In The Park

There is a park in my neighbourhood, opens at 5 AM and shuts down at 8 PM. Being an injured man these days, I have nothing better to do than take never-ending walks in the park. Big trees, trimmed grass, flowery plants, fountains, benches, and a bit of unavoidable voyeurism – that’s the order of the day, on a good day.  And there is no bad day in the park.

There is an old woman, comes at sharp 7 AM. I hear that her name is Hope. She looks like she could die any minute, but never does. She does her laughing alone. I think she could use a trainer. ‘How does the air taste?’ I jokingly asked her once as she laughed gaspingly beside me. And staring back at my newly refurbished soul, she murmured, ‘Bitter’. Since then I avoid talking to her.

But everybody loves a bit of Hope in the park. Especially the couples and the police guard.

While the elders jog, some children sing Twinkle-Twinkle as they play games. There is a separate arena for them, and other performers and practitioners alike. Games have changed. Some joggers are reluctant, especially the one that I call Dudeji. He is from Patna and has grown up in Bangalore. He has got many friends, two cars, and a girlfriend of ten years that his life revolves around. 

They are going to get married next year. That’s eleven years before marriage. He tells me that they had met in the same park. She also used to jog then. I immediately imagined a fitter version of her. But my imagination is very wild, so I stopped. Eleven years is a long time to process, I wasn’t even the same man eleven months ago.

Sometimes Dudeji likes to share a spliff in the park. I am reluctant but fundamentalist. The police guard knows me, let’s not get into how. Me and police go back long before you learnt to read or I learnt to write. He is a cool guy, wears civilian clothes and does not bother those people who do not bother others. I’m one of those people, but not Dudeji. 

Dudeji is what Hope calls an exhibitionist. He plays Michael Jackson in the car parked outside the park so that he could hear it while sitting inside near the fence. Beat it. Hope is inside the park on most days. I have not seen her much outside the park. I wonder if she has a family, people who care for her even if the old pouty woman wouldn’t give a pigeon a grain.

It seems to me that Hope wakes up every morning completely lost. And then she finds the park, every single day. And in the park she finds a new favourite spot for herself every day. And thereafter this mad woman finds all these people to gesture, smile, and stare down at. And then she laughs till her heart rate does not pull her blood circulation out of danger for that day, every single day, till Dudeji takes her home, till there isn’t a bad day in the park.

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Knocking on Heaven's Door

After having spent a lifetime wading through the monstrosity of human struggle for nothing, Anwar stood at the gates of heaven. Finally, the final home was here. But where that man was, Rizwan, the gatekeeper, or was it Chitragupta? Anwar couldn’t care less. The gates shall open soon and there shall be his interminable supply of wine and virgins. Knock. Knock. Knock. 

Will he have a new name? Having a right name, and the surname most importantly, was good. Because having the wrong one was horrible, Anwar had known, little love & too much politics. He stretched his neck. The stiletto that was stabbed in his neck was still there. There was no pain, no blood, but just the bloody stiletto which had travelled to the gates of heaven with the naked man. He wondered if that too will be answerable for his death. Knock. Knock. Knock.

He still had memories. Not so fond ones. There was no spotless mind, alas, but why. There was peace but no chaos to look for it in the first place. No death. No birth. And hopefully, no rebirth either. No sunshine. No moonlit trails by the river. No morning azan. No chai. Knock. Knock. Knock.

Rizwan! Anwar shouted. Chitraguptaji!

Once upon a time while replying to another of the stupid fucking journalists, Bruce Lee had said – If I am pointing at the moon, do not look at my fucking finger. But why was Anwar thinking of that now? He looked at his fucking finger. There was no moon, of course. Shit. Knock. Knock. Knock.

May be Bruce Lee will be there. He looked around but there was nothing apart from that gate. But this was certainly not that nothing which that Baba was talking about while sucking up Anwar’s consciousness through his chillum over a boat in the middle of Ganges in Shiva’s own city. Shiva was smart. Stoner city for the devotees, and himself in the hills… Cool, very cool… Like daddy cool, made Anwar crazy like a fool. Knock. Knock. Knock. 

And suddenly he could see more gates. And more people. Where were they coming from and where did they want to go? Their halo of social validation was shining bright. There were no animals at the gates of heaven, all of them stayed back with Shiva in the hills. Nobody was looking for God at the gates of heaven. Privileged motherfuckers! Anwar suddenly started to look for God. 

Knock. Knock. Knock.

If you are knocking at my door, do not point your fucking fist at me. Bruce Lee shouted. Anwar had tried to do things right. Treat people right. Do good, as his mama had told him, and people will do well to you too. That was not true. She must be in hell. Could he go there instead?

Rizwan! Anwar shouted. Chitraguptaji!   

Where was Rizwan? Where was Chitragupta? Knock. Knock. Knock. Where was death? Here. Knock. Knock. Knock. Knock. Knock. Knock. What would he ask of them? Hopefully, rebirth.

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Lovely Madam

Lovely Madam likes to swim, in the sea. The last time she did that, she was fourteen years old. Now she is about to get married next to a little pond and is loving it just as much. You see, after all finding happiness is her passion.

She is a teacher in a private university. An assistant professor, as she likes to put it. She has recently joined and has undoubtedly brought a new life to an otherwise stifling place. All men love her and all women envy her. Lovely Madam loves some men and envies most women, married women especially, as she thinks that they have what she does not, love that is. Unknown to her, many women envy her for the same reasons, thinking that she has what they do not, attention that is, and lovers. Lovely Madam certainly has a plenty of the former. She does not talk about the lovers.

 

Strange world, Lovely Madam still does not think it is. She wants it all, the world, a piece of the moon and a few of the stars. But who is going to give it to her? Certainly not the writer, a poor jobless man that he is. But Lovely Madam likes men with broken hearts as she feels that she can stich those pieces back together, a la Fevicol Se, makes her feel all motherly and shit, you see.

 

But she is no Kareena. And he is no Ghalib.

She likes the shrieking quiet of the jungles, the wilderness of human soul, the lovers they could be, the madness of her hopes, the clear sky and a long stretch of an empty road. She wants to live in a palace, her palace, away from the profound emptiness she feels all the time, away, far away, where there is just them and hoards of colorful exotic birds chirping over a large beautiful fountain of scented waters and fireflies lighting up the pathways to the majestic bed of flowers… 

There is one such palace, apparently haunted, which strangely wonders whether it is any real at all. The writer does not like that, but we will talk about it later.    

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New Business

I and my cousin have started a new business. We kidnap cute kittens off the streets and sell them on the internet. It is fantastic. The first kitten we sold was for twenty six thousand rupees where our cost was just thirty rupees if we considered the auto fare. An equally cute woman in her thirties bought it. It is crazy, but we broke even within an hour of starting the business.

We went to meet Babuji Smartass. He said we can not use the word ‘kidnap’. We are sourcing these, giving the cats shelter, we were told to speak. It would give a nice socially benevolent touch to the business he said. He also asked us to check if the cats have any rights we should know about. My cousin does not like cat rights and I do not like cats. They do not like the fact that they are smaller. Had they been as big as dogs, they’d have surely hatched a plan to get some of theirs to democratically live in Rashtrapati Bhawan.

Babuji Smartass also wanted a cat, for free. He said we should write a business plan so that we could set up a cat breading facility. We don’t have to kidnap each and every kitten, he said. Sure man, my cousin let him know.

The business is good. While working too much with cats, I think we too have become a bit cuter. My cousin says the cats talk to him. I understand. He has been spending much time with the clients. There are so many ladies who have found a Superman in him for rescuing free cats. I am astonished how the cats never tell him otherwise.

After much heated discussion over what could be a good advertisement for us, I put the posters of Cats’ Jurassic Park everywhere. Some people find a jurassic pussy very funny. When the kingdom comes, they’ll be the first to die. Chill man, my cousin lets me know, that this kitten meat is amazing. Apparently Babuji Smartass cooked it. Try some man, he tells me again. I'm planning to go off the grid for kingdom come.

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Babuji Smartass

The Indian Psychiatric Society has recently announced a strange new illness. They have termed it as a historic development in the field of psychiatry. The illness, based upon the name of the first person diagnosed, has been called BSC – The Babuji Smartass Complex. 

 

Babuji Smartass was an Investment Analyst in a venture capital firm. There were two women in his life – his wife and her sister. They both lived away from each other, but they both lived with Babuji Smartass. And Babuji Smartass lived with no one but himself.

There was a repelling magnet in his charming aura which made him mysterious to everyone. He himself was addicted to it. Whenever his mind found him to be happy, it promptly created imagery suitable to turn him distant. Not everyone could fathom it. People thought that it was a kind of loneliness that poets write about. But it was not the case and only Babuji Smartass knew so.

The problem for Babuji Smartass began when his office computer was intercepted by the cyber crime police for planning an attack on a famous historical mosque of the city – because, as he mentioned in his chats – there were terrorists hiding underneath the mosque. Police was sure that this was the case of a raving madman. 

They had to take steps to avoid any accidental tragedy and embarrassment. So they put Babuji Smartass on surveillance, and that’s how the process of BS Complex’s discovery began.

Police was stunned by his demeanor. They just couldn’t categorize it. He was otherwise a healthy man living the life a lot of people dreamed of. But something was amiss. The officer in-charge of the surveillance was taken aback by Babuji Smartass’ nature. Babuji Smartass was an expert at delegating work. Babuji Smartass never did anything himself, but still, all the credit went to him for all the things that were done in his vicinity. He disowned any association with anything remotely unsuccessful. And thus, Babuji Smartass was a very successful man. 

Sometimes, he passed lewd comments on hot women passing by while he smoked cigarettes outside his office. He made most calls outside the office. Inside, he checked on what others were doing. Other people are working very hard, he’d often remark to other people. Think Bigger was his favorite phrase, hiring his favorite hobby, and politics his favorite sport.

He had hired a prospective detective to help him execute his plan. He was spending a fortune on this plan – the money he had told his wife he was saving for their own house – and her sister that he was saving for the divorce with her sister – the money, most of which he had used to order a lot of RDX from an underground online market, and for a later getaway to Hawaii.

A week before his planned attack, the police picked him up from outside his office for indecent behavior in public. He was then brought before the doctors from the Indian Psychiatric Society. Weeks went by. His wife thought he had died somewhere. She filled a police complain too. Her sister left the country. The detective he had hired joined the police.

Babuji Smartass emerged after three months, still as much a smartass as before. But people didn’t like it anymore. They avoided him altogether. And the parasite in him was frustrated without a society to feed on. Only his wife grew much closer to him than before and he too grew more dependent over her than before. He was arrested again in a matter of few months on the charges of killing his wife.

Babuji Smartass died in prison of pneumonia. But Babuji Smartass Complex lives on.

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The Omelet Incident

Mrs. Batra made omelets every morning at 6 o’clock. Mr. Batra came home at around 7 o’clock after his night shift and went to sleep immediately after savouring whatever eggs he was served. Mrs. Batra then woke up the son, who apparently finished his nap in the toilet. The grandmother generally lay awake most of the time, moving only on a need to basis. The grandfather went out to play tennis. The dog barked after the newspaper arrived, and the morning as it came, came expectedly.

There was a milkman, obviously. He came on the right time, although not fixed time. Neither was he any Ravan, nor was Mrs. Batra any Sita. Neither could he fly away with her, nor did she wish for anything otherwise. So it was all good, life as it is. Until one day, when the cooking gas got over. And there were no omelets for Mr. Batra.

Mr. Batra worked through all night sitting inside the AC cabin of a chemical factory. He thought of the omelets in the pie charts and the glass windows of his world. There was little thought to it than a mere reflex. So when Mr. Batra could not have the omelets, he decided to start putting things on fire. Starting with the curtains in which was hiding the poor milkman. So much drama followed.

The milkman shouted for quite a bit but all the neighbors only looked up and around their roofs searching for a source of the sound. Few increased the volume of their radio or television. Mrs. Batra could never work in the kitchen without a radio playing in the background. She also upped the volume. The milkman said before dying, that the day was his most unlucky one.

So then it was all good, life as it is. They packed up the body into pockets and threw it away one by one, and by the evening it was all was gone. The only difference the omelet incident has ever made is that the grandfather now does not go out to play tennis. Also Mr. Batra said he was looking for a day job. And the rest is all good, life as it is.

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The Loudspeakers in a Party

Once switched on, two loudspeakers can seldom be happy in the same room. Many have tried, and many have failed. Those speakers that have succeeded in being with one or more other speakers in the same room have either had to reduce their voice or switch off, if they could not absolutely shout out the rest. 

This creates much trouble whenever the louder speaker plays the generally straining rhythms. Nobody likes it but the idiot fingering that speaker. The louder speaker obviously likes it. The louder speaker controls the overall mood inside the room – happiness, sadness, romance, nostalgia, and the general party mood for the rest of the speakers. 

There was quite a mutiny last month when the idiot threw his bachelor party in a farmhouse outside the city. There were many speakers, all trying to be the loudest. The good thing they thought was that they all started with the party mood, blasting ecstatically thinking that the party mood was going to last forever. They had faith in their unity which was based on their belief in the party mood.

But the idiot and friends shook the living transistors out of them. 

They played all kind of things. Sounds mixed and turned into sounds yet unheard of – frequencies that tickled people inside the skull and shifted down to move their spines along with it – lyrics which made them think of all kinds of drama – and cry and laugh and jump around the house – in ways that it became a song in itself, confusing the loudspeakers to a great degree. If their song was not what made people dance, and rather they danced on a song much different than theirs, did it not diminish the loudspeakers’ point of existence. 

The little speaker inside a mobile phone was the first to show signs of protest – it stopped while taking the phone’s life along with it too. Many fell from their place and broke their own wires. Many sucked in the acidic liquid that was being splashed all over the place. Many took the fight to the next level and competed with each other to gain the maximum voice – while the idiot and friends sang their own songs upon hearing all kinds of melodramatic old sounds from the loudest speaker.

Most of the speakers were in mood for fighting but had to give up. It was not just the loudest speaker at the time, but also the old sounds of their great grandfathers which it was playing, which made them shut themselves down after all, for sake of their conscience at least. 

The party will go on to another day – the speakers told themselves in the wee hours of the morning as the idiot and friends repeated the same to each other. Many have tried and many have failed, but it’s never the same party again. 

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