Gone

I am going to push the moon behind that, father said, pointing to the mountain across the town.

Son thought about it for a while. You mean the main moon? he asked, familiar with his father’s poetic implications.

Yes, the main moon, father replied, laughing a bit.

Behind that mountain?

That’s the one.

Alright, said the son, getting ready for the story.

In the breezy night of summer, they were on the roof, lying next to each other, sinking in the middle of a hammock-like cot, looking at the dark universe. Breeze from the nearby orchard brought with it just the right amount of familiar fragrance. On the way to moon, there are over a million villages, father said. They are invisible just because they are far away. What looks like dust might as well be a galaxy of villages with their own populations, transportation systems, health facilities, roads and everything.

In one particular village, he said, lives your mother. She has become a witch.

The idea of his dead mother living somewhere-else indulging in witchcraft was awkward. Curious and upset, he nodded asking for more. But not the harmful kind, father added, realising who he was talking about. She just tells futures; good and bad. That’s all.

The story moved on. Father crossed more villages and rivers, describing great wars, famines and sufferings of the people, and the son listened, believing in everything, visualising the encounters, his eyes firmly fixed on moon that could be pushed away anytime now. For a moment it occurred to him that he might be lying with the greatest father in the world, because at this ungodly hour, when all the other fathers in town were busy snoring, sleeping with their extended families, this one was actually doing stuff. Derailed from the story, son started to feel drowsy.

Soon, as a result of the planetary motion, moon dipped behind the said mountain, saying goodbye to its clouds, leaving them with a cold, uniform glow that wouldn’t last either. At that time, father cleverly brought his story to an abruptly subtle ending. How was the story, he asked his son who was deep in sleep. He jolted him. How was the story, tell me, how was it! Son opened his eyes and found the moon already gone. Very good, father, he replied most politely. Then he turned to his side and closed his eyes, waiting for the dreams to come to him and paint everything that he had missed.

Absurd Things

At last, I feel at home, once again. And that, my friend, is not because I am in New Delhi, because New Delhi is not my hometown anyway, plus I don’t give a bull about a city being old or new because it’s all the same in some weird sort of way if you know what I mean.

Well, I do live in a posh colony of South Delhi. So it’s not an embarrassing thing to tell someone your address and all. Imagine living in Shahdhara! Point is nothing; I was just trying to show-off. The other day, a guy was comparing Rohini to Dharavi (of Mumbai) and laughing his ass off. I didn’t believe him at all, but I did laugh because I felt obliged, and I didn’t want to make him feel like a real moron afterwards. He really thought I bought that.

And now, what is the best thing about living in Delhi? Well, there are many! First, life here doesn’t have to be as organised as it has to be in Mumbai. It means you can promise to meet someone at five and show up at eight, and blame everything on one of the these: 1. Metro Construction 2. Commonwealth Games. Not that they would buy that, but they would stop complaining anymore.

But the thing I am particularly kicked about is meeting my old stupid friends from home! It’s divine to have friends who are more stupid than you. It really is. You can make them spend all their money and distract them by telling false stories about adventures from your long absence. Apparently, the bigger the lie, more riveted they are. I'm kidding. But honestly, the best thing about them is that they don’t knead too much of horse manure about their goddamn restaurant preferences and places they’d love to visit before they turn thirty. They also don’t slaughter their asses to appear like connoisseurs of art/cinema, because they really-like a movie, or they really-don’t-like a movie! There are no stop-gaps. Middle-grounds? Anyway, don't break your head over it. And yeah, finally it’s a relief to have a break from 19-degree-Celsius throughout the whole goddamn year. I mean it’s a good thing to be able to wear half-sleeve t-shirts from Shoppers Stop annual sales throughout the year, but ‘winter’ and ‘summer’ are two different seasons; their individuality must be taken care of! You don’t care, do you? No one does, these days. Alright. Coming to the point: Bombay was exciting and all, but then, cities are like whores; you forget them the moment you are done with them. Or at least, you don’t miss them as badly as you thought you would. And they do forget you right back. Cities. No hard feelings please. That’d be ridiculous. And moreover, gay. It’s simple: every place has its pros and cons and should be respected for what it stands for. For example if outdoor Delhi doesn’t smell like moist granny hair, nor does indoor Mumbai. Similarly, if transport system of Delhi is in its pre-first-draft stages compared to that of Mumbai, Delhi has a big thing called Rashtrapati Bhawan! If Mumbai has beaches, Delhi has ... a factory of Navratna Tel (the thanda-thanda-cool-cool fame)... Thing is: fight between cities is insane and doesn’t get no one anywhere. So better think of it that way: Delhi and Mumbai are like MP4 and Sodium Sulphate – there is no connection, and, there needn't be one.

Shapes

It is believed that the first commercial use of the basic shapes (Triangle, Square, Rectangle, Circle, and Diamond) was made in a village by an old man in his nineties. He invented a lottery game for children in which they had to pay by the pebble (currency was yet to be discovered) and pick upside-down one of the wooden blocks under which these shapes were carved with the help of a sharp knife.

Prizes were sour mulberries that left you with a surprisingly sweet aftertaste. They were freshly plucked from the orchard where children were not allowed.

But discontentment was rampant among the shapes: Rectangle was most unhappy because there was no prize on him. No child ever wanted a Rectangle! What made it worse was the fact that her close cousin Square earned children five mulberries just because he was uniformly-limbed on all four sides. But Square wasn’t overjoyed either. Diamond, who was just a tilted version of him, was worth ten mulberries. Triangle - modestly prized between Square and Diamond - didn’t make much fuss about it. Circle was the luckiest. He was worth twelve ripe mulberries! Everyone wanted a Circle; He had no one to be jealous of.

One day, the old man died, obviously, and the game became extinct. Shapes lost touch.

Centuries later, when internet was common, they were employed across diverse lines of work: Circle was in government service - put majestically in the middle of the white-band of a tricolor flag.

Triangle was famous too: she was well settled in Egypt, and had made a few close friends who stood by her. Square was a hot-spot in London and was enjoying his lifestyle too much. Diamond was doing well, as always, and was expected to go on like that, forever.

Rectangle, though, was still miserable. He never quite found out what he was doing in this world. All he knew was that he was always being exchanged between different places, far from each other, like a parcel.

One day, when he was sitting in the middle of a greasy table inside a small military room, he overheard a telephonic conversation and realized that he was actually a nuclear bomb. Agonized by this sudden realization, he decided it was time. The explosion that erupted that day smashed everything on earth, leaving behind a shapeless cloud of smoke.


P.S. It happens to be my hundredth post. Inspiration for this story comes straight from John Matthew's blog.

Vague

As a child, I always used to wonder about the difference between the time-speeds perceived by the humans and ants (or other non-human creatures.)

Was there any difference at all? Did a grasshopper live a lifetime of happiness love misery success betrayal competition hope enlightenment by the time a human-being finished eating half a cheeseburger? Quite expectedly, I didn’t arrive at a solution in my later years, in spite of performing significantly well at both school and college level. I don’t know exactly when I stopped asking such questions, but they did a fairly good job of keeping my childhood amusing and thoroughly busy.

But lately, I find myself asking the similar set of questions once again: How would it feel like to be in a bus different from the one you are traveling in? How would it feel to live some other life? How is it possible - my disappearance from the world of which I feel to be so integral a part that sometimes a delusion of being the center of the universe possesses me to such an extent that I doubt I can conspire happenings around? And, what if one fine day everybody mutually decided not to wear anything at all? Exactly how many weeks would the embarrassment last?

I would not find these answers, simply because they don’t exist.

God, in spite of his popular image of being perfect and all, did leave some ends lose here and there, either out of haughty ignorance, or for the sake of making the world a little lesser contrived place, to allow scope for vague contemplations by miserable human beings.

But I think I do know something else: I am traveling back in time. I am moving leisurely but with a momentum made unstoppably magnanimous by so many years of compulsory and unwanted learning, that I am hopeful again. May be, just may be I would stumble upon a pivot-point where a small shift would change things forever. But I am not sure I would like that: risking living another life given the scope of my acquaintances with mankind. Time-travel is a risky affair, you know.

Just

Just logged in to post something. The time is: 12:34:56 and the date - 7:8:9. That's all.

Quicky

Hey all ya bloggers, check this out.

This is one great blog that will hook you instantly if you are into short fiction. Lovely short stories.

My favorites: Intelligent & Eva Brown

Signed out!

The tale of a good girl

Chapter 1

Through the shy yellow and pink bars of the see-through scarf that she held in front of her chest, her plump breasts were nothing short of naked; anticipating to be grasped in cuplike hands: two open secrets to be dealt with. But she kept holding the thin chiffon anyway, knowing that even if it was hiding practically nothing, it was doing something much more important than that: It was packaging her fresh bout of audacity in a wrap of coyness.

She was a good girl, after all.

And now she was married, finally. Her husband Edward was employed at a high rank in a famous wine brewery of Sivlersdale. He was un-auditably handsome.

Florence had never expected to get a man like him. She had heard, and for a long time even believed that easy girls don't find good husbands. But wisdom had fallen flat in this case. Luck had sided with her. The whole week before the wedding she kept congratulating herself while talking to Edward’s framed photograph.

She looked forward to a delicious married life.

Chapter 2

What excited Florence most was the prospect of doing anything in the privacy of their bedroom, as well as outside of it, without having to worry about the mildest of objection. And this honeymoon suite was nothing else but a sweet start to that life. She would scale new heights of boldness and confidence with this man - only, if she is a little careful.

Although the touching and the kissing had happened before, but the act was never performed without the fear of a sudden knock on the door. Police was always breaking doors of young couples trying to make love. But this evening, it was going to be different. The 'Do not disturb' sign hanging outside on the golden knob of the door was much more than that: It was their license to have sex and be assertive about it.

That, in a way, was all that she had desired for. Dirty, brazen sex! The sheer prospect of walking down the road, even if in proper clothes, drove her crazy, because the watching eye must know that the woman in focus has slept with a man and been entered.

She had a past. She also considered discussing it with Edward many a times, but a suitable time never arrived. They talked about religion, politics, and when Edward was in a pretty jolly and naughty mood, movies. He never mentioned sex and she never took the lead.

Chapter 3

Florence had always been a conscious girl. Even at the age of six, she found it hard to change her dolls’ clothes in the presence of others. So whenever it was about time, she would rush to a secret place - usually spreading out on a small cement slab behind the water tank on the roof - and undress the babies - not without motherly care - and wonder about the uncharacteristic area between their thighs. It was flat! Nothing like reality.

She actually had to check herself out when she first found the disparity, and she was shocked, even angered at the ignorance of toy-makers. On later occasions, she did that, the checking, but just for the hell of it.

Every new doll that came to the house was an opportunity, and eventually a disappointment. She never talked about it to anybody because she suspected this to be, too, one of those things that you are supposed to learn automatically when one day you are suddenly a grown up. And it would be a hugely absurd thing to ask to such parents who behaved mind-numbingly embarrassed when a love-scene unexpectedly arrived in an otherwise ‘good’ movie without a warning, or even a subtle sign like two flowers being rubbed against each other and didn’t know what the hell to do. The channels were not changed because changing them would have made the un-obvious obvious.

In her fantasies, she saw herself changing cloths and diapers of the real babies, feeding them from her grown-up nipples, buying groceries from a store with a huge glass door opening automatically, cooking at home on rainy days, knitting warm outfits for babies, tidying-up sofas and beds, putting the remote on the glass table for the million'th time, telling kids to be good while she is away, reading stories to them, shouting at an ignorant but handsome man to keep things from where he took them, loving her family like no one ever did, holidaying at sea-facing resorts, getting exhausted, being ready once again after a long long nap.

She wanted to do everything her mother did. Nothing more, nothing less. The sexual aspect of adult life had never crossed her mind; neither as a part of her imagination nor curiosity. Her parents had never kissed each other in front of her.

Chapter 4

All that was to change when one quiet afternoon of late May she accidentally gathered her courage talk to a boy who was returning a Chemistry book at the library counter. He was not very cute, but she liked his name too much.

He was shouting his name loudly for the old librarian woman who had forgotten to bring her hearing aids on that day.

“Joe Mather!” he shouted.

She found him struggling and to help him, she shouted even louder.
"Joe Mather!!!"

She smiled awkwardly. He looked at her, and smiled not so awkwardly. Then they shouted his name in unison and the librarian finally got it right.

Florence was fourteen, then without a boyfriend. Kristine, her tennis partner was thirteen and had already been through two major breakups. Biddy, whom no one in school would call a really sharp girl used to hang out with a guy in the Caufield Bakery after school. They would sit across each other in the bakery and talk. And that was all Florence wanted to do then: sitting across a guy in a bakery and talk.

She had no idea that such a thing like a brief conversation with Joe Mather – that too about the working of Lithium batteries - could change course of her life. She didn’t know then, that a hesitant handshake was going to leave her with something massive and undoable.

Soon, they were good friends. They shared lunches and went for long walks by the river. They held hands all along. But before they advanced further, exams came and went and Florence was forced to stay home. She could step out only if a friend was throwing a big birthday party, or she needed to shop urgently.

Chapter 5

They sat in the back row of Holly Grand. It was showing The Indefinite Break - four shows everyday. They had choosen the second show because it was supposed to be the least crowded timing. Only fifty people had shown up, mostly young couples and scarce old men. When there was still time for the movie to start, Florence explained to him how she had to cajole her mother to let her out. Joe was so amused that he gave her a peck on the cheek. She didn't seem to mind and he adjusted into his seat, slipping his arm behind Florence’s back, letting his fingers touch the skin under the hem of her shirt’s arm.

It was too much Florence thought, but then, the movie started all of a sudden and it was dark everywhere.

The fingers moved again and they slowly slid under her arm. She didn't mean to let a sigh out, but it didn't matter because already, her breasts was coming alive to a nudge from Joe's hand.

Contd...