The Boys

DREAMY BOY - Part 2/9 – The Boys

I realize that I have now been transformed into an overhead floating camera and that I am now covering the proceedings in this stuffy humid room, dimly lit with motley coloured zero watt bulbs and 70’s rock playing in the background. This room has no furniture in it, and is infused with the smell of burning mosquito coil and rendered blur with tobacco smoke all around. It is stuffy in here, and although I am just a camera I asphyxiate and let out a deafening cough to clear my throat.

As I pry over the room, I see underage boys; all of them who look similar, and bear features and characteristics akin to the different phases of my childhood. They are all engaged within themselves and busy performing different acts.

A fifteen year old is angrily riding a sports bike in circles on the walls of the room as a coeval lad wearing a sleeveless T-shirt and tight shorts plays squash on the same wall using a table tennis ball and a badminton racquet.

Another lad, two years elder to him has his head buried into a Human Digest.

Then there’s the twelve year old, who is sitting crouched in a corner and is hastily smoking cigarettes without inhaling any smoke, possibly trying to hurriedly become a man and in his attempt, just trying to finish off that whole pack of imported Rothmans, flicked from his dad’s cupboard, within the miniscule five minute gap that he has managed to sneak out of his home, into his secure hideout far and away from the entire maddening crowd.

A little five year old lad walks hurriedly through the walls of the room with a soiled underwear in his hand, stealthily avoiding being caught by imaginary elders, who, would rip his ass off and lock him in the 2x2 closet, if he is caught. His eyes eagerly search for that small niche where he could hide the contaminated object.

A ten year old boy stands on the right, facing the wall, wearing a school uniform and a large badge bearing the name, ‘SUE’, hiding his face within his palms and crying. Looks like he has just been bullied by some seniors, who cornered him in the bathroom and forced him to undress and prove that he was actually just a boy with a girlish name.

In one of the corners, a little eight year old sits squatted on the floor, breathing heavily and beating his chest as he grasps for breath on being choked by the deadly mix of Tortoise coil and Rothmans smoke in the room. Adjacent to him sits a little boy of his same age writing spelling impositions in his English note book holding his pencil in a very unconventional and odd way with his nose barely two inches away from his desk.

In the centre of the room stands a little senior lad entangled in a cobweb. He desperately throws his limbs around trying to escape of the hold, but in the process gets more and more entangled into it.

The room is full of such boys yet to attain suffrage, some sitting still doing nothing, some running around playing or busily engaged in some or the other acts. Some have toys in their hands and then there’s another one who is just playing with the self pulling his foreskin, rolling it over his index finger like a rubber band.

And then finally, further down in a corner, my lens captures this lad in his late teens, who looks like he is the senior most of the lot. He has wounds on his feet and wrists, and a sly cunning smile on his face. He has worn a shirt bearing pictures of naked girls with its collar raised and a pair of torn jeans which has lipstick marks on its foot. He has droopy intoxicated eyes and his lips bleed, like it has been just bitten by a pair of sharp canines. He bears claw incisions on his neck and his shirt is undone with its buttons missing, as if it has just been ripped off in a contest.  It seems like he has just had a struggle and has freed himself of all the shackles that once bound him. He sat there tapping his feet to the rock music, his right hand plays an imaginary guitar and his torso sways psychedelically like a snake does in front of his charmer. In his left hand, within his middle and index finger he has held a lit cigarette. He takes in a long puff and ejects out only a quarter of the intake, and that too, only through his left nostril. Next to him lie strewn empty bottles of Benadryl Cough Syrup.

As I wonder as to where this lad has stored all the remaining smoke and as I try to figure out how he managed this feat of ejecting smoke only from one nostril, I observe further that, his head gyrates within this beautiful halo ring that displays reels of events from my past life, some of which are traumatic and makes fresh a wound that was already healed and long forgotten, whilst some others that bring joy leaving a broad smile on my face and a tear in the eye.