Archive for the ‘Stories’ Category

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Sunday, March 8th, 2009

“Nowadys you don’t get any help. Santha comes now and then, if I send word. It would be good if Santha came and helped everyday, but she drags that girl too. I don’t like her coming here.”

Unni? What’s wrong with her? I no longer know the people in my home-town that well. Unni was a young girl we used to play with when we went to stay in my grandparent’s place. She was quite some years younger than me, and that’s how I remember her. Smallest of the bunch. The girl who couldn’t talk coherently.

“I don’t like the way she speaks. She is upto no good.” My mother lifts her nose into the air.

Unni comes with Santha and I tell myself she is no more a child, not quite surprising as I am not quite young anymore. She has grown, and she has taken care to show off her charms. Like allmost all the young women.But lack of money and ill-advised accessory choice gave her a cheap look. Hint of too much kajal, big bindi with some curious design, too many bangles, weird hairdo. I can see why my mother disapproves. Poor girl, I know everyone wants to look good when they are young. Taste doesn’t come until you are over the adolescent rush.

I smile pleasantly to her, afterall this girl in the ghastly makeup is the girl who showed me how to make a peepi[whistle] with coconut leaves. She smiles and then asks my brother when he had come back from college.

“The doctor said she should be married off.” My mother tells me after they are gone.

They took her to a doctor?

“Oh, she was behaving starngely and all, so they took her to Medical College. Too many ailments and fainting and wandering off and all. He said she just want to get married. That is what Leela told me.” Leela is Santha’s sister, and the sisters are known to war even though they live in the same house with their children.

She is what? 15 or 16?

“16. They are looking for boys now.”

***

“Manu sent his wife to her house” My mother tells me after Santha had left. Manu is Unni’s brother.

What happened?

“Unni is back now. And Shyla is there too, after her husband died. So Manu and his wife were sleeping in the veranda. No place to sleep in the house. ”

Why is Unni back?

“She keeps coming back.But this time her husband had run away. It has been happening from the time they married.”

Hmm.. What did they expect when they married her off at 16?!

“They had to.” My mother is adamant.

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Bed Time Story From Ancient India

Thursday, February 12th, 2009

A long long time ago, there in the ancient land of India lived a very pious man. He lived in his aashram, doing penance, chanting mantras and the likes mentioned in the Puranas by Devarshis Chopra and Sagar. He was thus living in obscurity, invisible to all paapis who burdened mother Earth, except for his disciples who were prosecuted in the name of law by various Asuras who ruled the land and the Gods he prostrated himself to.

Then one day Maya, the temptress struck. She showed him a world he was not used to. Instead of his scenic ashram, he saw himself in a Hotel; he was not wearing the valkala anymore, he was not surrounded by doe-eyed beauties who demurely washed his feet with the water they fetched from the river. With the material came the greed. He began to feel that the Gods were rather miserly with their boons in the brand new world that had sprung up while he was doing penance for just over three or four thousand years. He hadn’t received any boon whatsoever, not even the kind where he is almost immortal and can be killed only by a flying sparrow. Is he not to be famous? Is he to die a lowly death, unknown to the world, just another ‘almost normal’ burden to the mother earth?

The Lord granted him his wish. He made him an international celebrity overnight. The ever-merciful God was much pleased and moved by his offer to sacrifice as many maidens as he could find to him.

Moral of the Story: Ahh, moral.

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Life in the Metro

Friday, February 6th, 2009

In a crazy world every job can be interesting. Well, sometimes a bit too frustrating. While coming back home in the bus, there was a small altercation in Marathahalli. A scooter rider riding the wrong way stopped the bus to yell at them. Cause, you know , he is on the road on his scooter(what if on the wrong side?) and don’t you have eyes in your stupid face, how dare you try and start the bus as if I didn’t matter? What if he had died? Then there are threats of physical violence and all the other things people threaten each other with.

An old man got into the bus as this was happening. IT was not a usual stop for the bus, but since the bus was not moving due to fight you know. The scooter guy rode off, and this new man asks the conductor.

“Does this go to Kodihalli?”

“No. Cross the road, and you will get buses.”

“But I want to go to Kodihalli”

“Get down from this bus. Take another from the other side of the road”

“No. I want to go to Kodihalli.”

The conductor is losing it, and he asks him to get down. The man is obstinate, and he is NOT going to get down. This goes on for some time.

In the end they managed to kind of push him out of the bus. Apparently BMTC employees have a high suicide rate. I don’t wonder why.

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Teachers and Students

Tuesday, January 27th, 2009

Independence Day is nearing and we are being made to practice the mass-PT by George Sir. That is when an ambassador taxi stopped near us. A man gets down with a brief-case and marches;yes marches as if the drum beats were for him, straight-shouldered and all; and goes straight to George SIr.

“Good evening. I am Xavier, came to join as the new temporary English teacher.”

George Sir looks him up and down, and points to him the Principal who is sitting on the stage, watching us practice. Then he says matter-of-factly.

“When you meet him, you should salute him first.”

The poor man walks–marches–and salutes a bewildered Principal before presenting his appointment letter.

When you start out like that in front of the whole school, it is quite difficult not to be the butt of many a joke, and his many quirks didn’t help either.

Children can be cruel. I know that now. Most of the times unintentionally so. I think they realize the cruelty and meanness of many a silly act only when they grow up. I like to believe I was a sensible child. Yet we did glorify people who were just mean. Even though I know that “grown-ups” don’t exist in the sense I thought they did when I was little, I can’t help wonder why some of the adults in my childhood were never really grown-ups.

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Young cop and the missing body

Wednesday, November 19th, 2008

This story was narrated to me by an eye-witness.

I have to give you a background sketch. We have a large quarry of black granite in our village. It is now a difficult terrain with large water bodies and steep high rocksl due to extensive quarrying. There is a ‘colony’ nearby, of houses meted out by the government to the underprivileged of the place. Almost all of the colony dwellers use these large manmade lakes to wash and bathe.

People say it all started when Laxmi came and took the clothes she had spread to dry on the rocks. Some say it started when Paru kept hers to dry next to Laxmi’s. There are some who says it all really started months before, but they wouldnt tell me their reasons. Anyway, the available history states that Paru came from work, collected and clothes, and announced, “my body is missing”.

People heard her; she knew how to be heard.
“My body is missing.”
“Laxmi’s clothes were next to mine.”
“It must be with her.”
“She stole my body.”

The conclusion was fast, and the people followed her as she went to Laxmi’s house and demanded her body back. Laxmi vehemently denied having to do anything with Paru’s body. No , she doesn’t steal like some people.

Alas! Poor girl. You don’t talk back to people like Paru. By then everyone around knew about the body and the theft. Paru has a loud voice, and she doesnt mind using it. My narrator tells me she cannot repeat the words to me, as it would hurt my innocent ears. In the end Paru stomped out, threatening to get her body back, and Laxmi tearful and broken.

Noone guessed how affected Laxmi was. Being called a thief is bad in itself, and to be branded a body thief! We cannot judge her for what she was going to do. Majid heard someone walking in the yard at four in the morning, and the thief he was going to catch turned out to be Laxmi in a bid to throw herself into the neighbor’s well!

The colony was shocked. Noone actually believed Laxmi pinched the body. And she has proved herself innocent for their eyes by her unsuccessful bid on her life. People assembled. They discussed. They cussed. They heated up. They vented. And unanimously decided to ‘talk’ to her. But our heroine was nowhere to be seen. She had gone to Calicut in the early morning to visit a doctor. Well, she will come back.

My source tells me the scoundrel who gave away the plan was Nanu, Paru’s nephew. He has gone to Vatakara in the afternoon, apparently to tip off Paru when she came back. This occured to the people later. At that time they were just badly surprised by Paru coming with a policeman in tow. It is never a good idea to beat someone up when there is the eye of the law present. People began to melt away slowly. But there are always some brave souls left to save the day and the poor maidens! Thank god for them.

“So you are home with a policeman, eh? So you sacred for almost killing that girl”
“She stole my body”
“She didn’t steal anything. Maybe you have hidden it. We know why… ”
“Sir,last month Paru… ” “SHE STOLE MY BODY”
“You &^*..” “She …”
“Sir,….”and so on..

They tell me it was impoosible to discern anything except that somebody stole a body. Even when a dozen people are talking simultaneoulsy, Paru can drill her voice home. It was being continued in this vein for around half an hour when the young cop, with a bewildered expression in his boyish eyes asked a silent group member.

“What is a body?”

She tells me every single person stopped talking for an entire minute, before the explanations began.

* Where I come from, some old women still refer to the piece of clothing now we know as bra or brassiere, bodice, or less ceremonially body*

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Snakes, communists and falling coconuts

Wednesday, August 13th, 2008

The last post was about snakes. Which reminded me of more snake stories. My my.. I know snakes have a bad reputation, but whatever…

One of my uncles has a land in which there is an old abandoned temple. When I was a kid, those bricks were a mystery. Every other kid was afraid of going there. It was Koyampatta Bhagawati, and you shouldn’t step into her land. Except when you picked coconuts. And did the other work in the land. As luck would have it, I had a mother who sneered at all those.

Those were the old times. Young men were embarrassed to be religious. It was what women and old people did. Have we not all heard about the thing about opiate of the masses? Have we not heard Vayalar sing about how man created the religion? Those times were as hardheadedly communist as now. People believed in atheism, processions, fights, and giving the best fowl yearly to Kakkannur for the sacrifice. And not stepping into Devi’s land. They also believed that temples were against the spirit of communism. You tolerate them because people are used to it, but no supporter of the communist party could openly profess to be a believer.

I have been away for so long, and things have definitely changed. People have turned to religion. Temples and churches and mosques are coming up in every corner. People go to temples everyday, not just those 10 days of Navratri. There are renovations of old religious places with any trace of mysticism. Even people’s tombs get renovated lamps are lighted. My mother tells me there is a massive Karthika-vilakku in Koyampatta today, with thousands being served meals at noon. Those old-abandoned pieces of bricks I know is now a proper place of worship, with pujas being done, lamps lit every evening and a collection of offerings that will make a poor worker-bee wish she had instead gone in for the spirituality business.

Did I mention it was all being run by the communist party? The young blood which wanted it to be a proper temple are being supported by the party which says it is godless. Of course there were other people too, but nothing works in my place without the mighty Party. It so happened that along with the worship rights(?) and making sure the land in which the temple sites is common to the good people also wanted a piece of land surrounding it to be the temple’s. My uncle did not like the idea. That’s when the blockades began. No one would work in that piece of land. The fallen coconuts were aptly picked up by the neighbours and the grasses were soon taller than your head. Then there were the rounds of talk about finding a solution to the problem, mediated by the Party. It all came down to the same thing. Give some land/produce of a number of trees to the temple. The Party helpfully suggested they are ready to handle the finances from it. I have no idea why, but my uncle did not seem very keen on giving away his land for the common good of the people. The bourgeoisie.

Then somebody went to the Court. This being a medieval temple belonging to somebody or something. The Judge in turn said whoever steps into the land can be prosecuted. (The following story is going around about it. Coach Nambiar, who was rooting for the other team went to the judge before the judgment. Because you know, he is The Coach, and his protege got four gold medals in Asiad. It incensed the Judge so much that he made sure there were no loopholes in his judgment.) But don’t you think the bourgeoisie won. He cannot climb a coconut tree or lift a shovel. So it is.

So, in this long story where do the snakes come, you might ask. A viper bit our dog Tintu and she died. Sometime later there was a ‘Swarnaprasnam’ by the people, where the Tantri detailed the bad things that will happen to the people who were not willing to give Bhagawati her due. Santha, who works for us sometimes came and told my mother that the Tantri said Tintu was dead. (We are family, so) A four-legged animal will die, he said. My mother asked if he also said two four legged animals were obtained later on.

Apparently not. Maybe he didn’t know about the puppies.

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Curse of the Snakes

Monday, August 11th, 2008

I have the habit of making up ‘untruths’ when talking to babies. Like the throne in which the Lion sits in the jungle. Then I think they really do not understand it is a silly story. Which reminded me of my grandfather. The grandfather of the tall tales.

He has always had some allergic reaction in his hands. The skin would peel off, and it was quite painful. After all medicines failed, he even changed to cigarettes from beedis at his doctor’s insistence, as the beedis were wrapped in tobacco leaves. It was not so small a thing for him as it was easy to roll up opium pills into beedis. Not so easy in cigarettes. But ty it he did, and still nothing happened. Then one of those days when I was sympathizing with his hands, he let me into his secret.

:The doctors won’t be able to cure it, because they don’t know the root cause.”

But they are doctors. They know everything.

“No. This is the curse of the Nagas. I did not tell them.”

Why did they curse you?

“Once I was walking near the Kaliyamvelli temple, and a group of people were trying to kill a poor snake. So I told them it was the Devi’s snake, and you shouldn’t kill it. And we released it back to the woods.”

So?

“I got this after that incident. See, how my skin peels off now. Like that of a serpent. ”

But you were the good guy. You saved that snake. So others should be getting it, not you.

“But I got the sapam. (the curse). That’s how it is sometimes.”

I thought the snakes were silly to curse the person who saved them, but left it at that. Then after a couple of months, my grandfather came to visit us, and his hands were more or less healed. He told my mother he has stopped using the matches and was using cigarette lighters now.

So it was an allergy to matches? I asked him.

“No. I had tried not using the matches earlier, and it made no difference.”

Then how did it work now?

“Sri Krishna came to me in my dream and told me not to use matches anymore. That’s why it worked.”

I admit I had my doubts. I was not so small a baby. I knew it was an allergy of the match box. Then, I also knew he had a dream of Sri Krishna.

But now, I am not so sure.

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Travelogue

Tuesday, May 27th, 2008

While going home last time, I met this girl. A very interesting girl, I should say. When I stepped into the bus at last, I was relieved enough to know that even though the sleeper I expected turned out to be a 2×2 seater, mine was a ladies seat. So I smile at her. She doesn’t.

I was slightly piqued. Mean, am this nice young lady sitting next to her–of course I made her give up the window seat, but hey it was my seat–,so can’t she return at least a lopsided one to my most charming of smiles? However, being the magnanimous human being that I am, I let it go. I settled into my hard-won seat, opened the window and then she asks me if I know how to recharge a prepaid phone.

Ever ready to show off how good a person I am, I tell her to sractch off the silver stuff on the card she has. She borrows a one rupee coin from a guy in the next seat and tries scratching furiously. After a couple of seconds she hands me the whole thing, almost crying.

“Please. I can’t. I am so tensed I will scratch off the numbers.”

I dutifully do the honours. Though I am slightly worried about the whole drama thing.

Since I didn’t know which number to call, she gets four more rows of people get involved. And then it is done. I heave a sigh after all the commotion. Being of the genre who hates people, I was finding it all quite different from my existence. However, she begins to get calls immediately, which she dutifully cuts after a curt ‘don’t call me’. Lover’s tiff?

After the movie where she alternated between laughing loud (always poking me to show how funny the joke was) and crying about something that was bothering her, I drift off to sleep. I wake up to drink some water, and she is sitting there, all awake, not even trying to sleep. I smile at her, and go back to sleep. But she had other plans.

I am curling up into the most comfortable of balls when she asks me:
“Where is your office?”

MG Road. I try to sound sleepy.

“Do you know a Vivek who works in MG Road?”

Well, in which company?

“In MG Road.”

Is it Vivek N?

“I don’t know his full name. His friend’s name is Sujith. He works in Outer Ring road. And there’s an Ajay also in their group.”

I have no idea. There is a Vivek N in my company. He is a Malayali. He is fair and not that tall.

“I haven’t seen him, so I don’t know.”

????! I actually said that .. heheee…:P

“He is from Kottayam. Where’s this guy from?”

I don’t know. Somehwere in South. I really don’t know this guy except his name and that he is in such an such a team, and he is a Malayali.

“It is the same guy. I know. How is he in office?”

I don’t work with him. I think he is good.

“Don’t even talk to him. He is very bad. I know all about him. I know how he plays with girls. I have heard a lot…”

I don’t think it is the same guy. Mean, you don’t even know where he works or his name.

“It is the same one. He works in MG Road. And he is from Kottayam”

There are a lot of offices in MG Road. And I don’t know if the Vivek in my office is from Kottayam. And this person looks like a good person.

“Aah-ha.. You think so? I know about him. I would rather not tell you. But he is actually a very bad person.” She is getting slightly agitated. Poor me is finding it all slightly otherwordly. She doesn’t even know the person she is talking about, and she doesn’t know who I was talking about, yet she is so sure of both of them. I regret I mentioned Vivek.

I smile. Best escape route.

“Better not keep any company whatsoever with him. It is not good.”

I won’t. I promise her.

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On Jealousy

Wednesday, April 16th, 2008

“Where’s Ashita?”

Drama rehearsal. Didn’t you see yesterday?

“It is over. She isn’t back?”

I don’t know. Don’t bother me, Avii. I am studying.

“Why don’t you two sit together now? ”

Beacuse you two sit together nowadays.

“No,we don’t.”

Ahhhhhh… Don’t make me a part of whatever it is going on, ok.

“I don’t care for her anymore. It is just that she is being way too friendly with Aneesh nowadys. And I don’t like it.”

So? If you don’t care anymore, why do you bitch to me about it?

“I don’t care for her anymore, but I just cannot stop thinking about her. Oh, how I hate her! She has poisoned even my dreams. I cannot think anything else but them. Not for a single moment. From morning till night, even through the exams, even while I sleep. I cannot stand to see her laughing with him. I want her to be miserable without me. I cannot stop this from my mind.Oh-”

I start to laugh at this rhetoric and then I see his face. My laughter freeze.

“But it never ends,kid. Never ever ends. ”

That is when I saw him cry the first time.

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Ascetic

Saturday, October 13th, 2007

“Avi, what’s with the bandage??”

I fell down.

“Hehe… I mean, so bad. How?”

Well, you know about Siddashram?

“Yeah. Isn’t it where people wear white clothes? ”

They don’t just wear white clothes, silly. It is a community.All are swamys and swaminis or whatever. They sell their property and live together as a group, working there and all.

“So? ”

I went there last week, with Shaila chechi and her husband.

“Really? They let people in? And you fell down there?”

Yes, you can go see all, meet their Gurus, and if you want to, go live with them. Nice people.

“Oh?”

We were just roaming around seeing people and all, you know. Then there was this young Sanyasi ploughing the fields. So Shalia chechi asked him why an able bodied young man like him was working like a water buffalo in there.And that he should be ashamed of himself.

“Oh my God! What happened then?”

That guy is not fit to be a sanyasi. Not at all. And boy, does he run fast!

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