The Mosaic by Aniruddha Banhatti (superbooks4u txt) 📕

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“Hey!!” Sharu shouted, “What shall we do?” and Hari became conscious of the present. The taxi had grounded to a halt. There was a large protest march.
Hari looked outside.
They were very near to Crystal Art Gallery.
“We will walk.”
“Is it nearby?”
“Ya!”
They paid cab, and through the crowd, Hari took her via two cross lanes to the steps of the gallery. And as they mounted the steps, they heard the shots. Police firing. No tear gas, no water cannons, directly firing. Like they had shown in Rang De Basanti. There was a stampede. Shouts. More shots fired. Screaming of dying people. All the signs of British Good Governance. Hari found his bile rising. He had withdrawn long back. He hated being involved. And yet, from yesterday, Sandy – curse him – had pulled him out from his hibernation into this madness of human society. Somebody opened the doors an inch, saw Sharu and admitted them inside and closed and barred the doors from inside.
“I think, now a days, the police in every state have instructions to fire directly on the mobs.” Shashank, Sharu’s friend who had admitted them in, said “Oh! How I hate all this!”
Hari thought, by this time, generally, he would have been totally stoned. Thinking of black holes and stars and how universes are born and then after some time, after a few more rounds of hash, he would have been totally stoned. Intensely conscious of his own being and of nothing else. He knew Shashank. A brilliant student from the J.J.School days. He had seen his name in the newspapers. That was Shashank’s speciality. Self publicity.
“Oh! I am so sorry!” Sharu was saying to Shashank. Everything was cancelled.
The inauguration of Shashank’s exhibition, was cancelled. A few of his friends were now locked inside his gallery. Nobody knew when they would be able to get out. Police sirens were howling outside. The sounds of stone throwing were also audible. Then some explosions. Then blaring of loud-speakers.
Some announcements.
Somebody came in again and barricaded the doors.
He talked urgently with Shashank. Shashank and his three frinds, two of them women, nodded repeatedly, and then Shashank came to Sharu and Hari.
“I am sorry Sharu. Every thing is cancelled. You tow remain here. I will come back within an hour and take you to my flat”.
“O.K”. Sharu was seeing his canvases, or rather, printouts. Huge printouts of his computer art. As they went out through the back door, there was an eerie silence.
Hari looked around. Sharu was looking at a huge painting. He went to her and put his hands on her shoulders. The painting was a pattern. A mosaic. And then he spotted the movement in the painting! The mosaic was eternal, he thought. Sharu moved back and snuggled against him. He was aroused. The male desire. The cruelty. The penetration desire. The black hole. The engulfing instinct! From stone age till now, it was the same human society. Equally cruel. Nothing had changed. Surrounded by Shashank’s paintings they were suddenly making love! On the hard floor. This was good, thought Hari. This was the compensation for being involved. But that was better, not being involved, a voice inside him said.

They got up.
“Hari, I love you!”, Sharu said.
“Me too. “ , Hari said unconvincingly. Sharu took a pack of Wills from her purse.
“Wait”, Hari said, and took out a big lump of hashish from his jeans. They prepared a joint and smoked amicably. Both of them were stoned within minutes.
“Let’s look at Shahank’s paintings. “
The Mosaic. That was the name of the exhibition. Hari had been thinking about it from yesterday. One by one, they saw the paintings. Sharu was commenting intelligently on each one. They had bolted the front and back doors from inside.
Sharu’s cell-phone rang. She ran to it. Said, “ya,ya, ok ok” for a long time and came back to him.
“Shashank can’t come back till evening. A curfew has been imposed on this area till 6 P.M. There are some eatables in the fridge in that room over there. Also some good wine! What do you say?”
Hari was terribly hungry. Attached to the hall of the gallery was a small room with a bed, a fridge, a platform, a sink and a gas stove for cooking.
Sharu took out some cheese, a bottle of wine, took out some sausages from the deep freeze and cooked a sumptuous meal in a sauce pan. There was a loaf of bread. She made some coffee with the milk, without adding water to it.
They ate in peace, feeling great, feeling totally together. Yesterday’s proposal put forth by Sharu was in their minds and both of them knew that.
“Come,” said Hari, inspired, “I will paint you, sit on the bed.”
“Wow!” Sharu said.
Hari assembled paints, easel, brushes, which were lying about in abundance in the gallery.
He mounted a canvas and took the brush in his hand. He was overwhelmed. He was ending his exile. He was taking a brush in his hand after some 5, maybe 6 years!
Without sketching, painting directly that was his method.
He put the first dab of paint on the canvas and looked at it.
The world whirled around him. For a long time he didn’t know what happened. The world no longer made sense. A virus was attacking the mosaic. Shapes were collapsing and black holes were swallowing the universe. There were huge corruptions of the pattern everywhere in the mosaic. And the corruptions were spreading around. Ones and zeroes. The world was made of zeroes and ones.
There were fires and the canvas was burning here and there.
Everywhere was cruelty.
This was chaos.
But then some points glowed together and rose above the collapsing shapes. They formed a strange harmony. The glowing points rose and fell, and made a thousand beautiful patterns in each second. This was Mozart and this was Picasso. There was a Gandhi for each Hitler and a Vajpayee for each Quatrochi. The universe disintegrated and became pure energy in the eyes of Van Gogh, and a billion artists past and present made up for all the flaws of the universe.
He put the second dab and started working earnestly.
By evening, they had made love four times and he had painted ten canvases!
He was that fast during his student days in J.J., too.
Sharu knew this.
“You are rich!” she said “Each one will fetch at least one lakh.”
“So what about it?”, she said. They had dressed, were waiting for Shashank, who had called saying that he was coming.
Hari looked at her.
He tried to focus on the last two days of his self imposed exile. But he couldn’t.
Yesterday, Sharu had asked him to marry him and go to the U.S.
Her husband was dead and she was rich.
“So what about it?’ she asked.
“The answer is ‘Yes’!” he said with difficulty.
She uttered a cry and hugged him tightly.
“But,”, he said, and she stiffened, “We won’t go there. We will live in India. Maybe some village in the Himalayas!”
“Oh!” ,she said, relieved, “Ok. That’s even better. I thought you wanted to leave India and go there.”
“No, not at all!”
She started kissing him again.
There were loud raps on the back-door.
“Here comes Shashank and company”, he said and went ahead to open the bolted door.

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Publication Date: 03-13-2011

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