I Am Me

by Ram Sundaram

  I find all this information within the bottles washed up on this beach.

  Perhaps the ultimate answer then is to stop trying to imagine, and to stop searching for dreams, illusions and fantasies. Choose instead to think, assess and survive.

  Perhaps reality is the ultimate dream?

  Real, true, factual, honest…

  I was told once that dreamers find reality only in death. If that is true, then I must be nearing the end, for I have found my reality. I have found it within my world of dreams, where nothing has ever been real before, until now… when this beach is consumed, my world will become real.

  Six

  He notices the irony of the situation. Lamenting the drastic transformation of life from reality to fantasy, he collects all the thoughts and concepts from the messages he found in the bottles, and converts them into artistic ideas. For in a world slowly becoming devoid of reality, it would serve him better to translate his ideas into art, so that his thoughts may wander time without any real limitations. For art is the one language, the one translation of the truth, which transcends all human boundaries. So he paints, sculpts, composes music, writes stories, and translates all the ideas bestowed upon him by reality, into a suitable, distinctive form of art.

  And then finally, on a piece of paper, he writes not an ordinary message, but a poem.

  Seven

  The Poem:

  To Him We Return

  Pale and Black.

  Unbroken and Unblemished

  But for you, and your Touch.

  Endless Sea

  No Wind to summon it

  No Land to breach it

  A timeless Quest, measured by Thought

  A blank canvass, a clear Sky, an empty Sea

  Think. Feel. Live. Accept

  This Sky and this Sea

  And Him.

  He is there

  He was always there

  Perched on that Tree

  That Tree without Earth

  That Boy without Shadow

  In His eyes you will find it: Meaning

  And in His mouth you will find

  Life, The World, Yourself

  Let Him swallow you

  For in His chest dwells Time.

  The Past never was

  The Future will never be

  The Tree was never there

  The Sky was broken

  The Sea was dry

  You never were, Are not, Never will be

  For He made You, This, Them

  And to Him we return

  Eight

  I see a leaf.

  I stare at it from atop the Banyan tree, which has survived the flood as I have. Adrift upon the sea, the leaf contains a young boy. I wave him over to the tree. The boy leaves the leaf behind and climbs the tree. He now sits next to me on one of the branches.

  He is beautiful. His skin is dark, so dark that he looks blue. Or it is fair, so fair that he looks blue. He has wide, expressive eyes, and delicate, red lips. His thick mane of curly hair is adorned with three peacock feathers, and he wears golden anklets and bracelets. He smiles at me.

  I stare at him, lost for words. And then he inhales. I am swept into his lungs along with the sea, the leaf, the tree and the skies. Within his stomach I find another Universe, another ocean, another leaf, another tree and myself perched on it, staring at this beautiful boy. But there are more Universes, millions upon millions of them. He has swallowed them all. I find myself sitting before him again, gazing into his resplendent face, etched with an ethereal, translucent beauty. I say translucent, for though he sits before me in a solid presence and I can see his features, his hair and his body, I also see everything within him, as though he is transparent.

  I ask him to show me Maya, a kind of cosmic illusion.

  So he opens his mouth in response and I am once again inhaled into his stomach.

  I awake in a meditative pose, alone upon a beach, beneath a Banyan tree. The leaf sits idly before me, like a mere spectator to this grand show. I examine its texture—it is the same leaf as it has always been, except there is no boy sitting on it this time. I wish he would return…

  I sit back down on the beach and meditate over this world…

  The sea is rising. The skies are clear. I am Me.

  I Am Me

  A Collection of Short Stories

  Ram Sundaram

  Author’s Note

  I Am Me is a two-way book: it begins from either end and meets in the middle. It holds a collection of twenty short stories, or ten pairs that are split into either half of the book. The two stories in each pair share the same title and reflect a similar theme, but are depicted in two contrasting yet congruent ways. One half of this book represents reality, while the other borrows from fantasy; similarly, one half depicts an individual nestled within a collective world, while the other half represents a collective consciousness entrapped within an individual existence. Each reader might prefer one version of a story over the other, or else will find harmony in their combined reading. The purpose of this “two-way” arrangement though, ultimately, is to challenge the segregation of “fact” and “fiction.” These two labels are not as mutually exclusive as we deem; for the world of fiction borrows heavily (if not entirely) from existing fact, while the factual reality we perceive in our daily life is tainted with lies, fantasies and the artful brush strokes of an entire population’s imagination.

  An incident that occurs is fact. But the moment it is perceived by the spectators of this world, the integrity of its truth is diluted; for no two spectators are ever the same, and perception is fraught with prejudice. When an incident is recounted, this translation of the fact is already tainted with embellishment, misinterpretation and considerable opinion. By the time the incident makes it through its many retellings, it will have lost all trace of its original factuality. And yet the basic message of the incident, despite all the transformations it has gone through, will be the same when it reaches its final spectator as it was when the first spectator witnessed it.

  Fiction is no different. Art is a translation of fact. In its entirety, it is an analogy for life. An incident that is translated into art retains its essential message as much as a factual retelling does. Both are enhanced with creative license, with colorful embellishment and emotional prejudice. Fact and Fiction are therefore no different from one another, not in their conception or their perception. The only difference is us, the spectators that study both mediums.

  I Am Me presents ten stories in each of these two mediums. It is up to the reader, the impartial spectator, to decide which medium retains more of life’s essential truths.

  Acknowledgments

  A married couple entered the café, pushing a stroller before them. By their side was a seven-year old girl, who seemed curious about everything around her, yet never wandered more than an arm’s length from her mother’s side. When the couple found an open table and took their seats, the young girl lifted a toddler from within the stroller and set him on the ground. The toddler’s legs promptly buckled underneath him and he fell. Together, the mother, father and sister propped him up again and gave him a gentle push; he could wander as far as he liked—they would always be near to pick him up when he fell.

  He did not wander far though, and did not wander willingly. As if tethered to them by an invisible string, he returned frequently to look up at his mother’s lovely face and giggle, or else to have his father pick him up and hoist him over his head, from where he felt taller than everyone else in the café. At this tender age, his family was his entire world.

  But life in the café moved at a brisk pace, and its customers aged rapidly; some even aged years in mere minutes. When the boy was older, and had outgrown his current boundaries, he tried to wander further away from his family
. He was therefore placed inside a glass box with wheels; this way he could move around the café, observing the world from within the security of the glass box, while remaining unaffected by whatever he witnessed. He did not hear the words of those around him, not the profanities, the curses or the vindictiveness; but the sword had another edge to it, for he also missed the wisdom in their words and the emotions in their voices.

  When he grew older still, the glass box shattered and he was hurt. Where once the world had been full of sweet music and kind words, it was now harsh and painful. So he threw out the shards of glass and crafted a bubble instead. It was built much like the box, serving much the same purpose, and yet it was more pliant and therefore more resistant to harm. It curved itself cleverly over the sharp edges of reality and deftly bounced back the sharp arrows of negativity. It also expanded as both he and the world grew in tandem, and did not shatter or burst, despite how extensively he stretched its limits.

  From within the bubble, he met the other customers in the café. He drifted over to their tables and spoke with them. Some invited him to stay, but others were skeptical about his appearance—they distrusted the bubble. Otherwise unremarkable in every manner, the boy garnered no particular interest or favor at any of the tables, be it from the athletes, the artists or the academics. His normality gave him the opportunity to observe the reality of the café rather than shape it, and this passive form of participation would eventually define his role as a person. He was a reflector rather than an inducer; he merely shadowed the moods, gestures and intentions of others, rather than inducing these reactions within them. This passivity enabled him to observe discreetly, without ever intruding overtly.

  He made friends along the way, who each changed him in minor or significant ways. Some merely steered the bubble in a different direction, while others kept it temporarily. There were also some that tried to destroy it, for they did not trust a boy in a bubble. But regardless of how they perceived him, or even how they treated him, he considered them all to be the same, like grains of sand on an extensive beach. He was a grain of sand himself, no different than the rest of them but for this bubble. For he noticed that unlike him, almost everyone he came across lived in glass boxes. Some even lived in cardboard or wooden boxes, and a few unfortunate individuals actually lived in cement boxes—as you can imagine, they didn’t get very far. There were some who lived without boxes, and they were quick to suffering but equally quick to joy. They experienced the world on a heightened level, without any censorship. He longed at times to share in their experiences and to be rid of his bubble; yet he was glad for the shelter it provided him. The bubble was more than a home—it was a part of him.

  Along the way he met a boy that did not wear a box or a bubble, but instead sported a brown paper bag full of holes and slits. Chris Dueck was the most interesting person he had ever met, for he did not wander around the café interacting with the others, but instead sat at his table and allowed the café to come to him. It was Chris who showed him that while planting flowers was aesthetically pleasing, planting trees would serve his purpose better. Trees could be climbed, could be built upon or built with; trees bore not only flowers but also fruit, which nourished as well as soothed taste buds. Everyone else in the café had gardens of beautiful, exotic flowers, but they themselves seemed malnourished and disoriented. Chris was healthy.

  It was a little later that the boy met Diane Wynn, a young girl with a big heart that lay concealed within an enormous fortress, equipped with six moats and thirty crocodiles; walls that were a hundred feet high, with skilled archers that manned their parameters; a dozen beastly trolls, and one very mean dragon. When they met, the boy handed her fifty cents; she did not smile, did not hug him, or take him by the hand and promise to be his friend. She merely considered the two coins, took one and gave the other back to him. Then she returned to her table. But she hadn’t taken more than a few steps before she turned around to look at him enquiringly, as if to say, “Well? Aren’t you coming?” He smiled and followed her happily. Diane was the first best friend the boy had ever had, and he was proud of their friendship, because he thought he had earned it. The truth though, was that they had earned each other’s loyalty. She was the only one who let him sit at her table, though she wouldn’t eat with him. It didn’t seem like Diane would mind even if he sat at her table forever. But he couldn’t stay, for so much of the café remained unexplored. He however found solace in the knowledge that he could return whenever he liked, and could sit with her and talk like only two best friends could.

  A little while later he met Rick Bayer, one of the kindest men he’d ever come across. Rick was a fellow juggler, and he imparted upon the boy the many facets of juggling artfully, while still being an active, normal customer of the café. Rick and the boy shared many conversations while they juggled, and it seemed to the boy that he grew wiser in Rick’s company, yet did not age. It was as though their partnership lent the boy the maturity he had been lacking, which he used to harvest the reckless ambition that burned within him.

  The last significant person he met was Mona Nikhil, a woman who was more like him than any other he had come across. It was starting how alike they were, and this similarity enabled them to become best friends almost immediately. Mona was the first person who ate with the boy, cooked for him, and also ate his cooking. Their friendship was built on equality, and they roamed the café together, not so much as a couple but as one person, built with two individuals. They ordered the same drinks and the same snacks; they bought each other’s meals, told each other’s stories, and fulfilled each other’s ambitions. Until he’d met her, the boy had thought that the café was full of attractive, normal people, while he alone was disfigured. Mona was the first and only person who held a mirror before the boy’s eyes and told him he was beautiful too, as beautiful as she and every other customer in this café were.

  By the time he’d met everyone in the café, the boy was a man. The bubble had been stretched as far as it would go. Every person in his life, from his parents to his friends to even complete strangers, attacked the bubble with a needle. They stabbed at its stubborn hide, forcing it to surrender and liberate the individual within. When the bubble burst, he inhaled fresh air for the first time in many, many years. The air was sweet, invigorating, but full of dust and smog—it was the price of freedom. Once free of the bubble, he understood himself better.

  To thank them for their efforts, and to preserve them in his memory, he decided to immortalize them on a canvass. Standing before an easel, paintbrush in hand, he captured every one of them onto a large, life-sized portrait. When he finished it, he looked up to find that the café had disappeared. The people, his family, his friends… they had all vanished. They lurked now only on the canvass, imprinted like scars on his aging memory. They would remain there forever. They were a part of him after all, and he a part of them. They were all one.

  Prologue:

  Dreamer

  One

  His name is Ishvar.

  He is sitting under a Banyan tree, gazing out into a far-reaching horizon.

  The sun is sliding down the last few lengths of time. It won’t be much longer now before the darkness falls, for the heartbeat of the world has already slackened, and before the Great Shadow lengthens over him, time will have drawn its last breath.

  The sea is rising…

  It wipes away the beach, which has forever been its friend. Now it seethes onto the land, the loam that has never known its touch. The trees fall, yielding to the strength of the conquering tide.

  The virgin earth surrenders…

  “How has it come to this?” he ruefully wonders.

  Two

  I was named after God.

  Millions chant my name in their prayers. They groan out my name when they stub their toes; they sing out my name when they win their lotteries; they call out my name when they can’t find answers, and they hol
d onto my name when they take their last breaths inside our mortal world.

  “Ishvar” means God.

  One might therefore forgive me for having indulged in as much vanity as I once did. Their chants and prayers still ring in my memories, as they did in my ears long ago. And I still swell with pride and importance each time I hear my name being celebrated, even though the love in their voices faded long ago, as did I. Pride is a funny thing. It lingers on beyond the stretch of memory, beyond relevance, and even beyond time. Pride is essentially existence. So as long as there is an individual squatting under the Heavens, pride will live on. But we will not.

  By mere definition, my existence should now invoke little or no pride. I am naked, stripped of everything physical and emotional. I sit under a Banyan tree, alone in a world I neither recognise nor understand. A flood approaches, slithering closer with every beat of time. And yet, despite all of this, I am still proud. For existence—any existence, is undeniably special. Just ask the ant that scurries away from your thundering footsteps. We look upon that ant as an insignificant creature, unworthy of importance. If my big toe happens to hammer the life out of it, so what? Life goes on, we would say. Or rather, our lives go on. My life goes on. But what happens to the ant? Where does it go? What happens to the pride it must have taken in its own existence?