The thing I love doing most, besides asking people how they have been, is eating up words. It goes like this. You mouth something untoward, for no apparent reason and then plead guilty. Then you start eating up your words. It’s quite filling, by the way. The words I love to eat personally are Irony, Ridiculous, Matrimony, Nonsense, Oxymoron, Idleness, Hunky Dory and Maniac. It’s very filling and satisfying, I tell you. Satisfying is the word that I find hard to digest. Though I use it very often, but chances are I am lying. Another word I have developed a special liking to is Yeah, with more stress on Y and then you say ah! Sounds very chic one must admit and comes pretty handy. If you’re in those moods when you’re not particularly inclined to have a conversation or you don’t really know what to say, you say Yeah. That’s it, just a four letter word but enough to wrap up a conversation or get it going. Something like, if you happen to bump into a science geek in a social party and he happens to ask you if you’ve heard about the Star that’ll be the cause of World War III (apparently because it would come to US knowledge that Osama is hiding there) you can get away by saying Yeah. That should stop the bloody blighter from approaching you for another billion light years. Not bad considering the effort. Again there’re some words which I find very easy to spell but utterly tough to pronounce. Film is one such word. The L inevitably comes before I. Then there are some that simply refuse to leave the mouth. They just hang their laconically, as if some sightseeing happening inside the mouth and end there. Take eccentricity for one. Though not the least embarrassed to remind people of it’s presence in high society parties, it surprisingly acts pricey when you want to voice it.

V3777TU Part 2

Bought this expensive machine which was beyond my means. Of course, lot of good-hearted souls chipped in. But one should cut ones coat according to ones cloth. today, i sold it off.

blue baloon

blue baloon is blue in colur. he is filled with gas, so he's not hungry at the moment. his presence hangs by a white thread, let it slip out of your hand and he slips out for good into the sky. he camoflages with the blue sky and it gets impossible to track him from then on. he soars deep into the sky till he's tired of all this floating aroung, being shoved ruthlessly by gusts of wind here and there. he finally decides to take life easy. deflates himself. finds a patch of land or an crooked branch to hang from. no one exactly knows his resting place. no one so far can claim to have caught a baloon after it has taken flight. it probably goes to a mystical land where no humans have set foot. there you can find (if you find the place) baloons of varied colours and sizes scattered all over the place. they talk often and bump into one another and move one. finally they breath their last. they loose their air never to dare fly high again. blue ballon meets a similar fate, until he was discoved by an acheologist 20 feet under. his skin still elastic and vibrant. he tries to hold on to the gound but he's is finally yanked out, leaving shards of blue still loyal to the grip. his mortal remains are not put up in the museum but thrown away carelessly.

coo

the bird flew over the tall building and pearched on another. it spat in disgust and left it's droppings out of anguish. its been flying for quite sometime hoping to find a nice little branch to sit on and have a birds eye view of the place, watch other birds take flight and meet some colourful ones. then probably set things rolling and from a close alliance with a beauty. but what greets him is black smoke spewing out from big boxes, some wierd looking creature with ears and no feathers housed inside glass walls, rectangular-shaped creatures that kept on moving and blared out loud for no rhyme or reason. it was angry because all these strange creatures has encroached upon their land. what used to be trees and green fields was replaced by ungly looking structures where the uglier looking creatures inhabited. something had to be done about it. it sat in conference (in a row) with his comrades, working out what is to be done to stop this menace. suddenly a spark of light buzzed out of nowhere, elocuting all of them at one go. all that remained of the meeting was a few ruffled feathers.

V3777TU

Bought an expensive machine. an assemble of people helped me in the mega purchase. 1 car owner who drove me to the point of purchse, 3 overzealous financers, 2 moral supporters, 1 technical adviser and 1 purchaser. entire pack drove off to a place named galleria where the objective lay somehwere proudly enconsed. it plays hard to get but throw enough money and the stuck up bastard will fall in your arms. we checked out a couple of models. some a little on the expensive side and some failed to live up to our expectation. finally the group barged in a shop on the second floor and found one named v3777tu. we like the model which was threatning to go out-of-stock. it was the last piece in the shop. it was quiet a looker and we paid for the MRP, after some smart haggling, in three different modes. part my credit card used to the last dreg, part debit car not used to the last dreg and cash that flew from one of the overzealous financers pocket. finally we took possession and went our way.

Mornings

Someone playing the song "Can you feel the love tonight", from Lion King early morning. Am at my workstation, trying to think of the next best thing to do. Two people are catching up with their sleep. One on the floor. One on the chair. Apparently one bought a car and the other knows how to drive. He also knows how to ride a bike. Which he does early morning to the other's place and drives the car to reach office before time. Before anyone has dared to step in. I catch them napping. Not a very bright begenning to the day. More people have poured in and woken up the sleeping couples. The place has become somewhat too noisy to continue with the narration. Some hysterical laughs here and there and loud voices breaking the otherwise tranquil morning. It's almost impossible to continue now. Got rid of one by asking for a cup of tea. Had one cup already. Before he was gone he's back. One song kept on the loop, playing repeatedly on my mind as well. Before the day ends I am going to go off my rocker.

relativity

Time and again something pops up and forces the issue. Like when I had made myself cozy in the bed with a book and a hot cup of coffee for distraction. The time table was getting annoyed and was threatening redundancy any moment. Hours turned directly into years and the calendar resting on the table didn’t know what to do. Out of boredom it started repeating itself. Month after month till it lost count too. The book refused to end, the story hadn’t even unfolded and the author was still elaborating on the preface. Of course the pages had turned brittle and yellow. Some hundred thousand pages later, the book’s first chapter starts. But it was one hell of an effort to lift that amount of pages to reach that stage. It was getting easier, as one progressed, to lose interest in the book even before the characters took shape. The story goes something like this; someone had started writing this book on some BC. Till date no one knows who the person is. Generation after generation had been penning down to make a book out of it, complete with paperbacks. It’s believed that soon after someone is born into a family, he/she started writing taking only the necessary breaks in between. The end result being, the book devoured some dozen generations and a two storied apartment.

king's arms

a particular woman once stepped out of her house and came back with a cub. she must have wandered into the jungle or the cub must have wandered into the city. that's irrelevant considering what happened afterwards. she fed him and he didn't eat her. she took care of the animal as if it was her pet. which it was. and in no time the cub grew into a lion with a mane and everything it's supposed to have. she was of limited means and it outgrew her. she was getting a measure of what it takes to have a lion loitering in your yard. soon, she took him to the zoo or made the zoo authorities come and pick him up as he was too heavy for her to carry him around. quiet sometime had passed since when she finally decided to pay him a visit. and miraculously the lion recognised her. she stepped near the cage as if it had her pet dog. the lion stood up on its hind legs and rested the forearms arms on her shoulder draged her close to the bars and hugged her. the lion closed his eyes and was happy to let her head rest on his chest. it one didn't know what a lion looked like, the whole moment could have easily passed off as two living beings in love embracing each other. it was love and compassion. yes she was in the lions arms and i saw it with my very own eyes.

days

people are talking about things that's not making any sense to the person next door which is some miles away . absolute gibberish. ther's a lot of commotion for absolutely nothing at all. some, out of lack of any audiance, are inflicting pain on themselves by pulling one's own hair and plucking scabbed wounds, to find a reason to scream. everyone is lost in the din. they have too much to say within too little a time span. Time is warped. The clock is ticking too fast to let the moment pass quickly. Oblivious to the fact that impending moment will be no different. tongues are going out of control and are all over the place slapping, flapping and twirling like a derelict.

Type type type type type type type type type type type type….is the number of times I can type.

It’s all staged.

I was standing in front of a mouth piece. Or rather the mouth piece was standing in front of me, expecting me to take the first step. I hesitated. May be I hesitated a little too long, for hours had passed, without any change in the status quo. For some strange reason the audience was getting impatient. And were beginning to mutter their annoyance, which was growing with every second. I was feeling uneasy, but no clue what got into them. Even the mike, as if emboldened by the developments, was beginning to squeal and wail. I tapped it a couple of times to make it behave. I started tapping the audience as well to make them stop. But this seemed to aggravate the matter. I soon realised the genetic structure between the two are different and hence they would react differently to different stimulations. To change things, I started pinching. Things did change. People started jumping on their seats but one particular gentleman was upset over the whole proceedings as the ladies on the immediate front row started throwing their palms at his face. Possessive husband were sacrificing their posterior for their wives. Some unscrupulous people among the audience took it rather too literally. They pinched people off their hats, wallets, hankies, clips, underwear, socks, ties, cufflinks, combs, matchboxes and things. I thought the people were enjoying themselves. It didn’t really matter I was standing there, totally ignored.

A big bore.

A big boar came running towards me at speed close to the speed of light. I gave it a slip and went to sleep. Because of its mind-boggling speed, by the time the thick head realised it had missed the target it was light years away from me. But again considering the speed the damn thing had managed to gather it took him only a couple of minutes to reach within striking distance. Since, I have read somewhere, if something with mass ever managed to imitate the speed the light, it would turn into energy. And if the author of the book had any credibility, it should stop existing and therefore cease to be of any considerable threat to me. But the author of the book forgot to add that that thing has to be reminded that it was time he turned into energy or he stop speeding. So the wild bore chase is still on.

Well! well!

Have you realized you are wasting away? Doesn’t matter even if you travel from point A to point B only in a chauffer driven Merc. Never mind if you have an unscrupulous account in a Swiss bank or you’re a close friend of Bill Gates. Even your Armani jacket, crocodile skin shoes or shawl made of dinosaur skin (can’t say how you’ll get one though) can’t stop it. Or for that matter your picture on the cover of Times Magazine. Please rush to a store immediately, pick up a pack of tortillas and a good book to read. That’ll still keep the clock ticking but at least when the moment comes you’ll be busy reading a book with tortillas in between.

The day I lost my id card.

The day I lost my id card was the day I was playing cricket in the room with my room mates. A plastic ball, a chair as the makeshift stumps and a log as bat. I was savouring every moment of it. Making loud noises on getting someone out, some grunts of frustration of close calls and a puffed chest on every shot well played. And within half-an-hours of play my achievement was a cracked window, broken pen stand and a lump on my friend's forehead. All seemed to be going my way till there was a knock on the door. Play was interrupted and the knock was attended to. And standing on the thresh-hold was a small kid, almost in rags. He was sweating profusely like we were, though for a different reason. He had just carried a 40 liter water canister up the flight of stairs to the second floor. Not to mention the blistering heat. Whosoever had the heart to let the boy with such burden? He just looked straight in my eye and asked me in which room I want the canister kept. Did he not realise that he's being exploited under some clause and section of some act and he's protected under the same? Probably he didn't care. Well what I did on my part was feel sorry, told him I'll carry it myself the rest of the distance, gave him 10 bucks and wrote this piece.

Have you.

Have you ever wondered how someone in utter distresss and someone in utmost joy appears similar. If observed from some distance that is. And if you are not plugged in to the situation, more often than not, you cannot tell whether one is crying or bursting with laughter. The facial expression, the body language is almost the same in both the circumstances. The curling of the lips, the body jerks, tears rolling down, eyes reducing to slits, eyebrows drawing closer, forehead forming deep furrows and the almost smothered whimpering at irregular intervals. There isn't much of a difference. To an outsider so to speak. And if you're the one being observed, of course it's a hell of a difference then.

Try it.

Do something that you hate from the bottom of your heart, pit of your lungs and bile of your intestine. And you'll hate yourself for doing it. Curse yourself and the world for existing. Froth on the mouth and feel miserable for the day. Promise yourself never to let yourself go through such punishment. But after sometime you would have realised that you have just accomplished something that you didn't have the heart to do. What an achievment. And the next time you're made to do it again, you would do it without going through the pain you did while doing it the first time. So come to think of it you have just killed two birds with one stone. First you have managed to do something that you thought you were better off avoiding and secondly if circumstances prevail over you to do the same thing again you would most probably go through anguish of lesser degree. Which means you have learned to master that fear that you were hard-pressed not to admit. Right? So on a day when you are feeling miserable and when you think that you'll be better off if the sky were to come crashing down on you, do something you hate doing from the bottom-of-your-heart. So that what you did will override the bad hair day and you'll end up feeling better in some little corner.

Left is never right.

Will it be right if I take the left? Ya, take the first left. That’s right, no it’s left but its right. I mean the right is not right, the left is right. But left cannot be right! Where do I go from here? The prudent thing to do is to take all the rights. Any number of times and the chances are you’ll land up at the same place with the same question, “Where do I go from here?” If you are nonplussed, and under the circumstances, which you’ll be, it’s advisable to give the situation some deep thought and subject yourself to some sound reasoning. That is, if I take left I have already taken the wrong lane. And if I take right, which is right but not in this case, then I am taking the wrong route again. What the deuce, take the middle path or just get lost.

A Thought.

When I was on my way to school, a thought hit me. I though the thought was worth a thought to give it a thought. So I thought over the thought till I couldn’t think any longer. I decided (for the sake of my half-quarter brain) to brush aside that thought and think on other things that merits my thought. Ten years have passed since then but that bloody thought refuses to leave me alone. It’s still haunting me and pushing me to give it another thought. So I did and I am still thinking. And so are you for sure.

What?

Standing on the window sill late in the night he let the dry air run through him. It carried dust, sand, sound and some memories he had salted away. The world around him was sleeping and he was feeling cold, happy and sad. In fact the whole surrounding was reinforcing the fact that he was marooned in a far away land with virtually no human contact. He stood there for sometime till he felt heavy-eyed thinking of the swarm of people he will have to run into the next day. Without delay he hit the sack.

Prime Suspect.

That docile neighbour, who always wears Jamaican Shorts and a friendly smile, perennially on the balcony watering the plants. That taciturn colleague who comes to office only to work. That total stranger on the street who went out of the way to find you an auto rickshaw to make sure you reached your destination safely and on time. That shopkeeper who told you that his product carries a defect and is not worth buying. All prime suspect. They have been too good to be true in this world. It’s not how a normal person of decent is supposed to conduct himself towards others. What is the hidden agenda behind such show of kindness? Must be something utterly malicious. It’s so inhuman to help others.
There aren’t many surviving specimen of that kind though. Thank God! And they are thinning day by day. Going by the trend, a day isn’t far when we will be seeing the last of them. It’s not that mothers have stopped bearing them. But they grow up in an environment that repeatedly hammers them with survival tactics. Every step out of the house means a lesson. A lesson how to live for oneself.
Like, during my preschool days I learned shedding tears or behaving properly in front of guests fulfilled my demand for ice-cream. Then scoring good marks or pretending to study hard did the trick. And after that money supposedly to visit the book fair or buy an important book. And finally, sitting in front of a computer for 9 to 10 hours at a stretch and in between dishing out sermons to pliable juniors and boring them to death. A nice way to earn money. So the more exposed I was to the world the more I leaned to wriggle my way out or manipulate my way in. I became a pro. More learned and wise. More distrusting of people who are upright. While commuting in a bus if a co-passenger picks up a conversation with you for no apparent reason one tends to be a little wary of the conversation starter. And if you don’t then that gives the other a reason to be.