Two Brothers and A Cat

It is a bright sunny day. The landscape is dry with little vegetation. A distant train bellows smoke. A house stands alone in the scorching heat. It is a ragged old wooden shack in dilapidated condition. An armchair lies rocking in the porch. An emaciated cat sleeps beside it.

An old man is inside the house. He has a wrinkled face, droopy shoulders and exhausted disposition. He is wearing a blue toque. Soup brews in a pot on the stove. There is a cube of cheese on a plate.

The kitchen is divided into two identical parts. Utensils, refrigerators, microwave oven - there are two of everything and are positioned in the same way. A white line divides the two sides.

Another old man enters the kitchen from the right side while the first one works on the left. He is well built and walks about with confidence. He is wearing a red toque.  And he proceeds to cook on his side of the kitchen. The two men mill about ignoring each other's presence. 

The first man looks at his plate of cheese. It is empty.

"Where is my cheese?," demands the first one.

"What?" says the second one as he turns around to face him.

"Where is my cheese, Lee?"

"What cheese, Bruce?"

"The cheese that was here on my plate on my side," says Bruce as he clenches his fist angrily. He is trying very hard not to shout.

"I don't know anything about your cheese, Bruce."

"Don't lie to me. You've always bullied me. Not this time. Give me back my cheese.", shouts Bruce and throws the plate angrily onto the floor. It shatters into pieces. Lee wonders why it broke. The salesman had said it was made from unbreakable chinaware. He shakes off his head. He has more important matters at hand.

"Listen. Calm down, brother. Here, have a tub of olives. It'll go well with your soup," says Lee and slides the tub of olives to the other side.

Bruce isn't impressed. He lets out a huge breath and storms out of the kitchen to his room. He opens his bedside drawer and pulls out a revolver. He comes back in the kitchen and points the gun at Lee.

"What the hell do you think you are doing?" Lee is clearly not amused. "You need to calm down." He steps towards the other side stepping over the broken plate hoping to grab the gun from Bruce.

"Where is my cheese?" shouts Bruce. He has lost all control over his emotions. He is really angry. His finger is on the trigger. His hands are unsteady. He is shaking.

Suddenly, the cat leaps across the kitchen stepping on Bruce's feet. This startles him and he accidentally fires a shot. The bullet goes through Lee's left eye into his head. He collapses and dies immediately. There is blood all over the floor. The white line turns red.

"Aaaaaaaarrrgh!" screams Bruce. He is crying uncontrollably and stands there shell-shocked. "You fucking cat! Where are you?"

Bruce is blaming the cat for this tragedy. He looks around the house for the cat and finds it in a corner behind the bookshelf trying to scratch at something. But, it isn't able to get through to whatever it is scratching at. The space is too narrow for its claws.

"Come here you little cunt", says Bruce even as he is crying and shivering. He grabs it by the belly. The cat screeches. It has a premonition of what is about to happen. Its tail stands on its end.

Bruce looks at it despicably. "You killed my brother. Who will tell me now where my cheese is? It definitely ain't you. What use are you then, you little cocksucker?"

He takes his gun and shoots the cat through its right eye and drops it on the floor. There is blood splattered across the books and the walls. He exits the room.

There is movement behind the shelf. A book has fallen down. It looks tattered. There is a mouse eating a cube of cheese over it. A gunshot is heard from the kitchen and it seems as if a man just dropped to the floor. The mouse is startled and runs away. And we see the name of the book - 'Who moved my cheese?'

The Night's Beat

Sweat, spit, cologne,

Drips, flies, spreads,

On breasts, on faces and on palms holding others.

Alcohol, cigarette, recklessness,

Flows, burns, takes control,

Between conversations, between lips and in fantasies unfulfilled.

Lights, vibe, music,

Blind, lifts, sets in,

Your eyes, your souls and under your skin.

Friends, strangers, friendly strangers,

Smile, Dance, Groove,

Around you, against you and with the night's beat.

Two Cappuccinos, Some Cigarettes

"Two Cappuccinos, please."

I pulled a cigarette out of the box and lit it up. Ashish switched on his laptop.

"Bhai, this third question needs a lot of work," he said as he showed me his GMAT application for one of the many colleges he chose to apply. 

"Yeah, let me have a look."

"This is such fuckery man. So many colleges, so many applications."

"You chose it."

"Yeah, bro. I have to get out of where I am."

"Hmm."

He lit up a cigarette. I tried to blow rings out of mine. 

"Bro, I have to get into this college. I am running out of options."

I made a few edits to his application by fixing the grammar and adding words which can be worthy of representing the person sitting in front of me. His future dependent upon how an old man in a tweed jacket sitting in the familiar comfort of his office, with a shelf full of books, interprets these words.

"Here, look at this now. Does this seem better?"

"Nice. Can we change this line? It sounds a little casual."

"Nonchalant. That's the word you are looking for. Anyways, I'll edit it." I made a few more edits, carefully removing any remnants of the betrayal of my attitude about this whole application business.

Our coffees arrived just as we stubbed our cigarettes. 

"Boss, you can place it here," said Ashish to the waiter as he shut down the laptop and placed it on the chair next to him. 

We sat at the outdoor seating of a cafe on a bright weekday February morning. The winter weather is reluctantly taking its leave. The air has lost its chilly sting. The sun smiles a warm glow and is a lot more welcome than it would be in a couple of months. On the street opposite us, people in rickshaws, cars, bikes, on foot rush to get to their jobs. 

"Man, I am so totally disillusioned by this whole thing," I remarked in a sudden outburst. 

"By what thing?"

"This whole work thing. Getting up every morning, doing the same thing everyday."

"Yeah, I get you. But, gotta do it to feed this thing right here," pointed Ashish to his still not fat belly.

"I know. But, what I mean is why should it be so difficult and energy-sapping? Why should work have such negative connotations? There is something fundamentally wrong with the way we look at work and by we, I mean everyone."

I lit up another cigarette and sipped on the cappuccino. Ashish was already on his second cigarette but had not yet touch the cuppa. 

"Dude, I just want to get out of India. Get a decent college abroad, find a good job and make a lot of money", said Ashish. He had probably day-dreamed about all these things while I was looking at people outside and ruminating on the deadly routine of everything around us.

"Why? Why do you want to make a lot of money?"

"I just want to chill man."

"THAT. Exactly that is the fundamental fallacy. Money doesn't buy you 'chill'."

"What does?"

"I don't know, yet."

Silence glided into our conversation as we smoked yet another cigarette. However cliched it is, there is a real joy in smoking a cigarette sitting in a cafe under the shade while the sun outside is shining bright and the breeze is cool enough to be nice but not as cold as to make you uncomfortable. 

I peeked inside the glass wall separating us from the indoor area of the cafe. There is that couple which seems to be a part of every cafe as if they come free with your coffee - the one who hold hands, the guy keeps trying to make the girl smile and they seem completely over each other. A couple of girls who looked like they had skipped college talk animatedly. Outside, where we were, two big guys came and sat on the chairs next to us. They placed their cigarette boxes on the table-top and allowed their huge belly to take up the space between them and the table. They looked like men who beat people for a living.

"I have figured out the problem. Let's work backwards."

"OK", nodded Ashish.

"Look. My stress at work is a factor of how much pressure my client puts on me. Her stress is related to how much pressure her boss is applying on her, which, in turn is dependent upon the stress her boss's boss is under - so on and so forth. "

"Right."

"Eventually, it reaches to the top to the CEO who drives the whole chain of pressures and deadlines. Now, the fundamental reason for the stress and worries of so many people is what drives the CEO."

"Ahan."

"Are you listening or just nodding along?"

"Yeah man, I am listening. Go on."

"OK. So, if we figure out and fix the driving factor behind that CEO, we can potentially make lives of a lot of people easier. Take my client's company for example. The CEO is driven crazy by money - quarterly revenue numbers is his holy grail. But, does he really need to? I mean, he's already a billionaire or multi-millionaire at the least."

"Yeah, but maybe he enjoys money."

"Maybe. But, do you enjoy the money or the stuff and experiences you buy with it?"

"Hmm. True. But you do need that money to buy that stuff."

"Correct. But, what if you don't need that stuff?"

"What do you mean?"

"Think about it - all these companies selling us bags, clothes, watches etc. worth a fortune - what if we don't need all that stuff? Whom do we have to impress? So many industries have cropped up to feed on our desire to please someone else even at the disposal of our own sanity. Take advertising for example. If only we removed every form of advertising in the world, there'd be a lot less demand for stuff we don't need. Obviously, I am not thinking this through but you get my point, right?"

"Yeah, I do."

"There is something Will Smith may or may not have said but I am always reminded of it in such conversations - 'I wish everyone had fame and money and then they'll realise that it is not the answer.'" 

I paused to take a puff of the whatever little was left of my cigarette.

"What if instead of focusing towards making more money, we could focus on making more people happy - yourself as well as the people you work with. Of course, happiness is a subjective term and has different meanings for different people. That's alright, make a company with people who have same definition of happiness as you. Instead of looking at quarterly revenue, let's look at how happy people are. No one wants to be poor so I am assuming, if everyone's happy, revenue will follow. I mean we work for a living, why kill ourselves working?"

"Amen to that."

"Anywho. Fuck! I am late for work."

"Bro, but we have to redo the fourth question also."

"Yeah, I'll see you in the evening."

You just read my first ever short story. If you liked/disliked what you read, please do add in your comments below. For a writer, apathy from his readers is worse than criticism. So, I'd love to know your thoughts. 

Jack's complete lack of orientation

One day you are in Delhi. Same day in Indore. Next day in Mumbai. Then you might be in Gokarna. You are Jack’s complete lack of orientation. 

You see faces passing by, you stop to look at them, pretending to yourself to be curious about the world around you. But, you don’t care anymore. Sounds are muffled, faces blurry, your actions involuntary. You are going along with the wave that is sweeping everyone into motion - the ticket counter lady, as she wakes up everyday to enter some numbers on a piece of plastic to produce a piece of paper; you explain Murphy’s law to her after having switched queues multiple times and still ending up in the slowest one. The steward who greets you and everyone in front of and behind you - "Hello Welcome", while thinking about what he'll do after he gets out of this job of serving the great Indian upper middle class. You can still hear his words as you move ahead in the aisle - whether he is actually saying it to someone else or it is the echo - it is the same to you - you can’t make out the difference. As you type, the only sounds you hear are your keyboard’s and the only smell is the stewardess’ perfume as she closes the luggage compartments. You crack your fingers. You write about cracking your fingers. Then you are blank, wondering what to write next. You start noticing the complete lack of the concept of private space as one guy starts playing music - the fact that he plays Bandeh by Indian Ocean makes you feel less .... umm.. what's the word - you can’t think clearly anymore. You hear people speaking broken English in the horrible Indian accent that we've been blessed with. You cringe at its sound. Probably you are a jerk for thinking so. An honest jerk. Does that make it better? I wonder how and when people started lying. Why would you need to? You can’t think through the answers. You think about your blog and question yourself whether it is too preachy. You drink water. You write about drinking water. You look at the hostesses and try to imagine what kind of a person she would be in real life. The chubby one with a smile on her face - she looks like someone who likes to spend time with her family. The good looking one with high brow - she's the one who likes to party. You judge and stereotype everyone. The steward with an apologetic smile on his face - you still hear his "Hello, Welcome Sir". You judge people around you although they haven't done anything to trouble you. Perhaps they have - you think you want them to disappear. But, you are not sure. You notice a lady wearing huge sunglasses enter and place her wide ass on the business class seat. You judge her. You think and wonder at the sense of entitlement people have. You peek at the laptop of the foreigner next to you. Your eyes are droopy. Another hostess - she has a nice smile. Not the sexy, hot kind of smile. Not even the cute kind of smile. Your girlfriend has a cute smile. No, what this hostess has is an ‘innocent’ smile - as many of my friends in the one-way street of love will say. The flight is ready to depart. 

"Ladies and Gentlemen - this is a seat belt. "

"Put on your own mask before assisting someone else." 

"Mutual funds are subject to market risk…"

“To attract attention while wearing your life jacket, take off your clothes."

“Ladies and Gentlemen, Hello Welcome!"

You listen to a story by the Foreigner who is an assistant director. You remark on how remarkable the story is.

You smile a condescending smile looking at the guy who is wasting his life on Candy Crush. You judged him. 

“Sir, please switch off your laptop"

You fiddle through the in-flight magazine. You see the beautiful places you want to go to. Plans of going to such places begin shaping up in your head. 

You look at the glossy ads of bathroom equipments with beautiful girls. You no longer remember the name of the brand.

“We’ve begun descent into…."

You close your eyes. Your thoughts jump from one to another. Your head hurts. 

Thuk!

“Thank you for travelling with us."

“Hello Welcome!"

Illusions | Haiku

Richard Bach is a master at weaving simple stories into something deeply profound and moving. Illusions was also in my list of the best books I read last year. 

You can swim through walls,

Walk on water,

And everything that is taught in this book could be wrong.

#BookReviews in Haiku

On Illusions - Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah by Richard Bach

Aliens

There is a world which is called Bumics where lives a specie known as Hreathens.

They lead a life listening to music but not like we humans do on earth. Music is the air they breathe in literal terms. They look like us but with a slight yet important difference - they don’t have a nose. Instead, they have a headphone over their heads since birth. That is their life giving element. They don’t breathe but they have to listen to music all the time or else they die.

The way we hold our breaths, they stop listening to music for a small time while changing the batteries of their iPods and stereo systems. If the batteries die out, or their iPod breaks, they have to replace it. But, sometimes they can’t find the replacement at the right time and then they die. At other times, they can’t find the right music for a long time and they feel suffocated which again causes death.

When they want to get high, or they want to entertain themselves and have a good time, they buy a detachable nose, with which they breathe air. For their parties, they buy big containers of air which blows it all around the room. When they are breathing, everything else seems secondary. They are lost in the process of breathing, the fresh air that enters into their body, goes into their lungs and gives them energy. The air takes them somewhere else and they forget that they are Hreathen beings living on the planet Bumics. It takes them to another planet (Earth, maybe). That is also the time when they are actually able to focus on the music.

Hreathens had forgotten that they’ve been listening to music all this while. They had taken it for granted and had lost the joy of listening to music. But, these sessions of breathing helps them realise how simple, yet beautiful is this life giving process to them. They enjoy it, it is almost as if they’ve been hearing the music all the time but this is the first time they have listened to it. They also call it meditation. 

The kids always miss the silent H in the spelling. Their monks ask them the purpose of H in their life. They spend their lifetime finding out that answer. They don’t realise that it is a non existent question. They can very well live without the extra H. But no, their mind, like ours seeks conflict. They can’t let it go.

One day, one of them is breathing some really good air and he feels as if he has been transported into a different world altogether. He feels as if he has become a different specie. Almost human.

This is it. I think I don’t know more about them. I will come back with more information once my thought changes.

Do you think we become them for brief moments when we are listening to music and can focus on our breathing for the first time?

Did you like what you read so far? You can subscribe to my mailing list to get updates on new posts. I am not sure how frequently I’ll send you an email but it will never be more often than once a week. 
Appreciate your time. Thanks!

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle | Haiku

To all the day dreamers
Just because it is happening in your dreams
Doesn’t mean it is unreal

#Book Reviews in Haiku

On The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami

On the origin of language

In a discussion with a friend, I’d call it a discussion even though she was quiet and I was quiet and we were sitting without a care in the world, we figured out why language was invented - To Lie.

This is it. This is the end of the post, the end of everything, you can go home now.

————————————————————————————————————————-

Or, you can choose to stay back and get to know what preceded that.

————————————————————————————————————————-

So I see you decided to stay back, I’m glad. What happened was this: We were just sitting and chilling, looking at each other for quite some time, smiling, looking into each other’s eyes and just having a general feeling of contentment, happiness and fun. We didn’t speak a single word and yet our eyes said things to each other and it felt like our true feelings were communicated. After some time she asks: “Why do you think the language was made for?” to which I reply, “To lie”.

Isn’t that true? It is so hard to hide your true emotions and feelings as compared to lying in words. All the lie detectors in the world check your emotions not what you say - even they know where the actual truth comes from. All the people we lie to, they always sense something is wrong no matter how well we choose our words. But feelings, they are the true tell of what is in your mind.

Maybe, the inventors of language were actually really bad people who wanted to lie and do things which were until then not heard of and they’d wanted to keep that a secret. And that is why they invented language as a means to communicate instead of gestures, feelings and touch. So that they could lie.

I believe a true conversation happens without words. Isn’t that what they say about a good friend, he’s someone who can share a silence with and still feel like you’ve had the best conversation in the world.

Do you like what you read so far? You can subscribe to my mailing list to get updates on new posts. I am not sure how frequently I’ll send you an email but it will never be more often than once a week.
Appreciate your time. Thanks!

Norwegian Wood | Haiku

Dead friend’s girlfriend, 
And bookshop owners,
And old musicians - which true love?

#Book Reviews in Haiku 

Conspiracies of Life #37

You and I are projections of one single source. The universe is just a game someone is enjoying at our expense. We are not really alive because our lives exist only in the minds of some- or that- One.

All the code of how the game works is embedded into our brains. The brain is a powerful, all knowing bag of secrets. But, it can go rogue sometimes and spill out the secrets of the game, which the One doesn’t want. Thus it is kept shackled, under restraint. It is not allowed to explore a higher consciousness.

You know how people say that we use only about 5% of our minds and even the great thinkers that have come before have been known to use much more but just about 10% of their brain. Why so? What stops them? Answer: Our nerves - that connect everything and ‘control’ everything in our body. These are The One’s soldiers. The One is also known by philosophers as The Single Truth or by religion as God. These soldiers guard our brain, keep it in shackles. They don’t want us to realise our true potential or the truth behind all this because if we do, it will be the end of everything, of life as we know it.

People who do drugs, they talk about getting a ‘hit’. Here’s my definition of it: A hit is every time a nerve soldier dies. Think of it this way, when you take drugs, the ones which expand your mind and force you to think, you get ‘hits’. Every one of those hits, kills a nerve. The number of nerve soldiers constantly recedes as they keep getting hit. They are probably shouting ‘man down’ and are trying to scatter and run towards bomb shelters. So, when you are high, the guard is down and you experience different things and see a lot of stuff. But slowly the soldiers come back from their shelters with higher ammunition to protect ‘the truth’ from us. And we come back to our normal state. But, since the number of soldiers are lesser than it was before, some part of the brain is unprotected and we feel much more informed than before.

Sometimes people say, that they have a huge capacity for alcohol or drugs or whatever. It takes them longer and much higher quantities to get high. I think what they mean is that those remaining soldiers standing with higher firepower are better prepared this time. So the next time you take a hit, it takes longer for them to die.

The mystics and sadhus have been known to do it via meditation and sanyas. This higher state of consciousness is what we all seek. It comes in different forms. For some, it comes after a long run, or a good piece of music or a beautiful picture.

Opening up of our mind is what we constantly seek.

Did you like what you read so far? You can subscribe to my mailing list to get updates on new posts. I am not sure how frequently I’ll send you an email but it will never be more often than once a week. 
Appreciate your time. Thanks!