Chapter 5 — Liquid
And thus begins Chapter Five.
Now, children.
There we sat.
Our little chairs.
Beside the popcorn stall.
Festival passes in our pockets.
An entire cinematic universe available to us.
And
we got bored.
The council pauses.
At a film festival?
Children.
Yes.
There were options.
Many.
We could watch another movie.
The council gestures toward the theatres.
Reasonable.
We could buy more popcorn.
The council points directly beside us.
Extremely reasonable.
We could smoke another joint.
The council sighs.
Also available.
The supply remained healthy.
Axe looked at Sharky.
Sharky looked at me.
And somehow,
decision making authority fell into the hands of the least qualified member of the group.
The council becomes concerned.
Me.
I considered the options.
Movie?
No.
Popcorn?
Tempting.
Joint?
Always.
But then
children
I remembered something.
We were in Bangalore.
Not our university.
Not home.
Bangalore.
A place I had heard about.
A city people spoke about.
A city I knew existed mostly as reputation.
And suddenly,
sitting inside a film festival felt
small.
The council leans forward.
I wanted to see the city.
Not because I had become a wanderer.
Not yet.
No philosophy.
No:
The road calls.
No:
Curiosity is the noise within.
Children.
Nothing so elegant.
I simply thought:
We’re in Bangalore.
Why the fuck are we sitting here?
The council nods.
Ancient wisdom.
So I stood.
Axe looked up.
Sharky looked up.
“We’re going.”
The council pauses.
Where?
Excellent question.
I did not answer it.
Because I did not know.
I simply began walking.
And they followed.
The council smiles.
Pack protocol.
No discussion.
No route.
No permission.
We walked through the festival.
Past people.
Past halls.
Past movies we technically had free access to.
Past the glorious popcorn stall.
Children.
A sacrifice.
Then
the exit.
The council leans forward.
And this,
looking back,
might have been the first truly Unbegun decision ever made.
Not because it was clever.
Not because it was brave.
Because there was no destination.
I stepped outside.
Looked at the roads.
And chose one.
The council pauses.
Based on?
Feel.
The council grows quiet.
One road felt right.
So I walked.
Axe followed.
Sharky followed.
And that was it.
Children.
No Google Maps.
No recommendations.
No local guide.
No destination pinned ahead.
Just:
That way.
The council nods slowly.
Eleven years later,
I know that protocol intimately.
Pick a road.
Walk.
See what happens.
But University Nuo?
He had no idea he was establishing anything.
He was simply bored.
Origins are humiliating things.
The council smiles.
And boy
did the decision reward us.
Because eventually,
we found it.
The council leans forward.
A pub.
Children.
Not just any pub.
One of the few places from this ancient file whose name survived intact.
Liquid.
The council repeats it.
Liquid.
Children.
Time erased streets.
Films.
Buildings.
People.
Probably entire conversations.
But Liquid?
Still there.
In my head.
Blue neon.
Soft,
dim lighting.
Pleasant seating.
The kind of darkness that makes everyone look cooler than they actually are.
The council nods.
And alcohol.
Affordable alcohol.
Children.
To three university degenerates,
this was not a pub.
This was a temple.
The council sighs.
We entered.
Sat.
Looked at the menu.
And immediately encountered cultural revelation.
Now.
I grew up in Kerala.
I had drunk alcohol before.
Plenty.
This was not my first exposure to humanity’s oldest bad decision.
But Kerala had taught me a certain expectation.
Alcohol?
Expensive.
And often
watered down.
The council pauses.
The worst of both worlds.
Exactly.
Pay more.
Receive less.
A beautiful economic tragedy.
So when we ordered in Bangalore,
I approached the drinks with Kerala calibration.
This was a mistake.
The council becomes concerned.
Because children
the alcohol was stronger.
Much stronger than I had expected.
Did I know this immediately?
No.
Of course not.
That would require caution.
Instead,
we drank.
The council looks at the table.
Beer.
Then rum.
More rum.
Then
more rum.
Children.
We drank like Vikings who had recently discovered student pricing.
The council collapses.
Glasses arrived.
Glasses emptied.
Laughter increased.
Volume increased.
Judgment decreased.
And because we had spent years developing our drinking habits around weaker pours,
our internal mathematics betrayed us completely.
The council nods.
Same quantity.
Different consequence.
Axe drank.
Sharky drank.
I drank.
Someone ordered another.
Probably all of us.
The pub lights became warmer.
Or perhaps my eyes became worse.
The distinction is historically unavailable.
The council laughs.
And time
children
vanished.
One moment,
afternoon.
The next
late evening.
The film festival?
The council checks.
Still existing somewhere.
Our classmates?
Presumably watching cinema.
Faculty?
Hopefully believing we were enriching ourselves artistically.
The council looks toward us.
And technically
we were experiencing Bangalore culture.
The council sighs.
In liquid form.
Exactly.
Eventually,
some surviving fragment of collective responsibility activated.
We needed to go back.
Where?
The festival?
The accommodation?
Children.
Archive corrupted.
I honestly don’t know.
I remember the decision:
Return.
The exact intended destination?
History has dissolved it in rum.
But we left Liquid.
The blue neon behind us.
Bangalore outside.
Three increasingly unstable university students attempting to reverse a route none of us had properly memorized.
The council becomes concerned.
Did you get lost?
Not yet.
Children.
Patience.
For somehow
somehow
we returned.
The Archive skips.
Street.
Darkness.
Movement.
Then
the cursed accommodation.
The council groans.
Mattresses.
Dead air conditioner.
Fan rotating through another geological era.
Forbidden bathroom continuing its campaign against human dignity.
Home.
Temporarily.
I entered.
Found my mattress.
And collapsed.
The council nods.
To my left
Sharky.
To my right
Axe.
Or perhaps vice versa.
Children.
Eleven years.
Directionality has been surrendered.
But they were there.
The trio reassembled.
I lay down.
The room spun,
probably.
Or maybe I did.
And then
darkness.
The council whispers.
Fast travel?
No.
Something stranger.
Because eventually,
I woke.
Not to an alarm.
Not to faculty shouting.
Not to Axe.
Not to Sharky.
Children.
I woke to
“Moooo.”
The council freezes.
I opened my eyes.
Slowly.
Confused.
Still half inside whatever terrible dream came after several rounds of Bangalore rum.
“Moooo.”
Again.
The council looks around.
Children.
There are sounds you expect inside student accommodation.
Snoring.
Phones.
Someone vomiting.
A fan making noises despite contributing no wind.
A cow?
Less expected.
I blinked.
And there
cow.
The council goes completely silent.
A cow.
Children.
Not metaphorically.
Not:
A large person blocked the doorway.
Not some drunk hallucination I can safely attribute to chemistry.
Cow.
Actual bovine.
Present.
Close enough that the sound had successfully booted my consciousness.
I stared at it.
It stared
possibly.
Cows are difficult to read.
The council leans forward.
And in that moment,
University Nuo had several questions.
Where am I?
Why is there a cow?
Where are Axe and Sharky?
What time is it?
How did the cow get here?
Did I somehow leave the hostel?
Did the hostel somehow acquire livestock?
The council waits.
Answers?
None.
Children.
Absolutely none.
And that
is where Bangalore stopped being a relatively normal university trip.
The film festival?
Forget it.
Liquid?
Prelude.
The attendance scheme?
Ancient history.
Because from this moment onward,
the Archive becomes one of the strangest collections of surviving memories I possess.
The council grows quiet.
I had gone to sleep between my girlfriend and my dealer.
I woke to a cow.
And somehow,
children
this was still only the beginning.
Thus concludes Chapter Five.
The Great Escape From Cinema.
The First Road Chosen For No Reason.
Liquid.
The Viking Calibration Error.
And The Cow.
Children.
Eleven years later,
I can look back at that moment outside the festival
and recognize something.
No sadness pushed me.
No drugs waited at the destination.
No one told me where to go.
I simply stepped outside,
picked a road that felt right,
and followed it.
The road gave me a pub.
The pub gave me rum.
The rum gave me darkness.
And darkness
for reasons history has yet to explain
gave me a cow.
The council nods.
The earliest Wanderer had finally wandered.
He just had absolutely no idea what happened next.
