Slaughterhouse For Babies

Deep within the serene abyss of my mind, exists a slaughterhouse for babies. It has 9 chambers. Following is a brief account of what happens there.


Chamber 1:
There is a pack of hungry hyenas. Subjects are thrown in from a small window in the ceiling. The animals are skilled at their noble task. They slowly and painfully rip the subjects into little pieces.

Chamber 2:
There is an executioner with a sledgehammer. A conveyor belt carrying the subjects passes through the centre. Subjects' heads are crushed into bits.


Chamber 3:
A conveyor belt carrying the subjects into a hot tub of molten lava. What happens next, requires no explanation.


Chamber 4:
A 100 meters deep pool of electrocuted water. Subjects are thrown in from the top. They are reduced to skeletons before they can ever hit the bottom.


Chamber 5:
A conveyor belt carrying the subjects passes through a huge chopping machine. Subjects are chopped into little pieces.


Chamber 6:
Subjects are thrown into a 500 meters deep pit. The experience is meant to break each and every bone in their body.


Chamber 7:
An executioner with a small razor blade. Every hour, a subject is thrown into the room. It is the executioner's task to slaughter the subjects using his blade. He is encouraged to use his creativity in making the process as painful as possible.


Chamber 8:
The cold storage room. Subjects are allowed to freeze to death. There is obviously no shortage of ice cream here. Eat all you can, you little ones.


Chamber 9:
It has no door, no windows and absolutely no way to get out. The walls are unbreakable. There is no light. The author is locked in this chamber. He has the key to shut down the entire facility. 


The pathos must be understood. Otherwise, the puzzle will never be solved.

An Endless Search

I slept at 6:00am in the morning and woke up at around 10:30am. Sleeplessness has become a real bugger lately. So anyways I woke up with a strange kind of tension in my mind. To define it, it’s the discrepancy between my desired state and my actual state. I don’t know what my desired state is. 15 minutes latter I got out of bed and made a phone call. My “Desired” number was powered off. With a bit of disappointment I got ready and left for campus.

Its awfully hot and humid in Karachi today. Campus is a 15 minutes walk from my Hostel. During the course of this little journey, my mind must have gone through a 1000 weird thoughts. Be positive. No don’t let your hopes drag you into some kind of unrealizable dream. So don’t be positive. But life is such a drag if you don’t have hope.. so be positive….don’t be positive.. be realistic. Practical. Don’t think too much. You think too much……. Its 11:45am and I’m at campus. I go straight to the library’s periodicals section. My eyes are continuously sifting through the neatly arranged magazines on the shelf.

There it is, “The Daily Psychologist”; 50+ pages of psychology, antidepressant drug advertisements, and everything there is to life these days. This was the first time I had come across this magnificent compound of paper, ink and other chemicals and I must admit that I was overjoyed. So I took it out, grabbed myself a chair and started going through the pages, occasionally reading a few lines.

There was this one particular ad which deserved more of my attention than usual. “Discover Yourself”. 5 DVD Set by some acclaimed Zen Master. Discover the meaning of life. Make your life meaningful and what not. If we are alive and breathing I ask, is it not meaningful enough? Is it not meaningful enough to be human, with our eyes, ears, hands, brain and short comings? Define meaningful.

Its 12:45 and my phone rings, compelling me to take my eyes off the “Zen Self Discovery Process”. “Desired” number calling. I pick up and two minutes of conversation lighten me up.

Thoughts flood my mind. Why are we here? Why are humans the way they are? Why is self discovery so important? At times after looking at such advertisements, it seems to me as if the entire world is some kind of a mental health facility with all these scientists designing solutions and testing them on us. Its all a big mess. Human beings have systematized and institutionalized everything. The system suffocates me. The institutions scare me. Aren’t we all just highly intelligent animals. I think we’d be better off If we had not evolved into being the way we are today. Perhaps if we had stayed primitive, then our problems and complications of life would never have grown to such massive proportions. Perhaps…

I’m back in my room and my mind tells itself to shut up. But my questions are still unanswered…