Song of the Whale

By Sunil MS

There is a whale in the city of Bangalore and only the Listeners can hear it. The Wanderer, a man suffering from dissociative amnesia, is sucked into this secret world of the Listeners and joins their search for the mysterious whale. He is unable to hear the song of the whale that beckons the Listeners every night. Filled with longing for the music, the Wanderer finds strange new friendships and love in this bizarre world of the Listeners. But the world he has built, sits on the shoulder of a lie. Caught between the impenetrable wall of his past and the promise of a future, he turns to the Song of the Whale to set him free.

• Language: English
• Publisher: One Point Six Technologies Pvt Ltd
• Release date: Sep 20, 2021
• ISBN: 9789354584879

Sunil MS

Sunil MS was listed in the ‘Top 10 Short Fiction Writers’ by DNA-Out of Print in 2017. His work has been previously published in DNA India newspaper, Out of Print, and Bangalore Review. Sunil MS was born in Dharwad, Karnataka, and grew up on a steady diet of books by Stephen King, Edgar Allan Poe, Haruki Murakami, Franz Kafka, and Albert Camus. His journey as a writer began with narrative poems which evolved into flash fiction, short stories, and now a novel – Song of the Whale. A street photographer since 2010, Sunil mostly spends his time walking around the streets of Bangalore and making pictures. When not on the street with his camera, one can find him in bookshops or cafes. He currently lives in Bangalore.

Book preview

There is a ghost in my room that steals all my dreams. It floats where the shadows are thicker, and quietly, patiently watches me fall asleep every night. At the first whimper of a new-born dream, it leans over my body and, like a child stealing a cookie, removes it from my subconscious. And sometimes, a few crumbs slip through its fingers and remain.

These bits and pieces which I wake up to, are but fragments of memories: the black patch of skin on Ajji’s forehead, that turned darker and darker until it consumed her fully; the blind girl on the fourth floor who never sees me; a familiar song stripped clean off of its words; a broken, antique-looking cheap vase; and a piece of wood with my initials carelessly etched on it. That is all. Nothing else remains. I have looked between all the folds and fissures of my brain countless times. The ghost has emptied it all. Even the face of mother.

Of all the things, how can one forget the face of one’s own mother? Aakash asked me once during our smoke break at the office.

My answer was short and simple – The ghost stole it. I couldn’t lend my voice to that answer then. Sometimes an answer only strengthens the question.

But the last two nights, something new slipped through the ghost’s fingers and shone bright – a firefly. Too quick for the ghost, too nimble, too small. On the vast black canvas of sleep, I watched it flutter and float, like the dot of light in the abyss next to my house.

Unlike most things, I remember how it began. It was midnight and cold wind blew from the east. The air was without any scent. I stood in my third-floor balcony, smoking, looking into the abyss next to my house. The sun, during the day, changes it, transforms the abyss into a large, abandoned playground. I have been staring into it for countless nights now, without knowing what I was waiting for. It hadn’t occurred to me that the only thing that could materialize and show itself in the darkness was light.

Two nights ago, in that pool of darkness, I saw a tiny dot of light the size of a tennis ball. It shook violently as if it was having a wild fit. The light illuminated the ground below, faintly, momentarily. It travelled from the left to the right of the abyss. Somewhere at the centre of the abyss, it stopped, motionless like a soldier across the border without arms. I strained my eyes to see it clearly. But the dot of light lingered, hovering just above the ground. It resumed its earlier journey–moving, violent, never stopping. It traversed the abyss, and then; it was gone.

I walked to the bed that night, dreading my wakefulness, afraid of the thieving ghost. Lying in bed, I held on to the image of that dot for as long as I could. I carried it beyond my wakefulness. That night, the dream was left untouched, the dream of a floating firefly.

Last night was no different. I found it standing still at the centre of the abyss, as if it was unsure, lost. I leaned forward, over the railing and looked closer. But it remained what it was – a dot of light. As if it had found something, it moved. It turned perpendicular to its earlier path and began to travel away from me. It continued in the same rhythmic, violent fashion. When it had reached the edge of the abyss, it was gone.

Even now, when I am about to meet a pretty girl on our first date, all I can think of is the abyss and the dot of light in it.

I must get to it soon.

If you walk down the wide, pot-hole riddled roads of Indiranagar or HSR Layout or Koramangala, the bar doors swing open every other step, until you are lost in a labyrinth of doors. The young of this deteriorating nation, with their heads lowered, eyes transfixed to their cell phones, are either going in with anticipation or tumbling out like paper cups. The music from the ill-lit, dark spaces behind the doors, with its leathery bass, jumps at you as if it were pulling a prank until it recedes and is gagged behind the doors again. Like a jack-in-the-box.

Inside, there is a cacophony; of beer glasses hitting tables, of knives scratching ceramic plates, of steely footsteps of forks and spoons getting lost under the tables, of clicking sounds of lighter’s teeth as they open to breathe fire over murderous cigarettes, of the crackling sounds of waiters’ tired spines as they bend over to listen to their orders over the loud music. A cacophony of laughter, of birthday songs, of humming to half-forgotten songs, of unintended jokes, of half-finished sentences, and of the death of solitude. Outside, watching the hazy world go by, they wait and pray in silence to the gods to send in their sober angels to pick them up in their white chariots and take them home. Sobriety in cities is an inconvenience to be avoided at all costs. I am rarely troubled by it.

It’s Monday and the bar is not empty. But it’s empty enough for me to find a table where I wait for my date. What was her name? I take the phone from my pocket. There’s her message on the screen. Jenny is still 15 minutes away. Two cigarettes away. I light the first one. Is it too late to leave?

Maybe, maybe. In this traffic-clogged city of Bangalore, she is traveling an hour to meet me. A drink or two wouldn’t hurt now. Would it? Moreover, after an hour or so, she would want to leave anyway, despite this being the first date and all that rot. Rudeness is acceptable in boredom. But I must prepare. I open our Tinder conversation and go over her messages. While I read, I order my second beer.

Jenny Mukherjee, 29 years old. Born in Calcutta and studied in three cities: Pune, Delhi, and Hyderabad. Wasn’t she the one who met with an accident early this year and was hospitalized for a week? Not her. Not her. That was Anjali from Kozhikode. I haven’t met her yet. But I haven’t met Jenny, too. So, Jenny is into IT sales in… Wait. Wipro? Not her. That was Suchitra, the software engineer from Infosys. So many names to get lost in, to escape into. Never mind, I will find a way.

I will find a way to the abyss.

My phone chimes again. I light my second cigarette. Jenny is still 15 minutes away. She is thirty minutes late for our first date. Weekdays are tough, she had said. Weekdays are empty, I had replied. Empty. Emptiness. Doesn’t matter, weekdays or weekends. It’s all the same. Labels mean nothing. Hours are nameless, lack character, are devoid of shape, like the drifting thoughts of an old man with no memories. Nothing to remember, nothing to forget. Washed out, scrubbed clean. Sparkling white but without the quintessential spark at the edge of your teeth. Just plain white like the walls of an abandoned house, awaiting an occupant. Perhaps, no one will ever come. Perhaps, all the humans are dead, leaving behind the white walls in an endless limbo, wondering about their purpose. Anticipation grows, fear takes over. So do questions. Why should the wall be responsible for carving out one slice of space from the next, if no human can claim it as his or her own? The passing of time is slowed, nothing to mark its progression. Perhaps, in a few years, mould will grow, and the walls will no longer be white… fuck fuck fuck. I meant, on weekdays, the bars will be empty. Empty-ish. She understood that. Let it be. I look around the bar, to keep myself from thinking about a white wall’s existential crisis. Or the abyss by my house.

A girl sits at the table next to mine reading a book. An oversize grey pullover flops over her petite body. It has slid carelessly over the curve of her shoulder, revealing the strap of her yellow bra, which rises tightly over her collar bone. I look around, guessing her friend has probably left her to go to the restroom and would be back any minute now. But the book in her hand defies that reasoning. She flips a page. Holds it close to her face, eyes narrowed. Squinting to make out the printed words in this ill-lit room. She’s alone, I know. She shuts the book abruptly and reaches for her glass. She takes a sip. Her eyes hover over the table as if she were sitting on a beach and looking at the horizon. Something has changed. The rhythm is disturbed. The sadness that washes over her face, carves her out from the space we occupy. She’s now an old, crumbling tomb over which the bartender mixes his drinks and slides them across to his patrons. A tap on my shoulder.

I turn around to find Jenny, smiling, apologizing, with a face unlike the one I have seen of her in pictures. Is it too late?

Hey, that’s alright. Don’t apologize, I tell her and give her a gentle hug. And sorry I started without you.

Duh! If I were you, I would have finished half of that shelf by now, she says and points to the bar shelf across the room.

I laugh, she laughs. Hoping the girl in the grey pullover did too, I look towards her. She has returned to the book. Perhaps, Jenny’s arrival and our loud, innocuous exchange has pulled her back into the bar.

I am starving, Jenny says. We go over the menu.

With our orders duly placed, we look at each other and exchange curious smiles. This mutual exchange of smiles in silence, however, is a form of communication, the one that keeps the words at bay. Words will come, there is still time. Our smiles stay on until we are both done appraising each other’s faces, like an archaeologist running his fingers over an artefact recently unearthed.

A long nose which tapers into a bulbous tip. Curly hair parted slightly off centre. An astonishing jawline that cradles thick, voluptuous lips, which are still curled into a warm smile. She is still assessing. It won’t take long.

Now, what does she see? A black face with a big nose. Receding hairline. Black lips from too much smoking. A jawline, although as sharp as hers, hidden by the thick beard. A decently shaped head mounted on a tall, skinny body. Her smile vanishes.

You took different, she says.

I laugh even before I crack a practiced joke. I am good with Instagram filters.

She laughs too. No, come on. Don’t be ridiculous. I meant you look way better than in your pictures, seriously. I swear.

Well, that’s a first. I tell her. My eyes move away from her lips and look at the girl in the grey pullover. Our eyes meet. She lowers hers to her book in a hurry.

If this is how you look at the end of a workday, I wonder how pretty you must look when you are getting started, I tell her, not worrying what other meaning that sentence might hold in it. But frankly, I mean it. She’s pretty, nothing held back.

Does that line work on other women? she asks, her voice challenging, her black or brown eyes equally so.

I laugh it off. I was never any good with witty comebacks. I am not going to try now. I look down at my beer bottle and I feel the first wave of tiredness rising slowly inside me. Is it too late?

Do you dance? she asks, eyeing over my shoulder, swaying to the music, watching the people on the dance floor. I turn around and see them, the kind of people I envy the most.

I don’t. That’s like asking a prisoner if he cooks his own food, I tell her.

Her head tilts slightly, eyebrows try to meet each other. Then she laughs, I don’t know why.

Didn’t you say that you are on a sabbatical or something? What are you doing these days? she asks, leaving something on her mental list un-checked. Moving on.

I take a moment to go over the word ‘days’. I need to look at them through her eyes and realize that days and nights are two different things. That you stay awake during the day and sleep in the night. That you build your life during the day and rest your tired bones in the night. That you roll the boulder up the hill during the day and sleep in the night, listening to the rumbling sound of the boulder rolling down. And after several years, I finally woke up, on that fateful evening in Namita’s bed, to the clinking sound of a faceless man, sculpting the boulder with his hammer and chisel.

I have only just…

Hello? I hear Jenny’s voice, with a hint of boredom.

Yes, yeah. I took a break from work. I shake my head to ward off my tiredness. Been a month or so. Back in October, I think. What am I doing? What else are we all doing these days? Netflix. I have just been watching Netflix all day. Which reminds me, what are you watching? I ask her. When you are short of words, you can always fill the silence with Netflix.

Her eyes light up, her voice excited. You won’t believe. I am just hooked onto these crime documentaries on Netflix, you know. They are so good.

Like Ted Bundy stuff? I ask. It’s true. I cannot believe.

Yeah. Have you watched it?

Oh, no. I haven’t. I have heard they are great. But, honestly, never pegged you for someone who watches, you know, crime documentaries. They must be pretty gory, I assume. I surprise myself with the tone of my voice. It is almost unsettling because it sounds genuinely curious. Rightly so, because she has a display picture of a puppy on her WhatsApp, loves her picnics in Cubbon park on Sunday mornings, grew up around uncles, aunts, cousins, and family in general, is addicted to Candy Crush or some such game, and says I am just the second guy she has ever met from a dating app. Perhaps, the only outlet for that primal, all-too-human darkness in her is watching crime shows. I don’t know. I have always been bad at reading people.

What do you mean? she asks. The smile vanishes from her face.

Oh, no. Don’t get me wrong. There is nothing wrong with watching crime shows. You come across as someone who enjoys her sunshine, and it shows on your face. I recalibrate and smile, hoping to rekindle that smile.

It works. Her lips, they curl and part slightly to make way for the tip of the bottle. She takes an ounce or two too much and the beer spills out from