A day in the Kingdom of Jungle

So both of them were staring, staring at the banana python. The banana python was staring at a bat sample in formalin, as all of them being stared by the giant green Hanuman behind.

Many hanumans are running around. Mother is holding baby to her belly, crawling so fast that people think she has two tails and four hands. There the boy in black puts his camera on and moves closer. Mother stops, robs a visitor and feeds her baby peanuts. This criminal scene soon draws much attention around. Visitors found them naughty, lovely, paternalistic, and close to human yet still so wild. Now a circle of camera surrounds the mother. She is not sure if it is because she stayed with human for too long, a sense of shame creeps into her. But the next second it goes, and she looks down to her baby chewing peanuts, eyes of whom are reflecting the smile of the boy in black. He is walking down from the cave.

The heavy rain came after the encounter. The boy in white sits in a taxi, anxiously looking out from the front window. Endless cumulonimbus spreads above, lightning strikes the air nearby, and the explosive sound trembles him. Is the boy in black a mirror being of the conscious jungle? Is the rain a calling for him to be back to where the boy in black vanished? The taxi keeps heading towards the silver lining, questions haunting his mind. In dizziness, anxiety, and gleamingly sense of excitement, he can’t answer the questions for being too immersed in feeling the impulse of his heartbeat. Mouth slightly open, eyes fixed on the turbid half red half black sky. Puddles after puddles, the car squeezes the water out to be curtains. Shaded by the tiny waterfalls, the car becomes a perfect pensive vehicle. The tropical jungle cycles everything fast. The boy in white does not have questions, he is in them, but he is unharmed, for the questions themselves are also vaporising.

A thousand laughers, a thousand anger, a thousand thunder fall from the cloudy terrace hidden in fog.Where peaceful beams of lights resided, now a river from sky occupies. The boy in white finds the rain pleasant, for washing the glaring colourful walls of the Hindu Shrine.The snake-like thunders try to seize him. They fail.The Gods are too new to be holy

Back then it was stunningly sunny. The first scene the boy in white saw: the boy in black put his sunglasses on and walked to his direction where he was also putting on his sunglasses. The boy in black has sharp clean face line, walking steadily like a panther. The boy in white has aggressive eyesight, standing there like a marble statue. There was a transient confirmation of connection when their eye met as if the boy in white was there waiting for him. They simultaneously began forwarding to the cave, therefore shoulder by shoulder. Crowd is around and silence in between. It is a lane with shrines on two sides. The little frictions between the shoulders projected some tiny flame of expectation, sense of shame drew it back. They looked to both sides, fell the eyesight on each other, then naturally swift to a further focal point. Ganesh and Shiva on the temple tops are only, shadows of the person beside. But this omission of words, tacit may it be, seems unbreakable. As shoulder and arms touching, wheels turned in darkness, heart secretly bumped faster, and blood stream quietly accelerated, but all hidden, they are all hidden under the solid facade of the sweaty fleshes and heavy breath in the burning sun rays.

The atmospheres needed variation. For too many times they exchanged ambiguous information without talking. The boy in white decided to create tension. A two-story temple was in the front, as the boy in black casted his gaze to the exotic statues, the boy in white took his shoes off and entered the temple hall. The boy in black saw him, a moment of hesitation came, then left. Usually the boy in white has millions of prayers to convey no matter what the God is, but here he felt unease and uninterested. He was slightly disgusted by the intense and saturated colours inside. Looking behind, he found no boy in black but only an old brown man with golden muds plastered on his bold head creepily smiling showing his rotten teeth. Yes the boy in white was frustrated, for his game not working. But right when he was grumpily stepping down from the temple, from the dusty window he saw him. The boy in black. The boy in black was worshipping Murugan at the bottom of the mountain with his camera. Some blast took place in the nerves of the boy in white. He quickened his footsteps, forgetting that he could have prayed for the reconnection and within the jurisdiction of the Gods nearby, the wishes might more than likely to be realised. Or, it is the Gods’ wish that he shall not pray, for he was wishing for the sake of lust.

The moment the boy in white arrived at the dazzling Murugan statue, there was no trace of the boy in black. He gave up. He is used to making these dramas in mind and getting them over instantly upon the emergence of the first clue of impossibility. This damn micro Samsara is one of most fundamental codes from which his dreamy life was developed.

The boy in white followed people to the rainbow-like stairs, which is a clumsy mimic of natural wonder for they look too heavy and substantial. It is a sheer slope. Visitors stopped in the middle, framing themselves in the same screen with something interesting - hanumans, Murugan, Ganesh, shabby city view from high place, or just some rocks with lichen on. Of course they looked unfit. It is coercive, it is coercive the boy in white thought, to capture Gods, city and stones by just standing there and click shutter. It is also not so beautiful to always make human the protagonist of photography by accentuating their face with automatic camera setting. The boy in black was totally out of his mind now. He is lost in contemplating the anthropocentrism from Renaissance and consumerism manipulation of that human centrism illusion.

Enough shallow philosophical thinking, Gods save the readers who found the above bullshits. The boy in black was just there, resting on the stone bench. What is this. The boy in white wonders. Is he waiting for me? He looked to the boy in black. The boy in white is never shy looking into people’s eyes. He knows how people found his gazing, it is like from an old friend. Truly he thinks everyone he meets has been met. Then the boy in black gave back the same gazing - I KNOW YOU. WE MET.

Here they saw each other in more details. The boy in black has red hair, dressing all black but with silver rings on the edge of his hat. His crus get tattooed with sharp triangles. The boy in white has black hair, he is all in white: white shirts, shorts and shoes. In the inner side of his arm, a simple golden arrow is tattooed. This is how intimacy is built from, little similarity or matchability. They started climbing the stairs together, shoulder by shoulder, in silence again. They are both light and muscular. Their liveliness is explosive in a quiet way. Two fires conjure themselves. They were almost jumping to the core of the cave with the full confidence of discovering treasure. There was the treasure, or the most treasure-like objects in the cave - A Hindu shrine decorated with neon lights. Pictures taken. They moved on.

The boy in white walked faster to surpass the boy in black and stopped in front of a Flamen chanting mantra and offering anadaems. The boy in black also, also stopped there. They were talking, not in words, but by thrusting attention to the same object. Intimacy was accumulating, but not yet enough to break the silence. The boy in white lost patience, he began jumping to the next terrace every two stairs and wishing the boy in black would follow.

This is the end of the cave. Lights scatter in, water drips from stalactites. The boy in black came, leaning against the rails facing the last shrine. This shrine is simple. In his sight, the boy in white was looking to the tiny piece of the sky from the cave hole. The boy in white was fascinated by how drips became heavier when falling. It is unstoppable, he thought, once something is drawn by gravity. A huge white pigeon was gliding over, spreading the wings, the wings are transparent. This momentary wonder faded to darkness in a second. For years the drip would change the terrain, for soon the pigeon would lose its ability to fly. Then the boy in white turned his back and found the boy in black there. He did not dare to approach the boy in black in person, not even to get closer. He just gazed, as if he was gazing the natural surroundings. So maybe the boy in black really believed the boy in white at all time was gazing the natural surrounding but not him. He started heading back down. And several rounds of pass and catch were played.

For the second time the boy in white decided to awaken himself from this cliché imaginative drama. When the boy in black was taking photos of the mother hanuman, the boy in white bravely passed him to the dark cave. He sat on the chair at the dark cave entrance because he needs the cool wind from within to tranquillise him.

5 minutes later, the boy in black came with his inquiring eyes. But the lights from outside were too strong, the boy in white can only see the outline of his body. A black sword staggered onto a rock. What else was there? Waits, expectations, draw backs, inquires, misinterpretations, avoidance, and tiredness.

And just in this moment of confusion, in disappointments and hopes, in this tiredness after climbing hundreds of steps, a shining banana python descended from a vine next to them, the bat sample in formalin revived, they both saw, saw the baby King Cobra revolving himself in the sample bottle.

The dark cave blew another chilling wind to their faces. The boy in white was leaving, the boy in black followed closely as if they were going to talk. Some words finally were to burst out. An ejaculation of words was coming! The boy in white walked ahead, the boy in black was just about to open his mouth.

“ Come come, look at the monkeys, whoooo!” A fat Indian kid nimbly cut in between them, followed the boy were his entire family.

“Shall I wait?” the boy in white standing on the lane separated by the family, hesitating. He chose not to.

But immortal was the lust, he nevertheless stopped at the exit where there were flocks of pigeons, wishing for the black sword's reappearance. It got darker. Clouds aligned each other above. He saw the boy in black slowly approaching him, humming a melody with hands waving, walking, shrinking.

Came the storm, in thunder the boy in white saw a fire, a fire on the head of a black pigeon sliding against millions of raindrops. The unbreakable silence was thus broken, by rains drumming the land, like bullets fired by the Murugan.