Tell Tale 11

A little background will help you understand better. Ammani writ0es a blog, which is one of my favorite ones. One fine day it says "this blog has gone to sleep" and all the archives had vanished. Now read on.

I laugh at you, Mr. Death!

Mr. James Smith had rheumatic arthritis and his condition was chronic and extremely painful. He could not walk properly without having to bite his teeth till it hurted, in order to distract himself from him crippling pain. He should have been happy to be alive at his age now and after his stints in both the world wars. He should have been long dead and gone... but he just did not give up. Jim was the man what people called Man-of-steel. He hated anyone who gives up at anytime in their puny lives. He simply did not understand why people gave up looking at tiny hurdles. But now it looked like he was in real bad pain.

But, there was hope for him. He had found his peace in someone. He had found a blog so full of energy and breathing with reality that it had its own life. He visited that blog once a day, every day. It was writen by a women who called herself Ammani. Her blog's name is jikku. The blog usually has a new Quick Tale almost everyday.

One day, he connected his computer through his dial-up. It flashed up in his screen the words "this blog has gone to sleep". He did not understand this Quick-Tale, because it did not have the Quick Tale number 151 on it.

It finally dawned on him. Ammani had done with her job. She probably was bored of her blog, tired of writing stories for people. It shook Mr. James Smith because with benumbing regularity everybody in his life had given-up in their lives. But even Jikku! Could it be some hacker who deleted all the stuff? Was something wrong with Ammani? Was she sick or something ?

Whatever it was, Mr. Smith decided that nobody, not even Ammani had the hand to kill Jikku. And so, like the thousand other times, Mr. Smith brought Jikku back to life... or what was left of it.

"Once again, I laugh at you, Mr. Death", he would say,

"Ha ha ha!"

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Update: Following this post, jikku.blogspot.com is back online. I am not sure if this story did anything to change her mind, but all is well now!

Dead swans

I saw the death of a swan today. I felt like kneeling down and praying while I wept. "Funny Filthy Flawed Gorgeous" was killed by its maker Ammani. Like it usually happens, I ask the "meaning of life" question as I grieve over the departed soul.

Doth the maker have the right to destroy the creation ? Ammani did create a blog, a really pretty one, a blog that had a life of its own, which was pampered by the hundreds of comments that people leave and the million visitors that it boasts. But does she have the right to murder her own creation, in cold blood ?

Maybe she wanted to swiftly end her blog, than to drag it on or even worse leave it uncared for in the world of bloggers. Maybe she learned a newer hobby. Just too many maybes choking me from finding closure. I only hope a hacker did not kill the swan.

Here is a 2 liner from the dead swan (by Ammani in her now dead blog):

"She married one; loved another.
One became her husband; the other her password."

There is another swan that is about to die. This glitters with all the rainbow of colors. I pray for thee, Oh blessed divine birds.

A co-ordinated effort

Please visit Mumbai help for details about the dead and injured in the July 11th Mumbai train explosions. It is also a wiki page for ideas and help.

Tell Tale 10

The princess

I write this blog with a faint prayer that she might read it. This is all there is now, this blog. I carefully choose my words, because she might read it. I don't lose context a bit for art's sake. Every word a carefully chosen pearl; the sentences forming beautiful pictures that I hope bobbles up in the ocean of blogs to tell tales. I don't even use the "f" word, "s" word or even the "x" word like I promised once.

I dont miss a single opportunity to quote her. She comes in most of my stories. My darling angel always keeps away from me, always keeps getting angry even if she is just a character in a Tell-Tale. It was supposed to be a joke; I did not mean to say that, OK?

Sometimes I dream about her browsing through my blog in a shiny white Apple-Mac, gasping at the million sparkling mentions of her. I even dream of her smiling at the stories, her huge eyes gleaming with pride, cheeks blushing and tempted ever so subtly to comment, at least anonymously. The dream haunts me; I wake up with a jolt and check my blog for some girly comment with a faint trace of acknowledgment, but never saw any. Irony as it appears, is not without a sense of beauty.

My blog layout is simple. It is wide enough to fill the full breadth of the screen, so that the lengthy stories are easy to read and the short ones fit in a few lines. My font size is big enough to not let my blog look like a swarm of bees buzzing on the monitor. My blog does not have a counter because I know that any http redirection takes extra time. No hit-counter, no fancy blinkies, no weather forecast, no international clocks, no pictures or even a background image. The page loads in the fastest time possible, optimized to run like a jaguar.

Like the 17 year old princess, all dressed up and waiting to be rescued. Only her prince never turns up.

An appreciation

I would like to write some quotes, as a token of appreciation. These were sentences thrown at me by him over a period of a year; I have yanked them out of context. They may sound sarcastic, demeaning and condescending, but only to the touchy reader. I have never been more earnest in my appreciation.

"Oh my God, you are so fat that you are going to die soon. Why don't you run a marathon?"

"When it comes to money everyone is a bastard."

"Don't be too arrogant because wherever you go there will always be someone smarter."

"But, sometimes you need to be a little arrogant."

"The existence of people like you is a proof to the world that I am superior and that there are creatures which are meant to be inferior. Whenever you blabber you are only corroborating that fact. Good, you are serving the purpose of your existence."

I miss that guy.