Beauty, they say, should be appreciated. Always. And so, I saw this extremely striking example of God’s creative excellence, strewn on my way to provide a moment of pleasure to my senses which were now so fatigued by the bedlam there.
I was standing on the overcrowded Opera house bus stop, in the blazing heat, impatiently waiting for bus number 106 since the past fifteen minutes. Just then a really hot guy came out of nowhere and stood right in front of me. He was really fair, had sharp features and short cropped hair(the kind I so like), very handsome. To top all this glory he was wearing a pinkish coloured short shirt, black pants ant black polished shoes. He was holding his laptop which was hanging from his left shoulder and in the right hand he held his iphone and was talking to someone(which I was hoping would not be his girlfriend). I, pretty obviously, kept staring at him for quite some time, marveling at the beauty, after which he disconnected his call and was less busy now. So, I tried looking elsewhere.
Just a moment later, he looked down and……..SPAT!!!
Eeewwww…..as if this was not enough to disgust me…he, then looked deeply into his phone and with the loooong little finger nail of his, scratched out something. I think there is no better opposition to beauty than a man with overgrown fingernail (and that too of one finger). It was like pricking my little bubble with his nail.
Phewww….God’s beauty gone waste!
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Sunday, February 1, 2009
LIVING TO DIE
I woke up at five in the morning, as I do everyday. I sat by the window to see the magnificent sun come to its glory defeating the clouds which desperately tried to hide it from the world. This view was a secret hope for me to keep living on. I went to the washroom to find no water in the tap. My landlord had blocked the water supply to my flat two days ago, thinking I would get annoyed and leave. He did these funny things since he came to know that I was an HIV AIDS patient. I didnt mind it. He was just trying to protect his family from a deadly disease but I had my limitations and could not leave the flat. He did not exactly force me into leaving either, because one thing my landlord had nightmares about was a law suit. With the increasing AIDS awareness campaigns, he thought he might be imprisoned for discriminating against ‘a person like me’, as he termed it.
I washed my face and got ready for work. I benefit, I must say, I had was that I no more needed to push my way through the deluge of people at the station for my train. They had somehow known my ailment and preferred to miss the train than rub against me to catch it. You know, my skin could just spill some viruses onto theirs. I reached office right on time, but my boss was an early riser. He seemed to be rising earlier than usual since he came to know that I had contracted this ‘filthy disease’ and I seemed to have turned exceptionally inefficient also. I didn’t quite understand why did he even bother with so much of nonsensical explanation business when he had clear intentions to suspend me. He would save us both much time and energy if he would just give me a termination letter and say I am out. I justify him as probably trying to satiate his moral inclinations. The day at office began with his (now) usual disapproval of my work and continued with most colleagues maintaining their distances and making it quite obvious. Of course, some tried to introduce small talks and I thank them for being the only few people, except my sister, who talked to me throughout the day.
My parents died two years ago in a road accident and my only sister worked in Bangalore. She insisted on me leaving my work and going to live the rest of my life peacefully with her. She loved me. I knew she always cared for me more like a mother than a sibling. I, however, refused to consider this option for me. I never wanted to be the hugest albatross around her neck.
My vegetable vendor was kinder than I expected him to be. Off late, he had taken to benevolently accepting whatever price I bargained for and made sure to use plastic gloves before handing me my packet. I shopped some daily groceries and came back home. I switched on the light but it did not turn on. None of the switches was working. My landlord’s new trick. I retired on the sofa.
I hate this time of the day…the sunset. It’s so morose, so depressing. It reminds of the new ways people adopted to avoid as if I was a mucky cockroach who is better left alone. A ‘person like me’ with that ‘filthy disease’ obviously does not deserve to live. Amen. I am going to die. Aids cannot be cured. I am going on living only very well knowing that death is on its way to pick me up. It’s just stuck in bad traffic which I have created by taking pills. Now, I think, the jam will not last long. Death must be round the corner and, oh, I am not even prepared for the journey. Actually, I don’t want to be prepared. I don’t want to leave my cozy flat. Can someone not make death understand? I really don’t want to go…I don’t want to go.
I always sit there thinking about him…about death. And I start crying.
I cry until I fall asleep.
p.s.- I am usually really sleepy by 11:30 in the night until I have to force my eyes to remain open to complete some much procrastinated work. After I completed this article at 12 midnight, I kept turning in bed for the next to hours.
Why do we, humans, sometimes become worse than monsters?
I woke up at five in the morning, as I do everyday. I sat by the window to see the magnificent sun come to its glory defeating the clouds which desperately tried to hide it from the world. This view was a secret hope for me to keep living on. I went to the washroom to find no water in the tap. My landlord had blocked the water supply to my flat two days ago, thinking I would get annoyed and leave. He did these funny things since he came to know that I was an HIV AIDS patient. I didnt mind it. He was just trying to protect his family from a deadly disease but I had my limitations and could not leave the flat. He did not exactly force me into leaving either, because one thing my landlord had nightmares about was a law suit. With the increasing AIDS awareness campaigns, he thought he might be imprisoned for discriminating against ‘a person like me’, as he termed it.
I washed my face and got ready for work. I benefit, I must say, I had was that I no more needed to push my way through the deluge of people at the station for my train. They had somehow known my ailment and preferred to miss the train than rub against me to catch it. You know, my skin could just spill some viruses onto theirs. I reached office right on time, but my boss was an early riser. He seemed to be rising earlier than usual since he came to know that I had contracted this ‘filthy disease’ and I seemed to have turned exceptionally inefficient also. I didn’t quite understand why did he even bother with so much of nonsensical explanation business when he had clear intentions to suspend me. He would save us both much time and energy if he would just give me a termination letter and say I am out. I justify him as probably trying to satiate his moral inclinations. The day at office began with his (now) usual disapproval of my work and continued with most colleagues maintaining their distances and making it quite obvious. Of course, some tried to introduce small talks and I thank them for being the only few people, except my sister, who talked to me throughout the day.
My parents died two years ago in a road accident and my only sister worked in Bangalore. She insisted on me leaving my work and going to live the rest of my life peacefully with her. She loved me. I knew she always cared for me more like a mother than a sibling. I, however, refused to consider this option for me. I never wanted to be the hugest albatross around her neck.
My vegetable vendor was kinder than I expected him to be. Off late, he had taken to benevolently accepting whatever price I bargained for and made sure to use plastic gloves before handing me my packet. I shopped some daily groceries and came back home. I switched on the light but it did not turn on. None of the switches was working. My landlord’s new trick. I retired on the sofa.
I hate this time of the day…the sunset. It’s so morose, so depressing. It reminds of the new ways people adopted to avoid as if I was a mucky cockroach who is better left alone. A ‘person like me’ with that ‘filthy disease’ obviously does not deserve to live. Amen. I am going to die. Aids cannot be cured. I am going on living only very well knowing that death is on its way to pick me up. It’s just stuck in bad traffic which I have created by taking pills. Now, I think, the jam will not last long. Death must be round the corner and, oh, I am not even prepared for the journey. Actually, I don’t want to be prepared. I don’t want to leave my cozy flat. Can someone not make death understand? I really don’t want to go…I don’t want to go.
I always sit there thinking about him…about death. And I start crying.
I cry until I fall asleep.
p.s.- I am usually really sleepy by 11:30 in the night until I have to force my eyes to remain open to complete some much procrastinated work. After I completed this article at 12 midnight, I kept turning in bed for the next to hours.
Why do we, humans, sometimes become worse than monsters?
Monday, January 26, 2009
My 26/11 nightmare
Everything was perfect and I am sure it was Mumbai. My cousin, riki and I were thoroughly enjoying ourselves. We had taken a bite of almost all snakes available and tried all rides in the fair. My father is a banker but for some mystic reason he was in charge of organinsing this fair which was the largest ever in India. I did not quite try to figure out the mystery…. (How the hell would it matter when you had such fun to look forward to).
So, off we went making the most of this “opportunity”. It was a huge field, which somehow seemed to be an extension of the field in my school. The exit gate was towards the south of the field and on its left was a roller coaster where both of us were headed. We had the tickets and were standing in a queue to enjoy the ride. Waiting in the extra-long queue, we were quite near the exit gate. Riki, suddenly pointed towards a rectangular flying object. We thought it was an unusually designed plane while it started coming closer. Soon it started emitting a ray of coloured lights in different directions. A panoramic view indeed. The lights started disseminating like the splinters after a cracker burst. As the lights started moving down without being eroded by air friction, we saw that they were actually jets….or some kind of rocket. The rectangular flying reservoir was still producing lots and lots of jets. I had almost concluded it was an air show when one of them came much closer than expected and in that last moment when it was still approaching….the thought hit me. Before I could hold riki’s hand and run away, the jet hit the middle of the ground and blasted.
In an instant, half the fair tumbled down as if made of playing blocks. Moving, jumping, laughing people lay scattered on the ground as if someone just blew sleeping powder over them. They smiled lying there because the death did not give them time to think it over. The rest of them shrieked, and moaned. And I just stood there…terrified. Finally, it was riki who pulled me to run with her outside the gate nearby. Somehow again, my house was just outside the gate. We rushed in and found my father and my grandmother in a room. My father desperately trying to sound practical in such a moment of frantic outburst said something we almost already knew. He said that it was a “terrorist attack”. We knew it…but somehow, after being pronounced so distinctly, it brought a fresh sense of strange fear that I had never experienced earlier…it was the fear of death. The images of those scattered corpse, kept recurring making me sick in the gut and reminding constantly of the closeness of death.
The deafening silence in the room was more like a boulder than a balm for me. I excused myself and took riki along to look for my mom who was taking unusually long to come back from the other room. I went out in the drawing room and turned right to enter my mom’s room when I saw a man in black…
“papaa…”I somehow managed to shout out while both of us tried fruitlessly to hurt him.
He was a terrorist.
What followed was a three to one duel with a terrorist. My heart was definitely beating at triple its normal pace. I finally got hold of a heavy rod with which I tried to crush his face, making him bleed. Suddenly the sound of my rod changed becoming more rhythmic. Thump…thump….thuuuump…and I woke up and switched off the alarm.
I was wet with sweat and tears.
(I am a person greatly influenced by my surroundings. To be precise, ‘I am only human’. So, frankly I was more surprised when I did not have such an obscure dream earlier, more closer to the attack. Now that it has come, I am sure it was an after effect of 26/11)
Everything was perfect and I am sure it was Mumbai. My cousin, riki and I were thoroughly enjoying ourselves. We had taken a bite of almost all snakes available and tried all rides in the fair. My father is a banker but for some mystic reason he was in charge of organinsing this fair which was the largest ever in India. I did not quite try to figure out the mystery…. (How the hell would it matter when you had such fun to look forward to).
So, off we went making the most of this “opportunity”. It was a huge field, which somehow seemed to be an extension of the field in my school. The exit gate was towards the south of the field and on its left was a roller coaster where both of us were headed. We had the tickets and were standing in a queue to enjoy the ride. Waiting in the extra-long queue, we were quite near the exit gate. Riki, suddenly pointed towards a rectangular flying object. We thought it was an unusually designed plane while it started coming closer. Soon it started emitting a ray of coloured lights in different directions. A panoramic view indeed. The lights started disseminating like the splinters after a cracker burst. As the lights started moving down without being eroded by air friction, we saw that they were actually jets….or some kind of rocket. The rectangular flying reservoir was still producing lots and lots of jets. I had almost concluded it was an air show when one of them came much closer than expected and in that last moment when it was still approaching….the thought hit me. Before I could hold riki’s hand and run away, the jet hit the middle of the ground and blasted.
In an instant, half the fair tumbled down as if made of playing blocks. Moving, jumping, laughing people lay scattered on the ground as if someone just blew sleeping powder over them. They smiled lying there because the death did not give them time to think it over. The rest of them shrieked, and moaned. And I just stood there…terrified. Finally, it was riki who pulled me to run with her outside the gate nearby. Somehow again, my house was just outside the gate. We rushed in and found my father and my grandmother in a room. My father desperately trying to sound practical in such a moment of frantic outburst said something we almost already knew. He said that it was a “terrorist attack”. We knew it…but somehow, after being pronounced so distinctly, it brought a fresh sense of strange fear that I had never experienced earlier…it was the fear of death. The images of those scattered corpse, kept recurring making me sick in the gut and reminding constantly of the closeness of death.
The deafening silence in the room was more like a boulder than a balm for me. I excused myself and took riki along to look for my mom who was taking unusually long to come back from the other room. I went out in the drawing room and turned right to enter my mom’s room when I saw a man in black…
“papaa…”I somehow managed to shout out while both of us tried fruitlessly to hurt him.
He was a terrorist.
What followed was a three to one duel with a terrorist. My heart was definitely beating at triple its normal pace. I finally got hold of a heavy rod with which I tried to crush his face, making him bleed. Suddenly the sound of my rod changed becoming more rhythmic. Thump…thump….thuuuump…and I woke up and switched off the alarm.
I was wet with sweat and tears.
(I am a person greatly influenced by my surroundings. To be precise, ‘I am only human’. So, frankly I was more surprised when I did not have such an obscure dream earlier, more closer to the attack. Now that it has come, I am sure it was an after effect of 26/11)
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Pheww…my first post.
It took me so long to post this first one because I had something in mind which I was simply UNABLE to put in black and white. (I wish I had Vasu’s dictionary of adjectives, as described b Vay, so I could express myself s beautifully). However, threatened, yesterday, by Vasu I thought I should just say it.
So, here it goes…
I ate and slept on my mommy tree,
All the while yearning to be so free.
I had so many legs but no wings to fly.
How much ever I ate, I didn’t become a butterfly.
I loved my tree, my shelter and support,
But I wanted to go beyond, from here to another fort.
Then one season I slept so deep
I woke up to see my wings in a heap.
Crumpled and crushed, they were all over me,
My legs disappeared, wonder where they could be…
Oh! It was divine, ecstasy limitless,
I was ready to fly, though my antenna was in a mess.
So, I took flight and glided through the air
Adieu dear tree. I moved ahead…unaware.
The world was huge, beautiful and unbelievable.
My pupils dilated…I was viewing a fairy tale, a fable
I soared all day and the sun began to sink,
I looked all around for some water to drink.
I was lost, no familiar sight in view,
Many thorny bushes, green trees were so few.
Crows everywhere captured the sky,
They didn’t let me go ahead, they didn’t let me fly.
Ugly insects waited on the trees
The cacophony of the forest made me freeze.
Then I saw colours-blue, red and lime,
Green, pink, purple, yellow, all in a rhyme.
Bright butterflies against the dark woods
So like me, they were magic to my mood.
Before I could know, I was their friend.
We played on the leaves and slid with their bend.
I was so lucky to find all of them-
I thank them each for being a precious gem.
This was for all the great friends I made in such a strange place for me. I hope we remain friends forever.
For Vasu, Vay, Ru, Sh and Pu
(I hope the short forms of your names are fine)
It took me so long to post this first one because I had something in mind which I was simply UNABLE to put in black and white. (I wish I had Vasu’s dictionary of adjectives, as described b Vay, so I could express myself s beautifully). However, threatened, yesterday, by Vasu I thought I should just say it.
So, here it goes…
I ate and slept on my mommy tree,
All the while yearning to be so free.
I had so many legs but no wings to fly.
How much ever I ate, I didn’t become a butterfly.
I loved my tree, my shelter and support,
But I wanted to go beyond, from here to another fort.
Then one season I slept so deep
I woke up to see my wings in a heap.
Crumpled and crushed, they were all over me,
My legs disappeared, wonder where they could be…
Oh! It was divine, ecstasy limitless,
I was ready to fly, though my antenna was in a mess.
So, I took flight and glided through the air
Adieu dear tree. I moved ahead…unaware.
The world was huge, beautiful and unbelievable.
My pupils dilated…I was viewing a fairy tale, a fable
I soared all day and the sun began to sink,
I looked all around for some water to drink.
I was lost, no familiar sight in view,
Many thorny bushes, green trees were so few.
Crows everywhere captured the sky,
They didn’t let me go ahead, they didn’t let me fly.
Ugly insects waited on the trees
The cacophony of the forest made me freeze.
Then I saw colours-blue, red and lime,
Green, pink, purple, yellow, all in a rhyme.
Bright butterflies against the dark woods
So like me, they were magic to my mood.
Before I could know, I was their friend.
We played on the leaves and slid with their bend.
I was so lucky to find all of them-
I thank them each for being a precious gem.
This was for all the great friends I made in such a strange place for me. I hope we remain friends forever.
For Vasu, Vay, Ru, Sh and Pu
(I hope the short forms of your names are fine)
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