And then he asked "What about love?"

And then he asked, "What about love, then?"
"What about it, sir?"
"You say you want a romp with a 26-year old when you are 85, but that sounded so insensitive and blatant. I can see someone else putting that idea in your otherwise chaste wish. You are, from what I see, generally losing your libido, aren't you?"

"Yeah, you can say that. And it is effing irritating to talk to a person who knows it all, already. This is so weird. And I thought you would look like Morgan Freeman."

"I don't, actually. I don't know it all because when i created the brain, I never thought it would have thoughts in it. It was chalky, tasted bland, and I stuffed as much of it as I could into the skull. It was meant to find you food and shelter. It evolved, and evolution wasn't something I had accounted for."

"No wonder. Before meeting you I kept thinking if you had really created and willed it all, how come the world's such a dark place, like...like someone's spread a jet-black sheet of night sky, and scattered only a few bright stars, as if you had thought of Blackle before us, and then given us pollution."

"I hadn't thought of the mind's capability of thinking. I had kept thought exclusively to myself, and to...err... some dolphins, but it seems there's an evil design that had gotten into everything even without my knowledge. Like what do you call it? Virus? And that brings me to the question I had been meaning to ask you all this while. Why demonhead?"

"Eh! That's supposed to be secret, maaaan! Am not the devil in anybody's mind. I ask them to invoke the devil in theirs."

"See? Now tell me about love. Haven't you loved?"

"Oh yes, and you probably know about all that too. Yes, I have been madly loved by two, almost unconditionally, where one embrace can lead to a koala snore, and another conversation can remain open-ended in 'when you decide to come to me, don't think twice.' And then I have chased three, obsessively. And that pretty much sums up all."

"Who was the last? The dancer?"
"Yes, and you wouldn't like the term bimbo, would you? You being effing G or whatever they call you."
"No, and I hate the term romp as well. I don't understand why you created language and created slang in parallel. That was like a virus in your original thought about how effective communication would be, with language. See, it is inflicting all of us."

"Slang helps make communication precise, sometimes. You wouldn't happen to know Bengali, would you? A term 'baal', meaning pubic hair, can be used in almost every sense to communicate a range of emotions. Very nice, in fact. By the way, about this dancer, what do you want to know? Why I was obsessed and what I got out of it? What if her husband reads this?"

"He wouldn't reach till here. He has very little patience in life, and you must have heard about it from her. Every morning he stands in front of a picture of what he thinks is me and utters some unintelligible stuff in Sanskrit, which he himself doesn't understand. I didn't feel any prayers in his heart. He wouldn't reach till here, am sure. You continue."

"It was obsessive, that's about it. And now it is over. And it left me scarred, which I thought wouldn't heal for quite some time. But strangely, there's no pain, and there's nothing left to say."

"So, the open-ended, lifetime offer saved you?"

"You can say that. Sometimes she is quiet and her hand, with her nails painted shiny black, is placed on mine. And nothing throbs. That's peace."

"And the snore of the koala?"

"That too. In a disneyland of her own dreams."

"Why is it that you don't talk much about what you genuinely received as opposed to stories of how much you have given in vain? Do I smell some vanity in that? What does it get you?"

"Where, you should ask, non?" I replied with a sheepish grin. He knows me inside out by now.

And then I offered him a drink of a local whiskey. He said he will be back to hear more and that he is drawn to demonhead. He asked why he is seen as ugly in some parts of the world. And I have the answers.
I wonder if he will ever figure who the devil in our minds really is.