Wifey stuff

I was shocked to see a post from an aunt in the Facebook. It was a saying on a t-shirt, which read "Call me old fashioned but I learned to "take care" of my man, cook for him, clean the house, wear gloves, hide the body and act sad at the funeral. You know wifey stuff". I was shocked and I exclaimed, aloud I think "Oh my god! How could she?" (NOTE: I am old and old fashioned and hence am unable to say OMG instead of Oh my god.) I opened my contacts to call my parents. At that moment I remembered. My uncle (her husband) is alive and I had no reason to exclaim as I had done earlier. It was only an arbitrary Facebook share. 

Departing

Their world was falling apart. As a matter of fact, it was crumbling to pieces. They did not know how to live their lives anymore for the was too traumatic for for them to handle. It was so traumatic that they huddled together and cried. They hugged each other and rested their heads on each other's shoulders. The preparations for the day had started many weeks ago. They waited for the day of parting with a feeling of dread. 

Finally, the day arrived. They sat down in a circle and talked about the good times. They were sure that each of them would miss the memorable days. They swore that the days ahead will not be as good as the days of the past and then cried. The day proceeded with increasing sadness and finally the end of day arrived. They walked together as a group to the gate but did not proceed through the gate. They came back. They walked back to the gate and paused for a moment at the gate. One of the girls, left the group and walked towards the bus slowly. She got into the bus without looking back. The other looked at her for a few moments. They sighed deeply and loudly before turning around to tell her good bye. Each of them hugged and left without looking back. She watched them all go by before walking towards the buses. She looked into the buses and waved good bye to many. The buses started leaving. She stood at the centre of the road and let the buses pass on both sides. She looked at the buses with a sad smile. As the last of the buses passed, she noticed the girl who had walked away from the group first sitting on the last seat by the window. Her eye looked out of the window towards the distant sky. Her eye were brimming with tears but miraculously the tears did not flow down her cheeks. She had the look of Juliet pining for her beloved Romeo who, she thinks, lay dead by the lake, which was outside her village. The girl at the centre of the road was shocked to see her friend thus and raised her arm in alarm as she called out her name. The bus continued its journey and the girl turned around to look at the receding rear of the bus.

Chalk man

The room had many soft boards. The big one at one end of the room seemed bigger due to the presence of a smaller soft board next to it. The smaller one was green in colour and the big one maroon. The wall between the two entrances to the room was painted black and used as a blackboard. Two soft boards occupied the space on either sides of the blackboard. As one stood facing the blackboard one observed that the soft board on the left was maroon and the one on right green. All the soft boards in the rooms had charts of various sizes pinned on to it. One chart had an images of the sun and cotton clouds on it. An A3 sheet had the drawing of a colourful pot. A large chart contained a number of sheets arranged in a tight grid each containing colourful patterns drawn on it. The maroon soft board to the left of the blackboard contained a black chart with many colourful round paper popsicles stuck on it. Below the chart, impressions of chalk made by a duster stood out like a sore thumb in the otherwise orderly room. On closer observation of the pattern made by the duster, an image emerge from it. It consisted of two legs at the bottom complete with a foot each, a vacant space above the impression of the two legs was left for one to imagine the presence of the body.  A head with a tall hat was placed above the imagined body.  Curves emanated  from the head and went round it. Another set of curves were seen around the legs.  The chalk man on the maroon soft board seemed to be in the middle of a ecstatic twirl.

Tight spots

The security person directed my car to the right. As I stopped behind the red car, I realized that the car would drive away once its occupants had alighted it.  The occupants of the car were a colleague and her son. They were taking a few moments to get down. I was not in a hurry and sat listening to the words "crazy, crazy, crazy,...". I loved the song and did not want to get off the car till the crazy chanting ended. Soon, I realized that I the boy's floaters lay on the floor behind my seat. We had taken him to the hospital a few days earlier when he had broken his nose. More than a month had passed since that day but I had missed giving the floaters back to him. I got down from the car, opened the rear door, picked up the floaters, closed the door and walked up to the red car. I saw my colleague through the droplets of water on the foggy window. I knocked the window. She turned with a jerk and smiled on seeing me. I lifted up the floaters. She opened the door and thanked me with a sheepish grin as she took the floaters off my hand. I smiled and went back to my car. I got in and continued listening to the song. The occupants of the car got down but the driver did not move the car away. I got impatient and asked the security person to request the driver to take away the car. He went ahead and informed the driver to move away with a polite smile. The driver moved away the car and I went ahead and parked my car.

I got out of the car, took my bag, locked the car and walked away. As is usually the case, I took a few steps before turning around to look at my car. The car has been with me for more than twelve years and I care for it more than I should. This parting glance has become a part of our goodbye ritual every day. Usually, I give the car a quick glance and walk away but today something was out of place. I saw a few strands of grass sticking out from the side of the bonnet. To my amazement, the strands moved as I glanced away from the car. I looked back and sure enough found the grass moving. I realized that it was not moving in the wind but it was trying to wriggle out of the bonnet. Though I was a poor student of biology I possess sufficient knowledge in the subject to realize that grass does not attempt to wriggle out of tight places. I turned around and walked towards the car. As I approached the car, I realized that the grass like creature was a distant cousin of the actor who played the part of Mantis in Kungfu Panda. By this time, another colleague joined me in marveling the green insect struggling to get out of the tight spot. I wondered stupidly "If it could get in there, it can surely get out. Why is it struggling so much?" Fortunately, my colleague was smarter than I. He said "it must have blown in by the wind and now is stuck there. You should open the bonnet". The explanation seemed sound and I unlocked the bonnet. My friend said "Oh damn! It went inside. Let me take it out." He carefully picked up the Mantis and walked to the side of the road.

As he approached the fence by the side of the road, the Mantis got impatient and decided to wing it across the fence to a tree. My colleague tried to stop it by saying "Stop! Don't fly". But the Mantis did not pay heed either due to its lack of ears and/or due to its inability to understand language. The Mantis landed on one of the lower branches of the tree. Almost immediately a babbler babbled. Here I would like to exercise my bird brain for a moment. The babbler is a noisy bird that is noisier than a group of young children on a study trip. It is one of the birds other than the crow and mynah that I can identify. Oh! I forgot! I can also identify chicken especially when it served on a plate. 

The babbler was sitting a few branches above and jumped off its feathers when it saw the green object flying below. In a matter of seconds, the bird's brain informed the bird that it had prior knowledge of the green flying object and that this knowledge was filed under the section "FOOD". The babbler stopped babbling and sprung into action instantly. It pounced on the Mantis, which becoming aware of its precarious position jumped to the floor. I heard my colleague utter a painful "Oh no!" It was not the Mantis' lucky day. The babbler jumped to the ground and picked the struggling Mantis in its beak. I felt my colleague's pain in his voice when he said "Why did you fly away!" From somewhere within my head I heard Elton John sing "The Circle of Life". 

I smiled as I thought "and we thought we were doing the Mantis a favour".

1:11 AM to 1:52 AM

I swear

I swore

For I wear

A tear

In my gear

Which I fear

Is not clear

To the dear 

NOTE: The word dear is a compromise. I got tired of rhyming and decided to throw the dear into the worse (aka. verse). It would be interesting to note that I decided to write these words after I the second usage of a popular curse word below.  

So if you don't care for swear, 

I advise you to not proceed to the vice words below.

I find it difficult to maintain sanity and yet I am forced to act sane and yet people around me find a great deal of insanity in my sanity and yet they have no choice but to accept that I am sane. The fact that I am wide awake and writing these lines at 1:11 AM just four and a half hours away from my usual wake up time seems to be a sign of insanity and yet I believe that it is the world that is insane and my wakefulness is proof enough of my not being insane enough to fit into this insane world. But no one notices. They don't even have a faint idea of what a misfit I am. Everyplace I have been I seem like a perfect fit. It seems that there is no better place for me but its not true. No way! I don't fit here, there or anywhere and hence I find it easy to be anywhere. Can you see the logic? I don't fit in anywhere and so I can fit in anywhere. Everyplace is as good as the other. Of course, I utter such words only when I observe the half full part of the glass. But there are times when I see the half empty part of glass and I scream within my head "What the fuck am I doing here!" Pardon my language but that is what I scream. I wish I did not use that word and used "hell" instead. But I will not be true to my feelings if I used "hell" instead of the word I use. But I being where I am should not use that word. I feel terrible! Sorry, I was lying. I don't feel terrible. I am happy I uttered the word. It seems to have released some of the tension in my head. But not enough for me go back to bed. That's right, go back. I was tossing and turning in my bed when I suddenly decided that I cannot do this anymore. I had to get up and continue writing my latest travelogue. I wrote a few good words when I realized that I should be insane to be writing a travelogue at 1:12 am. I am sitting on a chair with the laptop on my dining table. Above my head an ellipsoid lamp is trying its best to light my room. But like me it is a misfit too. The bulb does not have enough Wattage to brighten the place. Suddenly I feel empathy for Lal Bahadur Shastri. Damn! That sentence was tough. I am not going to explain why I said that. That would be too convoluted and I have decided to only be convoluted tonight. No fucking too convolutedness tonight. Ooops! I did it again (not related to the song by Britney Spears). 

Four hours and ten minutes of sleep time left. That is only if I sleep now. 

I am not sleeping yet, which means I have less than four hours and ten minutes of sleep time left. Also, I am hungry. I did not have much of a dinner last night but that is not good enough a reason to feel hungry. I know there is food sitting in the refrigerator but I am not ready to mess my hands by touching food. Maybe I will drink some water and hopefully then I will be allowed to sleep for three hours and fifty two minutes. 

Before I go, I have to say why I started writing the above words. As I lay on my bed in desperate search of sleep the following words formed in my head "A head that is Messi will only create a world that is Ronaldo!" 

I can hear a bird crying "ko kooo" at some distance. It has been doing that for the past thirty minutes. 

It is not a pleasant "ko kooo" but a series of desperate "ko koooos" that start low prior to reaching the higher pitches and then going back to the lows. Another misfit in the vicinity in search of sleep that continues to elude.

Anything but a Marathon rant

The other day I saw a banner inviting people to take part in "Marathon run to stop child abuse". How does running a marathon help in stopping child abuse? The running usually happens early in the morning and through roads with little traffic or human presence. So the logic of the run being a mechanism to spread the required message does not work. I have a feeling this is similar to saving the environment drama that many indulge in. People are trying to convert a mundane activity done for one's own pleasure into something that seems socially responsible. Why can't we all be ordinary human beings whose primary goal in life is to save one's own backside? Maybe we should have a "Marathon run to stop all socially conscious marathon runs". 

A cricket ground

As I drive from my home to workplace, I pass a beautiful cricket ground, which is evenly covered with grass, except for the pitch, which is barren. Miraclously, the grass stays green through the year. Sometimes, I see two or three groundsmen working on the ground by cutting the grass and running the rollers over the pitch. The ground lies to my right as I drive from home and as a result lies on my left as I drive back home. However, I find it difficult to observe the ground on my return as it lies beyond a curve and as it is to my left, it is on the far side of the driver's seat. The field is called VB Nest. The VB in the name stands for V B Chandrasekhar who was a cricketer during the 80's and 90's. He played primarily for Tamilnadu and Goa in Ranji trophy matches. He had also represented India in a few one day international matches. Post retirement, he sponsored a team in the Tamilnadu Premier League, which resulted in him spending more money than he should have and it is believed that this forced him to end his life.

On a few days, I have seen a match being played on the ground with men dressed in whites focussing on a red ball by chasing, throwing and smashing it whenever it is in their proximity. At times, I have seen a person or two watching the match in progress from outside the fence. But yesterday, a large crowd of men was standing outside the fence and watching the match being played on the field. There were many in the crowd who had parked their vehicles by the side of the road to observe the happenings on the ground. I was surprised by the unusual presence of the crowd and was eager to determine its cause. When the cricket ground came to view I realized that the crowd was watching a group of young women playing a cricket match. I felt happy to see the encouragement this group of men was providing to women's cricket.