I must have been knocked out for quite a while, how long I don’t know. I can only recollect fragments of the incident, the last of which was the white dust of the fire extinguisher in my eyes. I am less than twenty minutes away from being returned to earth. The pain is gone. What is left of me now is the scorched residue of what I used to be in my days of glory. Well, I always thought I would die old, brittle and useless, left alone in the most abandoned corner of humanity. But fate had for me, a more remarkable departure in store.
Eighteen minutes left, and I still haven’t the faintest idea of how I got here. It’s bright and sunny, a vast dry space stretches out around me.
Fourteen and a half minutes left. It is coming back to me now. I remember waking up late, stopping by the gas station for a grub, and then heading straight to the Park Hotel where I was supposed to pick up the Indian Cricket Team at 7:30. Needless to say, it was a big day. The streets were clear; clusters of street dwellers buzzed around small television screens in shops to watch the semi finals between India and Sri Lanka.
The stadium was packed beyond capacity by the time we reached Eden Gardens. Among the scattered groups of people scouting desperately for someone to sell them a ticket in black, the street hawkers selling anything from from Bhel Puris to Rolex watches.
We cut through the press, and the enthusiasts (who sometimes threw stones at us if we didn’t stop to wave or shake hands on our way in) as fast as we could to get inside the pavilion. In truth, my sheer fascination with the game is not the game itself, but about how the whole city transforms itself in anticipation of it. The dynamics of routine come to a standstill, to the point where even the invisible hands of Adam Smith fail to keep the wheels of economics turning. Cricket is a celebration of faith and adulation, beyond anything we would ever see in Kolkata for a religious cause. Cricket becomes the religion of the city.
Nine minutes left. I was born and brought up in a small town in Germany known only for the large Volvo factories that employ more than half the townsmen. I can still remember the day I arrived at Kolkata. The east was almost incomprehensible in terms of my western upbringing; the shades of humanity stretched a much wider spectrum, than I had ever experienced before. What fascinated me most though, was how the rich and the poor conveniently accepted their place in the society without remorse or protest. There were the shiny new malls selling thousand rupee lingerie. Next to it in the slums, the kids played soccer with cheap ping-pong balls because a bigger ball was out of their parents’ affordable reach. In, the evening, when imported cars would line up on the road outside, the kids, in empty stomachs, would wait eagerly for their fathers to return with the rice, bravely combating persistent attacks from swarms of neighbourhood mosquitoes.
In spite of my superior European look, haughty mannerisms inherited from my high class lineage, the city had accepted me as I am. The humility this place has inculcated in me in the last seventeen years is beyond anything I had ever imagined myself capable of.
Five minutes left. I have no family, no friends. Will I be remembered when I’m gone?
Four and half minutes left, and I suddenly hear the roar of the mob waiting outside. I am back to the match last night. I was relaxing under the player’s lounge, when I heard my driver yell to the crew that we have to vacate immediately. India had played a despicable innings, and the upset crowd had broken out into a riot. The match was abandoned when the crowd had started throwing whatever they could find at the players on the ground. A group of young men had stepped outside smashing cars and vandalizing the stadium to express their rage towards the Indian Cricket team for letting their hopes down. I suppose they had their reasons; after all, some had skipped meals, some worked extra shifts, and some sold their possessions, to buy a ticket to the game that would take India to the 1996 World Cup Finals!
By the time I heard the warning, it was a tad too late for me to chart out my escape. The mob which had grown substantially in size by the time it had reached our doorsteps was knocking down the fence to where I was standing. I was dragged out to the road, my resistance useless against their momentum. For a moment, it seemed like the rage had nothing to do with India’s loss at all. It was an eruption of the pent up frustration that had accumulated over years of repression and destitution. Then came the blows and sharp streaks of pain shot up from every corner of my body. And before I could gather back my senses, I was on fire.
Thirty seconds left. I see the giant iron pile rising slowly in front of me. Soon I will become a large block of metal stacked upon blocks that used to be Tata trucks or Ashok Leyland public buses. A rusty crank, and I hear the hiss of the pile let loose above me. I take a deep breath and embrace my glittering badge - Volvo LuxuryBus LS, my identity, my emblem of pride.
Thursday, May 22, 2008
Sunday, May 18, 2008
The Match
They were warmed up now – the anticipation of battle was in their eyes. In their tense movements. In their terse exchanges. They had met many times before. They would meet many times again. Each occasion had the same elements – the thrill of competition, the shiver of excitement. Each occasion had its unique flavour. The thrill of competition, the shiver of excitement. The raucous audience settled down. This was what they had come to see.
It was scooped inches off the floor by the other. And then he was here, there – everywhere. Unlike his opponent, he seemed to fill up all space. And the noise! A waterfall in monsoon. A concrete monolith crumbling to earth. Every movement was an indulgence – every stroke played with wantonness. Lust. Excess. The sheer joy of unfettered power. A gun replaced by a racket. An imperfect body moving in perfect synchrony. He was competing with his opponent and he was competing with himself. He was equal to both.
And now the ball was bouncing around as if in a giant pinball machine. Explosive hits mixed with soft twangs as each point became a love-hate relationship between wall and ball. A whisper of movement alternated with a clamour. The audience watched stunned, wide eyed. Each stretch, each dive, each sprint was applauded with absolute silence.
The match continued well past the energy levels of both players. And yet they would not give up. The quality waned a little. The effort did not. More errors were made. The ball seemed to have developed a mind of its own – hitting the frame of the racket more often than the centre. Mini puddles of sweat formed on the floor. The match seemed like it would never end; just before it did. A tired swing, an uneven bounce. Two points. It was over.
The players stepped out of court, pouring sweat. The audience gushed its admiration. They sat down; unspeaking, unmoving for the next five minutes. Then one turned to the other:
“Think we’ll make varsity?”
“Nah – not good enough”.
“Yeah. I guess. Dinner?”
“Sure”
He turned to the audience.
“You guys hungry?”
“Yeah”
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Its time for action
Sorry for the long leave. I was busy waking up to graduation and associated realizations.
Please welcome aniRUDHAR ( pronounced 'rooder' by the white people), to our midst.
He seems to be the only one who ventured to broach the previous topic " a gay person coming out in a straight world". Or was it the other way around. Anyways, it goes.
This weeks topic is going to be light, considering the slight hiatus.
" My home town and what I love about it"
Love,
Aparna
Please welcome aniRUDHAR ( pronounced 'rooder' by the white people), to our midst.
He seems to be the only one who ventured to broach the previous topic " a gay person coming out in a straight world". Or was it the other way around. Anyways, it goes.
This weeks topic is going to be light, considering the slight hiatus.
" My home town and what I love about it"
Love,
Aparna
The Adventures of Ani and Anna: Part II
Monday
5.00 PM Read up trivia on Anna’s favouritestestest band in the whole wide world, Mötörђëäď. They seem like a cool gig. Mötörђëäď vs. Boyzone-in-their-prime. Now that would be some contest. I didn’t tell anna I did the reading up. Will save it up for a special occasion. He will be sooo impressed!!!
5.05 PM Couldn’t control my excitement any longer, and confessed to anna how I had become a Mötörђëäď fAnAtIc, just like him!!! “Stick to your Cockzone and your Backstreet Cocks, and you’ll be fine, cockboy.” Our playful, oh-so-affectionate yet über-masculine needling has soared to new heights these days!
Tuesday
8.00 PM Warmed anna’s seat in the living room before the big game. When he smacked me on the head with an affectionate “Outta my fuckin’ seat, cockboy”, I knew it was just guy-speak for “You’re one of my mates now; it would mean a lot to me if you watched the big game with me, bro.” This guy-speak thingy is sooo manly!
9.00 PM Sat by anna’s side and pretended to be interested as he watched the big game. This Cristiano Ronaldo chappie has such nice legs.
11.00 PM Made mental note to stop making mental notes.
Wednesday
6.00 PM Anna’s arrival home is a full three hours away :(. Reminded myself of Dr. Phil’s sermon on patience being a virtue.
7.00 PM 2 hours…getting angsty.
8.00 PM Abruptly hit by brainwave. Went over to the department store to buy a can of Tiger beer and a testicle-scratcher. Lusting attendant gave me ‘the look’ reserved for manly men like anna and me. No wonder she-men like Kaka are still virgins.
8.15 PM Poured the horsepiss out of the beer can and filled it to the brim with delicious gingerade. Took up my position in the living room with the remote, the beer can and the scratcher within reach. The trap is set.
9.00 PM Heard the door knob turning, and swiftly switched the channel to ESPN. As anna walked in, I vigorously scratch my balls with the scratcher and chugged my ‘beer’ (hehe) as I pretended to be absorbed in the sports-crapola on the tele. Although Anna barely looked up from his magazine (May edition of Sports, Cars and Naked Chicks, if you must know), I could tell he was keenly observing me from the corner of his manly eye.
9.30 PM Felt bad about how I behaved earlier. Worried if my clever ruse might make anna think I have become manlier than him. Made mental post-it (hehe, I cheated) to reassure anna later that his Y-chromosome is the bestest Y-Chromosome in the whole, wide world.
Thursday
9.00 PM Anna and Kaka have gone out drinking without inviting me, for the fourth week in succession. Wonder if tonight’s the night anna is going to break the news to Kaka that he’s found a new bestest friend and that he doesn’t fancy his company anymore.
2.00 AM Anna came in a while ago, accompanied by some Fugly French Bitch. I know anna would have much rather guy-bonded with me, but fugly bitch insisted on dragging him up the stairs to his room, all the way playing tonsil-tennis in his manly mouth.
2.15 AM I’m not thinking of what anna and fugly bitch might be doing in his room. And I don’t care.
5.15 AM I’m still not thinking of what anna and fugly bitch might be doing in his room. And I still don’t care. I don’t feel threatened by fugly bitch. Not one bit.
Friday
11.00 PM Left for Clarke Quay to look for white people.
11.45 PM Tried to bring bottled water, free healthcare and indie music into a conversation with a couple of Swedish blokes. They didn’t seem to care. The chap who writes stuffwhitepeoplelike is a liar.
2.30 AM The white people around here are sooo not friendly to me. Heading home. :(
Saturday
11.00 PM Left for Clarke Quay to look for white people.
11.30 PM Recognized fugly bitch from a distance sitting at a bar with 3 of her (equally fugly) girlfriends. She seemed to recognize me too. There was a lot of pointing and sniggering in my direction. My face reddened at the recollection of how anna had introduced me to fugly bitch the time I accidentally-on-purpose bumped into them at the mall: “The cocksucker who splits rent.”
11.32 PM Wept my heart out into the
11.45 PM All cried out now. Came to the realization that I actually PITY fugly bitch. She simply has nooo inkling that the ‘bros b4 hoes’ philosophy-of-living was invented by my anna. If only the poor woman knew that if I had, say, a pedicure-emergency, my anna would drop her like a lead balloon and be by my side like *that*.
2.30 AM The white people around here are sooo not friendly to me. Heading home. :(
Sunday
7.00 PM Hasn’t been an altogether memorable week. Feeling kind of depressed. Nip/tuck reruns aren’t working their usual magic. :(
8.00 PM Made impulse decision to start growing my facial hair. Although I know that I can’t hope to cultivate in a million years the sort of flowing man-beard my anna can sprout in a day. :(
The Adventures of Ani and Anna: Part I
Hi there. My name’s Ani. I am a 23 year old, heterosexual Tamil boy living in
About me: I just moved into a quaint little home in a picturesque corner of western
Off we go then. Be prepared for candid revelations, sheeple!!
Monday
7.00 PM. Anna left home, giving me specific instructions to stay home all evening and watch over things. I’m so proud that he trusts me enough now to give me important assignments!
8.30 PM Bored of Nip/Tuck reruns. Went over to Holland V looking for white people, and guess what? Anna and Kaka were at a table, drinking together! Naturally, I pulled up a chair. Although anna feigned a look of disgust on his face, I knew he was secretly glad I could join in the male-bonding session!!
8.45 PM Proud of how sober I was despite having had a wholeeee shandy! Confessed to anna how he was like my Dr. Cox, who told me to “shut the fuck up, you twat” and that he didn’t care abut my ‘penis-doctor’. I’m becoming such a masculine man these days, drinking beer with the guys and what not! This feels just like girls’ night out, except that it’s, like, guys’ night out! Made mental note to blog about the mythical guy-high.
9.00 PM Took pee-pee break. When I came back to the table, anna and his annoying sidekick had disappeared. Anna’s boyish hide-and-seek-come-and-find-me pranks are sooo endearing!!
9.35 PM Couldn’t find anna anywhere. Heading home. Hope he doesn’t miss me too much. :(
Tuesday
9.00 PM Heard Kaka and anna playing a game of Playstation downstairs. There was laughing and cheering. Anna seemed to be enjoying himself. Went down and joined in the laughter, but anna didn’t seem to care. :(
11.00 PM Updated my Facebook status to ‘Ani may have just found his platonic rival!!!’
and marvelled at the attention-grabbing qualities of multiple exclamation marks. Shuddered at the memories of a Facebook that only accepted ‘is’ status messages. My, has civilization come a long way or what!
11.30 PM Spent the last half an hour refreshing my twitter to see if someone’s status linked to their moblog post about how witty my Facebook status was. No such luck. :(
Wednesday
8.30 PM Spent the day eagerly awaiting Anna’s return from work.
9.00 PM When the moment arrived, I looked away and ever-so-nonchalantly asked him if he was ‘up for a game, mate’. I’m getting so good at man-speak these days. “Fuck off you cunt, I don’t play with dipshits”. I love anna’s one-liners, and how he does his I-don’t-give-a-shit-about-you act when in reality, he sooo does. We all know it’s just part of the whole masculine charade; he’s going to ‘change his mind’ in, like, five minutes.
9.10 PM Appears as though anna was serious about not wanting to play with me. I’m going upstairs to brood.
9.15 PM Can hear anna playing with Kaka downstairs. Strange. Maybe anna is saving up his attention for me for one of our male-bonding sessions, like the time he came into my room, mumbled something about me being a ‘cocksucker’, and clobbered me with a cricket bat for playing Beyonce!! Anyway, we all know who anna’s bestest friend on the planet is, so there. :P
Thursday
9.00 AM Have to go to the immigration office in a while to get a visa. Those red-tape nitwits need me to find a guarantor for my stay. Guess who I’m going to ask? ;)
He must be sleeping, but everyone knows that bestest-buddies-in-the-universe don’t have to knock before entering each others’ rooms. :)
9.05 AM Will post update on how things went inside anna’s room after tending to my broken jaw.
10.00 AM Ok, here’s how it went. After expressing playful ‘violent rage’ at being awakened from his manly sleep, anna promised to do it if it meant that ‘I would get the fuck out of the room.’ So I made him sign the form, and in the column for ‘relationship with applicant’, he filled in ‘Friend’!!!!!! Left the room with a tear in my eye. And not because of the jaw.
6.00 PM Finished updating my blog about how much it meant to me that anna had chosen an important government establishment as the forum for formalizing our union of camaraderie. Tried to update my Facebook relationship status. Damn thing won’t accept ‘In a friendship with.’ Cried myself to sleep.
Friday
6.00 PM Kaka made offhand disparaging remark about anna. Defended anna’s honour, and made mental note to be mean to him for a few days. Twat.
7.00 PM Microblogged about how much I love mental notes. :)
11.00 PM Left for Clarke Quay to look for white people.
2.30 AM The white people around here are sooo not friendly to me. Heading home. :(
Saturday
4.00 PM Finished up season 3 of Desperate Housewives. Was just thinking how AWESOME it would be if I could find a gorgeous girl called Anna to go out with, just so that I could dump her in the name of ‘bros b4 hoes, annas b4 Annas.’!!
4.05 PM Shared my feelings with anna. He didn’t seem impressed either by my clever wordplay or by my sentiment. I bet that nincompoop Kaka been poisoning his mind against me.
11.00 PM Left for Clarke Quay to look for white people.
2.30 AM The white people around here are sooo not friendly to me. Heading home. :(
3.00 AM The microblogosphere doesn’t like my punning skills either. This SUCKS. People SUCK. :(
Sunday
3.00 PM Caught Anna laughing at Chris Crocker’s Leave Britney Alone video. LOL. It’s sooo awesome how we both share the same sense of humour. Everyone knows Britney is sooo last-season. Made mental note to invite anna over to my room the next time I download sound-bytes from Jus Timberlake’s new album! ;)
Shorty's story
So there was this kid right. Kinda small for his age, so naturally we used to call him Shorty. His brother and mine used to hang back in the day. So it come only natural that this young ‘un come sling it with me and my crew when we hit high school. Now Shorty used to get all kinds of teasing directed his way, on account of his small stature and the fact he looked like a sledgehammer done a good number on his face. Word is, Shorty’s mom’s had a boyfriend once who went at him once when he was high on tha product. Shorty don’t ever talk about it, and us kids being raised on the street, don’t ever ask. Compassion don’t come easy on the corner. Here it’s every nigga for hisself and you looking for shit if you start showing a soft spot for the weak ones.
None of us liked Shorty much at first. That nigga was weak. In fact, my crew and I done gave him a hard time every time he tried to work himself into our outfit. We stole his lunch damn near every day and made him do every oddjob we could find. Coolio and DJ used him as lookout while they went ‘bout their dirty business in the ‘hood and even Prez, who only fronted like he was mean, never missed an opportunity to take a swipe at him.But Shorty never once complained. He just stood there and took it and looked at us with his sad,doleful, puppy dog eyes. Fellas used to joke bout how he was a Timex.He’d take a licking and keep on ticking. That boy had heart, I’ll tell ya. There was the time that Mean Pete and his boys killed Shorty’s li’l rabbit. No provocation, they just did it to watch a live thing die. And they took their time about it too. When Shorty found Bunnie, she had all these little cuts and burns on her, like they’d tortured her. Real concentration camp shit. Shorty took it real calm. And we all knew he loved that rabbit like it was family or sum’n. When DT found out, he was furious. Now Shorty is a weak-ass nigga. In tha hood, that’s recipe enough for inviting brothas to start banging you up. But he our weak-ass nigga. If anyone should be leaning on him, it should be us. Aint no call for Mean Pete to go all Josef Mengle on his rabbit when we got the market cornered on that shit. So DJ and Coolio and I sneaked up to Mean Pete’s crib while his moms was out and set fire to that mothafucka. I remember we stood and watched that house burn for a good fifteen minutes. Nobody saying nothing, just standing there watching. And after a while, it starts to rain and the fire kinda gets doused, but the house is gutted by now, so it’s all good. When we walk away in the rain like homecoming heroes from a war, there’s just a ghost of a smile playing on Shorty’s lips. DT and I slap him across the back. The nigga’s an initiate now. Welcome to the club Shorty. We got your back.
Mean Pete had mad enemies and rivals in the coke slinging business, so blame was naturally attributed to other quarters. My crew and I lived to see more daylight. School dragged on. DJ and Coolio never did attend, joining the street crews working the corners, selling drugs to all takers. They had uncles high up in the drug trade, who wanted them to get a real grounding in the workings of the family business. From the ground up. So school wasn’t no option. Prez was into all that black pride bullshit and he had a way with words. Damn, that nigga had words on him that would make a thesaurus proud. Aint none of us could see it coming, but prez was headed for the bar. A nigga lawyer, like Johnny Cochran. That boy sure made us proud. As for me, I grew out of the stupid machoism, got my inflated head out my tight ass and realized that if I kept on the way I did, I’d be dead or counting down jail time in five years flat. So I cleaned up my act and got out the game. For good. I didn’t see myself working for the man and I wasn’t gonna lay down and take orders from nobody at no McDonalds. So I borrowed some dough off DJ and Coolio and started me up a gym. It was slow going at first, but with a good marketing angle and some hard work, word got round and I got me a regular procession of niggas comin to lift weights. Shit, I become a regular citizen. I even paid taxes, a far cry from those crazy days when we used to sling rocks at windows, graffiti the walls with cuss words and rob old women of their pension money.
As for Shorty, I’d have liked to say be buried his nose in this books and found out he had a real aptitude for math and become a scientist or some such shit. But real life don’t play that way man. Shorty remained a stupid nigga and when school was over, he found himself inadequately equipped to deal. He started a nine-to-five at the local department store, but Shorty was so unlucky his store got robbed thrice in the first two weeks. Shorty was accused of partnering with the thieves and fired. He then bounced around some, doing oddjobs on the street for grub and room. My old crew would help him whenever he came round, giving him dough or some work. But Shorty invariably fucked up what jobs we gave him and managed to lose or spend his money so fast you’d think he was one of them Hilton sisters. We grew tired of him mooching off us and all of us told him at some point, to fuck off. Shorty took it quietly. He didn’t come by for a month after I kicked him out. But one winter morning, he was back again on the steps of my porch asking for money to get high. In a month’s time, he’d become an addict. Slim Charles’ crew had given him a job as lookout and convinced him to accept product instead of cash. Before you knew it, Shorty was a dope fiend with a dangerous and expensive addiction he could not afford. I told him in no uncertain terms what a fuck-up he was and kicked him the fuck off my property. Looking back, I might have been a little harsh on the kid, but whatever man.Tough love. You start pitying a nigga who’s an addict, he gon start exploiting that pity. Later I learned that DJ and Coolio had more or less done the same to him. Prez, being the sentimental sap he is gave him some dough and Shorty kept going back to him once in a while. Prez always was the soft one. That was the last I seen of Shorty. Word around town said he became Slim Charles’ bitch, doing all kinds of dirty work for him; sexual favors, burying the dead, all kinds of nasty shit. Shorty didn’t have a crew no more, so he took it lying down. Boy was a natural pushover,so aint nothing no-one could do. Man that don’t respect his own self can’t expect no respect. Still and all, I guess we shoulda done something. But DJ and Coolio were busy climbing the drug hierarchy and I was busy with my gym. Prez gave him dough and between the four of us, we rationalized and made excuses so we could sleep at night. Prez once told us over some drinks that inaction equals complicity. That means standing by and watching injustice is as good as doing bad shit yourself. And if that were true, then us lot were guiltier than sin. But the years rolled by and when word bout Shorty’s latest misadventure occasionally got to us, we’d sigh and toast our next drink to him and get on with our lives.
So when we heard what finally happened to Shorty, it hit us hard yo. I mean, we had given up on the boy and all, but still, he used to be one of us back in the day. And when I heard bout the manner of his exit from public life, I coulda just about crawled up and died. Turned out Shorty’d turned to gay prostitution to finance his habit. His customer that day liked to play dirty. Police officials deduced he beat Shorty real good and even brought a gun into the game to get his rocks off. They figured this out from accounts of the hookers in the adjoining room. At some point Shorty snapped. He snatched the gun and shot the guy twice, once in the crotch and once in the chest. Shorty then goes back to his old haunts down at the drug corner and shoots up Slim Charles and the rest of his gang. He’s got seven niggas chalked up and one in critical and all of them sure had it coming. That’s the last anyone’s ever seen of Shorty. It might be he hightailed it to the coast and got on one of them ships headed for Europe. But knowing Shorty he most likely dragged himself to a deserted corner and put one in his own head. Its been a week and counting. No body found yet. Slim Charles’ corner got re-equipped with a new crew today. They rolling out product at discount prices in honor of the dead.
That’s how they do in this town. Life goes on yo.
None of us liked Shorty much at first. That nigga was weak. In fact, my crew and I done gave him a hard time every time he tried to work himself into our outfit. We stole his lunch damn near every day and made him do every oddjob we could find. Coolio and DJ used him as lookout while they went ‘bout their dirty business in the ‘hood and even Prez, who only fronted like he was mean, never missed an opportunity to take a swipe at him.But Shorty never once complained. He just stood there and took it and looked at us with his sad,doleful, puppy dog eyes. Fellas used to joke bout how he was a Timex.He’d take a licking and keep on ticking. That boy had heart, I’ll tell ya. There was the time that Mean Pete and his boys killed Shorty’s li’l rabbit. No provocation, they just did it to watch a live thing die. And they took their time about it too. When Shorty found Bunnie, she had all these little cuts and burns on her, like they’d tortured her. Real concentration camp shit. Shorty took it real calm. And we all knew he loved that rabbit like it was family or sum’n. When DT found out, he was furious. Now Shorty is a weak-ass nigga. In tha hood, that’s recipe enough for inviting brothas to start banging you up. But he our weak-ass nigga. If anyone should be leaning on him, it should be us. Aint no call for Mean Pete to go all Josef Mengle on his rabbit when we got the market cornered on that shit. So DJ and Coolio and I sneaked up to Mean Pete’s crib while his moms was out and set fire to that mothafucka. I remember we stood and watched that house burn for a good fifteen minutes. Nobody saying nothing, just standing there watching. And after a while, it starts to rain and the fire kinda gets doused, but the house is gutted by now, so it’s all good. When we walk away in the rain like homecoming heroes from a war, there’s just a ghost of a smile playing on Shorty’s lips. DT and I slap him across the back. The nigga’s an initiate now. Welcome to the club Shorty. We got your back.
Mean Pete had mad enemies and rivals in the coke slinging business, so blame was naturally attributed to other quarters. My crew and I lived to see more daylight. School dragged on. DJ and Coolio never did attend, joining the street crews working the corners, selling drugs to all takers. They had uncles high up in the drug trade, who wanted them to get a real grounding in the workings of the family business. From the ground up. So school wasn’t no option. Prez was into all that black pride bullshit and he had a way with words. Damn, that nigga had words on him that would make a thesaurus proud. Aint none of us could see it coming, but prez was headed for the bar. A nigga lawyer, like Johnny Cochran. That boy sure made us proud. As for me, I grew out of the stupid machoism, got my inflated head out my tight ass and realized that if I kept on the way I did, I’d be dead or counting down jail time in five years flat. So I cleaned up my act and got out the game. For good. I didn’t see myself working for the man and I wasn’t gonna lay down and take orders from nobody at no McDonalds. So I borrowed some dough off DJ and Coolio and started me up a gym. It was slow going at first, but with a good marketing angle and some hard work, word got round and I got me a regular procession of niggas comin to lift weights. Shit, I become a regular citizen. I even paid taxes, a far cry from those crazy days when we used to sling rocks at windows, graffiti the walls with cuss words and rob old women of their pension money.
As for Shorty, I’d have liked to say be buried his nose in this books and found out he had a real aptitude for math and become a scientist or some such shit. But real life don’t play that way man. Shorty remained a stupid nigga and when school was over, he found himself inadequately equipped to deal. He started a nine-to-five at the local department store, but Shorty was so unlucky his store got robbed thrice in the first two weeks. Shorty was accused of partnering with the thieves and fired. He then bounced around some, doing oddjobs on the street for grub and room. My old crew would help him whenever he came round, giving him dough or some work. But Shorty invariably fucked up what jobs we gave him and managed to lose or spend his money so fast you’d think he was one of them Hilton sisters. We grew tired of him mooching off us and all of us told him at some point, to fuck off. Shorty took it quietly. He didn’t come by for a month after I kicked him out. But one winter morning, he was back again on the steps of my porch asking for money to get high. In a month’s time, he’d become an addict. Slim Charles’ crew had given him a job as lookout and convinced him to accept product instead of cash. Before you knew it, Shorty was a dope fiend with a dangerous and expensive addiction he could not afford. I told him in no uncertain terms what a fuck-up he was and kicked him the fuck off my property. Looking back, I might have been a little harsh on the kid, but whatever man.Tough love. You start pitying a nigga who’s an addict, he gon start exploiting that pity. Later I learned that DJ and Coolio had more or less done the same to him. Prez, being the sentimental sap he is gave him some dough and Shorty kept going back to him once in a while. Prez always was the soft one. That was the last I seen of Shorty. Word around town said he became Slim Charles’ bitch, doing all kinds of dirty work for him; sexual favors, burying the dead, all kinds of nasty shit. Shorty didn’t have a crew no more, so he took it lying down. Boy was a natural pushover,so aint nothing no-one could do. Man that don’t respect his own self can’t expect no respect. Still and all, I guess we shoulda done something. But DJ and Coolio were busy climbing the drug hierarchy and I was busy with my gym. Prez gave him dough and between the four of us, we rationalized and made excuses so we could sleep at night. Prez once told us over some drinks that inaction equals complicity. That means standing by and watching injustice is as good as doing bad shit yourself. And if that were true, then us lot were guiltier than sin. But the years rolled by and when word bout Shorty’s latest misadventure occasionally got to us, we’d sigh and toast our next drink to him and get on with our lives.
So when we heard what finally happened to Shorty, it hit us hard yo. I mean, we had given up on the boy and all, but still, he used to be one of us back in the day. And when I heard bout the manner of his exit from public life, I coulda just about crawled up and died. Turned out Shorty’d turned to gay prostitution to finance his habit. His customer that day liked to play dirty. Police officials deduced he beat Shorty real good and even brought a gun into the game to get his rocks off. They figured this out from accounts of the hookers in the adjoining room. At some point Shorty snapped. He snatched the gun and shot the guy twice, once in the crotch and once in the chest. Shorty then goes back to his old haunts down at the drug corner and shoots up Slim Charles and the rest of his gang. He’s got seven niggas chalked up and one in critical and all of them sure had it coming. That’s the last anyone’s ever seen of Shorty. It might be he hightailed it to the coast and got on one of them ships headed for Europe. But knowing Shorty he most likely dragged himself to a deserted corner and put one in his own head. Its been a week and counting. No body found yet. Slim Charles’ corner got re-equipped with a new crew today. They rolling out product at discount prices in honor of the dead.
That’s how they do in this town. Life goes on yo.
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
You win some...and Lose...?
It’s 9th March, 1996. She is an 11-year-old, bright-eyed but naïve kid living (temporarily) in the suburbs of Calcutta with her aunt. She hates living away from her family but circumstances have made her accept this arrangement for the time being. Along with that, she has also accepted the fact that every day, 6 days a week, she would have to take the same path home from her after-school classes and get bullied by the gang of neighborhood boys playing cricket in front of her block. Never before had she hung her head so low but in this acceptance spree, she accepted this too.
Everyday she counts down to the time when her stint in Calcutta would be over. Today is different – today is India – Pakistan World Cup Quarter Finals which means that the boys will not be hanging out in the playground. Lately, cricket has become the center of the universe and all daily activities including school, mealtimes, etc have to meander around its significance. And since everyone’s rooting for the same team, unity and brotherhood has taken over the daily tiffs and fights on the playground. Suddenly the place seems not too bad, she thinks muses.
The match begins and everyone in the house is watching intently. It’s an exciting match – the doors have been left open and the echo of cheers at every four and six can be heard down the hall and from the floors above. India makes a respectable near – 300 score and they break before the Pakistan inning. A simple hasty dinner is on the stove since no one has the time to cook or eat.
People step out of the house and into the road outside, catching up, replaying the game again in again in theirs heads and conversations – the voices are loud, the mood, festive as if we’ve already won. Some of the abovementioned boys find leftover sparklers from the New Year and light up in a pre-emptive celebration. She joins the fun too; some of the boys are her classmates. Slowly the crowd starts to move (with the celebration et al) towards a block behind. She wonders why they are moving towards the other block but joins them nonetheless, thinking it’s to collect more people. The boys who bullied her join the crowd too, dancing along and even exchanging high fives with her. She’s relieved - thinking this may be the end of the daily hung-head-stinging-eyes-hidden tears before entering home ordeal. She has another reason to celebrate - she’s free.
The crowd comes to a halt and become louder as if it’s jeering something. Someone. Why has the tone changed, oh so slightly, she wonders. She’s not imagining it because the crowd is not moving any more. There is nothing special about this block, is there. Why then are we here, she’s about to ask when she hears parts of a conversation – where all she catches is the name Aslam and more laughter. Not the pleasant type. It all becomes clear. Aslam and his family – the only Muslim family in that entire community live in that block, just above the spot where the crowd is.
A few hours later, India won the match.
But did he – I don’t know.
Everyday she counts down to the time when her stint in Calcutta would be over. Today is different – today is India – Pakistan World Cup Quarter Finals which means that the boys will not be hanging out in the playground. Lately, cricket has become the center of the universe and all daily activities including school, mealtimes, etc have to meander around its significance. And since everyone’s rooting for the same team, unity and brotherhood has taken over the daily tiffs and fights on the playground. Suddenly the place seems not too bad, she thinks muses.
The match begins and everyone in the house is watching intently. It’s an exciting match – the doors have been left open and the echo of cheers at every four and six can be heard down the hall and from the floors above. India makes a respectable near – 300 score and they break before the Pakistan inning. A simple hasty dinner is on the stove since no one has the time to cook or eat.
People step out of the house and into the road outside, catching up, replaying the game again in again in theirs heads and conversations – the voices are loud, the mood, festive as if we’ve already won. Some of the abovementioned boys find leftover sparklers from the New Year and light up in a pre-emptive celebration. She joins the fun too; some of the boys are her classmates. Slowly the crowd starts to move (with the celebration et al) towards a block behind. She wonders why they are moving towards the other block but joins them nonetheless, thinking it’s to collect more people. The boys who bullied her join the crowd too, dancing along and even exchanging high fives with her. She’s relieved - thinking this may be the end of the daily hung-head-stinging-eyes-hidden tears before entering home ordeal. She has another reason to celebrate - she’s free.
The crowd comes to a halt and become louder as if it’s jeering something. Someone. Why has the tone changed, oh so slightly, she wonders. She’s not imagining it because the crowd is not moving any more. There is nothing special about this block, is there. Why then are we here, she’s about to ask when she hears parts of a conversation – where all she catches is the name Aslam and more laughter. Not the pleasant type. It all becomes clear. Aslam and his family – the only Muslim family in that entire community live in that block, just above the spot where the crowd is.
A few hours later, India won the match.
But did he – I don’t know.
Monday, April 28, 2008
Gyan
On a side note, check out:
http://advaitian.blogspot.com/
My (overnight) attempt at becoming a prophet. Comes complete with voice clips (coming soon).
http://advaitian.blogspot.com/
My (overnight) attempt at becoming a prophet. Comes complete with voice clips (coming soon).
How to enable expanded posts and why there is a "Read More!" at the bottom of every post now
When you click on Create Post and then Edit Html tab of Post Editor you will see the following
Replace the line "Here is the beginning of my post." (Type your summary here) with your summary paragraph. Then replace the line "And here is the rest of it." (Type rest of the post here.) with the rest of your post. Do not delete the other lines and . Also add your summary paragraph above both the lines and your rest of the post between the lines. Then click Publish to publish post.
Replace the line "Here is the beginning of my post." (Type your summary here) with your summary paragraph. Then replace the line "And here is the rest of it." (Type rest of the post here.) with the rest of your post. Do not delete the other lines and . Also add your summary paragraph above both the lines and your rest of the post between the lines. Then click Publish to publish post.
10 years (Part III) - Riots
Now if you’re thinking that getting thrashed was a bad thing, think again. He has a strange way of playing his cards, God.
The next day when I went to school, He made his presence felt through a particular History teacher who, until that day, had never taken notice of me, but who, upon seeing my black and blue adornments, decided to take me under wing.
This was a good thing, for the History teacher in question was to play a crucial role in my rediscovery of myself in the time to come.
The chapter being taught that day was “The Revolt of 1857”...
The chapter was heavy and all of us were expecting to be crushed once and for all under its heaviness in the heat of the last period of school in that electricityless Lucknow summer afternoon. The ripple of a suppressed yawn left its briny residue in many a watery eye and the clock seemed to be ticking ever so slightly slower every time we looked at it.
However, our history teacher had plans for our salvation from boredom that we were unaware of.
I studied in a school with more than a hundred and fifty years of history behind it. With an institution that old, the perspective with which history is taught acquires a strange familiarity for, many a time, the characters in history are also associated intimately with the institution’s past.
Our school being as old as it is and also being founded by, strangely enough, a Frenchman who defected from the French army to join the British army, was involved intimately in the revolt.
Consequently, the “revolt” of 1857, became the “mutiny” of 1857 in which our old boys were heroes and we were even awarded battle colours by the British Army for the defence of the Residency in Lucknow.
Stir up pride and an ability to relate to a story in an Indian and you’ve won over his heart. We found ourselves mesmerized by how we had suddenly begun to relate to History and enjoy it.
Now in this strange concoction of an Indian identity, with a British and French history, one particular student, an individual by the name of Shiv Prakash Sharma, decided to sow the seeds of dissension.
“With all due respect Sir, please call it the first war of Indian Independence”
Details, definitions of “war” and “mutiny” ensued. Debate followed. The matter seemed to be nearing resolution when Shiv Prakash Sharma said “Sir, you are a Christian and that’s why you are siding with the British. Next you’ll be preaching the gospel and trying to convert us.”
The entire class was in shock. If there was one thing eleven years of education had taught us in La Martiniere, it was that religion was always to be respected and never used as a point of discrimination.
And then, an even stranger thing happened.
An Anglo-Indian boy by the name of George Ducasse stood up and said “Just because this country has a Hindu majority, are you going to re-write history?”
It seemed as if things were going to get riotously ugly but the ringing bell signalling the end of school saved the day.
As I went home that day, my own dilemmas of where my life was headed next were completely replaced with thoughts on where our country was headed. With governments using religion as a political agenda, how long was it going to be till another Shiv Prakash Sharma said something to offend another George Ducasse? How long before that George Ducasse fought back? Eye for eye. Tooth for tooth. Who could change this?
And that moment left me with a certain something that was to influence the course of actions for the rest of my life; a humbling.
(to be continued ... as usual ...)
The next day when I went to school, He made his presence felt through a particular History teacher who, until that day, had never taken notice of me, but who, upon seeing my black and blue adornments, decided to take me under wing.
This was a good thing, for the History teacher in question was to play a crucial role in my rediscovery of myself in the time to come.
The chapter being taught that day was “The Revolt of 1857”...
The chapter was heavy and all of us were expecting to be crushed once and for all under its heaviness in the heat of the last period of school in that electricityless Lucknow summer afternoon. The ripple of a suppressed yawn left its briny residue in many a watery eye and the clock seemed to be ticking ever so slightly slower every time we looked at it.
However, our history teacher had plans for our salvation from boredom that we were unaware of.
I studied in a school with more than a hundred and fifty years of history behind it. With an institution that old, the perspective with which history is taught acquires a strange familiarity for, many a time, the characters in history are also associated intimately with the institution’s past.
Our school being as old as it is and also being founded by, strangely enough, a Frenchman who defected from the French army to join the British army, was involved intimately in the revolt.
Consequently, the “revolt” of 1857, became the “mutiny” of 1857 in which our old boys were heroes and we were even awarded battle colours by the British Army for the defence of the Residency in Lucknow.
Stir up pride and an ability to relate to a story in an Indian and you’ve won over his heart. We found ourselves mesmerized by how we had suddenly begun to relate to History and enjoy it.
Now in this strange concoction of an Indian identity, with a British and French history, one particular student, an individual by the name of Shiv Prakash Sharma, decided to sow the seeds of dissension.
“With all due respect Sir, please call it the first war of Indian Independence”
Details, definitions of “war” and “mutiny” ensued. Debate followed. The matter seemed to be nearing resolution when Shiv Prakash Sharma said “Sir, you are a Christian and that’s why you are siding with the British. Next you’ll be preaching the gospel and trying to convert us.”
The entire class was in shock. If there was one thing eleven years of education had taught us in La Martiniere, it was that religion was always to be respected and never used as a point of discrimination.
And then, an even stranger thing happened.
An Anglo-Indian boy by the name of George Ducasse stood up and said “Just because this country has a Hindu majority, are you going to re-write history?”
It seemed as if things were going to get riotously ugly but the ringing bell signalling the end of school saved the day.
As I went home that day, my own dilemmas of where my life was headed next were completely replaced with thoughts on where our country was headed. With governments using religion as a political agenda, how long was it going to be till another Shiv Prakash Sharma said something to offend another George Ducasse? How long before that George Ducasse fought back? Eye for eye. Tooth for tooth. Who could change this?
And that moment left me with a certain something that was to influence the course of actions for the rest of my life; a humbling.
(to be continued ... as usual ...)
Saturday, April 26, 2008
At the End - before the Beginning.
He stood before the man with the flowing beard
“How do you justify your existence?”
“I did not choose to exist. I don’t have to justify it.”
He wasn’t sure if that was the right answer. He did not know how things worked here.“Were you a good father?”
Friday, April 25, 2008
Admin replies
Hope the new look is good with everyone.
If not, guess I'll be notified
I'm SO IMPRESSED with the quality of work here that I don't mind being reduced to admin.
Keep up the good work =)
Love,
Admin.
If not, guess I'll be notified
I'm SO IMPRESSED with the quality of work here that I don't mind being reduced to admin.
Keep up the good work =)
Love,
Admin.
Chapter 1: Remember the day I set you free?
I shook you awake but you just whimpered and turned away. I told you we could go to the swings and I would make you fly. You woke up and asked me if I would stop if you felt afraid. I nodded with a suspicious smile. We both knew you were never got scared on the swings. You jumped up in your frilly frock, and we trodded off to the backyard.
I pushed you. And high up into the air you went with your tiny legs dangling, your hands grasping the sides of the swing with all your little might. While you flew, thrilled and shivery, I could see Mummy and Daddy in the living room. I saw Daddy right behind the door to the backyard, with a big brown box and a small faded suitcase. Suddenly the childish delight in your eyes gave way to an unusual fright. You begged me to stop and jumped off the swings and began running to the door. You had seen Daddy.
Last year you turned seventeen. I called you at midnight and you were all impatient to hang up and go back to your friends. You wouldn’t even let me finish my rendition of our song ‘Ain’t No Mountain High Enough.’ You cut me right when ‘Marvin Gaye’ goes ‘To keep me from getting to you’. I hung up. I wished you were a child again and I could make you believe in things as easily as I made you believe in Rama Auntie’s strong arms by the swings that summer day.
Yesterday, Mummy called me up. She couldn’t hold in the tears this time. She told me you were very sick. She told me you had been battling deep depression for more than a year now and in the last few months had given up on everything. She told me you had slashed your wrists and were found curled up and alone in your apartment. She said you were in a hospital, not waking up. She said you had to go away for a while.
I asked her if you were going to die and if you did who was going to sing the last paragraph when we recorded ‘our’ version of ‘Ain’t No Mountain High Enough.’
She replied that all would be fine, and she would do sing it or Pooja Auntie would. She had a particularly raspy voice, perfect for the song.
I sobbed through the night, wishing for the first time ever, that I had been the innocent, gullible one on the swing. That I had been the one whose childhood had not been killed.
(Based on a true story)
Admin
I call for the template of this blog to be horizontally expanded, or to be made such that only the first 100 words of a post are visible in the main page with a link to continue reading.
Post-lengths are getting out of hand and scrolling literature is not much fun. Somebody do something about it ! We're all gonna die !!
Post-lengths are getting out of hand and scrolling literature is not much fun. Somebody do something about it ! We're all gonna die !!
Sticks and Stones
There were kids playing outside the window again, he noticed with casual irritation. He had warned them only this morning. Always with the cricket, these kids, always with the relentless howzzats and the interminable running between wickets. Just last week, a boy had been accosted by a timber lorry when he’d crossed the road in pursuit of the ball. The lorry got the better of that unfortunate acquaintance and the hapless fielder was hospitalized. Yet here the kids were again, one week having been adjudged a sufficient moratorium in honor of those wounded in the line of duty. His compatriots were nothing if not resilient. He stubbed his cigarette out with practiced chagrin and continued typing on his old Remington. He was finding it slow going; it had been a dull week. With only a fortnight to the election, one would expect it to be hunting season, news-wise. Even in a small town like his, a staged protest or two, numerous petitions and investigations into suspicious campaign contributions of the two contesting parties were par for the course. Baba Ramlal and Naveen Thomas had been on the election circuit for weeks and it was as close an election as any he had seen. In photo-finishes such as this, frequent and interesting news was almost a given. But no such luck this week. Not for this reporter. The only mildly interesting thing that had happened was the elephant having the runs.
The temple elephant had contracted a severe case of diarrhea and was advertising the fact with several obnoxious smelling watery turds deposited at strategic locations. That was the highlight of the news week. Roy’s editor had woken him up at 7 in the morning with the news that the Mother Mary statue on Christopher Street had just been the recipient of one of these gigantic excrements. Roy had burst out laughing. “Get on it.”, his editor had told him.
“What? You can’t be serious.An elephant is having a bad colon day. There’s no story there”
“Bullshit”, his editor said.
“You mean elephant dung, don’t you?”, Roy countered.
“Don’t give me none of your smart lip this morning, Roy. That’s atleast three paragraphs there and you know it. Now go.”
“ Fine. I’ll go look at the dung, pronounce it bonafide, write a brilliant article, maybe turn it into a long monograph that will be expanded into a Booker-winning novel. I’ll even mention you in the acknowledgements.”
“Roy!”
“ Then I’ll sell the film rights to Ashutosh Gowariker, get some money and go abroad where I can work for a real newspaper.”
“ You wouldn’t do that. You’d miss your editor too much. Now get the fuck outta bed and onto that story before I come down there and shove a zucchini up your behind.”
Great, thought Roy, here comes my two page exposé on pachyderm poop. He gargled some toothpaste, run a hasty finger over his gums and spat. Grabbing his notebook and pen, he stepped out of the house.
A tennis ball smashed into his face. “ Six”, somebody cried out in the street. He hated hearing that jubilant exclamation. “Six” usually meant another of his windows had been smashed. Damn kids, he’d show them. He went out of the gate carrying the ball and promptly collided with a 6 year old girl who’d been sent to retrieve it. She wore a fake white Nike t-shirt that was too big for her and a wide smile that fit her just right. “ Ball,” she said. “This ball?” Roy shouted, angrily shaking the dirty yellow ball in the girl’s face. “ Yes,” she cried happily, obviously not having registered his fury. “ Yellow Ball.” she said cutely, simply, grinning from ear to ear; a statement of fact, of happy ,untainted innocence. Roy almost fell for it. For a moment. Then he threw the ball as far as he could. “You know what it looks like. Now go get it”, he said, smugness written all over his face. He’d always wanted to use that line. “ …and don’t play here again.” he added. The little girl burst into tears. Damn little girls, Roy thought. Always with the crying. He bent down, “Now, now, don’t cry…”he said, trying a sentence which always seemed to work in the movies. However this only exacerbated the sobbing; the girl launched into a cacophony of sound reminiscent of a chorus of raucous jackdaws. He reached out to carry her in his arms,( another technique from the silver screen ) but she ran away frightened, her ragged t-shirt wet with tears, clutching her skirt to keep it from getting wet in the water-filled potholes that cluttered the street. The sooner kids learn that the world is a dangerous place, the better; Roy thought sheepishly, as he got on his TVS scooter and proceeded toward the scene of the ‘crime’.
The elephant had done a swell job of it; you had to hand it to her. Nandini, the apple of the pujari’s eye and star of the yearly temple festival had gone ballistic on the statue with such utter abandon it was almost a work of art. Roy pictured the whole thing framed in the Tate Modern captioned “Excretion Desecration” and sandwiched between Andres Serrano and Tracey Emin. The smell was unbearable, so much so that Roy wondered how The Virgin Mary didn’t take her hands (now outstretched in holy benediction) and apply them to her nose, to plug the stench. Roy spoke with the mahout, who blamed Nandini’s irritable bowels on some bad jaggery that visitors had fed her.” Pujari taking Nandini’s money, saab. For buying new radio. So poor Nandini must eat whatever she gets.” Roy figured he’d gotten enough info; he’d probably go with the animal rights angle without dragging the pujari’s embezzlement into it. This close to elections, it could cause quite a stir, and while Roy was a good reporter, he was no polemicist.
Often, Roy had buried some sensational story because it would piss off the wrong people. He didn’t see it as compromising his journalistic integrity; it was simply a matter of expediency. If you’re good to momma, momma’s good to you. You scratch my back, I won’t turn up at your house in the middle of the night with petrol cans and flaming torches. It was not right or wrong, it simply was. As an ingenuous idealist fresh out of journalism school, he’d questioned how reporting in this country could ever be objective, impartial, honest. His editor, a seasoned veteran who’d done some topnotch reporting in the capital during the war, had listened to the kid wear himself out in a self-righteous, indignant rant, then told him not to waste his time. “ You got to pick your battles, son. If you waste all your energy trying to catch little fish, you’ll be too spent to catch the shark when he comes.”
Roy biked back home, stopping only to buy a pack of cigarettes. He couldn’t write without his nicotine. He lit one up and started typing away, noting with irritation that the kids were at it again, fielders scurrying like rats, batsmen running across the wickets like chickens crossing roads, and with as much reason. Damned infernal cricket, he thought with weary affection, fatigued by his eternal, inexplicable hatred for a game that was almost a force of nature in this country. Hating cricket was like dogs baying at the moon or chasing cars, pointless and exhausting. He adjusted his imported Remington and typed out the final sentences of his article, stubbing out his cigarette in the coconut shell he kept for the purpose.
There was a knock at his door. It was Baba Ramlal, with a couple of his unsavory friends in tow. Roy couldn’t stand politicians. Yet he was fascinated and intrigued by them.
“ I hear you’re covering the elephant story.”
“ Yes,yes, do come in ” Roy replied. “ As one of the election contestants, do you have any comments?” he continued, reverting to type.
“ No comments, but I got a whole new take on it. In fact, I’ve got a whole new story for you.”, Baba Ramlal said, pausing to spit some betel juice out the window. Disgusting habit, Roy thought. “Have you spoken to the church authorities yet?” , Ramlal continued.
“No. But I heard they had no major problems. After all it was an act of God, hehe. Nothing they could do.”
“ True, true. But not enough masala in that version. I’m here to help you tweak it a bit. Say the Christians are very pissed. Calling it sacrilege. Say they’re demanding reparations.” Baba Ramlal spoke jovially, like a benevolent godfather.
“ Can’t do that, ole chap. Journalistic integrity and all that.” Roy replied in a jaunty drawl, though his voice had taken on a steely edge. Yes, definite steely edge there, Roy told himself.
“ Break the little finger on his left hand.” Baba Ramlal said casually. “ Not that left hand, you fool. His other left hand.”
Roy had always had fantasies of being captured by a radical terrorist group and being tortured for weeks. They’d ask him to write an article painting them as visionary, misunderstood prophets of truth, all the while waterboarding him and applying electricity to his testicles. In these dreams, Roy would always hold out forever, not succumbing to the pain, until finally he converted them to his way of thinking by his brilliant eloquence and unflagging clarity of vision.
He suppressed a scream as his little finger was snapped violently. That put paid to any romantic, heroic notions he had nursed. As pain coursed through his body, he looked at his curiously bent pinkie and had an epiphany; he couldn’t do this hero stuff, he had zero pain tolerance. “I’ll do it.” he screamed,” I’ll write your article. But there’s no way in hell you’ll get my editor to publish it.”
“Don’t worry about that.” Baba Ramlal continued in his avuncular fashion. “ We politicans can be very persuasive. Now let me take a look at that finger before we get started. We got some dissent to sow.”
The article was insidious, while not overtly expressing an opinion, it urged dissent. “ Genius, my son. Utter genius. Pulitzer-material. You should come be my speechwriter.” Baba Ramlal had urged, clapping him on the back, before ripping the pages away and scurrying off, presumably to the newspaper office to get the piece into the evening edition.
Roy went to the hospital, got his finger fixed and returned home where he fainted on his bed, sick with revulsion, with exhaustion. The things people would do to clinch an election, he’d thought with disgust, just before unconsciousness hit. Baba Ramlal’s attempt to turn the election into an issue of religion was a brilliant ploy. Nothing could get people riled up like debates over whose invisible person in the sky was more powerful.
He awoke in a damp sweat, at about three in the morning. There were distant shouts and screams in the night. Roy looked outside his window, and saw a house on fire. There was fighting in the streets, names of various gods were invoked. It aint my fault, he told himself, his penchant for rationalization asserting itself. Sticks and bones break bones, words never hurt no-one. Guns don’t kill people, people kill people. People with guns, an inner voice taunted. He cradled his face in his hands and tried to shut out the bloodcurdling screams. Later, towards dawn, he smelt burning flesh.
In the morning, he stepped out of the house and went for a walk, keeping to the corners, walking warily, hesitantly. Some buildings were still smoking, blood was splattered over the streets, but there were no bodies. Curious, thought Roy, objective, detached, his rational journalistic brain at work. I wonder who removed them. A little further on, he saw a couple rocking a charred body in their hands. A child, he realized, aghast, a damn kid – the paragon of innocence, lamb to the slaughter, collateral damage. Possible headlines zipped by in a haze before his eyes: Innocence Lost, Murder, Mayhem, Madness. Elephant takes a dump on Mary: Religious violence ensues. He looked again at the forlorn parents cradling the corpse. It wore a dirty white tee-shirt , nearly burnt out, but Roy could make out the faint markings of a Nike swoosh. Obviously fake.
No cricket today, Roy thought wryly.
The temple elephant had contracted a severe case of diarrhea and was advertising the fact with several obnoxious smelling watery turds deposited at strategic locations. That was the highlight of the news week. Roy’s editor had woken him up at 7 in the morning with the news that the Mother Mary statue on Christopher Street had just been the recipient of one of these gigantic excrements. Roy had burst out laughing. “Get on it.”, his editor had told him.
“What? You can’t be serious.An elephant is having a bad colon day. There’s no story there”
“Bullshit”, his editor said.
“You mean elephant dung, don’t you?”, Roy countered.
“Don’t give me none of your smart lip this morning, Roy. That’s atleast three paragraphs there and you know it. Now go.”
“ Fine. I’ll go look at the dung, pronounce it bonafide, write a brilliant article, maybe turn it into a long monograph that will be expanded into a Booker-winning novel. I’ll even mention you in the acknowledgements.”
“Roy!”
“ Then I’ll sell the film rights to Ashutosh Gowariker, get some money and go abroad where I can work for a real newspaper.”
“ You wouldn’t do that. You’d miss your editor too much. Now get the fuck outta bed and onto that story before I come down there and shove a zucchini up your behind.”
Great, thought Roy, here comes my two page exposé on pachyderm poop. He gargled some toothpaste, run a hasty finger over his gums and spat. Grabbing his notebook and pen, he stepped out of the house.
A tennis ball smashed into his face. “ Six”, somebody cried out in the street. He hated hearing that jubilant exclamation. “Six” usually meant another of his windows had been smashed. Damn kids, he’d show them. He went out of the gate carrying the ball and promptly collided with a 6 year old girl who’d been sent to retrieve it. She wore a fake white Nike t-shirt that was too big for her and a wide smile that fit her just right. “ Ball,” she said. “This ball?” Roy shouted, angrily shaking the dirty yellow ball in the girl’s face. “ Yes,” she cried happily, obviously not having registered his fury. “ Yellow Ball.” she said cutely, simply, grinning from ear to ear; a statement of fact, of happy ,untainted innocence. Roy almost fell for it. For a moment. Then he threw the ball as far as he could. “You know what it looks like. Now go get it”, he said, smugness written all over his face. He’d always wanted to use that line. “ …and don’t play here again.” he added. The little girl burst into tears. Damn little girls, Roy thought. Always with the crying. He bent down, “Now, now, don’t cry…”he said, trying a sentence which always seemed to work in the movies. However this only exacerbated the sobbing; the girl launched into a cacophony of sound reminiscent of a chorus of raucous jackdaws. He reached out to carry her in his arms,( another technique from the silver screen ) but she ran away frightened, her ragged t-shirt wet with tears, clutching her skirt to keep it from getting wet in the water-filled potholes that cluttered the street. The sooner kids learn that the world is a dangerous place, the better; Roy thought sheepishly, as he got on his TVS scooter and proceeded toward the scene of the ‘crime’.
The elephant had done a swell job of it; you had to hand it to her. Nandini, the apple of the pujari’s eye and star of the yearly temple festival had gone ballistic on the statue with such utter abandon it was almost a work of art. Roy pictured the whole thing framed in the Tate Modern captioned “Excretion Desecration” and sandwiched between Andres Serrano and Tracey Emin. The smell was unbearable, so much so that Roy wondered how The Virgin Mary didn’t take her hands (now outstretched in holy benediction) and apply them to her nose, to plug the stench. Roy spoke with the mahout, who blamed Nandini’s irritable bowels on some bad jaggery that visitors had fed her.” Pujari taking Nandini’s money, saab. For buying new radio. So poor Nandini must eat whatever she gets.” Roy figured he’d gotten enough info; he’d probably go with the animal rights angle without dragging the pujari’s embezzlement into it. This close to elections, it could cause quite a stir, and while Roy was a good reporter, he was no polemicist.
Often, Roy had buried some sensational story because it would piss off the wrong people. He didn’t see it as compromising his journalistic integrity; it was simply a matter of expediency. If you’re good to momma, momma’s good to you. You scratch my back, I won’t turn up at your house in the middle of the night with petrol cans and flaming torches. It was not right or wrong, it simply was. As an ingenuous idealist fresh out of journalism school, he’d questioned how reporting in this country could ever be objective, impartial, honest. His editor, a seasoned veteran who’d done some topnotch reporting in the capital during the war, had listened to the kid wear himself out in a self-righteous, indignant rant, then told him not to waste his time. “ You got to pick your battles, son. If you waste all your energy trying to catch little fish, you’ll be too spent to catch the shark when he comes.”
Roy biked back home, stopping only to buy a pack of cigarettes. He couldn’t write without his nicotine. He lit one up and started typing away, noting with irritation that the kids were at it again, fielders scurrying like rats, batsmen running across the wickets like chickens crossing roads, and with as much reason. Damned infernal cricket, he thought with weary affection, fatigued by his eternal, inexplicable hatred for a game that was almost a force of nature in this country. Hating cricket was like dogs baying at the moon or chasing cars, pointless and exhausting. He adjusted his imported Remington and typed out the final sentences of his article, stubbing out his cigarette in the coconut shell he kept for the purpose.
There was a knock at his door. It was Baba Ramlal, with a couple of his unsavory friends in tow. Roy couldn’t stand politicians. Yet he was fascinated and intrigued by them.
“ I hear you’re covering the elephant story.”
“ Yes,yes, do come in ” Roy replied. “ As one of the election contestants, do you have any comments?” he continued, reverting to type.
“ No comments, but I got a whole new take on it. In fact, I’ve got a whole new story for you.”, Baba Ramlal said, pausing to spit some betel juice out the window. Disgusting habit, Roy thought. “Have you spoken to the church authorities yet?” , Ramlal continued.
“No. But I heard they had no major problems. After all it was an act of God, hehe. Nothing they could do.”
“ True, true. But not enough masala in that version. I’m here to help you tweak it a bit. Say the Christians are very pissed. Calling it sacrilege. Say they’re demanding reparations.” Baba Ramlal spoke jovially, like a benevolent godfather.
“ Can’t do that, ole chap. Journalistic integrity and all that.” Roy replied in a jaunty drawl, though his voice had taken on a steely edge. Yes, definite steely edge there, Roy told himself.
“ Break the little finger on his left hand.” Baba Ramlal said casually. “ Not that left hand, you fool. His other left hand.”
Roy had always had fantasies of being captured by a radical terrorist group and being tortured for weeks. They’d ask him to write an article painting them as visionary, misunderstood prophets of truth, all the while waterboarding him and applying electricity to his testicles. In these dreams, Roy would always hold out forever, not succumbing to the pain, until finally he converted them to his way of thinking by his brilliant eloquence and unflagging clarity of vision.
He suppressed a scream as his little finger was snapped violently. That put paid to any romantic, heroic notions he had nursed. As pain coursed through his body, he looked at his curiously bent pinkie and had an epiphany; he couldn’t do this hero stuff, he had zero pain tolerance. “I’ll do it.” he screamed,” I’ll write your article. But there’s no way in hell you’ll get my editor to publish it.”
“Don’t worry about that.” Baba Ramlal continued in his avuncular fashion. “ We politicans can be very persuasive. Now let me take a look at that finger before we get started. We got some dissent to sow.”
The article was insidious, while not overtly expressing an opinion, it urged dissent. “ Genius, my son. Utter genius. Pulitzer-material. You should come be my speechwriter.” Baba Ramlal had urged, clapping him on the back, before ripping the pages away and scurrying off, presumably to the newspaper office to get the piece into the evening edition.
Roy went to the hospital, got his finger fixed and returned home where he fainted on his bed, sick with revulsion, with exhaustion. The things people would do to clinch an election, he’d thought with disgust, just before unconsciousness hit. Baba Ramlal’s attempt to turn the election into an issue of religion was a brilliant ploy. Nothing could get people riled up like debates over whose invisible person in the sky was more powerful.
He awoke in a damp sweat, at about three in the morning. There were distant shouts and screams in the night. Roy looked outside his window, and saw a house on fire. There was fighting in the streets, names of various gods were invoked. It aint my fault, he told himself, his penchant for rationalization asserting itself. Sticks and bones break bones, words never hurt no-one. Guns don’t kill people, people kill people. People with guns, an inner voice taunted. He cradled his face in his hands and tried to shut out the bloodcurdling screams. Later, towards dawn, he smelt burning flesh.
In the morning, he stepped out of the house and went for a walk, keeping to the corners, walking warily, hesitantly. Some buildings were still smoking, blood was splattered over the streets, but there were no bodies. Curious, thought Roy, objective, detached, his rational journalistic brain at work. I wonder who removed them. A little further on, he saw a couple rocking a charred body in their hands. A child, he realized, aghast, a damn kid – the paragon of innocence, lamb to the slaughter, collateral damage. Possible headlines zipped by in a haze before his eyes: Innocence Lost, Murder, Mayhem, Madness. Elephant takes a dump on Mary: Religious violence ensues. He looked again at the forlorn parents cradling the corpse. It wore a dirty white tee-shirt , nearly burnt out, but Roy could make out the faint markings of a Nike swoosh. Obviously fake.
No cricket today, Roy thought wryly.
10 years (Part II) - Cricket
Drama was freedom for me. I could be me in so many flavours of characters; express the silence lurking within in so many different ways and yet be removed from myself.
I could be actor on stage who was telling his own life’s story in the guise of a character and I could use the audience as my own personal shrink.
And the audience could laugh at me, pity me but never judge me, for it was the character they were emoting for and not me.
And so I decided, I wanted to be an actor.
Now since this story is set in India, naturally my ambition had to be qualified by parental consent.
On the subject of parents, I would like to talk about the incident of the cricket bat.
When I was a child of seven, as many children of seven, I had a rather strong fondness for chocolate. As I grew in years, my fondness grew with me as did my girth.
In those years, I was much of a loner and my favourite pastimes were reading, sketching and listening to music.
In consideration of my growing girth and what he considered as my rather “silly” hobbies, my father presented me, one fine day, with a cricket bat.
Now I have to tell you, I have absolutely no interest in sports. They make you sweaty, tired and generally full of misery.
Anyhow, I accepted the bat with a false smile and a “Thank you Papa”. Soon thereafter, I happily relegated the bat to the darkest and dingiest corner of my room that I could find.
That bat however, had a life of its own.
In school, when I joined the choir, the bat moved mysteriously to my study table. When I took up art lessons, the bat found itself resting against my bed. When I took up sculpture, the bat crossed all boundaries of decency and crawled into my bed.
The day I told my father that I had decided that acting was my life’s calling, there was (perhaps portentously) an India-Pakistan one-day cricket match being broadcast on TV.
My father looked at me and said nothing.
India lost.
That night, he picked up the bat, tested its weight, and let me have the best strokes that my body could take without breaking. Bleeding was a permissible evil.
And thus, my ambitions of becoming an actor were somewhat postponed.
A Night At Home
He couldn’t understand it. What had gone wrong? Again. After hours of concentrated effort, wads of cash and countless counseling sessions, things were exactly the same as they had been this time last year. He had sacrificed so much – received so little. Waves of self pity and self contempt crashed upon him and soon his face and chest were drenched. How could it be?! It was perfect – he had been sure it would work this year and yet it hadn’t. What were they looking for? His mails had gone unanswered; telephoning was out of the question.
Now it did not. He stared at the glossy envelope in his lap.
To: Jack Crick,
C/O Mr. Jonah Crick,
23 Hemingway Street,
New York City - 50686
New York.
The letter lay open on the desk.
Dear Jack,
Thank you for your interest in the Facebook “Do you have the best profile” Awards. We regret to inform you that your entry has not been deemed worthy of entering the second round. We hope you will work harder and return next year.
The Facebook Team.
Sounded interesting. He would check it out tomorrow.
It was late. He had not slept for three days in giddy anticipation of this letter. And here it was. He put it back in the envelope. The monitor’s light was too bright. He switched it off. He stood and stretched. He felt free. The wait was over. He had been taking sleeping pills he got off the net to help him sleep – two a night. They had not worked obviously. Tonight, perhaps he would take a stronger dose. Tonight he would sleep well.
Thursday, April 24, 2008
2. Surprise
We didn't manage to surprise her. Five above average brains put together for five days couldn't surprise her. We had planned and planned and figured we had gone over every possible loophole. We were confident we had covered all bases.
There was a beach she particularly loved, but hadn't been to in a long time. We decided to take her there. Two days before her birthday - when she would least expect it.
That night, two of us went ahead with a tent. The beach was moonlit and they found a spot under a huge dark tree to pitch it up. It would fit six in and the smokers would have to stand outside. Inside, a huge scented candle would be lit. We’d have a cake but we won’t have any paper plates. We would eat it with our hands in our sand floor cave. The cake – well, I raced the levels of our local mall trying to find the best black forest cake available. There were five shops which sold cake, and four of them had black forests staring at me from behind the glass windows. I made two rounds, ogling at each of them twice with pondering eyes before I made a decision. I based it on the looks - thankfully looks which later did not deceive. Meanwhile, our fourth accomplice was in the basement shops trying to figure out the right mix of balloons and caps and masks and whistles and horns and confetti and poppers to go inside our tent. They came in different hues and different sizes and the whistles all blew in different tones and loudness. On the other side of the town, after work, the fiancé was meeting her for dinner. Their dinner would give us a buffer in case of any delay for he had been instructed to stop eating only when we had given him the go ahead. The plan was reaching a symphonic frenzy and we waited expectantly for the dreamed crescendo.
We picked our cake, bought the right candles and loaded all kinds of birthday paraphernalia. We reached the tent and we sent him a message. All was as planned and he could now lure her for a walk on the beach. He made his most lovely face, put his arm around her right shoulder, pulled her close to him and sweetly lured, “Lets go to the beach.” She said startled, “Why ? Are you guys planning something ?” And then he gave it away.
The master of puppets
The incessant sound of ball hitting concrete did not irritate him. It was music to his ears actually – the boy was undoubtedly gifted, in more ways than one. He would definitely go a long way, all the way in fact. It was destined – and all this practise would only put the ‘deserved’ tag on him. Enough to appease the journalistic hyenas that encircled the family 24/7.
That was main reason for this sudden family vacation – to give him a breather, to gather his wits about him again. The king maker needed a rest and he had had to go to the other end of the world to get it. So here they were – and yet the boy, his son, would not rest. It’s all in the genes – he smiled inwardly. It was an indulgent smile, it was an inevitable smile. He did not like surprises – his whole life had been planned. He had always known what he wanted and how he would go about doing it. It hadn’t been easy. The convoluted, almost Romanesque circles he moved in had thrown up its fair share of surprises, mostly unpleasant, hence the unhealthy dislike – and experience had taught him to plan like a Chess grandmaster. Think three moves ahead, wrap your opponents into a warm fuzzy blanket of security, and move in – slowly, carefully and precisely. The boy had been a bonus – so talented, so industrious, so…lucky. The boy was his sole concession to fate – yes it had been fate that had dealt him this kind hand – there was no other explanation. The boy would rule – for a long long time, longer than he had. He smiled again – almost laughed. His thoughts had swerved. Democracy was the biggest hoax ever played on the most populous nation on earth. He knew – he was the hoaxer after all. And his son would continue this elaborate façade in two avatars – perhaps his son’s son after that. This empire would become a dynasty and he would be the founder. No one could have thought that possible 20 years ago. Times had changed though. His people were emotional even today, in 2025, when emotions too could be outsourced to machines. Who had the time after all? Today it is all about branding the self and everything else one could think of. Branding is business. Business has no place for emotions. Yet, his people were emotional. They would always be so – they always had been. Billions of them, their numbers combined with their atavistic emotions were his strength – their weakness. People who had two hearts and no brains deserved to be ruled and ruled they were and would be, albeit without knowing it.
The hysterical news reporter on T.V. broke into his consciousness. People had died – again. It would be tragic were it not so mundane. This time the riots had been incited by racist chants against one of the ‘home team’ players. If the effect was mundane, the cause was even more so – mundane and intricate. He could barely stifle a yawn – and yet he did; for it was a sad event –and it was good to stay in role at all times. Press inquiries would have to be addressed, banal speeches would have to be given, and politicians would have to be ‘pacified’. The Prime Minister, that brainless, lazy, disgusting no-good would be calling soon. The holiday would have to be cut short – but he was recharged, ready to keep the hyenas at bay again.
Lalit Modi, the master of puppets, called his pilot. They would leave in 30 minutes.
1.
The sand was wet from the rain last night. That is what she said, I hadn't taken my shoes off nor had I sat. The low tide had left strewn behind a coterie of clams, shells and shankhs. A bat of swollen dead wood lay at the edge of the water, one end lodged in a mound and the other zig-zagging over the surface water that came along with the waves. It was a little to the left of where we were, threatening with every lash of the sea liquid to break free from the heavy wet sand and become driftwood. But it didn't, and it gave her something to fix her gaze at. She had twisted and turned herself in such a manner that I was left standing next to her, a bit to her back, away from where she was facing. She must have wanted me to sit down by her and shut up, but I adamantly stood and told my story. She must have wished me to stop my endless barrage of over-zealous squealing. The sea was lost on me.
Last night, she had turned seventeen and I had gone to see my first cricket match.
Last night, she had turned seventeen and I had gone to see my first cricket match.
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
10 years (Part I) - 17 year olds
10 years. (Laughs) It seems to just fly by doesn’t it? When you look back? Who were you then?(Laughs) Who are you now? (Shrug).
I guess I am the same person. No, I don’t believe that people change. The only thing that changes is a capacity to want, to desire, (laughs) and maybe, even to love.
What did I want then. (shrugs) To be up on this stage. And now that I am, what am I doing here? Participating in a post-modern comedy about my own past, depressing life.
And so you may ask me, where does this comedy begin? Go ahead. Ask. (Laughs). If you don’t, the universal playwright (sotto voce: God) he’ll surely make me blurt it out in any case in his usual meta-fictional ironic style. Hell! He’ll even give this moment a name!
(Playing God) “Hmm. Let’s see, we shall call this moment an ee-mo-tional moment for the protagonist. We shall call his mental state de-pression. And just to make things interesting, we shall put him up on stage for the world to admire the absurdity of his life”
And so. Where does this absurdity begin? It begins as He has already made me admit. 10 years ago. It starts 10 years ago with the introduction of a Red Hat.
Why the hat was Red has kept me up on many a sleepless night, but you can’t fight fate. It was meant to be.
And so. This Red hat approached me and said with a benign smile on his face, “son, have you thought of dedicating your life to God?”. Now, let me tell you something about myself. (sotto voce: I never lie.) (Recovering as though the statement has taken the strength out of him) Yes. Go ahead. I know you want to. Go ahead and distrust me now. Everyone else has in the past, why should you be an exception?
Yes. A Red hat, pointy, with a yellow cross changed my life 10 years ago. Bishop Rodriguez was its name.
I was seventeen then. A devout catholic. Full of love, for God of course (under breath, nostalgic : and others). Sigh. And so, what could I do? I signed up! After all, she was in my catechism class!
Ah! I see now that you might be beginning to grasp what all this is about. Alright. I admit it. A teenager who professes a devout love for God and mentions a girl in his catechism class in the same breath is perhaps not the most reliable source for information. No?
Well, as I said earlier. I don’t lie. Both my loves were true. One had the mighty name of “JEHOVA!” and the other one, sweet, gentle, beautiful, Renata.
Now I had tremendously more success with one than the other. When I spoke, Jehova listened. Patiently, caringly, comfortingly. He was always there when I wanted to speak. He filled my heart with hymns of gladness; made my teenage soul rise above the clouds and be hopeful. He made me find a voice that I did not know I had.
The other muted that voice.
Oh! Friends, I’m sure you’ve felt that lump in your throat too. When you have so much to say but it gets lost in that endless chasm between heart, mind and voice box.
The hormones waged a mighty battle within me, my soul was a sea that He had parted to allow safe passage to his chosen people.
Only, I was the sea. I was the sea He was parting. I was not the chosen one.
I see recognition for the plot upon your face. Unrequited love? I hear you asking. No friends. It was worse. It was unconfessed love.
Thankfully, whenever a story settles into a rut, He gets bored and adds change to it. Renata’s father was in the army and he got transferred ending my long and sordid love affair with silence.
At around the same time, he sent to me a confessor. Now this confessor came to me with a handful of letters and heart full of love.
He was in love. He had been caught. The girl was his neighbour. Their love was a sickness that their parents would not tolerate. Letters were burnt. No place was safe for their teenage love, and so, he came to me.
(Poetic) With letters that he had saved, and bookmarks and dry, pressed flowers and other such relics of a blossoming love, he came to me. (Laughs)
With a sombre demeanour, and tearfully dry eyes, reflecting an untold future, he came to me.
What!? Poetry? Oh don’t worry. It’s just the me 10 years later mocking love. Tut tut. Really, sarcasm is lost on you.
So, anyway, his letters and relics were safely locked within my cupboard. A place so safe, that it has housed them till this day.
We became friends Deepak and I. We shared a common interest in dramatic irony. We would treat each other as if we were characters in a story that had absurdly brought two stories together out of the blue. We were playing a part yet we knew that it was merely a play.
Around the same time that Deepak and I were measuring our respective existences in terms of dramatic irony, our class English teacher decided to ask us to audition for our Annual English play.
I suppose God must have decided I had been loveless for just about long enough, for he made it “Come to pass” that I fall in love again.
This time, it was not a girl.
Oh God! Come off it. I know what you are thinking. Ridiculous. Besides, didn’t you notice the rating of this play? If there were gay themes involved, it would definitely not have a universal rating. (Very gay-ly) Shame on you.
No. I fell in love with drama.
(to be continued...)
Regretably...
Dear Writers and Readers,
It is with utmost regret that we inform you that our panel has found Mr.Varma's contribution, out of sync with the vision of the M & N agency of Unsung Talent. His article only displays that his talent does not wish to be Sung for at all. As a result, we have been forced to revoke his membership.
We have offered Mr. Varma a consolatory position as Mascot and if he wishes to take it up, we shall yet be blessed with his light hearted presence. He may also redeem authorship status at the burnt parchment, by a contribution of the usual (rib-tickling) quality that readers of his blog are usually spoilt with.
The thing is, we are not that serious, but we are certainly this serious.
Much Love.
It is with utmost regret that we inform you that our panel has found Mr.Varma's contribution, out of sync with the vision of the M & N agency of Unsung Talent. His article only displays that his talent does not wish to be Sung for at all. As a result, we have been forced to revoke his membership.
We have offered Mr. Varma a consolatory position as Mascot and if he wishes to take it up, we shall yet be blessed with his light hearted presence. He may also redeem authorship status at the burnt parchment, by a contribution of the usual (rib-tickling) quality that readers of his blog are usually spoilt with.
The thing is, we are not that serious, but we are certainly this serious.
Much Love.
Reply 1
17 year olds-anywhere-cricket-riots
1. 17 year olds : too young for me to legally have sex with.
2. anywhere: yes, i'll go anywhere they serve beer. or cake. or mmm... beer and cake.
3. cricket: GHEY!
4. riots: riots are for losers, and talking about riots is for emo kids.
wheres my money?
okbye.
1. 17 year olds : too young for me to legally have sex with.
2. anywhere: yes, i'll go anywhere they serve beer. or cake. or mmm... beer and cake.
3. cricket: GHEY!
4. riots: riots are for losers, and talking about riots is for emo kids.
wheres my money?
okbye.
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Welcome note
Hello everyone. How kind of you to have come :D
Now lets gets down to business. This week's hints for development in the order of people-place-thing-variable (The 'variable' bit is for the fiction writers) are...* drumroll*
17 year olds-anywhere-cricket-riots.
(Banal topics force creativity, if you please)
(OR)
Any topic of interest.
Genre no bar.
Happy parchment scratching!
Now lets gets down to business. This week's hints for development in the order of people-place-thing-variable (The 'variable' bit is for the fiction writers) are...* drumroll*
17 year olds-anywhere-cricket-riots.
(Banal topics force creativity, if you please)
(OR)
Any topic of interest.
Genre no bar.
Happy parchment scratching!
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