Left, right Don't slip Get a grip Left, woah, right Stop, that was close Wait, wait, wait Weigh your next step Where's the spot? Spotted it! There! Left... Nooo, right. Oh no! Thud! My ass' on ice Cold seeps to my genes Right through my jeans Should get up But how? Maybe, just maybe That rock can help Slide, slide, slide Hold the rock. Rise, rise, woah, rise Hold that rock Left, right, left Oops, right, woah Nooo, thud There goes my ass Kissing the ice For the fifth time
He picked the call and said "Hey, what a surprise!" She responded "I need blood." He did not quite know how to respond. So he asked "What, you are turning into a vampire?" She laughed and said "Last weekend I was watching Lokah and I had a premonition that I will be hungry for blood." He responded "Oh! Shouldn't I be concerned about this. What happened?" Once again she laughed and said "No, it's best to keep it light. The baby sucked off a lot of my blood and now i am hunting the blood banks for O positive blood." He laughed and said "Oh! O positive like Neeli." She corrected him "Neeli preferred O negative." He said "Ah ok! I don't remember. Hey, BTW I am O positive. Which hospital should I come?" She asked "What did you drink last night?" He responded promptly "Scotch, four pegs, on the rocks." She said "Oye bevde! I don't want my baby to be born drunk. He will be like Obelix, only high, not strong." He felt disappointed "Damn! You should have informed me yesterday then ..." She interjected "Listen I did not plan this shit, ok? My maid found me unconscious on my bed this morning and brought me to the hospital." He felt shocked. He asked "Why can't you stay with your mother? This is dangerous." She responded "No. Just two more months. My parents will eat my head if I go there. This is fine. My maid will take care. Before I forget, please send your non-bevda trustworthy O positive friends. I need blood." He agreed "Ok. Send me the hospital's address. I will come by." "Sure, sure. Ok. Gotta go" she said before cutting the call.
He shook his head and said "That girl will kill herself if she does not watch out." He looked up and saw the cook add a small spoonful of salt into the vessel of sambhar. He spontaneously shouted "Be careful with the salt." The cook turned around and looked at him menacingly. She said "Why are you telling me that? Are you telling me that the food I make is salty." He cursed silently and said " No, no. That is not what I meant. It is good to be careful with salt." She protested "I know that and I am always careful with the salt." He had no choice but to back off further "I don't mean you add too much salt. I am just asking you to be careful." She did not let go of the topic. "Do you say this to that cook who comes in the morning?" He became defensive " Of course, I told her the other day when she was making the kootu kari." She was livid by this time. "Have you seen the way she cleans the vessel? Look at this." He felt nervous seeing her walk toward him with a knife in hand. He said "What is it? Why do have the knife?" She extended a cooker whistle and started poking it's insides with the knife. She took out the knife and extended it toward him saying "Look at this. Rice! How old do you think this rice is?" He could not help but ask "From the Sangam era maybe?" His wife, who was observing the scene from a distance reminded him "This is not the time to act smart. She has a knife in her hand." She then looked towards the cook and said "It is ok ma. We will ask her to the wash properly tomorrow." But the cook was not convinced "She will not wash well. She is always in a hurry. I will do it."
Thirty minutes later she brought each of the washed vessel to him for inspection. Every time she said "See how clean this is? Does she clean like this?" Every time he said "It's clean, it's clean. You don't have to show it all to me." But she spent nearly 15 minutes showing each vessel and he had no choice but to inspect and comment on each of them. When she had displayed all her achievements, she left abruptly. He looked at his wife and asked "What's wrong with her?" She responded "Well, she proved her worth with salt." He said "I don't understand what you mean." She agreed "Nor do I."
The next morning, he was reading the morning newspaper when his wife walked up to him holding a small flower vase. She asked "Where did you get this?" He responded "Your mother gave it saying that it was a gift you received from a friend. She discovered it when she was cleaning the house." She looked at the vase with disgust and said "Friend! What friend! The fellow was trying to propose to me." He put down the paper "What? Who? When?" She said "Relax! This happened in college many years back. He was junior. I told him he is barking up the wrong tree." He felt irritated "Barking up the wrong tree! Where do you get such phrases from? Its all those P G Wodehouses that you read." She clarified "I mean I said I was not interested." He said "I know." She said "You don't have to bring P G Wodehouse into this." The door bell rang before he could respond. She opened the door and the morning cook walked in angrily.
The cook stared angrily at him and asked "Why are you telling everyone that I cook badly? You could have told me directly if you had an issue." He looked at her blankly and said "I did not tell anyone that you cook badly." She countered "The watchman told me." His confusion increased "I have never talked to the watchman about your cooking." She said "He told me just now. He was supposed to get me a new job but he said that he will not as you said I don't cook well." He protested "I have never talked to the watchman about you or your cooking." She persisted "But you told the evening cook that and she told the watchman."
"I have never talked to the evening cook about your cooking."
"You did yesterday."
"No, I did not."
"You did. The watchman told me."
"Now, how can the watchman know that?"
"Well, he told me that the evening cook told him that you told her that I cook badly."
"What! There are too many tolds in what you said. Explain clearly who said what to whom."
"What?"
"What exactly did the watchman tell you?"
"He said that you told the evening cook that I cook badly."
"I did not tell her that. End of story."
"But you said I put too much salt in the kootu curry."
He struck his palm on his head in frustration and asked "Why did you not tell that earlier?"
"Ah! So you did tell her that?"
"No, I did not!"
"But you just said you did."
"No, I did not. I asked why you had not said so earlier. That does not mean I told the evening cook that you added too much salt to the kootu curry. Wait, let me tell you what happened." He spent the next minute in recounting the incidents of the previous evening. He wisely left out the part about the evening cook complaining about the morning cook's inability to wash vessels properly. At the end of the narration, the cook said "So, this is what happened! That evil lady changed the whole story. I will not let this pass. I am going to give her a good shouting. Wait! I will get the watchman. You tell him the story. Please, I want that new job." She walked out of the house to get the watchman. He looked at his wife who was laughing at him and said "Don't laugh!" She responded "But this is funny. You have to talk to the watchman and in the evening you have to talk to the cook who will once again talk to the watchman who will talk to this cook and this story will never end." Once again he struck his palm on his forehead and said "What nonsense is this! Let us get rid of all these cooks. I will cook from now on." She agreed "That is a good idea. That way you can control the salt in the food."
Who taps?
We Taps!
Tap?
No, Tap, Tap and Tap.
We Taps!
Oh! Ah! Taps!
Yes, Taps!
But here?
Yes, here.
Right here?
Right by Target.
Taps?
Yap, Taps.
But, what you doing here?
Tap-tapping you.
Can I tap you back?
Yeah tap us.
But, I would rather pat.
Not too hard we hope.
A little hard?
No!
If not, pat becomes tap
We are Taps.
So?
So tap and don't pat.
Tap, tap, tap!
I don't remember why... No! I remember now. We were talking about having an AI/Tech themed Halloween this year. I wondered how it will be to have a poster of a robotic skeleton rise from its grave. Now, that we live in a world where imagination is not limited to one's head, I immediately realized this thought on 'paper'. I opened ChatGPT and asked it to create an illustration on this theme. It thought for a few minutes and came up with an illustration.
It was not bad but it was not impressive. It looked like a version of terminator. Inside my head I only had the picture of a metallic skeleton arm protruding from a grave marked by a grave stone. This illustration did not even have a grave stone. I was disappointed but was not interested in refining the illustration. Interestingly, something else caught my attention.
Underneath, the illustration ChatGPT volunteered to provide captions. I accepted the offer and soon, ChatGPT gave captions in the following flavours.
The captions sounded interesting. They seemed poetic. It reminded me of lines from the song 'Iron man' by Black Sabbath. I looked at the lines for a few seconds and rearranged them. The resulting lines looked like this.
Born of metal,
Buried in silence,
Awakened by code.
When machines learn to defy death,
Even the dead circuits remember their code.
From the ashes of silicon, it rises again.
Resurrection: Version 2.0!
Note from the writer: The views presented below are not the writer's. The writer is only recording some of the traumatic words that he underwent a few days back. Of course, not everything mentioned below are uttered by the utterer but some of them are. As a result, the writer believed that these words had to be saved for the posteriety to remember that such people existed. The writer wishes to add that such people existed, they exist now and they will continue to exist. So don't be traumatized by their words!
Once I was sitting under a tree. What? No, it was not a mango tree. This is US, not India. There are no mango trees here. What you mean there are mango trees here? Oh! Never mind. I mean I have never seen a mango tree in America. So, no it was not a mango tree. What? What do you mean which tree? I have no idea which tree it was. This happened 15 years back. So even if I knew which tree it was, I would not remember it. Besides I am not a zoologist. What now? What do you mean zoologist study animals and not trees? I mean isn't that what I said? I am not a zoologist. You saying the same, which means we agree. Why are you interrupting me? I am saying something important here. Something meaningful. Do not interrupt me. Let me go on, ok? Ok.
As I was saying I was sitting under a tree. Maybe it was an oak tree. What? I should not guess the tree. Ok, I won't. Ok? You happy? It was a tree, some tree, any tree, ok? Ok. Anyway, I was sitting under a tree. Actually more like lying down when a thought struck me. Not literally. I mean it was not like a ball striking me. It was just a thought that occured to me. From out of nowhere. Literally out of nowhere I got the thought that I prefer to work with Tamlyans. They are better to work with than any other people on this planet. You want to know why? Yes? Say yes, ok? Ok. You know why I prefer to work with Tamlyans? Because they are not troublemakers. I trust those Tamlyans. You know what they say about the Tamlyans in this country? You don't? I will tell you what they say. They say "We trust the Tamlyans as they will not steal our land, our money or our women? We trust them." They don't trust no Punjabi hunks like me. But they trust the Tamlyan. That's why I too trust the Tamlyan.
Yeah, ok? OK! Let us talk about business now. Blah, blah, blah, cost, blah, blah, blah, skill, blah, ...
Wait a minute! I got to tell you this. The Prime minister of India sent my wife a Happy Independece Day email. But he did not send it to me. I know, I know, I know he did not send it personally. It is sent by one of those Indian Government departments but it is signed Narendra Modi. He sent it to her and not to me. What? I have no idea if she signed into some Indian government website or not. But how can it be dependent on signing up in websites? I am as much as Indian as she is. So I should receive the Happy Independence Day mail with the prime minister's signature too. I know, I know, I know we are American citizens but we are Indians too. So, it is my independence day too and I should receive the mail too. It's unfair that only she got it and not me. Oh! Never mind, let us get back to business.
Blah, blah, blah, ...
So, guys send me the information about your company and I will see how we can work together. I know a lot of people at high places because they all belong to a particular religion. You know what I mean. So, I will go to the people in the high places and make sure you guys get a lot of business. I love you guys. I really want to work with Tamlyans like you. Yeah? OK? Cool! You guys have a good one. Take it easy!
I don't like sitting through meetings. Meetings have too many people talking for too long on matters that don't deserve that much time. I once asked a professor why he chose to be a professor. He responded "I guess I like to hear me speaking". That is true for people who speak regularly during meetings. I once wrote about a person who starts speaking 5 minutes before the planned end time of the meeting and went on for 20 minutes. I guess he was obsessed at having the last word. Unfortunately his last word contained too many words and most of us did not listen to a word of what he said. It gives me great happiness to say that I no longer work with him.
This write-up took birth in a meeting. As is usually the case, 10 minutes into the meeting, boredom set in. It was an event where emotions were flowing around profusely and it would have been rude for me to look at social media on my mobile. So I opened the small notepad that lay in front of me and scribbled some words. This usually is good tactic as people end up thinking I am noting down points from the meeting itself. I have used this technique successfully for many years. At the end of the meeting a friend looked at the writing pad and said "What is this? This does not make sense. I thought you were noting down point for your own talk". She did not realize i did not need pen and paper to talk in front of a disinterested audience who had no choice but act interested in the nonsense I spoke. But that is not the only mistake she made. The words on the paper did make sense. I tried and the words in such a manner that they made sense. Well, you can check it for yourself a little later.
I wrote those words down in the form poems. Here, I think it is good to make clear my definition of a poem. It's a piece of writing which does not involve sentences or grammer and has a fair bit of jumbling of words. After writing it, I review it and modify it by chanting or singing it in some rythm. When the rythm satisfies me, I declare that piece of written work as a poem. I have written many such poems to no acclaim!
The first two poems were written on the writing pad during the meeting. Of course, they have changed a bit since as a result of the review process mentioned above. The thought behind this first one is the frustrating repetetiveness of life.
I wanted to play around with words that sound the same but have different meaning. I think this poem is inspired by Crazy Mohan's line about meen/mean in Michael Madana Kama Rajan. I wrote 7 lines of this poem in the meeting, the last 3 of which was absolute nonsense. So I removed them and filled it up with other lines later. I referred to the internet to find the set of words that sound the same. Such words are called homophones.
Everyday, I drive by an open graveyard as I go to and come back from my office. I love graveyards. One of my fondest memories from my school days was walking through a graveyard on my way home. This one is not that memorable but driving through that road in the night always gives me ghostbumps. I once wrote a story about meeting a ghost during a ride back home. I am hoping that would be the climax for my first novel. This small poem is dedicated to the freshy laid road by the graveyard.
For reasons beyond my comprehension, I am considered to be a person of immense intelligence by many around me. For reasons beyond my comprehension, I am annoyed by this. Out of this annoyance was born this poem.
She walked into the new apartment happily. Unlike the earlier ground floor apartment, this one provided a bird’s eye view of the world from the balconies. The apartment had three bedrooms. The third bedroom, a spacious and well-lit room, became a guest room kam TV room jyada. It seemed like a perfectly secluded space for her to chill. To make matter perfecter her own room was opposite to it.
This was not her first visit to the apartment. She had visited it many times with her mother. Many of the ideas and colours within the apartment came from her head. So it was not all a new experience and yet this day was different. On this day, the apartment became her home.
She walked into her room and looked around it. It was almost perfect. She only had one complaint. She wished the bed was wider. But a wider bed would have made the room seem smaller. Besides she did not need a wider bed and yet it would have been good to roll around in her sleep on a wider bed, though she was not much of rolling around in her sleep kind of person… She stopped the thoughts in its track. She tightened her fist and told herself “You have to stop this habit of finding problems where none exists. Though a wider bed would have been nice, I don’t need a wider bed and now the room has enough room around the bed. So why are you cribbing? I am not cribbing. Yes, you were. I was just thinking. Don’t think. You think this room is perfect? Yes, it is. You don’t find issues with it? No, I don’t. Ok, ok! I won’t too. Just stop. Ok, stopped. Thanks!”
She stopped talking to herself and turned around to see her mother staring at her from the doorway. Her mother asked, “Are you talking to yourself?” She smiled sheepishly “The devil in me is finding faults in the room.” Her mother asked “… and what fault did the devil find?” She responded, “Should I have got a wider bed?” Her mother asked, “You planning to get married anytime soon?” She retorted “OK amma, I get it. I will stop.” Her mother did not let go of the idea though. “Hmmm! Maybe you will get married when you are in this house. But at that time, we can get a wider bed for the two of you.” She retorted again “Amma. Stop it. I am not getting married. Not now, not ever.” Her mother walked away saying “We will see. We will see.” She gave herself a slap for having let the conversation lead on to the topic of marriage.
That night at the dining table, after dinner, her mother asked “So, you ok with sleeping in your narrow bed? Do you want to exchange rooms with us?” She looked at her mother angrily and said “Amma, stop it! I was only thinking. Actually, it was not even me. It was Phaedrus.” Her mother did not understand “Fedroos, who is Fedroos?” She waved her hand and said “Does not matter Amma. I am talking nonsense.” But by then both her parents became concerned about the existence of Phaedrus. Her father persisted “Who is Fedrus? Should we be concerned about this fellow?” She cursed herself for having uttered the name Phaedrus “Acha, Amma, it is a character from a book. I don’t know any Phaedrus.” They continued to look at her suspiciously. She got up from the table and said “I am going to sleep. Good night”. Her father called out “Why are you running away?” She turned around, looked at him and said “Acha! I will get that book tomorrow, but you have to read it fully. To ensure that you are reading it, I will have a viva session with you every morning.” Her father waved his hands and said “Ok, ok. Never mind. I trust you. I am not in a mood to read any crazy books.” She felt offended but did not bother to continue the discussion.
When she walked into her bedroom, she realized that her parents’ bedroom was at some distance from hers. In the earlier apartment, the two rooms were right next to each other. She turned around and looked through the door at the TV room. It was dark and empty. She shook away the dark thoughts in her head by closing the door of her room. She looked around at the room and felt safe once again.
She sat at the edge of the bed and looked around. She decided again that she liked the room. It seemed large and cozy. She looked back at her bed and thought it was just the right size; not too small, not too big. She switched off the lights and lay down on the bed. She looked at the glow-in-dark stickers of the moon and stars stuck on the ceiling. She had hoped to grow out of fascination for these stickers as she grew but it did not happen. She spent a good two hours planning and sticking these stickers on the ceiling two weeks back. At that time, she had wondered if she was wasting her time sticking these stickers but now looking up at the ceiling, she understood that it was well spent.
At some point, she must have fallen asleep because something shook her out of her sleep. She sat up and looked around at the unfamiliar room. It took her a moment to realize that this was her room in the new apartment. Other than the hum of the AC, the night was quiet. She wondered what had woken her up. She wondered if she had a nightmare. She did not remember. She lay down on the bed and tried to go back to sleep.
“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa, Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa, Aaaaaayyyeeeeeeeeaaaaa”
She remembered what had woken her up earlier. She shivered in fear. When quietness landed back into the night, it did not last for long. The faint sound of a bell ringing broke the silence of the night. Her fear increased. She gave out a small scream and covered her head with the blanket and closed her eyes.
“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa, Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa, Aaaaaayyyeeeeeeeeaaaaa”
This time, she jumped out of the bed and ran out of her room screaming “Ammmmmmaaaaaaaa”. As she reached her parents’ bedroom, her mother opened the door and called out her name. She asked “Amma, what was that?” In a voice drenched with fear her mother responded, “I don’t know.” Her father called out from the bed “Switch on the light”. The mother and daughter responded together “No!”.
“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa, Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa, Aaaaaayyyeeeeeeeeaaaaa”
The three people in the room screamed in unison. When they stopped screaming, they heard the faint ringing of a bell. She said, “Its coming from outside.” The mother said “Wait! Let me check from the balcony.” She held her mother’s hand and said “No!” Her mother said “Come on! We have to find out what’s happening.” The two of them walked towards the balcony door. Her mother unlocked the balcony door quietly. As she opened the door, the hinges of the door complained.
“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa, Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa, Aaaaaayyyeeeeeeeeaaaaa”
The mother and daughter held their mouths shut to keep from screaming. The ringing of the bells was louder now. They crouched and walked towards the parapet wall. When they reached the wall, they raised head slowly and looked down.
“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa, Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa, Aaaaaayyyeeeeeeeeaaaaa”
A woman decked in a red saree with a large red dot on her forehead let out the series of screams. Her head looked up at the sky and her eyes were opened wide. The mother and daughter nearly fainted on seeing the intensity on the woman’s face, but they held on to the parapet wall. The ringing of the bell came from the other side of the road. The spot lay hidden behind a tree. Four similarly dressed women walked behind her. They gently swayed to the rhythm of the bell. The mother and daughter watched the women intently.
The mother and daughter started swaying their heads to the rhythm to the bell too. They watched the women in trance. They waited for the woman in the front to let out the series of deafening screams. A good dose of anticipation mixed with the fear that they felt inside them. The two of them looked at the woman at the front intently. Inside their heads they were egging her to let out the screams that had terrified them a few minutes back.
But that did not happen.
Instead, the five women turned to their left and looked up at the mother and daughter and let out a deafening “ULLULLULLULLULLULLULLU…”
