Arc of urine

Chapter 1

It was getting dark now. Nassir drove his SUV into the lane that was plastered with oil and grease. A warm shaft of wind gushed out of the ventilator. A broken slat of the window somewhere in the dark beneath the glowing pallor of the hotel’s back door, slapped its face periodically. Pushing his rotund figure beneath the oil coated tube light, his shadow now only a thickened daub around his body, met two elongated shadows. Two sturdy broad shouldered men dragged themselves out of the dark; Nassir produced his ID card and was marshaled inside.

The lounge was once opulent. It was now reduced to an empty backdrop for bald headed, lean framed, and half sleeved clerks to scuttle about in their daily routine. On the desk before each clerk was a translucent dashboard with square topped buttons. The charred backsides of desks bore slanted wedges into which each clerk plugged in a USB. All the desks inside were pooled into a network operated under codename ‘Probe’. It was an undercover operation to stifle the rebellious voices of the populace.

Nassir flashed his card and the clawed machine whirred. It forced its quadrangular forceps apart, doubly apart, to fit the bulbous head before it. Two torches of light issued out of the forceps’ throat, pressed forward and bore two individual beams of light. If the light was in visible spectrum, Nassir would be blind by now. After registering his retinal imprints, machine processed the clerk’s files, and admitted him.

It was the year 2092. India was reeling under dystopia. Hyderabad, the intellectual capital of a decrepit and corrupt India, formed a seat for intelligentsia. The government operated secret operations in the buried underground cellars of discarded hotels and dilapidated buildings. These offices wore a tired, worn out and fractured pale face outside. The deception was closely guarded by the secret police. Undercover agents paraded the dark corners of the city to protect its vital organs. Andhra bank, once a landmark in a vibrant Koti, presently looked like a nuclear bombed site. On the balcony of the second floor, the concrete letter A of the bank hung loose like a flayed tendon of ripped flesh.

Koti was carpeted with slabs of concrete over which the rowdy youth drew graffiti at night. If one were to walk across koti’s corridors, one only found shards of carbide faced bullets and shattered films of broken glasses. The bus stop was home to cocaine addicted junkies; rich parents’ spoiled kids frequented the place at night in search of hash and marijuana.

A sight of decadence! India, in the early years of 21st century, rammed its wealth throttle down to the floor. Information Technology was to thicken a slender Indian frame. It did. Indian industry thrived like a polar bear while the winter lasted. India grew wealthier and its population grew meaner and dull. Complacency! Every kid turned into an IT professional, earned a bounty, salaciously luxuriated in a state of temporal wealth. It is said that a civilization’s health is measured by its intellectual proclivities. India produced few individuals who fitted the bill. A couple of generations lived by, until dark shadows loomed over the country.

The flabby polar bear’s fat was not natural. Few civilizations were built on caustic, acidic, vaporous wealth. A purposeless sniveling nation wobbled on its hindquarters like a 7 ton Tyrannosaurus. Greedy politicians muddled up the top, aimless middle aged IT professionals shrugged in the middle, and nursery rhymes of Java 18.0 and oracle 42i cramped the bottom. The nation grew crabbed, defensive and trammeled.

Presently, India was a dystopia; history students outside India flung their textbooks away, and peered close into their TV sets. India was a case study. A tadpole’s innards; the dazed population wore rebellious arm bands and eviscerated the nation’s laughably opaque cloak to reveal its mushy, slippery, viscous, self-righteous soaked visceral contents.

In the mornings, a retinue of armed policemen, garbed in fire resistant smocks formed the rims of government institutions. Colleges were home to rebellious teenagers. It was fashionable for boys to stand naked on the compound walls of colleges. Last year, the students of Osmania College skirted the premises on Republic day to conjoin their arcs of urine. It was an oath; to rebel, to revolt, to mass up and force forward. A gothic metal band headed by a nineteen year old teenage girl was impressed with the idea. They called their band ‘arc of urine’.

When the band played on the eve of New Year on necklace road, there was a furor, a fascist upheave, a scathing passion of unison. Members of the band shaved their heads for the occasion. The vocalist wore around her naked bosom, the posy strung together with band members’ shaved hair. Tank bund, as a BBC reporter was to later recall, looked like a ‘fresh water lake that was home to a teeming amoebic amalgamation’.

People swayed in harmony under pyrotechnic flares overhead; some held torches of laser and painted the Buddha statue’s shanks with the band’s gothic symbols. Buddha’s trunk hung like a paralyzed tongue to a side; only two corroded steel shafts now separated the host from collapsing into the lake.

Underground bands celebrated their gothic gods. Arc of urine’s songs echoed the booze cushioned hearts of scamp clad hyderabadis. Pillared by shaved heads, filleted by band’s tattoos, fans patrolled the garages, shanks and metal scrap junk houses. By mid-July, the fanatic fan frenzy was everywhere. Schools and colleges were suspended on holidays declared by the band.

‘Is it sexual revolution, like the 1970 France?’ the Nobel laureate, peace prize holder, and celebrated philosopher Vishnu Priya was asked in an interview in New Delhi. Her reply, little did she know, was to charm the snakes in Hyderabad.

And the snakes rattled their tails.

Next morning, the major dailies, now fostered by the blood of revolution and subscribed by the autocratic levers of government, painted her words in red. One newspaper read ‘this is no sexual revolution. This is rectum evolution.’ For a century, the article opined, people of the nation drugged themselves in pseudo comforts; regaled in pompous ideas, vacuous notions and miraculous wealth. Now the drug’s effect was wearing off and slowly the zombie clad men and woman were tearing apart into shreds, their past virtues and quasi progress.

It was quasi progress for over a century. And it won’t be tolerated anymore. A fundamental change was to be erected out of the rubble. The article, among other things, spawned what was to become the anthem of revolution. Arc of urine released a sensational track. People all over the world downloaded it. The track ripped past every known classic and became the second most downloaded song in the history, next only to Beatles ‘A day in life’. It was called rectum evolution.

Sedated

Drugged

Complacent

We were born to a nation of feces scent

Rectum evolution…

Flabby

Lazy

Dozing
Fools…Nation needs a skeletal grooming

Rectum evolution…

Chapter 2

Sreelatha elegantly crossed her legs, flattened the folds of sari around her knees and consulted her watch. It was about six in the evening. She gently washed her tea with a gleaming spoon and replaced it daintily on the china before her. Nassir shifted his weight to lean on the table; the frail metal columns let out an audible creak. He pressed his flabby arms on the abstract patterned marble before him and brought his face closer to her.

The café inside the office was perhaps the only place in Hyderabad where one felt the sanctity of old days preserved. The office was located in the cellar of a little known hotel behind Andhra bank in Koti. Nassir’s sleep-deprived eyes rolled along the rim of the table and came to a halt on the newspaper spread before him. It was the 15th of November 2092.

A waiter came trundling along with his palms sprawled inside the oversized pouches one on each side of his red overcoat. His collar was upturned and sleeves rolled up his elbows, a chequered band of lemon green now hemmed his sleeves and collar. He jingled the coins in his pocket as he saddled between tables alertly watchful of a head roll or a raised hand. The man behind the counter was seated on a rather tall chair; a pink boulder, toweled and turreted, was squeezed tight behind his back.

The break was coming to an end. The metal tong would shiver its spine against the polished bulb head of the bell any time now. Sreelatha, the Deputy Director of the office, felt she could bring all the clerks together under the unifying theme –old Hyderabad. Save for the advanced computers on their desks, the office fed on antique elements that an old hyderabadi reveled in.

The deputy director was an enchanting epitome of a sari clad hyderabadi. She modeled the interiors to her liking. Café waiters were to don the smocks that irani chaiwalas did. The tables, seating arrangement and even the color of plaster on walls were to be routed through to Nassir who managed to see and hear for her. He was the deputy director’s eyes and ears; his work entailed him to cruise in his charcoal black SUV through the city’s pulverized streets. Sreelatha laid her confidence in him; many decisions that the office took were contingent upon Nassir’s travails in the city.

He was the vigilante, a fat one though. But Nassir was not to blame for this. He was over thirty five years old and vacillated between the semi-clad, shaved-head generation of the present and the unnaturally affluent generation of the past. At nights, his conscience swooned under the flabby body; but his senses were alert and vigilant. He had his contacts, spies and acquaintances all over the city. In Dilsukhnagar, behind the TV tower and in Himayatnagar, before the Liberty statue, were his twin abodes.

Under Sreelatha’s insistence, he towed away from Koti. The shorter route was through Koti. But Sreelatha dissuaded him from skirting around their main office located behind Andhra bank. So, for shuttling back and forth between his abodes, he took the route via Osmania College. This also, very conveniently, gave him a chance to stop by near the college. For the outside world, Nassir was a realtor who represented the Arab sheikhs. If any curious teenager was to look into his bank records, huge sums of money were transacted between Dubai and Hyderabad. His current account was fat, just like him.

Next morning, Nassir’s trained eye caught an intruder spying on him. His Dilsukhnagar home was bugged. He took a shower, made some calls, and drove to Osmania College. He was tipped; a mole in the college left him a message. It was written on a piece of paper screwed into a ball in his dustbin. Nassir parked his vehicle under the big hanging garden of the civil engineering department, and dragged his heavy weight along. Like a sea elephant, his lugubrious body wore alert tusks of senses as he closed his fist around the balustrade near the foot of the main building.

The stair case rose up to break into two bows before circumambulating a fountain and joining at the foot of the first floor. In the fountain, water jets rose and fell in melody around the glass beaded logo of revolution. In the first floor, urine stained corridors were littered with injection needles and frayed belt straps. Puddles of dry vomit streaked the walls around him; brown smudges with splash marks insultingly bore sharp gravitating trickles down to the floor.

An hour later, Nassir was standing with his back to an empty classroom window. He turned audibly with a shuffling sound of his trousers that rapped in the wind. In the cricket ground that sat perched in the middle of a thick green painting of short treetops, were a group of students. They were passing a tobacco roll between them, perhaps a marijuana roll. He did not care. A Jeep behind them was loaded with beer. One of the students stood up, reached for a bottle of beer while a slightly paunched bald headed middle aged man seemed to lecture the others.

Two truckloads of marijuana were being transported from the jungles of Warangal. Was the tip helpful? Yes. Nassir handed a folded envelope to the teenager. Why did Mansoor accede to this? Nassir always wondered but never asked. May be it was the money. May be it was a preemptive measure to be on the right side if the revolution was to fail.

Back at the parking lot, Nassir met a youth, a semi clad teenage girl. She had tattooed her bosom with slogans of revolution. A broad apricot scarf was wrapped around her shaved head. Why was the revolution spearheaded by women? Why were all the men so fat, ugly and lazy? It seemed to Nassir that over the last decade, women launched themselves into men’s shoes while men salivated over the nakedness around them.

It all probably began as sexual revolution in 1970 France, but the revolution steered away and metamorphosed into something altogether different. Men were kept occupied; they grew blind and apathetic. Men had become mere clerks in undercover operations. They went about distributing fliers of revolution in return for cheap money and sex.

The revolution was puzzlingly fuelled by women; the masterminds, the heroes were women. Servitude of men allowed women to funnel their efforts through narrow venturi meters of revolution. The revolution, Nassir concluded with an assertive nod of his head, was like the fluid that flew through the immense pressure conditions of a venturi meter to exit with quadrupled velocity.

The teenage girl said ‘Javeria will see you.’

Javeria, the notorious vocalist of arc of urine…was he prepared to meet her? Yes.

Chapter 3

Back home at Himayatnagar, Nassir let his mind wander over last night’s impromptu meeting. When he got there, Javeria was blowing rings from her seat behind the great teakwood desk. Smoke rings rose higher and higher until they met the low ceiling. Three more students were present in the room. Torn jeans, split gums, gritted teeth, shaved head, and tattooed torso – Javeria was a sight that would haunt Nassir in his dreams.

She had chosen the room beneath one of the bow shaped staircases to meet Nassir. The roof slanted overhead and the fat man had to squeeze himself through the narrow door. For a fleeting moment, he had second thoughts. She rose from her seat to greet him. Her desk was littered with fliers, pink, yellow, white and red. Yes red, the revolution fliers. What did she need from him? Nassir produced his business card as a good realtor does. Cleared his throat, shuffled files in his shoulder bag, all the time mumbling under his breath that he forgot where he left the updated land rate card.

There was an air of suspicion about the meeting. Nassir, as a good undercover agent would do, shifted his gaze from one person to another. It did not seem to work. Then his trained eyes glued their vision piercingly at javeria’s. And he began to rise up and leave; he slowly pressed his arms flat against the wooden hand-rests. Two shadows twirled down on him and a pat on each shoulder was punctually followed.

Javeria averted his gaze, quizzically flipped through the files until she found a piece of land that interested her. Pointing to the page spread before her, she asked him, spinning the upturned paper weight, ‘what is there?’ It was Gokul Chat in Koti. Too close to their head office, and besides the place was a stinking mess of crushed concrete. It was part of the operation by the government to make the place look inhospitable. What did she want?

The band was planning to host a concert there. Why there? Javeria wanted to cramp people up. She wanted to see fans camping on rubble. It was symbolic of their times. ‘No,’ Nassir wanted to protest, ‘I believe your fans would still prefer necklace road. Trust me.’ but he said nothing.

Sreelatha was not going to like this. Hell! He did not like it himself.

Next morning, Sreelatha received a message from the revolutionaries. A typewritten note was sent to all the dailies, and they duly obliged by making space for the message in their respective front pages. One newspaper wrote ‘The secret police’s eyes and ears are presently lounging under revolutionaries’ roof.’ Monetary benefits were mentioned. Sreelatha did not mind money. The government’s reserves were filled with deep pockets. But it worried her that they had Nassir. He was a treasure house. He knew a lot. Did they know the office location? ‘By now they must have milked it out of the poor bugger’ she thought.

Overnight, Sreelatha ordered to carry out an emergency evacuation. The office behind Andhra bank was shifted to a hidden dugout in Chowmahalla palace. Originally, the Nizams conceptualized the hideout, for they feared an anarchy in their times. Military trucks guarded the movement of clerks and office equipment. A battalion of army was called, for now the undercover operation was at risk.

A team of Special Forces was sent to retrieve confidential documents if any, from Nassir’s twin abodes. A surprise finding was a neatly pressed envelope that read in Arial print ‘to the eyes of the deputy director only.’

It was a letter addressed to her. A trained officer, Nassir typed the letter in his MS 19 Word processor, and primed it with a cypher before printing it out. The cypher was known only to him and his boss. But why didn’t he mail it to her. Did he not trust the network? Sreelatha did not. She wanted to avoid technology wherever she could. She was an atavistic shrub that sprouted in this anarchic desert.

The cypher was ‘enirufocra.’ It was ‘arc of urine’ spelled in reverse without blanks. Who would have thought that the undercover operation’s prime cypher was based on the revolutionary heroes? The heroes whose voice was to be stifled by the operation…

When Sreelatha deciphered the letter, it bore out only two sentences. ‘My house is bugged. If they get to me, remember that I will deceptively crawl and get under them. Contact mansoor.’ It was a subterfuge. Nassir was tricking the revolutionaries. Sreelatha realized that she had to act fast. Now, Nassir’s image in her mind floated like a buoyant cork in rippling pond. He had transformed himself into the Achilles hell of the revolutionary monster.

She could not hide her excitement. She dug her right heel into the left foot’s roof; pinched herself, and let out an audible cry. Her cheeks wore a red flush. It was only a matter of time before she got to them. She wished Nassir had left more than just a note. Later that night, Sreelatha set about to meet mansoor.

Mansoor was Nassir’s spy in Osmania University. He was a mole in the retinue of revolutionaries. Nassir had mentioned about him a couple of times. A confused teenager who handled the logistics of Marijuana from Warangal to Osmania… It had to be done alone. She could not risk spoiling this opportunity. Through mansoor, she would get to Nassir and then to Javeria. She would apprehend the hero of revolution, the poster girl. Ah! The revolution will stand beheaded. And a blind wayward headless monsterish revolution won’t survive. She knew it from her training. Always aim for the head.

The crown of revolution, the shaved semi clad hero of revolution, Javeria had other plans. Blood had to be spilled. Revolution had to stay. The nation needed her. The people of the nation implored for arc of urine. And she was not going to be the one to disappoint them.

Later that day, the evening papers ran a special edition. There was urgent news. News that could not have waited until the break of dawn! A business realtor’s wife was found murdered near Osmania. The murderer, a teenage boy named Mansoor, was believed to have fled the scene. A search was on to find him. The Warangal police was alerted.

Chapter 4

Nassir slid his fleshy bottom along the burnished slant of the chair; his copious paunch shook the table. The disturbed tea cup dropped a splash over its brim, on the table, and trickled past the saucer to meet a crumpled tissue screwed tight between Javeria’s fingers. Queasy! His hair sprawled over his broad forehead in worm-like curls. When he drew his thick eyebrows together in a manner of protest, his temples reddened and the pimpled face wore a cruel look.

On his way outside, Nassir slipped his fingers into the side pocket, priced out a coin and steered the weighing machine. The dashboard glowed in yellow, purple, mauve and the red belt came to a halt. Sound of a gear wheel rolling followed by the press of metal, and the machine clucked out a pale brown card. It read 130 kgs.

It can’t be. He pressed forward, his gait steady and slow. People nearing him face up, melted around his form like magnetic field around a magnet before joining behind him. A group of school children like a shoal of fish broke into two and joined hands behind his back.

He had to reconfirm. He threw a coin on the dusty mat before an amputee and raised his legs, one by one, to calm the weighing machine’s shivering pointer. It calmed at 126. That was comforting. Yes!

He plucked out the trousers’ back that was habitually pinched tight between his buttocks.