Abstractness during a train journey

22nd Sep 2009 to Hyderabad

Train crossed the Ashok Leyland factory, like a jet piercing the clouds, leaving behind a white trail. My heart jumped to tell someone beside, “hey my factory”, but condemned the anxiety as childish. Well, many of the childish happiness nowadays are beyond reach due to consciousness of self behaviour.
I went towards the compartment’s exit to smell the gushing air kissing the steel sheets skirting the train. It was drizzling and the setting sun appeared behind the rain. It appeared as if the great orange ball is encaged behind the vertical water bars of rain. The sun, a ball of dazzling pure orange started sinking in the clouds beneath like an innocent victim of quicksand.
I felt helpless and inert, like my inertness towards corruption, inertness towards filthy politicians, inertness towards victims of social harassments and many other things in society. I then realized that my inertness was actually born out of my inability, a shameless failure of my will power. The so called inertness, a witness of helplessness made me feel abashed; the sorrow, heavy by itself climbed my mind and up to my brain. My neck couldn’t bear the additional emotional load above and my head hung down automatically.
My eyes then capsuled the green fields spread across halfway till horizon. Like nodes of a finite element mesh, the shrubs buttoned itself into the clay submerged in the sheet of water. The sun reflected its rays of hope from the cloud’s quicksand. The elongated orange rays from sun laid down on the sheet of water reminded me again of my muteness towards sun’s request to retrieve it from the cloud’s claw.
The train later passed a power plant, the flames as high as the 50 feet danced brilliantly. A sense of bliss and achievement was visible in the fire when it looked around the charred building, contentment over its dominance. Above the chimney, black soot rose and slowly, very slowly diffused into the transparent air.
I looked above; the sun has descended further, yielding itself to the power of clouds beneath. A great realization stuck me again, the whole sky, dark now must have been formed from the constant burning of the purest form of fire, the sun. I looked back at the fire in power plant, its notorious smile while vomiting the smoke was evident. I looked up again; the realization filtered the knowledge contained within. The evil smoke vomited by the sun in the past billions of years has formed the great sky and it has now re-formed to quicksand to kill the sun in the evening.
The heavy headed flames in the powerplant continued sending black smoke, without realizing that one day, all these smoke is going to engulf the very flame which had produced it.
It is very similar to our life. Every bad conduct sends a poison from us to the outside world. It quickly dilutes itself with the society. Haunted by our everyday activities, we fail to notice both its emergence and disappearance. One day all the poison emitted by us will definitely kill our soul and or our body.

5 star ladies hostel- A short story

(The theme of the story is inspired from a true incident told by one of my dearest friends, whom I respect for all she is.)

The bus stopped inside usilampatti muddy bus stand with a heavy sigh from its brakes after a long 14 hours journey. I got down from the bus when the dust was still attempting to settle down. The dust took its revenge over the bus for disturbing its hibernation by settling down as my trouser perhaps because I traveled in that bus. It was still early morning and the yellow rays from sun had not picked up its temperature yet. I decided to take the shortcut behind the bus stand so that I could reach my house in ten minutes after 15 turns and 8 crossings. Velappan was coming back after his morning schedule of milk distribution. Seeing me, he smiled a smile broad enough to expose his loss of one tooth in the upper jaw. ”sundara, have you forgotten us? After your parents demise, you’ve never come home. How are you? How is the weather over there? Huh! You seemed to have lost weight and I think you were much fairer last time”, he continued and pedaled away neither waiting for my reaction nor reply. I just kept smiling till he was out of sight.
I knocked my neighbour’s door to collect the keys. Kamalam mami emerged amidst the busy kitchen schedule with the remains of rice dough in one hand and saree is tucked in for swift and easy perambulation in her cramped kitchen., which hadn’t witnessed a single whitewash after Gopalan master’s ( kamalam’s husband) retirement 8 years back. She gave me the key, enquired about me, the same set of queries I’m encountering since velappan.
Though it is hardly one year since I had come here, I felt nostalgic, especially after my father’s demise last year. The emptiness of the small house devoid of his physical presence definitely reflected a part of heart’s feelings, which still haven’t recovered from the emptiness he had left back. He was an ordinary farmer by profession. But, his respect and love for my mother made him extraordinary, especially in this society packed with filthy male chauvinistic pigs. Somehow most of the men in the society think that wives are mere alternatives for cheap labor, a live machine to replace housemaid, mixie, grinder, washing machine and above all a dumb robot made just to vent her husband’s frustration. I thought the poor fate of the society’s fair sex is confined only to my town of usilampatti. In my past few years in Chennai, I can boldly claim that the male domination is a part of every single family, whether it is usilampatti or Chennai or for that case any society which has human beings. Even those gentlemen and ladies talking and writing at length about women freedom do not spare themselves from their attitude of male domination.
The freedom for women in its real sense can be achieved only by changing men’s mind and nothing else. Till men change their attitude to accept their counterpart as equals, women’s social freedom will be just but a distant mirage. My father not only understood this, but also lived by what he understood. He respected my mother and hence was an aberration in the small town. My father used to tell that only those families who can respect their ladies will prosper in their life. I sometimes feel guilty at my prosperity as it can be staked as evidence against my father’s hypothesis.
After enjoying nice fresh water bath in the stream nearby, I finished the customary duty of visiting all the houses in the street. Each family had a lot to share with, some joyous, some sorrowful, and the prize of patient listening would be a filter coffee at the end. The day melted quickly giving way to the milky moon light. I was relaxing in my father’s easy chair in our pyol, when ramaswamy, a grocery shop owner living in the corner house hobbled towards me, “Hey sundara how are you? Was busy on the shop for the whole day. Sita( his wife) told that you had come”. I welcomed him, hiding my irritation of his unsolicited entrance disturbing my solitary bliss amidst the moonlight and neem breeze. A casual chat on the climate, water problem and politics went on for a while. Ramaswamy, with a sudden curiosity asked, “What are you in Chennai?”.
“Well, I’m a real estate agent where I actually help people buy, sell or rent their properties. It’s basically a service business.”

“oh ! Broker a”

“Ptch!!, Despite my endeavours to avoid the ignominy of being called as ‘broker’, I fall victim to such affronts, especially at a place like my hometown. Why can’t people use ‘real estate agent’? Doesn’t it sound more decent? When I first came to Chennai, I didn’t intend to become the so called ‘broker’. I wanted to start a business of my own. “Business !!, that’s not for people like us”, amma had exclaimed when I told her my plan for the first time. I argued and convinced her later that business needs only acumen and is not confined to one set of people. Later, I had to convince my father for financing me and I carefully delegated the responsibility to amma.
“Sundar wants to start a business in Chennai.”
“Business!!!”, almost the same exclamation as that of amma.
“Like Tata and Birla?”, my father asked. Any one or anything related to business is extrapolated to Tatas and Birlas. For example, after my settling in Chennai, amma used to tell her neighbours, “my son is doing business, like Tata and Birla”, this time Tata and Birla are seated in a statement of pride. When I told my friends “I’m doing business”, they reply back “oh, like Tata and Birla?”, a hint of sarcasm.
Huh! I really pity Tata and Birla; for they are the most used and abused names in Indian family’s conversation on business.
Ramaswamy interrupted my flashback thoughts, “Sundara I have come to you for a favour. Who else I know in Chennai and who else could help me”. One good thing about usilampatti people is that they talk straight to the point. Though Ramaswamy tried to plodder around, he couldn’t manage to conceal his plea for more than a short interval. In less than 5 minutes, I understood that Ramaswamy’s daughter had finished her engineering and she was planning to come to Chennai for a job search and that I was supposed to take care of her. A sense of pride over powered my irritation, at being entrusted with the new responsibility of being the girl’s guardian. It meant that I would have to take her to Chennai, find a good accommodation, take long walks with her during the late evenings when the roads are relaxed from traffic, advice her like a father, listen to her childish narration, take care of her health and list went on. Coupled with my pride, a sense of satisfaction started creeping in; like that when you feel when you help a blind cross the road or that you feel when you buy a biscuit and a cup of tea to the road side crippled beggar and so on.
With my acceptance and within a week, the three of us (Ramaswamy, his daughter Gayathri and I) left to Chennai. When we reached usilampatti bus stand, half of the village had assembled to bid Gayathri farewell. Everyone had the same farewell message, “Gayu, you wont forget me, will you? And don’t forget to write letters”. Indian postal department should be proud about usilampatti as its still unaffected by internet and its viruses.
Gayathri proved in our journey, why she deserves such an affectionate farewell. Within the twelve hour journey to Chennai, I knew all her details, the schools she studied in, her friends and their families, her teachers and their families, her neighbours and their families and the list went on. Since I knew many of the people she referred to, she got even more excited at my acknowledgement and went into further details to ensure that she was able to feed me with some first hand information. Her main ambition, it seemed was to join a software company. And I also understood from her that most of the engineer’s dream and ambition is to be a software engineer, where a fat salary fills the pocket, enabling them to enter into a new culture characterized by Pizzas, latest English movies and an on-site trip to the western hemisphere. About a century back, Indians were transported to Malaya and Burma in bulk by the British for rubber plantation. Their families sent them with cheer and lots of hope for clearing their financial debts. Little did they know then that these people were going as slaves to obey the orders of a capitalist. When I see the software engineers slogging late hours and weekends under the pretext of competition and career development, I somehow see not much difference between software engineers and those rubber plantation workers.
“Wow, how beautiful sunrise is,” Gayathri got up. “It looks like an orange, but in usilampatti, we don’t get oranges like this. That mohan, the fruit vendor sells only lemon sized oranges. Instead we can buy lemon itself. Ha, why should we buy lemon? Mangalam mami has a lemon tree in her garden and she is generous in distributing her lemons, unlike Kavitha mami who guards her guava tree as though she won’t even let the squirrels touch it…….”, she stopped finishing one around of gossip about all her neighbours and friends. Suddenly she stopped, “what uncle, you are talking since I got up, let me brush my teeth”, and she left. There was complete silence other than the periodic lullaby of train’s wheels.
We soon reached my one-room apartment cum office in Anna nagar. Before evening tea, I had found an accommodation for Gayathri. It’s hardly few streets away from my apartment. A white board hung outside and within its faded area was encapsulated in small blue font, “5 star ladies hoste”, sacrificing the ‘l’ of the hostel to environment. The lady in charge, in a shiny chiffon blue saree matching the font colour of the board outside, welcomed us clenching her broad smile to her beautiful face. With age, she was overgrown and her cheek muscles drooped making her smile even broader. The tiny vermilion mark caught between her eyebrows melted in the Chennai sun and descended her long nose. When she assured safe lodging for Gayathri, all of us were convinced.
Next day Gayathri shifted to ‘5 star ladies hoste”. The lady was in a plain green cotton saree and more beautiful than the previous day. A sign of maturity and responsibility blended with love may describe her in brief. Ramaswamy couldn’t control his outpour of the gathered tears hidden under his eyelids. Before leaving, he thanked me thousand times for my service.
Days went on, I often met Gayathri, and mostly when she came to ‘M.G. internet café’, diagonally opposite to my apartments. She would go through all the job search sites, read tips to make good resume and keep applying. With hundred applications and no responses, she came there again to re-edit her resume and explore new companies. Often, our meeting would confluence to the coffee house nearby. Our one hour meeting would witness her talking for 60 minutes, with diverse topics ranging from job market, usilampatti, her friends and so on. And never had she failed once to tell some good things about the lady in charge.
Occasionally I used to visit her in her hostel, for after all I’m her local guardian. I felt a parental responsibility for Gayathri, may be because of Ramaswami’s trust over me, or perhaps the self-consciousness of ageing witnessed by the graying hairs over my ears. I would be able to hear Gayathri at the gate itself and would wonder whether there is a time in her life when she could remain silent for 5 minutes. She used to greet me with her cherubic smile and immediately start talking, “uncle how long have you been , you know what happened yesterday…. “, a lady in brown house coat passed us, Gayathri interrupted, “hey Kavi, I old you about an uncle from my home town isn’t….”, she continued for a while when someone else passed with Gayathri interrupting again. After some time, she turned to me as if gaining consciousness after an accident, “uncle, what were we talking?” I was amused by her use of “we” as she was the one who used to talk and I would merely listen.
I got a wealthy client who was looking for investing his big chunk of black money in real estate. Money in black pays well and I soon became busy. One day Gayathri called me and said that her lady in charge was planning to take all the hostel in-mates for new-year party. She sought my opinion and I encouraged her to go out as it would definitely be a good change for her.
Two days later, I got a call from her hostel conveying an unbearable message. Gayathri had committed suicide. I rushed to her hostel. The whole building was silent, evidencing the void of Gayathri’s departure. The wrinkled thin white cloth formed an opaque layer over Gayathri’s dead body. The lady in charge explained that she was in love with a guy and he had cheated her. She showed some letters from her bag.
The post mortem report confirmed that Gayathri was raped before the incident. Ramaswamy’s fragile hand trembled when he received her body from police custody. We neither spoke nor ate anything. The shock drenched in sorrow melted and mixed with my stomach fluids causing some uneasiness. The sorrow vapourized, expanded and occupied my abdomen and chest. It further expanded pressurizing my ribs and choked my lungs. Like a safety valve, my eyelids gave way to the sorrow fluid and tears flew.
Separation and sorrow are inseparable. Even earth enforces gravity on its objects to escape the sorrow of separation. Gayathri, was suddenly omnipresent; in my apartment, in the net centre, in the coffee shop, her memories dwelled everywhere. Her innocent talk kept echoing into my ears. I was like a parent or an elder brother to her, enjoy and relished the bits of services to Gayathri; sometimes it was posting her resume, sometimes it was buying some stationeries, sometimes even accompanying her for interviews. All these, however insignificant it may be, had acted as a catalyst to improve our relation. Thinking further on these lines, I was convinced that I was closer to her that we acknowledged. The revelation brought along with it some amount of possessiveness into my mind. I felt that she should have discussed it with me and my intervention then could have avoided this tragedy. Had I known about her affair with that unknown guy, I would have admonished her, or I would have dealt straight with that guy. I felt like killing the guy who took advantage of her innocence. With the anger drifting towards the guy, my possessiveness shared its positive side of compassion to Gayathri.
Often I missed her and more often I became frustrated. I wanted to take her to beach temple; wanted to buy her the pearl ear-stud which she sighed at with awe when we went to Hyderabad bazaar, wanted to cook her favourite pulaav and so many other things which were postponed added fuel to my burning frustration.
As time went by, my sorrow slowly melted like candle wax. Gayathri’s memories were only intermittent; her constant presence slipped to dreams at night. The rigidity of her thoughts relaxed its grips and my real estate business diluted it further. I became busy with the wealthy client to convert his black money to land. That day I went to internet centre to email my client about a property.
I heard a voice, “hey it’s the lady at 5 star hostel”, the voice belonged to a group of excited guys in my next cubicle. From my seat, I could see a portion of their monitor. Yes, they were right, it was the same lady in charge of 5 star ladies hostel. My astonishment in what I witnessed later sealed me into my chair. The lady in charge was calm as usual; but the girls around her were crying, some of them looked tired; some of them bleeding and yet the lady in charge’s tranquility was intact.
Oh my God, that’s Gayathri. What am I seeing? Is it true? No, this can’t be. I wanted to close my eyes, but couldn’t; I wanted to run, but couldn’t. My legs went tired, a solid mass of energy just escaped out of my body, like air out of a burst balloon. I was stone fixed as two men damaged Gayathri. She protested vehemently, but in vain. The lady in charge stood beside, smiling. Ahh ! I ran out, like a mad man towards unknown destiny to escape an unknown force following me. However, despite my restlessness and hasty running, a corner of my mind smiled at my consciousness and told, “How much ever you run, you can’t escape the guilt inside forever”.

Slum dog- a perspective

Every one, by now might have read, heard or written enough reviews about the recently launched movie, Slum dog Millionaire (henceforth shall be represented as SM). Still I attempt one as the commercial movie hitting the top review columns, suddenly have taken an icon of Indian patriotism after Oscar ceremony.

We, Indians are thrilled even to learn that our movie is nominated for Oscar, perhaps we live by the adage, “competing is more important than winning”, or may be because we know the worth of our movies and are pleasantly surprised by its entering the international arena. I remember one actor's interview (there are millions of interviews by thousands of actors in hundreds of channels, so dont remember who), "we are using the cameras ditched by hollywood and our people want 'Matrix' like actions in all the movies.

Coming back to SM, I too, with the enthu inflicted by multiple sources, watched the movie with great patriotic feelings. The movie was nice overall, a good theme, but i was disappointed. First of all, someone please tell me whether its a hindi movie or english movie. First half or rather the childhood days of Jamal is in hindi till suddenly they jump from a running train and whole india speaks british accented english. The childhood slum days can never be depicted in english, but once the phase is over, the director conviniently came out of hindi. However, the well known hindi actors under very common indian cicumstances, when speak a foreign language in screen, the aberration is incorrigible, especially after a wonderful start of slum hindi.

The hindu-muslim riot and killing of Jamal's mother is an emotional force-fit for the simple question of 'what does lord Rama holds in his hand?". Similarly, when Anil Kapoor tried to cheat Jamal with wrong answer, Jamal is arrested for cheating case. Such scenes are aimed only to pull the emotions of viewers and built with no logic.The original book from which this movie is adapted doesnt have such illogical situations.

Talking about the theme, the social crimes of child abduction, prostitution and gundaism...A definite answer which director might have got from any indian across a coffee table. The director doesnt seem to have researched on any of these, for the scenes move too rapidly even to register or create an impact. The theme have lot of potential to exploit the emotions, reality and the real sufferings, but went till Oscar unexploited.

In one of the reviews I read that Oscar is under pressure to recognize india, but their ego prevented them to call upon an Indian director on stage and hence have found an easy route. Though the argument may convince all those who didnt appreciate the movie, I do not completely agree with it.

Few months back, I read a couple of novels by Khaled Hosseini describing the miseries in Afghan since USSR's invasion and for those who have had a first hand feeling about Afghan cant stop praising the work. But if an Afghan goes through it, he may not see anything interesting as he himself is a part of system which makes others eyebrows life in surprise. We are in a similar state of mind, being a part of the system, we couldnt appreciate it.

Finally, the reason for many of us to hate SM could also be because, the movie which is such an ordinary depiction of India won an international applause under a foreign director and not one among our millions. :)
(Image source: http://www.imdb.com/media/rm1571460352/tt1010048)

Lost debit card- short story

As the tiny white blades swung gently, the 2 ton air conditioner pumped cool air, laden with a strong aroma of room freshener into that small ATM. Today’s freshener flavour is sandal and is soothing unlike the previous week’s penetrating jasmine flavour.
But, inside the small room, I was not bothered about anything around. It was the third time I’m dialing from the wall-hung dust laden white phone inside the ATM. I pressed the button “Direct Manager” and waited impatiently when a computerized voice answered, “Welcome to JM International Bank, for banking related queries, please press ‘1’, for credit card enquiries, please press ‘2’, for demat account and other related enquiries, press ‘4’, for personal and housing loan queries, press ‘5’, for insurance and related queries, press’6’, …. And if you want to talk to our phone banking officer directly, press ‘9’.
I was desperately waiting for this and immediately pressed ‘9’. This time another cute computerized voice answered,” Please wait, you are in queue” and beautiful sitar music replaced the computerized voice. Had I not been in my current agony, I would’ve flirted with the owner of the computerized voice,” honey, your voice is better than the recorded music and…” But this time I didn’t entertain any such distractions. The loop of computerized voice and sitar music continued for sometime when a natural live human voice broke at the other end, “good morning sir, thanks for calling JM bank, This is Seema in banking accounts section of JM Bank, my staff no is 81435, what can I do for you sir,” she finished her routinely repeated constant greeting dialogue.

God knows how many million times she had repeated the same greeting to several customers and it’s really appreciable that she still holds enthusiasm in her voice. Who knows, may be the fat monthly pay includes her acting enthusiastic hiding her work’s boredom..

I repeated for the third time. ‘My name is Rajeevkrishnan, my account no is 460324589311 and I’ve lost my debit card.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.” Seema’s sweet voice answered at the other end.” This is Banking section, you may have to contact Card service” and transferred the call to some other desk. The monotonic ringing continued for sometime and there was silence, pure silence, the absolute solution for my complex problem. I slammed the receiver.

“Today is a bad day for me”, I thought. I tried to recollect all the possibilities under the sky for losing my wallet. “Did I forget to take it from house? Did I miss it in fuel station? Or…..” a series of mental questions with a single answer “No”.

Sometimes, under extreme pressure, your mind lands up somewhere unconnected to the present. My mind flashed back and forth and Gayathri haunted my thoughts. More than the loss, my worry then was how to face her that evening. “How many times I’ve told you not to keep debit card and license in your wallet? Are you that lazy to keep them in a separate pouch?” and a series of bashing. A corner of my mind generally agrees with her. But what I’m afraid is about the worst that follows, a solid half an hour of lamenting starting from my missing her uncle’s cousin’s nephew’s marriage eight years back and continuing chronologically event by event which ends in my forgetting to buy a cough syrup for her mother last week, which she claims that I should voluntarily have bought seeing her mother coughing.

I followed the ritual again for the fourth time. “Welcome … Please dial 9”.

I stood there feeling the cool air spit from A.C, watching the Monday morning sun slowly engulfing the mother earth with his flame lips and waiting for the irritating computerized voice to stop. The other end got life again.
“Good morning sir, Sumathi here”. This time its Sumathi, earlier it was Seema, before that Pearl who followed Kavitha. The beautiful names and their honey filled music-like voices were good, but gave no solution for my missing debit card. Kavitha didn’t know what to do and promised that she would call me back after discussing with her boss and she thinks she gave a smart answer. Pearl followed the same tactics of Seema, transferring my call to some department without waiting for a reply. And I wonder how none of the transferred calls are answered.
Having repeated several times, even my voice hardened like the emotion free computerized voice. I repeated the whole story again. Listening to my tragic story, Sumathi said “Oh ! I’m sorry”, a compassion not expressed by any of the previous ladies adoring beautiful names. Anyone, especially when in distress is easily moved by a couple of soothing words. Even in the state of misery, my brain made a mental note of the importance of empathy. Sumathi’s “sorry” made me believe that she’s going to solve my problem. Sumathi continued, “May I ask you few questions to verify your details?”.
“Yes, please”, I replied as courteous as possible though my mind was telling “you lousy lady, finish it fast and talk about my debit card.”
She asked, “May I know your mother’s maid’s name?”.. “What? maid’s name? Why do you need that”. “Sir, please tell me your mother’s maid’s name.” I was confused and answered, “Backiam”, the lady whose rough hands are responsible for the shining utensils of our kitchen for the past several years.
“Sorry sir, its not matching our records.” “But how come my mother’s maid’s name entered your database and it seems complete nonsense.” Even amidst the agony of losing card, I felt awfully irritated at her questions. My mind, for a moment went blank, a state of thoughtlessness surpassing the present tension. Sometimes, when you are forced to a complete state of pure confusion, left with no solution, you will surely have some clue in front of you just waiting for you to crack it. This time it was a fresh application form lying over the glass top which melted the dirty handprints leftover by someone unknown who might have taken its assistance for filling some forms, or may be to drop a cheque. But why do I care about all these?
The application form, printed nicely in orange colour also shared some dirt from its glass bed. The application form read as follows
“ NAME (CAPTIAL LETTERS):
MOTHER’S MAIDEN NAME: ………”,
Oh ! She wanted to ask my mother’s maiden name. My god! I was rather panicked wondering how insane the bank is to appoint such a crack brain in the help desk. Her sweet voice didn’t appear sweet anymore. I felt talking further about my lost debit card was abominable and I slammed the receiver.
My cellphone kept on the glass top vibrated riling my temper. The green colour monochromatic display contained within itself, “boss calling” in dark block letters. I could see unpleasant changes in my face even in the distorted reflection in the stainless steel contoured plates in front of me. I attended the call and for several minutes I kept on uttering only two words, “yes sir”. I had to rush for an urgent meeting and to send an urgent email and….. nowadays I’ve lost the feel for urgency as every damn activity is prefixed with ‘urgent’ and I do it as normal as possible.
Frustration from the calls I made and received forced me to get out of the ATM. I decided to send an email to the bank rather than calling unhelpful helpdesk. I took my briefcase, the one my brother in law presented for one my wedding anniversaries (Gayathri thinks that the suitcase is made of diamond, though I know the truth that he got the foam brief case as a compliment for some cheap conference on some useless topics he attends) and brusquely walked out pushing the aesthetically bent stainless steel handle of the heavy glass door.
I came out, took a deep breath of the warm air. I need to think what I should do now. I couldn’t get rid of Seema, Pearl, Kavitha and Sumathi. All of them haunted like devils and somewhere nowhere I could see them ganging up to mock me. I imagined them laughing at me hysterically, how crude!!
The ATM watchman approached me. The peach shirt has a coffee brown label, “B.S.K security services” embroidered over it. The shirt might have witnessed some tough blows during its previous washes, the embroidery has started unthreading. First thing that entered my mind was “hey black shoes don’t go with your trousers”, I controlled my thoughts and gave him a confused look. I’ve read in internet about ATM watchmen abducting the customers at gunpoint for money, but I seriously couldn’t believe that he’s attempting the crime at day time. Hmm, many criminals don’t even know how to perform a crime, and finally get caught to the big bellied khakhi policemen.
He might have understood my anxiety; he smiled relieving me from the thought of my being abducted. He searched for something in his pocket. Oh my god! Tension again, what could be that? A pistol, a knife, or any other pocket size weapon our film industry hasn’t captured yet for its miraculous heroes?. He took it out of his pocket. It was dark brown in colour and very familiar to me, yes, yes that’s it. He spoke for the first time, “ When you went in, your wallet fell down, please count the money”.

Kite Runner- Book Review

A captivating brilliant novel from Khaled Hosseni. The advantage of its being in first person made full justice to the emotional extract. The story is about two friends, Amir and Hasan (though Amir couldn’t accept till the end that he was a friend to Hasan) in Afghanistan. Amir and his baba leave Afghan due to Russian invasion in Afghan and flee to America. After several years (after Amir’s baba’s death due to cancer and after Amir’s marriage with Soraya)Amir goes to Afghan and bring late Hasan’s son to America as an act of repentance for a cowardy betrayal he had done to his friend in his childhood days.

Usually, many novels bring out innocence when the subject is about an infant and end up forcing the author’s thoughts through the child. There are definitely some rare pieces where the child is brought out in its original form, a very difficult task, say Lucy the pisher in “The Burning Summer” by Claire Raine. Even in those rare pieces child is depicted as an embodiment of innocence. It is true that under the milky skin, hiding beneath the innocence a child can be cruel to the core; however since innocence is the basic character, the cruelty sometimes lead to compunction like Amir in Kite Runner.

Amir’s baba rocks throughout the novel. Though the author thought of surprising us by telling Hasan as illegitimate son of his baba, he had left enough hints right from the beginning and I was not really surprised.

I saw a lot of me in Amir, his tastes, his thought process, may be because he had flaws and so am I and I believe so are everyone. Reading through this I felt little uneasy as my wrong deeds of the past pricked me. But I adore Rahim khan’s statement to Amir that only purity in character can give you guilt feeling. As you said, there’s always a way to be good again. Thank you Rahim for that. .

Relay Race- short story

Our town might have had one of the best engineers to design the gates of ‘Queen Victoria Park’. Since my childhood days, thousands of kids have swung on the iron gates and it still stands majestically holding my grandson between its slender vertical bars. The huge boughs of the Peepal tree near the gate fanned in the scent of fried cashew nuts sold outside by few black skinned, gray haired ugly-looking women. As a reflex to Peepal tree’s call, my hand scanned my shirt pocket. Scanning my shirt pocket is an easy job; it hardly holds an old fountain pen, a small pocket diary scribbled throughout with random information, a small bit of ‘to be bought’ items list written legibly in my wife Gayathri’s handwriting, few coins and few rupee notes totalling a value less than one hundred. My hand pressed my pocket, like Dr.Seetharam does with his chill stethoscope during winter fever. With the five rupee coin excavated from my pocket, I walked briskly towards the gate. The thin summer air was thick with the scent of cashew. In exchange of that five rupee coin, I got a small pack of cashew nuts and a murmur from the wry ugly face “now a days you wont get a cup of water for five rupees and people want cashew nuts..”. Ignoring the comment, I gently opened the shabby pack revealing bright yellow coloured cashew nuts. I took one cashew; it looked like a penguin with a broad hip and a narrow neck; its curved neck was charred due to excess heat from the clay ovens in the thatched roof huts of those ugly women. Appreciating the beautiful symmetry of cashew, I felt the fine dimples spread over its golden yellow surface. I happily allowed my appetite empty the packet. I slowly unwrapped the paper cover that till few minutes back held those daffodil cashew nuts. One side of the wrapper was decorated by a black and white photograph of some actress, whose name I don’t remember. The other side had a quote of Albert Einstein about Mahatma Gandhi. I carefully tore along the black lines embroidering the quote and slid it into my shirt pocket; who knows, someone might have thought that I’m actually storing the photograph of that actress; but I don’t really care what others think about me.
When I got up to deposit the remaining wrapper safely inside municipality’s never-cleared dust bin, I saw Vichu (Viswanathan) coming towards me from the park library. Soon we were sitting in the concrete bench under the neem tree, the one which we have been sharing for hundreds of evenings since our retirement. “Ha Nana (Narayanan) where is your grandson Ramu?” When Vichu asked, I realized that I had forgotten Ramu for quite a while. Startled, I turned back and was relieved to see the iron gates still holding him between its vertical bars. Pressing his palms on the concrete bench, Vichu bent back to relax his posture and enjoy the neem breeze. Breaking the silence, he farted, controlled explosions in the park air. May god bless all the holy hands that planted the trees around us which instantly purified the air contaminated by Vichu’s emissive presence. The Peepal tree’s breeze this time cleared the odour and relieved me the effort of wrinkling my nose tip. Vichu spared an unembarrassed casual smile, stroked his belly and said “today’s culture….”
I was surprised. In general, eye brows broaden in response to pleasant surprises and vice versa. This time, my eye brows contracted when Vichu attempted to reason out today’s culture for his invisible gas bubbles. Relieving my surprise, Vichu continued, “Today’s culture has ruined our lives. Those days, we had healthy food; spinach and vegetables that grow above the earth’s surface enriched with positive energy. The diet was balanced then. But, today’s culture have shifted towards pizzas and coke, hardly my daughter-in law cooks vegetables. Mention not the technological demons. The food, already poisoned with artificial chemicals is cooked with microwave. And what remains is only gas trouble and stomach ulcer.”
Being a part of retired men association, such bane for technology is not new. I think the hatred for technology stems out from the ignorance of not understanding the same.
“Vichu… I agree with you that our eating habits have westernized. But, weren’t we different from our previous generation? May be we didn’t had pizzas, but we adopted chappathis which were not a part of any of our parent’s dinner menu. The increased work pressure has decreased the available time and energy and hence increases the sales of packed foods. And about your curse on microwave oven, Vichu, don’t you remember how upset your father was when you bought the gas stove. He feared that the inflammable gas stove may one day shatter the whole house into pieces. We were different from our previous generation and so are this generation from us.” Gayathri’s words echoed in my ears. Once when I was upset with my son, Gayathri told me, “You were not like what your father expected and your son is not like you expect him to be.” Gayathri might have mentioned it casually. Truth, even if casually mentioned is indispensable.
Vichu was silent for a moment; may be his emotions were pricked by my mentioning about his father’s displeasure on gas stove or perhaps he was in agreement with my argument.
“But Nana…”, Vichu continued “Its not just about food. I’m talking about overall degeneration of this generation. It’s disgusting to see people being stingy in their costume and still be unabashed of it. Disco clubs and night-out parties have become a part of family life. Movies and internet spread venom and people are trapped into it.”
“Vichu, I think there is some problem in our viewing the next generation. We are unable to accept changes and at the same time we fail to realize that we ourselves had introduced some changes in this society. Talking about costume, our previous generation wore only traditional dhoti. Did you continue that? In fact, you were the first one to wear bell-bottoms in our college. I still remember your blushing when kamala told that you looked like Rajesh Khanna when you wore that coffee-brown colour bell-bottoms and tiny executive check, long collared full sleeve shirt. It’s a matter of fact that our social system is changing, may be the rate of change of social life is faster in this generation than ours.”
Vichu interrupted before I finish, “Nana, you mean to say that everything is allright?”
Evening sun had already started fading. Ellipsoid bulbs of sodium vapour lamp came to life giving birth to continuous flood of yellow light attempting to compete with the setting sun over the local area of concrete bench. Vichu’s discontent on my supporting this generation was visible in his facial changes, now illuminated by the monochromatic light flowing through the translucent (once transparent) glass panes of the sodium vapour lamp.
“Vichu, I’m just trying to say that every element in this society is changing. Few years back, we were the source of change and we didn’t realize then that we were changing. Now, when this generation is changing, we become mere observers. According to our parents, we were not right and according to our grandparents, our parents were not right. If you extend the time scale into both past and future, you would always observe that the older generation is reluctant to the changes of the present generation. And whether such changes are good or bad, we can’t comment. Because what we witness as changes are just symptoms, symptoms of something bigger and sacred. Yes, all these changes are just symptoms of another slow invisible change of our society’s value system. Among the infinite changes in technology, social life, dress, eating habits etc, some may positively influence and contribute for the betterment value system and some may not..”
Ramu came running to hug me, with soiled shoes and sweat laden T-shirt. When Ramu hugs me I forget everything, even my line of thought; but this time I didn’t and continued, “Vichu... Life is like a relay race, each individual run only for a certain distance and handover the baton to the next. Similarly, each generation run a certain distance holding the baton of ‘change’ and hand it over to the next generation. So, lets not worry about this relay race, but shall try to channelize the these changes to the overall objective of a better value system for future.” Vichu this time appeared to be relaxed and extended a smile. We walked towards the iron gates built by an unknown ‘best engineer’.
We crossed a couple of young men in their thirties, who might have come to the park with their kids and probably were returning then. In that silent atmosphere, amidst the soothing music of Peepal tree, those voices were clearly audible. In a hoarse voice one of them spoke, “these kids... God, they are no way like our generation. How nice we were as kids? I am really scared about the future of this new generation.”
Vichu pressed my hands, a gentle sign of approval…

That Stupid thing!!!!!- A short story

My name is … ah ! who cares about my name in the Chennai city holding more than 7.5 million individuals, including the yesterday born grandson of my friend, Srinivasan. Even the one day old cute kid whose feeble cry from his teeth free empty mouth making his rosy cheeks red, will not care to talk to me one day. From the one day old kid to people who have only one day left to live in this funny world, nobody wants to know about me. The 7.5 million individuals in this Chennai city, some percentage of whom I witness daily, some other percentage I witness rarely and the majority I never witness, to me appears like 7.5 million individual societies. All because of that stupid thing.

The basic principle of human society is to interact and cherish relationship. Every individual influences the society. The society is run by the response of each individual to the responses of other individuals. Everything was fine till few years back, until the stupid thing made its presence in the peaceful Chennai. From dawn to dusk, even while sleeping, people need only one thing, that stupid thing, that hand-held stupid mobile phone. Nowadays, I’m not seeing people around; I just see 7.5 million mobile phones roaming around holding human beings with it. Earlier, 8 out of 10 people I encounter used to greet me, but now; sometimes even I wonder whether I exist or not.

That day I really thought the guy has gone insane; what else you think about someone who talks and laughs by himself without anyone around in the middle of the road. Another day, when I went to milk booth, the person filling the decade old broken chair inside the cash counter asked, “ya tell me” and I replied “two packets”. He started shouting, “I don’t care who you are and let me see how you get it”. I was stunned and twisted my complexly entangled brain cells to think what the problem in buying two packets of milk is. Thank god! Only then I realized that he was talking-to someone through his mobile phone. Everybody everywhere is busy talking to someone nowhere in mobile phones. The whole world looks like a lunatic asylum where every individual confines to himself, an aberration in the society. But, since the whole society is behaving like infinite individual societies, only I look like an aberration for them. The black colour, grey colour and many other coloured plastic boxes with rubber buttons and a small screen have eaten away all my friends and relatives from me.

It’s long since I’ve talked even to my daughter. Normally when she comes home, she complains about the weather and also grieves that she had to walk a long distance. Compressing her big eyes, her cute little face wrinkles when she complains. I love to see that expression and often tease her for that. She’s indeed beautiful and like her mom, she’s a chatter box. During dinner, we sit together and we listen to her while she narrates incident by incident since that morning. Whether it is a quarrel with her classmate or an appreciation from her teacher, her food won’t digest until she completes the whole days stuff. The practice continued for years even after her joining the job, but until recently. Nowadays, she enters answering a call, later get hooked up in another call and responds to some other call even while dinner. No more narration from her and no more wrinkles over her face. All because of that stupid mobile phone. I feel like puking over it.

The worst part occurs during my daily travel to office. I use electric train for commuting to office. It’s a half an hour journey and I used to enjoy it very much. We, the co-passengers had formed our own local groups. The first one of the group will reserve seats for people boarding in subsequent stations. Our group mostly comprised of old men, Mr.Sankaran whose pot belly hits the passenger in opposite seat, the bald headed Balakrishnan who have never missed the sandal scratch on his forehead, a proud symbol which he used to portray that he is a keralite and Mr.Shyam,smart and handsome, an odd man in our group used to discuss about varied topics. Though we had never been to each others houses, we knew all of our relatives, functions at our homes and everything personal about us. Similarly, there were other groups; those who play cards and makes lot of noise, who sing film songs using compartment walls as drums, who stands on foot board to look around girls entering each station and so on. Basically, people of similar interests got together and enjoy. But, now, everything has changed. People are idle. Though they travel together throughout the year, they don’t even know each other’s names. They are always busy talking to someone or other in their stupid mobile phones.

Another group of people sit idle like Egyptian mummies. Yes, they are listening to FM radio in mobile phones. They sway gently by the cradle vibration of the train and I think they liked it as the swaying is sometimes coherent with the rhythm of the music that stupid mobile phone vomits. Once, I sat in between these swaying people, suddenly when one started talking to some stranger. He didn’t care about his neighbours and was revealing all his personal details. From his monotonous conversation (believe me, its killing to listen only one half of conversation), I understood that he is a diamond merchant and is going to Europe next week. Had my dad not inculcated some good value system, I could have used the free info to own few diamonds. If I go on listening to such numerous one sided conversations, I’m sure I will go mad one day. Already, my wife complains that my behaviour is awkward.

But one relief is that this train trauma will last only this Thursday. Tired of this old man who still uses his secretary to check email, my company thought that they should get rid of me at the earliest opportunity possible. Though I would have loved to work for some more years to avoid being with my wife for the whole day, the very thought of everyday train journey made me love my wife.

The most awaited Thursday also came at last. Since nursery school, I’ve been a part of many farewells. Every farewell is associated with mixed emotions, a grief of losing the past and excitement of entering the future, like a cup of water after eating gooseberry, a sourness mixed with sweetness. Relishing the past memories and expecting the future moments, I was experiencing the last official 30 minutes train journey. The train stopped in between at local stations and the railway platforms exchanged passengers and all the passengers with stupid mobile phones. A lady clad in a bright yellow saree reflecting the morning mood was standing near the entrance, perhaps for getting down in the next station. The breeze, which remains still at railway station, gushes with heavy force when the train moves blowing the lady’s yellow saree exposing her waist. Sweat dropped from her first waist tire to the second, slowly, very slowly like the collaboration of left over water droplets on an automobile windscreen after rain. But this sweat is an irritating feeling, especially in places like Chennai, the sea water provides enough liquor for the sun that the atmosphere is always fully drunk unable to suck even one drop of sweat from us leaving all the salt laden sweat to trip over clothes making us embarrassed with white salt patches. Everyday, I face the same problem. My loving wife always have something or the other to tell me in the last two minutes before I leave and I have to run from the railway gate to platform within 30 seconds at least to push myself into the last compartment in font of the white uniformed black skinned guard. When I force myself to equilibrium holding the passenger rails, I gasp severely accompanied by wild oscillation of my drooping belly like the bellows of a harmonium. My heart beats rapidly pumping through all possible blood vessels and spit sweat on my forehead and neck. The sweat collects and flows down through the side and reaches my earlobes. I feel tickled, try to wipe it off and I drop my bag in the attempt. The pot belly compels me to get my trousers stitched with the only known tailor Manickam as there is no standard size that fits my disfigured physique. While gasping, my belly pushes my trousers and the white lining peeps out. I can’t see it as y belly prevents, but can realize it by the teasing half-lipped smile from some teenage girls opposite to me.

Being the last day, I started early and escaped the embarrassment of white lining from the teenagers. But, today the teenagers were replaced by the lady inside yellow saree. She was deeply involved in her mobile phone that she was not even aware or didn’t care to be aware of her waist getting exposed. But some college guys who were swaying to the music inside the stupid mobile phone were fully aware of the lady’s exposed waist. I felt sick, but soon forgot about it as I entered my office.

Evening, my office staff hosted a farewell for my retirement day. All of us assembled in the conference hall and for the first time, I took the leading chair in the dais. Most of the people gathered 5 minutes before the scheduled time. Perhaps, the aroma of cutlet behind the dais might have attracted them. We heard some unheard music when one of the guys excused himself with his mobile saying, “hello, ya Ravi speaking”. Soon, one more lady followed the same way. By now, Ravi had come and Gopal received a call. I’m sure it is his fiancée. Despite his dark skin, he blushed; but I had been to his engagement and I personally feel that she’s just an ordinary looking female and doesn’t deserve so much blushing. Within 5 minutes, everyone around me was talking to someone who is not there then and I stood aloof experiencing the unfathomable truth of my loneliness. Under some strange permutation all the potential friends of the gathering were silent for five minutes and hence could finish my farewell.

First our G.M spoke and was followed by many others, my bosses, peers and subordinates. As a custom, they all spoke nice about me. I felt proud despite my complete knowledge that all these are alive only for few more minutes and will vanish like Cinderella’s chariot the moment I get out of the dais.

Before that moment, my G.M garlanded me and gave me a nicely packed gift box wrapped in satin ribbon. I was so delighted, especially at the packing and satin ribbon. With so much of excitation, I slowly opened the box. There was a small greeting card signed by all saying “you will be with us always”. I slowly took the greeting card and found a … god !... the stupid mobile phone.