EXISTENTIAL KISSY

It was an opulent Sunday sundowner on the fortieth
storey penthouse. Sorbet clouds floated through the deck
like perfect party props, eager to please the entourage of
partygoers robed in spring-summer resort wear. Unrestricted
views of grazing horses on the Mahalaxmi Racecourse and
a sunset against the Arabian Sea gave many of the foreign
guests in attendance a chance to echo the sentiment:
Mumbai’s the most magical city in the world. For the locals at
the party, the ambience offered no respite to the sentiment:
This city has drained my soul.

To Kissy, the whole affair was
an unbearable charade – the endless glasses of margaritas,
the sickly spell of hangovers, the stumpy stilettos that
balanced nothing in life. Gratitude and thanklessness were
worthless pursuits and fashionable conversation starters at
glitzy parties.

Kissy yawned, eavesdropping on a discussion
illuminating the advantages of real estate in Greece. You
know what the homes are like there? A chirpy girl with a
floral wreath in her hair quizzed her more sombrely dressed
male counterpart. Anything’s better than here, the sombre
man adjusted his glasses self-consciously, staring into the
eyes of the girl with dilated pupils. They’re like so much
better; you’ll wonder why you even bother being here at all.
Like in two crores, you could get a mansion with everything,
like everything! A clear, turquoise sea, a white Mediterranean
home, pink bougainvillea peeping through every window, an
infinity pool in the fucking backyard… It’s like you’re living
inside a Pinterest board… Like what more do you want? It’s
unfair how much tax we pay for the bullshit life in the city. The
girl went on rambling. The man in the crisp suit with serious
glasses grew increasingly smitten. Their conversation steered
towards flirtier pastures. Kissy observed them from under
the dessert counter wondering when the man would chance
upon the tan lines on the girl’s ring finger, probably from the
wedding band left at home. She wondered what kind of an
ape this sombre man in serious glasses would turn out to be:
the type that could love a married woman, or the type who’ d
blackmail her after. As Kissy savoured her banoffee pie and
placed bets on the nature of apes at the party, an excitable
Moses crept up from behind her.

‘Happy Birthday, Kissy.’ He sentimentally licked her
forehead, smelling of vanilla beans, much like his personality.
Kissy liked him. He was a good flatmate: gentle, considerate,
and didn’t think highly of himself. It made her approve of
him; most creatures were mediocre and didn’t even know it.

‘What’s so happy about the day?’ Kissy purred uninspired.

‘I don’t know’, Moses pawed his black ears, confused. ‘You
were born this day… That’s why the celebration.’

‘Celebrating what? Another trip around the sun? Another
round of degenerating cells? A celebration for whom? Gupps
over there?’ Kissy’s vocal cords strained. Nothing killed
a meaningful conversation like techno music. Inebriated
guests burst into hideous laughter spells from jokes they
couldn’t hear. Somewhere between that garish mess was her
pet Gurpreet – the ape-pet was obsessing over sauce bowls
plated with the wrong hors d’oeuvres.

‘C’mon, Kissy. It’s not as bad as you make it seem. Our
ape-pets care for us. They’re happy you were born. I’m happy
you were born. That’s why I’m here.’

Moses’ simpleton view on life was endearing, albeit
bourgeoisie. She craved for a more secluded hideout and
prowled away from him. Crouching at the edge of the parapet,
she settled by a shady spot behind the fancy barrel of beer
Gurpreet had imported especially for this party. The theme
was Kisses for Kissy (whatever that meant), and Kissy wanted
nothing more than to be left the hell alone. Moses followed
her behind, loyal as a shadow; his grey eyes earnest in concern.

‘Why are you so cynical about everything?’

‘We’re cats, Moses. We’re born cynical about everything.’

‘No’, Moses pressed on. The noisy bell hanging on his
neck strap made him cow-like. He shook his head side-toside.
‘Your butt smells off. There’s something that you’re not
telling me. Spit it, Kissy!’

Kissy relented at last. It wouldn’t hurt for someone to
know. After all, she wouldn’t leave a suicide note when she
was gone. The music grew louder, and her voice grew shrill.

‘Look at everyone around you… Do you think they think
about the things that haunt them? No. They’re all running
away, you see? They’re running from the why. I’m the only
one bothered by it.’

A drunk teenager flicked his ash over her exposed back.
She snarled at him, flashing her sharp incisors. He stumbled
away clumsily, spilling more drinks at the sight of her
canines.

‘Why all this? This big bang? This combustion? This
carbon? This air? This water? This mystery? These atoms
taking millions of years to make a web of landmasses and
life forms, where probabilities and possibilities collide into
mandalas of infinite consciousness, all left without the
answer to why any of this grand mess is? Why these lives?
Why these deaths? Why these falling teeth, greying hair,
failing organs? Why all the blanks that we fill in between?
Why should I suffer another day, breathe another minute,
eat another banoffee pie, if I don’t know the why to any of
it? Must I be grateful to be some form or formlessness of
life in this universe, destined to spend an eternity without
answers? I mean, what’s the guarantee that there is an
answer? Or the answer, if found, will be satisfactory? What if
the real purpose behind all this, is no more meaningful than
the boredom of a Creator who craved for some company?
What if the Creator decided to throw a party where any and
every vicious idea can come to life and try its luck, so long
as it’s entertaining?’

Anxiety escaped her lungs in quick breaths. Moses’ brown
eyes were dumbfounded. She envied him because he would
never know the burning itch of this unknowing.

‘Why must I, the bearer of this why the rest of you so
ingeniously look past, not find my own answer? If energy
is infinite and I will go on in this universe with or without
being in this body, then I’ve found a way to trick the Creator
at his or her own game. I’ve hacked the system, Moses. I will
kill myself at the earliest in each life and live on as a new
life form in some other dimension. On and on, I will go until
I find that sadistic Creator. And that is why Moses, tonight
I will die.’

Moses’ soft pink nose turned to the colour of a rash.
‘Wait… But you’re a cat. We have nine lives.’

From across their table, the thumping feet on the dance
floor made way for a food tray. Gurpreet pushed a tuna cake
for cat consumption, shaped in the number five, which she
mistook to be Kissy’s age despite the thirty-six cat years she
had endured. There was also another, much larger, red-velvet
cake for human consumption along with wafers, sandwiches
and sodas, also meant for human consumption to celebrate
Kissy’s birthday. The DJ in the oversized T-shirt and cigarette
pants pumped up the bass, blasting a cringe-worthy happy
birthday song. Guests clapped on with ridiculously large
smiles on their faces. Gurpreet announced aloud.
‘Anyone seen Kissy? My jaan? My little ball of grey?’

Kissy licked Moses’ dumbstruck mouth hurriedly. Time
to exit the matrix had come.

‘You be good, dear Moses.’

Before Moses could spoil her plan, or Gurpreet would
come down and swoop her up for the cake-cutting, Kissy
blew the candles of her life. Hurriedly, she snuck to the
corner of the table where stacked cardboard boxes made a
perfect ladder to the parapet, past which there was nothing
but her and the fall to death. There she is, the birthday girl,
the girl with the floral wreath pointed to Kissy excitedly,
while slurring mildly. Kissy turned her back to the crowd,
and without looking down, for fear of changing plans, she
made the leap of faith.

Like a movie scene playing in slow-motion – the error of
judgement dawned upon her – she hadn’t fallen forty storeys
at all. She had jumped off the wrong corner, one where a
neighbour on the thirty-third floor had extended his balcony
(unlawfully), manicuring an indulgent terrace garden for his
little children. Kissy remembered the taste of idiocy on her
tongue – that acidic sting of bile, skidding onto a turquoise
slide, flying a couple of feet in the air, before her head landed
on an ornate ceramic pot, and she lost consciousness. Like
a bullet separating from the gun, Kissy split into something
else. Her physical body hit the ground. Why does a cat have
nine bloody lives?

Weightless as a feather, she floated on her neighbour’s
terrace, watching squeaking children on the garden rush to
their parents’ bedroom. Weightless as a memory, she floated
to the fortieth terrace where Gurpreet’s mouth was open in
horror, and Moses hung by the edge of the parapet, watching
his friend’s mangled body seven storeys below. Weightless as
a whisper, she reached towards the stratosphere, and a cold
chill passed through her being, minty as a boutique hotel’s
towel. Up, up and away she went until there was nothing but
the blue sky; she was nothing but a translucent something.
A giant cloud, shaped like a cat, floated towards her. The cat
looked restful, wrapped in a monk’s robe, serene like the
Buddha.

‘Hello there, Kissy’, the Buddha Cat spoke without
opening its mouth.

‘I knew you were a cat’, Kissy sniggered. ‘Who else could
be so sinister?’

‘I am what you need me to be’, the Buddha Cat smiled,
eyes still closed. The cloud was so still, Kissy could well be
conversing with a stone.

‘I needed you to be good, fair and kind… You’ve strayed
far from those things. First, you make the dinosaurs, then the
cat kingdom ruled the world. Then, the apes hunted tigers and
killed every other species. Now the apes are killing themselves
and everything else.’ Kissy’s cheeks flushed angrily. She was
furious at the chaos of creation. ‘Don’t even get me started
on what you’re doing with the rest of the animal kingdom.
I mean, just thinking about the cats in Syria and Sudan makes
me sick.’

The Buddha Cat listened with equanimity (although there
was no way to know for sure since it didn’t open its eyes).
‘Wait a minute’, Kissy raised her eyebrow, ‘You’re still
playing games here, aren’t you?’

‘I’m always playing games, Kissy’, the Buddha Cat said.
‘And so are you.’

‘So, this is a game?’ She looked at the Creator without
feeling a sense of smallness – a cloud thousand times bigger
than her misty soul. ‘What is the truth then? Is there any
truth to this world at all? Or are you too busy having fun?’

‘The truth is everywhere you seek it’, the Buddha Cat’s
tone as distant as a recorded machine voice in an elevator.

Kissy’s tail went up mistrusting. ‘Don’t you talk this
stoner shit to me… I want you to open your eyes and tell me
the truth to my face.’

‘My eyes are open, Kissy. You’re the one not looking’, the
Buddha Cat wasn’t one for sentimentality.

‘Oh, sure. Know it all!’ Kissy spat anger at the cold cloud.
‘Tell me where to look?’

‘Down’, the Buddha Cat said. Kitty stared at her
manicured spirit paws, finding nothing different about them
(except for the obvious weightlessness). Her eyes, like a shaft
of sunlight, pierced through the veil of clouds, towards a
penthouse, where a party had come to a stand-still. A crowd
huddled over the shoulder of an ape-pet named Gurpreet. A
black cat named Moses looked white as a ghost. Meanwhile,
in a shadowy corner of that said terrace, a drunk girl’s floral
wreath fell off, locking lips with a sombre man grabbing at
her butt while she tore off his coat. Lower still, an assistant
veterinarian rushed with a stretcher picking the overfed,
grey furball, Persian cat who’d turned to a shade of beetroot
from the rupture on the head. Lower still, an elderly couple
sat across each other playing games on their phones, over
a quiet dinner. Down at the lobby, a sinewy watchman
pinched a new-born baby in her stroller, while her daddy
was out taking a cigarette break. Further down, worms living
below the Earth devoured a plastic motif shaped like a leaf
and choked to their deaths. And in the unexplored nucleus
of the Earth, rock-shaped dwarves swam in a pool of lava,
waiting for a chance to explode through the Earth’s core and
grow into burgeoning mountains as a sky full of tectonic
plates danced above them.

‘Left’, instructed the emotionless, elevator voice. Kitty’s
sunlit vision field turned sideways where swirling particles
of energy dazzled in bright colours of the rainbow, spiralling
downward, through the clouds. Carried by the Earth’s winds,
they pollinated life everywhere – the bellies of expecting
mothers and eggs in birds’ nests. A blood-stained baby
pushed between a woman’s legs. Tadpoles took their first
swim in muddied waters. Tiny buds learned how to fend
off attacking birds. All around Mumbai, the rainbow light
entered into the bodies of kittens, puppies, cubs, tadpoles,
chicks, calves, piglets, pinkies, lambs, fish eggs, larvae,
and infants.

‘Right’, came the directive of the elevator voice. Kissy
turned her head and found spirits just like herself, standing
parallel to her shoulders, facing their Creators on the
conundrums of life. A brown horse saw his Creator coloured
in his own image. Who am I? He neighed at the horseshaped
cloud, confounded by the dogma that claimed his
earthly life. A businessman saw his Creator as the Goddess
Laxmi. Why did it have to be me? He cried teary-eyed; hands
folded in a humble prayer. An atheist saw his Creator as a
black hole, staring wordlessly into its abyss before jumping
right in. Kissy looked back at her own cloud, a Buddha Cat
wrapped in a monk’s robes with an elevator voice.

‘What does it all mean?’ she asked, overwhelmed by a
universe much-too-large for her feline mind.

‘Look up’, the Buddha Cat said unfeelingly. Kitty raised
her dazed eyes. A floodgate of new sensations rushed in.
She soared faster than the speed of sound, heat, or her
own paranoia, diving into a portal of neon galaxies where
she was some odd sort of light. Her paws, claws, limbs, fur,
everything was blurry as line drawings. She feared looking
at her body parts, dissolving into smoke of variant colours
in bright blues, yellows, and whites. She was no longer
Kissy, although she was. And that kind of contradiction
made her nauseous.

‘Stop’, she begged out loud to the stars, ‘I don’t want to see
any more, I just want to go home.’

She missed her fluffy white bed, her cosy pink blankets,
her tuna cans, and her vanilla friend Moses who she’d liked
doing catnip with. She even missed Gurpreet, whose most
severe personality complexes were so much simpler than the
entirety of the cosmos Kissy had decided to take on.
‘There is one place you still have to go to, Kissy’, an echo
floated between her left and right earlobes, buzzing like a fly.
Every part of her was fluid, expanding, out of her command.
Every quark was an anarchist. Every atom wanted its own
free will. Kissy couldn’t wrap her mind around any of it.

She worried that her voice would dissipate just like everything
else. ‘I just want to go home.’

‘The only way to go home… is to go through’, the echo
surrounded her, between the smoky, starry space. Her spirit
no greater than a speck of cosmic dust. She was all alone,
oddly overwhelmed by a companion who was nowhere to
be seen.

‘Oh God’, Kissy’s voice was leaving her, turning into a
dreamy, fluid smoke. ‘Where do I have to go?’

‘Inside’, the cosmic abyss smelled like a burning wick, the
second it’s blown out.

And then there was darkness. Not like black, vantablack
or any other new blacker than black sort of darkness. It was
empty. There was nothing there. Not a colour, nor a shape,
a size, a dream, a voice, a whisper, the histories of a planet,
an asteroid, or an electron. It was neither born nor dead. It
neither hoped nor despaired. But it breathed. And because
it breathed, it expanded. And because it expanded, it grew.
And because it could grow, it had the freedom to grow in
any which way. Energy expanded in every form, shape and
direction of possibilities.

When Kissy finally opened her eyes, she was in her
bedroom, with a cast over her left hind leg and a wrap over
her head wound.

‘You’re awake’, Moses sighed, choking with disbelief.
‘This is pawsome! Absolutely pawsome!’ he licked her face
until her fur smelled of the chicken gravy he ate for lunch.
‘I knew you’d return, I just knew it. Gurpreet knew it too. She
thought you’d been depressed because she’d been working
late. I wanted to tell her so badly the thing you told me when
you jumped… I wanted to assure her that your madness was
cent percent your own… But you know how ape-pets take
everything personally… Never mind. Never mind. She’ll be
so happy to see you awake when she’s back from work.’

Kissy was disoriented. Her dislocated hind legs were
fastened in a cast. Her body spasmed in intermittent spells.
Her head felt heavy and throbbed from the ruptured skin.
The pink blanket she had returned to made everything
better. Moses continued licking her front paws with fervent
devotion; she felt grateful for his company.

‘I’ve been praying, Kissy. I’ve been praying all along…
I did not know whom to pray to because we’re cats, and
we don’t do these things. Yet, the belief I’ve found is as
comforting as tuna curry. Look, Kissy!’ He pointed out of
their room window where a fluffy cloud, faintly shaped like
a cat, rested its head sideways with the Buddha’s smile.

‘It’s been there since the night you jumped’, the cloud
reflected in Moses’ giant eyes, shape-shifting into tinier
soufflés that went off their own way. Kissy watched them part,
feeling that ineffable gush of emotions she could never rein
into the construct of a sentence, for as long as she was alive.

 

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