An early morning dream

V.P. Jaiganesh | Creative | September 12, 2009 at 8:52 am

supermarket

I kiss her in the lips and say good morning. The Sun seems to be all the more bright today.
“5 minutes” she says. I know she will take much longer. There is no hurry. Just another Saturday morning.
I switch on the TV – All channels show the same message ” Please wait for an important announcement..”
Meanwhile she is awake. She is definitely not happy.
“I dont know what you get by staring at the TV first thing in the morning. Atleast you could have made a coffee in the time you stare at the wretched box…” Her usual monologue is broken by the now flickering images on the TV.
The announcer is pale, the usual smile that sneaks out in the corner of the mouth even when he is discussing mass murders, is missing today. And then he changed the saturday, the sunday and the following all days. He had finished announcing the impending doom. Some well meaning scientists trying to cleanup the plastic muck in some ocean had mutated a pretty harmless bacteria for the purpose and the bacteria have had enough of slavery for homo sapiens. They are out consuming and digesting all things hydrocarbon. Symptoms the announcer said was not that bad – all the supermarket plastic bags vanishing, but worse was to follow. All the clothes bought from supermarket start shredding and then the same process happens to the wearer of the supermarket good. The government was considering arresting the ‘yellow peace’ volunteers whose ecological love has given birth to the latest disaster. The news cast was rather short filled with pleas to evacuate the city and keep proceeding to the wilderness – if any left in vicinity – There was no consensus as to how the bacteria would react in the warm tropical regions or the plains with no polluting agents. However the cities belonged to the bacteria. The TV had long gone blank- but we were staring at it with shock.
As usual she broke the silence with a sob.
“I thought of telling it today…” .
“What?” – I gave her the usual monosyllable.
“I’m Pregnant” – The hell had already broken loose.
I am a bloody obese software engineer. What am I supposed to do now?

Some months later a group of fellow ex-software engineers were traveling on a bullock cart to the nearest mountain foothills. By then the scientific rumor community was certain that petrochemical products were already contaminated which meant that civilization had already taken some quantum back jump. Even the prius owners couldnt find hydrogen refills far away from the already heavily infested supermarkets. The driver of the bullock cart mentioned that the safest place is the mountain observatory’s highest point as no one has seen the bacteria survive the freeze. Everyone in the cart unanimously wished for an ice age now.
I thought otherwise. I looked at her tired body’s swelling belly. She looked at me with the same scared glance.
It has been months since she talked. Her questions were basic – “I need food”, “Ask them to hold on please – I need to pee” so ons. The thought of climbing a mountain by foot was the last thing she wanted and of course the talk of heralding a new ice age made her the extreme opposite of ‘relaxed’. However she could do little but give me that glance. Even apocalypse doesn’t change certain things, I thought. I was overcome with pity and gave her a cuddling semi hug. She instantly felt happy.

A month later we were camping half way up the mountain. We were no longer software engineers who made virtual things in virtual machines to make that virtual thing – money that got us real ‘Things’ from the supermarket. The supermarkets were long gone and along with it the value for things that were ‘virtual’. A friend had brought some real books that he had and the feeling of reading it in real was enough to make us forget the ‘virtual life’. The paper never felt so comforting and papers were meant only for this supreme purpose – however we had subverted this beautiful paper a gift from the plant kingdom to all sorts of distasteful use, he reasoned. The sight of the huge plastic covered bundles of paper rolls for all kinds of cleaning – from ass to the kitchen floor flashed – another memory of a life long lost. There is no going back.
The following day was full of commotion – Some one had spotted shredded clothes – it meant only one thing – we had to move on. More words dropped out of our vocabulary. We were silent pilgrims to the kailash. Another group of erstwhile SAP programmers joined our party. They had been a little adventurous and had seen people suddenly disintegrate with pain as the bacteria overtook them from their ‘Super Market’ possessions. After many close calls and failed attempts to cheat the bacteria, they finally made the wise decision to flee, which we Java programmers had done long back. A very wicked smile glowed through the face of the chief architect’s face when he heard the failure of the SAP programmers. Before he could say something, the head of the group – the bullock cart driver and ex-security guy in the campus asked the SAP programmers to camp elsewhere – They could be carrying some infected ‘goods’ he reasoned. We agreed and the decision was taken to push even further ahead. She cursed the SAP programmers. In her mind and strangely I could sense what she was thinking – All this while I thought only she knew how to do it.

mountain

Pneumonia is a terrible illness. It mercilessly attacks the primary function of human body – breathing and gives you no chance – not when you are thousands of feet above the sea level and when the nearest doctor is an obese guy who couldn’t climb the mountain and stayed back in the foothill. He probably made the wise decision of dying quick in the hands of the new bacteria than suffer the older pneumonia that can be twice as terrible and the death so long to come even after invitation. The party had now lost a few to the altitude. Some to delirious panic while making a difficult climb, and some to the illness. A vedantic friend recalled the last journey of the pandavas to the himalayas. Almost everyone in the party wished to be the yudhistra, some wished to be draupadi who perished early in that journey. It was tough, terrible and for me and her – the most painful. The baby was due any day and the last thing to expose it to was terrible cold. Hypothermia is the worst an infant can suffer. The fact that new born has no voice is no comforting thought even though we don’t have to listen to the delirium induced blabber of dying adults. She saw it at first and I thought initially that it was the cold that was causing her to hallucinate – The sight of a cave – and some fire in the distance at night. When I saw it I rubbed my eyes with the cold fingers and winced in the pain. It didn’t matter – It was real. Our supply of firewood were hitting a low and there was no protection for a new life to touchdown.
We decided to go for it in the daybreak. The chief architect scowled – he sincerely believed that me and her have gone crazy due to the cold, altitude and the usual nervousness that accompanies a ’soon to be’ parent. The chief of the group – the erstwhile security guy and bullock cart driver however thought otherwise and the architect’s ego once again crashed down to the foothills. With pneumonia and flu causing problems, the new born would be safer elsewhere he once again reasoned.

So began the blistering journey to the cave with fire we had spotted. Blistering, because of the bright sun reflected twice on to the eyes by the white snow. We walked hand in hand, me and her. I never thought she would make it this far. She turned out to be a stronger soul than I had given her credit. The mere thought of the baby made her do some of the most difficult things. She was never this gutsy strong girl. Always so sensitive to pain and so easily irascible. A vision of our distant life passed through as we put step after step, hands clutched together in the top of the tallest mountains that we had ever seen in our mostly urban lives. Every few steps she would rest in my shoulder, clutching me like she were hanging on to a cliff. A new wave of strength would energize her and we would surge ahead. Countless steps after she began to get the pains and the caves were still ahead and the sun who had kept the company suddenly called it quits and then she let out a scream. I thought for a while that the world better come to an end. Let it all end now – I don’t care. Why is the life still in my body? Why didn’t I die in the foothills? A sense of despair that I had been postponing suddenly came over and danced in my chest and the eyes cant cry in the high altitude cold. So I opened my mouth to cry out only letting the cold air in. What an agony – Cant even cry out aloud.
“Think of the deaf mute” a voice said – I opened my eyes to a bearded face in the cave. The soft light from a lamp illuminated the cave and I could see her cuddling our child and for a moment I thought I was dreaming and I pinched myself…

I woke up and said – that was the most interesting dream I have ever had. So I began typing it down at 5 AM, when she said ‘Always fiddling with the damn computer, come and sleep NOW’.
I shut the computer down making a mental note to type it out later.
I must have forgotten. The existing code needs to be re factored into SOA pieces – the architect said.
I excused myself out of the meeting for a smoke and the security guy said – ‘Not good for health sir’.
‘Yeah’ I said.

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