Pee for Protest

By Sanjay Versain

Pee For Protest is set during the spring of 2011 amid the civil resistance movement sweeping India through protest demonstrations, marches, hunger strikes and rallies. A youth, caught in the uncertainty of mistrust and hopelessness, turns a rebel, not by joining the protests that had erupted in the country, but by deciding to attend a rave party

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ukiyoto Publishing
• Release date: Jun 5, 2023
• ISBN: 9789361721489

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Pee for Protest

Sanjay Versain

Ukiyoto Publishing

All global publishing rights are held by

Ukiyoto Publishing

Published in 2023

Content Copyright © Sanjay Versain

ISBN

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in a retrieval system, in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

The moral rights of the author have been asserted.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated, without the publisher’s prior consent, in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published.

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Dedication

To Vepa Rao

…who has promised to be back.

Acknowledgements

My heartfelt gratitude to all those who have taken my words seriously - literally. To Livia, Charu Rishi, Manish Choure, Preetinder Baidwan, Sarju Kaul, Vibhor Mohan, Alokparna Das and Medha Gupta, who were all instrumental in helping me put ink to my thoughts.

Contents

Leap Into Uncertainty

My Infinite Identities

Redemptive Justice

Bridge Across Boundaries

Reclaiming Memories

The Otherworld Within

Wild Waltz

Stiffness Of Reason

Shadows Behind The Candle

Flight Of Fancy And Other Delusions

About the Author

Leap Into Uncertainty

I

mean no harm to myself, whatsoever - I presume. It will soon be over; the proverbial moment of despair which decides the fate of those who tend to dig their own graves. But what if I try and fail? Oh, the glum clouds of uncertainty threatening to pour over pathos. I admit the threat remains too real despite all my denials, intention seldom being a slave to the tyrannical conscience.

Of course, my uneasiness right now has nothing to do with either the agony of despair or even the boredom of fulfilment. So, do I mean I am just furious at having landed myself in trouble for little insignificance? No one asked me to take a bus to nowhere in the middle of the night and yet here I am, fighting discomfiture of my own making. Seven hours gone, five more to go. It is not yet daybreak, but the air is anyway exasperating, reeking of midsummer discomfort. Behind my closed eyelids, I can see a pallid horizon shimmering over a billion clamours.

Who says mornings are an exception to madness? A disturbing thought having impregnated my cerebrum, it feels as if there was no intervening night. The customary drawing of window curtains brings in no joy, even though morning air diffuses in through the glass. Will I get down now? Yes, I want to, but then why am I still sitting? It cannot be just indecisiveness. My agitated mind has kept its neurons stretched wide all through - streaming frames after frames of nonsensical possibilities that could come next - but it refuses to act of its own.

In a way it is hallucination - following an event shrouded in delusion - and by all means, I must defend it as a moment of catharsis, relieving myself of a burden of historical proportions. In doing so, let me once again promise myself to be determined not to tread the path of harming myself because however enraged my senses, I mean no harm to myself. Even in the midst of the ominous conflagration of discontent consuming the landscape.

The party begins at 9 pm, reads an update on Chayah’s Facebook account. Do I still mean to be there? I have no idea and am yet to make up my mind, though now almost standing at a visible distance from that garden of bliss. That is how it must have played in my limbic system before I set forth on this journey, giving myself that deadly adrenalin push - the lure of the unknown, a pervert’s paradise, or my experiment with truth.

Accepting that offer from her was an act of indecisiveness in the face of troubled times, I am sure. I also admit Chayah is still a nobody for me, except for that one-click relationship struck in the virtual world. Networking was always a measure of human resourcefulness until technology got the better of them to arm even lazy bones like me with lightning speed to spread the web of contacts with mindless clicks of the mouse. Nonetheless, my friend list is a meaningless computer-generated compilation of names, not exactly in order of available options; rather a proof of clicks across the network of usernames put in a relationship by some insensate algorithm at work. Otherwise, believe me, my actual sphere of influence is quite limited, not the kind to weave a web of intrigue or even superfluous baloney.

It felt titillating and awkward at the same time to have an invite for a rave party from a female who is on my friend list just because someone postulated that six degrees of separation thing. Perhaps, there always was a random possibility for such an encounter, or maybe I grabbed the opportunity as an excuse after having let myself down. Or is it that I am on the run with my hubris, among others, chasing me? No shame, guilt, remorse, repentance. Just a pretence of irritability. Yes, I did not mean it. But then what are liberated souls supposed to do? Fritter away concupiscence, or freeze in missionary position?

Genelene on the other hand has been a friend for more than a year now. The friendship carries no cultural baggage that brings in caution and preconditions in conversations of a premature kind. Youthful liaison - playful, fidgety, gawky, and even embarrassing. Ok, let me admit - it may even be some kind of a quid pro quo relationship or maybe something in between. 

Before that, let me also admit there was once another thing - a game of one-upmanship between us friends to befriend a real firang chick. It happened during those occasional trips to tourist towns. As teenagers, we would selectively offer our valued handshake to female members of foreign tourist groups. The successful ones treated their own hands as souvenirs, not to be polluted by a friend’s touch. I was the reluctant laggard. Those were days in black and white, of teenage certitude. More recently, newspapers making business out of hyper-local news often come up with stories of inter-racial nuptials and we happened to come across one such - a German settling down with a village bumpkin not too far off from my place. We took it as a challenge. It was a competition to the finish with all seriousness from a sulking lot of youths ever ready to confront boredom with some difference, if not substance. I turned out to be the only lucky one and, unexpectedly, it happened not in those messy market alleys in tourist towns with local men drooling over cleavages behind liberating see-throughs, not in the guise of a friend’s friend trolling social networks, but over an article of faith, literally. 

Online reading - what puts me off is the confusion of choice it offers, and the frustration of drifting away from the core area of interest. At that time, it happened to be a psychedelic substance for no particular reason. I just stumbled upon something of interest and drifted towards psychedelic behaviour. It happens repeatedly, so now I seldom cross the barrier of letters in bold. Most often it is not even the formatted text, but the long tail of threadbare postscripts. Uncensored plain talk, devoid of the hypocrisy of sobriety. Of late, it has been my way of contributing to the cacophony of social consciousness, one line at a time. For a hesitant conversationist, it gives a breathing space not to be left behind. 

I admit being haunted by despair as the tyranny of self-proclaiming do-it-yourself evangelism punctures me profusely and that is how the easy way out comes by texting anything short of expletives to express my discontent on anything deserving to be despised. Why no expletives? Could be a covert operation to guard myself against shaming myself. Or the desire to hear the shrillness around, silently - of the seeds of discontent sprouting all the way across continents and watch in amazement enormous armies of flickering lights floating in suspended animation. In times of discontentment, choosing keystrokes is by no means any less difficult than choosing a sabre. But what side have I been on - dissent or rancour? I know not.

To add to the predicament, lately, the floating mass of humanity surging across streets has been no less befuddling - their banners bearing watermarks of maybe hope, naïveté, self-satisfying egos or even towering ambitions. The deafening chorus of booing voices anyway echoes a big leap towards certainty. But I remain a reluctant participant, blighted by indecisiveness of course or it could be my failure to build a connection. In contrast, I find the armchair activism of having an express opinion on goddamn everything a much-liberated zone full of possibilities. In every cross-firing of words, there is ideology, frustration, and hope. However, a consensus is a mirage, shifting one line at a time. Anticipating seconding my stream of thoughts at the other end, now slowly I have learnt to live with the chaos around me. It gives me a better chance to understand and appreciate others’ point of view and that is how my appreciation for Genelene grew to an extent that it was equally reciprocated by her. 

We started agreeing on more things than we disagreed upon and have since been together facing armies of opinionated minds. It had become almost predictable to find each other at strategic locations - articles of common interest. On a tumultuous day out there with enough ammunition of words, worldly chores sometimes appeared too unreal to be dealt with. 

Anyway, there is not much that I had been expecting from myself, except for what I expect my parents to expect of me - the fallacy of obligation. That is nothing more than the good old common sense to decide for myself whatever is expected of me to be decided by me. Clarity of thought. Such freedom while battling uncertainty and contradictions! Also, Genelene was even quick to send a friend request and that was it. Our friendship was sealed. 

An hour is an aeon in the seamless flow of live content out there, but if someone goes missing even for days, the break may still go unnoticed given that it is unassumingly normal to believe in the other person’s right to withdraw either out of boredom, fatigue, uneasiness or even triumph. I did not ask what it was when Genelene posted nothing for almost a fortnight. That is when I felt like having goaded myself through the shared hotspots looking for any wordmarks of hers. There were none and that is how I keyed in some words to Chayah to enquire about her whereabouts after failing to get a direct reply. She had no idea. Chayah had been a passive friend on my friend list after she sometimes intervened in our conversations, being on Genelene’s friend list. 

I am visiting India a month later, she wrote one day casually as I waited for another line of details, which was not to come. My reply was crisp as had been hers. All the best.

My Infinite Identities

W

ith daybreak now not too far off, the monotony of my journey too has changed as the linear highway gives way to a loop-like road moving in no particular dimension. The same may be said about the stream of thoughts flowing though my head, now cascading from one precipice to another, all the way frothing with angst. Is that actually a rave party, I nonchalantly question myself as if still shying to put it straight? The shadowy outside view of the hills gives me a good excuse to postpone answering it. The road ahead is still too much of an endless journey, my next-seat neighbour lets me know despite no such provocation from my side.

Tucked away in a deep corner of a valley cut by a rebellious river and hidden behind mountain walls covered with moss-looking thick forests, which in winters get blighted by an equally thick covering of snow, is how I visualize my destination after that graphic description, even though it adds little to my understanding of the mountains. There is urgency in his talk, as if to scare me away. As I match his first-hand knowledge of the place with my internet-acquired familiarity, he suddenly withdraws and in fact has not even shown interest in the outside view - his stiffness adding to my restlessness. The unease brings in a questioning thought - do I really need to be there alone if all that I intend is to escape the conspiring confines of that city under siege.

For an isolated village of not more than few hundred residents, 4,05,000 results on a web search, most with soubriquet ‘Little Israel’, would mean more than just a tourist destination by the riverside. Search engine overview - the place is menacingly notorious as it is spooky, known to come alive in the darkness of the night, in chilling alcoves, under a canopy of stars, amid a levitating moon wearing Halloween masks. The notoriety comes from visitors who vanish from the area without a trace. For quite some time now it has been an escape hole for just-above-teen Israelites wandering around to do away with the fatigue of conscription back home. The rave parties, or rather the moon parties, for which the place is particularly marked on a freewheeling traveller’s itinerary, have more of a cosmopolitan presence, I have learnt. Chayah too comes from Israel, though her name is equally claimed here as well with an altogether different meaning.   

A three-hour drive from native Jahanpur, my journey started from Gurgaon, an anachronism standing out amid a background of primeval anarchism. There are no fringe lines that separate the two with both protruding into each other, but invisible fault lines function as traps. Caught unawares, now it is not possible for me to disown any of the two, but it is also impossible not to transgress the boundary walls - familiarity of the terrain being no assurance of avoiding stepping onto troubles zones.

Not to forget the third world in my life, Delhi, an occasional abode when the other two become too menacing. To me Delhi is that pain-relieving balm that works over sores of the soul. The momentary relief, however, comes at the cost of numbness of memory induced by latent anxieties. It is a concoction that acts when cocktailed with some real adrenalin, which anyway needs to rush through distances not just in mind spaces but real ones as well.

That evening I had tasted a gram of something sitting in the fourth-floor apartment of a friend in Gurgaon. It was not the first time, but neither was it out of compulsion of addiction. Another friend coming back from home up in the mountains had carried a few grams wrapped in a cloth rinsed in cow urine to keep away sniffer dogs and aided by the cacophony of an overcrowded bus. That is how it always reaches us freewheelers, or otherwise as well. I was agitated for no reason, or maybe too many of them. Yes, a fight with Maitri over the previous night’s mayhem. Could I have been mad to mock a cop? That is what she thought. And I am not even the hyper kind, abusive when provoked. Perhaps, it is in the temperament, layers of it. Still not able to figure out why I could not resist this trip. Why do I always find myself drift towards the unknown? Why do I show such indecisiveness when there is not even a question of choice? Why this befuddling afterthought - of undoing the done? Even in matters too routine. Now it is almost in my nature to doubt my own judgements, without fail; a sceptic on the verge of schizophrenia; an impatient nincompoop stuck in the imperfection of hope and despair.

Split between this and that and more, there is no other option left but to challenge my own gut feeling. When Maitri called up at 9 pm just when I was battling another bout of nothingness soaked in a room heavy with dizzying cannabinoids, I found myself racing all the way to her place in Rohini, no less than 50 kms in ground distance. At that time, it could have been just the excitement of driving my recently bought second-hand blazing red Maruti Alto. The road was not too crowded at that hour, but my hazy mental faculties made the journey no easier than a salmon climbing up a mountain stream. I drifted with the flow of traffic, in between also dozing off with the purposelessness of my travel. Somewhere midway, as if losing sight of the destination, I found myself drifting towards the side lane of a commercial street before coming to a halt near a bus stop. Seeing two police officers come my way, for the time being I felt it best to slowly move from there. Confronting a city cop in the middle of the night amounts to inviting trouble, at least when dopy-eyed. At that hour you are not questioned but answered on your own behalf, in standardized expletives delivered in highly squared dialect. What may follow is an extreme scenario of unexplained detention if you happen to somehow confuse their senses. Under what goddamn law? Any, or all.

It could be that they had sensed my drowsiness and headed straight at me. Looking into the rear mirror, I nearly shoved an auto-rickshaw parked just ahead of the bus stop. And then they suddenly retreated as if having escorted me well to my destination. The moment I reversed my car to make space for the turn, an auto-rickshaw driver looked straight into my eyes. Need a hotel, sir! Before I could say no, he again came up, Would not cost much. Not giving it even the wildest of thought, all I cared for was to move ahead. As if waiting for me, a group of cops stood barricading the road some 50 metres ahead. How could I forget it was a city under siege and held hostage under public gaze, its inhabitants spooked by their own daredevilry as never before.

The daytime unrest was only one of the reasons why I should have avoided them at any cost. In an excuse not convincing enough for my own dopey self, I kind of feigned being hypnotized by the auto-driver and started following his vehicle, not knowing where he was leading me.

My familiarity with Delhi is limited to regular roads I took to places or halting dens I had cultivated during college days, and it was certainly not one of those routes. As he navigated through streets narrowing further, I gained some consciousness to question my purpose behind the madness. 10.33 pm. I called up Maitri but there was no response. Again, that self-deprecating feeling. Why did I not call her up before leaving? I did not get time to think beyond that point. Manoeuvring though the defaced gullies closing in from both sides, as if in a slow tectonic shift, it was a one-way affair ahead, too late to make a retreat.

The auto-rickshaw was now in front of a three-storied building jutting out in one corner of the street with a dead end. There was no sign of any activity except for a small glow sign flickering irregularly just above the doorway. With just enough parking space ahead for one vehicle, the auto driver signalled me towards the entrance and himself took a turn. Still too stupefied to be able to confront the moment, I could only manage to ask him in a sleepy tone if that was it. You will like the place, sir, was all he said sheepishly.

Dreary eyed, I showed no movement and instead sprawled on the car seat. The comfort lasted momentarily as I found myself being helped out of the car and into the building by the auto driver as a diligent guide would make his client manoeuvre through the delicate portions of a crumbling monument.

The dimly-lit interior was hardly a room, with a couch, a small aquarium and a raised desk crammed into an area no larger than an office cubicle. A coiling staircase also drilled a hole into the room from the ceiling. I dropped on to the listless couch and my steward for the moment almost ordered the guy crouching behind the desk to give me the best room available. A certain disquiet took over the place for the next few minutes and then the receptionist with a slight hunch came over to me and offered a room worth Rs 3,500. And how could you believe I had that much money with me? I said drowsily. At this the auto driver at once intervened to bargain on my behalf, at the same time assuring me good value for money. Not in a position to reason out anything more, I had nothing to say and conveyed willingness by way of slouching further on the couch.

A short while later, a petite figure came down and took me to the third floor through the narrow staircase that bent awkwardly to save space. He opened the door for a room at the end of an equally tight aisle and shut it closed before I could look at the interiors. Anyway, it was immaterial now and I spread myself on to the bed touching one corner. My senses were too numb to even acknowledge that I had my shoes on. More than that, I was trying to avoid answering the same question again - what am I doing being here - and therefore pretended to be tired and asleep to avoid self-flagellation. By all accounts it was not for the first time I had given up to indolence of an abominable kind. Liquor parties in hostels during university days amused me, but most of the time as a passive participant. It is perfectly ok to be mad in maddening times, I have tried telling myself ever since.

Alone in the room, purposelessness triggered further anxieties. But, before I could embarrass myself with the question any further, the answer stood right in front of me, at an approximate distance of about five feet, at around 5.5 feet in height, having tip-toed into the room without even knocking.

Feigning ignorance being no option this time, shying away from the moment was a natural outcome as I pretended to be asleep. Ah, me the unwilling compromiser, I must have told myself. Was it not a deal I always knew about but did not want to acknowledge? That is consent! The unsaid vocabulary defined by circumstantial behaviour and also suggestive words of high context - that is how it materialized, to hide the very shamelessness of the act, at least for me.

Till now I have always tried to live with bare minimum secrets. Bare minimum, yes. Those that fall in the twilight zone. Not the least sins, to which I find it ridiculous to attach the baggage of intuitive morality. However, the borderline here was money moderating consent. That was one of the clear moralistic high points I was sure about - no paid sex.

I faltered and fell into the faultline of my own making. So why escape from the moment now. Add to the richness of living experience as it comes, and without scruples. Nothing new. Prove it, I must have said. A good enough excuse for that moment. Or, better still to blame the overpowering male libido, the evolutionary gene that enslaves the male, abdomen downwards. Where is the doubt then?

Things happen. Why not with me, could be another reason. Maybe that explains my indecisiveness. To let things happen without express approval of my conscious self. A personal manifestation of being in denial mode. This explains the why-I-am-not-me alibi. But wait, it does not mean the fault lies with me. To be more considerate towards my own wellbeing, let me say I am part of the problem not the problem itself. The world around me has been in perpetual denial as well and it remains so. The double helix doing the dressing up on decisions across a bloodline - controlling our ability to live with contradictions. It is a public orgy and all I need to do is to close my eyes and let it happen. Let me also emphasize I am still in denial mode. From pretending to have closed my eyes to actually holding the eyelids tight when it happened, there came an elusive fleeting moment I am not sure how to describe - an area of uncertainty, perhaps another layer of excuses.

But once I held on to my breath, the blow came fast. The rush of testosterone as she made the first move - or was it me - ensured there was no other disturbing thought. No grey area anymore, only flesh and mad rush of blood. No conversation to interrupt the act, not even a fleeting thought, and before the beastly me could take over, it was all over, and she was gone leaving me struggling with heavy breathing. Nothing said and expressed, not even exchange of courtesy smiles. I sprawled on to the floor, stupefied and drained out. At that moment I remembered holding a candle in a protest procession. It flickered with my breathing and then went off. The burning smell almost choked me. Beyond that it was an uneasy night till fatigue finally shut down all chambers in my head. The comfort of sleep was to be short-lived as something woke me up abruptly. It must have been some loudspeaker amplifying morning recital by the faithful. An unwilling peep through the small single-frame glass window revealed an aerial view of the world around, of tessellating blocks and compromised spaces.

A building facing the opposite side of the pathway was an altogether different world. All aglow, it must have witnessed the confusion of a wedding, it appeared. That is the opacity of a city like Delhi. Familiarity shrouds the visible, and unfamiliarity reveals nothing. Or how could I have missed the razzmatazz in the first place. It was nearly daybreak but there was hardly any morning lethargy in my sinews. Instead, a certain outrage took over and I wanted to leave the place as soon as possible.

Rushing down the staircase, the lobby still maintained the same silence with the reception attendant and the gatekeeper sitting in one corner of the settee. Not to miss my drubbing of the floor, they stood up languidly. Keeping the room keys on the reception, I asked for the bill, looking the other way. Sensing my uneasiness, the watchman bleated, Are you in a hurry?

Maybe, I uttered, at the same time realizing that my wallet was missing. Before I could rush up to the room to look for it, I heard the receptionist calling up someone to check the room. The waiter immediately went up and in no time was back with a wide grin on his face. In no mood to stand there, I paid the amount and headed straight for the car. The watchman came running and opened the car door for me.

Looking askance, I saw a faint gleam over his brow, and it lingered on in my visible memory. As I drove to nowhere in particular, that image played again and again in front of my eyes. The obvious doubt - did he know me? It matters not in a city of infinite identities. Even if some weird occultation throws up a familiar identity in front of you suddenly, there is every possibility that the person too may be living an acquired identity, just like you. Therefore, it hardly mattered whether he knew me or not. If yes, then I denied his existence, his actual one. Are we not an army of acquaintances shuttling between our real selves and assumed identities? The watchman was definitely one among us. Persuading myself with this argument, I again proceeded to nowhere. It was 4.20 am. Sunday. There were vehicles trotting across the connecting lanes. Could they have been the candle-bearers or just the regular Saturday night birds returning home late in the morning? No point going back and drowning in self-pity, I thought. Running amuck for some time through the labyrinthine gullies, it was easy to get lost, if that was my intention. I was in no mood to ask the way out, had that been the option, and it was not because the other vehicle drivers appeared equally enraged. Taking random left and right turns through the lattice work of buildings bound by commonality acquired by virtue of being there, I was convinced the maze was unsolvable, like my own predicament.

Just then a strange stroke of improbable luck threw me out on a very familiar road, as if conspiratorially - the one that I had always taken to Maitri’s house unmistakably each time I visited her. I could not miss the smirk on my own face.

Was I so close from saving myself from the disgrace of betraying myself?

Yes,