short story

Vibes

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Mumbai ki na Delhi walon ki; Pinky hai paise walon ki, went the song. For a moment he wondered who Pinky was -and if she had anything to do with him. After much contemplation, he gave up.

“Maybe I am trying too soon. I should observe some more before I try to make sense of this”, he thought.

This wasn’t exactly supposed to be a party, but over the years it had slowly turned into one – sans the alcohol, but the music was unmistakable. A DJ with his setup was on a truck, pandering to the live audiences’ demands and gesturing them to jump with him.

It wasn’t his birthday, he wasn’t getting married and neither was he being promoted on a job, but the crowd directly in front of his eyes, dancing like there’s no tomorrow, suggested otherwise. He wished he could travel back in time. Overwhelmed by nostalgia, he closed his eyes and reminisced the days of old – less pandemonium, more purpose. He liked it that way. But not all of his modern day followers necessarily agreed.

He looked forward to this short visit every year. Most of all, he loved his people. Welcomed in millions of homes around the world, he admired some of them for simply believing in him – he who could slay every obstacle there was or could possibly be. With a heart full of gratitude, he eventually left – promising his followers to come back whilst also keeping an eye out for them from afar.

Not everyone could let him stay for ten days, and he understood. Life was way busier now than it was more than four hundred years ago – when a career wasn’t as pressing a reality as it is today. He was first welcomed by a ruler in the early 1600s –the ruler who was loved by his people then, and is fondly admired by his people even today.

Time flew when he was here. Ten days felt like a few fleeting moments.

As he made his made his way to the sea on each of the immersion days, he wondered if the floating objects were offerings he could take along.

“I don’t really need those.”

As idol after idol was immersed, he followed the trail to each of them. Floating flowers would return to the shore at high tides and make the beach look like an eyesore at low tides, he knew. And although he wished he could clean it all by himself, he feared that taking it easy on his people would only encourage them further.

“I should let them see the filth and decide for themselves.”

He was proud of most of them for using eco-friendly idols. But some didn’t, and in addition to a little money, they paid a price that seemingly didn’t affect anything or anyone right then. Little did they know that it would all come back to haunt them some day. The planet’s predicament would soon be appalling. It already was, but there was more on the horizon.

The God of wisdom was surprised by the lack of it here – dispersing it among an educated few wasn’t anywhere close to being a quick fix. A change in attitudes was the only thing that would really work.

“There will be a day when these people will expect me to save them from a calamity more self-made than natural. What will I do then? Will my principles still hold? What if lives are lost?”

It was unusual for someone of his stature to be in a dilemma. But he was in one now – all thanks to his unruly followers. They had already ruined the very waters at their shores, but an end was nowhere in sight. It was something they clearly saw, yet chose to unsee. Karma loomed large.

He spent the next 365 days missing his followers and hoping that the next year wouldn’t be as messy as the one gone by. They were mortals after all. And they could take more time to learn – certainly more than the average God.

As the 366th day dawned, he awoke with renewed hope.

He could hear some music in the distance. Excitedly, he jumped out of bed and called out to his mouse. Halfway through, he still couldn’t hear it clearly but it was louder.

ganesha-on-mouse

Straining his ears, he heard the words, DJ wale babu..

“Turn around”, he said, hitting his forehead with the palm of his hand.

“I would rather catch up on some more sleep.”

The Infliction

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Amir was an unruly kid, the kind most parents came close to resenting, but didn’t.

“Wake up already! Don’t you dare be late to school”, a commanding voice declared.

He had no alarm to help him know that the day had begun – he couldn’t afford one. Besides, his half-blind father did the job willingly. Having lost Amir’s mother at the time of his son’s birth, he had no choice but to oblige – the double role had grown to be a habit over time.

Amir and his father were some distance short of a proper place to live and breathe in – having spent most of their lives living on the streets of a bustling Baghdad. A make-shift shanty constituting of a rag and a few sticks was what they called home. His father worked as a cobbler and did his best to make ends meet. Amir never complained, but often scorned at the thought of his daily trudge to school. The journey to and from school, was the only Achilles heel to Amir’s strong resolve.

They had a few schools closer to home, but his father could only afford this one. It was more of a dilapidated building on the verge of a collapse – a facade no one was too proud of. The funds that went into maintaining the school were limited, and as a result, so was the infrastructure.

Amir left from home at 8 am every morning considering the fact that he would roughly take an hour to get to school. The journey was particularly treacherous that day. He hadn’t expected the winds to whip up a sandstorm of sorts and hand it over to him, or more precisely, his face. The grains clung to his face while occasionally finding their way into his eyes. Amir muttered a few abuses, but the sand and the winds were as insouciant as ever.

He never had anyone for company either.A few kids in his locality did attend the same school, but preferred to keep their distance when it came to Amir. Being seen as the arrogant kind had its pitfalls.And although he liked saying he was just a loner, his overly sarcastic demeanour often came across as rude. Simply put, Amir’s social life was long dead, buried and probably way past the final stages of decay. His existence was markedly devoid of hope and filled with frustration to the brim.

At a significant distance into his walk toward school, Amir felt something under his foot. A long hard look at a glossy portion of metal threatening to blind him fueled his curiosity further. He dug into the sand and unearthed a lamp – a shiny black piece, bearing every resemblance to the one Amir had read and heard about. Aladdin was Amir’s favourite protagonist. He couldn’t believe how lucky he was. He couldn’t help but imagine a life full of riches and comforts – of not having to work or glue his eyes onto a book ever again.

“Finally, a way out of this misery”, he exclaimed.

For once, Amir saw hope–and he saw truckloads of it. Recalling Aladdin’s tale, Amir rubbed the lamp expecting a fancy slave to pop out almost immediately.

About ten seconds later, a cloud of black smoke emerged. Everything that transpired in the minutes to follow, diminished any traces of hope or confidence that Amir had gathered.

“I know this is a nightmare,” he murmured in disbelief, expecting his father to splash a sudden stream of water onto his face effectively waking him up.

demon

And there stood the inhabitant of the lamp – tall, dark, with bloody eyes and horns akin to those of an ox.

“You sir, have been tricked. Your tendency to be allured is your weakness, I am afraid. And for that, you shall pay!”, the demon remarked.

“Your prize is replete with three curses:

The first –the phantom phone vibration syndrome, the second – a runny nose, and the third –a pebble in your shoe, one that accompanies you everywhere you go.”

Inflicting his curses, the demon proceeded to return into his lamp. Amir was shaken, and afraid of the consequences the curses could possibly bring.

The following morning, Amir woke up to a stain on his pillow. He had slept face-down all night and soon realised that the second curse had manifested itself.

He wore his shoes while getting ready for school, he realised there was a tiny pebble in it. As he removed his shoe and checked for a pebble, he saw nothing. But as soon as he put the shoe back on again, the pebble was there – declaring its sharp, annoying presence. Amir had expected it to happen, but it still felt terribly creepy.

On his way to school, while he went past the spot where he had last seen the lamp, he was reminded of a curse that was seemingly inconsequential.

“I don’t even have a phone. How is that curse supposed to affect me?”, he wondered.

His question was answered at lunch time. He felt an eerie tingling sensation in his pocket, only to realise there was nothing in it. This happened several times during the course of his day.

A runny nose, a pebble in his shoe and a syndrome that was totally uncalled for –Amir had a trio of problems to deal with, which in spite of the inconveniences they came with, were only mildly annoying.

Days and hours of stress later, Amir eventually got accustomed to every inconvenience bestowed upon him. The pebble in his shoe could no longer trouble him as soon as he got home and took his shoes off, the phantom syndrome was as good as non-existent when he fell asleep, and as for the runny nose – he figured it was something he could put up with, albeit with some amount of irritation from time to time.

Amir soon realised that no curse was really so significant as to affect his way of life, and that no matter how many difficulties he would have to deal with, his resolve would always ensure he wasn’t down and out. Above all, Amir learned that nothing was ever as bad as it seemed to be – and that any tribulation could only be as powerful as his perspective allowed it to be.

War

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He was a man of few words and often of silence – seeking to overcome mountains of doubt.

mountain-climber-silhouette-climbing-mountain

Climbing that mountain was a tedious task, one he saw as too much of an ask.

“I am no trekker”, he thought, imagining himself crumbling with the boulders.

“Besides, I would rather go for something suited to amateurs.”

“Someday, I’ll conquer this too. Someday.. ”, he said glancing at the tallest of them all.

“Until then, a good amount of practice on the smaller ones will help.”

Classifying his doubts as the minors and the majors, he cut out a strategy to bring them down one at a time. The minors looked easy with their innocent profiles – profiles that hid all their defiance. Five battles down the line, he realised that underestimating the minors was a mistake. And with that piece of wisdom, came more doubt. The antagonist’s army gained strength with every battle it won. More territory, more weaponry – the stakes were high.

The man’s weapons weren’t made to last –swords of pretense soon gave way. The shields his ego had so carefully built started to crack. He was fighting a losing battle.

He knew he wouldn’t win the war, so an alternative suggestion was accepted –there would be a treaty. Neither the doubt, nor the man would bother the other. That way, they wouldn’t have an opportunity to clash and there’d be no battle in sight.

The treaty went through and the man lived in peace for an entire month. That was until all the chaos in his mind came back to haunt him. He had been betrayed, the treaty violated. Peace, yet again, was a distant dream.

He consulted his cabinet of wisdom in an attempt to find a permanent solution. The ministers had an array of suggestions, but none appealed to him. The parliament lacked a sense of purpose.

So he picked up a pen and set it to paper, attacking his doubts word by word. Some perished, some stayed and a few others absconded – victory increasingly imminent with every letter he wrote.

And on the spur of the moment, a writer was born – fueled by his obsessions, relentless with a passion. This was victory, or so he thought. Doubt’s days were long gone.

Tired of the conflicts his mind so diligently conjured, he took to writing for it would set him free. Instead, it held him down with an inescapable addiction.

He was now a soul that was willingly imprisoned, yet inexplicably free.

 

 

The Santa Thesis

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Toward a cottage in the middle of nowhere, he walked through the snow.

1

Joe had been a student of the arts, and spent a majority of his time away from home –studying in college in the middle of a city far far away; following which he had taken up a job.Of course he missed his family. But there was something he missed even more.It was the feeling of being at home –at peace, in comfort, away from all the hustle and bustle,whiling most of his time away on the couch, cocooned in the warmth of a brilliant novel.Life in college made him a busy young man, with a social presence as lifeless as a dried carcass in the middle of a desert. He craved interaction, social meetings and simply spending time with his people.

It was holiday season and Joe couldn’t resist the idea of reuniting with his family. He stood on the porch outside, and knocked twice. He could barely move. It had taken thirty minutes of trudging to get to this place – and even as he was protected by multiple layers of winter wear, he could feel the chill.

Seconds later, his father was at the door –he hadn’t been expecting Joe and a knock on the door late in the evening had taken him by surprise. Needless to say, his father was pleasantly surprised. “What a remarkable Christmas this is already!” he remarked and gave his son the tightest hug. The upcoming week held promise aplenty for Joe and he looked forward to the New Year filled with optimism to the brim.

Celebrating Christmas at home had lightened him up considerably.The holiday season was nothing short of top notch.But he dreaded returning to college – to endless assignments, to a social life that was conspicuous by its absence, to missing his people, to wishing he could experience it all again, albeit without having to wait for another year.

“How I wish Santa was for real!” he thought to himself. “If I could ask him for anything right now, it would be a life as lively, colourful and refreshing as the Christmas tree.”

A week after Christmas, Joe packed his bags with a heavy heart and set foot to return to college. Throughout his return journey, he couldn’t stop obsessing about being taken over by the mundane again.As the bus he was in raced forward – destination bound in a relentless manner, he looked up through the window at the night sky. He couldn’t help but stare and wonder about the magnificence that was the universe.He had heard about the ‘thoughts become things’ theory all too often, but he had never given it a try.A supposed lack of a few things had made him somewhat desperate.He thought it was hard work –not physical, but mental.

The following week, he made a conscious effort to discard all the pessimism in his life. From thinking patterns to behaviours –every ounce of his mind would be subject to thoughtful reforms. He didn’t bother about whether or not it would work –he just went about doing his thing, hoping for the best.

A month later, Joe opened a large case that lay idle in his apartment for years. He didn’t remember what it contained and his curiosity got the better of him. Besides, it was the weekend and it looked like a good time to clean up.As he opened the case, his eyes sparkled.It was a six-string he had bought five years ago.

“Damn this thing. I haven’t touched this in years now.”

As he strummed the first notes on his old companion,he reminisced the last time he had used it –it was a Christmas carol in a church outside the city. “Those were the days”, he recalled. He had played it everywhere he went back then, and to anyone who insisted.

As he proceeded to clean all the nasty dust off his stringed pal, he realised that Santa existed. And although he didn’t always turn up in a red suit,he was always there – waiting for the slightest hint of faith to show up on his mind so as to make its way to the soul.You didn’t always have to wait for Christmas.

 

 

Future Perfect?

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9:00 am:
This wasn’t the usual morning in many ways, or maybe it was? I have no idea why I have always fancied living in denial – as if it was an extraordinary thing to do. As I waited for the train to arrive, I could sense that I was engulfed by an aura of nervousness; a heart that couldn’t stop racing, busy hands, wobbly feet and a countenance that was far from composed. I liked to think I had little or nothing to worry about, a feeling that only lasted until reality chose to stick its ugly head out. If only, life was the little fantastical tale that unfolded in my head day in and day out.

Five minutes later, the train entered the station. Every prospective passenger was overcome by a sense of urgency – men holding their bags closer to their bodies, women lining up closer to the train. Train travel would normally be an indispensable part of almost every working citizen’s day here in my city. I rushed inside as the train barely grinded to a halt, and was lucky enough to find a vacant seat that day. For a moment right then, I was tempted to affirm that this was a wonderful morning, but I hesitated. Throughout my journey, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Today would be an important day at work – an all-important presentation beckoned. That would be followed by lunch with the who’s who of the organisation, the journey back home in the evening, an hour at the gym followed by dinner with my lovely family. A very simplistic schedule albeit one that stressed me out today. What was I worried about? Or what wasn’t I?

The adage, time flies is the truest of them all. Twenty five years of being an earthling, and I had spent the last ten chasing one thing – perfection. Was I any closer to it now than I was five years ago? Or was I going around in circles chasing something that could never be mine? Who knows?

For every problem I had in the now, I looked to a solution in the distant future. The present moment was always a haze. I couldn’t help but wonder if I was doomed – doomed to spend the rest of my life with the “what-if(s)” and the “if only(s)”.

I was nervous about the presentation – but hey! Wouldn’t doing it right fix everything?

Would I be able to maintain my composure during that lunch? I don’t know.

If the presentation is okay, I might. But what if it isn’t? – I shuddered at the thought. I just hoped to not embarrass myself and my boss.

I snapped out of my daydream just in time to realise that the train had almost reached Weary Road. The office was a five minute walk away from the station and I made it in time. The presentation was an hour away and I grew increasingly restless with each passing minute. In an effort to distract myself and alleviate my nervousness, I tried fiddling with my phone.

12 pm:

It was time for the presentation and my confidence was still an invisible entity. Every inch of my body was in ‘no chill mode’ which in turn led to a shaky voice. No matter how proud I was of getting these opportunities, these final moments made me have second thoughts, always. These were moments when I went from “I am so glad it’s me” to “Why me?” in a matter of seconds.

I took a deep breath, started my presentation and was glad that it went along just fine. Halfway through, the fact that I was supposed to be nervous had escaped my head. I wasn’t even thinking about it.

The end of a decent presentation was followed by lunch. In complete contrast to my expectations, nothing had gone wrong. And then came that rare moment again – of believing that I had nothing to worry about. This is always how I went about my days; swinging from one extreme to another – from wanting to worry about everything, to having nothing to worry about.

My presentation was a temporary respite. I wondered if I was doomed to live in fear. For every attempt I made at locking horns with my limitations, my fate reasserted the fact that it had other plans. I didn’t want to believe that my fate controlled every inch of my being, but I was forced to.

I slogged to no end for every single day. I was a thorough workaholic and trying to find life beyond work was a tiresome ordeal.

My schedule these days was simple – Eat. Sleep. Work. Repeat.

My personal and social lives were in complete and utter turmoil. I needed to pull myself out of this rut. And to do that, I was willing to go out of my way.

The mechanical and the mundane had consumed me over time. Contrary to what many believed, I really wasn’t living a life, for it had little that could be described as lively. My fears still managed to keep me in a shell. I was living in oppression – one that was imposed upon me by my own mind of all things. Breaking the shackles was going to take far more than a philosophical speech and plain courage. It needed me do what I feared the most – it needed me to act my answer out, to confront my fears head on without any consideration for the consequences. I could make it unscathed, or I could be shred to pieces. The choice was mine to make.

image

It has been ten years since I retired. I dread living the life I had left.

Just as my old decrepit body struggles to get off the sofa, a loud alarm goes off.

Startled, I open my eyes and look around. I rush to the mirror at the other end of the room and heave a sigh of relief. I am still 25, have a presentation followed by lunch with the biggies and my usual routine to look forward to.

“Thankfully, that was just a dream. Or probably a nightmare”, I murmur. Shaken and stirred, I know I cannot be the same person anymore – for existing had always been my forte, but living was still a distant dream. Maybe I still didn’t know what I was looking for, but for once, I knew what I wasn’t looking for – because sometimes, that is just as important; or maybe more.

PS – This story is a work of fiction.

Double Edged

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Monday, 0700 hours: The alarm set off – it was time to wake up. Another morning of chores, of heading to work, of having little else to look forward to. It was all eerily familiar, and he hated every bit of it. On the contrary, he always looked forward to evenings.

 

Raymond was the perfect assortment – quite literally, the complete man. His life revolved around his 9 to 5, but there was always more. A people’s person, he got along with just about everyone at work and was considered to be the nicest bloke around. His energy was outright infectious and whoever met him, instantly took a liking to him. But for all the extraversion and the charisma he exuded, there was always an air of mystery to the guy – the kind that worked in his favour.

There was more to Raymond, more to his day than a desk job and he claimed to enjoy it.

His colleagues at work never really knew what he did or where he went post work. For reasons unknown, he always maintained ‘it was personal’. But they were all happy for him. Happy because they knew he had struggled to settle in a whole new city and his homesickness was pretty obvious for the first few months.

“Four years since I left home,” he reminisced – preparing to leave for work. “And it still feels like it was yesterday.” He did miss his family at times, but this was home now.

1700 hours:

Raymond looked up and saw the clock strike 5. It was time to leave – the end of another day at work. He said his goodbyes and stepped out of the office. He figured he was going to be home late and shuddered at the thought as he recalled a headline from the morning paper – ‘Serial Killer on the Prowl. Another Man Dies. A series of killings had rocked the city over the past couple of months.

Seconds later, he shook it off and continued on his way to a café downtown. He was about to meet an old friend, or so he thought.

Flashback – 0715 hours – *Raymond receives a text on his phone* – ‘Good Morning Ray! I have something for you –Meet me at Café Riverdale today – 5:30pm. Regards, John’

John was one of Raymond’s oldest friends. They had known each other since school but hadn’t been in touch for more than a few months now. Raymond was pleasantly surprised and to some extent, confused. “What now?” he wondered.

1730 hours:

“Hello Raymond! It’s been so long,” he was greeted by a familiar voice.

“H-Hello”, he responded nervously.

He shouldn’t have had a reason to be nervous. Meeting an old friend was supposed to be pleasant, after all. But he was trembling from head to toe, sweating profusely, trying to make sense of what had unfolded.He settled on the adjacent chair.

It wasn’t John.

The man handed him a die and gestured for him to roll. Raymond obliged.

The die rolled for what felt like an eternity. It read ‘one’ when it did settle.

“That looks like the number for today. Doesn’t it Ray?”

Raymond nodded and hurried out of the café.

2000 hours:

He smirked as he entered the train terminal.

“This is it,” he said to no one in particular.

He saw a man take the escalator heading to the platform above and followed suit.

A deserted terminal and Raymond following another man – to anybody who knew the guy, this wouldn’t look like anything out of the ordinary. Why would it ever?They didn’t know him as well as they thought they did.

With no inkling of approaching danger, the man collapsed as Raymond stabbed him in the back. He looked around for no signs of witnesses and fled the scene in a rush.

2100 hours:

The bus terminal bore a deserted look. A few people scattered around, waiting for their rides.High on adrenaline, Raymond took the ride home feeling accomplished.

“No traces left behind. No CCTV cameras either. I should be okay” he thought.

Tuesday, 0700 hours:

Another dull day at work beckons. Followed by an eventful evening, surely?

The glass doors slid open as Raymond enters the building. He avoided the elevator, climb up to his office on the third floor – enclosed spaces made him excessively paranoid.

The morning paper highlighted yet another killing. Just then, his phone beeped.

A familiar text – ‘Café Riverdale – 5:30pm. Regards, John.’

He looked forward to meeting an old friend, or so he thought.

Back at Raymond’s residence, the police broke in. A few minutes into the search they discovered medical reports.

“This is messed up!” an officer remarked.

And in a moment, half of Raymond’s life became an illusion. Or was it completely so?