Thursday, February 25, 2010

Shilo- Rambling Storyline of Chapter One (yes...1/7 O_O)

They were young. And they were Lost.
Some stories about other worlds begin with 'Once upon a time', others with 'In the beginning'.
In this world the beginning is not known.
This World, sometimes forgotten and sometimes vaguely remembered by the Children and elders as 'Khoya': What was lost.
The elders in khoya tell tales of 'What-once-was'. A feeble whisper of the past. They spoke of a world not constructed and constrained. A world devoid of tall glass buildings. They spoke of other beings and half beings made of as fluid as water and as light as breath they called 'spirit'. They spoke of these spirits and life that existed beyond experiments in laboratories. They spoke of 'Colour': Strange hues and tones and pigments that spread like honey. They spoke of other life with four legs: creatures with a will of their own. Winged Creatures that would soar into the far reaches of space and dance with stars with painted wings and sing songs that told stories of other lands.
To the children of Khoya the words 'Of-their-own' seemed unimaginable. As did words like 'spirit', 'soul' and 'nature'.
To the children of Khoya this was myth. A jumble of fantastical mumbo-jumbo jumbled up in the elders' memories. And soon no one listened to those tales either.
There was no room for fantasy here. Only routine. And magic disrupted routine.
And what's the point of a story if it isn't even real? They said.

However, if one is to try and rediscover 'What-once-was'
If one is to attempt to pinpoint when Khoya was lost- it was possibly when the glass sphere was built around the earth.
Before, when the world was a spirit of itself, at first man lived in Harmony with other spirit (because he was intouch with his own).
He saw the network of light. He spoke the language of love, a language without words but only truth.
Everyday on earth was a celebration of this love. And man's voice (strong and sweet then) was part of this great cosmic orchestra.
They would sing in crystal voices about this love. they would spin round and round with the stars. Whirling in ecstacy. Everything was magical.
And I don't mean the mumbo-jumbo sort of magic. I mean Bliss.
one day men and women were distracted while singing. While looking up at the skies and his heart was connected to this great network when suddenly his eye caught something flying glimmering.
It was a firefly.
'Light that is worn by something apart from the stars' he thought...the idea of having light was interesting to him and he thought about it for days on end.
He wanted it. And then on, when he sang with the orchestra, it wasn't a celebration of love. It was a song of longing.
Having always lived by his need- this 'want' was new and exciting to him.
7 days and 7 nights later he saw Fire again. One day when all the world creatures were asleep, he snuck up behind the firefly and trapped it in a small glass box.
He labelled this box and it gave him great pleasure that he could see it whenever he wished and it would never ever go away (it had no choice).
Soon he collected more creatures like this. He no longer sang in praise with the rest but instead arranged his collection meticulously in rows.
When the other spirits approached him to ask him why he didn't sing and why he was trapping these creatures and plants he said
'Don't you see? I discovered them and so they are mine'
The spirits didn't understand this logic at all.
But the truth is- that before any pandora's box was opened...it was first sealed up.
and this incessant want to label and claim ownership over was called greed.

Man's greed led him to try and manipulate. Try and consume and control the spirit of the earth.
He was blind when he saw not the sadness in that he killed. He was deaf was he heard not the cries of the earth.
But above all, he was intoxicated.He was addicted to power. and it is this addiction, this intoxication and this blindness that gave birth to a dark powerful force with a life of its own
'The Nasha'
It started as a small puff of smoke that enveloped his heart and wrapped its long vines around it. This gave him indifference.
It then spread to his chest that swelled up as his lungs were taken over by the Nasha. This gave him pride.
Next it spread to his throat and wound its vines around his neck nearly choking him. This gave him cold silence.
Then to his eyes. dilated pupils. Nasha swirling inside like dark pools of sorrow. This gave him blindness.
and having wrapped itself around every nerve and entered every stream that ran through man's body:
finally it penetrated his mind. This brought him death.
And not death of the spirit (for the spirit lives forever) or death of Love (because love exists beyond that) but the death of his compassion.
Which is the worst end of all.
The spirits were chased out one by one. Poisonous gases were released into the world that punched holes into the layers of spirit and protection that enveloped the earth like a blanket.
Homes were destroyed. Forests burnt down. The sky began to fall, the earth began to quake. Spirit fought back. The sky would cry for days flooding the earth. His greed to control spirit brought terror. His greed to possess and consume land brought wars. And soon it wasn't even land anymore. Soon it was Oil, then Water. and last but most tragically- The Battles of Breath.
With holes in his sky, with a hole where a heart once existed, surrounded by chaos and cacophony- he had to make a choice-
Either he embraced the spirit and restored it to a magnificence of its own- let go of his control and need to consume and lived in Harmony.
Or
He built more walls and banished the spirit forever.
And Ofcourse, He chose to banish.
So he created a glass globe around the earth to block out the clouds that became animals in the sky. He shut out the stars that looked down upon the earth like eyes.
He created large concrete bottlestoppers that stopped rivers from flowing. He scooped out all the multitudes of fish and life in the ocean and replaced it with plastic that he'd consumed and spat out.
Remember poor Hansel and Gretel?
Who got lost in their woods and other kingdoms of love we could find no more: miniature labyrinths we no longer find our way back into.
The world faded,diminished and disintegrated into smaller and smaller histories until finally becoming the one we know.
Like a crystal prism that had been preserved for centuries to unleash the rainbow that shattered into tiny fragments .Cold, brittle and weak empires of manmade catastrophy eroded the soul like dirt off cliffs that drift in winds into beautiful tragedies of 'What-once-Was'.
Children were lined up in rows of gray and with glassy eyes of conformity gazing upon nothing. A vacant expression branded upon their faces with no decipherable features or beauty or ugliness. Their mind's trained not to think, not to question. This is the age of mediocrity and these voices of a forgotten generation of zombies. Jaded and incomplete but told to feel otherwise, these Children are laid to rest in an adult tone with the once beating heart of a child. 

This was Khoya. A mistake. A generation of alienation. And where our story begins.


So This is just a first draft of the first chapter. In terms of sequence of events it is more or less decided(unless people have some feedback or suggestions). The writing style keeps changing- which is something I need to take care of.Also I'm going to have to change the style of narration so it becomes a script or a conversation.
perhaps even a novel without any conversation or text at all?


Concept/Rough sketch of the Nasha.


Desperately trying to figure out how I can convert this into a script or a conversation.
Chapter 2 has much more dialogue and action in that sense.

1 comment:

  1. shilo
    chapter 1 in itself is good
    why dont you freeze it here and forget the other six chapters unless you're fully confident and make this visuals with minimun text and see how it works out
    i think if you get it right it will be breathtaking

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