Parallel Voodo

Parallel Voodoo
Dara Shikoh
(6/11/2013)

The breathtaking humidity suffocated me to the neck, we were sitting under the open sky but still burning from the inside, not even a single leaf was moving, me and my friend Zarek had travelled to a village in the Punjab district of Vehari, the local animal life had faded recently but you felt a difference once you crossed the borders of Sindh and Punjab, although both the places were filled with scavengers, Punjab had some wildlife life left, a couple of birds sitting made strange honking sounds, we sat in the open grounds of a very small herds of villagers, the fourth full moon of the year on which we had joined them was a ceremonial event for the villagers, they had already tempted us with what they promised to be the best goat sajji of our lives which would not exactly be a sajji.

This specific village which we had come to today was left isolated by the rest of the villages because of their conspicuous behavior, before the partition of the subcontinent men had come to slaughter their whole village on more than a couple of times, before that, in the 17th century the local minister in the area of the Mughal sultanate had ordered an armed troupe of 100 soldiers to destroy these men and women and specially the children. Both the conquests had’nt succeeded none know the details of the events but people grew even further from this tribe, I don’t know if they mind that or not, they were a closed community, they had a history full of mysterious events, incest, unorthodox ideologies some called them the devil worshippers, some called them saints.

Devil or saint, me and Zarek now sit around a fire lighting high and bright, its warmth made me uncomfortable but closest to that fire sat a group of three old men who were either brothers or maybe they were so old that they all looked similar to each other these men played old, beaten up instruments, quite bad ass.

Bulgu, our guide, our host told us that the instruments were a tumbi, one stringed sitar like object with a high pitched voice, a bughchu, small drum like instrument struck by another small stick hanging by a thread of it and the flute like instrument was called Algoze. Their beats were steady each one of them struck one note every time but in perfect time, making a vocal sound which I couldn’t figure out who was making exactly it seemed to be coming from everywhere, there was a separate ceremony for the women going on inside and now me and Zarek were growing more and more desperate for that ceremony to end, because within that room from which came sounds of women howling sad tales of old kings and murdered children and praise of the ancient trees standing strong on the ground before any of us were born, it was getting ready, they said it is ready when the odour covers the whole village and I could smell it now, I wouldn’t call it a pleasant smell of course it made me wanto close my nose and breath from my mouth alone but I doubted the sanity of that action, I could see Zarek gagging due to the smell.

The village and its strange surroundings were a touch bit spooky indeed, for example there was no road which led here, its said you have to follow a western star to reach here and that is exactly what we did, the village was surrounded by trees almost in a way that it was being protected by them, the mud houses were made close to each other, unlike most other villagers, these were clean people, they might have been way below poverty but their houses were clean the pathways had no stones on them, I kept glancing towards these homes as at all times as soon as I entered this village I felt there were people moving, people climbing trees people eating, more people than there were.

Finally a huge crowd of women came out singing that same song and as they came closer, their voice echoed loud even the heaven might have heard some of it, they put down a huge steaming pot of a thick green sticky liquid, me and Zarek were given us that in a given bowl, Zarek and I were scared, many people stopped us from doing what we were about to do but there was no way we could have backed out now, so I took a small what was between a sip and a bite I wanted to spit it all out but instead I smiled at the ancient lady who was looking at me excitedly, she told me to drink it all in one go because everyone had to drink from the same bowl, so I did that and so did everyone else, instinct made me light my goldleaf, the best cigarette around definitely, not to hard not too light, just right.

I looked to the right where Zarek was sitting he wasn’t there any more instead he had joined a group of local villagers who from a distance just seemed to be staring hard the long strong trees from which came the green sticky liquid which we just had, it is called gzagufn pronounced with the g and n silent.

My senses were starting to brighten up my heart was starting to race, this drug was supposed to open new dimensions of life to people, what did It do exactly was yet to be discovered, the woman who had handed me the wooden bowl I drank in was whispering at the sky and then I saw what was one of the many strange things that started happening that night, she took a rusted, old but sharp looking blade and cut herself from her forehead extracting her blood in the same bowl, she didn’t drink it she kept whispering to the clear skys above, she threw the bowl in the burning fire, the fire grew louder and burned higher the notes from tumbi made my eyeballs flicker everytime, I couldn’t sit anymore, it will fuck my head up.

I didn’t know about ghosts and magic, but magic I believed to my understanding was science, it had existed for so long, so many people had given in to it, people are said to have died do magic. The point is, even if you are someone like me who doesn’t really care about these minor details of the subject, these things made you wonder, wonder if there actually is more to life or not, sounds like bullshit if you listen to it from a distance.

I was sixteen, I remember, my family and I were living in Hyderabad, when I faced the knocking mystery, my house had a glass door with a wooden frame, we once left for umrah for a month, the house was left alone, when we came back I remember my mother’s face going pale and my dad’s confuse expression, someone kept knocking on the door, if you get closer to it, it started knocking harder, my parents and the rest of the family labeled it as the influence of djinns, one day after cricket I decided to get closer to this door, I wasn’t scared, there was a door we opened to let the wind in, on the other side of the lounge, this door had a volt on the bottom of it, the volt got locked in a hole inside the marble, the circumference was bigger that the volt, every time the wind hit it, it made a ‘tick tick tick’ sound, I was so excited when I had solved this, I went straight to my parents and an aunt who was sitting with them and told them what I had discovered, but my constant failing at school, sport and other normal things in life reduced my credibility as a believable kid. Since that day I decided never to believe in this sort of thing, and it was since that day that I never thought about it.

I was scratching my head, the blood was pumping in my brain the stars seemed closer , brighter, I could see energy, I saw a lag between a person moving from distance A to distance B, the old woman still sitting by the fire, whispering to the heavens as the fire burned on the ground, I saw her cut her head again, I saw the same drill repeated again by the old lady again but this time I felt something getting sucked away from me, I felt their existence growing stronger around me, not on me, I looked to my right the old lady who was far away sitting by the fire was right here, I think I spooked up behind but I don’t know if my body moved or not my expressions were that of worried disbelief, all she said was ‘accept, son’ she kissed my forehead I could see no marks on hers. I was shivering but the sweat dripping from my body wasn’t stopping, the moon was now covered by heavy clouds, the musicians hadn’t moved even a bit they were going on non stop and by the looks of it they would go on the rest of the night, my hands kept flickering, the old lady was gone the fire was near, black figures like humans crossed by, were they humans, they surrounded us all, a black cloud seemed to approach from the woods, when I felt a hand approach my lap, a woman of not more twenty seven years, her light brown stoned eyes stared at me as she led me to the center room of the whole village her body was against mine, every time she touched me, I could feel energy, she took her clothes off, she had a beautiful body, our horizons were too broadened to be even thinking about sex we were just two souls in our natural most form, naked, close to each other, she ran her pointed finger nails through my head which had never felt this good before, her hands sent divine tickles through my blood stream, all I could see now was her eyes and it looked similar for her, her words felt like a refreshing breeze from the ocean, our bodies were locked with the purest emotion in human dictionary, I was in a bubble with her alone, I could feel me, I could feel her to be honest, I was her and she was me, we were one as I opened my eyes the room was filled by more people, more naked people, men and women, men and men, women and women, all too tightly locked to each other to know who they were and what they were doing the old woman looked on through the window the musicians played, my friend Zarek was surrounded by people, some feeling his heartbeat, some making love to him, some whispering in his ear, this felt like love, this felt like the strangest thing I had ever come close to, the world outside this bubble was suffering everyday, people killing in the name of not only God, but family, love, honor, land, water, rocks, coal, sex, race had become a common aspect, the hartred between, I did not know who these people were, but what if one day we stopped paying attention to the, what if one day we stop talking about them, what if one day we decide to live as adam and eve did as the first humans on earth, discovering a new dimension every day.

Are we alone? Or is there another dimension of life, we are all just energy; we are rays of disposable energy which can’t end but only be converted. I couldn’t take the heat in the room, so I left, outside I aimed toward the woods, kept going straight towards them into the wild dark woods, a hand stopped me from going in there a middle aged man with a slight smile on his face told me that we don’t go there, they come here, he explained to me that humans are too occupied to enter a new dimension, their vision is too limited to meet new kinds of God’s beauty upon earth, we only see one world, we don’t even see that completely, those who live amongst us are much more powerful, they can see both the worlds and many others which function on the same planet on a separate frequency, we don’t channel ourselves to discover other energies which surround us, you have too many needs, you need money, you need phones, you need cars, you need weapons, you need love, you need to hate, you as a race aren’t ready to face the realities of life so we let you live in the bubble that you live in, away from what really matters, you challenge your earths wisdom as if it were only for you, yet you know nothing of it, I saw a man yesterday, I met him, I spoke to him in his final hours, he cut his sons throat before he cut his own, how could one be pushed to kill its own fruit, that’s why we don’t accept you, we try to ignore you as much as we can, some of you, who have broader horizons of knowledge they know us, the interact with us, we live as one, we had always lived together, but we don’t kill, we don’t hate, we don’t misuse.

The man spoke as I tried to connect the dots, I looked at the woods, I looked back at the man, gone. My body had massive goose bumps on it, I wasn’t scared, I wasn’t confused, I did not know if this was real or un real, I did not know if I was still high or not, I stepped into the woods my every foot crunching on the leaves, they lived here. The ate here, they made love here, I knew, the wild forest was too wild for humans or animals to be standing so tall amongst us has to be supernatural. I couldn’t see but I could feel, the sound of wind were separate from the sounds of music which were separate from a third sound which was not recognizable, it was coming from around it wasn’t whispering, it wasn’t talking it wasn’t whining it wasn’t crying it wasn’t singing it was just a single sound, un understandable, they weren’t telling me to get out, they weren’t telling me to stay, I was lost, but I had found the place where I had to be, the haunting sound of the music came from the noisy village away far away where the humans lived, I sat, lied down on the ground, my brain was working in so many ways, I was so lost in the inception of parallel reality that the water dripping from my forehead wasn’t sweat but it was the rain showering upon me I was soaked up by the beauty of reality, for some time all those things which according to the strange man before the woods made us humans un acceptable to them did not matter, the feudal begging the peasant to show him respect, the mother telling her husband to stop loving, the arms dealer who prayed five times a day and told his wife to cover up, the short skinny man who found peace by murdering innocent, the politician who worked hard for his country to make it a better place, the mother giving birth to another soul, the man making love to his wife, the father loving his son, the lady who loves animals, they were all so distant. I was inside me, I was outside me, my soul had found peace and love at the most strangest of places within those who aren’t even my the same creatures as me, those whose wisdom spans centuries more than us.

Zarek, my friend, woke me up, I still fail to understand how he was awake, he had been looking for me for quite some time the sun was high and shining, I was still blazed as red forms of laser patterns would travel through the skies. The fire wasn’t burning the musicians were gone the whole village was at work, from distance I saw the lady whose each and every curve was embedded in my head like the picture in your brain of the road between your house and the place you love the most. What is natural? What is supernatural? Will logic ever let us explore the thousands, millions of possibilities which are right in front for us but we are too occupied to see them, I don’t have a conclusion for you, I don’t even have a direction for you, I don’t even have a direction for my self, do we need a direction? Do we need something that’s not inviting? Something we aren’t ready for? All my human brain could think of was how much I needed food, as I missed out on the sajji last night.