Les Languages

If you have read any of my previous post you must have a fair idea about my literary skills. I was never good with languages, I still remember how my Malayalam teacher at the govt lower primary school, where I studied for a brief period of time, used to pinch the living daylight out of me when I found it hard to reproduce the jalebi letters he laid on the board onto my slate.

By the time I finished schooling I wrote neatly and sensibly, however, recently I found out that the neat jalebi letters I once wrote looks more like over stretched spring when written after a decade.

Hindi at school was an absolute nightmare. I hated hanging letters on a line, it’s double the effort and writing with dull HB2 pencils didn’t make things any prettier. Hindi grammar is still an unsolved mystery; pul-lingh and sthree-ling was okay for me until my teacher went on to explain genders in sun, moon and other heavenly objects. I found it unacceptable; you see these objects rotating naked in the sky and never saw anything on them that would suggest a gender, then why do you have to complicate a language for no reason? Isn’t that phool-ish?

This gender confusion did cost me a lot, my Hindi answer sheets looked more like arieal shots of American Civil War, with plenty of red cutting into few rows of blue.

To be continued….

Missing blogger found alive!!

My apologies if your search for a ‘missing blogger’ took you to this page. I am just being polite here, I know for a fact that the google crawlers aren’t dumb enough to take my post tile seriously. Anyway, I’ve been absconding from bogsphere for over 4 months; now am back and has a lot of catching up to do.

The last time I tried writing was way back in January, on the Gaza issue. I made no less than five attempts over a period of two weeks and each time I ended up losing my mind. I realize the Israel-Palestine issue is not political and to which you cannot find a political solution, until and unless people on either side realize the value of human life. I hope to write more on this someday.

My sister got married in February. It was one blitzkrieg wedding; planned and executed in just ten days. Less than a week after the wedding I flew to the UAE. I, being the master of bad-career-moves had resigned my job in Bangalore a few months earlier, hoping to find a better one abroad.

In UAE, I had three months to find a job and thanks to all the busted banks in the US, job openings were very rare. Finally after two months, I got into one of the telecom companies. Now that my visa has expired, am back home, hoping my company would send me an employment visa in the near future.

Enough bragging for one day, I promise I’ll post better stuff hereafter. I just wanted to get things moving all over again. Noticed how I avoided the term writers block? That’s because am an aspiring writer and will always be :)

Mid Summer Deluge

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A smile beamed across his face as he surveyed the dark sky; he whispered to his fellow third graders, “It’s going to rain”. Even before they could react, he picked up his battered notebooks from the ground and climbed over the school’s mud fence. He felt a sudden cold breeze on his face; the rain was coming and he had to reach home before it did.
He pulled out a few marbles from his faded navy blue trouser pocket and made sure the big one with the yellow streak was there. Holding his books close to his chest and clutching his trouser pocket containing the marbles, he jumped off the mud fence and dashed towards the rice field. Balancing himself with one hand, he crossed the field over a narrow path while the rice plants danced to the tune of the strong breeze. By the time he reached the banyan tree just outside the rice field, a heavy wind had started to blow away leaves and the tree rained down ripe fruits like heavy pellets.

He reached a long dusty road and saw his house on the other end. His small feet kicked up dust as he raced towards the house. He heard the rain, like a swarm of bees, getting closer and felt the air getting heavier with moisture. He turned back to see the dusty road changing color to dark brown as the rain splashed on it, racing towards him. He ran as fast as he could while the trees on either side swayed violently, as if cheering him. He leapt over the steps leading to his house followed by the thundering sound of the rain hitting the clay tiled roof. He fell on his knees trying to catch his breath, the sweet smell of earth filled his lungs and he felt it flow throughout his body.

Twenty years have passed since that mid-summer deluge, but the sight of the rain chasing him down the dusty road, the sound of it pelting on the roof and the sweet smell of earth it brought will remain locked in his heart forever.

This story was originally posted in Writer's Lounge
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.bringing down the beast.

It’s unimaginable what human beings are capable of doing to each other. Three days of mayhem in Mumbai leaves us stunned and asking a lot of questions.

The attack wouldn’t have happened if the young perpetrators, before setting off to kill innocent people have had asked themselves; is it worth fighting and dying for an ideology or a political cause that demands the blood of 5000 innocents? If there is a force that is smart enough to convince the worthiness of this cause and mentally prepare educated young men to kill innocent civilians, then that’s the enemy we have to bring down.

A war against terrorism can’t be won with weapons and tactics because rules of a conventional war don’t apply here. You can cut off the funding and burn down the infrastructure of a terror organization, but how can you fight a highly motivated terrorist? You just can’t. Of course, you can neutralize him, but it’s just a matter of time before someone replaces him. ‘One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter’ I believe this was said about Yasser Arafat, after his death. To the Palestinians he was a great freedom fighter and the Israelis considered him as a terrorist. While we thank our armed forces for killing those terrorists, a group of aspiring ‘freedom fighters’ might be keenly listening to the inspiring story of how ‘a few young men lost their life fighting the evil Indian armed forces’ and they will soon arm themselves to fight and die like their heroes.

People in the Indian subcontinent have lost faith in the political system. Most of Pakistan’s politicians are educated in the west and have charming personalities. But they are just the pretty political faces of the country; they don’t have control over their army, the ISI or anything for that matter. These politicians are so helpless, they risk losing their head if they criticize the army of make a move against the local terror groups. Pakistan has become a safe haven for breeding terrorists who are capable of doing unimaginable crime against humanity.

In India, political parties are like warring clans. Close to 200 people have died in the Mumbai attack and the opposition leader was not ready to visit the place along with the Prime Minister, nor was he willing to attend an all-party meeting, fearing that it might help the ruling party in the coming election.

We have forgotten that the power lies in our hand. We let a petty politician like Raj Thackeray unleash terror on North Indian immigrants. He ordered his henchmen to strike upon the poorest of poor. Where is he now? He hasn’t uttered a word since the terror attack, maybe AK57 and grenades are too much for him to comprehend. There were reports of three MPs stuck in Taj during the attack. MPs usually have their dinner in five star hotels? Who is paying for their luxuries? We must not let anyone rise above the law or forget his responsibilities to the nation.

This gruesome incident has brought us together as a nation, stories of selfless sacrifice will be always remembered and a stronger faith in our country will bring down this beast one day.

~ rich-poor machine ~

The excitement could be seen on Anto’s face as he jumped the compound wall and ran towards the bushes. Even though he was 10 years old he looked much older, thanks to the hard living conditions in the slums of Mumbai.

He couldn’t stop giggling as he neared the bushes and saw his classmates, Guru and Sethu, dressed up like never before, waiting for him. Guru was wearing a bright yellow T-shirt and blue jeans, the clothes fitted him well but looked as old as the boy himself; Sethu on the other hand was wearing a brown full sleeve shirt neatly tucked in and black trousers, the tip of a long comb exposed its head from his shirt pocket.

Anto went around the boys inspecting them; Guru was wearing a long belt and the loose end was dangling behind him.

Whose belt is this? Anto asked, pulling Guru’s tail

Brother’s, he replied

He bent the protruding part of the belt and pushed it back inside, making it invisible from outside.

Now facing the boys, he started speaking “The guard is not a problem unless you try something stupid. The first time they caught me because I looked like a beggar boy, the second time the machine alerted the guard who caught and slapped me; he said he would strip me naked if I went there again…”Anto paused for a second seeing the anxiety on Sethu’s face “…. It’s alright, you look good. The guard is not going to stop you, but the machine might. That’s why I asked you to bring money. How much do you have?”

“Sixteen” Sethu replied

And you….?

Guru pulled out a few currency notes from his jeans pocket “twenty…”

“That’s good enough” Anto said as he pulled out some coins from his pocket and held towards Sethu

“I have five rupees here, take this now and give it back once everything is over”

The three boys started walking towards the huge mall across the road, it’s 5 in the evening and there was already a huge crowd coming in and out of the main entrance. Anto, who was walking a few steps ahead of the boys stopped and turned around.

“Remember what I told you, no fooling around… I’ll wait here until you come back”

The boys nodded and started walking, as they reached the entrance they avoided looking at the guard’s face and stood in the queue before the metal detector. Sethu turned back to check whether Anto was still there; Anto gave a thumbs up sign. There were a few well dressed guys in front of them in the queue; the machine let them pass through. When Sethu went through followed by Guru, the machine gave a loud beep….

The boys stood dazed for a second, they looked for Anto, and at the same time a guard at the entrance was calling them towards his desk. Just then there was another loud beep, the machine also caught the girl who was standing behind them in the queue. She moved towards the guard near the desk to show her purse, just then the boys saw Anto signaling them to get inside….. and they did.

Walking towards the shade behind the popcorn vending machine kept outside the mall Anto breathed a sigh of relief. He had asked Sethu to count the number of cinema halls that are in the fourth floor, he never believed his friend who heard someone saying that there were 11 of them. How could that be possible?!

He sat on the floor behind the popcorn machine with his face resting on his knees; He could see people going under the metal detector one by one. He wondered how a machine could find out whether someone was rich or poor. Sethu had 21 rupees; still the ‘rich-poor machine’ caught him… How much money does one need to be called rich?? Maybe the machine is not all that smart, it did catch the boys, but it also caught the girl. She had to go to the guard and let him check the money she had in her purse. She must have had a lot of money in her purse, say 200 rupees…

His eyelids started to feel heavy and the images getting blurred, the smell of pop corn made his stomach growl, maybe there’s a ‘rich-poor machine’ inside him as well..