I Am Me

by Ram Sundaram

  I turned to the man standing behind me, who was wearing a bulky overcoat and a fur-lined hat. He appeared to be Russian, though he had darker skin and heavier features. His accent however was undetectable, and felt out of place in relation to the rest of his appearance.

  “What is this place?” I asked him, hoping language wouldn’t prove to be a barrier.

  “Dis a soul market,” he replied at once, much to my relief.

  “Seoul?” I said, surprised. “Are we in Korea?”

  The man looked at me like I was a rabid dog. “Soul market, like soul, huh?” he said, tapping his chest with his finger, hoping I would follow him. “Dis ain’t Korea, man.”

  “Soul market,” I repeated, frowning. “What do you buy here?”

  “Ha, you buy nothin’ man,” he said, cackling suddenly. “You go’ nothin’ to buy but everythin’ to be bought, huh? Des people dey won’t think twice of selling you if dey got to. You leesen to me, huh? Take what dey gives you and don’t ask for no more.”

  “Yes, but what do they give me?” I asked, somewhat impatiently.

  He tilted his head and grinned at me. “Man, dey gives you a soul,” he said, bunching his fingers together and kissing the tips. “Dey gives you de soul you meant to be with, huh?”

  “You mean I don’t have a soul right now?” I asked.

  He looked animatedly annoyed. “No man, no,” he said, waving his hands as though he was trying to land a jet. “You have soul now—but is alone. Dey gives your soul a friend.”

  I frowned at him. “Like a soul mate?”

  He looked relieved and slapped me on the back happily. “Dats it man, dats it,” he said, laughing. “Soul mate; you go in der man and dey gives you a soul mate, huh?”

  Soul mate… I didn’t know what to make of that revelation. A myriad of logical questions assembled before my mind, demanding equally logical answers: how could a soul-mate be bought or even sold for that matter? How would this place be able to provide people with soul mates? How would they even recognize a person’s soul mate? Why were all these people so desperate to find their soul mates? How had I wound up here, standing in line like the rest of them? There were so many questions and yet no conceivable way of having them answered.

  Equipped with a few theories, I looked around the market place again, but with a different perspective. A lot of what had confused me before, now seemed to make sense. The market as a whole resembled a small town in Africa that I had a vague, detached memory of having once visited. In that town, aid workers had set up a small camp to give out rations to the public. The people I had noticed standing in line then had been half-starved, malnourished and in a state of desperation that not many outside of a third-world country could have imagined. The people standing in this queue around me weren’t half-starved or malnourished in that same sense, but they looked intensely depressed, lonely, and seemed deprived of emotion. The desperation within their eyes wasn’t different from what I had seen amongst the starving public in Africa, except that while the latter had suffered physically, the suffering of these people appeared to be largely emotional, if not even spiritual.

  I remember having decided upon that trip to Africa that human suffering was not a curse or a bane of existence, but rather a trivial, inconsequential passage of life—inconsequential only when considering the larger scheme of things, for suffering can actually be enlightening. Echoing the old cliché of suffering being good for the soul, there is a lot of insight one can derive from enduring pain at the rawest, most basic human level. For suffering provides clarity of thought. Joy and contentment can disillusion even the most accomplished seer into abandoning the tools of introspection, for happiness tempts an individual to remain within a reality that has been kind. But suffering forces an individual to look beyond the present, beyond the good, the real, the factual, and to delve instead into fantasy: a realm where through the aid of imagination, suffering can be dismantled, disabled, and eventually discarded.

  However, to evade reality altogether is difficult, if not impossible. For those of us unable to immerse ourselves wholly into fantasy, we require the aid of something more tangible than dreams, something equally intoxicating, but more adept at surviving reality.

  Love is one such aid.

  Even in the midst of that tense, cheerless market, I could remember the heady, overwhelming joy of being in love, and more importantly, of being loved. It was strange, I thought, that while I seemed unable to recall my own name, my past, my whereabouts or anything even remotely tangible about myself, that I should nevertheless be able to remember with clear precision the potency of love. The mere memory of it brought a smile to my face.

  “You look happy,” said a voice nearby, pulling me out of my reverie.

  I turned and found a young woman looking up at me curiously. She was sitting on the ground, apparently too exhausted to wait on her feet any longer.

  “I’m talking to you,” she said, when I didn’t answer. “Why do you look so happy?”

  “I don’t… I’m not…” I muttered, suddenly flustered.

  “It’s all right,” she said, comfortingly. “I’m just curious. I haven’t seen someone looking happy in a very long time. You must be new around here.”

  “I think so… but… I don’t remember. Where are we?”

  She grinned: it was a hollow, lifeless expression. “Somewhere between heaven and hell I figure; though personally, I think it’s closer to hell.”

  I frowned. “This isn’t earth?”

  “Earth?” she frowned back. “You really are new around here. Earth doesn’t matter here anymore than a car or a job or even your name. Nothing matters here but your soul.” She didn’t say the word with reverence or any kind of significance, but rather with a skeptical, somewhat disdainful undertone. “Till you find what you’re looking for, nothing else matters.”

  “And we’re looking for a soul mate?”

  “That’s what they tell me,” she replied, rolling her eyes.

  “You don’t seem convinced,” I noted.

  “Of what? Their fairy tale about how a soul mate can change my life?” she replied, scornfully. “They have no idea who I am, how I think, how I feel, or what I’ve been through. But somehow they’re convinced they can pair my soul off with a perfect match? How do they even know I have a soul? I haven’t seen it. I don’t feel it. So I don’t believe it.”

  “Then why are you here?”

  “Where else can I be?” she said at once. “You think I caught a bus and came here? That I bought a ticket to stand in this line? How did you end up here?”

  “I… I don’t know,” I admitted.

  “Exactly,” she said, meaningfully.

  She reached into her pocket and pulled out a little box of small, square tablets.

  “What are those?” I asked at once.

  “Love pills,” she said, as she took a handful to her mouth and swallowed gingerly.

  I fought back a sudden, childish giggle. “What are love pills?”

  “They suppress your emotional appetite,” she informed me, oblivious to my amusement. “If I don’t take them regularly, the pain becomes unbearable.” She gazed into the distance, as though trying to recall a long-forgotten, distant memory. “It was different once,” she said, in vague, almost dreamy tone. “I didn’t need these pills and I never felt any pain. I believed in love. It was everywhere. I bathed in its calming, healing waters daily, and I was happy.”

  “What happened to change all that?”

  She shrugged. “I came out of the forest. I found light, and it showed me the world for what it was. In the forest everything had seemed larger than life; but out in the light, I realized the word was tiny—smaller even than I was. How could I lose myself into something that small and insignificant? So I grew sad and sadder still, until the pain nearly swallow
ed me whole.”

  “I don’t understand,” I told her. “What’s this forest you were in?”

  “The forest,” she said, as if I ought to know. “We all begin there.”

  “Me too?”

  “I should think so, yes,” she said, after a moment. “The forest is more than—” she began, but was interrupted by a sudden uproar amongst those gathered in the queue, a kind of mad panic that infectiously captured every innocent bystander in its terrifying embrace.

  “The Narcissans!” cried several voices, with terror and awe.

  I followed the direction of their alarmed gazes and found a group of the most beautiful creatures I had ever beheld. They appeared human, yet unlike any human I had ever laid eyes upon. They were each so tall that our heads reached below their waists, yet they did not lumber along like lethargic giants, but rather moved with the quick, graceful gaits of antelopes. Their skin, bathed in a striking golden hue, sparkled with an ethereal, flattering glow that lit their proud, strong features with enviable clarity. Their eyes were the most gorgeous shade of violet imaginable, and complimented the deep maroon of their lush, curly hair. Their strong, nimble bodies rushed past the crowd majestically, and as they passed us, they extended their arms as if asking for friendship. Many in the crowds reciprocated the gesture, and the moment a Narcissan touched someone, that person transformed into a similarly beautiful, god-like creature. This tempted many at the back of the crowd to abandon the queue and offer themselves for conversion. In this manner dozens were taken away, as the Narcissans deftly picked up armfuls of people and kept running, until like a passing storm, they drifted out of sight.

  It took a while for the dust to settle and calm to be restored. There was a great deal of excited chatter and murmuring amidst the leftover crowd, and I confess that I felt a surge of bitterness at the fact that I hadn’t acted quickly enough to be picked up by the passing herd. I turned back to the young woman I had been in conversation with, and found her curled up in a tight ball on the ground, her head shielded within her arms. I knelt beside her.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  “Have they gone?” she asked, cautiously.

  “Yes, of course,” I replied. “Do you fear them?”

  “More than anything else,” she said, slowly lifting her head up to look at me. I noticed that terror still lingered in her eyes, as she scanned her surroundings cautiously to confirm that the Narcissans had indeed left. “They are demons, darker even than the nameless heralds of death that roam these lands, for to die is not to suffer. But the Narcissans do not kill… they destroy. They lure you into an existence devoid of humanity. It is a fate worse than death.”

  “But they were beautiful,” I argued, as if that was a valid point to consider.

  “More beautiful than anything you or I would have ever seen,” she agreed. “And they share that beauty with those they capture. But it is a fickle quality, their beauty, and it does not allow hope, faith, reason or enlightenment to seep through its stubborn hide. No, I would rather remain as I am now, even if I am ugly, for at least I have a measure of myself.”

  I considered her words as my eyes wandered to a father and child, standing a little way before us. The father was carrying his daughter, who looked to be no more than three or four years old, and he was speaking reassuringly to her about what was to come.

  “The storekeeper won’t hurt you,” he was saying, in a soothing voice. “He’ll just ask you to look around and choose what looks best to you. That’s all, sweetie.”

  “What am I supposed to choose?” his daughter asked, anxiously.

  “I honestly don’t know, sweetheart,” the father admitted. “That’s something you have to find out by yourself. But it’s nothing to be afraid of… you’ll see. It’ll be all right.”

  It only then occurred to me that I ought to have felt some kind of apprehension about what was to come. It had sounded simple enough when I’d been told that I was standing in line to find my soul mate… but what did that mean, exactly? What did this line lead to? Who was this storekeeper that the little girl feared? I looked around at some of the others standing around me, and noticed that most of them looked similarly concerned.

  “What if I don’t find the right one?” a woman asked a man standing beside her.

  The man grinned somewhat arrogantly. “I know a lot of people who’ve been to this store. Some of them tried other places first, but they never succeeded. Then they came here. So far, no one who’s come here has returned empty handed. Trust me, you’ll find the right one.”

  The woman sighed. “Promise?”

  “I’m not selling insurance here,” the man laughed. “But sure, I promise.”

  He sounded so confident that I found myself believing him, too.

  I wondered if my soul mate would look like a Narcissan: tall, grand and beautiful beyond description. Or would I not be that lucky? Perhaps my soul mate would be an animal, a donkey or a meerkat or something… or maybe the shopkeeper wouldn’t be able to find me a soul mate. Perhaps he would inform me that he was out of soul mates, and that I was therefore destined to spend the rest of my existence alone. Would that be so terrible, I wondered? Solitude was not something I was unfamiliar with. But it would have been nice to share life with another… four eyes instead of two, to witness the world’s beauty; two hearts instead of one, to match life’s steady pulse; and two pairs of feet instead of one, to tread that winding path to salvation.

  “Careful,” the woman beside me suddenly said, holding out her hand to prevent me straying to the side. I stepped back and then looked down. There was a low, rumbling noise as the ground seemed to part into a large hole, just beside my feet.

  Within this newly formed crevice, I glimpsed a splendid sight: mounds and mounds of shiny gold, amassed along with gems, diamonds, and other treasures, far beyond even the most ambitious pirate’s dreams. I gasped out loud, greed building within me.

  “Mammon!” cried several voices around me, and then suddenly some people started hurling themselves headlong into the hole. Their actions stole my attention long enough to notice that most of the people in the queue had turned away, as though in fear. I sensed that I ought to do the same, for this treasure pit might have just been another hurdle in my path to finding a soul mate, and if so, then I would have to muster enough will-power to resist temptation. Chaos ensued for several minutes more, as people kept throwing themselves into the pit, while others screamed in terror and panic, until eventually I heard a low rumbling noise again. When the rumbling subsided, the screams died down, and a sense of calm ensued.

  I deemed it safe now to turn to the woman who had so far enlightened me about much of this reality, and ask her what that hole in the earth had been. But when I turned around, I found her missing. She was nowhere to be seen. I could only assume that she had succumbed to the temptation of treasure. If so, then she was lost in the depths of the earth…

  I wondered what that hole in the ground had been. Was it merely a temptation thrown in our path to see which of us had the resilience to withstand it? Or did it serve some larger purpose? What would have happened to those that had fallen in? I had many answers, but none that bore any real validity. I wouldn’t discover the real answers until I too met my end. For death was the ultimate answer: it was the lifting of the proverbial blindfold, the revelation at the end of a riddle, the climax at the conclusion of a convoluted story—death was salvation.

  Yet life had taught me so much, so much more than I could hope from death. What would my soul mate teach me? Would I be taught the value of love? But I already knew it…

  I had a sudden vision of being a child, and running into my mother’s arms.

  She set me on her knee and rocked me gently as she held me in her tight embrace. The moment her arms wrapped around me, I forgot all my concerns and relished her warmth, the warmth that only a m
other could provide a child.

  “Would you love me this much if I wasn’t your son?” I asked.

  She stopped rocking me. “What do you mean?” she asked.

  I looked up to meet her eyes and challenge her. “If I wasn’t your son, we would have never met. How could you have loved me then, if I was a stranger?”

  She opened her mouth to speak, but seemed unable to find her voice. Her mouth opened and closed like a fish, but she remained silent. Nevertheless, I got my answer.

  There is no selfless love. Through our actions and words, we don’t so much express what we feel, but more what we desire. She did not love me as a person, but only as her child. I was a part of her, forever. It is how I would have loved my child, too. We love selfishly, only that which is ours, or that which is near to us. I can love the apple tree in my yard, for it feeds me apples. But will I love the apple tree in my neighbor’s yard? It does not feed me anything.

  I was so engrossed in my thoughts that I was startled to find myself being pushed into the store. I wasn’t sure how I had reached the front of the line so quickly, but nevertheless here I was, inside the store. The door swung shut behind me.

  The sudden silence was deafening, especially after having spent so long waiting amidst the agitated thousands outside. I could still sense their restlessness, even through these closed doors—they wanted me to hurry. But now that I was inside, time felt irrelevant. I didn’t care if it took me an hour or all of eternity. I wouldn’t leave this store until I found my soul mate.

  There was the storekeeper, standing behind the counter. He was old, with a few wisps of silver hair atop a large egg-like head. He had long, thin limbs that made him look rather like an insect, or a really tall bird. He stooped considerably, even when standing upright, much like a vulture. He had a large, curved nose, which only accentuated his bird-like appearance.