The chances of finding a pearl in an oyster are 1 in 12,000. The chances of being hit by lightning are 1 in 700,000. The odds of the soul surviving the body’s death are one in nothing, one in nada, one in zilch. You must be asleep, of this you are certain. Soon you will wake.
And then you have this terrible thought. More terrible than this savage isle, this godless planet, this dying sun, and this snoring galaxy. What if, all this while, asleep is what you have been? And what if, from this moment forth, you, Malinda Almeida, photographer, gambler, slut, never get to close your eyes ever again?
You follow a throng stumbling through the corridor. A man walks on broken legs, a lady hides a face of bruises. Many seem dressed for a wedding, because that’s how undertakers decorate corpses. But many others are dressed in rags and confusion. You look down and all you see is a pair of hands that do not belong to you. You wish to inspect the colour of your eyes and the face you are wearing. You wonder if the lifts have mirrors. It turns out, they barely have walls. One by one, the souls enter the empty shaft and fly up like bubbles in water.
This is absurd. Even the Bank of Ceylon doesn’t have Forty-Two floors.
‘What’s on the other floors?’ you ask anyone with ears, checked or otherwise.
‘Rooms, corridors, windows, doors, the usual,’ says a particularly helpful Helper.
‘Accounting and Finance,’ says a broken old man leaning on a walking stick. ‘A racket like this won’t fund itself.’
‘It’s all the same,’ wails the dead woman with the dead baby. ‘Every universe. Every life. Same old. Same old scene.’
You rarely dream, let alone have nightmares. You float along the edge of the shaft and something pushes you. You scream like a horror movie damsel as the wind takes you skywards. You are startled by the figure in black floating behind you. Its cloak of black garbage bags fluttering in a feral wind. He watches as you ascend the shaft and bows as you float away.
You try another question and ask what The Light is. But all you get are shrugs and insults. A frightened child calls you a ponnaya, an insult which alleges both homosexuality and impotence, and you will plead guilty to only one of these charges. You ask the staff about The Light and get a different answer each time. Some say heaven, some say rebirth, some say oblivion. Some, like Dr Ranee, say whatever. The options hold little appeal for you, aside from maybe the latter.
At Level Forty-Two is a sign with one word on it.
CLOSED
Figures float through this vast corridor, not noticing the walls until they bump into them. There is a reception with no one in it. And a line of red doors, each one obeying the sign by staying shut.
At the centre of the hall stands the figure in black, uninterested in the aimless wanderers who collide around him. He stares at you and beckons you over. His eyes track you as you float away; this time they glint in yellow.
The universe yawns in the time it takes for you to get back to Dr Ranee’s counter. Outside, the night fills with winds and whispers. In this place, there are only counters and confusions.
Dr Ranee notices you and shakes her head. ‘We need more Helpers. Less complainers. Everyone is doing their best.’
She looks at you. ‘Except for those who aren’t.’
You wait for her to finish her thought, but it appears she already has. She pulls a megaphone from under her desk. Now this is the Dr Ranee you remember, shouting at campuses when TV cameras were around.
‘Please do not get lost. If you haven’t had an Ear Check, don’t come here. Level Forty-Two will be open tomorrow. Come back then. Remember you have seven moons. You must reach The Light before your last one rises.’
You are about to launch a rant of expletives when you notice it once more, the figure wrapped in black garbage, beckoning with both hands. Its eyes flicker like candles and it is holding what looks like your missing sandal. Dr Ranee follows your gaze and drops her smile.
‘Get that thing out of here. Maal, where are you going?’
Two men in white leap over their counters and sprint towards the figure in black. The man with the Afro who looks like Moses raises his arms and bellows in a language you have never heard spoken. Next to him is a muscleman in a white robe who sprints towards you.
You fade back into the crowd, drift between the broken people with blood on their breath and reach the figure holding your footwear.
You float towards it, this garbage bag grim reaper, like you floated towards many things you shouldn’t have. Casinos, war zones and beautiful men. You hear Dr Ranee screeching but you ignore her like you did your Amma right after Dada left.
The figure smirks with teeth as yellow as its eyes.
‘Sir, let us get out of this place. It is a brainwashing bureaucracy. Like every other building in this oppressive state.’
The hooded figure stands with its face to yours. Though the face is in the shadow, you see it is a boy, younger than you once were. One eye is yellow and the other looks green, and you are unsure what silly pills could bring on a hallucination like this. The voice appears to be nursing a sore throat.
‘I know your name is Maali-Sir. Don’t waste your time here. And please stay away from The Light.’
You follow him to the lift shaft, but this time you descend. The angry falsetto of Dr Ranee and the baritone bellows of Moses and He-Man become distant echoes.
‘Even the afterlife is designed to keep the masses stupid,’ says the boy. ‘They make you forget your life and push you towards some light. All bourgeois tools of the oppressor. They tell you that injustice is part of some grand plan. And that’s what keeps you from rising against it.’
When you reach the bottom and exit the building, the wind hits you from all sides. Outside the trees groan, the rubbish dumps belch and the buses secrete black smoke. Shadows crawl across the streets and Colombo at dawn turns its face away.
‘Where did you find my sandal?’
‘Same place I saw your body. You want it back?’
‘Not really.’
‘I meant your life. Not the sandal.’
‘I know.’
The words come easily to you even though you have not had time to consider them. Do you want to see your body? Do you want your life back? Or the real question which you really should be pondering. How the hell did you get here?
You remember nothing, not pain, not surprise, not the last breath, nor where you took it. And, even though you have no desire to be hurt again or to breathe once more, you choose to follow the figure in black. The Box Under the Bed
You were born before Elvis had his first hit. And died before Freddie had his last. In the interim, you have shot thousands. You have photos of the government Minister who looked on while the savages of ’83 torched Tamil homes and slaughtered the occupants. You have portraits of disappeared journalists and vanished activists, bound and gagged and dead in custody. You have grainy yet identifiable snaps of an army major, a Tiger colonel, and a British arms dealer at the same table, sharing a jug of king coconut.
You have the killers of actor and heartthrob Vijaya and the wreckage of Upali’s plane on film. You have these images in a white shoe box hidden with old records by Elvis and Freddie, the King and Queen. Under a bed that your Amma’s cook shares with your Dada’s driver. If you could, you would make a thousand copies of each photo and paste them all over Colombo. Perhaps you still can. Chat with Dead Atheist (1986)
You have seen dead bodies, more than your fair share, and you always knew where the souls had gone. The same place the flame goes when you snuff it, the same place a word goes when you say it. The mother and daughter buried under bricks in Kilinochchi, the ten students burned on tyres in Malabe, the planter tied to a tree with his entrails. None of them went anywhere. They were, and then they were not. Just like all of us won’t be when our candles run out of wick.