A Letter to His Majesty

SEPTEMBER 1939
3rd INDIAN ARTILLERY BRIGADE, CALCUTTA
We have been stationed here a while. Long enough for me who is not a man of letters, or pithy reminiscences, to crave the lost comfort of fog and fireplaces, the familiar, filial, and appetising scents of a hearth replaced by the oppressive gunpowder-and-metal foulness of howitzers. They have modelled this city after Home, but it is as far from my home as these thousands of fresh boys, nestlings, being shipped off to fight in a War they have no stake in, crossing forbidden waters, are from theirs.
Forgive my rambling. My time is drawing to a close, in a city of lost men I cannot recognise, and I feel I have much to say and naught but these last few hours to say it. Yet I must do my duty first.  I feel I must warn Your Majesty. A spectre is haunting the Empire. The spectre of Death.
It is not the War, or not just the War: I mean that our time has ended, though all of us may not know it yet. We are but Flying Dutchmen.
That is not idle metaphor. I believe that this spectre is following me, His only reason for not claiming me sooner being to savour my prolonged torment. He thrives on yearning and memories and tears and lost causes as much as on myths and legends and superstition. And I believe He has already claimed several of my men and brothers, though we, blind as we are, did not see it at the time.
I only now wait for Him to arrive, so that I might ask Him His Name, and if He does not answer me I shall scream, "Very well, Demon: then say my name and drag me to Hell" and He shall.
I apologise if it seems that I am wasting your time, or that you have trusted command of your forces to a raving madman (I have killed with and without cause, but never as a madman- this you must believe). But I sit here, now, in my bare alien quarters with only the light of a candle and the chirp of crickets, painful memories, the scratch of my pen and an unfamiliar, uncomfortable rustling for company, to report only what I believe- know- to be true, as is my duty, and to you directly because it is your misfortune to bear the crown and thus, despite all the protection we can offer, to stand at the gates when the time comes.
As is your sacred duty.
We created this spectre; we may have done it in Plassey or in Waziristan or in this very city, in May.
 Poor imitation of home it may be but in desperate times you relish whatever small comfort you can extract: perhaps from a stroll through the corridors of this still fledgling City, or the riverside. Buoyed by the announcement of the new Socialist congregation under one of their native sons (who I believe shall be confined soon), there was unrest, but not enough that I would not steal a chance to gauge how unsafe the city had become in the evening, for us and for them. A few months later death from the skies would ensure that.
A few paces out from the river I came upon what seemed to be a theatrical performance on the streets; the congregation was not big enough for the local Constabulary to notice. My eyes were drawn to what I presumed was a Bengali family: husband, wife and young son, dressed in finery and thus conspicuous in their choice of company, time, and place, despite the assertion that revolution does not follow the maxim of class. I had seen far too many instances to the contrary to believe in this: even the rebels and politicians of the higher classes adopt the vestments of the lower ones in a futile attempt at unity (which works no better than segregation: we tried both and failed). I followed them at a distance, being possessed by a wild curiosity; maybe the morbid and fatal interest one has in the instruments of his own failure.
The play began, stirring the crowd, perhaps shaping their spirits: zeitgeist, as the krauts would call it. The players shouted rhetoric, the crowd answered in kind. There were no guttural screams, or cheers, or bold declarations, as I had witnessed elsewhere, and it was all the more terrifying for it. I watched as they killed us.
Later, when the butchering was over, and the crowd had disappeared, only the conspicuous trinity was there, waiting for me. Evening had seeped into night, and in that mostly calm yet only very slightly troubled, mostly silent yet only very slightly whispering breeze, and in the glow of buildings that did not belong here, I could see myself in a clarity that I had been denied before: as a terrifying yet pathetic being from another world.
They were waiting to deny me, or perhaps to welcome me into their bosom. I do not remember the order in which I killed them then, in my mind, or even if I did: perhaps the boy knew where to strike, and knocked the gun out of my hand, and saved his family; perhaps he joined them in oblivion or a better land. Or perhaps he knelt among their bodies, weeping at the violation of his world.
I watched them leave. I already knew where they would go. And the streets were empty, but for the buildings and the owls and the bats.
And the spectre has been following me since that night. Sometimes it whispers the names of murdered dissidents and denied orphans who do not exist merely in my mind. It tells me of how this edifice raised on the soil of sacrifice and suffering is crumbling. But I am not the only one who is guilty, or with blood on his hands. And so I believe that this spectre, or their own spectres, has claimed so many of my brothers and my men. Soon it- they- will claim us all. Even you, Your Majesty- especially you. God save you.
I hope this reaches you. My night is tonight, and so I made this final effort to collect myself, my thoughts, and do my duty. There is much left to say, but the time has not been granted us. The night has grown quieter, the crickets have silenced their chirping in anticipation, and we, the bastard children of giants who dared to stand on their shoulders, shall now go to sleep.

The rustling grows louder. In distinctive beats, like the flapping of wings. Perhaps it is nothing more than a furry, fickle pest stuck in some corner of this empty room. It does not matter.
All that remains for me now is to blow out the candle.
It has been an honour.
I remain, your most faithful servant,
Major Joseph Chillingworth.

Wood

It usually goes like this: I imagine all the people, straddling the bus-seats in peace, riding to their prizes like veritable Nimrods, legendary huntsmen of yore, and woe be to those who find the other meaning of the word more fitting for the flock. They are, each of them, prophets and oracles in their foresight, having armed themselves for they can’t deny that the prize may never fulfil them, as M menacingly sings to 007 just as the FM station cheekily reminds this flock of 70-odd Orions. They, each of them, every single day, endure and survive the wiles of Our Lord Yog-Shoggoth who shall one day be displaced. And like them, as I imagine, I travel upstream, to mount the much vaunted seats of wood most finely varnished (in this world, unlike in many others), and learn, imbibe, be inspired by the polished craft and degenerate art of the trade, the foxtrot of puppets. Call me Sashi, call me Ishmael, call me what you will, but call our conductor Herzog as he guides us upstream through and beyond the wrath of Yog. Aboard the bus I imagine infomercial screens that lend to our apparent quotidian odyssey a sense of the Cosmic: on this day Pete Best shot Richard Starkey in broad daylight and by the will of the Throne became The Drummer, the most silent and shadowy and deadly of the four enforcers of her Music Regiment; on this day, Chacha woke up to a New Dawn minus the Throne but still subservient to the Resistance, for Yog must be overthrown. You are special for being born on this day; you are mundane for you have been denied all of these other things that happened on this day. Nevertheless you are Orion, on the Hunt for Varnished Wood, and you belong to the World. As the Omnibus, Pequod 101, moves past the New Gates of the Police Station (bright airy music playing at the crossings) we read, as we do every day, the inscription on those Gates: “koro snan nobodhara jole”, and we glimpse, in the distance, the sea that now fills the crater upon which there was Land once, and a Fortress of Commerce, and the sea swells like Hokusai on Coke, and a common thought sweeps through the Hunter Collective: “Oh Shit, the Maderchods will rise again today,” and as commuters in this city, Dis city, they are prepared for assault. 
Yet, I imagine, I embark hurriedly at the Fourth Gate, for beyond lies shelter, varnished wood, and the promise of tools of vindication and vengeance and warm companionship and, say it already, a better life. 
I imagine, and then I board the bus. And I look around, but there isn’t a chair.           

Yes Father

 “- Eaten well,” he finishes.

Terrified faces. Shaking hands. Foul smells spoiling sweet aromas of gourmet meal. First victory.

As the words finally escape his mouth he knows that he has created legend.  A myth that is already writ large on these faces that are as clear to him in the darkness as the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. As clear as the Narrows, as the mad, as the poor, are not to these people.

He allows himself a moment of gloating, a moment to soak in his victory. He is no poet, as his friend and father back in the Mansion would attest, and perhaps later, Bards and Balladeers and Sensationalists shall embellish his Legend. For now, he shall fall back on the clichés. On his many vulgarities.

It is a Chilling thought.

He is but one of them. He has his Mansion. But he has journeyed to the depths of his Palace, to an altogether different kind of depravity from theirs. The only depths they have plumbed: decadence. 

Resting on their gilded table, counting down the time, sweat heavy on his brow under the stuffiness of his cowl despite the unearthly chill in the room, he makes his excuses, he makes his penance. 

Nice chandelier.

Pretty plates.

Tempting food. Sharp teeth, finely honed over the ages.

“But your feast is nearly over.” 

Finely stained trousers.

And in that twilight moment of his birth, before he puts out the candle, he thinks, just once, of legacy. A long line, one of the oldest con-jobs in the world, and not philanthropy- that is their word. No, he knows, he asserts, that he is no champion,

That

She is no-one’s saviour. She is not offering emancipation. Salvation. She is here to help. Disregard circumstances of birth, Disregard Parity of Purchasing Power, Disregard Equitable Distribution, Disregard the Iron Heels: She is here, simply, to take back what was plundered. 

This city. Its wealth. Its spirit. 

This Haven of Goats that have, for far too long, had wolves living among them. 

The cowl rests uneasy on her head, and thus its likeness to a Crown makes her uncomfortable. As she climbs through the window, as the room is plunged into darkness, as the smoke becomes a shroud she thinks of the years of preparation and the months of planning that it took to come here. 

All of which culminated in throwing the smoke bomb, a swift jerk of the hand, in breaking the window, the tinkling of glass, in moving through the tiny mirrors darkly. 

Who benefits? Who is she helping? Who, in her arrogance, has she forgotten? They do not need saving, but do they need, or want, her help? 

Does little Jason from the Narrows need or want the secret hand of a cloaked beneficiary, the little Jasons of the stolen tyres and the venom pellets whom generations of her forebears have failed to show anything but crowbars and Death?

Is she not the one wearing the cape?

No higher purpose. Maybe just the thrill. The terrified faces. The mixed aromas. The stained trousers. The satisfaction of creating legend.

Fulfilling the circle.

As she lands on the table, and through the darkness sees clearly their faces, the thoughts clear, to be replaced by one single word of power and purpose. The cowl is no longer a crown or a twisted reflection of their ugliness, but an ancient, beautiful face from beneath the ground, a comfort; the cape is now a swirling mass of terror, unfurled.

Sweat drips from her brows. “Ladies, gentlemen,” She begins. “You have-“

When she finishes, there will be Legend.

        

Azmaish-e-Azrael

This is a continuation. This is also a beginning. Perhaps this is an ending.

The Majlis-al-Malaikah has not prepared him, Azryel, as it shall not prepare you, for the Majlis-al-Djinn, the smokeless haze, the frigid yet ardourous heat, the multiplicity of voices birthing babble, the profusion of colours creating epilepsies. The Malaks are structured, orderly, bound and with purpose; not so the Djinns, who revel perhaps like degenerates, not befitting their stature, in Freedom. And why should they not, for Allah the Merciful has, in his boundless wisdom and infinite justice, granted them this as he has granted Iblis a deferred punishment. For this they exalt Allah, as is their duty, unlike the Sons of Adam who have forgotten. Perhaps the Djinni is greater than the insaan.

It is what they first ask Azryel upon his coming to the cave, a question perhaps rhetorical. “Is the fire greater than the clay, Ashrin?

“Is it not the Fire that moulds the Clay and births the Light?”

Azryel seeks not the speaker, for they are all speakers, and he is not surprised at such a greeting, for he has received far stranger ones, but he is shocked at the splendour of the Majlis, an Earthly yet ethereal splendour, a splendour unlike that of his own kind or any he has seen among humans.

“Is your kind the Malak, Ashrin? Do you not bear the Cross of St. Dumas? Are you not the one who broke the Bane of the Demon, are you not a desecration of the name of Holy Azrael, who is sworn not to protect, only to avenge?”

“There is no plot, Djinn. We are bound yes, but if there is a plot we do not know it. Cease your tongue and halt your words, for they are unduly strong if not blasphemous.” Azryel regains his composure; he must now act like the envoy, as he has been appointed. “But to answer your question, I am not him; he is dead and he has been claimed, as has been his successor. Dumas is not and never will be a saint, perhaps fortune is his.”

“You are of the bomb, yes- in one of the Worlds we see there are no bombs.”

 Perhaps the Djinn are greater than men, and perhaps Iblis was not the only one of his kind: the only whisperer, the only tempter. Do his sins reflect upon all of his kind, are sins shared, like Fard, like the prayers at a funeral? Can the One absolve the Many, then? And is this just as true for the Light as it is for the Clay and the Fire, though they be bound and not immortal beyond their purpose?

Has Azryel doomed all Malaikah?

“I have come to see these worlds, Djinn. To inspect the borders of The Lady’s jurisdiction.” Azryel is aware of his inexperience, unsure of his words, he is afraid that the Djinn will notice; and if experience were indeed his, he would not have expected otherwise.

“Your doubts are valid, Our Little Six-Winged Archangel: What use be of Malaks and Ifrits in this world of Dark Knight Demons and Sun Gods of Steel? Only Allah the All-Powerful has any jurisdiction here, and He does not truly require enforcers. And indeed, is there any World where this is not so? For they exist in all, for as a human once said, it would be necessary to invent them if they did not exist.”

He cannot condemn their blasphemy, for that would make him a hypocrite: has he not, just now, invoked the Lady’s name? What manner of jurisdiction does she exactly have in this or any World? How far beneath Allah is she? For she exists even in paradise.

“This is not an inspection, young one: This is a test. This is a baptism. We will show you the worlds, Ashrin, and you must choose your favours after.”

And they show him the worlds, as multitudinous as their voices, as eclectic as a congregation of kafir illuminators, infinite worlds where the quotidian blends with the surreal in thin slivers forming a larger whole with a pattern that he is sure is exclusive only to him, only for his eyes, and this proves that he is still more admi than Malak, for he sees worlds in which Osman’s calling is of the World and not of the Ideal and they move him, affect him, crush him as they should not, Worlds in which the Valley stood and the Lane did not go crooked, and the call did not come for Osman; worlds which are plain but have logic and make sense and worlds which are absurd but have a beginning and an end and not just a middle; Worlds where the Plot is Real.

And he burns, and he stands, as the Djinn say, “Find your purpose, Archangel: Is it Death? Is it just for you to affirm your presence in Arcadia? For you are the one who is not merely to be a Malak

“You are the one who must ask if it were more difficult for Allah to create you and create us than to create Jannah. We exalt his name, and the Children have forgotten, but is it your charge to tread the middle ground?

“Is this a test, Ashrin, or is this temptation; Are we Iblis, or are we Djinn; Are we One, or Are we many; Are we all joined in our sins, or holy in our shared innocence? Is it all the same?”

Ashrin is ready to find the Plot, and he knows that one day he, or the Lady, or Allah, must claim the Dark Knights and the Sun Gods. Ashrin’s Buraq, outside the cave, neighs, whether out of impatience or fear or anger he does not yet know. But he cannot let himself be abandoned by his steed, for then he might lose the road. Yet he still burns. There is a question that is not rhetorical, one question between him and blasphemous, decadent freedom, or perhaps true Malakhood.

“And so Ashrin, Azryel, Azrael,

“Malak ul-Maut:

“Which of His favours do you deny?”

A Subtler Harlequin

See

Allegories jostling for space in cramped four-square panels; Our Maroon Mountebank, bereft of conundrums, shimmying through the parade to murder inane imagery. Whisked out of existence, toiling in a no less brimful bountiful void, mourning not so much their lack of being as their loss of place in the cavalcade: figures pictures metaphors meaning non-meaning.

Arlecchino serves Comedy and Faith and Reason. In a flurry of red black and steel he absolves lustrates disinfects (like pages from the diaries of absent friends). Skill and grace over coarse vulgar erudition, beautiful beautiful improvisation and sublime craft over bland base brutish art: his blade butchers and then subsumes its unfortunate draftees, swift furious arctrails tinged with crimson and disobedient arclings refusing their parents' love disregarding their sacrifice running away from home slashing air.

So hear

The swish of ungrateful arclings fleeing from burdens and baggage refusing life, the Empyrean ur-sound of a creased costume and bent Angelic limbs, the Diabolical un-sound of allegories non-existing, the drip drip drip of adrenaline and ink and perforated-pimple juice. The colours coalesce to achieve auditory sublimity, the sounds are important still secondary to the craft of picture-cleansing picture-making.

Arlecchino twirls and waltzs and slashes in glorious euphoric non-conformity so that red and black are no longer just combatants in a Punch and Judy World, or statements of uncreation, but heralds of a new simpler subtler experience-in-extension. Hamelin tunes seducing eyes appraising innamorata.

Thus feel

The wholeness of the madrigal: the Hamelin tunes, the ur- and un-sounds. The Creation of an Equal yet Greater Music. The death and defiance of Our Other Players. And then, yes, the break in Arlecchino's step accorded by yes the neverattainment of Columbine Harsh Columbine catalyst trigerring transformation into all-too-familiar Pierrot (staring with terrified eyes at soap and consumerism) destroying sync symphony causing image-survivors to rebel regroup escape and turn the tide.

Pierrot who is Arlecchino suffering epiphany, the near-orgasm of Space-end. Seeking recourse in the vulgarity of art, seeking subtlety in coarseness, until Arlecchino loosens himself into the throes of a demented phoenix-resurgence: having broken his waltz he fixes his trot and twirls slashes twirls yet again in indiscriminate Arcadian autonomy and in his ascension dancing himself into and further from: and all the while seeking seeking seeking a finer sense a swifter hand a subtler Harlequin.

75

Ma, amidst benign golden stalks granting the splendour of a life un-lived for life unearthed from the bowels of a Starcoach tainted yet aglow in the history of a million dead souls, shewing, bestowing, teaching compassion in a world wrapped in sacred, unassailable despondency: beneath the wrapper the beauty of benign golden stalks, deeper, deeper Gaia at work nurturing: worms granting life, ants granting life, the departed granting life, all united in Motherhood: I recall strength in the face of adversity. I recall unwavering compassion even for those who are not and can never be. Ma, I recall Brahms fading into hope.
Pa, tilling the salt of the Earth, gazing up, up, and away, above and beyond the Dome Despondent, into the jowls of Celeste, rendered monstrous and magnificent by unassuming, unconditional Star-sacrifice, seeking the measure of a man: the measure of a man forged in the post-mortem heat of a World absorbed. Pa, channeling Star-Mother and Star-Father, affirming the Last Child's place in the future history of billions of souls unforged, believing that a man can fly. Also that the capacity for humility is Gaia's greatest gift. 
I recall the rousing crescendo of the Valkyries' ride cut short, almost utterly extinguished by the majesty of Delibes spewing flowers and Billy Strayhorn threading them into a lovesome thing.
You, staring straight at the dome, denying, defying, wrecking the unassailable. Grasping unworthy hands, unfaltering, firm, and leading them to that one moment in space-time perhaps destined, perhaps random, altogether undeserved. Miles Davis celebrating his funny valentine? While in the space between seconds as we walk to that one moment a billion dead and unforged souls may cry of arrival, of vigorous reality slouching, slouching, slouching towards Bethlehem, You celebrate the irreality of freedom, and in accepting, acknowledging, sharing, uniting faults and flaws and frailties allow me, for that one fleeting moment, for that one undeserved piece of history crystallized, to be equal, to belong.
So that like everyone else, just like everyone else, we can strive.
For Tomorrow.