Zimmer

I've moved.

2010-08-30T04:03:00.000-07:00

I now blog at http://urgu.tumblr.com

Kindly take the detour. Thank you :)

Flynn

2009-11-13T00:47:00.000-08:00

With a great cry and huge gasps of lungfuls of air, he jolted awake from what he had imagined to be eternal limbo. He could think of nothing, and didn't care about the nature of time. Suspended animation filled his wraith-like panic stricken consciousnes, the freeze-frame photovoltaic capture of the poised knife, in paused momentum, just bursting at the seams of its frame to unload itself, transfer the pain, translate the cold glint of polished steel into ripped flesh and opened chest. Maybe there was blood on the floor. What was real anyway? Who cared?

As he took in the lungfuls of air, he came to know he had not been breathing for quite some time now. He hadn't had too much last night, he hadn't had a shot in months, there was no possibility, no route in space-time leading to the present situation. The exotic psychedelia that inhabited him just a few moments ago began to fade away, one by one. Colours returned to their proper places, and his breathing grew normal. He was drenched in sweat, even his blanket. He sat up straight, poured himself a glass of water, and walked up to the window.

Insomnia was one thing, and this new kind of stifling thing was quite another. The guys at the bar told him to take care of it, or he could end up all strung up in his sleep, and not know a goddamn thing. To that, he simply nodded, and drained his glass. Lighting a cigarette, he got up and walked right out into the bustle of the city.

"Flynn Marsh", the lady called out, "do we have a Flynn Marsh here?" "Yes Ma'am", he said. He had a peculiar drawl, this nasal twing to the 'am in Ma'am, that betrayed his Chicago upbringing. He shuffled nervously and lied down on the table, standard procedure. After the torch-and-eyes routine, Flynn told the balding doctor he was going to die in his sleep because he simply stopped breathing at times. The doctor said, "Hmm", and thought awhile. Then he scribbled something on a paper and ...

He was in limbo again. He knew it. To break out of the suffocation, he had to surface. Once he surfaced, everything would go wild. He knew that too. But surfacing was salvation. In pain lay his redemption. Periodic sadomasochism, and he had no say in his sub-ego's whims and conspiracies. He had to move his hand. Break free. "Aaaagghhh!" again the now-familiar rush of blood to the head, three lungfuls of air in one go, and off-the-rocker wild crazy heartbeat. Gasp, gasp, choke, cough, cough, cough. Curses. Exhaustion, fatigue and impotent helplessness.

He could not concentrate at work. He kept dropping things, and got clumsy with paper and pencil. Peope shimmered in and out of view. Down at the pier, with a beer in hand, he watched the seagulls. "Ah, what the hell."He flung the bottle into the waves and lit up.
And just at that moment, through the cloud of cigarette smoke, Flynn beheld the most beautiful girl he had seen in his life. She was a charming young thing, with short blond hair and the prettiest dress. She was smelling some flowers at the shop and buying a magazine. The old shop keeper was saying something nice to her, because she immediately broke out into the most innocent laugh, tossing back her head ever so slightly. A halo of goodness, warmth and love sat lightly on her head, and she seemed to glow with happiness. Flynn had not noticed he had let fall the cigarette from his fully agape jaw, now displaying a thin line of drool. In his imagination, he had just got skewered by Cupid's pink missile, and she was at the other end of it. He followed her, ten paces behind, all around her Saturday morning shopping route, completely dazed, intoxicated by her presence.

As she waited by the curb to cross the road he caught up with her. As they both stood by each other in the motley crowd of random people, by the traffic light, he caught a whiff of her perfume. The light changed, and the crowd began to move. "Miss -", he managed before collapsing to the ground, coughing and spluttering.

When he came to, he was in a car with some guy with a moustache. Apparently Pete was the good guy who was getting him to a doctor or something. Pete, on noticing he had come to, began regaling him with his wartime exploits in Vietnam. "Stop the bloody car, I'm getting out of here." He felt nauseous. Boy, it was cold. He stomped on the ground to warm his feet up. Not a cloud in the sky. If only he had stopped the girl and got to talk to her... He felt confused. He had read about Buddhism and Hinduism, and reincarnation, and maya. Would he meet her again, in a different birth, tomorrow, next year? She had such lovely eyes... But what if she wasn't real, only a figment of his sleep-deprived imagination?

What if she was?

He was afraid to sleep that night. What if he dreamt about her, and died before the dream ended?

Faster!

2009-06-29T02:10:00.000-07:00

Writing little ditties for my love
on paper strips in the sand
Walking by the riverbed
On these i paint my rhyme.

Dancing in the shadows
warm nestling cuddling
chin gently rising
eyes closing
gentle osmosis
one with the one

The slow climb but steady pace
jumping all the gates
then the longest stretch for serenades
and suddenly the road runs out.

bursting from the top
of a cascading waterfall

a most unholy pause
poised, bracing for the rush
pin-balanced on a rock

then

the fall.

body ripped and injured
clawed at and maimed
clueless and drained

but happy.

oh so Fucking happy, yeah.

Mmm.

In The Lurch

2009-06-12T00:27:00.000-07:00

A door opened, and Joby stepped out.

Strangely unaffected by the surroundings, he started off rather tangentially in a direction, with unsteady step. There was no grass. Parched shitbits of earth with yawning cracks refused to sprout life. The land was irrigated by the blood from the hills. Two men tumbled down the hill, each animatedly trying to slash at the other with black claws. In the east the fires raged.

Joby walked in a trance. The waves of blood lapped at his feet. He passed by some vultures feeding at a mound of the vanquished. Sailing onward he reached the city. Excited mediapersons screamed into cameras bewailed the loss of something. Bulidings crashed down and dust filled the air. Hippies grabbed at women and dragged a few into dark alleys. Monks were shot point-blank. Emos stuck needles in everyone who stopped to dodge a falling meteor. Rabid mongrels barked the beginning of Apocalypse.

Then the army moved in and started killing everybody. Rebels ate sandwiches and threw shrapnel about. Doctors impregnated patients and nurses nursed the young and wounded. Diabolical maniacal laughter accompanied the thunderclaps.

Joby saw all this, and meekly kept going. Nobody noticed him. Not even the lunatics.

Presently, Joby met his mother on the edge of the cliff. They embraced, and jumped.

When they hit the cold water, the resurrected Albatross airlifted them to the other side.

Joby stood hesitating, and stepped back respectfully to allow his mother pass.
His mother shook her head and kissed her son.

Joby ascended the steps, and turned the knob.

And everything was right with the world again.

He

2008-12-09T09:27:00.000-08:00

And just when he thought it was safe for him to surface, life struck him down again.
In a semicomitragic turn of events, whatever he had ever counted on as his own crumbled to dust, and got scattered by the unforgiving wind into lands unknown to men, safe from the sweeping prying eyes of satellites and probing alien arms.

She was staring at him.
"What are you looking like that for?"
"Why not?"
She was speechless. With an angry huff of her shoulders, she planted her arms firmly on her hips and stared daggers at him. Unidentified steel weaponry briefly appeared from behind her, and disappeared before anything/body even knew of its (inifinitesimally small) existence. He wasn't seeming to care anyway. He lit up one, and puffed away into the incandescence of the hot April afternoon. She threw up her arms in what was an unmistakable sign of exasperation, and cried,

"Why not? You ask me that question, and I have no answer. So what if white rabbits run amok on the floor? I couldn't care less."

He continued puffing away. Finally he threw a stone at her, and she burst into a million pieces that caught the sun and glittered like diamonds, and disappeared one by one, like in one of those not-so-cheap High-End XBox games. He, who had no name, threw his smouldering cigarette on the ground and ground it into the ground.

Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds ...

He celebrated well that night. All of his friends had turned up for the party; it wasnt often that he threw this kinda money about. Multicoloured peacocks danced with wet rodents to Pink Floyd. The air was saturated with smoke from myriad sources. Everybody smiled at each other as they floated in green semisolid space.

He missed his mother. Years ago, she had said to him, " Son, always cross your t`s and dot your i`s." He had nodded. This poignant memory from the dark, decomposing remains of what was his memory moved him to tears. He excused himself from the table, leaving behind twelve pairs of stunned eyes accustomed to gore, violence and blood, but not to tears.

He swaggered to the terrace. Taking a final swig from McDowell`s, he gazed about him with absolute satisfaction. He felt that feeling people feel when they are King of All, and twitched his nose this way and that. He thought of open windows, climbed the parapet wall, and jumped.

Post Script: This story is the result of exactly one hour and five minutes of rapid typing and editing in order to meet the deadline drawn by the editorial board of my college magazine.

The Sign of the Cross

2007-10-20T21:16:00.000-07:00

Ever since dawn lit the underbelly of the eastern sky he had been pining for this one moment. And now, he knew it was time. All of his bones, tissues, muscles, and entrails throbbed and pulsed with feverish activity as he opened his eyes, concluding a laborious journey into his within. He ground his teeth softly.

Grabbing the bars of the window, he hoisted himself up. Gently wrapping his cloak about him he entered the sofly-lit hall. The smoke of incense pervaded the air. He marched to the corridor, and made his own light using a torch. The orange flames created a shadow that danced on the ceiling and the walls of the dungeon. In seconds the cabaret had ceased; and an old, wrinkled face, ripe with age, turned to the altar and let fall a tear. A peal of thunder which rent the skies, echoed portentously the young man's fate.

Passing swiftly through the vast expanse of the cathedral's labyrinth, he stepped out into the black night. Thin flakes of snow no bigger than snatches of cotton were falling sideways into the street. A tongue of white-hot lightning laid the road bare at his feet. A slight drizzle ensued. The rain sizzled as it plopped on his body.

Every inch of his being was aflame: his eyes alone shone brightly in the smokey black, akin to the wolf's. A sense of urgency illuminated his youthful visage. He read the sky - robust clouds riding on a carpet of black; stars extinguished by the wind. "Jesus" he said, and cast away his cloak. It landed with a heavy whisper onto some bramble bushes.

He was now perfectly naked. His elegant features formed a brilliant silhouette against the backdrop of the blue church and the white precipitation. The wind, which was no more than a tickling breeze, played around his jet-black hair and set jaw. He exhaled a hot blast of air, and stamped on the pavement under him. His gaze was fixed on the moon, straight and unwavering. Another bolt of celestial fire showed him the slope of the land. He was on the top of a shallow plateau, whose torso was populated by cedar and oak. He caught a last whiff of incense, and flinched.

The Within whispered to him that the place would soon turn into one hell of a hailstorm, with stones potent to kill. So he leapt. With all the agility of a panther he negotiated the slope, jumping off the trunks of trees, and landing on his feet. With untiring energy he bounded from crag to branch, thence to the undergrowth, avoiding thorns and nettles. Before long his feet were torn on the heels and his torso streaked with red. The night was still virgin, and it had stopped snowing long ago.

The greatest surprise was that he knew exactly what to do. "Though you spill blood with every step, you shall not stop": it was clearly an inviolable command. Helplessly, and (inexplicably) voluntarily, he kept up the pace. Frogs and grasshoppers jumped out of his way. Those that could not got singed and burnt. He had attained the womb of the jungle. An owl watched him, a swift-moving ball of fire.

Far, far away in the cathedral, the same old face contorted with pain. In a short time it slumped down, dead.

Presently he entered the savannah. The predators lifted their heads and tried to gain a scent of him, carried on the wind. It was here that he first paused for breath. Looking at himself, he understood that he had made the descent with few serious injuries. He resumed his journey with a mighty sprint. The hyenas sniggered away and made for him. As they gained on him, they perceived a heavy something moving straight towards them. Unable to take the mounting pulse in their temples, they fled. Too late. The ball of fire had traced a path of burnt grass right across the heart of the savannah, leaving seven dead hyenas in its wake.

He kept running, jumping, bounding, racing with clenched jaws and focused vision. He could not be a second late or early. Great deeds are not done before or after their time. Time...it was indeed a race against time and fatality. Within a voice whispered, “Faster, faster!”, and melted into transcendental subconsciousness. The night was almost spent.

As the first rooster in the land rattled its scrawny throat he had left it for good. God was waiting.

Sweat had bathed his torso, arms, thighs and legs. Glowing with the remnants of the night’s shower, the trees purred as the breeze caressed them. The tremulous leaves shed their few drops of cold water on him as he passed under their canopy. It was really refreshing to him, after that journey. He had now slowed into a brisk jog, and he welcomed the cheerful reception that the foliage above gave him. “It wont be long now”, another whisper, fading as soon as it was born.

It was sunrise. The golden circle began its diurnal orbit in a warm orange eastern sky. As it dispelled night he glanced up at it, and smiled. His teeth glistened in the sparse light of early dawn. He was almost done.

Soon he felt he was drowning. His lungs were distended with some kind of gas, and he was suffocating. He gasped for breath, and passed out.

When he came to, he was in shock. Had he missed the moment? “NO, move now. Or else...” It was a threat from within, and he knew how that sentence was completed. Shuddering, he brushed off the dust and ran to make up for lost time.

Moses waved to him. He did not pause to return the greeting. Instead he dodged the trees, and their multi-hued fruit, and leapt lightly over a freshwater stream. Abraham smiled contentedly at him, lifted the veil of white, and disappeared. Fishes darted in the clear water, and snow-capped mountains shone lustrously in the background. Honey and milk flowed in runnels down mounds of gold. He stopped: another hoarse whisper had commanded him to. “Where, where?”, he said aloud.

“Come, my son. I have been waiting for you. Long years you have suffered; your time in purgatory is over. Rise, Isaiah, and behold the power of God!”

He looked all around him, startled by the holy power of the voice. His tired body was threatening to give way any time, and his knees were weak.

“Rise, Isaiah, and behold the Lord of Hosts in all His glory: flanked by the lion, the Lamb and the sentinels of death and destruction: bow down before Him. Let not your tiredness impede you, Isaiah, open your eyes and ears, you are delivered!”

And a deafening crash was heard. The earth opened, and he screamed. As he fell into the abyss yawning under him, he cried, “God!” as he flailed his arms and legs. He was then blinded by a searing light. He opened them to see a white phantasmic, cataclysmic being reaching for him in bolts of lightning. He felt its power all over him, from the outside and the inside. The fire in him leapt up and danced manifold. Every cell in his body was alive and kicking. He unleashed a mighty cry of indescribable joy, his countenance indescribably lit up with Joy, and reached into the white. He felt it descend on him, a great peace in his breast and nectar through his veins; he breathed in all that he could of the being, fiercely wading through all to reach It. And when he did -

Time lost all its meaning as he became one with the infinite and infinitesimal, with the atom and the black hole, the sand of the desert, the molten lava, the juice of the virgin, the waters of the oceans and the complete in the incomplete. He was now the laugh of the child, the rage of Genghis, the thrust, the fear, the joy, the very atom of all. He pervaded everything and everything was contained in him. He was All and All was Him.

Somewhere, the plaintitive cries of the mocking bird echoed through the forest and washed over a clump of dung. A tree of no name and kin began to sprout even as the sun shone down upon it, illuminating the forest with an unearthly glow.

Meet Myself

2007-08-30T07:30:00.000-07:00

Everyday as the sun sets
i line up for my wages,
and leave carrying my ashes home.
As I sit down to my dinner
served by my wife, that poor lady
with hollow empty eyes,
ash turns to dust.

Welcome to my workplace
where stones are made.
Specially crafted by the ones
who are bereft of dream,
Pieces of earth pregnant with an angel each,
await the liberating chisel.
Flint and stone or
gravel and sand -
something flying from the rocks
all the time.
The perpetuation of a mistake
an unfortunate ancestor made
The Seth smiled as he calculated:
As many generations as the money.

One day his men barged into my hut
They took everything.
When at last there was nothing,
they shoved that too into their bag
and walked away whistling.
At least they left my wife alone.

I once had a mother
She died before i could ask her her name
Nobody knows her name!
The other day a saffron clad beard
walked the streets, begging with a bowl.
People thronged His presence.
Very proudly i got Padma to give him food.
If Greatness lies
in eating cowfeed three times a day,
Or not eating at all
i should have been God by now.

My son, he studies well.
he keeps telling me things about
the sky, the dam and the plants.
One day he will become a great doctor.
He will cure for a very small fee
and get people to eat less.
We will have a car and Padma can
drink lots of coloured soda,
the good variety...
...If Mohan survives to be twenty.

Not for long. The Winds of Change are Coming,
My friend Balu tells me with fire in his eyes.
When? Today? Tomorrow? asks Mohan, fire in his belly.
Fire...hmph. The same thing that makes meat
turns into a celestial vehicle for the liberated
from the burning ground.

Not for me are those havens
Higher realms of God await my arrival.
Evergreen immortals smile upon me
Reaching out with sparkling clear arms
Let me taste them, their honey
It's been too long, now,
It's time. Water!

Actual But Centrifuged!

2007-06-25T20:44:00.000-07:00

Death enters first.
Gently holding in jars
Kissed lentils.Many nights of
Pervese qualms, and
Roaring shafts of thunder undo verisimilitude.
And Weak xenophobes still yearn for the zenith...

A new Beginning

2007-03-11T20:56:00.000-07:00

Due to repeated complaints from the one reader of this blog for the past year, i have decided to end a long period of inactivity and sloth in blogging. Thanks, Sriram, 4 finally getting me around to agree. For the (hopefully more than one) readers : Pl do expect a steady correspondence.

The perfect Li(f)e

2007-01-29T02:05:00.000-08:00

Okay. Here goes writing 4 the first time in months. I can feel it coming on already.

It was about ten in the morning. A plastic bag filled with tied shafts of spinach wound its way through the sparse but irritatingly reticent crowd, riding on the robust arms of the energetic Sivakami Iyer, who kept elbowing obese middle-agers out of the way, crying, “Vali, vali…onnu vazheennu maaredo!” As the bag reached its destination, its contents were butchered up and mixed into a hot syrupy grave containing similar fated objects.

Madhu drew up the sleeve of his kurta and glanced at his watch. “Mm…”his friend teased, “what are u in such a hurry for? Just cant wait for tonight, can you?” Madhu was not amused, and glared at his friend. One gets nervous on one’s wedding, but never so eager for the night as to get completely distracted, he told himself. Then he thought about his bride who was probably putting flowers in her hair and things. He suddenly wanted to see the long stupid string of circular objects that would be hung on her long hair, and to laugh at her, if it were possible. Madhu walked out into the hall that was slowly getting filled and headed to the bridal chamber, praying that he may not be stopped by a relative who would decide to deny him access as part of a hideous pre-bridegroomal torture.

Sushila was crying. The kohl linings of her shapely eyes made narrow black drain-runnels down her cheeks. She was crying out loud as she grabbed her toe and fell back onto the bed, amidst much ominous creakings. Shocked and concerned Relatives crowded around her, making a big deal out of a stubbed toe. Many of them hung about just for the formality: They just came for the feast; because their wives would not cook for the day a wedding was on. Sushila wailed even more loudly as she spied her soon-2-b hubby slowly ambling towards her with malice on his childish face.

And at evening, vehemently protesting against the many idiotic rituals that they had to perform, the couple went across to a lounge and sat down. They had to be dragged away to the ritual area with Madhu screaming that it was getting late. And then there remained the most embarrassing one of all: A bunch of strappy young girls teased the life out of Sushila before shoving her into The Room with a brass pitcher of milk. Perfume wafted for brief seconds from the room, whose door was slammed shut by an impatient arm that instantly wound around Sushila as the door kissed the frames.

“Everything seemed just so perfect then, didn’t it, Sushi?” Madhu asked his wife, who was cradling his second baby. “Nothing could possibly go wrong…”he sighed. The only reason he slept on the terrace of his ancestral (small) home was to wish upon his final resort, shooting stars. Stars were what he had been seeing for the past many years, shuttling between many jobs and perceptions of life. Sushila often thought it was cruel of Ganesha the Obliterator of Grief to add, no, multiply to their troubles.
“Come, eat.” Madhu sat down to his meal of chapatti and salted onions and chillies. Within minutes he choked on the spicy chillies and had to be retrieved by Sushila’s glass of water.

Glass splintered everywhere as Sushila ducked under the table. Madhu threw away the rest of the bottle as he dragged her to the cot, beating her all the while. Pushed supine onto the cot, Sushila was rendered helpless before her drunk husband, who looked like he could kill. Only for a moment. She rolled over, raced to the table, and brandished a long knife.
Madhu slumped into the only good sofa of their flat, with the knife in his throat. The flies that quickly settled on his erupting blood did not fail to see Sushila deserting the place with her children.

There was a fire. “Where?” “There! By the lamp! Someone has lit up the jar of oil!” Nobody in the faceless crowd had either the time or patience to look at the ground a bit and save a lady from the heady stampede. Terrorists rejoiced in incarcedine glory as they brought down all kinds of people to their knees, succumbing to the crowd. Two children, both of them looking for their mother, were shot in the head and chest respectively, and fell, unwilling martyrs, in the presence of God.

The crowd rushed out into the open, where many made off in scooters carrying plastic bags of weekly provisions.

The Comprehensive epic works of Shri Thunjathu Gurudasa Nam(b)yaar(u): Gurudaasa Ramaayanam Kilippattu

2006-10-22T05:06:00.000-07:00

The Ramayana: An epic well-written by Valmiki, into whose unequivocal stanzas many Hindu and non-Hindu persons read meanings that are seemingly incomprehensible for ordinary mortals.
King Rama, for the simple reason that he happened to be an extremely successful king, has now been deified. Sita the epitome of (allow me to put it so crudely) Virginity, and Lakshman the dutiful brother.

The Scene: Dasratha has ordered Rama out of the palace – Sita obeys – and Lakshman, too, packs up his things in fraternal devotion. A lady meekly stands beside Lakshman in his hall, watching him pack, change into deerskins, packing a couple of deerskin undergarments in the process. He is in a frightful hurry, and packing being done, orders to the lady that she bring him his weapons. The lady obeys, and when she passes into the light from the chandeliers he realizes that she is his wife, NAME. When he sets upon waxing the strings of his bow, he sees three droplets of water sitting cautiously upon the helm; they taste salty. Looking at his wife’s face, he sees her quickly turning away and wiping her eyes with the edge of her ohh-so-transparent veil drawn over her scanty-clothed figure (my readers do watch TV, don’t they?). She sits beside him and pleads unspoken feelings, entire negotiations with her eyes. To no avail. Lakshman casts aside the person of his wife from himself, and sets out to the forest, leaving behind a disconsolate weeping NAME.

If the astrologers’ sayings could be heeded in a situation better in circumstances than the present one, then she would have had the rapturous experience of being planted with a seed within that night, auspicious in every respect due to the rare concurrence of all possible favourable omens.

The trio leave. Amidst all the hullabaloo about the father King Dasratha recounting the fulfillment of the curse laid on him by an aged couple, and the bemoaning of the women, the lamentations of Kaikeyi, the anger of Bharatha, one person stands apart in the fact that she is stoic, when she actually should find a place amongst the now breast-beating women of the household. She is NAME. Standing apart from the maddening conduct of the palace, she faces the land from her balcony, and the moon smiles upon her in lunar sympathy. The tears have dried upon her pale face, and nocturnal flirtatious Gandharvas pine away for eternity singing her praises and dreaming liquid, oily, porno dreams about her radiant figure.

Many many days later, a monkey arrives at the palace, and is beaten with sticks by the citizens of the kingdom who consider its arrival as an ill omen, foretelling bad luck for the King who is bed-ridden suffering from grief born of separation. This news reaches NAME and she somehow does not feel at ease. That night a monkey arrives at her balcony, and delivers her the heart-rending news that Sita has been abducted by a demon, along with the balm that Hanuman and others are on the trial. She fears not for Rama or Sita but for Lakshman. In her dreams a few hours later, the whole drama of the fateful day of her separation from her husbands replays as in a flashback sequence, in black-and-white. Everyday from then on, she sits in prayer fearing for Rama, Sita and her precious Lakshman.

Fresh tidings. War has begun down south. At the negative peak of the central axis of the world (that is India) the forces of good and evil, both replete with arms, clash. Lakshman was wounded semi-fatally a few hours ago, and Hanuman’s great-nephew flies across to Ayodhya to convey the news to the family, and leaves, the folds of his mundu bulging with apples and mangoes, chewing contentedly upon a ripe one. NAME faints, and family members discover that she fainted not because of grief, but because another organism had begun germinating within her, sending up a shy plumule, tickling NAME from inside, in the process. All care is given to NAME so that she may deliver her child in the best possible manner.

The war over, Lakshman returns with Rama and Sita, to find himself the father of what he joyously expected to be a girl child. Beside himself with rage at finding a boy in the cradle, he vows never to speak to NAME ever again. Rama rules over the land, Sita is disposed of while pregnant, in the forest, and Rama grows melancholy. All the while Lakshman is at the feet of his brother, lapping up his every word, and paying no heed to the needs and expectations of his wife.

A few days later, unknown to Rama, Sita lays two eggs in a nest of twigs and torn clothes, provided by the seer Valmiki, who is too busy chronicling the lives of Rama and Sita to pay any notice to pregnant Sita screaming in pain, and who leaves everything to his ashramites. Sita accidentally leans backward upon what she thinks 2 b the wall, and falls backward, injuring herself by falling backwards, and providing tangential acceleration to her eggs in the process. The eggs crack when they hit the wall, and plop! fall two wet, slimy things upon the rotting garbage heap in the corner. They are Lava and Kusha, the Ever Slimy Rotten beings, the ones who will prove themselves to be the downfall of Rama’s race.

At the palace, NAME commits suicide when she realizes Lakshman had been a Shinto priest all along, and Rama adds to the general frenzy by proclaiming his imminent death by impact of semi-solid waste as prophesied by an old hag who came begging at the palace and finally left confused as to why she came there in the first place. Then Rama finds out about the existence of his wife in the rough of the forest, and sets out to reconcile with her. Sita is offended when he throws stones at and drives away Lava and Kusha, thinking them to be demons of a liquid nature. Sita appeals to the earth to swallow her up; she falls into the womb of the earth. Greatly angered by the incident, Lava and Kusha fling themselves upon Rama who passes away as per the prophesy.

Lakshman, thereafter, sees no point in living in Ayodhya, and leaves for his heavenly Shinto abode up above by lying perfectly naked in a cave full of mildew bacteria, snails, and ant-eaters. Repulsed to no extent by the anarchy prevailing in Ayodhya, the neighbouring kingdom, Mithila severs all trade contacts, following suit as other kingdoms leave Ayodhya in isolation. Presently,
Life sucks in Ayodhya, and then everyone dies.

Gurudaasa Raamayan-ithihaasam sampoornam

>> the end<<

The Youth Festival Experience

2006-08-15T06:38:00.000-07:00

>> Today (Tuesday, August 08, 2006) was the first day of YF06, hosted and conducted by us. I was on the Publicity Department, quite against my wishes initially. I actually wanted to be on the Debate Committee, but by the end of the day, I felt that I was better off in the Debate Committee than in the Publicity C. But anyway, I made friends with the mike and I feel less oru mathiri when I take the mike in my hands.
The reason is quite simple. The biggest mistake I ever made in my short (15) years of existence is this: I wasted all my younger years in academic pursuits and other things, and due to this strange compelling subduing power of Stage Fear, could not participate in previous editions of YF. As a result, I had very little stage experience. I can write fairly well, but I suck at speaking. I calculated that by inducting myself into the Debate C, I would be able to practise some public speaking skills Ashique (“Dubai”, “Dufoi”) taught me.
I didn’t quite understand Soni madam when she did not let me participate for either Recitation or Declamation. Now I do understand. When Ashique and another veteran, Joms told me my problem – a lack of expression on the face and an ability to convey emotion through the speech, or, in Ashique’s lingo, “the technique of voice modulation”. I finally managed to do the intro quite well; with the damned expression in my voice and everything. I bungled initially, and it took me quite a while to find my feet. I bungled one final time before the end of the day. (Grand total of mistakes : Two.)

>> With at least 4 different people plucking my shirt at different points of time during the day, I think I did fairly well. Till now, I used to be this ass who just sat in a chair and poked fun at the participants, when I couldn’t perform half as well as the least accomplished of them. Now I have an idea of how grueling such a job is. Only an idea; the real thing is LAFest.

>> About the previous entry: I have absolutely no intention of continuing that shit. I think I am going to delete it something. Bye for now.

VENUS

2006-08-05T09:59:00.000-07:00

For all of you authors out there...

One day I sat myself down before this computer screen, and typed a small story. However, i was not able to complete it. So I present this unfinished story to all of you, to add on and conclude. Please continue this story in the Comments section. And while you are at it, keep in mind that i am as eager as any one of you to see the completion of this story. And let the first of a series of bits of stories string together! I will withold the brainchildren of many minds no longer from their final destination among the logical pieces of this story. Enjoy!

Fifteen minutes from Dógrez’s cry of “Land, ahoy!” we struck land.

We knew two things about this new world that was unfolding before us. One, it was largely uninhabited; those areas which were not, were inhabited by a tribal civilization, and were closely guarded by their wary and armed watchdogs of the rainforest.

Two, five English ships were reportedly seen moving towards these shores a week ago. Implication: Many English foot-archers, rifles and cavalry were already up and about on these shores. We the French had ample reason to be cautious.

Cautious we were in the safe docking in a shaded cove; and in the subsequent hiding of the ship in foliage. Even so, in spite of our caution, a large trunk of ammunition slipped from the deck, and Crashed open upon the gravelly beach. The sound echoed through the rainforest. No harm came out of it, but we clutched our guns. Then for a fleeting instant, I fancy I saw the figure of a man slink away in the undergrowth. But it was only for an instant.

When all our stuff was unloaded from the ship, our Captain Bernard sent three cavalrymen into the area to scout. They came back, and led the company into a clearance in the jungle to pitch camp. That was how we came to camp in a dark, dismal and damp clearing in the rainforest. I was apprehensive of the choice of site for camp at first, as any natives would know of this place, and that man in the undergrowth I saw could bring an Ethnic army to our place. But the Captain said:

“Which is why, my dear fellow, we have a Watch, about fifteen strong. The Watch shall be among the shrubbery surrounding the Camp, and will alert us in case anything chances upon our territory.”
I had to give in to a determined commander, who incidentally blinded by his (over) confidence.

Soon, six hours after we first struck land, we had all of us lounging in our territory. We hadn’t brought with us any drink; some of us felt bored with just idling about, so I talked to the Captain.
“Right”, said he, “but I shall allow only three men set forth from Camp at a time. If others want to follow, they shall have to await the three-man party that has gone, and leave in groups of three, and so on.”
All the men listening agreed heartily; since I was the one who spoke to the Captain first, I was allowed the first chance, and the men drew lots. Finally the lots decided that Tinderbox and Felanor should accompany me.

We promised to return in a short while.

The Captain said, “And I want a full report of the land when you are back.” “Yessir”, we chorused. And then we went west.

We were finally out of camp!
Tinderbox ran ahead of us, and we kept close to the shore. We would have not gone a couple of miles from Camp, when I heard the sound of rippling water and a voice that seemed to be in song. Tinder and Fell heard it too, and they whispered, “What?” but I motioned them aside, and went towards the sound, sword in hand.

I stamped over the shrubby undergrowth, and from the cover of a girthy tree, I looked; and beheld a sparkling lagoon. Coconut trees grew upon the sandbar, and the water was transparently clear. The noon sun broke into an infinity of distortions upon the blue waters. The waters were rippling from an epicenter just about the bend. So I sheathed my sword, and drew out my crossbow, and loaded it as I walked to the epicenter in the cover of the trees.

A girl was bathing in the azure waters, and she seemed ethnic in origin. She was singing softly to herself, even as she splashed her hands and legs about and above herself. She seemed quite ecstatic, and I watched in awe.

I observed the sun adorn her black tresses as a celestial jewel, even as she reached a peak in her song and behaved like a dolphin. (I sighed heavily).

I had heard many of my learned fellowmen back home speak at length of Beauty, and how Beauty is not walled in by any barriers of race, or colour. Now I did not need any philosopher to tell me that.
And so I named my bathing lady Venus.

Venus, the Greek god of Love (or something);
Venus, the star at sunrise and sunset;
Venus, the native girl to whom I willingly seceded all my heart;

Venus, the girl who caused me to topple over the green hillock in my adrenalin-enhanced eagerness. I gave a short cry as I fell, and Venus saw me. She screamed too, and quickly gathering her clothes in her arms, disappeared into the density of the forest. Darn!

At first I did not realize the consequences of my rash deed. I just lay there, revelling in short daydreams about my new obsession. It was when my comrades came running up beside me that I realized what my Venus could cause in the circles of her tribe. Instantly I was on my legs, and met my comrades’ angry gazes. This time I pleaded: “Whaat?”

Captain Bernard was very very angry. I hardly see the need of repeating all that he said to me, so I say again: He was Furious.
The men were very tense. Would the hunters become the hunted this day? It rent my heart to see them suffer on my account. Seeing them, I began cursing myself with many abuses that Captain usually showered from his lips.

Like, here were all of us, in the middle of a tropical rainforest, with Englishmen and tribal foes prowling around. It needed only my inadvertent lust to worsen the already doomed expedition. Why did I ever lean my ears to that ethnic Siren, indeed? Possibly, all of us would soon be hunted down by a posse of rainforest tribal organisms. At this point, I think I shed a tear, as I thought of my mother and sister, who clung to my legs pleading me not to go, at the mention of my will to accompany this accursed expedition.

Then I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was the Captain, and he smiled at me, a fatherly, assuring smile. Pointing towards the centre of the camp, he said: “Look here.”

I looked, and saw a couple of tribals prostrating before our men, and one of them held out a Red Arrow with his face towards the ground. The other pushed before us a shield with a bunch of eagle feathers upon it, and thus paid us obeisance. Our men had their weapons handy, and though the two messengers were unarmed, I espied hundreds of befeathered and armed tribals assume positions in the foliage all around us. One wrong move, and many French would fall to tribal arrows.
Captain Bernard sensed this too, and acted swiftly and diplomatically.

He stepped forward towards the prostate tribals, and sheathed his sword, unclasped it, and placed it beside himself as he went down upon his knees, and performed an exaggerated bow before the tribals. Next, he bade the men sheath their swords too, and then he grinned warmly at the hidden tribals.

By this time, the men had got wind of his plan, and a few of them put out a few plates of food, and invited the tribals in sign language. Encouraged, the tribals came out of their hiding places, and put down their bows on the ground in sign of friendship, even as they beamed warmly at us too. Their leader was befeathered (as was every one else) and he had a few conspicuously white streaks across his cheeks. This man led a dog to our food, and made the dog eat it. When he was satisfied the dog showed no signs of dying, he laughed aloud and embraced the nearest Frenchman in his vicinity, which happened to be me. A great wave of joyful laughter went across all the men gathered in our territory, as more embraces followed. CheekStreak (as I will hence refer to the tribal leader) seemed to make the most number of embraces, and I saw even the stout Captain Bernard writhe in his bear hug.

P.S>> Dont forget to write.

THE LUNATIC

2006-08-03T09:56:00.000-07:00

“Hello, my name’s Kirkwood, and how can I help you? You have come a-visiting? Wonderful, and who will you be visiting? Bed No. 144, sir? Climb the stairs over there, and you’ll find 144 to the left. And, sir, please fill this Visiting Form here, will you? Thank you.

“Like, sorry for the interruption, but I really have to guide people around to their folks in bed. To answer your first question, man, I am, simply, a Guide. To be more precise, as my job as Chief of Guides here, it is my duty to look after, and control and restrain as necessary, victims of insanity who have the misfortune to be admitted to this asylum. And this asylum has very few visitors, mind you, there’s the one climbing the stairs now. I also work for the Chief Doctor whose only responsibility is to herd together a group of 50 strongmen, 5 for a floor, around the asylum. A few of them are trained in injecting morphia and tranquilizers. Sometimes when my mind gets the better of me, I lazily spend the hot afternoon in my little office, with my legs propped up onto the table, and find myself thinking that the strongmen over here are as lunatic as any one of the asylum’s inmates, or even as me.

“Oh, you want to know about the deaths. I quite forgot that you were reporting for the local paper. Let’s begin to take notes, shall we, hm? Let’s begin. Since it so happened that I was the only Guide employed in this place, the Chief Doctor was very friendly with me, and told me everything. I even accompanied him occasionally, and always when the Doctor was visiting Sankunni. And that’s how I know most of what I am going to tell you now.

“Sankunni was an abnormal lunatic.
I mean, he did not those things which the world expects of a lunatic. While his hyperactive and perpetually excited roommates drove imaginary airplanes, and shut themselves up in imaginary pressure cookers, and barked, whinnied, mooed, clucked, and roared, Sankunni would lean back on the wall, and impassionedly watch the proceedings with a beedi between his lips. He was a very curious specimen to all of us.

“Every time the Chief Doctor came to his bed on his daily rounds, the belief I harboured in his sanity was fortified. Like, it is hard to believe a man is insane if he smiles at you every morning, offers you a beedi occasionally, and calmly asks for the day’s paper. At night, I would shudder to think of him as a sane man – A sane man living amidst lunatics!

“Sankunni exhibited only one kind of repetitive behaviour. Every evening, at sunset, he would put his head out of the window (which was close to his bed) and seemingly yell at the trees. A carefully calculated few minutes later, he would drop a five-rupee coin out of the window, whereupon it would clang on something metallic and sonorous. Sankunni was perfectly normal otherwise.

“He gradually began exhibiting ‘normal’ behaviour, and undeniable signs of sanity, that the C.Doctor was moved to think of his coin ritual as only a perfectly sane affair (which it was). One day, Sankunni called the CD to his side, and said that it was only right that the doctor kept in mind the fact that he felt afraid during certain nights, when slumber was driven out from his brains by the mad ravings of a lunatic in an adjoining bed. I felt sorry for the man, and felt even more so with the secret suspicion that he was a sane man. I heard the Doctor agree to keep it in his mind.

“But later the Doctor told me, ‘On returning to my room, I was beaten down by a huge anguish: ‘Have I not stored a sane man in a hencoop of lunatics? How many such sleepless nights must have passed for him?’ Acting upon this sudden but powerful impulse, I saw the Doctor sign papers for his release.

“The next day, evening time. It was raining torrentially, and bolts of lightning flashed down the length of our 10-floor asylum. Leaves of trees swayed and dripped, and seemed to be petrified by the howling of the wind.
The coin was dropped, and I approached Sankunni. Three strongmen loomed in the room behind me, patrolling. I had one strongman behind me. I handed the papers over, and proclaimed him free to go wherever he wished. He looked at me quizzically.

“Then he laughed a ‘gobble’ of laughter. In seconds he was laughing uncontrollably, and then hysterically. Two strongmen came up behind me as rearguard. When Sankunni was done, he cried next. He wept, “My family is out for my life. Don’t send me out,” and such things he said, and burst into loud sobs. I was beginning to have dark suspicions regarding his sanity by now, but I tried to console him.
“That was the last straw. He repeated, “Leave? Leave? Leave?” for maybe a hundred times, with intensity growing manifold, till at the end, his eyes were red, he was shivering all over, his hair drenched with sweat, gnashing his teeth – unmistakable signs of an outbreak of lunacy of the first order. The strongmen rushed to him, too late. He had, by that time, wrenched a whole bloody bar off the bloody barred window, and savagely mauled down the men. He lunged at me next, but I ducked, and ran out of the room, and turned right. As I crouched in a dark corner, I saw Sankunni storm out of the room, armed with his bar, and gored a nurse carrying pills and needles. He then made for the terrace. I tore my hair in despair – a lunatic on the rampage, two men down, a nurse killed…

“I fetched my gun and burst out into the terrace. It was raining so hard that I was instantly drenched, head to toe. I think now, that he was probably waiting for me in the terrace.
As soon as he saw me, he ran at me with poised bar held aloft, and yelling as one with the surging hum of his testosterone fuel, a loud “Aaa…”. A huge cosmic bellow it seemed to me then, when suddenly, a bolt of lightning struck the bar he was holding. He in his speed, instantly let go of the bar, and went pummeling into the wall, and rolled over. I had him covered with my gun, and approached.

“Even as the huge and numerous raindrops saturated the air spaces in my labyrinthine hair and ran down the barrel of my gun, I realized Sankunni had passed out. His body was toasted by the heavens, and foul singed odours arose from it. I would have, given the pathos of the situation, forgiven him with all my heart, if he had opened those wide white eyes of his, and looked upon my face, even if it was to be his last. But he did no such thing; instead, he just lay in the rain, his singed body sizzling in the rain. He had passed out, and away.

“I walked away to the sanity of my lunatic asylum, much to the mindless mocking and unintentional jeering of my more sane patients. As I walked I thought about the damage and destruction that Sankunni had left behind on his final rampage, and suddenly, I felt giddy. I lay down on my bed and slept like a dead man. The next day, I… or maybe I will tell you that after this: The next day, the Doctor was not to be seen. He had left his diary open that night, and written something on it. The contents of the previous night’s entry made me shudder and tremble; here it is - read, or whatever, take it down.”
DIARY. 16-08-1835.

“After I learnt that Sankunni had broken loose, something whirled inside my head, and then I passed out – black. Pitch black for a few seconds, and then a shooting pain searing through my head.

I opened my eyes to find myself in a pink room with two horns on my head, and Sankunni sitting in state across the room, comfortable on one chair which he shared with Satan, who was sneering at me uncontrollably. Satan held aloft a glamourous bolt of lightning and poised it over my head (I was helpless – I found myself bound in a strait jacket.) and let it fly. As it flew towards me, something stuck a spanner into the dial machinery of Time, and the bolt froze in mid-air. Satan and Sanku too were found frozen. I alone could move, and move I did. I quickly unloosened myself, and reached for my gun, which was surprisingly, suspended in mid-air conveniently for my reach. I shot both of them, and then ran around my captivity. I could find no exit, no crack in the wall – cotton paddings! Heavens! I am in a solitary confinement room! Have I gone mad? Where did Satan – Sankunni – myself - Kirkwood – my staff…. Pink, Blue, Red.

Goodbye. Freedom at last from the padded walls. Hahaha !”

REPORTER’S ENTRY. Page 15.

This last part of the diary is covered in blood leaked from the doctor’s head, which is found to be resting on the above-mentioned page. The doctor lies with a .25 pistol clutched in his right hand. In all probability, the victim must have suffered a heavy shot in the head from the gun, either from a foreign hand, or possibly, his very own. Evidence points to the latter. Looks like the lunacy doctor turned loony towards the end and shot himself.

**** **** **** ****

Hence Proved.
Quod Erat Demonstratum.
Et cetera.

LAFest - An Insider Account

2006-07-27T10:31:00.000-07:00

So. It has been a lifetime since I last wrote.
To compensate for all those words lost, let me now try and put down my thoughts on silicon.

LaFest 2006 came to a glamourous conclusion yesterday. Let me start from the very beginning. With a month to go, the 11th were intimated about the jobs reserved for them for LF, and nobody took it seriously. We just went about doing normal things, carefree, and the Jobs For LaFest lay chalked up on the right hand side of the board. Come to think of it, I am now pretty sure that it was because of a certain level of snobbishness that manifests itself in every batch of 11th std. students, and prevents them from showing off to their juniors, and thereby, failing to generate interest in the actual sweat involved behind LF. I myself was surprised when these people, our seniors, said, “How many people want to be ushers?” and finding less-than-meagre responses form us, remarked, “Edey, last year we had almost all the class volunteering for being ushers.” Only a few hands were up in the air then, and to say the most, all the class (save a few Asst. Event Cood.s) became ushers eventually. Back then, we did not have any idea of how we were to go about doing things.

As LF06 drew nearer and nearer, attendance fell down the Mariana Trench in our classes. Fewer people came to school to attend classes. Till the 5th or 6th day backwards from LF, my class (inclu. Me) were under the impression that Computer Lab classes were provided to the students to access the Net free of charge, and to play UT and CS over the LAN. And then we had Shijo sir playing spoilsport every lab class, either disconnecting the LAN, or barging into the lab at regular intervals and bellowing, “Eiy, Hoosplayinggaymes ‘ere ? ” (Hmph…Fume!)

More about the lab: We had at least 2 holidays before LF; all of us were required to come to school to help out. I did not attend the first day, but the second day. Then I found most of Our Venerable Seniors whiling away time by themselves playing over the LAN and shooing us away from the premises, which they compensated by finishing things on the eve of LF, well into the night, as a result of which DP got pissed off on account of poor organization of the rehearsal; Implication → us juniors and seniors had to leave the school only at 2200 hours.

(I fear this will be too boring; nevertheless, not all thoughts can be expected to be interesting.)
Quite responsibly, Ganesh, Renjith, and Dennis (not a Menace) explained to the ushers their duties, which were minimal but of utmost importance, a day before LF (the day before yesterday). Whatever any Organiser or Cood.nator might say, it is only the truth that ushers form the backbone of the smooth functioning of LF. Any Org or Cood may go on fiercely for hours together, describing what pressures a Cood or Org face, and blahblah jaba-jaba, and so forth. What happens to all the preparations they did for the big event, if they find that the teams have not reported backstage at the right time? They immediately crib for the Cood, who in turn, must seek the services (viz. put the blame on) of the ushers of that school.
Quite clearly, it all boils down to the ushers, who make or break the events. (Oh, and Andrews said it was actually the participants who b. or m. LF, which also happens to be true.)

Since this is supposed to be an impartial account of LF, and not a personal expression of feelings, let me, without further ado, bring it up without any further delay.

I could not bear witness to the Inaugural Ceremony as I was waiting (hoping against inexorable Fate that my school, which did not send in its participants’ list till the end) for my school to arrive. The Chief Guest was the IG of Police, South Zone. The Ceremony went off well, and my friend told me (sarcastically) that the IG was endorsing traffic rules and exhorting the audience to obey the rules. So I gazed at the long and colourful lines of girls moving towards the Sutter Hall, sighed and sat upon the grass, waiting for my school.

I saw only a couple of schools performing at Harmony, one of them having sent a very attractive group of girls on stage, sang as though they wanted Music to get intoxicated with their charm and curl up at their feet. Needless to say, I could not help feeling that whenever girls do stuff, that stuff assumes totally different proportions altogether. Nothing much about Harmony to remark upon.

Up next was Filme Duplicano, an event where popular movies were spoofed and tragically, mixed with another film to create a whole mess of confusing plots and humorous caricatures of characters and actors. The participation was pathetic.
Every school had the same characters –Rajamanickyam, Anniyan, Radhakrishnan (of Chandupottu fame), and miscellany. I can say that this was the most boring event of LF06. Monotony and clichés were acted out again and again, till the audience could not help groaning when the same characters appeared repeatedly (from different schools) and doing the same caricatured things. It was altogether a great relief when this event was finally over.

Lunch Break: I could not eat my lunch until 1400 hours. Lunch was a Frooti, a burger, a Roll and a creamgoo-filled soggy wafer object. Tolerable. Later we came to know that most schools felt that the chow was better than last year’s fare.

Tentez la Fortune: Quite fancifully named thus, the Quiz event was a good event, which could have been well presented and participated in. Due to some strange stage fright or forgetfulness or something, the host made a crucial error in the event. The round was the round where as many questions as could be asked were asked to one team in 30 seconds. The host accidentally gave the first team an extra 10 seconds, unmindful of the countdown being projected on the screen. To make up for this mess, he gave every other school an extra 10 seconds, after the 30 seconds were up onscreen. That round was a mess.

Mockie Talkie: Perhaps the most enjoyed (by the people) event, this Mock Press event was exceptional. The participation was quite challenging, and almost all the participants managed to outwit the panel. Here too, Rajamanickyam, Achuthanandan and Karunakaran showed up but with the only consolation that they performed very well. Let me say this again, the participants were class-stuff, and this was only because we said, “No language barrier.” We would have shown them who was King when we could get at them with English.
(But I would say that this event contributed to the lowering of our standards. Let me make this most clear. I am not, by any means, saying that by speaking Malayalam we are lowering our standards. No. It is when we continue, or are forced to continue to, speak Malayalam in an event like LF. Especially when we claim to be the best, and claim to test language skills in LF. This is tantamount to suicide, and I am pretty sure that next year, I will voice this opinion and see that it is done.)

The all-time popular event of LF, La Persona, was absolutely rocking. 3 boys and 3 girls made it to the finals, and two of them were from TRINS. One was half a Russian, and the other one (a girl) was half French. The girl thought she was something great, but her level of self-obsession was beyond my comprehension and an extraordinary one, one that I always believed to be found only in exaggerating cartoons. I cant actually believe she came up the ramp in what was the most pathetic attempt at cat-walking. It looked more clumsy than a baby giraffe taking its first steps. And an absolutely rocking question thrown at her by Rohit went waste because all she could say to that was a very artificial-sounding, “How dare you”. An absolute dud, with limited sex appeal and lesser brains and feebler responses onstage, this French girl was the typical bourgeois dumbo. The other guy was okay; good with his responses and fascinatingly casual on stage, even when the music played was a (deliberately) baby tune.
And no insider account of La Persona 2006 would be complete without a complete and unabridged account of Bambu’s achievement onstage. He saved the day for us all, and can be said to be the sole reason why people didn’t say, “Aiye… this time around, La Persona sack”, or something. He scored big time when that Sainik School guy was making a fool of himself when he was asked to recite the song (he sang it himself before as his talent) ‘Goodbye to you my trusted friend’ like a nursery rhyme. Bambu said, “Guy, stop. Stop. Stop. Here, follow my lead, there, all right?” and went on to sing the first line admirably like a rhyme, thus scoring the winning goal of LF06, amidst the loud cheering from our Loyola side and good applause from the rest of the audience. I must also say that Rohit did not do out as well as he thought he would be onstage. In summary, one can say that La Persona this time around was a runaway success, due to Bambu’s casual remarks and ultra-cool attitude on stage.

Viva la Bambu!!

The last event, Dance O Mania, was also remarkable. Other than certain people who fall into the category I fall into (wont tell you what it is) most people loved it. Our team also did well, I am told. Told, cause I could not see this event because I was made to run around the place by Tushar (Shark, on Blogger.com) and made to look for my seemingly runaway team.

Drawing to a close, LA Fest 2006 had its Closing Ceremony at about 1830 hours, a bit late, and beyond schedule. The Chief Guest for the Closing Ceremony was Ms. Sayanora, (I am not qualified at the moment to inform people about her occupation other than the fact that she was) an exceptionally good singer. When she was invited to “speak and entertain” us by P, she went wild with herself and sang Dhoom’s lead song and ended up rocking the ancient and fragile walls of Sutter Hall with her unbelievably kidilam voice. There was a call for an encore, which she accepted, and finally got the whole group of us ushers here up on each other’s shoulders with the whole crowd swaying, jumping up and down, rocking, shouting the song out in chorus and absolutely enchanted. So ended LF 06, (I am omitting Andrews, Mango, and Ganesh altogether) and I made complete use of the opportunity and indulged myself in flirting. (With dignity, of course, and not “base spaniel fawning”, to quote Caesar.)

That’s all for now. Wait till I put up my exploits and experiences as an unfortunate usher on Blogger on my next post, and then let’s go for another ride aboard the Hypocritical Bus. Bye…

Love at Tuition

2006-07-09T05:44:00.000-07:00

He had quite a tumultuous evening the day before, and the after-effects of the epoch-making incident that happened the day before seemed to him to be lingering on.

He had attended tuition the day before, and without the faintest idea of what was going to happen in a few half-hours. What exactly happened was this : he ,very shy and hesitant by nature, made a friend who happened to be a girl.

The stars favoured him yesterday as the teacher left the class giving the students work to do, and the hacker people left at six. All except three, who remained giggling and talking among themselves. When they went downstairs repeatedly and came back up with some info, he questioned one of them about some insignificant thing.
Soon, the St.Thomas boys left the room, and his arch nemesis a lust-hungry outspoken son-of-a-bitch also thankfully left. The room was empty but for him and the other 3 girls. So he ventured, “Are you people coming over for the carnival?” Thankfully, one of the three, whose name was Madhumita , responded, and he kept up the conversation. Going at the same rate, he cracked a joke. Madhumita and the others laughed, or giggled. A few minutes later, the boys came back in. And wishing to make the full use of an available-and-waiting opportunity, he waited with his hand poised in the air, and waved when he finally caught her eyes. “Name?” He asked. “Me?” she said. He nodded, and she said with no apparent change, “Madhumita.”

And immediately, the son-of-a-bitch turned around and asked for the guy who had asked for her name. Our hero purposefully looked away, and he found out. And said some crap about our hero being only a small cracker, and he being a nuclear bomb. Snapping back, our hero jabbed at his pride and ridiculed his sparse language.

When he left the building, the 3 girls were standing around outside, and he caught her eyes, (carefully, her father was nearby) and said abruptly, “Bye.” While he plodded away, he thought to himself, “There’s more to come, yet.” And sure enough, Madhumita, perched upon her father’s bike, waved to him as she reached the foot of the slope, and he waved back. He smiled to himself a contended smile of having achieved something in life, and reached home with thoughts of only Madhumita.

CROREPATI

2006-07-03T10:29:00.000-07:00

His employer was harsh to him that day. That man had shouted at him for not clearing up the previous records, and freshening the existing ledgers. Though it was the departmental chief’s work, the bank manager had picked on him, the clerk, and not the departmental chief, simply because the departmental chief was the manager’s wife. The clerk, Sugunan, went home with a suitcase of ledgers, thrust into his hands by the manager.

He had no money to use a bus, nor had he a scooter. All he had was the common man’s friend – the green thin-bar bicycle. He cycled home.

As soon as Sugunan reached home, he threw the suitcase onto the floor, where it burst open, and threw up its dusty contents. Hearing the noise, his wife, a timid, docile creature screamed and ran into his arms. “What is the matter, my husband? Why are you so angry? Do not make more noise, as the children are sleeping, and they have to leave for tuition early tomorrow.”

“F – [expletive] the children. Get me food, or I shall die this instant, you lazy woman!” Sugunan shouted.

Dinner having been over, Sugunan gathered up his ledgers (he called them his sins from an earlier birth) and dumped them onto his study table. Opening one of his Sins, he sneezed at the dust cloud that had risen, and then angrily spat upon the yellowing parchment. Then he did not feel like doing them anymore. Sugunan arose and dropped onto the bed. He slept like a sack of wet mud.

# # #

It is what is lying on the ground that gets stamped upon repeatedly by the world. The world stamps again and again only upon the objects lying on the ground.

Sugunan felt like a worm, as he cycled to his miserable workplace of exploitation out of despair. That ramshackle building was the only source of income for the whole village, and the Manager’s word was Law. There seemed to be no way out of this Pandora’s box. His fate was sealed forever by the green plastic tapes between ledgers and exploitative managers. He moaned piteously, like a dog at the moon.

Then he saw a ray of hope dawning upon him, when he bought the Kairali Super Lottery. Some old bloke handed one to him, for which office Sugunan paid him ten rupees. Then Sugunan continued his cycling, and presently reached the office. There he found many of his colleagues leaning over the Daily Manorama’s pages. He, out of curiosity, looked over some shoulder, and understood that the page displayed the wining lottery number. Turning back to face him, they informed him that 9000234 was the jackpot number that would fetch the winner a crore, and pulled on long faces.
Only Sugunan was thunderstruck. He had got the winning number! One crore was now his! All he had to do was throw the ticket into the authority’ face and walk away with a crore!

“Yahoo!” He shouted. Grabbing his cycle, he cycled to the authority’s office, and translated his thoughts into reality. His bicycle was honoured to feel what a crore weighed like, and merrily obeyed Sugunan under the expensive weight. Sugunan then stopped under the banyan tree, and, heart racing, contemplated his future, so magically alchemed by Fate into a golden and luminous pre-reality.

He would, first of all, throw all the ledgers, one by one into the Manager’s face, and resign his job. Collecting his family, he would go away to Madras, where he would start a cloth –manufacturing unit, and make more crores. His descendants would eat off silver and gold plates. He would then become a proud grandfather, and … But what if his son suddenly deserted him, and eloped, carrying his prize money? Then all of his thoughts would become a null; useless. But would his son do such a heinous act, and put his father to immense distress? Oh, if he did that in, cold blood, (“Oh, the low-born”, Sugunan cursed him), Sugunan would certainly die; he had no purpose in living… He would die, he would die.
Then Sugunan fell a-weeping. He cried and beat his chest, and pulled his hair. He behaved like a madman, and made incorrigible noises. Suddenly, Sugunan felt a pain engulfing his heart. He went “Gak…Gak” and tore off his shirt. Grasping his throat, he shouted, “Water!” but no one was within earshot. He understood that it was cardiac arrest, and then he suddenly bewailed, “Oh, my money, my money!”

Those were his last words. He slumped onto the banyan’s trunk, dead.

JUSTICE (UN)DELIVERED

2006-06-28T18:14:00.000-07:00

A length of cigarette glowed red in the darkness, and a part of it dropped out of the fence, dying out on the damp alleyway below. The night was murky dark, and a heavy fog rested upon the city’s many damp highways, roads, by-lanes, dirt tracks, and footpaths.
It seemed that the electric post was ‘short’ing again. But wait…
Could electric posts move, and were they usually only 5”6’tall? Surely they could not make quick, frantic, darting movements, like extinguishing a cigarette (glowing red), and hide from the gurkha patroller behind a garbage dumpster. Neither could they take out a mini frame of…
…the Lord from between the folds of his rough and lumpy woolen cloak, Mariappan gazed at the frame from behind his putrid hideout, praying mutely for success, and suddenly, shed saline liquid from his eyes copiously. He thought about what would follow if he failed in his mission, and wept at the hideous image of the multiples of 100 that would be massacred / shot / trampled upon / killed throughout free India, and brought as one with the earth’s sighing sands. Still, he pacified himself, what must be done must be done. Blood must flow tonight – either his, or the Magistrate’s.

His shoes made ugly squelching noises as he traversed the damp alleyway to get to the front of the Magistrate’s Office. At the end of the alley was a leaking pipe that was dripping periodically, giving birth to a stream of water that meandered aimlessly until it lost itself in a pile of vegetable refuse. Why, he reflected, did the Magistrate have to build his home in a suburban area of the city, amidst leaking taps, damp alleys and gangs of drug addicts? There in the corner of the alley was a group of dark personalities heaped over each other, some of them groaning with syringes stuck into their arms. (with erotic pleasure?)

There had to be a fire exit staircase somewhere around this wall… Or is Balu wrong? Balu never fails to give accurate info especially concerning an important mission, and even some of the gang seconded his info. Mariappan felt his way once around the whole building for any feel of a staircase, and met with no success. But he soon shuffled his legs on the ground, and made his way up to the Magistrate’s window by means of his rope, which had an anchor-hook at its one end, and was really lengthy. Once he reached the window, he left the whole metre lengths of rope piled in a mass heap on the windowsill. Loosening himself from the tangly ropes, Mari managed to drop to the floor. Shaking off a loop of rope, he surveyed the room with squint eyes, in the darkness of latent Terror.
* * * * * *
This magistrate, the famous and seemingly upright Raghunandan Nair, was responsible for the untimely exit of Krishna from his gang and from the Earth. Krishna had pleaded guilty in the gruesome electrocution-caused murder of the Sales Tax Officer at his home.
Krishna still had duties left on the Earth to perform – to give Justice to many in his special Court of Justice, which differed from the ordinary Court in that it awarded only one type of punishment to all those who appeared as accused – namely, the Death Sentence. For, Krishna the Law-Giver had never obtained a Degree in Law, or passed any Bar Council examinations. He had only brought together some people of his, formed the People’s Court, whose members embarked upon murder as their missions, their victims being the Corrupted and Corrupters of society, throughout India. As such, they had many branches country-wide. (They were pleasantly surprised to learn of Anniyan’s theme and to learn that their organization had been personified in it.)
Mariappan was not a leader, he was only a subordinate; and was presently entrusted with the double duty of avenging Krishna’s capital punishment, and the giving of Judgement to the erring Magistrate. Raghunandan Nair secretly ran a liquor shop in the beach’s west end, and also smuggled drugs and gold biscuits from an Unknown Source off the shore. The People’s Court would not expose his misdeeds to the public, even with evidence; they knew more than anyone else did that the evidence would be unerringly destroyed and their People’s Court would be hunted down somehow, and annihilated.
* * * * * * * *
“I have no fear”, he reminded himself, “because I have nothing to lose but a lot to gain.”
The windows of the Magistrate’s house were in his face, and in his hands was a spoon and a penknife-hairpin apparatus. With the spoon, he tried to pry open the window, but it was bolted from inside. He used the sharpened edge of the apparatus in his other hand, and the window gently creaked open. Mariappan’s mission had begun to come to an end. The words of his proof-of-initiation into the Gang echoed in his mind: “…will not turn my back on a beckoning mission hot at hand…” Mari gulped. He now only hoped that he would not prove false to his pledge.

Searching for the Magistrate’s bedroom was not easy. As Mari tiptoed through the house, feeling his way around in the absence of light, he speculated on other elements of his mission. What was to be done if the magistrate’s wife was sleeping in his bed? And were there any servants in the house? All he had was a dagger forged in Kanampally. He must find a pistol, as he had a silencer, and using a silencer was less risky than a knife, which could not be depended upon for his purpose of quick murder. Then, leaving all to the spur of the moment, Mari passed across an open door. And retraced his steps.
His would-be victim was on the bed, snoring like a tired hog. Mari entered the room, and found it to be devoid of other occupants. Rummaging about in a drawer in a last search for a gun, he, to his surprise, found one, and ‘silenced’ it. It was only when he perceived the unsuspecting, calm and contented countenance of Nair that he first felt his conscience unsheathing its cruel thorn. He shuddered. Here he was, ready to murder, for the first time in his life, and he felt dreadfully nervous. Unexplainably, his mother’s face appeared in front of him, and told him a story of morals. Forcing his mind on the snoring hog, Mari aimed at his head. Forcing apart his legs, firmly planting them on the floor, Mari perspired a volcano of sweat. Breathing heavily, he pointed his gun, and then thought about Nair, who would make an exit in a gory death caused by him. Blood would splatter, and also brains. And the People’s Court would have triumphed, having given Justice once again. Now he just could just not pull the trigger. “Damn it”, he cursed, and again took aim. His knees trembled and quivered. His heart worked overtime, and he positively burst his head with the tension. He was going to become a murderer in a few seconds. If he did kill the magistrate, the only difference between his act, and the magistrate’s would be that the magistrate’s decree was backed by law, while his was not. Both were essentially people who gave death to other people…
It was then that he decided that he would not do the murder. Turning back, still in a state of a frenzied relief of excitement, he sort of walked-ran through the house, retracing his path, and reached the window. As he jumped up, and perched on the window-sill, he felt a mass of rope enmesh around his ankles. “Whoa!” he said, losing balance. ‘Not a piece of bloody rope! I want to live’ he shouted in his mind, as he held on for dear life to the frame of the window-sill, hanging 8 metres from the ground.
* * * * * * * * * * *
And the only thing the Magistrate saw in the morning was a mesh of rope in his kitchen, which, outside the window, suspended in its coily grip a gradually rotating body by the neck and other thoracial regions. The anaconda had done things differently that night, and held on to its strangled prey long after it had expired, late in the night, instead of swallowing it whole.

Soon, the People’s Court was hunted down, the self-assumed successors of Krishna exterminated, and the whole establishment set fire to by the Police Force. The Magistrate took care of the rest of the People’s Courters, delivering Justice the legal way in the Legal Court. And in the court, a pale transparent image of a person hovered and flew around, moaning and wailing, which had a long length of rope in a tangle all around its body, which had an anchor-hook at its one end.