Big Ex

When the sheets of water rolled up into my head, I could see my adversary clear. He was sharp around the edges and everything inside and outside that was fuzzy. His voice rang sharp and clear. It cut through the empty air that separated us and touched me like a soft pink tongue lapping at my nose.

‘What is it that you hold?’, he asked

‘Nothing’, I mumbled

‘What does it do?’

‘Nothing. It’s a toy. It does nothing.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘I mean, toys don’t do anything unless you make them do something. And the lazy ones need you to stick a battery in them before they do anything.’

‘So you don’t have batteries?’

‘This doesn’t need a battery.’

‘Is that why it does nothing?’

‘No. It does plenty. It is an intelligent toy. It doesn’t need a battery or two to be stuck into its belly. Look at it! Don’t you know what this is?’

‘I don’t know. What is it? I have never seen anything like it before.’

‘This son’, I said pausing for dramatic effect, ‘is the model of an animal. Not just any animal, mind you, but a reptile. A lizard. This is a dinosaur.’

‘What is a dinosaur?’

‘It’s a lizard, son. A very old and big and bad lizard. A mean, mean bandicoot if there was one.’

‘The lizard is a bandicoot?’

‘No. I just said bandicoot because it fit in well instead of something else I’d rather have said. You’re too young to be impolite with. When you’re older, you’ll know what I mean. And if you remember this then, you might even get a good laugh out of it.’

‘You must really like lizards.’

‘Not all. Just some. This one is a favourite.’

‘What is so great about this one?’

‘Well, he’s the greatest, isn’t he? He is the baddest. He’s the strongest and the fiercest. I can’t believe you’ve never heard of him before. But you know him now, so that makes you better than before.’

‘I can’t say I know him. What’s his name?’

‘Ah yes. I forgot that. I call him Big X. He’s a T-Rex. That makes him a king of tyrant lizards. A Tyrannosaurus Rex. I’ll show you how to spell that when this train stops in a bit.’

‘Ok. Why do you call him Big X?’

‘I don’t know. I like the sound of that name. And you’re saying it wrong. You write him Big X, but you call him Biggex. There’s second ‘g’ in there that you say but don’t see when you write him.’

‘Biggex?’

‘Right! That’s right!’

I look at the kid and now notice his sharp face for the first time. It’s a clean face. White with dark brown hair parted at the side and plastered to his skull with shiny odourless oil. His shirt is crisp and white and the trousers dark and comfortably stiff. He sits back in his seat such that the back of his knees press against the rounded edge of the seat. His soft brown eyes held me in a steady gaze. I lean back in my seat and return his stare.

‘Where’re you off to?’ I ask the kid

‘Chennai. My aunt lives there. I am travelling alone this time because my father thinks I should learn to do things on my own now. Where are you headed to?’

‘Same. I’m travelling onward though. Once I get to Chennai, I’ll head to the beach and get some rest and take the train out to Ariyalur to meet some friends there. Chennai is a nice place though. I wish I could stay there longer.’

‘So what about the lizard? Where can I see more of him?’

I held up the toy for a bit and then gently placed the model on the side table between us.

‘Not really. This is just a model. There aren’t any more of him running around anymore.’

‘What happened?’

‘They died out. They got killed. And just like that, now they’re gone.’

‘Who killed them then? You said that they were big and bad. What went wrong?’

‘Everything. Just about everything. And that’s just the way it is when you get too big and strong. It makes people around you aware of their own smallness and then they want you out. Or they want you down. They want you being small like them and they want you to want less because their flimsy little hearts wouldn’t dare to dream a dream that scared them. They are pitiable little things- the rest of them. They tell the world that they aren’t afraid of a thing in it and yet they run scared of themselves. Walk up to the bravest guy in the room and ask him to spend an hour without his phones and tablets and coterie of screens and the guy will lose it. The thought of being by himself will wring him dry. That confident swagger crumbles like stale cookie and he is just a weakling like the rest and when that happens, take a step back and look around at the others in the room and you will notice how the ones- the weak and insignificant ones- are suddenly cocky and happy and you will know that it is because they are content knowing that everyone in the room is now mediocre and there are no standards by which they can fall short of.

That’s what went wrong with the T-Rex. They got too big and too strong and that got under everyone’s skin. There wasn’t a fight they couldn’t win. Their prey knew they were just lucky when they got away and knowing that, they always lived looking straight and over their shoulders. The ones that weren’t preyed upon hated that they were of no consequence or of any significance in his mighty world. They were passengers passing him by and he didn’t care enough to take note of them. They wished he would, but he didn’t and that ticked them off. They were safe. But they wanted some of his adventure. Yet when they wanted it, they woke up and realised that they weren’t fit enough to match their step with his. So they got around doing the one thing that they did best. They hated him. Now if he cared enough he would have known better and acted wiser. But if there was a flaw in him, it was that he didn’t care. He didn’t care enough to learn what the others were thinking. He didn’t learn that knowing what others thought of him wouldn’t change him. Instead he got so busy looking forward and leaning into the future that he forgot to pause for a moment and look at his own hands that had grown weak and small. He didn’t need it, but they could use it. They used it to tell him that he was the problem that they couldn’t help him when he needed it. That quite literally, when it came to him, he had tied up his own hands and that is why they couldn’t pull him out of that bog that he was drowning in. His biggest weakness was that he kept his own counsel and wanted little of mediocre companionship. And if there is one thing that the large majorities have hated, all throughout the course of life- human and otherwise- it is that one guy who can think and act for himself. Nothing is scarier than the self reliant soul, for if one cannot discern one’s own purpose and walks into a world not being needed by the self reliant ones, all ambition becomes recipe for immense solitude. And this, as I have mentioned earlier, is something few can handle.

Now here’s something you need to know. There is a lot of truth in what I have just said. And there are a whole lot of factual inaccuracies. I’m not sure if you will remember all of it because it came out in a rush and you might want to sit back and mull on it a bit. Read up on it as well. But you must remember this much. The most clarity you will ever find is going to be shapeless and vague. You will know it is there not because you see it, but because you feel it. Not because you heard it, but because you have known it- all along. And everything you are ever going to be will be what you make of the truth that you have known all along.

Now I’m starving, kid. Hold Biggex while I get out there and get us some grub, wont you?’

_V. 04/12/2017