Marching Powder

Ghazala and I speed through a social session on Ferozepur finally steering our wheels to a private “kothi” soirée in Gulberg. Sovereign like Bonnie and Clyde we make a fine entrée: we are the cat’s whiskers. The Gulberg “kothi” swarms with an achingly yuppie nouveau riche herd-Peerwani-clad from head-to-toe.

These nouveau-riche types make us choke with embarrassment. Their vague brush with celebrity suddenly makes them the bees’ knees. Their cheap perfume as poisonous as anthrax. Their fake smiles as synthetic as their Polaroid existence.

Ghazala and I proceed to the VIP: meshing with a “genu-wine kothiwalleh” elite engulfing an inner-sanctum where our “true” chums guzzle down Moet and Merlot with reckless abandon. We are now amidst frequent-flying jet-setters with double-barrel names and triple-barrel egos.

My fix for the hour: a compulsive cash-depleting habit: that majestic water-soluble white snow needs snorting up those murky nasal passages. Compared to me even Kate Moss morphs into a tame kitten. I ask Ghazala if she wants to meander into this pleasurable “China White” abyss to which she experimentally retorts in the affirmative.

In the citadel of mysticism, Ghazala and I stand brazenly like an Alluvial plain traversing the Ravi.

“Charlie” now audaciously absorbed deafeningly screams into my blood-stream. Its Cobra tongue perniciously pierces my bodily system snaking and slithering down wine-red blood vessels into my cranium.

Despite the warning signals I ski down this Alpine snow “line by line”. Read between the lines: the border outposts of my capillaries are invaded like the West Bank and Gaza in nano-seconds.

I’m given a sudden salary-rise in the confidence fidgety-energy stakes.
The moneyed entourage around me spins faster than Pirelli. This ecstatic “hyper Dom” nosedives fast and furiously.

My ragingly red eye-balls are rolling like cannons of fire. More inhalation and the micro-capillaries, like Pegasus, pass the message onto my brain cells now fired-up like a Kalashnikov unleashed.

An alarming spike in blood pressure and pulse-rate, my crack-addled marching powder has betrayed me! Its python venomously squeezes my arteries causing cataclysmic contractions in my left ventricle.

Dopamine receptors are depleted. The pimped predator has reached its prey: a not-too healthy cardio-vascular system.

Ghazala and the “triple-barrels” fret with worry. The morals of an upper-class dinner-set dictate them to summon an ambulance duly whisking me to Fatima Memorial.

En route Ghazala exasperatingly clutches my hand while the rest despondently gaze down with an artificial bleary gloom. Yet a guilty pleasure prefixes the air: they internally grace themselves for this could have been one of them.

Meanwhile my septum is raped, heavy usage of the marching powder lifts away skin from the cartilage beneath.

This is: Fear and Loathing in Lal Qila.

No cameras.

No Depp.

No Del Toro.

Just a mala fide life-threatening situation. Is this my “Alamgiri” gateway to the fort of burning fire in the next life?

The sirens of the ambulance are music to my earlobes. My imagination storms with esoteric delirium, pernicious paranoia and acute phobia. The batteries of my meticulous mind for some reason still charged signal that my bloodstream is probably invaded with 1.30 milligrams of marching powder per litre of blood.

A fatal seizure and cardiac arrest is merely a door-step away for 0.5mg/litre is enough to send sturdy Mughal warriors 6 feet under. I might as well be draped in white and slid down Shandara or be coffined in a Shah Jehan tomb. My claim to glory? I “alpined” down the virginal “Snow White”.

Even an epic miracle of Sarasvati will not halt this internal Holocaust.

My only thought du moment: Ghazala. The triumvirate of loose characters around her are meaningless debris. Snubbed products from a glossy Vanity Fair.

They just don’t want a coffin on their conscience and unnecessary “tulleh” knocking into their omniscient air-conditioned lives.

My existence bends perilously like the circuitous Ravi.

Does the powder have me marching to a graveyard?

The world rushes before my eyes. My survival is on a final script about to reach its epilogue.

My life dwindles. Hanging on a thread.

I have burnt the candle.

At both ends.

This end.

And that of the Hereafter?