Brownie | by Neha Tayshete

Even though it lashes outside your window full throated and magnificent, there is still other stuff to engage you than to stand still by the window and breathe in the rain.

Your blue coloured false ceiling, for example, while still maintaining that perception of space and sky your fancy interior designer promised you, is now leaking in several places.

I watch you, you search for plastic soup containers of old Chinese delivery restaurants and strategically place them, in a frenzied dance to the beat of a rain you don’t even hear.

And I think to tell you a story.

Not the story I tell you now though. That is an insipid, listless and dull story.

Which I recount now for you could bear to hear it only when you, beset by rain and plastic Chinese soup bowls, aren’t hearing it at all.

Yet it must be told nonetheless. For the story I am going to tell you, is of another story.

This other story is so beautiful the rain envies it.

I wrote this other story an afternoon that seems in the biases of my memory at least, sunny and cheerful. And I sat simply, before me pen, paper.

And I wrote…

 

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I wrote of a tiny brown dog with shaggy ears and droopy eyes. A dog that’d tug on your quilt to wake you up. When confused, he would snuck his tiny brown head at an angle, when you went near him he would bound at you with all the happiness in the world and when you left, he would place his head between his front paws and whimper.

I wrote possessed till you could feel that little dog in your arms and he would always, always feel to you very fuzzy and very warm.

And here my story stared at me from the confines of my page and coughed softly, the first hesitant traces of Life.

And then, brashly, this story leapt off its pages and bounded off.

And I stared solemnly.

So many before me have tried to write a story that infuses meaning or better yet some feeling. Some stories turn maudlin in this attempt and when that first reader approaches it, the story thrusts itself as far as possible into the paper it is typed out on and fidgets yet poses flirtatiously, waiting for the reaction. And when there is unintentional laughter or worse, indifference, the story is frightened and withdraws deep into the paper it is etched on, till it seeps into the paper like dried ink and all that is left is marks on a paper that spell words but no meaning.

Not all stories are treated with such cruelty though. Some stories fare better. They get a reaction of some sort and they leap from the confines of the page and crave to come alive. But something comes in their way. Perhaps a blue leaking ceiling, who knows. And while they still touch a reader at any level, while a reader(it’s ok if it’s only one reader, really it is) beholds the story and  thinks of it as sentient, the story leaps and struggles more. But before the birthing, the reader has forgotten the story and has turned the page and the story is trapped forever in the page, half alive.

And there is a third kind of story. A story like no other. This story, mine once, has escaped and come alive. So I watch it till runs out the door and I can see it no more.

I sleep with my head on the desk.

When I rouse, a man in a kaftan stares at me with obvious pity.

 

“What kind of story is this? You only describe a dog. It is not a story at all. Nothing happens.”

Is something meant to happen, I wonder. I mean nothing’s ever happened to me so far, so…

“The dog must do something. Something exciting” Kaftan man says.

“I’ll tell you. Have the dog go on an expedition of some sort. Maybe to space.”

I am infinitely glad my story has grown a Life and run away so it is not here to listen to this.

To tell a story it is not a story. To call it a bastard like that. The Gods of poetry, inspiration and pan rasna flavoured hookah did not possess me so some kaftan wearing man could call my story a bastard.

I have a sardonic reply all sharpened up in my head like a pencil, but suddenly I stop cold.

The story is by the doorstep.

“I came by to just say hello,” Story tells me amiably, with a bright smile.

“Hello,” I say hurriedly, “Did you just come in? Did you, er , hear anything?”

“No” But the smile falters. “Should I have?”

See, stories are like that. Very insecure, fragile creatures.

The Kaftan man enthusiastically half begins. And I know what must be done…

 

 

I know nothing of space. This is something I realize only when the paper and pen lies before me. I do not know how one makes a space ship, more importantly, I do not know where one goes in it. It seems a little pointless to me, to travel so far to ultimately reach emptiness, is not there much of that unexplored right here, in Kaftan Man’s head for example. Also I am too bored to bother with Wikipedia right now.

So I wonder, what could a wonderful and tiny dog do since clearly him being tiny and wonderful and full of waggy, shaggy love was not enough? And so I thought if I was a dog, was perfect like that, all I would ever want would be mangoes. So I concocted a little story of the dog stealing mangoes from a tree. But there too research impeded me- I did not know of opposable thumbs and whatnot and how dogs would climb trees etc. So instead I described the mangoes- all ripe and a cheerful happy colour and how cool and succulent they tasted- the taste of summer. And in the end I almost wrote the dog and the mangoes lived happily ever after. But that was silly and I had just implied that doggie found the mangoes instead.

“You are an oblivious little fool.”

I am okay with a criticism like that really. As long as I am not asked to explain I am okay with anything.

“How silly must a man be to not realize his own genius. It’s such brilliance that you do not realize yourself the importance of this story. It’s not a story, it’s the new coming of the Christ.”

“Are you sure? You just called it a bastard a while ago.”

“I am a fool too. Just a far, far less interesting one than you. I could never even a dip a pen in ink the way you’ve written your story. This is the story that will change the world. That will teach men to love, to shun everything that’s wrong.”

It happened very quickly. Streams of men collected outside, but together, bound by something. Is the eliciting of feeling really so potent, so startling?

We walked for forever. Kaftan man kept talking to me- telling me of things, of ages and importance. But I drowned him out and breathed in instead the teams of humanity who walked with me, imbued with purpose and feeling. Like I breathed in rain.

We stopped by a very large house which housed only one man. The crowd gathered and carved him out with knifes and sticks and all sorts of things. By the seventeenth knife he was already dead. But there were too many people and they all felt imbued with purpose and contribution so they all attacked his corpse with a knife in a row, like a line of obedient school children.

I did not mind the butchering, maybe a bit in that it was messy and too real for my liking, but when the corpse too had been killed by the gatherers, the gatherers dispersed.

“Don’t you see” Kaftan man said, in a voice that implied I had disappointed him again in my incomprehension of this turn of events.

“Your story has sparked a revolution- that dog who stole the mangoes. Clearly you were alluding to that fascist, thief of an asshole who lives in his little palace and who has subjugated us commoners and he just plain needed to die. This is a modern day Bastilles story.”

I stare at him for a while.

“At a subconscious level I am sure this is what you meant by the dog who stole mangoes.”

Maybe I did.

Darling, let me tell you why people write. Shut themselves in a room and harness that which is theirs and is lonely and often dark and write or draw or make music. So when, after the toil, they hear the first strains of melody or a verse of poetry that lashes in their head like rain with perfect symmetry- they can stand back and tell themselves that they have created something beautiful. That are capable of creating beauty and so they are not useless, random specks floating in nihilistic space at all.

So when I look at the content of murder still fresh on Kaftan man’s face, I am proud of my creation. At it meaning something to so many people that it‘d inspire murder like that. And I am sure subconsciously that I intended the dog and the mangoes as a metaphor for fascist bastard.

Only when I am in your arms weeks later, and you are looking at me with awe “are you really the one who wrote the story that led finally to our liberation from the fascist monster?” that I have let my guard down from my own awareness and comfortable self lying to realize that I do not even know what fascist really exactly means. And no, not even subconsciously…

 

It is only when the rain ceases that you are given some respite. You look at me again and there is still awe in your gaze.

“I am sorry darling” you are saying, all frazzled by the inconvenience of the rain, “I was so occupied with the damn ceiling leak. Were you telling me something?”

I created something beautiful once and something alive. So alive a man had to die for it to be born.  Turns out I did not create anything quite so momentous really, it was an accident. But you are looking at me with such awe and respect. You are looking at me like I matter.

“Nothing important, darling. I was only telling you how important it was for the fascist bastard to die and how glad I am, as an artist to be able to effectuate it.”