Googol.

‘There’s a subtle joy in huddling together like animals, tasting the sweat of each other hands, saliva dripping here and there, smelling the mass fart suffused in high velocity- as long there’s a destination that’s more like a home or a dream.’

This is how he describes the scene. Time to move on to the character’s more didactic voice.

‘The dream of a better humanity often shadows the humane and like scuttle marks left in prison walls they are etched in history books only as facts and statistics.’

At this point, he talks about the importance of stories.

‘Reminders in real life do not come with alarms, that’s why you need stories. The stuff of stories give a number its meaning. Good stories are the alarm clocks of humanity. A Googol is one followed by a hundred zeroes, but what if we say a Googol is a boy who works in the day and masturbates in the night, we will share him with the human experience of many Googols out there. What if, let’s say, he be remembered as a leader- ‘one’ man followed by a hundred ‘zero’ men. Such a nice image it is.'

There’s physically no joy in travelling in a crowded bus (realities of a heavily populated country), often hanging like an animal in those slaughterhouse trucks but perhaps it calls for an intellectual stimulation. Sometimes when he is hanging out there holding those steel rods by the gate, he imagines letting his hand go- his frail body falling over, bending and rolling for a while before another speeding bus goes running over him and making him all gory and dead. He often thinks of doing it, but his destination always remains the same. Someday he will reach for the moon. We can say that such imagination perhaps issues out from watching too much of those fancy little b/w art films. To me and you, depression is overrated anyway. Nevertheless, he never minds such a thought. Neither should we.

The denouement of the story comes in his voice.

'I do not want to be a part of that accumulating Googol of humanity that only ends in the tragic misunderstandings and power-play of others. I want to make a difference. I want to live and fight. I want to love. I… am...’

Bam, we lose the signal. We think he’s cured of his ailment. But we feel helpless anyway, who doesn’t like hearing an inspiring speech every weekday morning? I will instead try cheering you up a bit, so here’s my insight and please take me seriously.  It’s true that although a Googol is just another meager name assigned to a number: numerals repeated in space, but you know what, it’s kind of vast and if you are the geeky kind of a person you can tell your beloved that you have a Googol of love stored in your heart for him/her. I can’t be held for any sort of bitter consequences though. You can thank me later. Send me a letter and all your love?

The signal comes back again and all I hear are those final words. I know you already turned off the channel so I will tell you how it was…it was like the ending of some good book - a stab in the heart but in a very good way. I don’t want to ruin you with those words for I want you to imagine something sweet you will say to someone at the end of a pestilence, imagine a rhyme, a little poetry that’s nothing but the projection of your honest heart and trust me when I say it was something like that for those words were not his they were yours too. It was always words like that, you know,

it was something that

you must always

hum for

her.