One Woman Man

“So you’re a one woman man?”, she asks.

“Yes. That I am…”, he says.

“Okay, then. Doesn’t that mean that your ex was your ‘one woman’ ?”

He looks at her, the sparkling eyes and naughty smile playing on her lips and says, “Oh, nothing like that. She wasn’t a woman.”

Her eyes widen and a stream of laughter comes from her.

“Oh, stop laughing. You know what I mean. I meant that she wasn’t THE woman.”

Of macchars and babies…

Purnima’s latest post made me remember that as a kid, I was really good at coming up with really obscure theories [exhibits for such behaviour in adult life : Of buses, Of phones ].

One such theory was of procreation. That means reproduction, or how babies is born. Well, my theory was (please note, I was barely 9 or 10 years old at the time) that it happened with the help of mosquitoes. Yes. Mosquitoes. How? you ask. And I shall tell.

Married people sleep together (mind, in the eyes of a 9 year old, it just means sharing a bed ), on the same bed, in the same room. And mosquitoes being the biting types, bit such these sleeping together people, in the process transferring all the baby making raw material needed from one person into another. These were no ordinary macchars by the way…these were special baby making macchars, otherwise the whole world would be full of babies, lots of people get bitten daily by ordinary macchars ,you know

Of course, these special macchars knew which couple wanted a baby and when etc. They were noble creatures, these macchars. That didn’t stop me from killing any macchars I got my hands on though. I believed I was doing my bit to solve India’s population problem

This theory held for lots of years, until that fateful day in standard 8 when a friend, armed with encyclopedic knowledge, told all the guys THE TRUTH (which left us completely flabbergasted).

I didn’t even have the heart to even kill a macchar that day.

Short Story 5

[written long ago...am not reponsible for any puke arising out of reading all the cliches in this story ]

He looked at her. She was smiling, talking to all the friends who had gathered to watch the movie. He stood away from that crowd, immersed in his own thoughts with a can of soda in his hand. He looked at her again. How he missed her. And yet wanted to be away from her. He couldn’t understand. There’s a lot you don’t understand, he told himself and sipped from the can. He looked at her, as she smiled when the guy held her hand standing beside her, talking to her friends. He looked away. He called him ‘the guy’, even though she had introduced the both of them and he knew his name. She wanted him to like the guy. Like that has a chance in hell. He smirked.

He looked at the people in the plaza, people eating at the food mall, people talking, people thinking, some deep in thought. Somebody must be watching me too, wondering what that guy with the soda is thinking.

“She talks about you a lot, you know”, the guy had come and stood next to him and was blabbering.

“(Oh god. Now i’ve got to talk to this guy. And listen to a speech. Help me God)”, he looked to the sky.

“She sees you as one her best friends”, the guy blabbered on.

“Hmm (Oh god, please don’t let him say what I think he will say, please)”

“She still has feelings for you”, the guy said, with a sombre expression.

“(Damn it). Look dude, you come here looking all sombre and noble and tell me that your girlfriend has feelings for me. What are you asking me to do? Take her away from you? Or do you want me to give you a speech telling you some crap about how it isnt meant to be and that you should keep her happy, and that if you dont keep her happy or you hurt her, I’ll come and kick your butt till kingdom comes? Sorry man, I dont operate like that. I’m not the hero here, you are.”

She looked at them. They were talking. Although it didn’t look like it was too cordial. Why was he waving his hands like that? Why did he crush the can in his hand? I’d better go and calm him down she thought. She didn’t have to.

Someone had come up behind him and tapped him on the shoulder. He spun around, looked at her and smiled. Not the usual one which he reserves for friends and me nowadays, she thought. This was his special smile, for that someone special. Special, my foot, she thought. What was this? Was she jealous? No, no, that can’t be it. She can’t be jealous of some girl who had waltzed into his life just some days ago. It wasn’t as if he was in love with her or anything. Just boyfriend-girlfriend business. The usual. He was like that. He was THE commitment phobe, if there ever was one. But something about this girl bothered her. The way he looked at her, he might actually fall in love with this one. Nasty thought that. But why should she care? She was in a relationship of her own, she was happy with her guy. Even if he didn’t like her guy. The feeling was mutual. She didn’t like his girl either.

As she walked towards them, he looked at her and smiled. She smiled back. As their eyes met, both of them knew, in their hearts, that they would never be happy without each other. But then, both of them thought, not everybody is meant to be happy.

The lowu phone

One thing that Dhirubhai Ambani will be forever immortalized for is the small mobile revolution that he helped usher in India. Make no mistake, he played a huge part in this, what with the Rs. 500 ka mobile phone Reliance introduced some years ago. But this post is not about that. It is about a bigger contribution he has made. A contribution that will not be forgotten by a generation of Indians, and will be spoken of with reminiscing sighs in the days of their retirement.

A little history here. Soon after Reliance Mobile came into existence and a lot of consumers had them, people found out a way to cheat Reliance out of money they’d have to pay for legitimate calls they made. Basically, instead of disconnecting calls, they’d pull out the battery from the phones. Reliance executives, instead of taking a hit month and month again, decided to introduce a new scheme, which said: Pay fixed monthly charge and call any Reliance phone anywhere in India for free. That, and they also fixed their faulty billing system. People chose the fixed monthly charge and free calls scheme. Entire khandaans converted over to Reliance.

Perhaps unknown to the Reliance people, there was a market segment that they hadn’t thought existed. The people in lowu. Now, whats better than spending each moment in somebody’s company? Eh, wats that you said? Calling each other? Yes. That’s exactly what the lovers of our generation did. Both parties got Reliance mobiles and started spending a lot (and by that I mean a LOT) of time with the phone connected to their ear. Long distance relationships flourished, aided by this free reliance to reliance scheme. Short distance relationships flourished some more, if that is possible.

In fact, the practice is so prevalent now, that I have devised a way to identify people in lowu (and various stages of lowu), just by the mobile network they use. The algorithm goes:

Boy/Girl has Reliance mobile? Boy/Girl is constantly on the phone (>3 hours in the work day)? Boy/Girl talks very softly on the phone? Boy/Girl has expression of supreme happiness/ extreme stress/ regular boredom while on phone? If the answers to all of the above is Yes, then ladies and gentlemen, I present to you, a reliance couple.

A note to parents: If your child wants/switches to a Reliance phone all of a sudden, you should stop entertaining thoughts of a peaceful arranged marriage match for your child.

I have seen many such phone users. Separated by distance or circumstances, The Lowu Phone a.k.a Reliance Mobile has made life(lowu) a little easier and cheaper for lakhs of couples across India.

[And just in case you are wondering, the author does not own a Reliance mobile phone.]

LOL

Three alphabets. Meant to say:  Laugh out Loud.

He often wonders if people who write LOL on chat, actually laugh out loud at their own terminals. Or is it just an expresssion? A statement of intent perhaps.

Behavioural scientists in the future would go through aggregate data of the post millenium human interaction and find many insightful clues in the chats littered with LOLs. They would find:

• LOLs that were not meant.
• LOLs that were sarcastic.
• LOLs that were just thrown into the conversation, every five sentences so that the recipient was kept happy.
• and of course, LOLs that actually were.

Just then he gets a IM saying LOL.

He wonders which category this one belongs to.

Devavrath

He woke up in his chambers. He sat up on his bed. Bones creaked. He felt old. He looked at himself in the mirror as he got up from the bed. He smiled. Perhaps the only time he would smile in he entire day. He knew he had along day ahead of him. There would be the court, the war briefings, the planning sessions, the training. There was a war coming. And he had to be a part of it.

He’d rather not. Who wants to fight against one’s own kin anyways? Kids he’d practically raised were going to fight a war against each other. He’d tried to stop them, to see reason. But they wouldn’t listen. He was going to see most of his family wiped out by the end of the battle, if he lived till the end of it. Such was his destiny, he was sure he’d live through the war, if only to bear the agony of a thousand deaths inflicted on him.

He’d endured worse in his life though. Born to a human father and a mother who was a Goddess, he’d been destined to live a life of suffering. He’d heard this all his life, spoken by the storytellers and sung by the balladeers. But even they knew only a fraction of the many terrible decisions he had had to make through the course of his life.

One of which was the awfully terrible oath he’d had to take, just so that his father could marry some princess fisherman’s daughter* he’d fancied. He had decided to take the oath to be celibate all his life, just so that his father could have a go at creating babies with that girl. He chuckled at the thought.

Terrible oath to take that. Really. Imagine being hit on by women all through your life, but knowing that you cannot respond in kind. Ever. Not that he’d never thought of it, but he had a promise to keep. And real men never break a promise. He wished he could be a fake man, just for five minutes, so that he could break the promise. He chuckled at his own(rather bad) joke.

Speaking of women, and being hit on, he wondered if Amba’s reincarnation would be present in this war. If it was, then his time was up. Lord Shiva had himself granted her the boon that her reincarnation would be the cause of his death. And all this because he’d refuse to marry her. She was very good looking, come to think of it. And he had actually fought for her hand in marriage at the swayamvar. So that his brother could marry her. Why the hell did he end up doing things so that others could get laid? Damn that stupid oath.

A messenger has come to see you, your highness. Lord Bhishma will be with you shortly, he could hear the servant tell the visitor. Bhishma, the name sounded weird on his tongue. Like something alien. He’d never been able to get used to it. His name was Devavrath, but hardly anybody remembered his real name anymore. Everybody called him Bhishma. He of the terrible oath.

Stupid Oath.

*subsequent to mrinal’s correction

“The opposite of love…

…is not hate, its indifference”, he says.

“In that case, I promise never to be indifferent towards you. Ever”, she says.

“So, you promise to hate me forever?”, he asks.

“With all my heart”, she replies, smiling.

Eyes

He passes by her, keeping his eyes downcast.

He does not want to look her in the eyes.

Eyes are where affection is most prominent.

He is afraid that she may find out.

–

Just as he is about to turn a corner, she calls out his name. He turns around. She says hi, he replies with some random noise that his throat comes up with.

He has no option, he has to look her in the eye. Look anywhere else and she might be offended. And he did not want to offend her.

–

Eyes, he knows, speak a language of their own. Her eyes do too. But its a language he does not know, but it seems nice, he feels he ought to learn to speak that language. 

24

There are 24 hours to the day. The hours tick away one by one, finally coming to the 24th hour. After which it all resets to the zeroth hour. And yet again, the count begins. Time marches on, in an ever so perfect circle.

Today is his 24th birthday. The zeroth hour analogy is apt, he feels. After all, what better way to convince himself that he needs to start his life afresh, anew?

L n H

Love is hard to understand. Even harder to achieve. Everyone aspires to it, few ever get close.

Hate, however, is easy. All one has to do is look back at the past, remember someone or something that wronged. And hate is born.

Is it any surprise then, that the world is so full of hate?