State of the Art: The Diem Carpes Back

by FREDERICA VON McTOAST-HYPHEN, Alternate Reality News Service Pop Culture Writer

The grizzled old man (never before had I seen a human being with so much grizz!) named Mohinder staring glassy-eyed at the monitor of a Home Universe Generator^TM was muttering to himself. What was he muttering? you may well ask. Well, I'm glad you mayed, because he was muttering:

"Carpe diem? My ass, carpe diem! Yesterday? Yesterday, I carped that diem! Carped it just fine. Carped it for all I was worth, and, if you were there, you would agree that I carped it plenty! I mean, man, I carped the ever-livin' snot out of that diem! Carped it real good! Carped that diem like one of our lives depended upon it - cause one of our lives probably did! And, I gotta tell ya, I been doing this for so long that when I carpe a diem, it bloody well stays ferking carped!

When I asked him what he had actually done the day before, Mohinder turned his glassy eyes (honestly, I wanted to use them to make a roots beer float) towards me and smiled. It was a far-off smile, devoid of emotion, as if part of a matching luggage set in which the suitcase carrying the smile had arrived but the one carrying the smile's joy had been rerouted to Pittsburgh. Before he turned back to the screen, I surmised (yes, I sometimes hang around mises that have been knighted - oh, don't give me that look: you would, too, if they ever invited you!) that his verbal eruption had been influenced by the poster over the terminal of a fish being yanked out of the water by a hook over which loomed the words, "Newfoundland: Carpe Diem."

Sometimes a journalist just has to trust her instincts on such matters.

Mohinder laid in one of the infamous alternate reality dens of Kolkata (previously Calcutta, before that Loch Cuttovar, referred to in an earlier incarnation as Ach Gribble Pleff, nee One of the Other Places With Much Sand and Rock - 27 and Counting). In the dark room in which no photographs were allowed to develop, a dozen slack-jawed bodies stared at monitors. Occasionally, one of them moaned. Even more occasionally, one of them recited statistics for the top 20 football players of the 20th century. A blue pall was cast over the room (the Home Universe Generator^TMs are at least two generations old, and the colours projected by their screens are no longer natural).

The proprietor of this den of iniquity - deniquity for modern readers who value their time - is Guildhall Gertie Suresh, so-called because the wrinkles on his forehead remind people of a union card. When I asked him why people were so willing to alternate reality themselves into oblivion, he helpfully told me: "You are not a customer, yes? Sorry, but I only talk to customers. Not customers here with coupons, either - only paying customers!"

Fair enough. I had had enough experience with east Indians to know that -

"Ooh, ooh, I'll be happy to answer your question!" Hermione Plotkin raised her hand so sharply I was sure her arm was going to pull away from its socket, achieve escape velocity and end up in orbit. "Pick me! Pick me! Pick me!"

I picked her.

"Some people have such dreary lives," explained Plotkin, the Koala Vs. Panda Chair of New Delhi's Siegfried and Brunhilde Poverty Clinic (named, of course, after the famous circus performers), "that they would rather alternate reality themselves into oblivion than live another day."

Looking at the customers of the deniquity, I saw natives in tattered rags (ssh - don't tell Pierre Cardin or it will be all the rage on the Paris catwalks next season!). I had always assumed that the denizens of deniquities - the denizeniquities - were wealthy foreigners who came here to expire artistically. Before she could embarrass herself further with her undue enthusiasm, I asked Plotkin about this.

"Oh, no," she told me. "White people coming to Ach Gribble Pleff to waste their lives in front of Home Universe Generator^TMs only happens in Victorian romance novels. The reality is that denizeniquities are natives who have scrimped and saved and collected their rupees over the years. "They would rather pay for a dirty mat in front of a Home Universe Generator^TM than food...come to think of it, that may be why so many of them look at alternate worlds where feasts are taking place..."

But, I asked, isn't it true that the British introduced Indians to Home Universe Generator^TMs when they controlled the country so that they could have something to become addicted to and be rescued from by their heroic (and clearly morally superior) compatriots? "That's true," Plotkin allowed, "but -"

Sorry to interrupt, but I meant to say "bloody British" in my introduction to that paragraph.

"None taken," Plotkin replied. "But, that is only true in the historical sense."

The response of the government of India to deniquities vacillates between self-righteous despair and self-righteous tolerance. There are periods where the police remove denizeniquities lounging in front of Home Universe Generator^TMs and take them to prisons...where they admittedly mostly lounge in front of Home Universe Generator^TMs. But, in cells. With proper cots. And, sometimes even working plumbing. And, anyway, they are government sanctioned Home Universe Generator^TMs, so that's all right, then. Then, there are times when denizeniquities are left alone; coincidentally, these are times when politicians are not up for re-election.

"Be honest: who has never dreamed of forgetting his cares and disappearing into an alternate reality every now and again?" asked Sergeant Srinivas Annan of the Kolkata police force, Flying Wombat Division. "Not me, of course. I mean...other people. Not Detective Batchatchurian, either. Other other people. Or, Chief Patchali, for that matter. And, certainly not my wife, Andy. Oh, no. Definitely not Andy. Or, The Incomparable Florian of the Lesser Narrative. Or -"