Descent into darkness

Darkness! Darkness that stretches out to infinity and eternity!

And then my eyes open to darkness of a lesser nature. Darkness of mere mortal night, of mere mortal death.

I know not what sleep, death or spell brought me here. I lay supine, my eyes open staring at a lightless emptiness, my body unwilling to stir. Sediments of stupor cling to my tattered raiment. My chest feels heavy, crushed as though some impassioned lover held me in her desire's embrace. It suddenly dawns on me that I am no longer breathing. I panic into a voiceless scream that is swallowed up by whatever succubus sits on my chest. Fear lends my body motion and I sit up in cold sweat.

I am still not breathing.

I rub my eyes and try to pierce through the darkness. With no light to ally, my eyes beat a hasty retreat to the cave of my soul. My sight broods there in silent defeat. I see vague memories of a summer sun, fair open meadows and love's sport.

My love! My love!

Where is she? My goddess with shimmering robes that could barely contain her budding charms. My verdant spring with hair of sunlight, eyes of lilies, breasts of bounty and fertile hips that welcomed the ploughshare. Joyful love seemed to me when in her keeping was my heart as she lay asleep in my arms. And now I am but alone.

I try to cry, to give voice to pain and loss. But nothing happens. It dawns on me that I can't cry because there is no pain, no loss in my heart. I am only aware of her non-presence. No feeling. Only vague mirages of memory.

Now the spring turns into an autumn night. I feel a fierce pain in my chest, as if it were rent by the tusk of a monstrous beast. I hear the gurgle of a river that I cannot see, the harsh voice of a sordid man with his eyes like the hollows furnaces on fire, a hungry monstrous worm...

Then all fades away. Like fresh rain washing away the muddy earth, I recall naught.

Then I see her. I see her eyes.

They shine like a lone evening star in the firmament of a moonless sky. From the light of her eyes mine get sight.

She stands by a window of frosted glass. Her majestic height is a striking counterpoint to the infinite langour of her poise. Her skin is the shade of an afternoon sun under an ancient tree. Her tresses are luxuriantly black rippling down in sable streams. She is robed in naught but this rayless cascade of night.

But she is not a vision of beauty that is. She is beauty that was. Her eyes shine with the light of a star that has been long dead. Her breasts are full with youth as the defy the downward pull of age, and yet the heave with sighs of unrequited desires. Her lips are luscious red flower petals, but even without kissing them I know they are cold to touch and yield no sweet nectar.

And then I see her hand.

Curled like the tremulous tendril of a creeper that holds a flower of beauty too flame-like her hand bears a pomegranate. A ripe red fruit whose every seed bears the immense allure of sadness.

I lick my lips as an immense hunger comes over me. It seems as though I have never eaten, not since I was born, not since the universe was born. Hunger now pushes me forward as I move on my knees to her.

She looks at me with infinite pity in her eyes...and yet...and yet...there is a hint of malice in them. That spark of malice travels down her supple shoulders to her lissome fingers. Her cruel nails cut the fruit open in tantalizing agony. The fruit bleeds crimson juice.

Then it dawns on me.

I breath no more...

Fierce pain...

The monstrous beast and its hunt...

And finally, the alabaster tusk ripping through like a pomegranate cut with an ivory knife...

I have no heart, I have no life. Cold is my body and wan are my thoughts. She holds my heart, my living heart, this goddess. Her cruel finger pries it open even as it nestles in her loving palm. I look on ashamed as her baleful eyes gaze into my open heart. She sees it all.

And then she turns my gaze on me. I tremble in fear for I know what is coming. But there is still hope.

For one moment she looks at me with great kindness. Her eyes cool to a moonlike pity as though she would spare me. But as her slender arm stretches out, I know it is not the pity of the tormentor that spares the victim, but pity of one victim that knows what another endures and yet inflicts it without mercy.

Her arm droops like a dying flower, the fruit hanging like a laden cloud above me from the very skies.

"I bid you eat this burning heart..." her icy command resonates off the darkness that engulfs us.

I know all that comes now. If I but refuse, I may go back to light, to spring and the summer sun. Even now, despite the aeons and leagues that separate us I see my goddess of light, her breasts leaning forward to my lips calling out to me, warning me not to taste what is offered. Fro one bite, one taste of the tiniest seed of darkness from this heart fruit would bind me to this sable goddess forever. The world shall still walk over the cool grass and drink of the living stream, but I shall remain here in eternal repose, buried deep in the cold loins of this queen who carries only memories of innocence.

A moment passes that is longer than the eternity of any god.

And then I stumble forward sinking my teeth into my own burning heart. She draws me close as I feed. I look up into her eyes and see that I am now suckling on her soft breasts. I am on her lap, her hands on my head guiding me into those ripened fruits that spew sweet bile, tears and blood into my hungry lips. Her hand ruffles my hair and her eyes shine with the pity of the Virgin Mother.

And then she cries. She doesn't shed tears for she becomes tears. She is now a river that washes over me cleaning the dregs of memory that remained. The furious screams of my spring goddess who has been cheated of her love, her prize are on longer heard. Life itself which just a while ago seemed like a nebulous dream is now erased without as much a trace of its existence.

All goes silent now as I clutch and drink of her breasts. Rest, repose and peace. Nothing stirs.

Nothing except for the faint echo of my queen's voice that is at once hateful, sad and triumphant.

"My prince... my prince..."

Krithigai worship

Of what use is it to light lamps at your home and worship?
Look at expanse!

The sky is littered with starry lamps.
In the center the moon is the beacon lamp.

Opening my eyes and drinking the light
I placed the flame in my forehead.

My beginning and end unknown
I too am a Siva.
My form too is a mountain of fire.

Go around me you poor world
My word shall grant you salvation.

Crimson Peak, macabre and malevolent

Too often do we associate evil with mere darkness and death. We fancy evil to thrive in darkness and associate it with death which is inherently stagnant. However, evil does not thrive in darkness nor does it desire death. Instead, like life itself, evil feeds on light and has a life of its own. But unlike life which reflects light in a million different ways, evil consumes it whole. And evil that lives has a hold more pertinacious on life than light will ever have. What light strives to set free, evil jealously desires to hoard.

Evil, light and life. Lucille Sharpe, Edith Cushing and Sir Thomas Sharpe. This is the unholy trinity that forms the revelation that Crimson Peak is.

We start with the little Miss Edith being warned by her mother's ghost (a ghost like only del Toro can produce) about the Crimson Peak. Years pass, the rose bud has bloomed. Young Edith is an aspiring writer who does not write ghost stories but stories with ghosts in them (Oh, how I would love to read such a story!). She is brushed aside as just a pretty little face when Sir Thomas Sharpe enters her life seeking from her father a loan for his ingenious clay mining machine. He is handsome, charming and most importantly understands and appreciates her writing. While the subtle courtship is underway, Mr. Cushing discovers dark secrets about the Lucille family. Despite his attempts to protect his child, he himself is murdered and Edith becomes Lady Sharpe. And during all of this, Lucille, Thomas' sister stays lurking in the background, merely playing the organ while her brother and the unwilling debutante waltz around the dance floor.

The story then moves to Allerdale Hall, a house that is putrefying in almost the exact way a corpse would. And it is here that Lucille, much like a certain Transylvanian Count, when her feet are on her own soil; clayey soil that when touched with the snow becomes crimson as Sir Thomas explains later (a little too late for Edith perhaps) comes to her own. From hereon, there are just two characters in the story conducting their own opera of the macabre - Lucille and the Allerdale Hall itself. What is the final act, the denouement of this opera? You will obviously find that out watching the movie, but it barely matters.

Because the plot, the dialogues, the ending are all trivial embellishments to a movie that is almost a pagan worship ritual for the Gothic. It is like watching the visions that inspired, or perhaps haunted the likes of Bram Stoker, Mary Shelley, Poe or Emily Bronte come alive on screen. There is perhaps only one simile that can be used to describe this movie - it is like a pomegranate cut with a knife of ivory (Elle est comme une pomme de grenade coupée par un couteau d’ivoire. - Salome, Oscar Wilde). Morbid, macabre and alluring.

I was rather disappointed with del Toro's Pacific Rim. It seemed like another director with vision had fallen prey to mundane box office revenues. But thankfully unlike Burton, del Toro seems to have survived. His ghosts are very much the fantastic and grotesque monsters of Pan's Labyrinth. But where he truly excels in creating the atmosphere. The roads are muddy, the decadent clothes all seem like they are out of the Masque of Red Death, the snow droops like dead flowers rather than falling and even daylight seems dreary and shorn of life.

And the house! My, what a house. While it might not be as horrifying a presence as say the castle Dracula (the one infested by Bela Lugosi, not Gary Oldman) or the Overlook hotel, it is definitely a presence more alive. The stairs do not creak, they groan with mortal agony. The walls do not crumble, they rot like human flesh revealing skeletons of the past. The boards on the floor do not squelch with mud, they bleed crimson. It is a living, breathing maze of death and like Edith, we too are trapped inside it. The house towers over the movie with a stature (pardon the pun) that no actor dare challenge.

And yet, Jessica Chastain does just that and I daresay almost wins. It is always too easy to get carried away when you have a character as steeped in evil as that of Lucille Sharpe. A lesser actor would have resorted to exaggerated histrionics and affected mannerisms that would have definitely reduced Lucille to a caricature. But Jessica breathes the character into life with her subtle performance. The scene where she "takes care" of a wan Edith promising to "get her out of this bed soon" will send shivers down your spine.

Tom Hiddleston and Mia Wasikowska play their parts well. Hiddleston is required to give a more nuanced performance as the enterprising brother who is torn between the two women and does so brilliantly. The confidence of his character with Edith and diffidence with Lucille are brought out perfectly. Mia plays yet another nubile damsel in distress in a Gothic horror romance. Thankfully, this time she is in a delectably dark Cumberland and not in a badly imagined Wonderland. (Mr. Burton, sir I hope you are taking notes!)

The climax of the movie was a bit of a letdown. Personally, I would have preferred a tragedy for the climax. (SPOLIER ALERT: Why not have the Allerdale Hall buried under the very clay that is the lifeblood of the house with everybody in it instead of the "happy ending as only celluloid can deliver"?) But I guess one cannot afford to get one's hopes too high as a pessimist with movies these days. :-)

To sum up, you remember the first time you read Frankenstein or Wuthering Heights or The picture of Dorian Gray as an impassioned youth? You remember all those dark desires that these works stirred in you, desires beyond love, lust, romance or even evil? Crimson Peak breathes life to all those malevolent thoughts and ends up consuming you much like how evil does.

I, for one, however could have done with a couple more bodies. ;-)

Cold zen

Riding paths of thoughts
I suddenly realize
Chilly winter night.

----

Deaf to silent night
Mind and I on different paths
A chill! We are one!

----

Empty roads and thoughts
Prickly kisses on my skin
Aha! T'is winter!

The season of lust

Hark! Ye laden clouds!
Shroud the heavens! Tarry not!
Monsoon impassions gods. 

Bhairavi

Sinuous serpent
Sways so soft, strikes swift
Behold! Bhairavi

Eternal hunger

This morning I woke up feeling a little despondent, dregs from the previous night's depression. An idle wasted day was followed by a night of dark brooding rains. I had gone to bed with anguish and anxiety as bed partners. Not the most pleasant menage-a-trois. The night's sleep had washed away most of the darkness and dawn was sucking away the last drops of depresion along with the dew drops.

However, I still felt small and helpless. I saw the morning was glorious, but I could not share the glory. As I sat down head bent over some old tome, she came to me. Or rather, her பொட்டு (bindi) came to me. Apparently, I had not gained enough intimacy to talk to her directly yet. So I talked to the dot.

Dot (spreading a warm glow across my face): Why are you unhappy my child?

Me: What else can I be? For am I not a failure? Am I not a lost cause?

Dot (amused):  Failure? Ah yes, that is something you people talk of. Why do you think so?

Me (with a tragically grand sweeping gesture) : Look around. Listen to the sound of the measly crow, the buzz of the annoying mosquito. Look at the muddy slush that is drinking up the sun, the filthy flea that sits on even filthier shit. Look at the lowliest creatures that she has made. Even they produce music, even they shine in beauty; music and beauty that I dare not even aspire to. Here I am, a man with dreams of being a poet and I barely even write.

Dot (laughing): Is that all? Silly fool. You think there are lowly creatures and lordly creatures. You think there is music, beauty in some and not in some others.

Me (puzzled): Isn't that how it is? There is good and there is bad and I must aspire and work hard to reach the good.

Dot: Tell me, what does fire eat?

Me: What?

Dot (repeating patiently): What does fire eat?

Me: I don't know...wood, fuel, ghee, paper...

Dot: And...what else burns in fire?

Me: Well, almost everything.

Dot: Everything. The fire is her mouth, one of her mouths. And it eats everything. The purpose of everything is to offer everything in sacrifice. If her mouth does not differentiate between the mosquitoes' buzz and the koel's call, the jasmine's perfume and the stench of dung why do you? She is ravenous. She cannot wait for food to be cooked, to be perfect in aroma, in taste and texture. She devours them all - cooked and uncooked, ripe and raw. Just feed her for she is eternally hungry. Do not keep her waiting.

Me: Silence.

And so...this was written.