Online scratch paper

Her eyes

2014-12-19T04:13:00.003-08:00

Not far away from the hot drops of tears,

a shimmering blue moon floats in a vast white sea.

Red rivers meander in the white sea

in a vain effort to reach the beyond-beauty and brain.

The salty waters of the Earth wash away the filthy dreams

swimming the white sea and beyond.

The moon is seeing you.

Ah! The shimmering blue moons.

Yes.There are two.

They are hers—the tears and the moons: her eyes!

Next time you count, don’t forget even bees can!

2014-06-26T03:14:00.003-07:00

“Go towards the circle. Turn left and the building you are looking for is after five blocks from there” directed a lady, to a man who was new to the city.

“One, two, three…” counted the man, as he passed the blocks to reach the building he wanted to visit.

We use our ability to count many times in a day. Once learnt how to count, it seems so easy that we do it effortlessly. While most of us have learnt counting by opening our fingers as we count, some can count in their minds.

Is such numerical competence innate (comes by birth) or acquired (learnt)? Do human babies have the ability to count (at least the small numbers)? When and where did this ability evolve in evolutionary tree of life? These are the questions that excite a few scientists who have been studying how the numerical competence many have evolved.

Studies have shown different ranges of numerical competence in various animals like rats, monkeys, chimps, human babies, fishes, Parrots, pigeons, and surprisingly, even ants and honey bees! Numerical competence includes being able to count, subitize (being able to assess/count numbers when shown simultaneously), proto-count (can learn to count number of some fixed kind of objects but, cannot transfer the knowledge to novel objects) do simple arithmetic operations, assess numerosities, order numerosities etc. A few animals have been shown to be able to count not only visual objects but also auditory, olfactory and tactile cues.

Human numerical ability is different compared to that of other animals. It is closely connected with our language ability. However there might be language equivalents in other animals. For example, dance language in honey bees (though it is highly debated) which bagged Karl von Frisch a Nobel Prize in 1973. Does the dance language play any role in their numerical ability? Can information theory reveal any interesting patterns in their numerical ability?

Honey bees are known to be able to proto-count, count and subitize. How do we know that? Think how you can prove this. Find out more about it in the next post.

Update: An interesting link on the same topic: http://plus.maths.org/content/node/5549?src=aop

Have you started editing/writing for wikipedia?

2014-06-06T03:18:00.000-07:00

A few years back, there used to be a huge stack of big books in many houses. Those who have watched the TV series 'Friends' would know the books better through Joey (he was made to buy them in one of the episodes).

They were encyclopedia. These books were the source of any(or most) sort of information available to mankind at that particular time. They were written by a small group of scholars and they were revered as much as the Bible or any ancient scripture, if not more. But with time, everything changes--size of the computer, human knowledge, hair on your head and many more things. We now have Wikipedia at our fingertips.

Wikipedia is awesome! It is one of the best uses of crowdsourcing. Here, information is entered by common people (Yes. Anybody can add information) and the best thing is, since not all the information entered is correct, it is edited by people (again, can be anybody). This way knowledge and information are shared and it is FREE (Provided, you have internet. But there is an offline version as well.).

Even though, this information may not be devoid of factual and scientific errors, it provides easy information which can be checked for errors by looking at relevant (scientific) literature.

I just started editing Wikipedia and I feel good about it.
So. Have you started editing Wikipedia?
..........................................................
How about now?
Did you register in Wikipedia?
Did you start reading the help page of Wikipedia?

A few fungi from Arunachal Pradesh (ID please!)

2014-04-06T03:56:00.000-07:00

Colony founding by short legged hunch back ant (Myrmicaria brunnea) Queen

2014-04-06T03:38:00.001-07:00

Collection of a few behaviors

2014-03-22T02:04:00.001-07:00

2013-10-16T22:05:00.000-07:00

Of slavery in ~~human society~~ ants and the defense against it

"Slavery is founded in the selfishness of man's nature - opposition to it, is his love of justice.”

-Abraham Lincoln

If you had thought slavery is a concept only in humans, you are mistaken. Slavery is seen even in ants!*

Before you find out more about the ant slavery, you need to know the social structure of any ant colony. Generally, each colony has a Queen which is the sole reproductive individual of the colony. There can be multiple queens in a colony too. There is a division of labour in the colony. That means, work is divided between many individuals: soldiers protect the colony, foragers search for food, maiden workers clean their nest, nurse brood and the queen and so on.

Coming to slavery—some species of ants are known to invade colonies of closely related ant species (host species) and steal their brood. Once the brood matures to become workers, they work as slaves in the slave maker colony. The slaves forage for food, maintain the nest and are involved even in slave making raids on other ant colonies. Some species of slave makers have gone to the extent that they have lost the ability to forageand thus are completely dependent on slaves¹.

The process of slave making begins with a few scout ants checking out the potential slave colonies. It is followed by a raid in which many slave maker ants involve in a fierce fight with the potential slaves. Many ants from both the colonies get killed in the process. By the end of it, if the slave makers succeed, they steal the brood and carry them to their nest.

Photo: Alex Wild

Slave maker=red ant, Host=black ant

At this point, you might be wondering—‘Don’t the host species remember that the slave maker scouting is followed by the raids and thus prepare to defend more fiercely? ’

Yes, they do. In a paper published in the journal Behavioral Ecology, Pamminger and others tested if there is any increase in host ants’ aggression as an induced defense (after a scouting event) against slave makers. They also checked if the host ants’ response to non-nestmate conspecifics/slaves is context dependent.

Optional reading--[To answer the above questions, they used 3 treatment groups and a control group consisting different combinations of dead slave maker ants and conspecific ants. They stimulated scouting events by 4 consecutive cycles of encounters. First cycle consisted of conspecifics in all groups. Second cycle had slave makers in treatment 1 and 2 while treatment 3 had species of same genus that of the host. In third cycle treatment 2 had slave maker while all other groups had conspecifics. Fourth cycle had all conspecifics except in treatment 3 in which no ant was presented. Control group had conspecific dead ants. They noted the responses of host ants for each of the 4 cycles of encounters in the 3 different treatments.]

It is revealed that host ants remember the slave makers and show an increased aggression for at least 3 days. After an encounter, host ants react equally aggressively to slave makers and non-nest mate conspecific/slaves. So the response to conspecifics is context dependent--higher after a slave maker encounter than in normal encounter with the conspecifics. Host ants also show a seasonal variation in response to the conspecifics (higher aggression in summer as there are few slave raids during this time). The response to slave makers is always high. All this makes sense knowing that, while conspecifics are competitors for resources, slave makers are a threat to the survival of the colony.

In a broad picture of animal behavior, this study adds a pixel of environment dependent behavior response. It showed that, in an animal, different behavioral changes are induced by competitors/predators/slave makers in different conditions.

Throughout the study, dead conspecifics and slave makers were used. This would mean that the behavior of these individuals during the slave raid and the corresponding responses of host ants were completely ignored. So, the findings need to be validated with experiments using live ants. Costs and benefits of the induced responses need to be quantified.

*Note: Even though the term ‘slavery’ is anthropomorphized, one should not think of considering slavery as normal (i.e. nature chose such a concept— so it’s okay to support it). One should not base morals strictly based on what is seen in nature.

References:

1. ‘The Ants’ by E O Wilson and Bert Holldobler

2. Pamminger et al, “Increased host aggression as an induced defense against slave-making ants”,Behavioral Ecology, 2011

3. http://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/social-parasitism-in-ants-13256421

What's cooking offline?

2013-03-17T10:43:00.003-07:00

‘I wonder what’s cooking online. What are my friends upto? Has somebody shared something interesting? Who is getting how many likes?’ These are a few thoughts which fly across some students who are into Facebook.

I am not writing this to crib about Facebook, but to share my experience of volunteering for Disha, a student organization. Disha conducts ‘Spread the smile’, an outreach program for kids in villages near Pune. It aims to motivate kids to learn - the fun way. It is through simple experiments and games they are taught the concepts which they felt familiar only in the cramped lines of textbooks.

You must be wondering, why I wrote about Facebook in the beginning. Volunteering for Spread the smile was an exit into the reality: away from the Pseudo-walls of Facebook, the pages of books, the sluggish weekends and from the virtual reality.

I had a few wonderful experiences in Ambavne, the village we visited. We started with teaching kids—how to make their own hand pump. We asked them how and why it worked the way it did. Other activities included making a motor, paper cup telephone etc.

“The Science labs are just for name-sake show off. It is all blanketed with dust” said a student pointing at a room which is supposedly a Science lab.

A few kids seemed to be very interested in all the activities. Here are a few photos:

As the Sun’s heat plummeted, traditional chulhas smoked dried wood, leaving kitchen in smoke clouds. Meanwhile, the village elders were involved in their usual chat near Panchayat building. As stars shone one by one in the sky, the kids started showing up one by one near Primary school building. Surprisingly, a few (more than expected) elders also assembled. It was show time for kapil, a volunteer who carried his telescope to show kids, the vast ocean of secrets and awe right above us—the night sky. It was a star gazing session. Kids were very energetic and often over enthusiastic: a guy almost pushed the telescope down.

With this, we retired for the day. We woke up to the birds chirping. After completing our morning ablutions, we stepped out to know the village—its social structure, places, people, traditions etc. We were escorted by the village Sarpanch, who had been very supportive since the beginning.

As we walked through a few lanes, we could not miss to notice women mopping their houses, young girls creating traditional rice flour designs on dung paste spread in front of their houses. Hens which were just let out of an inverted handmade basket ran around leaving their footprints on the designs. Perfume of incense rented air. It was a pleasant start for the day.

“People of different castes doing different jobs live in separate groups in this village” said Sarpanch, pointing at a potter’s house.

Chulhas, pots and idols of Lord Ganesh which smelled of fresh clay could be seen outside the house. As we approached, the potter showed us how they make idols.

We then moved on to the other side of the village where child labour was prevalent in a brick kiln.

“Don’t click photos. You will complain that we are making our kids work” said a worker, when I was clicking photos of the kids working.

I had no idea what I could do for the kids. I am sure we have written and read about problems like this for exams, blogs etc. But, what could I have done? If they send the kids to school, they will have less money to feed them. If they don’t, the kids will be illiterate. It is a sad tradeoff.

“There are many big problems which we may not be able to solve. Problems like child labour are complicated. We should try solving small problems first” suggests a volunteer back in Disha meeting held at IISER.

“So..uh…what did you learn from this program?” I asked my co-volunteers.

“The way my brother grows up in Pune city is completely different from the way these kids do…” said Sofiya.

Ambarish, Kapil and Mihir (volunteers) also shared what they felt about the program. It was a unique experience for all of us.

It definitely changed a few things in my life. Lately, I wonder—what’s cooking offline, in the real life.

PS: I urge you to try volunteering for Disha. I am sure there is lot to teach and even more to learn. Your weekend would be worth spending, doing something useful. For more info, visit Disha’s blog.

Of monkey business and life lessons

2013-01-21T21:41:00.000-08:00

“Yatrigan Kripaya dhyan de. Gaadi no 11212, Pune se Mumbai jaanevaali Deccan Queen, platform no 1 se ravaana hone vaali hein” warned a pre-recorded female voice which echoed in the misty but otherwise mostly empty Shivaji Nagar Railway Station.

“Hurry up! Let’s get the tickets” exclaimed Sangam. Nisarg scurried to the counter. We were on a weekend trek to Bhimashankar.

As the train moved slowly, Anil, Nisarg, Sangam and I barely managed to get into a general compartment. It was packed with people, goats, hens and what not. It was very difficult to move. Luckily, being skinny, Nisarg and I managed to move through the crowd towards a window. As the train swerved out of Pune, the tender rays of the Sun kissed the skin of the people near windows. It was a perfect sunrise in the back drop of hills - much like a kid’s first scenery drawing.

The train snaked across the hills of Western Ghats through a few tunnels on the way. One could see kids waving at the passengers in every village the train passed through. They seemed to enjoy both the sight and the sound of train. It was a delight to beholder’s eyes. For those kids, even an old cycle tire is a prized possession. These sights bore testimony to the ultimate fun and bliss of enjoying even the simple things in life.

As we grow, we get caught up in the quagmire of monotonous jobs. Obviously, I am not asking you to wave at the passengers in trains. I mean, are we digging the wrong places for fun and happiness? We no longer seem to enjoy the so called ‘simple things’. Is that what makes us grown-ups?

Meanwhile, we reached Karjat. From there, we took an auto to Khandas, a village in the base of Bhimashankar hill. By the time we began trudging up the Bhimashankar hill, the Sun looked like an egg yolk on a frying pan. As we continued our trek, we saw a few Macaque monkeys along a cliff on the way. As they seemed quiet and unmindful of our presence, we clicked a few photos.

Suddenly as if after a meticulous planning, the whole group of monkeys attacked us. Sangam and I ran pell-mell while Anil and Nisarg were trying to find a way to escape. A monkey jumped on Nisarg’s bag and scattered its contents. Sangam was a little paranoid and was shouting at me to stop running. He was mad at me for leaving them. Nisarg had lost his rain coat, gifted by his father, in the commotion.

Somehow, all the four of us managed to meet near a tree. The Alpha male showing off its extra sharp canines inched towards us. Surrounded by monkeys in three directions and a steep cliff in the other, we were rendered helpless. We could neither run nor fight. So we decided to open up all the bags and show them that there was nothing left. The Alpha male pulled all the stuff out of bags and sat with us for a minute probing a piece of soap. After some time, they lost interest in us and vanished into the canopy.

It resembled a rape scene of typical Indian movie—scattered clothes, bags, bottles… It was a life time experience for all of us: of getting surrounded by monkeys, sharing space and time with the scary Alpha male…

I am sure we have all read many stories of valour in our schools. Some of us even imagine ourselves as the protagonist of the story. Do we really have those characters in us? Can we imbibe them just by being enclosed in the four walls of a classroom? May be, if we had stayed together, Nisarg might not have lost his precious rain coat.

I realise that treks are not just aimless trudging in the wilderness. They teach us life lessons. They reveal our inner selves, improve our learnability and make us mentally strong. Until we are confronted with unexpected situations, we don’t quite know what we can and what we can’t. It is in such situations, we learn that life is not linear. But, isn’t that the beauty of it?

So, Yatrigan Kripaya dhyan de! What makes Life worth it is the journey—the people we meet, places we see, things we learn or unlearn, the joy we find in the simple things… What say, readers? Hellooo!! Anybody there..? Was I that preachy? J

Feel free to share your views and stories.

PS: Sitting through a boring lecture was the driving force for writing this article. After all, anything can be turned useful. Why not a boring lecture?!

Photos: Nisarg P Desai

I write, can I?

2013-01-18T22:05:00.001-08:00

Mind-- it was a dried up desert. No thoughts, no ideas-- and feelings? None at all!

He sighed into the cold air. All of a sudden his mind had homed vacuum. It was one of those writer’s block thing. He could neither sleep nor eat. The sensation of emotional word shower was suddenly numb. He stared at his laptop, as if he wanted to emotionally black mail the word document to seed some ideas in his mind.

Of course, what could a word document do? It was a mere lump of clay waiting to be shaped.

kismet.blogs.com

The sound of silence lodged his heart. Everything around was as still as the printed words in the books. His mind felt emptiness even in the enigmatic expression of Mona Lisa in the portrait which hung wobbly on the shabby wall of his room.

He felt as if he was fighting a war against the words and they were too cowardly to come near him.

“Why? Whaai are the ideas afraid of me? What do I write on for my next book?”

supernovacondensate.net

He started fantasizing himself as a frog in a swarm of word flies. He could see the flies but could not catch them right. He turned away from the laptop and had a fleeting glance of his reflection in a mirror nearby.

“Unfortunately, ideas don’t fly around in the air. But definitely, some thought, good or bad, does arise in my mind. Why don’t I write down whatever hits me and compile them as a piece?” he asked himself introspectively.

It was as if he saw ‘desert’ as ‘dessert’. He was more affirmative than ever. His dried up mind was replete with words, live words! His thoughts rolled down at will as if they were set free from a jail. The words sprinted along the page as his fingers danced on keyboard. He went on till he reached the saturation.

“Err……….err….Umm now what do I write?”

vintageanchor.tumblr.com

The water fall - the word fall - had stopped rolling any more.

His eyes whooshed through the cramped columns of his writing, like a boy running in an alleyway of a slum city. The editor in him took over his mind. He started editing the piece.

“Oh! I should delete, ‘and feelings? None at all! ’,in the first line. It does not sound logical. Emptiness is a feeling too! A full glass cannot be filled. Emptiness is a sign of seeking more…” he thought to himself. “I write, can I?”

2013-01-14T22:02:00.001-08:00

A Letter to let her...

The letter

Post box

Date: today

Dear letter,

Everyone writes you. A few long for you to arrive. But, none writes to you!

I am glad to meet you in this postbox where messages meet and share the secrets, joy and gloom equally. It seems as if it is a carnival of emotions. Each letter has its own emotion to communicate: the excitement of the birth of first child, a young man’s romance in his Love Letter, a letter replete with the sadness of demise of a valiant soldier …

The reason, I write to you today, is to leave this letter with you. She is very innocent. She has not seen the real world out there. She feels lonely and abandoned since the e-mails have pervaded the world. She feels as if it is the end of her world…

I want you to let her communicate the way you do. Let her feel the emotions of writing, reading and most importantly, of being a letter!

Let her know that this post box homes both good news as well as the not so good ones. Letters convey myriad emotions-- acceptance, rejection; love, hate; joy, sadness…

Teach her how to relish when the postman thumps the seal on her. Let her dream about the gusto of getting her first stamp. Let her understand the absolute bliss of communicating through the letters.

Before the postman arrives, let her know what this life thing is anyways!

Let her…….let her…..for she is a letter!

Yours verbally,

The words of this letter

Photo credit: naturalparentingtips.com

2012-11-01T05:36:00.005-07:00

TIME TALK

Time line, time pass, time dilation, New York Times, Times of India, time bomb, time this, time that, time, time, time.

Well, the list can go on. But now, I know what is bothering your neurons!

No. Not the ultimate question of life, for which the answer is 42. But why on earth (or Vogosphere!) am I talking about time, when we have no time to make some time to read this shit (sheet?)?

Allow me to explain the “Time syndrome” which bothers me every time I think about time.

Disclaimer: Geek alert, geek alert. I speak Geek in the following lines. My words may smell chemistry. Sometimes they may come alive and try to poke your eyes. So wear goggles and take off your thinking cap for your safety. Fasten your pant belt (or should that be seat belt?) and don’t break the speed limit, for thou shall be killed.

Is das clarr? (Don’t reach for dictionary to look up das clarr , coz it does not exist)

Now that I have warned you, let me set up the scene for you.

Tick tock, tick tock…….

1:10 AM.

It was quiet and calm outside my room while there was an equal amount of chaos in my brain.

Tiny alarm clocks (or were they biological clocks?) were swinging from one neuron to the other. I know, they were doing it in vengeance. Every time my alarm rang, I used to thump him on his head and cajole my sleep.

Yes, they were taking revenge on me. They swung, they wrenched, they pulled all my neurons .while one of them slid down my spine (from r3 to r8, to speak in Geek), the other ran a program (in T++, an object and time oriented programming language) in my brain.

Consequence: Ugh……. Honey, I was shrunk.

I found myself in a clock.

It was (and still is) a small world there, in the clock; a family of 10 members (0 to 9).Each member has a surname, AM or PM, depending on time.1 is seen either alone or with his twin brother at 11 or his friend, 0 at 10 or his another friend (who is a girl) at 12.

Pss….Psssss. come closer…………… clooooser.

I know a secret. Don’t tell this to any one, especially 1.

There is a rumor that 1 has an affinity to 2. He is so in love with her (reference: some paper in Times journal)*. But 2 seems to have given her valence electron (or is it her heart?) to 3. They form a strong bond (Stronger than that with 1, possibly a covalent bond) that they are mostly near to each other, except at 12.

You don’t believe me?

Then may be your thinking cap is still on. Safety I say, safety. How many times should I repeat it for you? I am telling you, I am not responsible if you go crazy after reading this piece.

Anyways, coming back to the family. Their life starts at 6 am. No, not sleeping lazily, but doing their duty punctually. They ring the alarm, just to get hit on the clock’s head. You might be thinking how boring their life is, to do the same thing again and again. They say “We try to see new things in the old-every day. We never get bored. And we do have our own sweet time to read, write, contemplate, have fun etc. When we are at hard times, we just change our batteries (but don’t kill ourselves). You are a moron, if you lose time.”

So you suffer from Time syndrome, if you are a procrastinator or a secret agent [Bond, James (chemical) bond] recruited to kill time.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Post script: I was just kidding. I don’t have Time syndrome.

Post postscript: Well, may be a little.

Post -post- postscript: My skills of procrastination and the subsequent realization of the loss due to wasting time was the driving force to write this piece. Yes, the force does follow New-Ton’s laws of motion. No, don’t ask me any more questions. I am immune to them.

* Reference is given just to make you believe that the hypothesis is scientifically proved (P>0.05, n= 1 and 2). Hence, proved. Ting ting ti din…..:)

Image credit: CLUE (Comics about Life, Universe and everything)

Check this out-https://www.facebook.com/cluecomics?ref=ts&fref=ts

2012-10-04T22:29:00.001-07:00

Page 42

A windy Sunday night: the moon seemed to be swimming in the dark, rain filled clouds. As the breath of the wind created commotion in the clouds, moon light peeped through a broken glass window. The room was illuminated by a big candle which was almost fully melted. It was a spacious, but sparsely furnished room, except for a table, a diary, a wobbly chair and a huge clock. Quite the opposite of what the room looked like, it was replete with many experiences all buried in the pages of the diary which lay on the table.

As the wind sneaked into the room with curiosity, the diary was turned open exposing its crisply written words on the yellowed pages which personified the feelings of its owner, a poet.

“I like her smell, pure and nostalgic. Her picture is painted in my mind. Her eyes: as pure as crystals. Her hair: as free as waterfall, and the face: as pure as the first rays of the sunlight. I crave for her…… ” said page 1.

Page 2 continued describing the beauty and the need for her. While the next 10 pages talked all about her, page 12 said “He is the root of all the misery. There can be no other beast as cruel as him….He has snatched her into his blood thirsty soul. She was molested till her blood soaked the grains of sand…..”

By that time, the fragrance of innocuous flowers had made its presence felt. It was very curious to know if it had felt the people referred to, in the diary. As the wind and fragrance read on, they could not guess the identity of the people. Their curiosity peaked. With one more breath of the wind, all the pages were flipped just to expose the last page, PAGE 42.

“It is her, THE PEACE, which we have all been craving for. She can never be free until he, THE WAR, is confined in the darkness…..” said page 42.

Wind exhaled a gush of shame, as it realized that it was polluted by the hatred and violence all around. It was during the time of World War 2 that the diary was written. Time was the witness to all the misery. It was with the same frustration that the clock had stopped ticking as it could not bear the violence and hostility any more.

Photo Credit: bitsandpieces1.blogspot.com

2012-09-10T05:17:00.001-07:00

A letter from the Lord

Homo sapiens

Earth, Solar System

Date: Today

Place: Lord Krishna’s office, Heaven

Dear Humans,

I have been following all your arguments on Evolution and Creationism, rather heated debates at times. I am writing to you on behalf of all the gads (I prefer gads over gods) not to defend the idea of creationism, but to question the evolution of the creators itself. The old man, Charles Darwin, and many other people like him, have proposed the idea of evolution so as to explain the vast diversity of life forms. I kind of like the idea as they explain by reasoning and experimentation rather than just blind faith in something.

(Image credit: bestofdesijokes.blogspot.com)

Considering this scenario on the earth, I always wondered why the hell we, the Gads, look the same since the time we were created. The world is changing with time; even the tiny micro-organisms are evolving mechanisms which are good for them. I mean-what is wrong with you?

You never changed the way we look neither in photograph nor in Photoshop. So I am putting down a few wishes that we, as the Gads you created, long for.

We always wanted to get funky looks, wear branded clothes, and be called by a cool name like Krish. At least an electric guitar which could help me hack a few girls’ hearts. Let me tell you, it is not all that vibrant here in heaven as you have described. You have attributed to me success with many girls. But, it is a completely different situation here. Sex ratio is quite skewed in heaven. Blame the sex identification techniques of the corrupt doctors who do not seem to spare even the Gads.

Image: momorobo.com

You might ask why I would need all these.

C’mon. I am not asking you to give me money or build a fancy air-conditioned temple with swimming pools and all those luxuries. I am just asking you to update the way we look at least in photographs so that I would upload those narcissistic photos in my Facebook page.

Hoping for a crazy change,

Yours Gadly

Lord Krish

“Gad must be crazy.”

PS: This is just a piece of fiction. It is not meant to hurt theist’s feelings about the Gad(s), but FYI, I am an atheist.

2012-09-03T07:04:00.001-07:00

Life is colorful, so is our blood

I was born in a factory. They had filled me with blue blood and dressed me in a transparent plastic outfit. I was then given a plastic helmet which protects my intelligent head. So did my siblings - ten of them.

We were all happy together until one day; a boy separated me from my beloved ones. He removed my helmet and put down his thoughts using my intelligent head. My blood drains out every time he does this.

“Dinner is ready”- a husky voice from downstairs.

At that moment I found myself amidst many other people like me in a small pipe. The first person whom I saw was Mr. Highlighter. He was a fat man with fluorescent yellow blood. He said he has been living there since many months and has seen many ’Use and throw Pen’ men pass away. He was very proud of himself as his head is used to highlight the important points in any document.

As I averted my glance from the bragging fatso I saw Ms. Pinpoint Red. She was a slim and sassy girl and had pink blood. I had not seen such a beauty ever. I was ogling at her to her discomfort. While I tried to take my eyes off her, I saw Mr. Reynolds Black, who is from Africa. There was Mr. Add Gel who knew German and had the German technology gel mechanism on the rear end of his body.

Then there was Mrs. Pencil, who was a very strong hearted woman. She had a graphite body. She always wore a wooden outfit with colorful stripes on it. She was married to Mr. Eraser who is from the West. He said that he always erases the mistakes of his mistress and expects perfection in every work. He also said that she always goes to a beauty parlor called ‘The Sharpener’. She comes back with a very sharp head and a beautiful smile on her newly carved face.

“Our life is colorful” exclaimed a few sketch pens. Apparently they were all similar in appearance but different in color. There was Violet, Indigo, Blue, Green, Yellow, Orange and Red. They said, “We come in rainbow colors and we make lives interesting”.

Suddenly I had a strange feeling in my body. Some of my blood had oozed out. Mr. Ink Pen said its cancer. I was startled then. I thought I would die. But Mr. Ink Pen took me to Dr. Ink Pot’s clinic. He was a fat man with lot of blood in his body. After examining my condition he told that it was just due to a mistake in my making and it could be cured by changing the tip. He then took out a tip from his collection. My tip was surgically removed and the new tip was implanted. Since then I am hale and healthy, happily helping the boy put all his thoughts on paper.
Credits:Inspired by an article "UNPROTECTED"by Simon Rich,JULY 30, 2012 in The New Yorker.