Tell Tale 22: I forgot my words

I did not spend time with you for a while and now you seem to be forgetting me altogether. Am I to blame if I don't use all the words that I know of? Actually I went into a lengthy and tedious exercise of learning thousands of new English words, to score well in an English test. That was long time back and I cannot remember all those words now.

Ah! it was such a nice time. During the preparation I came to understand the beautiful curves of the language and even the maturity of the vocabulary. It seems, because your language has been around for a while, there is a word to describe every feeling humanly possible, and anything can be described succinctly in a canonical, unambiguous and meaningful way. And that was my style to be, for a while. The elegance of short and curt sentences. A little rhyme, perhaps. You know all that!

We were such good friends, me and my lovely words. But then, I got busy with other things, and I did not visit you frequently. I did not notice when you were around, now you have completely forgotten me. While I am to blame for not maintaining good relations, it was not all my fault, for I had too many words to count. And I did not really understand a few of you well enough to have a sentence party with.

You don't seem to understand, that I am really trying to make things work. I write infrequently, but I do try to use as many as possible but they you would not come to meet me. I started a blog, and it was a fine opportunity to give us a fresh start, but now, you have found new friends. You tell me that, bloggers like ATP, eM, Shoefiend, ... treat you like royalty. I try to explain to you that they are professional writers and journalists and these bloggers are "using" you, for their profit, but you are already drunk with their bribes. How do I explain to you that I truly love you guys?

Yes, I am quite notorious for making spelling mistakes, but you see this new blogger interface corrects me, that at least saves us the public humiliation. I understand when you say, good friends should at least be able to spell each other. I am trying, I truly am. But give me some time.

I promise to play with you. I promise to not cheat; I won't use the thesaurus. Do you remember?, in high school, when I was asked for the expansion for "SCUBA", I said "Sacrificial Claustrophobic Ululating Blanching Apparatus". Such fun we used to have!

Oh! my wonderful vocabulary, Please come back to me!

Tell Tale 21 - And they lived happily ever after

Ramu was a mediocre student in school. He was not a very hard working student, and he had many reasons for being mediocre. He did not have a very good handwriting, and he was not particularly interested in Math either. Then, one of his teachers Mr. Ramayya found these two problems in Ramu and wanted to motivate him. Ramu was grateful for this new found help, and he took his teachers advice. He practiced cursive writing and his handwriting improved. He also started getting better with numbers.

He went to college and graduated with a Bachelor degree in Mechanical Engineering. He graduated with a Masters degree from a prestigious University in the US. He got a job in a Fortune100 company with a fine starting salary. He met Sita in his work place and they started going out. Initially they liked each other's company and soon they fell in love. They talked to their parents, and within a year of their first meeting there were engaged to marry. They went on a Europe trip for their honeymoon. Soon after their second honeymoon in Australia, they had two kids, one boy and a girl. By this time, both Ramu and Sita had both progressed well in their careers and together were earning more than $300K. They had settled in the US, and had both their parents living with them. Ramu and Sita loved each other, were very happy.

Their son is a very naughty boy and their daughter was quite a princess. Their kids had lots of friends and each had a unique set of talents. They both had good grades and went to Ivy League schools. They were very happy to have such wonderful kids.

By this time, Ramu and Sita has retired, and had saved more than 3 million dollars over the years. They wanted to go back to India and spend time in their home town, Madras. They bought a spacious bungalow in the outskirts and found themselves in touch with their roots.

Sita played the veenai, however she was an amateur. So, after her retirement, she started re-learning it from a professional player. She found it to be very refreshing. Soon she also started playing the veenai semi professionally and she enjoyed the musical world. Ramu, enjoys listening to Sita play her instrument. However, he too drealized his childhood dream of playing soccer. He became a soccer coach for a local high school. They were very happy to have realized their childhood dreams.

They also indulged in some light social work and charity. They funded the education of a poor young girl. They participated in blood drives, helped the needy with some funds, helped the sick get medicines and helped the illiterate with evening classes. They were very happy to help others.

Suddenly, one day, their son brought a girl home and introduced her as his girlfriend. Ramu and Sita were very excited to meet her and they showered them with blessings. His son was married and soon, their daughter also married a guy she loved. Before they knew, Ramu and Sita were playing happily with three grandkids.

Tell Tale 20 - Postnatal Story IV

Gui, The Girl

I woke up from my sleep with a jolt, because there was someone near my cage who called for help in qualese. "Is there anyone here!", came the cry for help again. I turned to the right and there was another baby! At last I knew I was not alone.

"Qi", I said. She responded. We just looked into each others eyes for many minutes. I was not even trying to talk, and we both knew about what happened to each of us since our birth. The crushing squeeze into the world, the loss of one of the appendages, the incessant biggie infestation, Goochi's sedative. We just understood each other! I could see the pain in the eyes and if not for the underdeveloped tear glands we would have cried our hearts out.

"Gui" was the name of the other baby. "You should also have a name", declared the Gui and unlike the biggie world, babies get to choose their names. I chose "Ee" as my name. We were both extremely happy in our own little conversation when two very loud nurses came and started changing our fishy restraint (diaper). Then as this was going on, I saw Gui free as a baby, with no fabric or fishy restraint. Gui had no fishy, but looked very beautiful! Without the artificial embarrassment emotions, we both smiled at each other at the free show. Gui had a very pleasant smell, so very different from the nurse's stench.

Gui unabashedly asked me "What is that between you legs?", and I replied "I call it fishy but have no idea what it does!", and as Gui was looking at me, my fishy felt very funny. Before I knew, there was a sudden stream of sparkling liquid from my fishy that hit the nurse right on the face! Gui and I both gurgled in delight, at the little discomfiture I gave for the nurse. I guess I was the world's tiniest rebel. I said, "take that you bully! You deserve that for restraining my fishy!" For the first time since we were born, Gui and I had forgotten about the misery in our lives.

After we were both tied up in our little shackles and we continued our conversation. I innocently asked "Did the biggies cut away your fishy?", she answered in the negative and we then realized that even though we had so many common things, we were pleasantly different in our own ways.

We talked about the biggies in our lives and exchanged our ideas about the world. Gui also was given the tasty liquid but not by the same Goochi, when we both realized that our Goochies were giving us individual attention. "I somehow got to like my Goochi", Gui said, "I do not think Goochi means to hurt us". Gui had a point. Even though our Goochies utter incomprehensible blabber, they never tried to hurt us. Gui was very wise, I knew I wanted to be with her all the time.

After all the talk we were tired and we fell silent. I fell asleep after some time and when I woke up, I was not in the same room. I never saw the same room again. With the room, I also lost Gui. The one person with whom I could talk, communicate, relate and laugh, was gone. Forever. With age, Gui would forget about me, our little rendezvous in hospital nursery. I never told Gui how I felt about her. I cursed myself for not doing so. I had so much to tell to her, but I fell asleep.

Never did I see Gui again. She would be a biggie now, maybe married and maybe even a mother herself. But, I still remember her as the bald baby without fishy. Every now and then I recollect, every word she said, her smell, the way she gurgled in delight when I peed on the nurse.

Fate it seems, is without a hint of charity.


PS: If you think you might be Gui, please contact me.


The Rosetta Stone:

Goochi -> Mummy
Qualesce -> Baby Language
Biggie -> The grownups
Ee -> My name
Gui -> Another girl baby's name
Fishy -> The strange appendages between my legs :-)
Appendages-> limbs, fishy and umbilical cord

Tell Tale 18 - Postnatal story III

I woke and and found myself imprisoned in a short and soft cage. It did not have a ceiling but since I could not even get up, it was impossible for me to escape. I was very stressed out and I was beginning to show signs of early life crisis. I then tried to remember what happened last. I was with Goochi and she had tranquilized me.

Just then as I was planning my day, a bunch of biggies came in (pests don't knock, do they?). It looked like the circus was town, and they were very happy to find yours truly, newly caged. Then a biggie, reached out into the cage and touched me! Yuck! The hand was as big as my face, with nails as long as 1cm and just plain ugly. Can you imagine a huge dirty hand as big as your face touching you everywhere? I came to know about BlankNoiseProject much later started by biggies who did not liked to be touched by other people... but even back then I wanted to start something called BabyNoiseProject (actually QuaQuaProject)!

Then when a biggie touched my palm I quickly graped the finger, and I was glad I could grasp it firm. The biggies ignorantly understand my primitive grasp reflex of a new born as a way to hold on to mommy! Yea right! What they don't know is that, we hold on to your finger only to prevent you from touching us!

I had dexterously grasped every finger which came to touch me when there was sudden flash of light! They kept saying "cheese"! And bang, another flash! I was blinded by the flash and even though I had silently wished to be blinded than to see these biggies again, I never really meant it. The bastards blinded me! Again they called me "Cheese" and more flash bangs. I dawned on me that they had named me "Cheese". "Cheese" sounded like a very sophisticated and endearing name. I had no qualms about that.

A particularly interesting biggie was smiling a lot at me, and even looked proud. Initially, I was not sure about the source of the pride. Then I saw it come closer. Closer and closer. Aaarh! The biggie was going to eat me! "Qua qua" I screamed. The biggie was not proud but happy about the dinner I was going to become. Then in a grotesque display of magnanimity, it touched my cheeks with its lips and retracted! I prefer to be eaten than this. Why? Why did the biggie touch me with its lips? Is there even a reason? I also happened to see a close up of the biggie's face. There were black thorns covering the lower half of the face. The biggie had transparent eye protection, so I had had to abort my plan to poke its eyes.

Then the biggie put some grainy crystals into my mouth. Aarh! I screamed "Do you have to kill every one of my senses?". And I saw a sudden change in their behaviour. They were very discomforted by my scream. Did they really listen to me? I was stunned by such a vague sign of decency. After all there was hope. The effect soon vanished, and they got busy violating my senses again. I screamed again, and this time louder than ever. I kept repeating it until Goochi came and shepherded them away. I was much relieved, as though Goochi was any better.

I guess this is the punishment I get for screaming. So, whenever I scream, Goochi is going to come. I cried "save me! save me", but again like before, I was tranquilized with the yummy liquid and silenced. Caged circus animals are treated more humanly, I tell you.

Tell Tale 17 - Postnatal Story II

After I was born, I was put on a fabric, and wrapped all around. None of my personal preferences were heeded, but I was voicing them anyways. I should have had a tag saying, "store in a warm & dark place", not that the biggies would have cared to notice.

Then one biggie, who was also lying in the same bed (about 8-9 times my size!), was checking me. First the appendages (4 big ones) and then the fishy and was very pleased. I was watching its movements carefully and finally it looked at me and began speaking to me like this "bubbla boo, giggly gooogly ga", "goochi goochi", with very very interesting facial expressions. I guess this must be the biggie language. I was very impressed with the biggie language, but damn! even though the biggie was very animated, it lacked articulation and the biggie language had so many consonants. May be it wants me to do something... I said "quuuaa", for which it again repeated "goochi goochi". I tried to say, "goochi", but it was too hard. I promptly named this biggie "goochi". Then I realized that Goochi had a much wider range of vocal versatility: why don't they try to speak my simple "qualese" (the baby language)? Maybe, biggies are not so smart to understand my qualese, so I have to learn their ways. Hmmmm!

Then Goochi touched my tummy, and it felt funny. Actually, there had been a weird feeling going on in my tummy, you know not outside, but inside. Something like a pulling feeling and I had no idea what it was or what to do. Then Goochi took me closer to its body (the biggies have no sense of personal space) and tried to a thrust its sack like appendage into my mouth. I was in no mood for this kind of closeness, for I had just met Goochi. And I told that, "qua quuu quaa quaa". Again this poor hapless being's protest were in vain, even before I could finish the sentence, my mouth was full. With nothing to do, I grasped the huge sack with my limbs, and suddenly my mouth was all wet! Can you believe it? My mouth was full of some very tasty fluid, and unfortunately, it disappeared down my throat immediately. Just when I was sad that such yummy fluid was exhausted, there was more fluid from the sac. Hmm, Hmm... Oh! I get it, the sac must be filled with this, and Goochi must have been trying to articulate this to me! Goochi could have just told me that in the first place, and I would not have made such a huge fuss. I already liked this biggie. I had one more mouthful of tasty liquid. After plenty of yummy liquid in about 3 huge mouthfuls I was very happy. I also wrote a small poem "quaua quaua, quak qu!" (In case you did not understand, it means "Yummy Yummy, Happy me!")

A little while later, I could not think straight and my vision became blurry, and I could not keep my eyelids open! Goochi must have mixed some sedative in that yummy liquid. I have never in my 4 hour life trusted strangers and resolved I never will! Before I could realize, I fell into a deep state of unconsciousness.

To be continued...

Tell Tale 16 - Postnatal story

I am a just born baby and by nature babies think and talk very much like you grown-ups. But babies have short term memory loss so they seldom remember their pristine first moments. So, the world knows not a single nascent story. But I am gifted with an excellent memory and I remember everything. But here is the world's first postnatal autobiography.

The first thing I remember was when I tried to open eyes. Ah! and it hurt. Everything was so congested and I was stuck somewhere. I was being squeezed from my place, and I didn't like the new place one bit. I tried to squeeze myself back into the warm moist place but na-ha. Crap! There was an enormous force and in one fine twist I was out in the open. I felt like the soft wet Colgate toothpaste, squeezed from the pregnant tube onto the brush like world. I was chocking with air... oh wait, this air is cool but I liked it better when I was in the liquid, for I need not breathe needlessly. Soon, like a smoker I got used to feeling of breathing fresh air and I am now addicted to air and have fatal withdrawal effects.

It was too much work, I decided to take it easy for some time and let things happen. Only then did I realize there were huge things all around me and they all were exactly like me, but only bigger! I will call them "biggies", I resolved. They were all very powerful.

I took a look at myself and I had a torso and 6 things attached to it, four of which I could move voluntarily. A biggie lifted me and the bloody bastard cut one of the things that was attached to my tummy. Aaarh! Do you know what you are doing? I tried to say to him with "quaa qua quaaaa qua quaa", the dumbass pretended to not hear me and he dressed up the vestige of the umbilical cord. At least it did not hurt much. Now I could see 5 things attached to me, oh wait, I wanted to reclassify my attachments, I counted 4 huge attachments and the tiny but very interesting stuff between my legs... I called them fishy.

I was everyone's attention. And I liked it. The biggies were busy looking after me. They put me on a hard metal, and I looked at the dial and it showed 7 lbs (I understood "mass" and "weight" right after birth because like I said before, I am a prodigy). They prodded me with sticks and needles and I screamed "stop it, stop it!" like this "qu quaaa, qu quaaa!" Again everyone pretended not to hear me. There was only one obvious conclusion... "The biggies must all be deaf!"

To be continued ...

Twenty Thousand leagues under the Sea

I am a Science-fiction fan. My favorite is Ray Bradbury's "The Illustrated Man". I am a fan of hard science fiction, where the author puts an appreciable effort to support the fiction with scientific reasoning. For this reason, hard science fiction is not everybody's cup of tea for it takes ample amount of prior knowledge to appreciate the author's reasoning and verify the soundness and validity of the logic. I found "Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea" in a old book store and bought it for Rs 30. It was originally written by Jules Verne in French and since I am not a "foutre vous" fan, I never tried to read it, but this one is an English translation. It was first published about 150 years back.

The story is quite simple. The oceans are explored in a submarine ship in which the protagonist and two others are held against their will, until they manage to escape. The fate of the submarine is unknown after a last mishap, and the protagonist lives to tell the tale. The protagonist is a scholar in marine biology. In the title, Twenty thousand leagues (a league is 2.2 km) is the distance they travel in the submarine.

There are a few popularly interesting things about the book. Firstly, his predictions of a submarine ship came true, and the actual designs were very close to his descriptions. He had a thought quite a bit before he wrote about the vessel. The mysterious and most interesting character is Captain Nemo, of the Nautilus (name of the submarine ship) is very famous.

What struck me was the protagonist Professor Pierre Aronnax. Prof. Aronnax is not a magician nor is he shown to have off-the-charts intelligence. Prof. Aronnax is shown to be a logical man and a social one too. In the beginning of the novel, when the world is dark about the existence of this submarine ship, but there is rampant speculation about an unknown sea creature with massive destructive powers. Prof. Aronnax convinces that the object of everyones attention is a narwhal (a species of whale). Even though that the reader knows that object is a metallic contraption which the world will call it "submarine", one will be convinced that Prof. Arronax's conclusion is derived from flawless and impressive reasoning.

The other important think I noticed about the book is the careful limitation of the characters. After Prof. Arronax, is the very necessary Captain Nemo who cannot be ignored in that story. But other characters are given a low profile and a lot of the fiction being spent on the submarine zoology, artifacts and adventures. It would be hard sustain other complex human characters. The undersea adventures are multitude, for they see the south pole, Atlantis, historical shipwrecks, fictional underwater Suez canal.

It is quite possible that the author engineered Prof. Aronnax based on
himself, for the scientific reasoning did not look like part of some piecewise constructed character but a real researcher with painful attention to detail and adherence to robustness of logic.

This book is a must read for any researcher and it would not be cricket to recommend this book to everyone.

Have you read book? What are your thoughts?

Tell Tale 15

He used to say clever things with a hint of prescience and she used to try very hard to disconfirm his expectations. They had whale of a time doing just that. He once told her, "we are so close now, but sometime in the future we could be far away, and we would only be cell phone missed calls." A couple of years later, he was sad that his intuition had come true.

He was wrong. She had blocked his phone number.

Tell Tale 14

Following Ammani's lead, I wrote this Tell Tale. Here is my contribution.

First it was red. Then yellow. Now it's red again. Why can't Shailu make up her mind?

In her 30 years of service as lead of the elite bomb disposal squad, Shailu had never been in an accident. Somehow, she has always escaped the grim explosion that takes away life or limb. But today was different, she was not diffusing some RDX. Shailu had been assigned to diffuse the primary charges in an armed thermonuclear device.

Earlier the police had got a phone call about a bomb and they had located the device. The device had been moved it to a ship on the Bay of Bengal to minimize impact on the population. Now she had 5 minutes and a nuke to diffuse.

It is not everyday that you get to neutralize a nuke. The thermonuclear device was not state of the art. It is a 2 stage fusion reaction. First the conventional explosives detonates and creates an implosion, and compresses the Uranium 235 to a critical mass. The U235 fission is the primary. The x-ray emission from this primary fission is then focussed on to the fusion fuel, (typically deuterium) which then fuses to release huge amount of energy. Shailu, a conventional UXO (Unxploded Ordnanace) expert, was asked to diffuse the explosives that start the primary fission.

She removed most of the sheath and metal and was looking at the wiring. She deciphered the circuit board and all she needed to was figure out which wire she had to cut. The Red or the Blue. Shailu smiled. If it had been a movie, the audience would be sitting on the edge of their seats waiting in suspense to know about the wild guess the actor makes. It took her 30 seconds to find out that she will need to cut the Red wire and short a transistor to diffuse it. But Did Shailu want to diffuse it?

She had a 30 year itch. She had not seen an atomic explosion. The world had not seen a terrestrial detonation of deployment capacity fusion bomb. She had not even been in the vicinity of any explosion herself. Obviously she could not see this explosion if it detonates. She would die from the initial gamma ray burst, even before she could see a single spark. Red or blue?

Shailu felt very very naughty that day.

Tell Tale 13

I was bored one afternoon and was going through our almirah, the store room for something old, something with a long forgotten history, some amulet which was the pride of my paati. Other than the sneezes I got from the dust allergy I also found an old photo album. The album itself was not too old, but the photos looked much older, in contrast to the people in the pictures.

Most were wedding pictures of my maternal grandparents. I hear my great grand parents were very affluent and had grand weddings. I had seen the pictures before, but I could not recognize any of them in the pictures. The pictures mostly were of the kanyadhanam, Oonjal and nalangu. Typical of a tamil brahmin family. My grand parents were iyer, vathima (that is like sub-sub sect) to be precise. In case you were wondering, I am half black.

I was generally browsing through the pictures when I saw a particular striking picture. There was one young girl in the picture, just her near a tree. She must have been the bride. This girl had no resemblance to my grand mother and I guessed that it must be somebody else's marriage.

The more I looked at the picture, the more beautiful she was. She was laughing with with her hand on her chest, over her new thaali (mangalsutra) hanging from her bright yellow cotton thread still stiff with the starch. Her huge eyes gleaming in the sun, her mouth open wide, flashing her teeth in her laughter. She was looking at something in the sky. It was her marriage and she was glowing like a princess.

The girl must have been 18 years old. You would think she was too young to be married, but she looked very happy that day. She was not skinny at all and her cheeks looked chubby enough for me to want to give her a gentle pinch. The vangi (armlet) that was slipping down from her blouse sleeve was squeezing her bicep.

The short sleeved shirt or sattai of which only the sleeves were visible had a wide jarigai (zari). Her blouse colour was the same as her saree, which was ofcourse worn as a madisaar. Her umbodhu gajam (9 yards) or padinettu mozam saree was worn perfectly, in the proper "Vaathima" way. Her thalappu (pallu) was hanging for just about a foot from her tummy. It was very tempting to look at her waist where a small triangle of previously unexposed pale skin contrasted very very well with the thaali koorai colour (a dark maroon like a wet terra-cotta brick) of her saree.

She was standing bare foot and the heavy silver golusu (anklet) was almost touching the grass. I am sure her man kissed her shiny new metti (toe ring) over her red marudhaani (henna) tainted toe. Her right leg was actually behind her left, and her kosuvam (pleats) hanging between her legs was gently blown by the wind, revealing cute cupped calf muscles. She had her other hand on her hip which is when I realized her figure was stunning. It must be because of the "Vathima" style madisaar, which is to be worn "kreech" (chik), where you would not believe there was 9 yards of silk around the body. I could actually see her figure through the thick yardage. She was the sexiest girl I have ever seen and she did not even have lipstick.

Just then my mom interupted me from behind "She is my periyamma (mom's elder sister), and you should not be looking at elders like that."

My explanation was more embarrassing than my gawp, "I was just wondering what she was looking at , amma."

Tell Tale 12

Have you ever just thought about something and you wanted to run ? Well I do. There are times when I want things around me to move back. I would sometimes want drain the energy in my whole body so that the thing in my head would magically go away. It would feel lame for the first 10 minutes because warming has never been exciting! But then, when the song in my Ipod goes bum-pum-bum in a regular beat like "Dil Se" or "Mortal Kombat", you would want to step on the speed a little bit. But a single step out of tune would feel like a bad note. Every song I added in my ipod has had a different feel when I am running. This has made me listen to every song with a completely different ear. I guess running is the closest I could ever come close to dancing.

But, why did I run? All this beauty about running comes only after I have taken a voluntary decision to make a move. Is there any philosophical reason to it? I am not going to use obscure arguments or a foreign philosophy. What could possibly make an organism, bring down her energy level to a bare minimum for absolutely no reason. I ran around a ground twice accounting for about 6 kilometers. Would have taken half a litre of petrol to drive a car.

Maybe it was power, a sense of self gratification about my health, my fitness, my ability to be at my physical optimum. But, why O why did I try to race a bicycle for a full half kilometer? Maybe it a masochistic pleasure, that I get when my abdominal muscles pull and my thigh muscles hurt.

It is obvious to me why run. Just for fun!

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!

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.

Tell Tale 8

The lost interesting cell in the body

There were 3 people in the car on the freeway to California. The road was not too much trouble but winding just enough for the driver to enjoy the pulls of G-forces. The one in the back was almost sleepy or almost asleep and nobody knew. The songs being played in the car were getting boring after being played over and over again, which subsequently led to FM being unanimously preferred, which was also boring and again subsequently unanimously decided to be turned off. One of the people was driving, the other one almost asleep and one guy who could not sleep nor enjoy the grip of the wheel was getting nervous with boredom. That was me.

I wanted to start some conversation that would be interesting enough to wake the sleepy guy and distract the driver who's enjoyment I had come to envy by now. I was searching really bad through the many many conversational topics I had used before. Here comes the catch. Not all topics are readily acceptable because the driver was a girl. So, no "A" jokes, no topics involving mud, blood or beer. And that was most of my conversational arsenal. It had become a challenge now which was actually sad.

Now, I remembered reading a medical magazine which had once started a huge debate among my other bunch of guys. The magazine had quizzed about "the most interesting cell in the human body." Well, my answer was obviously the sperm as it is the only cell that gets to have a fat girl friend. The answer was as lame as it could get because the probability that one sperm out of the million other people could get one was almost negligible and considering all the hardship our poor guy has to go through to get to her, it really was not worth the effort. And thus started the debate. And I decided that it would be a good starter to spur a banter.

I ask, "So, what do you guys think is the most interesting cell in the human body?"

The girl goes, "I know what you have in mind, now look at the map and see how far away is the next exit."

Tell Tale 7

The sticker

We were three guys sitting on a clean and well postered wall, which was not more than four feet in height (a kutti chevaru!). The wall was very comfortable to sit on because it was wide enough to not hurt our bottoms and the place had good supply of cool breeze and girls in the otherwise parched Madras. This was our usual hang out place. We don't indulge in smoking or drinking because our pocket money was not much. I love samosas and vegetable puffs. We pretty much sit there, with our legs hanging loose and our sandals dangling loose on our feet munching on anything edible in an arms reach.

We were the king of the roads because it was "our area". It is not a very busy street but busy enough to interest a bunch of bored 17 year old kings.

Oh yeah, did I tell about girls? That road never fails to deliver. It must have been the busy bus terminus nearby or something that we used to see a lot of "out of area" girls. We were not perverts or anything, but I would not hesitate to appreciate beauty walking on our road.

That day, there were fewer people that usual, maybe because of the football match between Brazil and Germany. Then as were talking about the soccer world cup and how USA lost to Ghana, I saw this girl walking on the other side of the road.

She was really beautiful by any standards. She had the walk, the fitness, the hair. But the best was her attitude. It was nice to see a girl walk with such confidence, on a road with a bunch of guys brandishing adolescent mustaches. I think she caught my eye. I smiled at her. Then I saw that she was wearing a shirt in the most beautiful of greens. She wore it well and it was a really good fit on her. I happened to notice that and tried to tell my other wall-mates, about how good the shirt looked on her. But the other boys were least interested and were annoyed at my irrelevant intervention in their now supposedly "scientific" reasons behind the patches on the soccer ball.

Funnily, she looked at me again and this time since I was slightly indignant at her refusal to reciprocate my previous smile, I smiled again in defiance. I was not really doing anything bad, was I? and it was my area. She walked past us, on the other side of the road and I promptly joined the next interesting thing on that road (the guys), but now they were in agreement and there was nothing to argue about.

Suddenly, the girl in the green shirt was standing before me and was handing me a sticker. It was the "UNWANTED" sticker from Blank Noise Project (I had read it in one of the newspapers). And she walked away. It was better that there were not a lot of people around because, it was very embarrassing. But it did not make a lot of sense. I was not eve-teasing, was I? I probably should not have directly looked at her shirt. There was an unusual silence for about 30 seconds.

But then, as my friend was trying to flinch away from me, I noticed I was getting goosebumps.

Tell Tale 6

How do I tell her?

I wanted to say something to her. Nothing fancy, but just that I really liked her blog. Just that. But how do I say that without giving away my name ? There is nothing wrong in saying my name, is it? Why am I so shy ? There is no need to be shy. I can always leave an anonymous comment. Oh no! That would be washed away in the million other adulatory comments that she gets. I should be bold and tell her.

I want to leave a neat comment. It should be crisp and sharp. Something that should make her smile. How I wish to be the source of her few seconds of happiness? But, then that would attract everyone to my blog and she would see why I don't have any comments in my whole blog. What if she thinks I am just pimping my blog ? She is nice. She probably won't. But then I don't even have a counter. She will understand. I will hold my breath and say it in one go.

I really like your blog, Ammani. I just wanted to say that.

Tell Tale 5

The family story

When I was 3 I did not understand how fast time flew. When I was 10 I was hoping time would fly faster so that I would get to grow a mushtache like my father. When I was 15 I started worrying about future issues like my career, my wife and the kinds. I am married now, to the most wonderful woman in the world and I have a very beautiful 2 year old daughter(She is very naughty). I woke early today and saw my wife breathing slowly and snoring very slightly, sleeping like a baby and my actual angelic baby sleeping between us sucking her thumb. I did not have anything to think about.

How long is this going to last? 60 years till I die? Of course not. We will probably become grumpy old people way before that. 40 years? My daughter is not going to stay with me till she is 42, is she? 20 years? I probably will not be in the best of my health then, my daughter might be away in her college somewhere, probably even married. 10 years? Me and my wife are going to be around, but will my daughter still going to suck her thumb? That moment was not going to last for more than 2 hours. That was the peak 2 hours of my life and I will never be happier. Just way down from here.

But, I did not think of all that then, because I was too sleepy and slept. Maybe tomorrow I will try to wake up again to glow at all that.

An excerpt from:
As I walked out one Evening
- W. H. Auden

In the burrows of the Nightmare
Where Justice naked is,
Time watches from the shadow
And coughs when you would kiss.

Tell Tale 4

A tough one too!

I was teasing and flirting with the girl online. I almost knew everything about her, including her eye and hair colour but never told her anything about me. To her I was a 50 year old woman, a veteran from the armed forces. My details looked dubious. For about 3 months I was teasing and flirting with her. Initially she had openly said that she did not care who I was. Then weeks of careful banter piqued her interest.

Then her curiosity overwhelmed her and asked me politely about my whereabouts. I was not about to give away my almost God like unassailable position because a girl was curious. Since her polite demands were not heeded, she abruptly decided to cut communication channels, even at the risk of losing an interesting person ever. If one does not want to be found, he will stay lost. But then again, wouldn't I deign to disrobe myself and stop abusing the niceness of a girl, stop trespassing her blog, humanize a weird character, just because a girl wanted me to? Yes.

Sadly, no one wants to know about the 50 year old woman.

Tell Tale 3

And the girl was not coy

The girl was beautiful. She writes very well. She writes with a feminist waft. It was the first date. I was nervous. Had to give her a gift. Something new. Something good. What would be her mood?

So, I thought. And then, I wrote. A story. Telltale 2. First the plot. Then the characters. Portrayed the protagonist. Layered the story. Played the narrator. Rebelled with some anti-feminism. With hesitation, some naughty erotism. A little flirtatious. Tuned the characters. Felt the tension. Some dangerously contained chaos. Nailed the ending. Reread it 4 times. Took me 2 hours.

She thought it was "different" and found a spelling mistake.

Tell Tale 2

I once knew a girl

The students were are paying rapt attention. Their heads swaying synchronously with the professor's walk left and right in front of the green coloured supposedly black board. The class was Anthropology 101. The topic the professor was teaching the last few weeks was about "Cultures of the World." The professor with unrestrained discomfort began the class with "Today we will talk about the Indian Subcontinent and the Hindu culture."

We all know that India is one of the fastest growing economies, stealing everybody's jobs. The culture itself is extremely hard to characterize. First, it is a country of contradictions. Most of you know the country as the birth place of "Kamasutra" or the land of the fastest growing population. Yes, It is all that.

Regarding the religion itself, it is one of the oldest. But there seems to be a bit of a confusion. It is the religion that wrote a book on sex, built a temple for it in Khajuraho. The country with the most erotic religion now considers looking at women as eve-teasing.

(The students too were finding the professor a little incoherent that day)

Every single women yearns to marry the man she will love, but invariably, in the end waits for her parents to find her the right man. Maybe this is the only sub-species where the offspring is nourshed to its mating. People have forgotten courtship and take pride in a maintaining a forced celibacy even to a determined prince charming. Why the hell do I care.

My darling angel doesn't know to flirt! And the professor promptly swoons.