Human Void (Ikebana and Kansei)

“Ting-ti-ting, Ting-ti-ting, Ting-ti-ting, Seven o’clock … Good morningggggg…get up Mrs. Ikebanaaaaaaaa …the pink medicine and the herbal tea is waiting for you!!!”

Ting-ti-ting, Ting-ti-ting, Ting-ti-ting, Seven o’clock… Good morningggggg…get up Mrs. Ikebanaaaaaaaa …the pink medicine and the herbal tea is waiting for you!!!”

Ting-ti-ting, Ting-ti-ting, Ting-ti-ting, Seven o’clock … Good morningggggg…get up…Mrs. Ikebanaaaaaaaa …the pink medicine and the herbal tea is waiting for you!!!”
The specially devised alarm clock rang!

Barely in her senses, Ikebana shouted, “Kansei…shut that!” Her feeble voice could not shout further but Kansei knew it all! One word and all his sensory nerves were at work!

Ikebana was 72 and lived with her only espousal ‘Kansei’.

Ikebana slowly got up from the bed and drank her tea. She walked towards the balcony with the help of a walker. The rising skyscrapers blocked the blue water beauty of the Tokyo city. Outside the window Ikebana took a deep breath and returned to the living room. She opened her treasure chest and took out her old diary. The smudged blue ink and the jaded yellow paper were a metaphor to her wrinkles and freckles. Yet the mind’s eye and the diary’s heart had preserved the golden memories of the youthful days. Ikebana, her husband, her little daughter and the picture perfect life…

Ikebana’s husband ‘Michiko’ was a scientist and use to work with a Japan Research organization. His work kept him busy most of the times, but Ikebana never complained. At the age of 60, he died due to over exertion and a stressful life. Ikebana’s daughter decided to study aerospace engineering and moved to the U.S. She did not dislike her mother but she was neither fond of her. Ikebana yet maintained her equanimity and the strong willed lady lived her life alone ahead…

A tear rolled down Ikebana’s eyes as she read the last letter Michiko wrote her. It told her about his clandestine feelings towards her which he never expressed and yet felt so strongly…She closed the diary and kept it on the table besides the neatly arranged Tsutsuji flowers. Ikebana could see her reflection in it. She wiped her tears and smiled. She murmured to herself: ‘Kansei must have surely done that. Only he, after Michiko knows that those red flowers are my favorite’. Ikebana itself meant flower arrangement and even though the flowers in her were withering, Kansei tried his best to bring their fragrance back in her life. Ikebana’s display of feelings was like the arrangement of the Tsutsuji flowers. They were adorned to exhibit and yet she suffered the pain of the pluck!

Kansei had somewhere transformed her life. Her loneliness seemed to have vanished…
Just at that thought Kansei came and sat besides after cleaning the kitchen cabinet. He served her favorite cardamom tea along with her medicines. Ikebana smiled and started narrating her childhood instances to Kansei. When she laughed, Kansei laughed along, when she cried, Kansei cried along… Ikebana almost relived her childhood instances. And Kansei sure was quite a patient listener.

Hours passed by. It was 7pm now. Kansei got up to make dinner for Ikebana. He pulled out the noodle packets which were kept besides the refrigerator and the lubricants. Minutes later Ikebana was served her dinner. Ikebana heard the pitter patter sounds while she was finishing up her soup and noodles. She got up to peep outside the window. It was pouring heavily. Hysterically paranoid, she pressed all the buttons on the remote to close the doors and the windows. She shouted “Kansei, where are you? Stay in. Come in here”. She started breathing heavily, her heart pounding. She felt weak in her legs. Kansei came. She took a sigh of breath when she saw him. She smiled. He smiled. She finished her dinner.

The routine continued. Ikebana felt more and more affectionate towards Kansei. She felt like he was her new found world. A world in which people were too busy to care for an old worthless lady like her! Often they would sit and play video games together. Kansei had taught her many such things! They would read book together, indulge in unique flower decoration etc.

Days passed by. Ikebana’s health started deteriorating. She now lay on her bed. She was breathing heavily. She rang the bell besides and Kansei came in. Through the movement of her eyes, she asked him to sit besides her. She confronted Kansei by telling her about how he had filled her life with beautiful colours. Her old age had been quite contended and that she was very grateful to her husband for giving Kansei to her. She could fight with her isolation and solitude only because of Kansei. The human void in her life was filled by Kansei. Tears started rolling down her eyes as she struggled to breathe. “I love you Kansei. Thank you for all that you did for me”. She took her last breathe and closed her eyes. Kansei stood there motionlessly. Tears started rolling down his eyes too. He was programmed to cry when he saw tears in a human’s eye.

Kansei was a robot…a robot that Michiko designed for Ikebana…a robot who was capable of feeling six basic human emotions…

The last evening that she flew

She was sitting on the swing in her penthouse porch. Her habitual rolling of her curls through her fingers had not changed. The evening chirps and the commotion outside hardly came to her notice. She was lost in her own thoughts, in the web of contradictions of her very own life. The constant inner dilemma inside was depressing her to no ends. She knew she was slipping into the concaved world where she would soon be lost; never to find herself. She opened her closed fists and gazed on the Arabic design on her palms and her hands. She saw those neatly outlined flowers and motifs in auburns. She smiled. She smirked. She laughed. She was maniacally guffawing. It stopped after a while when she had enough of those suppressions of her emotions. She sat there; silent, without any expressions. She subdued the confusion of emotions within. Now she wanted to cry, cry out loud and she did, but that too did not suffice to make her feel fine. She herself did not know what was making her go through these dragon ride emotions. She had perhaps reached a state where she could not distinguish between so called being “happy” or “sad”. She had been tired of composing picture perfect fake smiles and affected behaviors. At times, she got so blank that there was a vacuum in her mind. Nothing could fill it up; absolutely nothing! There was no one to understand her stature because she found people very different to her. They comfortably lived in a world doing things so naturally that she strived to pretend. She was at sea. She kept swinging; gazing on to the sky aimlessly. Then suddenly she ran to the kitchen and searched for a knife at the impulsive thought to cut her nerves. The knife was right in her hands. She stood still and stared at her own nerves. She started laughing again; feeling pity on herself. She thought that this act too was being pretentious and was influenced from seeing movies. She hated to be predictable. And perhaps she thought it was not that she did not want to live. She very much wanted to live but live to the fullest, fulfilling her all weirdest fantasies that were scribbled in her diary. She wanted to talk to herself but she thought she suffered from aphasia. Though she did not have any physical injury; she suffered from mental illness; an illness which no one could cure except her. She wanted to live in some unknown, unseen, misty, hazy, foggy thoughts; thoughts that did neither have a start nor an end, thoughts that would come and go, thoughts that would make her feel free to think about anything that she wanted. Thoughts that had no connection and if laid on paper would form a haphazard design making no sense to anyone who sees it, except her. She somehow made sense of her nonsensical thoughts too and she loved doing it all the time.
She was staring at her curls again. She thought she too was entangled in the curls of life. A life where she would soon have to learn some big words of responsibilities, deference, obedience and what not…its not that she did not have these things in her but some oblivious facts of forced human life always scared her. Nothing was dearer to her than her freedom and from what she had seen in her twenty-five years of life, she sure had a phobia against losing it. It would actually make her go numb. She knew she was a misogamist- having hatred against marriage. She had never viewed matrimony as a heavenly thing to happen to two blissful souls. She felt marriage were synonyms to suppression, suffering and sorrows. Somehow these things were instilled engraved in her mind right from childhood. The fact that love too would be artificially generated using the biotechnology games of arrange marriage had scarred her mind. But then again she thought may be one would grow affectionate towards a person one stays with but she knew she would never really truly love the person in that forceful manner. Now she was frustrated of her own brains that could never stop thinking. She gazed the sky again. She so wished she could fly and roam and meander in this cosmos till her last breath!
It was the last evening she spent with herself coz the next day was going to be the grand day of her marriage!

Strange Affections

Yesterday, after working the whole day at my friend’s place on the second last project of my course (thank God for it being almost the second last one), I was on my way back home. I checked my watch. It was 9 pm. And I checked myself! I was dead tired. I was waiting at the station for the freaking train to arrive. As it did after due testing of my patience, I entered the second "second class ladies compartment" with some difficulty.
There are always these women in the train who think they are traveling in their private jet and thus they sit comfortably at the door blocking the way of all those who want to board in!! I was pretty annoyed at this as I entered but did not say anything as I never like to mess around with people of such great honor!!!! . There were a couple of empty seats in the train, but I always preferred standing near the door, listening to the music and enjoying the cool breeze as it hits you… Mind you I stand at the door but the moment a station arrives, I step back to let people enter and not behave as if I owned this moving property..... . But sadly this time my pleasure of enjoying the breeze was taken away for the obvious reasons!! I stood on the so called “second standing seat” inside the Mumbai trains. Soon I heard the cop acrimoniously shouting at the women near the door. These cops have their duty to be in the ladies compartments after 9. He was telling her to get up but she made the excuse of not being well and feeling puckish. She told the cop that she needed to sit there so that she could easily vomit out...... "Yuk!" my mind and my expressive eyes said....imagine what would happen if they were to actually fly in a jet! Where would they vomit…..never mind...I like keep getting these crazy thoughts… The cop too made a grumpy face on the woman’s bahana no. 47 (though innovative enough) and decided to let that women enjoy her "jet ride".
I looked at the cop who was standing diagonally opposite to me. My eyes went first on the name plate. It read "Vijay. Pra. Dhadke". It took me a while to read it, as it was written in Marathi. Then I looked at him. He must be in his forties. He was dark yet his features were simply adorable. There was this
” aggressive yet kind” look on his face which revealed his dual personality of being a ‘strict angry cop’ at the same time a ‘loving caring man’. For a moment I thought “What crap!! Why am I observing and analyzing no one but a cop!!!! Why am I doing his work?? Hehe!” But there was something about him that made me just look at him, think about him. He was not like other cops who merely stand there like titular heads! He seemed a cop who knew his duties and responsibilities very well. He was a “concerned cop “in the true sense of the term. I felt a deep sense of affinity towards him. There was an eruption of emotions in my heart. It occurs every time I get sentimental and foolish (both together). It would be very filmi to say but I felt as if I knew him since years. I felt like going and pulling his cheeks, calling him ‘my sweet uncle’ and talking to him. Amazed and abashed at my own feelings, thoughts and imagination I decided to abort this aberrant thought. (Hey that’s alliteration (all A’s)).

I started listening to the radio to divert my attention but it was an abortive attempt. As he was standing right opposite to me, it was impossible to not look at him. Just then my thoughts were disturbed by shouts of this young girl selling bindi packets. She was hardly seven-eight years old and was carrying a basket on top of her head which was full of these bindi packets. She was persuading each and every woman in the train to buy at least one packet but all her attempts were in vain… I was feeling sorry for her … The cop too was noticing that girl. (Vijay uncle- wish could call him that.). He summoned the girl. He asked her to show some bindi packets from the basket to him. It was very strange … I mean imagine a cop buying bindi packets!!!! I don’t mean that they can’t … but we have these stereo typical images of cops being this brave, strong, no non sense kind of attitude and all….. And here was my uncle (the cop)! Buying bindi packets for his wife…. How cute!!! He would surely be an ideal husband.
After he bought the packets, he saw me... Unable to hide my emotions I gave him this 360 degree smile trying to convey how much I appreciated his purchase for his wife… he smiled back at me. I liked that.
My home station soon arrived and I was all ready… geared up to jump out of the train (u jump out of the Mumbai trains… not alight!!!) I turned to see him the last time. His eyes gave me a blink and waved me a good bye. I smiled and got out…. Walking past the platform with a thoughtless brain and an emotion filled heart…………….
YES! My affections were strange but nonetheless they were pure and serene……..