(The following is an extract from Sudeep Sen's book Erotext: Desire, disease, delusion, dream, downpur recently published by Penguin Random House India, 2016)
The seductiveness of a slim tall transparent glass tube – the curved silver juices it contains – is such that it makes me forget the news of the birth of a new child. Human life and inert chemical life compete in insidious ways, the same way fact and fiction do, as do desire and disgust, illness and passion.
Like an aria, it is a curious melody, as distinct from harmony – a solo part in a cantata or opera. Its inherent nobility and splendour, its treble and bass create an enigma of its own private architecture.
The mercury in the thermometer rises, gradually and numerically, to a height where human equilibrium can just about balance itself. I stand at its base. The glass chamber rising many storeys above me holds a reservoir of finely granulated liquid that changes its silvery-grey shade in the fading light. Above that, a constriction, then a towering shot of fine tubular glass hoping to reach a degree of sanity at the cost of human heat.