Pin-Hole Camera

A fan is in motion. A room is dark and filled with plumes of smoke. Walls peel off, paint smells and create a sense of nausea.

A man is travelling in a cab. He doesn’t know where the cab is destined to go; but he sits there – stone-faced.

A quicksand exists in all its usualness sucking in a new born baby. A fist just emerges out of the blue and keeps going back and forth.

The cab makes its way through the bylanes.

A flag unfurls and sways unperturbed in the thin air. A wedding procession is on its way and somewhere else a funeral pyre is burning.

The meter goes on ticking and the ride goes on.

A girl is drowning in the sea of currency notes; while food lies in the wastelands.

The ride of the cab is going on and on. Outside the window, the city is desecrating and is in shambles.

Cries, shrieks and screams fill the streets as the radio blares out songs and speeches indistinguishable from each other. They all sound like noise. The car turns towards a huge crematorium where a funeral is taking place. A body is being incinerated as the people standing by are crying and screaming. Some of them also stand by with just moist eyes. He gets out of the cab, goes and stands there amidst the crowd, meshing in with them, absolutely indistinguishable from the swarm of people. He stands there looking at every single face that he can. They look at him. He stands there cold. Devoid of any expression, he spends time looking at every one leave after the body has turned to ashes. After everyone leaves, he still stands looking at the ashes and continues looking at them for some more time and then he turns around, gets back in the cab. The meter starts ticking again as the cab leaves the crematorium.

Sitting in his cab, he looks outside the window at the sky as he sees a bunch of vultures and eagles fly above him. He keeps staring at them as the sight right in front of him is engulfed in a huge ball of fire. The vultures and eagles morph into fighter jets and drop bombs and annihilate everything in the vicinity.

His cab goes clean through the ball of fire.

He sees insects and reptiles as they morph into crying and wailing babies bathed in blood. Their faces are crying for help and hands outstretched.

The cab meter is still ticking and he sits there in the cab unaware of the final destination. The line demarcating humans from reptiles blurs. A little further on his path, he looks at a school. He sees kids just trickling out in numbers and in hoards. Looking just like the other, a copy of the other, the kids seem indistinguishable from each other. He moves a little ahead in the cab and sees a huge gathering dancing and indulging in a wedding procession. He gets off the cab and goes there to participate and stays there with a stone face. After a little while, he gets back into his cab and drives away.

The cab now flashes a sign of fuel levels reducing and the driver turns into a petrol station. Fuel is filled and the cab is on the move again.

Up ahead the road, he sees a washroom. He stops there to take a dump. He gets into the washroom and sees piles of currency notes being hurled as trash and being dumped away. He stands there and watches and suddenly out of nowhere a group of people – some clothed and some unclothed – run towards the pile and start fighting over it. They start hitting each other and ripping each other off, inflicting harm on each other in unimaginable ways to just claim ownership of that stack of money.

He goes a little further and sees a big fat man sitting on a huge dining table and his plate is full of coins, notes and jewelry. He sits there and feasts on them. He gulps down every scintilla of what has been served on his plate.

He gets back into his cab and starts moving a little further and sees a nicely decorated room. He walks into the room and sees a bride and a groom making love. Right outside the room a canon ball hits the city and people are turned to ashes. The couple remains unaffected by it all and savors the moment.

He boards his cab again and travels further. His cab now travels and continues to move further.

Beyond the horizons, his cab continues to move and move towards a source of light.