Category: Mumbai

A few months ago I was asked what my biggest fear was. I answered without hesitation, losing my memory. The shrink made such a face I still laugh about it. He must have been utterly intrigued by my response since he knew many of my recollections; especially the most recent ones were hell. Yeah, I’ve stared the Devil right in the face, but you know what? I did exactly as Stagger Lee,

Then in came the Devil, he had a pitchfork in his hand. Said, ‘Stagger Lee, I’ve come to take you down’ Well, those were the last words that the Devil said because Stag put four holes in his motherfucking head.

The problem with shrinks is that they all are cut from the same cloth; stereotypically oriented by nature, too commonplace, too normal, too DO (Direct Officer) and I truly dislike being controlled by functional imbeciles. But I went there just to please a concerned someone who thought I needed to talk to a professional in order for me to come to my senses and put some order in my love life. Yeah, right.

Order? OK, but I really don’t know how much professionals of all sorts can do for me. While in India, a former friend of mine took me to a woman who supposedly read past lives. She lived far, far, far away from downtown Mumbai so my old Canon had no rest during that precious 3 hours-ride and that was the most amazing part of it because the moment I entered the session I blacked out, so much that by the end of it the sorcerer had serious troubles waking me up from a profound sleep. My Hindi is very modest; she did not speak any other language known to me, so I’m still wondering if bad karmas were removed from my current soul or are they still lingering over it. I must assume the latter is true because my love life can only be described as a fucking mess in all languages known.

Back to the story, the only thing I could think of during the way back home was how easily, how confidently I lied down on a completely stranger’s bed and comfortably slept there for hours. No worries whatsoever even though the sorcerer had previously, in a casual manner remarked that she shared her bed at night with two other young women who worked for her. Oo-key, other cultures, other costumes, I thought, not my business. You see, this is again my daredevil 7K (Seven Killings) Structure in action.

Anyway, what I wanted to say is that memories as painful as they could get, are life. And by that I mean, they do not represent it, they ARE life. Our memory is our coherence, our reason, our feeling, even our action. Without it, we are nothing. I know that for sure since I joined for a while my former mother-in-law’s trip into a deep hole of darkness called Alzheimer. You really don’t know what emptiness means until you look into the eyes of such a patient. This shit is scarier than staring at the Devil himself; and I certainly know what I’m talking about because as previously mentioned folks, I well know that one face too.

I recall stupid me asking her gdmnd-no-idea shrink “Is it possible that she had really been de-souled by the disease?” And off he went with some kind of scientific explanation I obviously overheard. But his prolonged monologue gave me the chance to go into myself and ask again, and see, and get my answer. She was totally corroded by the disease because she had no connection to any divine force included the one within herself. She and her whole aristocratic family considered themselves high-levelled intellectuals and always denied the existence of God; which is a respectable position since no one has ever proved the contrary. But it was the lack of spirituality, which doomed her. I am certain of it; had she practiced at least one form of it, that alone could have saved the little rest of life and dignity that remained after losing almost all cognitive neuronal functions.

Spirituality and Brains and Life, that’s a subject I’ll take up later, enough for now.

Photo by Himanshu Singh Gurjar.