Chapter 5: Miracle Drug

[The shortest chapter and probably the weakest. You'll say I've lost my touch considering that I took the most amount of time writing this, and I will not disagree. I intended it as a bridge between two highly pivotal chapters. I intend to wrap this up in about 8 chapters.]

Aseem loved chocolate.

A few questions and 35 minutes later, he was scheduled for a 20-minute break that he could utilize for light food and/or rest and/or a pneumatic shower, depending on his temperament that day. His usual choice would have been a quick, rejuvenating shower followed by a power nap, but when the time came, he surprised himself by going in for a bar of chocolate.

The Arbitron obliged and a bare, dark-brown cake of chocolate exited from a slit in the wall nearest to him, one that was chiseled to a perfect rectangular shape and had a smooth, silky texture to it. This, of course and like all other eatables, was the handiwork of the Arbitron which adhered to the General Cooking Manual. The chocolate had been cheekily nicknamed ‘Mary Jane’ by the Arbitron itself, which seemed to have put all its creative energies into naming things of daily use with an idiosyncratic, almost anachronistic, self-referencing twist (Runaround, Mary Jane, itself to name a few).

Aseem snapped a chunk off the top-right edge of the bar and popped it into his mouth, involuntarily oozing a mouthful of drool while at it. Eyes closed and taste buds excited in orgasmic anticipation, he finally got his teeth to gnaw the chocolate between his canines and molars, letting it melt and spread all over his teeth, tongue and gums. And it happened; a feeling of utter rapture, of isolation but of infinite fulfillment, of consummate ecstasy, vivacity and climactic glee engulfed him. It was as if all physical, mental, sexual and environmental desires he harbored in his body had made a vanishing act, all of his senses charged-up to the extreme. He could visualize a parade of flashy colors and zany shapes conjure up in front of him, and a tingling sensation all over his skin, something he resisted as well as relished, much like what a tickle is to an unsuspecting tot.*

Aseem did not know how long the moment lasted, for he was busy losing himself in the endless nooks and crannies and lanes and by-lanes of the world of Mary Jane. Unbeknownst to him, the chocolate bar came to an abrupt expiration after the designated 20 minutes of rest; all its affects worn themselves out, and he came out of his prolonged daze with a heavy, cavernous gasp. Eyes wide with having felt a myriad of alien visual cues and sensations, and skin still perspiring with activity, he tried to acclimatize himself to the newfound normalcy of his universe, and failed. The blackness of the box, the comfortable innards of an outside-less world, the subservient yet overseeing gaze of the Arbitron, forever fixated on him; everything seemed new all over again. His experiences had been immensely satisfying, but not without a slight tinge of yearning: yearning to experience all that he had, all over again, and then some more. He looked around for the remaining bit of chocolate he had held in his hand absently, but it was nowhere to be found. Like always, he thought, Arbitron had obediently picked it up from where his hand had left it in his ecstatic state of stupor, cleared and put it away inside the intricate machinery of the four walls the universe.

Chocolate, he said to himself and not out loud (for that would be a positive symptom of dementia, something not expected before he turned 68) was the best thing he had had.

*A word or few about the nature of Mary Jane before proceeding further, in the interest of the obviously flabbergasted reader: chocolate, in Aseem’s day and age and universe, is akin to a strong, cathartic drug that brings tension levels to practically nil, takes sexual realization to an off-the-chart high, and most importantly, curiosity levels to a sharp, crashing dive. In short, it has similar effects to the human body as to what the reader might be familiar as cannabis, or hashish, or what-have-ye.


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Chapter 6: http://kahaanikisse.blogspot.in/2012/07/chapter-6-torture.html