficult, this type of undeniable love. His women didn’t ask this of him. They never demanded him to accept their love. They didn’t attack him with care.  

Another knock. “Five more minutes, darling!” 

“Thank you, my love, I’ll be ready!” His chest started to sweat. He had to make a quick decision. Nadine Muhammad, the nurse with the large green eyes and depressed heart wanted him to save her and she wanted him to save her in person. Don’t worry lah, she’d texted, we’re just gonna have coffee, cake, fun, laughter. 

It couldn’t be so bad, could it? He wasn’t really doing anything. This wasn’t sex, it wasn’t even kissing and he didn’t want to have a full-blown affair. That would be too goddamn tiring. Virtual chatting had always been peaceful, calm, straightforward. He was just talking for fuck’s sake. But he did want to see Nadine Muhammad’s buxomness if only to prove to himself he could capture a young big-breasted green-eyed beauty. 

His palms pulsated with a fury he’d never experienced. There was nothing to deposit into the toilet bowl, thank god, but he still needed to shower, put on his clothes and make himself presentable for his wife. He had three and a half minutes to do this and he needed to make a decision. 

Why the hell was life so stressful? 

“So, 3pm at Café Ulterior ya?” 

It would be so easy for him to type back “ya.” Just two letters. 

But he wasn’t ready. Not yet. 

He got up from the toilet seat, looked down into the toilet bowl and saw his reflection in the clear water. His face appeared small and alien as though he had transformed into a cat. He blinked and looked at his reflection again. He saw the same image. When he was first getting to know his wife, he’d taken her to a lake by his apartment and they’d sat by the banks of the clear tranquil water, both staring at their reflected shadows on the lake’s surface. Then she’d looked into his eyes with such affection he wanted to cry. She asked, “What’s your best memory in life?” No one had ever requested this kind of information from him. It made him uncomfortable, shy, curious. He wanted to reply, as if his entire soul was begging for this moment. She kept staring at him. He felt like the only person in Kuala Lumpur, next to her. He felt, for the first time in his life, that he belonged on this earth. The wind blew in his face. It carried a nice smell of grass and flowers. The moon was huge and pregnant. Its light coloured the surface of the water and made it an otherworldly silver. He heard his wife breathing quietly beside him and it was the most beautiful sound he’d heard. “This will be my best memory in life,” he said and he meant it. He glared at himself in the toilet bowl water and realised it was still true. Nothing in his life had matched that memory. 

His wife’s laughter from behind the bathroom door startled him. She must be watching her standup comedy skits on YouTube. He remembered the days when observing her from the kitchen counter while she sipped coffee and laughed at the laptop filled him with pleasure. It was a strange, distant time. Another life, almost. 

Almost. 

She was still there. Giggling at her laptop. She was just a few steps away, behind the wooden bathroom door he’d fixed himself when they first moved into their apartment. He was suddenly curious about what he’d find behind the door. It was silly. He felt ridiculous but he couldn’t stop wondering what he’d see if he turned the knob. Who would he find? His heart pounded like a machine gone mad. His hands trembled. Sweat dripped from his armpits down his thighs. He was naked. But it didn’t matter. He needed to see her. He had to open the door. He turned the glistening silver knob. All he could think of was the shade of moon-silver on the surface of the lake two years ago when he’d felt like he’d made a friend for life. Was that friend still there?  

He flung the door open. 

Still there. She was still there. Laughing and snorting at her laptop, tears streaming down her pink cheeks in joy, in levity. Had she always been like this? Glowing and happy? 

She looked up from the screen, her smile present but shrinking. “Damien,” she said, keeping her smile in place. He appreciated this effort too. 

“Maliga,” Damien whispered, “Maliga, you’re here.” 

Maliga’s smile bloomed, as though she knew where his words were coming from. “Yes, I am, Damien. Are you ready to leave?” 

“Yes, Maliga, yes I’m ready.” 

She laughed and said, “Well, then you better put on some clothes.”        

The man who turned into a stone 

The day Singham turned into a stone he was surprised to discover he could still think. He had no real body, that was all. Everything else remained. Thoughts, feelings, hatreds, resentments, the usual stuff. 

It was maddening. 

Typically, in the days when he had a soft fleshy body equipped with legs and eyes, he simply walked out of the front door and looked. What did he look at? Oh, all sorts of things, but mainly women. His girlfriend Meena didn’t like that of course and one could argue that Singham was a stone today because of his body. It made him do things that got him into trouble. Looking is just looking, no? But his girlfriend didn’t think so. He was pretty sure now, especially since he’d had days existing as an inanimate object and therefore had been blessed or cursed with lots of time to think, that Meena was the one who put him into his current condition. 

Don’t mess about with women’s wrath. It’s an actual thing, his father taught him on nights his mother screamed at the ceiling, accusing her husband of philandering. Philandering was such a confusing and mysterious word to Singham that he spent his whole life trying to understand it. It’s an overblown concept, frankly speaking. And women expect too much. 

You see, all Singham ever wanted was a simple life. Straightforward, you understand, Meena? That was the perfect instigation for her to yell. The words ‘simple life’ motivated her anger like a man motivated to ruin his life for the sake of lifelong research into philandering. 

A simple life to you, said Meena, means dashing away from the truth like it’s a poisonous plant, or a rat coming to strike you with its infected rat teeth. Basically, you want a life with no stones along the path, nothing that can trip you over. 

The woman, Singham could now see in his life as a stone, was clearly a looney. She attracted suffering, wanted problems, drew complications like a hawk bringing the rat in its beak, delivering to him all the wonderful diseases the rat has to offer. 

Singham found it strange he couldn’t turn to the left or to the right, couldn’t scratch his head or pick his nose. Typically, at this point in his horrendous self-reflection—enforced onto him in his life as a stone and certainly nothing he’d willingly enter in his life as a man—he’d be doing something with his hands and legs. There was nowhere to go in this state. 

This was hell, of course. 

He must have died even though from time to time, he saw flashes of Meena’s shadow on the wall behind the wall he was doomed to stare at, without sleep, every second, every minute, every hour of this blighted life. And if he saw that, she must have been alive and so must he unless he’d hallucinated her into existence. 

Singham, said Meena in the moments leading up to his conversion into a stone, you float around in your hallucinations and think you’re inhabiting the world. It’s true, you’re inhabiting a world, but it’s not a shared world. It’s yours and you keep it a secret from the people who love you the most. 

Singham had wanted to reply he didn’t actually think anyone loved him and whatever Meena thought was love was in fact obligatory care the way a human being cares for a bird that’s crashed out of its nest and has found itself stranded in a drain. But he let her speak. It was the quickest way to peace. He wanted a simple life. 

Singham, asked Meena, do you think life is meant to be smooth? That when problems come, the easiest way to deal with them is to click open a can of ice-cold Coca Cola and eat a bag of kerepek ubi? And then maybe procure an ego boost by getting a woman to like you and tell you you’re sexy? Because, believe me, out of that simple act of pleasure will come ten thousand more problems and the irony, Singham, is that you’re left buried under an avalanche of problems. An avalanche, my friend. Not looking closely at the problem in front of you brings you the gift of lots and lots of problems. You want that? 

No, Singham had wanted to say, I want you to shut up. 

But he didn’t have the will or the energy to go down the path of telling her to shut up. And since they were on the topic of irony, telling her to shut up would inspire her to open her mouth even more. 

In this moment as a stone, Singham wondered if his new condition was a blessing after all. As a stone, he didn’t have to speak, didn’t have to listen, and he couldn’t do anything and if he couldn’t do anything, he wouldn’t persist in pissing people—mainly Meena—off. The only problem in his life as a stone was his inability to scratch his arse. And the other pressing problem was the fact that he kept getting pushed into a corner of his own angular stoniness whenever he wanted to bail out of his internal horror movie. So, although he couldn’t move and that was great for stopping him from making mistakes, he was also trapped. He was too scared to pray for his re-transformation into a human being because that could mean falling back into a place of problems and then being forced to study them like a goddamn math puzzle, Meena looming over him, watching. 

I’m not your enemy, Meena said, I’m a woman in love and I’m showing you how you’re hurting yourself and the people around you. 

What hurt? Singham didn’t dare to ask but Meena answered anyway. 

Life is not supposed to be perfect, Meena said, when difficulties come, we don’t run away from them, we run towards them. And solve them. When things in your relationship become unpleasant, you don’t sneak out of the house and find temporary superficial relief in random strangers. You face the person you’re with and settle the issue. Don’t you see this is where beauty is? This is the exact spot of freedom. 

What Singham did see was that he hated her life philosophies. Hated with a passion when she spoke about living and living well, about living at all. When they first started dating, she wasn’t such a motor mouth. Life was easy. My god, life was so damn easy! They laughed, they ate, they went to the movies, they baked cupcakes, they hung out at waterfalls, took picnics at the foot of their favourite mountain. 

And then the problems started. 

And the problems started, she said, because you are running away. 

Running away from what? 

Here you are, Meena said, let me spell it out for you. You’re not going to like it, Meena said, but I’m not a liar and I don’t like living in lies: you think too highly of yourself, you think you’re some kind of high and mighty god who’s not supposed to make mistakes and when you make mistakes you can’t forgive yourself and you immediately start to think you’re rotten and you hate the pain so much you leap out of it into the next high and the next high is more important to you than what you have here and I was once one of your highs but when I started speaking truths it caused more pain and you wanted to run away from me too so you went out to women who would tell you nice things about yourself so you wouldn’t have to feel rotten when actually the way out of feeling rotten is to accept that you’re a human being who makes mistakes and you have flaws and it’s okay and you just have to be nice to yourself and accept them and know that you’re supposed to have flaws as a person and that doesn’t make you a bad person but you insist on thinking that having flaws is the direct equation of rottenness and so when problems come you think you don’t have the ability to solve them because you prohibited yourself from having flaws since you think you have to be perfect and so you’re not supposed to have problems in the first place which then makes you believe you’re trapped in your problems and you have no choice but to run away from them and try to soothe yourself in what feels pleasant but nobody learns anything from pleasant experiences, unfortunately Singham, the real lessons are learned from the painful problems you’re so desperate to run away from but the irony, again, is that these problems are waiting for you to solve them because this will give you peace and isn’t that what you really want, Singham, peace and love and joy and all that good hippie stuff which is not really hippie stuff but real life stuff and where the hot centre of life is. 

He’d thought she’d gone mad. Screw loose. Proper loco. A machine with terrible wiring.  

When he began to zone out, she tried her other tactic. 

She started shouting words of encouragement in an acrid tone. In the past, he’d found it sexy. Now it simply infuriated him. 

Own up! Be here! Don’t abandon yourself! 

She was a fucking military leader. 

He wanted out. 

And he got it, didn’t he? 

He’d turned into a stone. 

Now, the real question plaguing him was: was it better to remain as a stone or plead for his return to humanhood? 

If he got his body back, at least he could run. He could jump, hop, somersault and tumble. He could make his escape from Meena and find another woman. He had options. It’s true, at one point in his life as a human being, he really, truly, madly wanted Meena and a life with her, filled with lilies (her favourite flower), chocolate cake (her favourite cake) and tom yum soup (her favourite soup), but that dream had long passed and what they were left with was, as Meena put it, the raw bare truth and a bagful of problems that needed solving. 

A shadow flits across the wall behind the wall Singham is condemned to stare at if remains as he is. From the length and volume of the hair, he knows it’s her. Who else could it be? He’s in love with her shadow, he admits. Heat surges in the middle of his granite torso. Her shadow could be the shadow of any other woman and the wall could be any other wall. What in this godforsaken world made one thing different from the other? 

The heat in his stoney stomach (if it can be called that) becomes a fire. Maybe his fate as a stone is to implode in a surge of heat and flames. How would he know? He didn’t turn himself into a stone. She did it, he’s pretty sure of that. Is she the god he needs to pray to if he wants to return to his human form? That’s probably true, isn’t it? Look at her shadow. Isn’t there some gloss of gold running through it? Or is that his stoney vision? The vision brought to him while stoned. Is she any different, that’s what he’s desperate to know now, than any of the other women and is his life as a stone actually worse than his life as a person? 

The ultimate problem in life, Singham wants to tell Meena as though he has finally cracked the code she invented, is in choosing. How do you choose, Meena, and how do you know if it’s the right choice? 

As if she hears his stoney voice, the shadow on the wall pauses. Clicking of heels. The clicking gets louder and louder. It gets so loud he wishes he has hands to place over his non-existent ears. He doesn’t know how he’s taking in these sensory moments. But then again, he doesn’t know how a man can suddenly turn into a stone. 

She’s coming towards him. She has a full bonfire in her eyes. He hopes she has marshmallows in her hands. Is that hatred or love on her face? 

He lost the ability to discern that quite some time ago, he admits. 

What makes one thing better than the other? What makes one woman worse than the other? What makes one form superior to the other? 

Aren’t they all the bloody same? 

What’s the point in choosing, and if he chooses this, why would he want to risk crying (not that he would ever stoop to crying) over the other thing he didn’t choose? 

Living as a stone is— how the hell can he even describe it? 

No one in this universe knows, surely. But Meena, his military boss bitch woman, the woman who won’t shut up, the woman with an overgrown inner Oprah so comfortable inside her she’s doing backflips, this woman has given him the gift of subsisting as a stone. 

She stands in front of him. “I didn’t turn you into a stone,” she says with her eyes. This must be how humans communicate with stones. 

“If not you then who?” He has no eyes to speak so he has to rely solely on his will. 

“Take a good hard look, stony Singham, take a good long hard look at yourself. You chose everything yourself. Don’t you see it? You have been choosing and rejecting your own choices like a baby takes in food and spits it out again. If you had the courage to admit what you chose and then accept it, you won’t think another human being has the power to turn you into a stone.  Perfection isn’t power, Singham. Power is the ability and the guts to own what’s yours, both the dirt and the gold. In fact, you can only see your own gold once you see the dirt around it.” 

Here she is again, doing what she does best, preaching like a fucking self-help Guru. 

“Go into the storeroom, Meena, and bring the hammer. Then I want you to do me and yourself a favour. Smash me up nice and good. Destroy me into a pile of pieces. And yes, that’s my choice.” 

Meena doesn’t move. She doesn’t blink. Who knows if she’s even breathing, maybe she has turned into a stone too. He’ll have a stone companion. God no! Why can’t he be free of this woman? It wasn’t enough to be trapped with her in humanhood, he’d have to be stuck with her as a stone too. The thought is unbearable. It’s the worst thought he’s had, his first real problem since he became a stone. 

Heat travels fast throughout his rigid body. It expands. He feels it as a fire that wants. A pure fire of wanting. He wants to get out. He longs to step out of mineral form just so he can walk to the storeroom and collect the hammer from his toolbox. His yearning grows big and strong. He hasn’t wanted something this badly his entire life, as man or stone. He wants to soar out of himself. 

He wants to get going. 

It happens so quickly, and in the repeated retelling of the story of his metamorphosis, Singham drags this moment out so his listeners can really inhabit his transformation. 

“My will was so huge you see,” he says to a circle of men and women who have come to him to hear about the spectacular possibility of moving from one form to another, “and I knew exactly what I wanted. I wanted that hammer. And I knew Meena wasn’t going to get it for me. She’d had enough. It was her choice, anyway. It was her right.” 

His audience gaze at him, waiting to hear the ending of this bizarre tale. The tale began to circulate in town a few weeks after Singham’s re-transformation. And then the people started coming. He was forced to open up. Forced into fame, he jokes with Meena over dinner. 

“The precise moment I broke out of my stone form was the moment I realised I didn’t need the hammer. I didn’t need Meena and I didn’t need the hammer. I had done it all myself. With my own will. I chose to break out of the stone and I did it. That was the thing I needed to see to be free. It was the best rush of my life, so much better than moving on to the next thing that I just wanted to stay there. You know what’s the funniest thing?” 

A few people shake their heads. 

“I’ll tell you. The funniest thing is that when I got my feet back, the feeling of using my will was so delicious I wanted to stay put. Didn’t want to move anywhere. Now that I had feet, I wanted to stay in place like a stone. You see, when you use your will from the bottom of your heart and you really believe in your heart with every heartbeat you’ve been given, you don’t need to go anywhere. You’re exactly where you want to be. You chose, you see. And when you feel the heat of your choice, the energy, the lifeforce in that, you feel real power and when you feel real power, you don’t want to go anywhere else. You’re free.” 

Everyone claps. Some have tears in their eyes. One woman shouts, “Will you ever want to go back to being a stone?” 

Some people laugh. A man says, “Why would he want to? He knows how to be in his stonehood even as a man. He uses his will. Didn’t you hear anything he said?” 

“Tsk. Tsk,” another man says, “no need to be rude. The big question everyone has is, what happened to Meena?” 

Singham smiles. A few people smile along with him. 

“It’s true,” Singham replies, “it’s very true I could have chosen another woman and it would have been fine too but I chose her and the reason I chose her was because I’d already chosen her, you see, and all I had to do was accept my choice. People ask me how to be happy. I tell them this: happiness comes when you choose what you have.” 

Clapping, whistles, shouts of appreciation. 

Singham gets up from his chair. “No need for the applause. Just think about what I’ve said and maybe you’ll break out of your own stones too.” 

Even as he says it, Singham realises what a preacher he has become. He remembers the days when he hated the preacher in Meena. A smile forms on his lips. He starts to laugh and all he can think about is rushing back to Meena to tell her what a whiny little preacher he has become.