“Are you dejected from your monotonous life? Are you tired of the daily routine and strive to live life differently? You know the path, don’t you?”
A middle-aged lady from the brochure nodded gently, as if understanding his plight. Well, maybe she did. He knew that he was being nudged gently by that visual brochure, hell he had money, he could afford being nudged!
Anything to drive away this dejection.
Along with being dejected from life, he was also frustrated, felt violated, had been rejected, spitted at, kicked at, licked off, clawed at, mauled off, hammered at, laughed at, cursed at, all that grinding and grueling of a rich, famous life, where life juices were constantly being sucked out. Besides he had never been on the moon.
He decided to give them a call, after all.
********************
“Come on now, get out.” He yelled, rapping the glass tube with the back of his hand. The man inside the water indicated with his fingers that he would take two more minutes. Mahesh sighed. He was going to get late. There were six of these glass tubes. Each was presently occupied, and the next ones in line were waiting impatiently for their turns. This was not half as horrible as waiting for your turn in toilet. First of all it is somewhat difficult to shit on moon, and now if you have 20 contenders with just four toilets you could imagine the rush in the morning. The glass was slightly opaque, so as they would not encounter the stark nudity of the co-workers. He brought out the electronic keypad out.
“Bloody hell, today I am receiving good connectivity, looks like my mobile is catching up some of the earth’s signals as well.”
“It is?” A man next to him asked.
“Yah it is, let me see if my facebook account opens up. It has been indeed a long time since I have been on earth.”
“Well, looking at the population, they should indeed start giving us basic amenities. The Moon– internet is so busted up.”
“Exactly, all we have is a google that could not open up most of the sites due to network errors.”
“Moon is no one’s dream habitat.”
“Hell, no go.” Mahesh said, closing the flap of his mobile.
“What are you to crying about? At least, we all are better off than the scientists on Mars; they have to face the planet’s fury all the time.” An old man countered their opinion. He was cranking up some knob of a very old device.
“Well, you can say that. I read in newspaper that a psychotic scientist after killing his wife and children shot himself dead.” The guy next to him said.
“Oh man, what the hell was the man thinking?” Mahesh asked.
“It seemed that he was tired of the harsh life on the surface of Mars.”
“It must have caused a huge furor.”
“Furor, it was a downright scandal. The ICSV (International Council for Space Venture) was trying to hush it up, but the news leaked out. Young men and women would now think twice before strapping their belts and hopping to Mars.” The old man remarked. He still hadn’t given up on the old machine.
“What are you trying Uncle Billy?”
“Different forms of entertainment for different generations. I am just trying to listen to my Radio.”
“You don’t like the Moon Radio station?”
“Ha, I would not listen to some Guruji giving short-cuts to reach salvation.” Uncle Billy jeered.
“You unhappy with your job, old man?” Mahesh ask, restraining a smile.
“Not exactly, pay is well and the work is not too excruciating. Besides I love moon’s gravity.”
“You love it?” The guy next to him asked.
Mahesh could not listen to the bickering that followed as his turn came up. The guy in the tube emptied it and stepped out.
“Had a good wash?” Mahesh asked, good-naturedly.
“I love a good day’s bath.” He smiled.
Mahesh stepped inside. He stripped off and threw the clothes down a smaller tube that sucked them up and went to the laundry. He fitted up his oxygen mask and started taking deep breaths. He then pressed the refill button. Water slowly rose up, first wetting his feet, then his thighs, waist, chest, chin, face and at last his whole self.
************************
“Welcome children, welcome to the abode of The Only One, Supreme and Sublime, surpassing all the known boundaries of the universes possible.”
He was tall, dark with intense eyes and jet black hairs. His hands were extended towards the entire troupe who had assembled there. The air rustled his hairs and the wavy long beard.
James was shocked beyond his imagination by the view that presented itself in front of him. This must be the view of a jungle on earth few centuries ago. His senses were having their feast. It filled him with instant joy.
“This is my humble manifestation of thee,” he said extending his hands towards the surreal beauty behind him, “my service to you and to Thee, to awaken the flame within you, one that had been dormant for aeons. The soul in you craves to be free, free from the eternal bondage of your rigid body. It craves for the joy, delight, happiness and for the feeling of elation. Long have you denied yourself the true happiness, now don’t!”
Few of the old-timers reverentially bowed down in front of Guruji. Guruji smiled and gave his blessings, kissing the forehead of everyone present there. James felt that he would let things go more slowly, smoothly and surely so that he could process one thing at a time.
“Your feeling of restlessness is about to be appeased. All you need to do is to look within. You cannot understand the without, without understanding within. Discover all that you are not- body, feelings, thoughts, time, space, this or that- nothing, concrete or abstract, which you perceive can be you. The very act of perceiving shows that you are not what you perceive.”
There was a thunderous applause. Guruji laughed. “I am happy children that you decided to come here. I would help you shed all the exterior garbs revealing the inner you. Bolo International Bhagwan ki?”
“Jai.” They cried in unison.
Guruji folded his hands and departed back to his room that lied behind him on the plinth on which he was standing.
James looked at his feet. He was standing on pure, original marble, having no radioactivity to shirk away from. Voila, this was indeed going to be a rich experience staying in touch with Earth, which Earth itself was not in.
“Now we would be asking you to surrender your mobile phones or any other personal belongings,” Guruji’s associate smiled, “as we don’t want any distraction to hamper your meditation. We would keep it safe, and return it back once you leave Guruji’s abode.”
Young volunteers were collecting the mobile phones from everyone one of them gathered there. James fished out his mobile, thinking if he had some important call to make.
No, he didn’t. He sighed. Back home, business would be tough without his presence.
Don’t think about it.
His back hurt. The journey was tiresome. They of course gave him sleep inducer so that he did not have to feel the harshness of the journey. Still, he felt happy here.
Everything around him was artificially manicured. It was hard to believe that the Sun and the Sky, the calm lake and the green forest, and the clearing in which this village was built were all created to suit his fancy.
He had not brought any personal belonging as he had closely read the brochure. The volunteer who checked his bag smiled.
He could not whisk him, can he?
The volunteer smiled. “Sir, your room number is 35, straight in this line.”
“Yah thank you. Can I get the keys?”
“Sir, you won’t need keys. We do not bar the doors.”
“Oh, okay. There would be of course no smog to fear from?”
“Not at all. All that you would intake is pure fresh oxygen.”
James smiled. No doors! On earth, everyone had pressurized circular hatches to let none of the outer air pollute the inner sanctum of home. Everyone had tight-packed chambers for their homes. Well of course, not every one of them survived the smog. Poor people always kept on dying. They didn’t have homes neither did they have full-fledged oxygen masks.
And here he was, on practically airless moon, basking in a pure gentle sunlight and pure air to breathe in. The odd thing was he wasn’t even feeling the less gravity.
“Can you tell me why we aren’t feeling the less gravity?”
The volunteer smiled once again. “Sir, beneath your feel, and beneath this grass and soil, lays moon caves which are airless. And your surrounding is filled with air. So you see, it automatically works like a vacuum pump that keeps you well-grounded. Of course- we keep on enhancing the vacuum so that you feel only the pleasurable gravity.”
“But if air is getting sucked, then what are we breathing?”
“Sir, you needn’t worry about that. We have a hydrated asteroid at our disposal. It sufficiently caters to the need of the entire moon. Of course when we allow the air to be purged, we constantly bring in new air for you to breathe in. With the magnanimous amount of air that the dome is supporting, humans are just some sort of dust particles that is swooped in, forgive my generalization, along with the air. That’s how you stay grounded.”
“And the Lunar surface never caves in?”
“To suck you in the vacuum?” He said scratching his head. “No, it does not.”
“Now I get it. Wow, that’s great.”
“Sir, though you may get more curious about things that you may like to know about, I would ask you not to let these questions bug you. Here you will learn many things about controlling your mind and concentrating on a single thought for hours that may allow you to attain nirvana. This peaceful setting is only to aid you in that quest.”
“Yup, sure. I am looking forward to enjoy each aspect of it.” James winked. He then walked along the pathway that led him to an encampment where they were tiny cute huts with numbers written on the top of them. There were conical roofs, and dim yellow coloured exterior that gave them an antediluvian feeling. He could see children playing hide and seek, some middle aged ladies amidst a hot discussion nearby. Some one has just lighted a camp-fire on the permitted site, young men and women were dancing around it. The happiness around began to creep inside him and it made him giddy.
I love it here.
Now and then he would smile to people around who were on the spaceship with him. This was indeed an extremely luxurious life.
The room 35 came; it was on the left hand side of the muddy pathway. He had a pretty lawn just outside his home for next several days. They have even provided him with a reclining chair for the sun bath. He went inside. It was to some extent frugal. But all the basic amenities were provided. His bed was simple but the foam was soft. They had even provided him with a radio, though all he could receive from it were the preaching from different Gurujis who had their abodes here on the surface of the moon. He heard a rumor that there were more than 5000 of such glass domes with artificial environment within it belonging to many of such religiously inclined men. Most of them preached the teachings of the International God, who as the myth goes died in order to save humanity from complete destruction.
Being here made him feel blessed, blessed to be away from the farthest reach of malicious technology. I am lovin’ it.
************
“Birds are having trouble Kotla,” yelled the Simulation Manager Lisa Pundit.
“On it, ma’am,” said the Animator Kotla Krapla, hunching towards the console. It was always the orientation that was problematic. It was extremely difficult to simulate the movement of the birds’ wings, through just videos as guide, as the original muses had become extinct years ago. There wasn’t any computer program developed to imitate organized randomness – chaos, so they had to always start from scratch- developing programs for the birds to flap wings in a particular direction, flap them repetitively and then begin a new set of motions, building on the previous ones. And though bounded by constraints in the form of Laws of Physics, the birds would start flapping their wings in a manner that was far from aesthetic point of view. So they had to start again. It was pain-in-the-ass kind off job.
The intercom beeped. “What?” Lisa barked.
“Guruji wants a Serene Sun Rise, and he asked it to time it with his Surya Namaskar.”
Lisa croaked a minor unprintable cuss word. “What is the tentative time that His Holiness wants the Sun out?”
“25 minutes top.”
“What! You want me to do a Rising Sun in 25 minutes?”
The speaker on the intercom was irritated. “I am not asking for it, Guruji is ORDERING it. And he wants the rising Ohm hymn in the background.”
“Anything else?”
“Not that I am aware of. Over and out.”
She switched off the intercom. “Son-of-a-bitch. Okay guys, stop all your current assignments. Run the dome on the pre-programmed template mode. Guruji wants a Serene Sunrise.Kenya?”
“Yes boss?”
“Search the database, and get me 25 most exotic sunrises that primordial earth had to offer. I want it to be a large blob of a disk, orange colored, with reddish tinge. Dust particles swirling up- giving me a perfect, trance inducing sunlight. Is it understood, Googler?”
“Yes boss.”
“Blip?”
“Yes ma’am?”
“Is your cricket ready to buzz?”
“It is.”
“I don’t want the crescendo of cacophony it had raised to yesterday.”
“It won’t happen again, ma’am. I think I have timed the repetitions perfectly.”
“You think?”
“I have timed them perfectly, ma’am.”
“That’s better. Operator Durza, get me that Gravitator on the phone.”
“Yes ma’am.” He typed a few keys on the console. “Gravitator on line 3.”
“Hello?”
“Chris, did you realize what you did yesterday?”
“God morning to you also, dear.”
“Goddamnit, the water was not flowing down from the water fall at 9.8m/s2. It was flowing down at 4.9. One of the onlooker found it to be odd, telling that it was somehow different from a scene in a movie that he had seen.”
“I wasn’t responsible for it. It was a technical malfunction. A freak solar flare permeated its way in the electronics. The entire Gravitation team went in overdrive correcting everything, barring that one anomaly.”
“That’s okay. But I don’t want any anomalies from your division. I had the Guruji on my neck the whole afternoon.”
“Honey, you are so beautiful, anyone would want to be on your neck.”
Everyone in the room chuckled.
Lisa flushed red with anger, “Shut up. Now get lost.”
“Good bye, and have a nice day.”
“WHERE THE HELL IS THAT LASER MAN?”
“He is on his way ma’am.”
“No I don’t want him on the way presently. Message him to stay put in his office and inform him that Guruji wants his Serene Sun in 10 minutes. I should see satisfied faces down there as they bask in the artificial infrared warmth of this phony sun.”
“On it, ma’am.”
“Do we have the videos,Kenya?”
“Yes ma’am. They are on screen 1 to 5.”
“Let me see them. Fast forward it please, so that I can quickly scan the next batch,” she said. For the next five minutes she skipped back and forth from one video to other.
“Yup, right there, on screen 4. This is the video I want. Mac D?”
“Yes ma’am?”
“Add some orange, near the twilight zone. You have two minutes to do that,” she said, raising her voice, “All right guys, synchronize. We have to get the dome ready in next five minutes. Kotla, get your birds, someone please add the sound to this silent clip- I want to Ohm, in that old Jagjit Singh voice. Mac D, you do….”
“Excuse me, ma’am?” Operator Durza interrupted.
“What?” She barked.
“We are having Guruji on line 2.”
“Holy Cow,” she whispered in an undertone. Then she cleared her throat, “Put him through.”
“Namaskar Guruji.”
“Namaskar, Namaskar. May the International God keep you calm, contended and peaceful.”
“I am blessed.”
”Is the setting for my Surya Namaskar ready?”
“Yes Guruji, I am just adding finishing touches to it.”
“Excellent. I hope that your hardworking and enterprising nature inspires others to be like you because that’s the driving force behind this ashram getting more than 10 million worshippers annually.”
“Thank You Guruji. But this is a team effort.” She didn’t know where this conversation was heading.
“That’s true,” Guruji conceded. As an after thought, he informed, “I am not actually feeling up for Surya Namaskar presently. So would you please go on your normal proceedings, we may get on with it some other time. I hope you aren’t inconvenienced?”
“Not at all, Guruji,” She said, biting her lip.
“Bolo International Bhagwan ki?”
“Jai,” Cried the entire operating station in unison.
Guruji put down the phone.
There was a dreadful silence in the room. No one looked up at their boss. They knew that a brain whacking deluge was not away.
“I JUST HATE IT,” She said, gnashing her teeth and pounding her desk.
Then they relaxed. She didn’t fire the salvo. They were safe.
To be continued…
Alienman 