“Do you know what the problem is between us?”
We were sitting in a room that seemed like it hadn’t been
touched for generations. Just some cold remnants of happier people left behind.
An old photo frame stuck in the corner, meant to commemorate some miniscule
moment in a miniscule life. Like this one.
“We have a lot of problems. But do you know what the
dominant issue is?”
Silence from the other side of a centuries old wooden table.
You can’t help but imagine the tree this would have been, bearing fruit and
other trees instead of spending decades as someone else’s plate elevation. An
entire forest now supporting our dinner.
“Let me tell you a story of when I was thirteen. A whole
bunch of us were out in the wilderness exploring Karnataka. Did you know
there’s this stream in the middle of the forest which is different than the
rest? I forget what the locals call it, but it translated into the stream of a
thousand shiva-lingas.“
“A thousand penises of Shiva?”
“Exactly. A thousand Shiva-dicks. Made out of stones in the
river carved at the patient hands of Mother Nature. Now here’s a group of
thirteen to seventeen year-olds sitting in the afternoon, counting penises in
the water while picking off leeches that crawled up the tiny gap between our
legs and our pants. And you know what’s funny? None of us realised it then.”
“Is there a point to this story?”
“The first point is this. As a kid when you’re exposed to
hunting down phallic rocks in a freshwater stream, you’re bound to grow up
looking at the world differently. We all go through these moments. It’s the
main reason you look at a baseball bat and realize it’s hard wood in more ways
than one.”
Again, silence.
“However the main point, is
the leeches.”
“The leeches?”
“Yes. Leeches. An astounding and insignificant creature.
Their saliva has a local anaesthetic so you won’t realise it’s on you until you
look for it. And you can’t just pull them off coz then their jaws are stuck to
you like a dismembered lizard’s tail, thrashing and spewing blood. Your blood.
Do you know how to get rid of a leech that’s latched on to the back of your right
buttcheek?”
“I assume you’re going to enlighten me?”
“Well, I've only heard of two methods. The first is you
take a pinch of salt and put it right at the mouth of it. The salt absorbs all
the water from its body and you can see it dehydrate in front of you. Like a
toothpaste being emptied, it vomits blood from both ends. Your blood. But the
problem with this method is once the leech is off, the salt enters the wound
and it burns like a motherfucker.”
“So what’s the second method?”
“The second, is tobacco.”
“You put tobacco on the leech?”
“Nah. You light a mound of tobacco in a tent and let the
smoke fill up. Then you hold your breath, strip to your birthday suit and stroll through. The leeches
can’t handle the nicotine, I guess. They’ll simply let go and start crawling as
far from the smoke as possible. So you’ll eventually see a dozen bloodsuckers
trying to escape a gas chamber making a trail of blood towards the exit. Your blood.”
“I assume there’s a point to the leeches story too?”
“The point is, if you want to get rid of an annoying
bloodsucker. Light a cigarette.”
Click.
