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.