ADEEL BABREE

CHAPTER ONE
For Science

There are mysteries in life whose answers slip beyond reach, fated to remain unsolved—at least within the brief span of my own lifetime.
The origin of consciousness. Dark matter. The pyramids. And why I stub my goddamn toe on the same sofa every goddamn night.

It’s these very mysteries that, through the ages, have kept men and women staring at the ceiling at 3 a.m., questioning the meaning of life, the existence of God—and whether they left the stove on… on purpose.

They say Newton was under a tree when he was struck with the idea of gravity.
Archimedes discovered buoyancy in the bathtub. Don’t we all?
Schrödinger cracked quantum mechanics while on a romantic getaway with—ahem—his colleague’s wife.

And just like that, I too found myself face-to-face with a black hole of my own.
Only, I wasn’t in a bathtub or a steamy chapter in a Henry Miller novel.

I was in my car, stuck in traffic—staring into the void of my dashboard, when the universe revealed its greatest mystery yet.

A delivery truck.

Perfectly ordinary. Mundane. Ugly.

Four wheels, one headlight, paint peeling and a side-mirror hanging on to life with.. not determination, but duct tape. The kind of machine that should’ve been dismantled long ago and recycled into spoons. By all means, there was nothing special about it. Nothing remotely cosmic. Nothing that said, “Behold, the mysteries of the universe!”

And yet… on its back gate, it bore an image—an abstract masterpiece. A painting, perhaps, of the divine absurdity itself.

An image of a soda bottle with the words “Zeera Cola” under it.

“By the ghost of Pythagoras, what manner of chaos is this?!” I gasped.

It was, by all the dictates of reason and conscience, my philosopher’s duty to unravel this sheer perversion of nature.

I followed the heap of metal right to the source.

Gourmet Bakery.

There are men—mighty men—who’ve arm-wrestled the sun, who’ve spat lightning, who’ve tamed storms with their bare hands.

Beowulf wrestled sea monsters.

Samson tore down the pillars of heaven.

John Henry drove his nine-pound steel into the heart of the mountain.

Hercules had his labors. I have mine. And mine comes with a receipt.

I bought 500 milliliters of snake tonic for a hundred pops.

Not for glory. Not for legend.

But for science—because someone has to drink this abomination, goddamnit, so others don’t have to.

And lo, fate had that burden set upon me.

CHAPTER TWO
Cacophony in the Mouth: Movements I & II — Ingestion and Remorse

Pop.

Like a gunshot in a back-alley where even the shadows wear trench coats.
I twist open the cap. The night flinches.

Noxious fumes curl up immediately — a little mushroom cloud of cumin menace fills the vacuum of my car.
My nostrils flare. Every instinct screams: put it away, put it away. For the love of all that’s sacred — put it away, man!
But no. I tell myself I must be strong. Not as a gourmand, but a scientist. Like Marie Curie, Henri Becquerel— willing to risk a little cellular decay for the sake of fizzy curiosity.

I lift the bottle to my lips.

First swig — bam!
GREAT GLOSSOPHARYNGEAL BURP DEMONS!
For a fleeting second, I think it’s not so bad — strange, exotic, almost clever. Like a Kazimir Malevich painting.
Then bitterness slices through the sticky sweetness — like a wandering draft in a mosque, carrying the smell of arq-e-gulaab, woolly carpets, and feet.
My brain hiccups: Is this medicine? Soup? Did someone liquefy a pansari shop and carbonate it?
Brilliant, maybe — but absolutely disgusting.

Second sip. URGH.
I swallow. No — I choke. I gag.
I pull faces like a second-rate mime performing a piece on the human condition.
Nausea sets in — a little dizziness. I lose a tiny fragment of my will to live.
I feel violated. I feel like I’ve walked into someone’s burp at a wedding — after three helpings of biryani and that sad bowl of coleslaw no one ever touches.
My soul gets acid reflux.

I think about a third slog — but no. Hell no.
I slam the cap back on and shove the bottle to the back of the car.
Might come in handy later. Maybe as paint thinner.
Or some tincture to ward off evil spirits… and the living ones too — like that cousin who keeps asking about my bank balance, insisting I put my savings in real estate, and lecturing me on how I’ll never survive being a musician. What savings? What survival?

Now, the two gulps of whatever abomination I had swallowed weren’t the worst part of the ordeal though. No. No way. The worst hit after. A calamity that took hold — patient, merciless, unforgettable. Like Chernobyl, only smaller in scale and infinitely more personal.

It waited. Like a snake in tall grass, every muscle tense, eyes cold, fangs ready. S-s-strike — and you’re hit with an aftertaste. Oh, that vile, lingering taste that kept coming. Like a weekly business tip e-mail newsletter that I don’t ever remember subscribing to. The taste didn’t stay put. It nested in your mouth. Harvested fields. Raised children. Built empires. Made you sign a peace treaty. Then dropped bombs on your colonized ass.

You don’t just taste Zeera Cola, man. You wear it. You become it. And by the time you realize, it’s already too late.

Too f*ckin’ late.

CHAPTER THREE
Terminus

Gourmet’s Zeera Cola promises to “Relieve Your Digestive Discomfort.” A noble claim, no doubt, intended for the aftermath of a heavy meal. And I realize most popular colas today, were once brewed in pharmacies — the bubbling bastid childs of cough syrup and snake oil — designed to soothe ailments of both body and soul.

But the real question is… “What manner of meal, pray tell, requires such a violent remedy?” You really need to question your dietary choices if they require a Zeera Cola chaser. If your meal requires this, it’s not relief you need, man—it’s a long, hard conversation with yourself about how you ended up here.

An anaconda, perhaps, who’s swallowed a rabbit, an elephant, a school bus full of children (and, with some luck, the math teacher too), might have more use for this damn devil’s drink.

BURPP!

Indeed, as their campaign suggests.

If public indigestion was part of their strategy and concern, then it belongs behind pharmacy glass, among antiseptic bottles and careful labels—not flaunting itself shamelessly on supermarket shelves. It should come slapped with a disclaimer: Caution: For display only. Do not ingest. Ask your doctor before use if pregnant, nursing, or on other medications. Side effects may include regret, nausea, existential dread, or a sudden awareness of one’s mortality.

But you’ve got to hand it to them — Gourmet Foods are a bold, ambitious lot. A bakery with its own news channel, no less. It’s the corporate equivalent of a nobody bluesman who fancies himself a writer, launches a website, and rants endlessly about beverages no one asked for, in essays that meander like a drunk poet refusing to get to the point. (Is there a point? Who knows.) Wait.. what?

And yet… somehow it all fits. A bakery running a news channel makes as much sense as their pastries: most headlines emerge the same way their eclairs do — hollow, stale, and dressed up in synthetic sweetness. Because it takes the courage of newsmen to mix cumin with cola. To mix truth with shameless sensationalism. It takes daring. It takes guts… to offend guts.

While cumin belongs in many marvelous things: pulao, nihari, raita… in jars in your mother’s kitchen cabinet that you’re never allowed to touch. But the one thing it does not belong in.. is cola.

Cola, official sponsor of happiness and Type 2 diabetes, was never meant to mingle with the ancient austerity of cumin — the spice of passing caravans, gypsy wagons, and dying empires. One is a beach party; the other, a solemn ghazal night. Together, they form an unholy union of sweetness and spice, shallow and profound.

My fellow esteemed apes and apettes—it’s been a long, hard, glorious slog of progress of man. From humble primordial soup to the fast-paced chaos of now. We invented the wheel, tamed fire, cured diseases, mapped the genome, made cotton briefs, wrote symphonies that make angels weep, and put men on the moon. Monumental, almost divine stuff. And then, one day, in a fluorescent-lit boardroom somewhere, someone cleared their throat and said: “Erm.. What if soda… but smells like armpit?”

Ah.

This is where human progress ends, friends. The bus screeches to a halt. “This is the last stop. Please exit the bus.” Doors hiss open. Step out. Stretch your legs. Look around. This is as far as it goes. Welcome to the terminus.

For refreshment, there’s some carbonated kabbab breath in a can that you and your family can enjoy.

EPILOGUE

There are corners of the universe that do not yield to curiosity without cost. Black holes twist space and time into shapes the mind can barely grasp. Dark matter blankets galaxies, invisible and unknowable. Ancient viruses thaw from Siberian ice, carrying millennia of unfinished business. Some doors don’t need opening; some mysteries don’t want solving. The Universe keeps a few secrets for a reason. So the next time you see a truck with a weird picture on the back, please—leave it the f*ck alone. Go home.

The optimist sees the bottle half full, the pessimist half empty.
The wise man digs a hole, drops it in, lights a stogie, and walks away.

Now, excuse me—I need a deodorant for my tongue.

Strange Brew,
Killing what’s inside of you.
— Cream, 1967.