Twin murders and a kid's penance

That Sunday afternoon was a typical one, the two-day-holiday cushion diluted by the impending Monday blues. I squatted on my haunches in our compound, all my attention focused on the green, shiny skinned grasshopper, sitting motionless on our home’s whitewashed wall. Only the two antennae on its head moved. That too, ever so slightly. The rest was still.

“It is not moving. You sure we can catch it?” six year old Winnie asked, watching excitedly by my side.

“Shhh…” I hissed, pressing my index finger against my lips. “If you make any noise, it will fly away.”

Silenced, she squatted by my side, pouting, as I stealthily moved my fingers around the grasshopper. She let out a squeal of delight, when it was between my fingers, trapped, struggling, legs flailing and wings fluttering wildly.

“Hold it tight, Yippee!!”

Paying scant attention to her, I methodically removed the two antennae on its head. Black blood trickled out, and stained my fingernails.

“Oh poor thing! Why do you do that?”

“To make it obedient”, I said. “They will jump away unless you take their horns off.”

We had kept aside a translucent lid of a cough-syrup bottle, with the letters ‘Cipla’ on its top and ounce measurements on its sides, to enclose our prey in. The lid lay on the portico, its Cipla side upwards. As Winnie gingerly lifted the lid, I put the insect inside, and replaced the lid in a flash.

The trapped grasshopper stood inside, as if ruminating over its Cipla cage and the lost antennae.

“It looks lonely.” Winnie said.

“Yes.”

“Why don’t we catch one more? So that he’ll have company?”

Then we set off, to find another one, squatting down again, waiting, like hungry lizards do on walls and rooftops for their prey. Several would-have-been prisoners came and went, and all were either very smart or very lucky, until one finally fell in our trap. He was brown, the color of dead wood, and had an ugly mottled design over his back.

“It is so ugly”, she screamed. “We can catch another”.

“It’s tough to get another, Winnie”, I said, carefully plucking off the antennae from the new grasshopper’s head.

We got him too under the Cipla cup.

“They won’t be friends”, Winnie was still complaining, “They don’t match at all.”

“They will fight”, I said. Winnie’s eyes widened. Fights always thrill children. We weren’t any different.

“They will? Really?”

“Yes. They will. You just wait and watch.” I said gravely.

“Who will win?” She continued to chatter.

I had not thought of that, but then, the conventional filmi wisdom must have come to the fore. The good looking one should be the hero and the ugly one, the villain.

“The green one.” I replied.

A handsome hero. A loathsome villain. The stage was so nicely set. Both of us knelt down, elbows resting on the floor, faces cupped in our palms. Two pairs of eager eyes glued fast to a Cipla lid.

The grasshoppers transmuted into sparring gladiators in our imaginations. One armored in brown and the other in green. Raring to go at each other. The Cipla lid became a Roman amphitheatre.

But the insects, trapped, together in their misery, had other ideas. They faced away from each other, desolate, showing no intention to fight. They didn’t even move an inch, and stood there, bottoms pressed against each other’s and the antennae-less noses rubbing against the lid’s inner walls. Having watched for sometime, Winnie lost patience, got up and walked away.

I still waited, hoping for something to happen. For quite some time, nothing did. Exasperated, I took a round pebble, lifted the lid, and smashed the pebble down twice onto the brown grasshopper. Our supposed villain.

Snap snap. Broken wings. Cracked head. Black blood. Gnashed flesh. It briefly slashed out with its frail legs, before dying a quick death.

I chose to subvert reality: ‘The green one killed the brown after a fight’. Then I yelled to Winnie, to come and see for herself, how the fight and the result had panned out in exactly the same way as I had said. But contrary to my high expectations, Winnie found the scene too gory, and stomped off. Unimpressed and queasy.

Not having got the adulation that I expected, I disposed the dead brown one, forgot about the green one sitting alone in the lid, and kept myself occupied with other similar, silly games. It was an hour later that I set my eyes on the Cipla lid again.

I had not replaced the lid properly: A part of the green grasshopper’s legs stood outside the lid; so did a part of the feathers on its rear-side, and the weight of the lid pressing down on its body had enervated the insect rather badly. Almost fatally.

I took the lid off. The insect could not move. Feet crushed under the weight of the lid, it was crawling on the floor. The wings had been broken too. I tried to set it free, but each time it started to fly or to jump, it landed back on the floor with a dull, sickening thud. I felt sick. After a few moments of deliberation, sure that it could not survive anymore, I put an end to its suffering – in the same way which I had done with the other grasshopper. With a pebble.

For the entire afternoon and the night, the dead grasshoppers flitted about in my consciousness, stirring up guilt and remorse. I just could not shake it off. By the next morning, I had almost forgotten about the incident, preoccupied with thoughts of school, when I saw something – a fleet of ants, as if in a funeral procession, carrying the rotten carcass of the green grasshopper across our compound. The insect ghosts started to wake up once again within me.

I had come to know recently from Mom, that God forgave sins till kids were seven. Beyond that age, the sins would be recorded in ChitraGupta’s register, and depending on the intensity of the crime, we would roast in hell, in stygian furnaces of varying temperatures. Greater heat for greater crimes. And I was nine years old. Two more than seven.

Starting to feel sick and guilty again, I skipped breakfast, slung the schoolbag over my shoulder and walked off, ashen-faced, to school. I walked, absent-mindedly, the hellish fires in my mind and in my eyes, tripped over a rope and fell down. My knees landed on a rocky ledge, and got badly bruised. Blood ran down my legs, soaking my white socks and canvas shoes in red. My parents came running over, lifted me up and carried me home. I stayed at home that day, wounds bandaged and dressed.

For the entire day, I was confined to my bed. But, even as the searing pain crept up my thighs, even as the vitriolic antiseptic burnt its way through the wound, even as its strong pungent smell crept up my nostrils; what I felt was not pain. There must have been pain, but more than that, what still stays etched in mind was the queer sense of relief that I felt then. Of justice being done.

Perhaps, this could be how I had to atone for my little sin. Moreover, ChitraGupta might pardon me and score my name off his dreaded register – I had already served my punishment. Thankfully, the flitting, restless grasshopper ghosts never reappeared again to ruin my dreams.

I remember, it was then, as a kid all of nine years, that I got my first idea of penance. And as a matter of fact, I haven't played an insect torturing game ever since.

NumbSkull Country Goose

We had a bit of trouble locating Vinayaka Nagar.Several of the bylanes in our locality had recently been re-tarred, renovated and renamed, and once we had located it, I realized with amusement that, it was the road which led to our school, the same road through which we cycled every morning, right from my fifth grade to my twelfth. House-number Ninety-four, we were told. We had to meet the old man who stayed there, we were told, offer him financial help, and an admission to the old-age home nearby, on behalf of our charity organization, Jyotis.

Finding Nintey-four was easier, and took us just under five minutes. It would have been even easier, if I had known that it was NCG's house. But, what I saw stunned me. The house looked like a ghost of what it was ten years back. The bricks on the walls were chopped at the edges, with cracks running criss-cross, covered by green, sticky moss all over. The old electric post beside the house, which used to present a striking, stark, ugly contrast to the spotless cleanliness of the walls, now seemed to blend seamlessly with the dirt which covered them. The post, in comparison, now looked cleaner and better groomed. The granite name board, which read " N.C.G.Panicker ", swung from a screw at it's one end, like a disoriented pendulum, with a hole at the free end where the other screw which had held it against the wall.

It took a while for NCG to answer our knocks at the gate. And when he did, it gave me an even bigger shock. Everything about him had changed. As the three of us sat with him on the run-down verandah, NCG recited ruefully about how he had lost his job as an insurance agent and all of his wealth in unending litigation, over a property dispute, with a construction firm. Even the house and property was under mortgage, he said.

I observed him, making sure that there were no signs of recognition on my face. He seemed to have degenerated, as his house had. His skin had sagged, and hung like loose sausages from his neck and cheekbones. The once-black, perfectly manicured sideburns and moustache had grayed and were overgrown, merging with his long and untidy beard. Only one thing had withstood change; the ever-present scowl on his face. It was with this trademark scowl, that we saw him for the first time, at a Resident’s Association function, while we were still in our school-going years.

My friend Naveen and me, had watched intently as NCG sat by our side, during the function, reading his magazine ( His initials were printed on the cover of the magazine, in clumsy, roundish letters).He had been comparing the results of a lucky draw, and both of us stole surreptitious glances into the magazine and the paper-bit which he held in his hand. As he compared the numbers, his scowling eyes moved from the paper-bit to the magazine, and back again. He realized that he had lost the draw, and angrily crumpled up the paper bit, and threw it to the ground. The violent reaction tickled our funny bones, and though I managed not to laugh, Naveen couldn't, and first let out a loud squeal, and then a giggle.NCG's quick fiery glare, blood-shot eyes from beneath the thick eye-brows and sideburns, had then subdued us into silence.

As I noticed my mates from Jyotis trying to convince NCG about the nobleness of our intentions, and into accepting our help and joining the old-age home, I remembered how our paths had crossed once again, while we were still in school.

Both of us used to play a game, while on our way back home; we would pick pebbles and aim them, five in a batch, one by one, onto the dirty post adjacent to NCG's squeaky clean walls. The post was squarer, and a good two-inch wider than the usual electric posts, making it a perfectly aimable target. None of us had a particularly good aim, and on average, atleast two out of every five missed the post, eventually creating a spotted design on NCG's super-clean walls, stretching his wafer-thin patience to its limits.

Getting proactive, NCG soon started a daily-evening vigil on his verandah, with his scowling eyes fixed at us, bringing our game to an abrupt end. He just glared, never uttering a word to us, and the one who talked, as if on his behalf, was the lady who stayed next door, in a curious mix of English and Malayalam. We had assumed then, that she was NCG's wife. “By chance, Aarude enkilum thalayil kondalo*?” she had asked, sounding concerned. The heavily accented English words struck a jarring note, followed by her rustic, local Malayalam. We instantly nick-named her By-chance.

Christening NCG took us a bit longer. I contributed Country for C and Goose for G, but we needed something catchy for N. It was then, that Naveen, the founder of the stone-throwing game, seething with anger at his game's sudden demise, finally came out with his masterpiece. NumbSkull for N. Thus, our bitter enemy stood baptized. NumbSkull Country Goose.
Mr Numbskull Country Goose and Miss By-chance. The nicknames stayed, and the names became a big joke among all our schoolmates who stayed nearby. We laughed behind their backs, invented funny rhymes about them, leaving them puzzled and irritated. We would regret our prank, sooner than we imagined, on a rainy June evening.

The rains had come lashing down, catching us off-guard, on the way back from school. We had no umbrellas, and as we stood, bedraggled, struggling to get our feet out of the way of the brick and logs which came hurtling down the slope along with the gushing water, we saw Miss.By-chance running towards us with an umbrella. NCG watched from his compound. We had gone in, along with her, and had a tea which warmed our shivering insides, thanked them and left, once the rain had subsided. We felt guilty and our relationship then grew better. Though NCG still scowled and never talked, By-chance gave us an occasional smile, and our paths rarely crossed.

I had been lost in my thought for quite some time, when I realized something. It was the first time, since I first saw NCG, that I ever heard him talk. I started listening, as his frowning face surprisingly softened, and eyes grew tender. He was talking about his sister, whom, he said he had lost to cancer. It took a while for me to realize that he was talking about By-chance. For us, she might have been his wife, or his servant, but it had never occured to us that, she was his sister.By then he had decided, after his hour-long conversation with my Jyotis colleagues, to join our old-age home, and had started to fill in the admission paper.

I stood by the side, watching him filling the papers, when he stunned me, still looking down into the paper, by asking where Naveen was now. I hadn’t expected the least that he would recognize me, was wonderstruck that he still remembered us. I let him know our present whereabouts, to which he nodded in acknowledgement, still looking into papers. At the end, as he was about to fill in his full name, which I watched curiously. I even half expected him to write Numbskull Country Goose Panicker, as I watched him fill in his name.

As I stood beside him, peering into his papers, he wrote, in his clumsy, roundish letters, which like him, appeared to have withered with age as well – ' Naledathu Chandra Gopan Panicker '.

PS:
By-chance's dialogue meant :- * what if the stone hits someone on the head? "

The Second Coming

I woke up, to the shrill railway siren and loud cries of the vendors and hawkers on the platform, as the train slowly ground to a halt. We had moved into Kerala, I realized, leaning my head against the train's window sill, trying to sniff Onam* in the air, looking out eagerly for the flowers that bloom just for Onam and trying to pick up notes of Thiruvathirakkali* and Onapattu* . This year though, I was alone, as Krupa, my eight-year-old daughter couldn’t come along, as she had gone with her father, for a scholarship exam near our house in Nagpur.

My attention was diverted by the voice of a young boy, around ten years old, singing an old folk song. I watched him, with his hollow eyes and emaciated frame, hobbling on his one normal leg and his other polio-crippled leg, as he made his way through the compartments. He tapped with his fingers on his aluminum vessel, providing musical accompaniment to his song; and extended it towards each passenger as he sung, to which very few people obliged by dropping a coin or two.

The sight of him awakened something in me. Memories I believed were buried beyond recollection. Around thirty onams ago. The same hobbling walk. The same malnourished body. The uncanny facial resemblance. Way back, when I perhaps, was as about old as my Krupa, or even younger.

I first saw Murali, on a similar Onam morning, while my mother was attending to him, putting a soaked cotton cloth on his forehead. He had sought shelter under the huge teak in our compound, during the heavy rains of the previous night, and mother had found him in the morning; drenched, feverish and unconscious. My mother had lived like a queen, in the midst of luxury, till my father, who was a premier liquor contractor, had passed away when I was just one. Even years afterward, mother couldn't refuse if someone came to her for help - even in times where she and us, her three daughters, struggled to manage three square meals a day and had to satiate ourselves with the meager supply potatoes and tapioca that we cultivated in our compound.

Murali stayed on with us, running errands, tending to cattle and helping mother with her household chores.Radhachechi* and Padminichechi, my elder sisters and their circle of friends paid no attention to him, not even as much attention that they would have paid Veeran, our dog who sometime back, had died of a snake bite. They used to go after the hobbling Murali, teasing him with chants of “Uruli* ! Uruli”, all of which, Murali would suffer in silence. They never used to include me too, considerably younger, in their games, with my thick lips and short hair being their most common object of ridicule. Inevitably, being birds of the same feather, Murali and I befriended each other.

The Onam season that followed, still, remains the most unforgettable one of my childhood, for reasons more than one. Murali and I would sit together under the trees in our compound, telling each other stories, our fears and our anxieties. He told how he and his twin sister had no mother; and they just had a cruel uncle who would beat him up daily. When I told him that every child has a mother, and that all my classmates had one, he disagreed and maintained that they never ever had a mother. I used to tearfully tell him, how my sisters would never let me play along with them, and how my birth was told to be a bad omen that had led to my father’s untimely death, which in turn, led to our family's current plight.

We had our moments too, though.Murali would seat me on a tree-skin and drag me at a great speed through our compound as if he were operating a speed boat, would pluck ripe fruits for me before the crows started nibbling at them, and would make tiny, cute trinkets for me from cardboard shreds and coconut leaves. I thoroughly enjoyed the looks of admiration from the other girls, when Murali, would stand with me on the swing, describing huge arcs in the air and would bite off the edge of a leaf from the adjacent mango tree when the swing began its downward journey, from mid air. My sisters, by then, had dropped their high-handed air and would plead Murali to do the same for them too, but Murali wouldn't agree, unless he got my nod of approval . I became an instant celebrity, so did he.

My short curly, un-girlish hair had been the thing that I most disliked about myself. Sometime back, before Murali's arrival, I had once met old Ramla, widely rumored to be practising chathanseva* .Though my mother had forbidden me from talking to her, I asked her about how I could grow long hair in a short time.Ramla pointed to a lotus at the centre of the pond. The stem of the lotus which grows right in the centre pond had to be taken, and kept for a full night between your hair, for the hair to grow thick and long, said Ramla.

This, had then seemed unattainable, but with Murali around, nothing seemed impossible. I went in search of him, and found him sitting in a corner, and was to my surprise, crying. He had dreamt that his sister was sick, he said, and he wanted to go home. No one should know, he said, he had to leave in the night. Our little heaven had lasted for a few months then, and as all good things do, it had to come to an end. And it did.

I wondered whether he had the money. Of course, he had'nt.Then we made a deal. I would give him my gold bangle in the evening, and he would pluck me the lotus from the middle of the pond.

There is a special sanctity to it, when pacts are made between children. Under no conditions, is the pact expected to be broken.

As decided, we met at the pond that evening, unaware of the dangers involved, and as decided, Murali dived into the pond and swam for the lotus, as I waited at the shore, my heart thumping furiously. Things happened far too fast. Murali missed a trick, and was soon drowning. I ran to my uncle, who immediately ran back to the pond with me and pulled Murali out. He lay motionless, as my uncle pulled him out of the pond.Sometime then, I fell unconscious.

When I woke up the next day, I found the anxious faces of my mother, uncle and sisters looking down at me. I enquired first about Murali, to which my uncle replied that he was alright and had gone home. I insisted that I wouldn't believe it unless I saw Murali, and was in tears again. He had funded Murali's trip, uncle said, and he off to see his sister. Finally,I trusted uncle.We would never hear from Murali again.

As the memories came up, tears welled up in my eyes. The surprised passengers looked on, as I hugged the stunned boy and pressed a hundred rupee note, into his hands. Staying close to me, he let out a smile.The smile gave me a shock. Something made me feel that Murali himself was standing right before me. Two front teeth in the upper row were broken, leaving a triangular gap in between. Exactly in the same way, that Murali’s teeth were broken.

At my age, I don’t give a thing for talks of rebirth or reincarnation, or any such superstition. Maybe it is due to my experiences in life, or my education, or my ten-year old relation with my husband, who is an atheist. But when I saw the smile, I, somehow, felt convinced, my worst fears confimed - that Murali wasn’t alive, that he never survived that night. Each passing moment ,with the boy in front of me seemed to reinforce the same.

The train started to move again, he released my grip, ran and hopped off onto the platform. As the train picked up speed, and as the boy on the platform faded away from my sight, I buried my face in my lap, and wept.


PS: For non-Mallus . I felt obliged to use these in my post, mainly because this is Onam time !
-onam is the national festival of kerala
-onapattu means onam songs
-thiruvathirakali is a kerala dance form,performed during onam
-chechi means elder sister
-uruli is a round vessel,sounds phonetically similair to murali
-chathanseva is devil worship a.k.a witchcraft

Sita

I took some toothpowder in one palm and a steel mug in the other hand and walked out into the courtyard, sucking in the cool, fresh, invigorating village air. Mom and aunt were near the well, involved in an animated discussion, glancing occasionally towards a shack which had been propped up just outside the farthest end of our compound. I walked up to the well and half-heartedly listened to their conversation, while cleaning my teeth.

"She surely deserves this ", Mom murmured through clenched teeth.

"Quite true ", seconded Aunt,” After all the miseries she put you people through."
Mom nodded, in agreement.

" I treated her just as a member in the household, just like one of my kids. And what did she do to me? ".She fumed."Not even a word before she left the home. And to think of all the events which followed."

“These kind of people, sister, you should keep them at a distance”, advised Aunt. “And at the same time, keep an eye on them. Never trust them.”

“Let it pass”, said Mom, shaking her head with an air of resignation.
“Let her suffer. Who cares?”
With that, both of them turned back, cautioning me to stay away from the well's sides, as it was slippery from the heavy rain which had fallen last night. Them gone, I stood, index finger stuck between my teeth and cheeks, wondering who the 'she' was.

Every time I visit this place, where my dad's family lives, I make it a routine to brush my teeth and then go cycling through the un-tarred, dusty roads with paddy fields, plantations and scattered tenements on either side. This time though, I went the opposite way, bisecting the courtyard, jumping over the fence into the road. I walked down the road, towards the shack and was no farther than ten meters from the shack, when a clay pot came hurtling out through its front door and landed on the road.

I moved to behind a tree and watched. The clay pot was followed first by a steel plate and then by a dark, swarthy, red-eyed guy. Obviously drunk, he had another clay vessel in his hand which he promptly smashed to the floor, shouting loudly at someone inside. A woman, around thirty, apparently his wife, appeared at the door, carrying a frail, sick boy, perched on her frailer, sicker frame. There was more bellowing from him, murmured apologies from her, and then a resounding slap which struck her square on the cheek, after which he stomped out of the place. The mother and the son sat on the doorstep, weeping.

It was the first time I ever saw Sita in tears. Ever since she had come to our house as a seventeen year old, to help Mom with the chores and to take care of me and my sister( as Dad, undergoing treatment for asthma, was then in hospital), she was always bubbly and cheerful. And pretty too - in an innocent, village belle sort of way - with dark honey colored skin, an uninhibited smile, twinkling eyes and long hair reaching down to her hip. I still remember my sister and me, returning from school, each of us holding Sita's hands on either side, each of our school-bags slung over her either shoulder. She was our main playmate, teaching us games that they often play in villages, and was our constant companion in watching movies, and recollecting excitedly the action sequences and punch lines in every movie that we saw on television.

Being bought up in a village, I guess she got too enthralled by the amorous ways of the city. While returning from school, clad most often in her bright yellow duppatta, she would respond encouragingly to cat-calls of "Manjakkili"* from guys perched on roadside walls, and in the evenings, she would communicate eagerly with her hands and eyebrows to the overtures of guys who stayed at the Law-college hostel, opposite our house.This, I remember was a problem that Mom had to address with an iron hand. It was something which she thought she did well, but it ended up with mixed results,as we would soon realize.

And one fine Sunday evening, while Sita and me were returning home from the flour-mill, she stopped by a shop, and bought me a toy-jeep,one with a steel chassis and shiny wheels,and asked me to go back home, adding that she would be back soon. It became my favorite toy, and I remember I played with it, pushing it around the house for almost two years since then. Thrilled by the toy, I obliged, and ran back home. We didn't realize then, that it was a farewell gift, till nine in the night, after the Sunday evening film on television. We noticed then, with considerable alarm, that she hadn't returned.Sita's home and my Dad were informed, and Dad took a forced discharge from the hospital.

If there ever is something called hell, I guess the week that followed would come closest to it.Sita's relatives chanted slogans and squatted on our courtyard, demanding that we return their daughter without harm. Policemen questioned us in and out.Dad, whose health kept worsening, exerted considerable governmental influence to keep us from being put behind bars. With police investigations going nowhere, we hired an advocate, a shrewd old man who peppered everyone endlessly with questions. Having got nothing of interest from my parents, he turned to me. His eyes gleamed with interest when I told him about Sita's dilly-dallying with the guys-on-the-roadside-walls. He thought a child's testimony would have enough innocence to convince the police about Sita's immorality and wanted me to recite the same to the police, with a few additional Sita-maligning inputs from his end.

I had learnt his testimony by-heart (as thoroughly as I would learn a poem at school) and had reached the police station with him and my parents, when we got the shock of our lives.

Sita stood there, all smiles, in full bridal attire, accompanied by the man with whom she had fallen in love and had eloped ,the same man who would be beating her to pulp everyday, a few years later. They had registered their marriage and the police got the news from the response to a man-missing ad that we had filed in the newspapers.Sita looked composed, having defied my Mom's iron hand, Mom and Dad stormed off in a rage, and I, sad at the realization that she would never return home, turned back tearfully, and met her endearing smile.

I watched him walk away, and stood there,unsure of what to do.A part of me wanted to go up to her and offer some help,though I didn't have the faintest idea about what help to offer.The other part of me didn't want to embarrass her in her current state of decrepitude.I thought I would walk away, but by then she saw me .I felt I saw a small sign of recognition,but could never be sure,because,as soon as she looked up and saw me,she picked up her son, turned back, went inside the house, and slammed the door shut .



*Manjakkili : A teasing expression - 'Manja' means yellow in Malayalam and 'kili' means bird

Asthmatic Aunty , Respiring Roomie

I wondered why she was here,in the exam hall,of all places.At Seventy-seven years,she was the last sight I expected here,inspite of the fact that she is my own Dad's,own Auntyji.There she was,right in midst of several other candidates,upright on a chair,pencil in hand,looking thoughtfully into the question paper.

It being an objective choice,fixed time exam,I didn't have much time to waste,pondering over why she was writing the exam along with me.Ignoring the absurdity of the situation,I buried my head into the question paper,picking my choice among the various answer choices,and darkening the appropriate ovals on the pink colored OMR Sheet with my pencil,nervous about whether I would end up gaining or loosing a mark with each darkened oval.

Meanwhile,I stole a sideways glance at Auntyji,out of curiosity to see what she was doing .Her posture had changed now.Sitting sideways on her chair,hunchbacked,she now had slumped,her head touching her knees.I could sense what was coming up next.She was about to get one of her bouts of asthma.And she did.

Auntyji started taking in deep breaths,each breath emitting a sound,which appeared something like a cross between the bay of a sheep and the croak of frog.Bay-croaking , let me call it .It came forth,in frequencies of such amazing regularity.Two breaths in a second,one hundred and twenty in a minute,seven thousand two hundred in an hour.Nothing more,nothing less.

You had to be either Superman or RajniKanth to concentrate on your examination in the midst of such unadulterated pandemonium.Sadly,I am,and was,neither.

Things where fast driving me to exasperation.The questions were'nt too tough and I was positively confident that I would crack the exam.But right then Auntyji had materialized,threatening to blow the whole exam with her asthmatic exploits.I just could not get myself to focus.

But what bemused me more was how unaffected the others in the room were.They seemed to have earholes plugged with cotton chunks.I turned and peeked into the ear of the girl next to me.Surprisingly,there was no cotton.

The bell rang. End of Session One.

There was a brief interval,and then my Mom came running,holding a glass containing a plain honey colored liquid,which looked and tasted like apple juice;the kind that we often get at HPMC centres in railway stations.But strangely , she referred to it as Pineapple-juice .Auntyji was offered just a quarter glass of the same.I felt a pity for Aunty,and wondered whether Mom's senses of hospitality had left her,just like the ability to distinguish apple juice from pineapple juice had deserted her,a few minutes back.

Things were already happening too topsy-turvy from my perspective.I emptied the glass in a single draught and decided to keep my mouth shut.

Sure that I had messed up the first half,I glared fierily at Auntyji.She was slumped in her seat.The asthmatic bouts seemed to have subsided.The quarter glass of the pinapple-juice-which-looked-like-apple-juice stayed there,untouched on her table.

The bell rang again. Session Two.

The exam restarted in a few minutes.Five minutes went on peacefully,and I felt I was getting into my groove again.Right then,the sheep bayed again,accompanied by the frog who croaked in unison.The last reserve of patience exhausted,I got up,shouted,and lunged menacingly at Auntyji,determined to get her out of the hall.I guess I tripped then, and fell down in the process .

Startled awake,lying flat on my back,I waited for my eyes to get accustomed to the darkness.As the pupils dilated,I first saw the ceiling fan,rotating laboriously overhead.The flourescent time-piece needles read Three A.M , while the alarm needle threateningly pointed to Five. Auntyji and the exam,it had all been in dreamland.

But something was still wrong.Still out of place.Yes,I realized -the bay-croaking.It was still there.Loud,rhythmic and unbearable. Confused,helpless and groggy-eyed I turned three-hundred-sixty degrees,my back facing the ceiling fan and buried my face in the pillow.The sound would'nt disappear.

Summoning all my consciousness,I got onto my feet and looked around.Right then I figured it out.Arun,my room-mate was lying beside my bed,covered head to toe in a black blanket,totally inconspicous,sleeping peacefully,snoring away to his heart's content.I picked up my bedsheet,the time-piece,my dishevelled clothes and trudged off to the next room.

For the next two hours,till the alarm went off,I slept in peace,neither seeing Auntyji nor hearing her bay-croaking.

Mrs.Cattie's nose-ring

Once upon a time, long long back, there lived one Mrs.Cattie Black,who,with jet black skin and nimble feet, was the toast of the town and was the best rat-catching cat that ever lived. She would stealthily melt into the darkness and pounce on the unsuspecting rats, catching them off guard and would bilch away fish with consummate ease, from kitchens where they were either cooked or kept aside to be washed. Never was she caught, and there wasn't a single family who wasn't jealous of the fleet-footed Cattie and her never-hungry kittens.

But Cattie was always unhappy, always jealous of the colorful feathers of Mrs.Bluey Feathers, the peacock and of the dazzling green skin of Miss.Greenie RedBeak, the parrot; both of whom stayed on the same street. She would always despair of looking at her pitch black skin in the mirror, sighing and wondering how she could ever get herself to be as beautiful as they were.

Once she had stolen enough fish from a nearby courtyard at night and had kept them aside for the next day, when she spotted the goldsmith walking across the street. She tiptoed upto him, taking half the fish with her, and placed them at his feet.

"I am so sad.. ", she whined.

"Why should you be sad, Cattie?", asked the goldsmith. "Don't you have more fish and rat meat than any other cat in the town?".

"Yes", Cattie was still whining.

"Then what is the problem?".

"I am ugly. I want to be pretty. Pretty like Bluey, pretty like Greenie ". She muttered, gazing despondently at her black feet and claws.

"You are perfectly fine, Cattie", pacified the goldsmith,"You can so easily blend into the dark with your dark skins, and you and your kittens would never starve."

Cattie would have none of it. She badly wanted to look pretty, and she had already thought of how she'd go about it.

"I need a golden nose-ring,with a bright diamond on it", ordered Cattie.

The goldsmith found the idea of a cat wearing a nose-ring quite strange and tried to dissuade her. But Cattie had already made up her mind and wouldn't let anyone drive sense into her head. Within a few days, Cattie had got her nose-ring,and she would strut around flaunting it, evoking gasps and looks of astonishment from Bluey, Greenie and all others on the street. For days on end, Cattie sat in front of the mirror - her narcissistic senses stroked awake by the shimmer of the sun on the diamond - admiring her own beauty, blissfully unaware of the approaching winter and the diminishing stock of food at her disposal.

And then, one fine evening, winter had set in and there was no food anymore with Cattie. She had still not had enough of admiring herself in the mirror, but the hunger, incessantly gnawing away at her and her kittens' intestines, forced her out to brave the biting cold. She was rusty, her feet not moving as nimbly as they did, thanks to all the days spent in front of the mirror. Yet she ran, with all her might, trying to pounce upon the rats, who now found it ridiculously easy to outwit their nemesis, the glint of moonlight on the diamond ring visible from a mile away.

Cattie couldn't fathom how the rats managed to spot her from so far. Undeterred by the unexpected reverse, she turned her attention to the kitchens of the houses nearby. She had gone no farther than the kitchen window sill when a blow struck. A stick landed right on her back, then on her legs and within minutes she was beaten black and blue by the townfolks.

She ran back wailing and was soon licking her wounds, staring at the reflection of her and her bloodied diamond-affixed nose in the mirror, remembering the words of the goldsmith. Her once coveted possession, the diamond studded nose-ring was her bane now. Smarting from the wounds and her hungry stomach, she set out in search of the goldsmith to get the ring off her face. But the goldsmith was nowhere to be found. He had left the town and a distraught Cattie was left with no option but to wail and curse her fate. Body aching from the beatings and the diamond-ring soiled, she trudged back home inconsolable, with tears rolling down her cheeks.

We still hear her in the streets and the alleys, wondering how she would feed her kittens again, how she would ever get the nose-ring off, crying and crying, desolate and inconsolable - "Meoow!!!! Meoow!!! Meoow!!"


Thanks to :
Chunakkara Ramankutty,malayalam film lyricist,whose one creation served as the inspiration for the above post.
Krupa,for finetuning the post, adding appropriate punctuations and correcting errors induced by late night sleepiness and my inherent carelessness.

Sugreeva,Mr.Bali and the Airhostesses

For those who are yet to be initiated into the awesome epic of The Ramayana, I have a small piece of information to share.Rama,during one of his sojourns, met Sugreeva,a vanara(the same genre as Hanuman) who was tormented endlessly by his brother Bali,upon a misunderstanding.Rama took it upon himself to free Sugreeva from the torments of Bali and slayed Bali after a mini-battle.

By the way,I had gone on a trip to Bangalore last week,partly to relax after a hectic month of work and partly to do some shopping.I had finished my shopping for the day and were walking down Brigade Road,when i spotted a rotund,pot bellied guy,trudging lazily towards me from the other end of the road.The gait and figure was so familiar but I couldn't place him even after racking my brains trying to figure out where I had seen him.But as soon as he passed us,it struck me.A few extra pounds ,a moustache and a straggly beard were the main reasons why I had'nt placed him yet.

"Sugreeva !!", I yelled.

He whirled round,shocked at hearing his college-nickname called out,at the most unlikely place. His shock quickly turned to a pleasant surprise as he saw me(it was four years since we passed out of our college,where we were classmates)and soon we were hugging and getting each other posted with the events which had taken place in each other's lives in the past four years.Our discussion soon veered to incidents at college,which we never get fed up of reciting, inspite of the number of times we do so.

At college,he had been an ardent fan of certain B-Grade magazines which published tiltillating stories mainly aimed at adolescents.Once we had caught him red handed,reading one such book,and the story which he was reading,had the main protagonist with the name Sugreeva.Though he never owned up to buying that book ,the name quickly caught on,even among girls,who fortunately never knew about the origin of the name.It had infuriated him to no end,and he would fume at anyone who called him by that name.

And one day,after we had completed our freshman year at college,we decided to meet up with the new joinees at our hostel.We marched in and out of the junior's hostel rooms,Sugreeva being one of the main scare-leaders.In one room,there was this boy,bespectacled and geekish, his head buried deep into his Mathematics text,and feverishly working out his assignments.I snatched the text from the guy. Our first-year Mathematics text was written by one Mr.Bali.

I had already intimidated the boy with a couple of questions when my Ramayanic awareness was awakened by the author's name.

I said,"Hey,why the hell do you study from Bali's book? It's too tough.You should try Sugreeva's book".

The boy,already about to piss in his trousers,never sensed the humorous side of my question. "Where can I get that text from?",he asked,innocently,his big,round eyes staring at me from beneath his spectacles.

That was when I got my brainstorm. I pointed to Sugreeva,who was already spreading fear throughout the hostel,terrorizing each and every soul who came his way. "You can ask that guy".

The boy hesitated,but one stern glance from me,and he was off to Sugreeva and had asked him for the "Mathematics text by Sugreeva". We watched joyfully as Sugreeva flew into one of his rages,scared the boy out of his wits.He never again could summon the courage to look Sugreeva in his eye, until they met each other time in a less hostile and more professional office environment and a Sugreeva having mellowed down quite a bit by then.

We were laughing at how scared the boy was,when Sugreeva surprised me when he told me that they shared the same apartment as well,as they worked in the same company now.

The mention of the apartment reminded us of another incident involving him.Our apartment,during college was in a posh residential area with its kitchen window facing a house ,which was rented out by a dozen pretty airhostesses.Inspite of repeated warnings from each of us,Sugreeva could never resist the temptation to peek at them from our kitchen .One day, the apartment bell rang.Two of us answered the bell.To our pleasant surprise ,one of the airhostesses was at our door.We weren’t allowed to entertain any new hopes as she snapped angrily.

“Your cook is such a nuisance ! Will you ask him to stop staring at girls all the time”.

Cook ???’’ ,We asked in unison,flabbergasted. We never had a cook at our apartment. It just needed a split second to realize who the cook was.We assured the girl that it wouldn’t repeat again,slammed the door and before the half asleep Sugreeva knew it,we had landed blows on all exposed parts of his body.

We were laughing again,when Sugreeva surprised me once more. He was in love with a girl in his company and they were getting engaged in June. I started jumping up and down for a treat and insisted that I wanted to meet his girl in person. He okayed the idea of a treat,but would never let me see the girl in person.He relented,only when he had sworn me to secrecy upon God , that the above incidents would be kept a secret from her,atleast until they got engaged to each other. I agreed and was rewarded with a sumptuous dinner the next day, before I left Bangalore.

Professors - Unplugged !!!

Last month,there happened to be an alumni meeting at our alma mater ,Loyola School.We passed out of school nearly 10 years ago and I haven't quite been a frequent visitor at school since.The school had changed a lot and while we passed the staff room,there weren't many familiar faces there too.I hoped I could see atleast one of our teachers,but couldn't.They had been real special and the staff room bought with it some memories of some truly magnificent teachers that we had.

The first one has to be Jacob Mathew Sir,our chemistry professor.He was around 60,almost always impeccably dressed,in pucca formals,and seriously,if he gave a modelling career a thought,Raymonds and Peter Englands would be at his doorsteps the next day,vying with each other to woo him.Such was the charm he had,and add to it a level head with a toungue that could never utter something unless it was absolutely necessary and appropriate,he was the complete package - a gentleman,head to toe.And we gave him one of the cutest nicknames one could ever think of - Jams - a short for Jacob Mathew sir.Once he was giving a class test and underprepared as we were,malpractice was a foregone conclusion.The thing was not in commiting the sin,but it was in doing it as stealthily as you ever could.One of my classmates,Shivaji,was not very good at being inconspicous,and in a moment of desparation,resorted to peeking into the book of the guy sitting behind him and could not escape Jams's probing eyes which picked him out almost immediately.Normally in such situations,the guy is made to stand and undergo a dressing down right then.But Jams's response was a classic.He reached over his shoulder,looked at Shivaji and gently quipped,
"Shivaji,dont strain too much .You will break your neck ".
There was a delay while the joke sank in,and then the class roared with laughter.

Then there was Gayathri Manohar,our english professor till class Ten.She was the iron lady,with a heart of gold,and with her stern looks and imposing presence,could glare down even Mike Tyson with ease.The only time I remember her soften was at the funeral of one of our classmates,,while we were in class Ten,during which she was uncontrollably in tears.With her,there was no messing around,no half-measures,no pranks and she was the ultimate taskmaster.Her nickname too,almost went wonderfully in tune with the terror that she generated.Gayathri and Manohar got truncated identically to leave Ga and Ma,and the name GaMa just stuck.Once she was about to teach an act from The Merchant Of Venice,by William Shakespeare,when she asked for a copy of the book from one of us.One guy,Boney stood up in a trice and proudly took his book to her.There was reason for him to be proud,as he was one of the guys who came under constant chiding from GaMa for not coming to class with a proper text book.Moreover the book was neatly covered.But for some strange reason,instead of writing the full name-"The Merchant Of Venice"-on the cover,he inscribed just the first letters of each word.
As a result,the book cover read "T.m.o.v".
GaMa took one close look,frowned,then let out the rarest of smiles and said,
"Boney,I dont want the Russian version.Could you please give me the english version instead?".
A bewildered Boney,all his enthusiasm evaporated,was left struggling for words.

Another incredible teacher was Deepa Pillai,alias DP,our English teacher in the Plus Two course.Pint sized and frail,her appearance belied the energy and enthusiasm which she carried within.School days,dramas - whatever cultural programme held at school- the strings were and had to be pulled by DP herself.I haven't seen a better english teacher,and for each verse from Shakespeare's classic tragedy,Hamlet,she would enthrall the class with its hidden meanings,puns and umpteen connotations.And she was very concerned with the grades that each of us were managing to get in each exams and was particularly exasperated with the performance of one of the boys in our class,Harish.He was a gifted hoopster,the school general captain and one of the top athletes in the school,and had then taken to playing the jazz drums for the school choir.Inspite of being an extremely intelligent guy,his grades at school had plummeted badly,and DP badly wanted him to focus more on studies and less on drumming,and one particular day,while distributing the mark sheets to each student,Harish's grades drove her to despair,and she exclaimed,
"And Harish,will you please STop BAnging away at those BLessed DRums?".
The sentence was so magnificently accented and delivered that it came close to resembling a drumbeat sequence in itself.We all stared,impressed at the verse,as DP acknowledged our open mouthed admiration with a sweet little smile,and nonchalantly continued with the distribution of the mark sheets.

There are still much more about school,about which I could go on writing forever.It is great fun recollecting them,and saves me the trouble of reciting boring events,which seem to have "happened" in every school,every year,every batch like how the chemistry professor asked to "take an iron rod of any metal" or how the drill master instructed to open the windows to "let the air force come in".

Teachers at Loyola,take a bow !!

Glassy Recollections

Last week,taking the cue from one of my friends,I decided that I would undergo laser treatment to my eyes.It was easy,he said,just a half an hour at the doc's,and your eyesight would be back to normal and you could dump your spectacles for good.The talk about the specs took me for a walk down the memory lane,with my glasses by my side.

They had come, the light of my eyes, neatly wrapped in a shiny plastic case with the name of the shop neatly embossed on it, in golden italic letters, and a yellow satin cloth inside to wipe them clean.

They were initially taken off before sleep, carefully with both my hands , wiped clean with the cloth and tenderly placed back into the box. As time went by, I would whip them off and toss them on to my table. The cloth, replaced by the loose ends of my shirts, disappeared first, followed by the box, which ended up covered in dust, at some forgotten corner of my wardrobe. As a result, within weeks of purchase, they invariably end up with one leg pointing towards London and the other towards America.

They made the text on billboards and films on television clearer, and saved me from the wrath of many who would smile at me from far away, only to meet my blind, blank stare. They have emboldened me to look people in the eye, as I know it wouldn’t be very easy for them to see my eyes, through the glasses.

They contrived with my then awkward gait, to give me the geek look, but the competition from my miserable grades right through school and college was too much for them and ultimately the grades won, hands down.

They made me very appearance-conscious, and despite instructions from the doctor to wear them permanently and persuasion from my parents, I always made sure that they rested in my pockets till I crossed the row of shops on either side of the road, which preceded the rather deserted path which led to my school.

They ruined an otherwise good looking photograph of mine--which honestly speaking, is quite a rarity--by reflecting the studio lights with a vengeance. Despite the best efforts from me and the photographer, neither the good looks nor thankfully the glare, repeated itself again.

They once silently rested on my nose, as if mocking at me, while I ran desperately all around the school, searching playgrounds and bathrooms thinking that I lost them. I realized they were still with me, only when, temporarily forgetting that I had "lost" them, I involuntarily readjusted their position on the bridge of my nose.

They have evolved from brown to black, oval to square, from biggish to smallish, the evolutions being triggered by wear and tear or by the latest fashion trends. But the demise of the first pair was the most tragic.
“They were in the pocket of my shirt,
The shirt was hanging on the door,
The door was then slammed tightly shut,
They were smashed and crashed to the floor.”
Nice rhyme, but such a cute piece of poetry occurring to me while speaking of this incident seems quite an anticlimax, as the sight of them crushed to a hundred glass pieces, jammed between the door and the wall, had been too much to bear. I got a sound thrashing from dad that day and a brand new pair on the next.

They have reduced RayBan and PolicE brands to utter irrelevance as far as I am concerned, as sunglasses don’t come with provisions for the visually imperfect, and wearing sunglasses over your eyeglasses isn't exactly what you call sanity.

They haven't been a permanent fixture on my nose of late, and they come up from my pocket only in the event of something interesting (read beautiful) cropping up before me. While at college, me wearing them and looking in a particular direction was a sure-shot indicator of a pretty someone walking past, and scores of hopeful adolescent eyes would soon follow mine. The flip side of the whole thing was that even some of my innocent, unassuming glances were quite often grossly misunderstood.

They get deposited by me, at the oddest of places, on bathroom window sills, on living-room cushions, in trouser pockets and many such unlikely places. I go mad hunting for them, and keep everyone around me on tenterhooks as well. They do resurface at the end, leaving a sheepish smile on my face, but the resultant mess-the upturned cushions,malaligned furniture,rummaged wardrobes- takes at least another hour to get cleaned up.

With the surgery imminent,my glasses wouldn't be staying with me for long.Even with a perfect 10/10 vision,and free from all the fuss which accompanies them,and the fact that I can spot a RayBan without bothering about them,I realize I would miss them ,and miss badly - my unsung companions,their reassuring presence,the desperate spectacle hunts - and the more I think about them,the more second thoughts am I having about letting them go.

'INVITATIO'Nailed !

They say marriages are made in heaven. But outsourcing being the order of the day, it seems marriages too have been outsourced from heaven nowadays. The quintessential marriage broker and marriage bureaus have taken a backseat as more and more get to find their better halves by themselves. Though largely unsuccessful so far, I have put in quite a number of efforts to this end myself.

The main bottleneck has been the shortlisting.Talkative girls don’t make the cut, so doesn't the fashionable and the over-socializing ones. No mirror cracking materials please, as she would get soon get bored going about cracking mirrors without my company. But long hair and intelligence are an absolute must-I still have my demands, you see. If at all some lady meets all the criteria she would have to still have to get acquainted with me and at least pick up a friendship with me. Sounds wishful thinking, but let me tell you, there has been more than one on my list so far. To be precise, six of them.

Now the twist in the tale. Of the six, two were already married, one was engaged, another one was already in love and the last two got engaged within a month of me meeting them. Call it pessimism or whatever you want, but I formulated my own theory about girls and me. Bring any girl who is struggling to find her match, due to reasons ranging from domestic to monetary to horoscopic, get me to like her and within a month, her cup of matrimonial woes would be empty and mine would be that much fuller.

Then I happened to switch my job. Quite often a change does you a world of good. Sometimes a change is what makes Lady Luck to cast her benevolence on us.Atleast that was what I hoped when I joined the new job. My hope wasn't out of place at all, when within a week I spotted what was to be the next entry on my growing list. She had joined recently and sat diagonally opposite to me. There was everything, the charming smile, long hair, simple dressing and calm demeanor and the fact that I didn’t even know anything about her couldn't put me off at all. Before long, glances and smiles were exchanged, and my brain worked overtime to correlate the smiles and glances to something like a mutual liking. Except for the smiles and glances, we never talked to each other. From my past relationships one thing which I had learnt was instead of being pushy,it was always better to be patiently bide my time and wait for the break.

So far, so good. By the way, I am not in a position to reveal the name of the girl, so let me call her Miss. DreamGirl.I needed to find out more about Miss. Dream Girl, starting with her name. The problem here was that since both of us were new at the office, there weren’t many whom I could ask for such sensitive data and there wouldn't be many who actually would know the details. That was when one day, luckily, I met this particular guy at our pantry. I will call him Mr.GodSend.Mr.GodSend was a talkative fellow, and since then, we used to talk occasionally over coffee. The talk was pretty much the boring crap - about the latest bank interests, housing loans, worsening condition of the roads of Cochin, train timings - the topics which come to your rescue when your interests doesn't match with someone and you still have to pick up a conversation. Though he was quite good at gossip-mongering, I was apprehensive about asking Mr. Godsend about Miss.DreamGirl as his chat never veered to "girl-topics”, as we call them. But his furtive glances and knowing smiles at me whenever a pretty, well-endowed female walked past us made me feel confident that he could be my man. I went ahead and managed to get her name from him, and also came to know that even her native place was the same as mine.

The signs were pretty bright and I sat down and formulated my plans. I methodically rehearsed our first conversations and the questions that I would ask her and so on. Meanwhile the glances continued, the smiles grew wider and the occasional one line conversations started to flourish too. Things were slowly picking up pace when after some days our Mr. Godsend came up to invite me for his marriage. He handed me his wedding invitation.DreamGirl was invited too,and was attending,so I made up my mind that I would attend too, and I joked to him about how me and Miss.DreamGirl would come to his seat to invite him to our marriage. He departed, and I folded the invitation and put it into my table to find yet another invitation there.Out of sheer curiosity I opened it.

I would have admired the card, with its silver background and embossed golden letters, if it was not for the content. I read the card again, hoping that I had read it wrong. But I hadn’t. The bride happened to be our Miss.DreamGirl and the saddest part was the date of wedding-it had happened a good two months before. I couldn’t help cursing her for not sporting at least an obvious Sindhoor mark on her forehead.

Months have passed,Miss.DreamGirl was promptly rechristened Mrs.DreamGirl,she is expecting a baby in a few months, Mr.Godsend is happily married and I am still drawing up lists and cutting the entries off with a speed that only my fast-running-out optimism can match.

A Tale Of Two Poems

Some years back,I took a sudden fancy to poetry.I jotted down some,and honestly speaking you couldnt spot even a trace of a rhyme or poetic beauty in most of them.They where just plain prose,with line breaks coming in at absolutely unnecessary places.The titles too,werent any great,and it wasn't long before I gave up on my latest fad.
Recently happened to come across two of them after a long time.These two seemed to be better,and though I could not find a better title for the second one,I thought I'll share them with you.
The first one seemed to have been inspired from the initial days of my then hectic software career.

TECHIE'S TRAVAILS

Monday comes along
Sunday slips away into the past
Friday waves from far away
And I am in bed,half conscious.

The alarm goes off. Damn it!
Damn me rather for setting it to go off at such unearthly hours.
I hope against hope that something has gone wrong .
Alarm might have been set to 4 AM by mistake,instead of 6.
But the sunlight peeping in allays my doubts .

Well,it's monday morning.
I sit up,groggy-eyed and drowsy.
Mom calls from downstairs
I wonder where she gets all this energy from .

Well,I must be off now,I realise.
Sheer will takes me to the shower.
I dress up,
The feeling of the darned tie wrenching my poor neck says it all.
The sight of equally unlucky souls at the office cheers me up.

Just 5 days like this,I tell myself.
To be back in the lap of that glorious feeling of nothing-to-do.
The same feeling,which made me sick,in those horrible jobless days.
This is much better,I console myself .

The thought of salary is vaguely comforting .
And as I get philosophical,the realisation dawns.
And I realise how lucky I am,to be here in this seat at Office.
A little chill down my spine
As the thought of the umpteen unsuccessful tests and interviews races back to mind.

I say a little prayer,and stare at my PC ,
Trying to figure out a pattern in that junk before me.
A curse for the (wretched) soul who created such meaningless(?) piece of material.
I say the prayer again,the junk gets more imposing .

Tea-vending machine is more humane,I feel .
At least it works when you want it to .

A cup of tea,and I am back to my seat,
With the software junk for company.
Two hours of mental wrestling,
Half my hair is strewn across the table.
At last it gives way(the junk,not my Hair) and I smile to myself.
You need to be brainy to crack it,and I feel good.
Wonder how I got the gumption to call it Junk.

Come On ! The day is not so bad ,after all.

Lot more junks,more e-mails and chat .
The days whizz past,great news!
But the deadlines too whizz past along with them ,bad news !
Desperate attempts to catch up,to no avail .
I start believing in miracles more and more.

Soon,Friday comes up,and another weekend .
Its party time.
Celebration of life,nothing less.
Absolute bliss,till the ill-fated alarm goes off once again

Such is life ,
Little disappointments,struggles and some joy at the end of it all.
A saying comes to my mind .
When you are about to fall from the edge of a Cliff,
God either rescues you,
Or He teaches you to fly.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The second one was inspired from a movie I saw,where the protagonist was a poor guy in love with a blind pretty girl.The guy just sells out the his guitar( his most loved possession, sob! sob! ) to raise money for his love's eye surgery.The surgery is a success and the guy is scared whether she would like him when she sets her eyes on him.The poor guy feels she would not like him,and out comes the poem.

THE SYMPHONY OF LOVE

The earth was bathed in moonlight ;
The sky,a hazy blue .
The leaves were sprinkled with silver ,
And the moon smiled from behind the clouds.

The cool wind blew ,
With breaths laden with dew.
And she lay on my chest ,
Lips parting into a smile,and eyes locked with mine.

She never saw me ,
She never saw anyone ,
But all saw her,a true marvel.
I sang to her,odes to her and her everlasting charm .

She lay,savouring my words.
As the wind soothened our tired nerves.
I was numb then,frozen with anxiety,
Even in the midst of the song and the moonlight.

Before the sun would bend down to kiss the oceans again,
She would open up to the world,
My asinine countenance and haggard frame would have to be the last thing to welcome her. The realisation shook me.

As the night melted away ,and sleep soothened our tired souls.
The day barged in.
And bought with it a hundred fears.
All about to materialise as shadows do from a lamp.

Her eyes were closed as she lay,
Wrapped in a serene charm .
And as I watched she opened her eyes ,
To the world ,which she had never seen.

I hoped the earth would swallow me,
The gale would blow me off,
But they were kind,and there I stood,
Facing the moment,the dreaded one.

Eyes closed,tears overflowing,I stood.
As her soft hands lay on my shoulders,
As dainty fingers wiped away the tears.
I opened my eyes,and stared blankly.

My misplaced fears vanished,
She had seen me with her mind,
Which had been a secret jewel-box,
Which I could never unlock,with both my eyes , and my ever so shallow mind.

Love overtook us,
As we stayed close, hearts beating in rhythm,
Whispering to each other,
Sweet nothings,from ear to ear.

The greatest music was born then,
Melting with the wind,lilting through the souls,
The loveliest symphony,
That the Universe ever listened to.

The symphony of Love.