We walked
A world not so young but yet green
We walked
In plenty and through lean
We walked
Bound, we were almost one
We walked
At times on the edge
You walked
To that ledge
You stand now, a sentinel lone
Author: Bantering Ram
Grief falls
I walked this earth in pomp
Till I took the life of one I held to be my own
In kindness it was done
But still a soul
And now I find me without one
See here just a shell
The Man has left the building, his long-held home
And in his place are echoes fell
I’m done here, my doom it has come
Airloom
Once lovers, now slaves here
In the hold-house of despair
Greed-sucking masked air
Picture this, with no filter
Broken and lost
We wouldn’t be found
In a seconds shop
Not even at the tinker
Beyond repair
Broken
Lost
Protected: A Run On The Spice Trail
Fairy Tales, Of Sorts
The softest pillows and mattresses in the land. Real golden, soft human hair – no less – made them so. Business flourished and coffers were in demand to hold the coins pouring in. For sure, the odd trouble popped up. No one knew why but once in a while, a stray pillow or a petulant bedding would let its hair down; hair that would snake its way around the sleeper a little too tight. But the coffers would be quickly opened and a generous flow of its contents would burn away all memory of such unfortunate unpleasantness.
No one knew why? Well, not quite – SHE knew but SHE was locked up in HER high tower. And SHE had given up on HER prince. HER prince, now king, had come to rescue HER once but he stayed only to love HER hair more than HER; hair that meant gold.
*****
The fair pretty girl was on the floor. The old, sour-faced woman stood looking down at her, armed – as it seemed – with a broom. The door burst open and the midgets trooped in with loud yells. They took in the scene and saw the desperate plea in the girl’s eyes. Furiously they tore into the old woman. No one saw the look of bewilderment in her eyes. The girl with the snow white skin got up. No one saw the cold gleam that lit her eyes and the chilling smile that slashed her face to open up the cruelty beneath the skin. She shrugged. Oh well! The old hag knew too much. And her sweeping had got too sloppy anyway.
*****
There she was, a beauty laid to sleep in an open casket of ebony and ivory. The light of the crescent moon lent her fair skin the colour of a paler shade of alabaster. The prince stood in rapture awhile. Then he bent low and kissed her on her blood-red lips. Mmm…wet. Wet?!?
She opened her eyes, beautiful dark eyes.
She stepped out of the casket, all grace.
She sank into his neck, one inch fangs.
*****
The king was rich beyond measure, for he was married to a treasure trove that filled his coffers with coins golden as her hair. The king was miserable and lonely. The king knew not the reason. No, not even a block for him to stumble upon and discover why. He walked the long corridors of his castle, head bowed and hands clasped behind his back; a walking Atlas shouldering his vast gloom. One day, he found himself himself by the door of a musty old closet. He walked in. All he found was a mirror. A half-forgotten childhood story wafted into his conscious mind and stirred him to ask haltingly and not without some sheepishness:
“Mirror…er…mirror on the wall
Haha; Who’s the fairest of them all?”
A voice cold as the far hills came rippling out of the glass:
“Who else but you, my Queen!”
The dazed king staggered out of the closet.
Age Is A Number
It’s strange how a piece of music can set your thought wandering seemingly unconnected paths. I was listening to ‘Comfortably Numb’ when my mind went rambling into notions of age and of ageing. From that was borne a series of lines mostly silly which I tweeted. I’m carrying that a little further and dropping it here (some of it is too obscure for minds that are not quite as twisted as mine).
* Age is a number. It numbs you, not necessarily comfortably
* Used to be broad-chested. And then age and gravity did a down-shift
* When “letting your hair down” is no longer literal
* When “Who am I?” becomes literal and no longer indulgent philosophical introspection
* When you wish someone would invent a Google to find your glasses (your eyes lit up when Google Glass was announced but no, that wasn’t it)
* When “What Was It You Wanted” becomes your theme song
* When with each year you move further away from Douglas Adams’s answer to Life, The Universe and Everything Else
* When you get recognised by the back of your head
A Short Circuit
Arguments were rife at the table of this family of 6 – grandpa, ma, pa, two elder sisters and himself. Nothing violent, just normal differences of opinion that are likely when a group this size gets together. He was the only one who kept his counsel. As the youngest, his pronouncements were likely to be dismissed anyway. He turned his attention to the newspaper. What is this!?! “1 in 5 people likely to be mentally ill”.
“2 of a family of 6 murdered in cold blood” screamed the headlines two days later.
He had reduced the odds, hadn’t he?
************
A few minutes after reaching home – 4162, Laburnum Lane – she cranked up her laptop to post about the MAN who stalked her on the quiet stretch of road from office to home that evening. “Creep”. She tapped out her righteous anger to her six hundred and seventy-two followers on Facebook. She had met only thirty-seven of them ever.
The MAN walked on and turned into his home at 4159, Laburnum Lane.
************
And it hit him then. HE had the answer to Life, the Universe, EVERYthing. Thrilled, he started expounding in the spirit of sharing and caring.
He couldn’t hear himself.
The duty doctor on his rounds in the Neurology department raised a quizzical eyebrow at the nurse. She shook her head. “Still the same doctor, as the last 15 months. Other than his left eyelid fluttering for a few seconds two hours back, there’s no response.”
************
He settled down at the table of that familiar dim-lit bar. And they came and sat with him, his girls. All make-up and cleavage. His eyes started scouting customers.
Loner. No one to talk to. It had not entirely deadened this orphan but it was killing him. He silently and fiercely envied those with families, even the ones that didn’t look too happy about it.
“F mily B r & Rest ur nt”. The lurid red signage drew the orphan in. The pimp smiled. A likely one, this.
************
She worked on the “Science” beat. She had found one of those random studies (who does these and why?) – you know the ones that tell you that a mole on your right elbow significantly increases your likelihood of suffering a paralytic stroke before the age of 80 – that predicted probability of insanity in any given population. The editor had okayed it for publishing the next day. Her day was done.
The Monday Mundane
Monday for the munDane
Tuesday for a twISt
Wednesday for WAR
Thursday, Oh! Die of ThiRSt
Friday for the Jedi
Saturday for red eYed Sith
Sunday for the ShuNNed
And these lines?
These lines for a load of SHiT
Orbituary
If I puncture a few – or many – chests puffed up with pride, it’s only because I’m an obnoxious, cynical, ignorant prick. I have the utmost respect for the scientists who worked on the Mars Orbiter Mission. So it’s not you; it’s me. In a nation of over a billion I must be a rare one, maybe even the only one, who had no clue why we have a mission sent to/around Mars. Everybody else is chest-thumping (careful there, you might bust your coronary), desk-thumping, tub-thumping (careful here too; an obscure one-hit-wonder band might just sue you), fist-pumping, tear-jerking in ecstasy. Members of various communities want to suddenly recognise their ‘brothers and sisters who did the community proud’. FB and Twitter have gone into overdrive as the Iyers and the Nairs, the Mehras and the Mehtas hunt down their own. I suspect when they do that they’ll see that unassuming fellow next door whom they scorned as a geek and a nerd. Yeah, that should be a fun meeting. The real estate maven are drooling and the autorickshaw (tuk-tuk to you foreigners) drivers are rubbing their hands in glee, their greedy eyes popping at the very thought of the out-of-this-world fares that they can demand. Everybody else knows what this is all about and how much the human condition will be elevated as a result of this great spin-off. Whereas me, I’m just going around in circles much like the Mars Orbiter (that’s an ellipse, you say?). My terrible ignorance has had me riding nightmares through hellish landscapes these last few afternoons (yep, that’s right). No, not Mars; that is obviously a rapturously lovely planet. Heck, what is this mission? What, WHat, WHAAAAT?
And then a group of people mentioned that it was to prove that men, and only men, are indeed from the 4th planet. That’s when it struck me that everybody else is an ignoramus too – it’s just that they don’t know it yet. See, Mars already has this.
So now you know; your mission is a dud. Wait, wait, wait unless you meant to bring Capt. John Carter back to earth…er…Jasoom.
P.S.: If any of you is offended by this, didn’t you read the first three sentences? Lighten up. Levity (Red Bull, suck on this) gives you wings and sends you flying without spending billions of dollars.
In God’s Country
The wife and I recently went on a whirlwind (nope, that doesn’t explain the squally weather there) trip to Kerala. There was a time when I used to go often to “God’s Own Country” but it’s been a while since that happened last. It definitely has been a couple of decades since I last caught sight of Thrissur, my mother’s hometown. And given the very wet reception that we received, it was only to be presumed the town was none too pleased to see me back. If we were not doused in rain, we were drenched in sweat. Like I said, wet, wet, wet.
I’m not much of a temple visitor but given the proximity to Guruvayur which houses one of the most important Hindu Vaishnavite temples in the country and since we don’t visit this part of the country very often, we thought we’d say hello. The temples in Kerala have some fun rules of entry. One of them is a dress code. Women in saris (these days they allow for the northern ‘salwar kameez’) and men in dhotis or veshtis (no lungis please) and bare upper bodies. Quite an eyeful for the women, you think? Nah. The quite-a-noseful puts paid to any such impure, lascivious thought. After standing in line for one and a half hours, we edged closer to the inner sanctum. Actually not much hard work – the throng carries you along. I would’ve put my hands up and let the aforementioned quite-a-noseful blast the hordes down if only I wasn’t hemmed in hands down. A clever gent ahead of me had drawn from his apparently vast reserve of experience to hold his arms well above his head supposedly in supplication to the lord. Supposedly. Hah, I knew what that was all about. Like I said, clever man. After snaking around more corners than the wonderful chaps in our corporate houses cut, we had to climb up a slippery stair installation and slither down the same before we got a nano-second view of the lord. Or so we happily thought. See faith is all about belief. The good folk in the managing committee of the temple would have us believe that the path to a holy peek is evidently a long one and sees its share of twists and turns, ups and downs. Seriously though, we had not a moment of a sense of piety, a realization of spirituality in the whole experience. But holy cow! we came away with an understanding of the horror that cattle encounter when they’re herded into the narrow confines of rickety transport trucks. The temple management here has much to learn from the Tirupati temple.
In sharp contrast to this rush-job in painful slow motion was our visit to Thrissur’s Vadakkunnathan temple. Even at the peak of my atheistic days, this was a temple I used to love visiting for the sense of peace and tranquility that I found in abundance there. Thankfully that hasn’t changed. Housed in a beautiful and huge complex, this dedication to Shiva is a wonderful example of a style of architecture unique to Kerala. Legend has it that this was the first of the temples constructed by Parasurama in expiation of the greatest bloodbath let loose by one man in all mythology. Here I found a calm and a sanctity that should be the realm of a place of worship but which rarely is.
Everywhere we went in “God’s own country”, we found the hand of God. Here too came once the man who briefly wielded that very same hand.
Every village had posters put up by fans of national football teams. The dominant ones were Argentina, Brazil, Germany and Spain (just about). And clearly the English team that ‘God’ infamously struck down in 1986 finds sympathy and quite a few fans. If this truly is God’s country, then his game surely must be football. Yeah, it fits – he must be getting his kicks from it.
Rambling On My Mind 