3. The Vampire’s diary: Day 1
I was not born a Vampire like all the other of my kind, or better to say the one I am eventually going to turn into. My hazel eyes which are now getting drained of any human emotion that it had: are turning cold, lifeless. These are the same eyes that used to once sparkle with life, excitement and had dreams. Now I don’t dream anymore, I don’t sleep I retreat into my coffin every morning. I am dead and lifeless things do not dream. Somehow I am not able to come to terms with the fact that I can’t dream. I try to make dreams when I lie on the cushion that is cold and is without a bed sheet. I remember I gave my only bed sheet to the dhobi couple of days before I went home. I asked my room-mate to get it back from him because the dhobi isn’t there when I wake up. I think of people, places and things and arrange them in a way that I wanted them to be like. Sometimes I even kill myself, I commit suicide- the outlet that I would always be deprived of. No, I don’t have fangs like all mates nor do the others who have completely turned into Vampires. We have disguised ourselves pretty well to look like a part of this world. Please do not confuse me with the lifeless corpses who subsist on human blood or those comic looking creatures as portrayed in cinema; wearing black cloak, pale face, funny accent or with white eyes. These people should seriously think of better ways to scare: innocent, ignorant beings rather than comically exaggerating the physical appearance of a creature that is certainly attributed with deeper psychological complexities. The fear should not be shaped out of façade but from the trauma that rests within the persona. I suck happiness, hope, love, forgiveness or any possible virtue that I can smell in a human. I don’t kill them to feed myself but I keep them alive and to feed myself on their sad faces and fears. The better I like my prey the more it has to suffer. I try my best not to do this to people but it is very difficult to impede myself. I subtly hint them to keep away from me. The more I like them, the more I warn and the more they want to be close to me. Not my fault. I am not yet completely evil. I am transforming, eventually, after getting bit by a good few number of these dark sinful creatures since childhood. I can never forget the first bite, the first time since I gained senses. I never realised that I was bit. People say ignorance is bliss but is it actually? I didn’t know the dire consequences that would follow the brutal act but it did hurt me at a more physical level. Dark rooms, alleys, basements or even lonely streets always scared me but human presence was always a solace: back then. I never knew that one could become a prey, a victim in a room filled with peers, a basket full of garlic lying underneath my bed and Ramayana being screened on the television. Back then we lived in a government quarter which might have looked like an overcrowded railway coop. Small cages constructed by the authorities to push as many people as they could accommodate. The building was never painted as far as I can remember or perhaps it was, I can’t recall. The memories of this squalid colony’s stagnancy is so overpoweringly established in my memory: the greenish walls that used to gain a deeper tint with every monsoon that passed by, the aimless youth of the colony congregating religiously to have a tea in kaka’s cha dokan, the aunties conferences every noon post-lunch when they would crib and complain to each other about their respective mother-in-laws and the mother-in-laws snoring away to glory after having a sumptuous lunch and on the father’s occupied with their jobs that paid them wages at the beginning of the month. There was a pretence of everything being fine or possibly everything was fine. Moving away from the paradiso if self-imposed ignorance or innocence that the new place I landed in is infact a stark opposite of the former. I carried with myself when I departed from home the memories of home, the land, the smell of wet soil like Count Dracula did when he left for London from Transylvania. The memories keep coming back to me every now and then of my parents, my loved ones to whom I would get back after I achieve something, after my thirst is for blood is quenched. But would I die too like Prince Dracula did? Would I be followed and murdered by people who would be jealous of my powers and would kill me by guile? I would be killed by treachery like all powerful people: Indira Gandhi, Julius Ceaser, J. F. Kennedy. Who were these people? All of them were as abhorred as vampires are, they are considered to be the ones who mongered for power they are nothing but the abstractions of feudal order in a capitalised world like my people who love to have absolute control on people around.
This was the diary that the vampire passed on to her friend called 69. She really liked him and wanted him to know the truth about herself. She hoped against hope that 69 would accept her oddities. 69 was also her secret-keeper and had every inch and bit of knowledge of her ‘being and nothingness’. It was difficult to pretend for her infront of 69 but it was also difficult for her to overlook the fact 69 was too getting attracted to her. He was acting like Mina Murray at times who had the knowledge of the evil powers of Dracula but was ascending the altar of contamination...
I was not born a Vampire like all the other of my kind, or better to say the one I am eventually going to turn into. My hazel eyes which are now getting drained of any human emotion that it had: are turning cold, lifeless. These are the same eyes that used to once sparkle with life, excitement and had dreams. Now I don’t dream anymore, I don’t sleep I retreat into my coffin every morning. I am dead and lifeless things do not dream. Somehow I am not able to come to terms with the fact that I can’t dream. I try to make dreams when I lie on the cushion that is cold and is without a bed sheet. I remember I gave my only bed sheet to the dhobi couple of days before I went home. I asked my room-mate to get it back from him because the dhobi isn’t there when I wake up. I think of people, places and things and arrange them in a way that I wanted them to be like. Sometimes I even kill myself, I commit suicide- the outlet that I would always be deprived of. No, I don’t have fangs like all mates nor do the others who have completely turned into Vampires. We have disguised ourselves pretty well to look like a part of this world. Please do not confuse me with the lifeless corpses who subsist on human blood or those comic looking creatures as portrayed in cinema; wearing black cloak, pale face, funny accent or with white eyes. These people should seriously think of better ways to scare: innocent, ignorant beings rather than comically exaggerating the physical appearance of a creature that is certainly attributed with deeper psychological complexities. The fear should not be shaped out of façade but from the trauma that rests within the persona. I suck happiness, hope, love, forgiveness or any possible virtue that I can smell in a human. I don’t kill them to feed myself but I keep them alive and to feed myself on their sad faces and fears. The better I like my prey the more it has to suffer. I try my best not to do this to people but it is very difficult to impede myself. I subtly hint them to keep away from me. The more I like them, the more I warn and the more they want to be close to me. Not my fault. I am not yet completely evil. I am transforming, eventually, after getting bit by a good few number of these dark sinful creatures since childhood. I can never forget the first bite, the first time since I gained senses. I never realised that I was bit. People say ignorance is bliss but is it actually? I didn’t know the dire consequences that would follow the brutal act but it did hurt me at a more physical level. Dark rooms, alleys, basements or even lonely streets always scared me but human presence was always a solace: back then. I never knew that one could become a prey, a victim in a room filled with peers, a basket full of garlic lying underneath my bed and Ramayana being screened on the television. Back then we lived in a government quarter which might have looked like an overcrowded railway coop. Small cages constructed by the authorities to push as many people as they could accommodate. The building was never painted as far as I can remember or perhaps it was, I can’t recall. The memories of this squalid colony’s stagnancy is so overpoweringly established in my memory: the greenish walls that used to gain a deeper tint with every monsoon that passed by, the aimless youth of the colony congregating religiously to have a tea in kaka’s cha dokan, the aunties conferences every noon post-lunch when they would crib and complain to each other about their respective mother-in-laws and the mother-in-laws snoring away to glory after having a sumptuous lunch and on the father’s occupied with their jobs that paid them wages at the beginning of the month. There was a pretence of everything being fine or possibly everything was fine. Moving away from the paradiso if self-imposed ignorance or innocence that the new place I landed in is infact a stark opposite of the former. I carried with myself when I departed from home the memories of home, the land, the smell of wet soil like Count Dracula did when he left for London from Transylvania. The memories keep coming back to me every now and then of my parents, my loved ones to whom I would get back after I achieve something, after my thirst is for blood is quenched. But would I die too like Prince Dracula did? Would I be followed and murdered by people who would be jealous of my powers and would kill me by guile? I would be killed by treachery like all powerful people: Indira Gandhi, Julius Ceaser, J. F. Kennedy. Who were these people? All of them were as abhorred as vampires are, they are considered to be the ones who mongered for power they are nothing but the abstractions of feudal order in a capitalised world like my people who love to have absolute control on people around.
This was the diary that the vampire passed on to her friend called 69. She really liked him and wanted him to know the truth about herself. She hoped against hope that 69 would accept her oddities. 69 was also her secret-keeper and had every inch and bit of knowledge of her ‘being and nothingness’. It was difficult to pretend for her infront of 69 but it was also difficult for her to overlook the fact 69 was too getting attracted to her. He was acting like Mina Murray at times who had the knowledge of the evil powers of Dracula but was ascending the altar of contamination...
Comments