THE INSPIRATION

Two young writers were sitting in a coffee shop. They often chose this one in Lajpat Nagar amongst many that had sprung up in Delhi. It was mostly a time when they didn’t have a hot looking babe to hang out with, that they sat together. Actually they never had any. Perplexed by the intellectual mediocrity of the babes they couldn’t get laid with, they often came to this coffee shop to smoke away their time and talk about something that they would want to talk about. While one was contemplating ordering a 60 bucks coffee and not giving the manager another chance to ask them to leave, the other followed a female’s arse with that usual lustful look in his eyes and broke the silence.
“That’s what you call a wobbly arse.”
“And what’s a wobbly arse?”
“It’s the kind that wobbles when you spank it.”
“You can’t get over thinking about girls. Can you?”
“I hate this thing about you; all the good writers say and write about what they feel and not what’s moral and righteous. The other day I was reading these memoirs by a Turkish writer, where he said when he was a kid, he used to think a lot about religion and politics and the rich and the poor and then he turned 14. He just thought about sex after that.”
“Ha ha…I’m sure he did. But he wrote about a lot of other things too.”
“Yes but those guys had issues dude… he wrote about the melancholy that prevailed in the fallen capital of the great Ottoman empire, Kafka had this whole surrealistic movement influencing him, Dylan had this folk tradition which was in vogue. And he could do it better than anyone else. Tom waits, Lou reed wrote about the down-town trash a great capitalist economy, Rand glorified the virtues of capitalism or individualism or objectivism or whatever. What do we have to get inspired by? Hot looking dumb chicks?
“You sound like a pseudo. But I know all you can think about is sex.”
“Dude, there’s more to me than sex.”
“The truth is - you are sex and more.”
“Whatever…maybe we are living in happy times. Booming economy, great jobs, a flat and a car for every hardworking executive of a corporation, fashionable wives, kids in schools that cost more than a stay in a luxury liner. Happy lives. Happy times.”
“That’s what someone cursed an artist with – may you live in happy times.”
“Or may be its guys like us who aren’t living those happy lives, desire mayhem and disorder and chaos and ugliness.”
“There must be some kind of way out of here - said the joker to the thief.”
“And I must assume that the joker is me and the thief is you.”
“How does it matter? Both of them aren’t normal. It’s just that the thief accepts the intellectual mediocrity of most people and obviousness of life and the joker can’t come to terms with it. And the thief is the one helping him understand that.”
“But dude I can’t live with this shit. I need inspiration. Some real inspiration.”

The other guy takes out a rod out from somewhere under the table and bangs it on the head of his friend. He keeps hitting till the poor guys head is all but a pulp of blood and flesh.

“Is this inspiration enough for you?” He shouts aloud.

“Extreme violence is not an alternative to real inspiration.” A voice comes out from the moving lips of the battered head.

People around them continue sipping coffee and smoking cigarettes oblivious of what just happened.