Stephen Kelman - Man on Fire

And with that I left the scene, my head held high and my heart beating again with its original passion for simple life.

Needless to say my wife was shocked by the news of my swift departure from Bollywood life. At first she did not understand the strength of my reasons. There followed another period of stiffness in the house while the news sank in. For one week she refused to talk to me except to bark like a dog whenever I got in her way. Cooking standard reduced and rooms left in a hurry when I entered them. Me sleeping on the new zebra-print sofa because she spread her limbs to bar me from our bed.

My son was my only comfort in this time. I only had to look into his eyes to know that I had made the right decision. I saw his future there and was pleased to discover he would be a man of firm convictions.

After seven days my wife lifted her silence. ‘But what of our future?’ she asked.

I heard the typical rattle as the A/C switched off, then the lights went out. I went through the darkness to our bedroom where the fuse box is located. I hit the switch and light returned, showing the room as if I was seeing it for the first time. A cosy space with all necessary features. Light. A place to sit. A window to permit a segment of the outside. The sky was a lovely shade of dark blue and despite my wife’s complaints of small dimensions the room seemed big enough to contain the dreams of an entire span.

‘Everything we need is here,’ I told her. ‘Our son is here. God’s love finds us here every day, we do not need to look elsewhere for it. The money would be a chain around my soul and the demands of the job would keep me apart from my record-breaking fixture. A man must know his place, and my place was set up previously. This is my decision. I have made it for our protection and there is no going back.’

I saw my wife’s eyes turn wet and knew that my words had entered her heart in effective manner. This expressed later that night when she allowed me to return to our bed. Back in the arms of my dear ones, and everything settled into usual rhythm. Before sleep came I introspected on my blessings. I had received a clear vision of the future and saw that if I took up this life bad fortune would swallow good and a shadow would fall over the legacy that I had worked so hard to plant in dusty soil. I recognised the divine warning and acted quickly to prevent this terrible consequence.

Still today I am asked from time to time if I regret this decision. Many of my younger students share a big love of the actioners, and they often fantasise of seeing me perform on the silver screen. When they question my philosophy I always reply thus: when a donkey comes to your door do not be tricked by the gifts he carries on his back. If you pull his tail he will still drop loosies on your feet. I have stuck to this rule through thick and thin and this is why I can hold my chin high above all challenges.

Thank you.

As the sun set over the hills beyond the pylons of Vashi I climbed into a barrel and started stomping. The grapes felt slimy between my toes. I realised I’d been craving the touch of something organic for as long as I could remember.

The rooftop SkyBar was hosting a New World wines promotion. I’d come here to feel indiscreet. The corporate high-flyers pranced and flapped for a free bottle of Chilean Merlot while in the street below fatherless children clamoured to divvy the sweetbreads from eviscerated clock radios.

I was in the third barrel. The girl next to me was Korean, I think. A furious little thing in oatmeal linen, she stomped the fastest of all of us. She wanted to win. The waiters were handing out free bottles like they were the last of a tainted batch. As guests of the hotel we were owed something. A prize for having made it to the jet set.

None of them knew they were dancing bears. I was the saddest bear of all but at the time it didn’t matter. I was strong and alive and I had a friend who’d die for me.

A circle formed around us. The other hotshots still in their shoes clapped and hollered. Tonight they were on fire. Far from home and swaddled in booze they’d write their own history on the sky. One of them pointed and laughed at me. He wore a pink shirt and his sunburn made his head look like a fire alarm.

I looked across the rooftops to the train station and the InfoTech park, its stacked boxes topped with Airfix aerials and dishes. I decided for the night that it wasn’t a call centre at all, but a training facility for orphaned acrobats. The smudge-faced kids in the rat runs below me had once been caged there, sold by their families into showbiz slavery. They’d escaped into this darker freedom and were happy to endure its hardships if it meant no more cartwheels at the tip of a ringmaster’s bullying cane.

I stomped my way to notoriety and won my bottle. I held it up like a trophy. They cheered me. I fled to the edge of the roof to commune with the hidden stars. Their music couldn’t puncture the smog. I listened instead to the howling and chatter of the high-flyers and imagined myself better than them because I had a purpose worth running from.

The kick had been a breakthrough. When I’d landed my foot between Bibhuti’s legs I’d heard my own bones creak and mesh into a new formation that would let my greatness out like rays of light through pinholes in a blanket. It was restorative. Bibhuti’s nightly incursions were just local colour and the dogs that serenaded me so tirelessly would one day be bonemeal for an orchid farm.

A couple of weeks in and the novelty had started to wear thin. I was always tripping over Bibhuti meditating in the darkness on my way to the toilet. I tired of the sight of him in his underpants standing over me as I tried to sleep. I needed a dose of comfort to reward myself for all my hard work. Cotton sheets on a king-size bed and a break from his watching. Some carefully selected pleasures to throw a share of my money at before it got swallowed up in the record attempt and whatever life came after. I booked a night in the hotel next to the shopping mall Bibhuti had taken me to. I left his apartment in a holiday mood and promised to be good.

Bibhuti didn’t like the idea. ‘What if something is happening while you are there? A bomb or a fire or perhaps there is too much temptation there and you are returning to bad habits?’

I told him those things were behind me. The quiet would be a tonic and I’d come back stronger.

The lobby air smelled like a focus-grouped future and there were free boiled sweets in a jar at reception. I took a handful to last me.

I swam some lengths in the spa pool in exorbitant trunks from the in-house boutique, scraping elbows with fat Europeans on a desalination junket. I ate a fusion lunch in the restaurant that came out the other end a vibrant orange and sipped cold beers in the Tipplers’ Lounge, watching an office block go up on the opposite side of the street. The scaffolding was bamboo and the unharnessed workers dangled from it like monkeys. I credited their bravery to a handed-down belief in falcons that would swoop in and pluck them from the air if their footing failed them.

I could feel Ellen looking at me wherever I put myself. I couldn’t put a lid on what I’d done to her. I had more freedom than I knew what to do with and all I wanted to do was sleep and wake up again in a post-people world, where all our rivalries had grassed over and the animals ran the streets again.

I became aware of someone standing beside me. I looked down and saw a brown hand clutching the railing next to mine. I looked at her face. She was young and slender. Her native complexion looked out of place unstarched by waitress whites. In her emerald-green dress she could have been Bollywood. She smiled diffidently. The heat whispered over us and stirred something up. I let her make her proposal. I added my amendments and she suggested a price. I accepted. We boarded the lift in silence.