Prologue

We like to fashion ourselves after the outlaws of the old, their stories had a glamour in them with a favorable romantic ploy involved. But these stories, at least the ones that come to us by word of mouth, do not capture the hardships that these so called outlaws had to go through. We speak highly of those who were awarded the death sentence, be it a bullet or the gallows. People speak of a quick and easy death, but what would they know of that fraction of a second of humongous, mind bending pain that drags on to eternity at least in their cognition? What of that brief second of selfishness when all that they can think about is their loved one(s), wondering if losing your life for such a paltry cause is worth that? A cause that involved the overthrow of all those machinations that question the very security of their loved ones? What of the pain suffered by the ones that they leave behind? Having to live and relive the incident by recanting the bloody story to all those visitors who can’t have enough of the gory ending.

We live in a cruel world. Have you ever come across a person caught in the worst of an accident and mangled to death, or worse, screaming in agony inviting the death that is lurking just out of reach? The death mocking him or her, playing hide and seek, displaying its rather malicious yet childish streak? Have you seen people engaging in all sorts of gymnastics to look at the said person, caught in some cleft of the killing machine, out of reach but not out of sight? The way they gape and later puke or walk away shrugging and shaking their heads?

Everybody has at least a dab of this craving for violence and gore in their lives. What makes them human at least part of the way is their ability to hamper this dab from spreading, from smearing the mental makeup of the person with gaudy shades of red and black, thoughts of hurt and suffering, ideas of violence and it’s impending wallop. There have been many attempts at converting this piebald, chequered character of man into smoother shades of cool blue. People wanting to master the science of evolution, taking into consideration not the “survival of the fittest” motto but inventing a new one, “co-existence of the dovish”.

If we could leave the ethical implications aside, stem cell research coupled with cloning could make this possible. Do not be misled by this motto of pacifism though. Infact, great movements and even greater thoughts are not always guided by a noble mind. They are laced, and sometimes very heavily, with a selfish and egotistic urge to rule, the more peace loving the race, the lesser the number of squirmishes in the kingdom. This coupled with a limited amount of knowledge of the workings of a democratic system among the masses, an ideal realm for a conceited person(s) to rule over. They could give themselves the right to erase entire hordes of population, if they find them up in arms or if they just took a fancy! This tale is about one such conceited band of people who had both the wealth and the brains to bring about such a society. A band of people who gave themselves power to start over Creation again, right from the mythical rib that mothered the feminine to the fabled Noah’s ark that carried two of every kind, albeit with a convoluted sense of purpose.

This tale is told as not a transcript for the reader to read and dole out dictums about the doings of the characters but rather as a reminder of the depths to which the human cognition and purpose can reach in order to satiate their sense of “righteousness”.

- posted by Swetha @ 1/17/2005 11:05:00 AM 2 comments