From the Free World

The Bridge of Detachment

2014-08-29T16:36:00.000+05:30

My village had changed. It had changed a lot, since the last time I was here almost twenty years ago. It had changed for good, or worse, I am not sure. But there seemed to be more people walking around the main street, carrying out their daily day to day activities since the last time I could remember when I was here as a kid. Some were rushing towards the other side of the river, walking briskly, or on their two wheelers. It seemed as if all of a sudden, somebody had stopped time, and now everyone seemed dazed and confused, and realized how little time they had, and lots of pending work, which they had to complete before sun down.

Yes, there were certainly more number of two wheelers on the road, motorcycles and bicycles. Three wheeled rickshaws and auto rickshaws were also plying on both sides of the road.

The last time I was here, I remember I was a kid, probably studying in the first standard. I had come with my parents to visit our grandfather. That was the last time I had seen grandfather alive. After his death we rarely ever came to the village.

It must have been late evening that time. I must have been feeling very sleepy, because I remember father having to carry me in his hands all the way from where we parked our car on the other side of the river bank, across the ferry, and then right up to grandfather’s house. Occasionally I would wake up from my sleep, open my eyes, take a look around to see where were we, and then go back to sleep on father’s shoulders.

But I still clearly remember the sounds, sounds that were breaking the eerie silence of the village night. The nocturnal insects were all buzzing, warning each other about the approaching human intrusion. A dog was howling somewhere far away. But there was no sound of any vehicle, which we were so used to in our city. The silence was a little frightening, even though comforting.

It had rained the previous night, and puddles of rain water had collected at several places on the mud road. Sanju Mama’s (uncle) heavy steel torch was the only source of light to show us the way.

I opened my eyes a little. We were walking down a slope now. Pitch darkness ahead. In front of me I could see several small dots of light moving here and there. Must have been fireflies, but I was too small at that time to realize what they were. I was hooked. I watched as the specks of the light kept dancing in front of me, teasing me, inviting me to enter their world.

As we descended down the slippery muddy slope, my father kept his firm hold on me with one hand, and with his other hand, he helped my mother descend the slope slowly and steadily. Sanju Mama’s torch light also danced down along the slope, bouncing here and there, till we were at the end of the slope.

Sanju Mama then raised his hands, cupped them in front of his mouth, and then made a loud hooting sound. I woke up fully now. I tried to imitate him, and made another hooting sound. My sound echoed back from the darkness in front of me. I liked it. I hooted again.

Somebody hooted back from the darkness ahead. I tried to see through the darkness with my small eyes. I couldn’t see anything. I hooted again, imitating Sanju Mama. It was answered back again.

It was then that I could see a small speck of light, much larger than the fire flies dancing around me, moving towards us, far away in the darkness. It was floating towards us, dancing slowly in the darkness. I was a little scared now, and turned away my eyes. Father, mother and Sanju Mama were talking as if nothing had happened. Maybe they didn’t see the dancing light, floating towards us. It could be a ghost !

I tried warning them, but nobody paid any heed towards me. My father instead tried to make me go back to sleep on his shoulder. I didn’t want to sleep. I wanted to warn them. I started crying.

That got my father’s attention. He tried to silence me. I looked up at the approaching source of light. It had floated very near to us by now.

It was then that I heard that voice, that beautiful voice, singing. He was singing a beautiful local Bengali song. I was star struck. It was the most beautiful song I had ever heard. I can’t really remember the song now, but it was about the river, something about it being the fortune bearer for us, our source of food and good will.

But I still couldn’t see the face of that beautiful voice. It was pitch dark ahead. The light was almost near us now.

Then I heard it, the sound of splashing water as the oars chopped through the water, rhythmically, backing up the song that he was singing. I saw the boat approaching. I could see his face now. It was a beautiful face, an old man’s face, flowing white beard and a gamcha (loin cloth) tied around his head. He was wearing a chequered blue lungi and a white half sleeved vest. He had a white skull cap on his head. He must have been aged around sixty, but he looked quite healthy.

He was no longer singing. He stopped rowing now, and angled his boat towards us, till it touched the river bank. A lantern was tied to a post over his head. He got up slowly, and then greeted Sanju Mama. Sanju Mama said something back, and introduced the old man with my father and mother. I don’t remember the conversation, because I was busy looking at his face.

“Come bachcha (kid), come her”, he said, trying to hold me to help father cross over to the boat.

“No”, I cried, wriggling my small hands, trying to resist his old wrinkled hands.

“It’s ok Chacha”, my father came to my rescue. “He won’t go. I will manage.”

Father climbed into the boat, while Sanju Mama, helped mother get on the boat behind us.

We sat down, and the old man pushed the boat away from the river bank, and pushed us towards the darkness ahead.

I managed to steal a peek at him. He wasn’t looking at me. That made me feel safe. I turned towards him now. He was using his strong hands and was rowing powerfully. He closed his eyes, and then he started singing again.

He sang the same song, about the river. He sang about how generous the river was, and gave us our daily bread. But it also damaged lives when it was in a furious mood.

It was the most beautiful song that I had ever heard. He sang so freely, and without any inhibitions, at the top of his voice. He sang as if he didn’t have the slightest care in this world, as if he had got everything he had ever sought in this life, as if he had lived the life he had always prayed to God for. It was the voice of a happy and content man, and it was magical. It was infectious. It spread comfort and warmth around him.

May God always bless the man; keep him happy and content like this forever.

I came out of my childhood dream. Years later, I was back in the same village, this time during the day. It seemed nothing like the memory I had had of this place for so many years in my mind.

I had got down from the bus at the Silchar ISBT stop, hired a taxi to take me to Buribail village. There was no magic this time, no romanticism in the air, as my taxi crossed the Barak river over the newly constructed bridge. It was hot and humid. I was sweating. People around me were too busy to talk to each other. There were several shops that had opened on both sides of the river, shops selling hardware, paint, vegetable, meat and poultry, tea shops and hotels, shops selling SIM cards and top-ups for mobile phones.

It was like I was in an entirely different place.

I got down from the car, to ask for directions towards my grand fathers ancestral home.

The house itself had changed. It was made of bricks and concrete now, far away from the mud and thatched house that I remembered standing in between the mango and banyan trees. The pond in front of the house was still there, though it was much smaller in size now, with concrete steps leading up to it. It was more like a swimming pool now, rather than the old pond, where me and my sisters had spent so much time trying to swim and catch fish. I doubt if there were any fish left in this pond now.

I felt a little sad, my childhood memories about this place having been shattered. I hated the development that this place had achieved during the last twenty years. I wished this place hadn’t developed, and was still the same old place which smelt of mud and cow dung always. I wished they had never broken down the old mud hose, and built a concrete house instead. I wished they hadn’t changed the old pond. I wished they had never got electricity connection here, I wished there was no mobile phone connectivity here. I wished they never would have got clean drinking water supply here. I wished they had never built the bridge over the river.

I got a hold of myself. What was I thinking? I was being selfish.

Where I wanted my own city to develop as much as possible, wanted all the modern facilities and amenities there, I was wishing my village hadn’t developed at all, and was neglected and stuck with the same age old difficulties that my grandfather and his peers had faced, just so that I could retain my childhood memories about this place? That was so selfish of me. Even this place needed the development and all the modern facilities that it had got.

Come to think of it, I hadn’t even been here for so many years after grandfather’s death, and had only visited now because of some formalities that had to be completed about inheritance of the ancestral property. I had come now because I wanted a piece of my share, a share that was lawfully mine, but morally I knew I never deserve a share of this land because I have never ever cared for this place. I was busy making money, living my comfortable life in my metro city with my wife and children. Like a vulture who swoops down over a carcass, I had rushed down to this place only when my relatives were eyeing their shares over this property.

“Why do you even need a piece of that land?” my wife had asked me. “Let them take it. It’s not like we are ever going to live there. Let them be happy. Let them take it. They need it more than we do.”

I had shushed her, and asked her if she was crazy to let go of a piece of land that could be worth lakhs now?

Maybe she was right. Maybe I didn’t need this land. Maybe I didn’t even deserve it.

But what I wanted was a piece of that dreamland that I had saved in my heart about this place, the land with the fireflies and the insects chipping in the darkness at night. I wanted a piece of the land where that magical voice used to sing that melodious song. I wanted a piece of my childhood memory. Was I so selfish in wanting that? Was I making my own childhood fantasies to cover my judgment?

I came out of it. I had to do what I came here for.

I stayed there for about a week. I completed all the legal formalities that would make me the legal heir to a piece of the property.

It was a day before I was supposed to leave from the village.

Maybe I could give it a try, I thought. Maybe I could find what I actually came looking here for. At the bottom of my heart I knew it was not a piece of this property that had forced me here. It was something else. In my heart I knew I had come here looking for something else.

But I had forced that thought aside considering it a part of my childhood fantasy.

But maybe I could still find it if I looked hard.

He was not difficult to find.

Everyone knew him. He was the only ferry man that there ever was in this land, as long as anybody worth their salt here, could remember.

I found out his name was Dolu. Dolu, the ferryman, that’s how everyone still remembered him.

He was still alive. I had to meet him once.

I found out his tea shop easily. He must have been approaching his nervous nineties now.

I went there with one my cousin on my last day in the village. He was lying on a cot outside his shop. A small kid, his grandson probably, was preparing tea behind the stove.

“Dolu Chacha, this is my cousin brother. He has come here from the city ” my cousin introduced me to the old man.

The old man opened his eyes, and looked up at me. The eyes were old, and weary. His skin was so wrinkled that even the cotton kurta that I had been wearing since the last one week, seemed smoother. His hands shook as he shook mine. The face looked tired and old.

And those eyes, those sad eyes, they didn’t have the same magic in them that had become symbolic for me about this place. The content and happy face that I had remembered was gone now, replaced by the face of an old man who just couldn’t wait to meet his creator.

I just couldn’t dare to hear his voice. I was afraid his shaking voice would bring down my childhood dream.

And it happened. When he spoke at last, his voice trembled so much that I felt guilty for having made him to talk. He struggled so much to speak each word, that I felt I should better leave him alone lying on his cot, let him die in piece.

But I needed to talk to him.

We started a normal conversation, about his health and his business.

Then he started to open up slowly.

“Business? Is this what you call business?” I could see his eyes flare up.

“Businnes was what my son Ranju had had at the river bank.”

His eyes seemed distant now.

“Alhamdulillah, what a flourishing business he was having in his sweet shop! I used to ferry people from across the river, and the first thing they would do was to visit his shop, and buy biscuits or sweets for themselves or their relatives. Every single person I ferried would stop at his shop, have, if nothing more, a cup of tea before entering the village. What a team we both were.”

He paused for a while, as he let his excitement die down, and returned to his present.

“And then they built this bridge”, he said with a sigh.

We let him catch his breath before saying anything else.

“This you call business?” he looked up at me angrily.

“I am not doing anything here other than lying here all day long. My grandson is killing flies all day. No one comes here. Why would they come anyway, in this dirty and fly infested place?” he asked, making me put down the cup of tea I was sipping from.

“The bridge killed everything”, he said after a long pause. “It killed my son.”

I was confused. “Killed your son? How?” I asked.

“After they built the bridge over the shop, business died down. Nobody would climb down from the bridge to come down to a sweet shop that was below the bridge, would they?” he asked himself, rather than us.

“ Ranju decided to move to Dilli city where he said his friend was doing better business. But the city killed him. He was a village boy, and couldn’t survive among you city dwellers. They killed him. Somebody killed him over some money he owed them. His body was found, lying in the drain the next morning.”

A tear dropped out of those old weary eyes of the father, as he remembered his son.

“We didn’t even get to see his body. It was too expensive to get his body here to the village. Plus it would have taken days to reach here. His friend buried him in Dilli itself. He sent us Ranju’s belongings by post.”

I was shocked to hear the old man’s story.

“They said the bridge would bring money and happiness for everyone. But it has destroyed us. I curse the day the first man set foot on that bridge”, he continued.

“It has destroyed many families, not only mine. I have lost my son, and my boat. A lot of people have lost many things too. Earlier you used to get good grooms for your daughters here itself in the village. People used to marry within the village itself. If there ever came a rishta from the other side of the river, people used to decline those offers, because it was difficult for families to send their daughters across the river. Boys on the other side of the river are evil. They drink, and smoke dirty stuff, their language is filthy, they don’t respect their elders. Our boys were never like that. They were nice and good mannered. Now after they built the bridge, marriages are happening across the river. I told them not to get their daughters married across the river. But who listens to me nowadays? They laughed at me. They said the bridge had joined both sides, and had opened up the world for us. But our daughters never came back.”

“Why, the other day we got news that Usman’s daughter has been divorced. These things would have never happened if they had married on this side of the river.”

I could not really understand the old man’s logic, but I could clearly see that he was blaming the bridge for everything.

“But Chacha, the bridge also brought development to your village?” I asked nervously.

“What development?” he asked angrily.

“You call this development? They destroyed the village. They have made it like the city now. The people have also become like the city dwellers now. They cheat you off your money, lie to you in your face, they don’t respect their elders. They use foul language. Our people have even started drinking nowadays.”

“Earlier a bicycle was enough for everyone to ply through the village. Now they have started bringing auto rickshaws. Some have even bought cars.”

“But isn’t that a good thing Chacha?” I asked again.

“You won’t be able to understand it son”, he said sadly.

“For you money is everything. Earlier there used to be peace on this land. We were poor and un-developed, but we were happy and content. People used to know each other, they used to talk to each other. Every person attended everyone’s marriage ceremony. Nobody ever locked their doors. They trusted each other. If a child was born, every house used to get the news and we would celebrate it together. Now people have money, but they do not talk to each other. Even if they do, they get into fights with each other. Everyone thinks evil of the other. We were never like this. My songs used to calm down every weary soul who used to come from the other side of the river. Now I don’t even sing anymore”

I was starting to understand his problem now.

“The price of our land has increased now. People are selling their land, and going off to the city. Greedy city people are coming here to buy our land. They are destroying our land, polluting our people.”

“Why, have you also come here to buy our land, son?” he looked up suspiciously at me.

I didn’t answer him. He was right. I was the ‘greedy city dweller’ who had come here now because the land value had increased. I am the selfish person who never had even cared about this place. Now I have come here to claim a piece of my grandfather’s flesh, so that I could sell it for a higher price later on, and buy an apartment in the city with that money. I never had any plans to settle down here. I was just using this village as a source of money.

“Please don’t bring any more filth here than there already is. Please, I beg you”, said the old man joining his hands in request to me.

“Leave our people alone. Let us die in peace”.

I had nothing else to say. I took my leave from him, and left the old man in his misery.

I called up my wife.

“Honey, do we really need an apartment in the city?” I asked her.

“Not really. We are happy where we stay. Why do you ask?”

That was what I was really hoping she would say.

I smiled at myself.

“Nothing. This place is not as good as I expected it to be.”

“When are you coming back?” she asked.

“In a day or two I replied”, and disconnected the call.

I was crossing the bridge again, leaving the old man’s village, going back into my own evil world, filled up with selfish people. May the old man find his peace. May he die peacefully. I have done my part. I have found my peace, now it’s up to the old man and his god-forsaken village to find theirs.

May the magic return to their land. May the old man find his song.

---Concluded---

The Blood on our Hands

2014-08-23T20:49:00.003+05:30

We call His name only when we have no one else to call,
We seek His help only when our own towers of pride fall.
Why do we say He has deserted us, turned away His eyes
When we are the ones who have broken all ties?

Disobeying His orders, soiling His name, mocking His prophets,
The self appointed Kings, we were never afraid of the consequence.
Thinking we know our way, not listening to the things He said,
The path to Heaven, is now stained with the blood of Innocence.

It is not unknown, it was always foretold,
Ignoring the warnings we had read and always known,
To the Devil, all the souls been sold,
Only now to reap the seeds of the sins we had sown.

Oil, water, land, religion and power,
No reason left now to start a new fight,
Destruction and death across the border they shower,
It goes on for years, with no end in sight.

Each day takes a new life, each day brings new destruction,
Hungry for power, and no value for any form of life.
War, hunger, poverty, and disease, all part of the great misconception,
The Devil now has us all, living on the edge of his knife.

Our promised land of milk and honey,
Turned into a land of filth and money,
A land of greed, sin and guilt, a stained and scarlet whore,
And then we wait for You to clean up the mess, when it gets sore.

We ignore the pile of bodies and the bloodstains on the bed,
No belief, no trust, Blindly we carry on the exercise sad,
Till one day it will wake up, the Monster we have created,
Destroy us all and our world, for its time we get liberated.

All the pride and all the nerve
To ask where You've been, when we're the ones we serve,
No one to blame, but only ourselves in the end,
Because there is no excuse, the Blood is on our hands.

The Case of the Mysterious Messages - Part 11

2013-08-31T14:34:00.004+05:30

Note: This is serial fiction. Please read the previous parts before starting with this one:

Link to previous part : http://ashrafchoudhury.blogspot.in/2013/08/the-case-of-mysterious-messages-part-10.html

She was looking at me, judging me, trying to decide what to play next.

“It was here when I came. I collected it and put it in my bag” Anju finally replied, fishing through her bag.

Finally she came out with a Samsung charger, and showed it to us.

“But he had a Nokia phone, right?” I asked.

“How…How do you know that?” she stuttered, and her voice was now quivering.

“After you left last night, I went to visit a friend who is an ethical hacker. We went through the mail that you and Ravi had been exchanging, and his signature on all his mails was ‘Sent from my Nokia phone’” I finally brought her house down.

“You hacked into my inbox?” she said it more with anger than with surprise.

“Let’s say I did a lot more than that, Anju,” I said. “And I know a lot more than you think.”

Her head was bowed. And I continued to rub it in.

“When I went through all the mails you and Ravi had been exchanging, I found something very curious.

There was a detailed description of the kidnap drama you two would enact, of how his company’s HR department would pay the money, how you would negotiate and how you would collect the money. But there was one thing missing. You know what I mean don’t you?”

She looked up. Her eyes were boring into me, yet at the same time they were a thousand miles away.

“There was no mention of approaching Ravi’s parents and asking them to fund the ransom. That was your own little scheme- a little bonus you had planned for yourself, right, Anju? Ravi had no clue you were trying to con his parents as well, did he?”

At this, tears started flowing out of her eyes. She didn’t even try to hide them.

“But…they deserved it, didn’t they?” she stuttered, in between sobs.

“I am sure they did. But this kind of a revenge scheme, with a double cross thrown into a fake kidnap plot, is too complicated to work, don’t you see, Anju?”

She didn’t say anything, and went on sobbing.

“Ravi must have found out somehow that you were trying to squeeze his own parents with his own plan. He was a devout son, and never had any ill felling for his parents. That is why he walked out of your plan. And walked out of here. Out of his own free will. And that is when his messages on Facebook started getting nasty, didn’t they Anju?” I finally elaborated everything for everyone’s benefit.

She was crying loudly now, having no more cards to play. Both Sunil and Lola were equally stunned, at Anju’s evil designs and my newly discovered detective play to say anything.

“But there is one thing that I don’t understand” I finally asked. “After playing your double game with Ravi’s parents, how on earth did you plan to stay happily with Ravi and your child anymore?”

And the answer she gave sent shivers down the spine of everyone present there, and sent us scurrying out of the door.

***

Sunil had finally got off the phone, and I and Lola were eagerly waiting for him to give us the news.

The rain had stopped, and we were sitting in K.C.Das restaurant on M.G.Road.

“That was Inspector Mirza, my good friend from Banjara Hills Police station. They had checked in at Ravi’s parents’ house at Banjara Hills. But it seems the house was already empty by the time they reached there.

The neighbors too had no idea where the family could have gone. But the local travel agent who runs a travel agency just below the apartment, has confirmed that Ravi had come to his office yesterday, and had booked three tickets to London for last night.” Sunil finally informed the two of us.

“So did they safely check out?” Lola asked excitedly.

“Yes. Mirza checked with the airport authorities, and found out that Ravi Rao and his parents had infact boarded the flight to London at 10pm last night.” Sunil replied, and we heaved a sigh of relief.

“So the goons that Anju had hired to enact the robbery cum murder at Ravis’s parents’ house must have failed” I asked.

“Yes. She must have thought that with Ravi’s parents out of the way, there was no way Ravi could have found out that she had asked his parents to pay fifty lakh rupees for his ransom. And with no one else in this world to go to, she had thought that she would have Ravi all to herself” Sunil added.

“It was the perfect plan. Too bad Ravi found out about her evil plan. But how did he get to know?” Lola asked.

“It seems he got an email intimation from the Bank when his father withdrew thirty lakh rupees from their joint account. Then he must have got in touch with his father, who was surprised that his son was still in India, and that too in good health. Ravi then would have told his father about the plan that he along with Anju had made to collect some money for their soon to be born child. Surely his father would then tell him that they too had received a call asking for his ransom. And then Ravi could clearly read through Anju’s double game”, Sunil explained.

“All said and done, I want to know why did you let that bitch walk free after all this?” Lola asked me.

“Isn’t it a fair punishment to her that the love of her life, for whom she had hatched all this conspiracy, has left him for good? Didn’t you see the way she had cried and moaned when he sent her the last message on facebooktoday from London? Plus the pain of bearing his child, without him beside her, won’t that itself kill her?” I asked, putting one hand on Lola’s shoulder.

“True. And moreover, come to think of it, she didn’t really commit a real crime. Ofcourse she could be booked for conspiring against Ravi’s parents ‘with intent to kill’ charges and ‘fraud’, but remember Ravi himself staged his own kidnap. He was also involved. So Anju had planned a kidnap that didn’t happen, asked for ransom money that she never got, and hired goons to execute a murder of an old couple who had already left the country for good. So tell me, what were you going to charge her with?”Sunil added, supporting my judgment.

Lola could see reason now. She was smiling. And then she put her arms around me and kissed me on my cheeks.

It was my turn to blush now.

“So Anuj, I have a proposal for you? I am old now and its time I retire. How about carrying on my legacy and joining me at my office as a private investigator?” Sunil smiled and asked me, taking another bite from one more famous Bengali rasgulla.

“Oh come on Sunil, I am not cut out for all this dangerous cloak and dagger stuff. I am just the guy who loves to poke his nose in other’ peoples’ affairs, once in a while” I smiled, taking another puff from my cigarette, and blowing up smoke into the clear sky.

The clouds had parted, and the sun had come out after a long time. Bangalore weather, as predictable as ever, I thought, wondering about the beautiful city that I lived in, with all its unpredictability and unpredictable people.

I so loved this city.

(Concluded)

The Case of the Mysterious Messages - Part 10

2013-08-31T14:30:00.001+05:30

Note: This is serial fiction. Please read the previous parts before starting with this one:

Link to previous part : http://ashrafchoudhury.blogspot.in/2013/08/the-case-of-mysterious-messages-part-9.html

It was well past midnight.

The sound of the rain hitting against the window pane was still loud. Lola and I were still too excited about how the day had unfolded. Sleep seemed to be a distant possibility.

We had been lying on the bed, still excitedly talking about the events of the day.

“Why would Ravi send such self-contradicting messages?” Lola wondered aloud.

“I don’t know Lola. It even baffles me to think how a man could turn so hostile within a period of twenty four hours?” I wondered.

“Does happen to people, I guess. If they are hurt, or if they find out that their loved one has ditched them” Lola offered.

“But why did he send messages on facebook? Why not send simple SMSs, or even make a call directly?”, Lola asked again.

“SMSs and calls are easy to trace. Plus, maybe he didn’t have a SIM card on his phone when he was imprisoned in that room. Remember, he had just come back from Russia. Maybe he just hijacked into a neighbor’s wi-fi and the phone had facebook app installed. So he messaged on facebook itself. He couldn’t call or send SMSs”, I calculated.

“But remember the messages themselves? I mean at night his messages are so full of love and good hope ‘I just wish everything gets over soon, so that I can be with you again’. And then the next day evening his messages turn hostile. ‘When a man trusts a woman and finds the trust betrayed – what punishment could be worse than this?’ I mean, what could make him turn so topsy-turvy within one day?” I added.

“I don’t know. Maybe he went crazy” Lola said, unable to offer any other explanation.

“Yeah”, I offered.

“I mean he was crazy, wasn’t he? I mean, what kind of son makes a plan to dupe his own parents to rob them of their money?”, Lola wondered.

“Hmm”, I thought. That was something to think about, keeping in mind he was a dutiful son, and dotted on his parents.

Suddenly, something came up into my mind. I had to check it out.

I got up from bed, and grabbed my jacket and the car keys.

“Where are you goingRuffu?” Lola sat up on the bed.

“Lola, I have to go and check out something. You go to sleep.”

And I ran out into the rain.

***

Shivaji Nagar is one of the oldest and busiest areas in Bangalore.

Lined up with vegetable markets, fish markets, beef markets, chicken and meat markets, it is forever infested with people going around doing business and commerce. The main shopping hub, Commercial Street, is also very nearby to Shivaji Nagar. Shivaji Nagar is also famous for its many mosques, temples and churches. It is an area which is a living proof of secularity still surviving in India.

I knew Shivaji Nagar would be too crowded at this time of the day. It would be impossible to drive there.

Plus I wasn’t in the mood to drive right now. I was feeling lighter and happier, now that I had a clearer idea of things to come.

We took the metro till M.G.Road. From there, we hired an auto to Shivaji Nagar.

By the time we were crossed Commercial Street, I was actually smiling. Sunil noticed it, and asked me what it was. I gave him my most mysterious smiletill date.

It was still raining since last night. The rain made sure that the potholes on the roads of Shivaji Nagar were all filled with mud water. Our auto had a difficult time, making its way between all the potholes on the road, and splashed mud water all over.

Finally we reached our destination, the address given by Anju last night.

I hoped Anju had reached the place before us. I was not in the mood to wait in this rain.

She hadn’t. So we waited under the thatched roof of a hut. The hut smelled of cow dung, and God knows what. All our jeans were already covered with mud.

“Are you sure she will turn up?” Sunil asked.

“She will be here alright”, I knew.

We waited for around fifteen more minutes.

Finally we saw her, walking down the road, with an umbrella in her hand. The umbrella had done little to keep her dry. Instead the wind kept swaying her umbrella from this side to that.

Finally she walked up to us, completely wet.

“Hello”, she said, closing her useless umbrella.

One look into her eyes told me that she too hadn’t had any sleep last night.

Last night, in our apartment we had made this plan to meet here today. Come rain or high water, we had made a plan, and we were sticking to it. But something in me had changed, and Anju had no idea about it.

She led us wordlessly up some rickety, old wooden steps, which turned thrice before reaching the second floor. The corridor was old wood, supported by rotting cast iron pillars from the ground, dating to the pre-British era. I was nervous on more than one count.

She led us across a passage lined up with doors, made of rotten old wood. Finally she stopped infront of one door. The door looked so old that it was difficult to tell the original color of the wood. A bright new lock hung on the door.

She opened the lock with a key that she took out from her purse.

It was the smallest room I had ever seen. I doubt if the residents of this room ever saw any sunlight. The room smelt odd too. The paints on the wall were peeling off. All the four corners of the small room had Paan spit decorated on them with utmost sincerity.There was just one cot in a corner of the room, and that was the only piece of furniture in that room.

“So this is where Ravi was hiding until he disappeared all of a sudden” Sunil asked finally?

“Yes. I found out this property where nobody had been staying since the last one year. This was the perfect hideout since nobody would ever care to come and look for Ravi here” Anju replied.

“Look, there is clear evidence that Ravi didn’t leave from here out of his own free will. There are clear signs of a struggle” Anju added, pointing to the jar of water that had fallen down, and had spilled all the water. Also the mattress on the bed had slide out of the bed, and half of it was now resting on the floor. “He must have been dragged from here” Anju added, matter-of-factly.

“Looks that way” I added to support Anju’s theory.

“In that case Ravi must have left in such a hurry, that he would have left all his belongings here?” I asked.

Sunil looked at me suspiciously. He must have calculated that I was playing at something here.

“Right. But he didn’t bring anything that belonged to him here. We didn’t want to leave any evidence about his presence here” Anju explained.

“Quite right. But what about his mobile phone? He was messaging you on facebook on it, right?” I asked.

“He must have had it on him when he was kidnapped from here.” Anju said, looking here and there, not meeting my eyes.

“Yes, of course. I forgot he was still messaging you from his phone after he had left from here, right?” I asked, a smile now appearing on my face.

“But I wonder how did he get enough time to collect his charger too, when he was kidnapped from here?” I added some more spice now.

Anju looked at me now, her eyes trying to read how much more did I know. I smiled, my infamous crooked smile, at her. And with that Anju knew that things were not going as she had planned. I was reading right through her now.

(To be continued)

The Case of the Mysterious Messages - Part 9

2013-08-31T14:25:00.003+05:30

Note: This is serial fiction. Please read the previous parts before starting with this one:

Link to previous part : http://ashrafchoudhury.blogspot.in/2013/08/the-case-of-mysterious-messages-part-8.html

The environment in the room had changed drastically after Lola’s astute observation.

Now that her big secret was out, Anju stopped fidgeting with her dupatta, and was more confident and comfortable now. She also understood that other than Sunil, two other people had got deeply involved in her story, and that there was no use trying to hide anything from anyone now.

Lola made lemon tea for everyone to ease the air a bit. It had started raining outside again. Bangalore weather, it was as unpredictable as Anju’s ever changing stories. I went and closed the windows in the hall. The sound of the rain hitting the window was ever disturbing.

“So tell us everything from the beginning. Tell us how it all started. And this time if you say anything other than the truth, I swear to God, I will leave your case, and then you can go and help yourself or take help from Boris” Sunil warned her.

She took a deep breath, and took a few sips of the hot lemon tea Lola had brewed for us all.

“Well it all happened so suddenly. I didn’t tell you, Sunil, but I and Ravi- we kept in touch all the time. We never really got over each other. The separation was more like a sort of protest against his parents’ misbehavior. But one thing I was totally sure was that I wasn’t going back there again. We chatted and emailed each other jokes and small friendly things. Just friends, that’s all, nothing more. We never met, or did any video chat, just plain old SMSes and messages via facebook.”

She paused, and took a few more sips of the tea.

“Then six months back, he got this chance to go onsite to Russia on an assignment. He messaged me. He was very excited at the prospect. The money was good, and he was always eager to visit foreign countries. We said our good byes, and that was it. I understood that he got busy there, and I too was preoccupied with my own life.”

“Then last week this happened. His parents came and cried about him being kidnapped- I told you all that. After they went, I went to see Mr. Sashi, who was the HR guy of Ravi’s company, and asked him what his company was doing about it. He was already acting on it. Poor guy was actually doing all that he could. He engaged Boris, and we met in his office. Later that day as we were leaving, Boris casually invited me for coffee at Café Mateo on Brigade road, and I said ok, with the vague idea of tapping him for more info- whatever.”

With each of her sentences, I was getting still angrier.

“Anju, you are still lying” I boomed.

She was avoiding eye contact with anyone, and now suddenly her eyes flooded with tears.

“I don’t know what to do…” she cried.

Lola came near her now, put a hand around her, and told her softly “Just tell them the truth. They are trying to help find your husband.”

“Umm.. I actually skipped something. Four months back I went to Russia to meet him. I was actually missing him, and he too said that he was lonely, and that the weather was great there, and I should visit him”, she said, and then broke down, crying with her head on Lola’s shoulders.

Sunil and I looked at each other. Things were slowly falling into place.

So that’s how they grew close to each other again, I observed. And then there were multiple possibilities. My mind zoomed over what could have happened after that.

Lola gave Anju some water. “So what was the plan after that?” Sunil asked.

“There was no plan. It was unplanned. It just happened” she said.

“I am not asking about the baby”, Sunil interrupted. “You must have thought of something. After all, this happened when everyone knew that you were supposed to get a divorce.”

“No plan” was all Anju said, breaking down again.

“I will tell you what the plan was”, I said, suddenly everything becoming very clear to me.

“You both played a game, didn’t you Anju? Faked his kidnaping, planning to recover the ransom money from his parents. After that you both would have vanished somewhere and lived happily with the baby. That was the plan, wasn’t it Anju?” I was jumping, and clapping my hands now.

Sunil gave me a ‘am-i-the-detective-or-you’ kind of look. Lola was in disbelief.

Anju didn’t say anything. She was on the floor now, crying. She nodded, and in between sobs said, “But they deserved it, didn’t they?”

“But why hire me then?” Sunil wondered.

“Because something had gone horribly wrong with the plan. What went wrong, Anju?”

“Ravi had actually disappeared. Right Anju?” I shouted at her.

She nodded, still crying.

“Yes. I had him confined in a one room place in Shivaji Nagar that I had rented. But last week he vanished. The door was broken. And there was no sign of him.” Anju said, in between sobs.

“Who took him?” asked the bewildered detective.

“That’s what she wanted you to find out.” I told the detective, who still had a quizzical look on his face.

“But, if you both had planned it together, how come you don’t know where he went?” the detective still wanted to know.

It didn’t sum up right. Something was missing here. My head spinned as I tried to think about the obvious.

Anju looked up from the floor, held up her I-phone, and cried “Look at these messages”.

I looked into her phone. There was the facebook application open. It was opened on the Private Messages page.

I read the messages, one by one, and with each message, my head started spinning more and more.

(To be continued)

The Case of the Mysterious Messages - Part 8

2013-08-27T00:08:00.004+05:30

Note: This is serial fiction. Please read the previous parts before starting with this one:

Link to previous part : http://ashrafchoudhury.blogspot.in/2013/08/the-case-of-mysterious-messages-part-7.html

It was already past eight when we left Mr. Shahi’s office. He instructed us not to go back to Sunil’s office after that because he was sure by now Boris must have found out that his tab was last operated from there.

So Sunil accompanied us to our two bedroom apartment in Koramangala 1^st block. Not that we had a big house like Sunil was used to, but he felt he would be much safer with us, rather than facing a Russian goon alone.

We reached our apartment on the second floor. Lola went into the kitchen to prepare dinner for all of us. Me and Sunil were sitting in our hall.

“So what do you think about the whole episode?” I asked him.

“I don’t know what to think. I have solved hundreds of cases in my career. But this one appears very confusing to me” I heard the old man say. Maybe old age was catching up to him, and affecting his grey matter, and clouded his vision. But I didn’t dare tell him that.

“Mr. Shashi either genuinely didn’t know, or refused to share anything more about Boris than the fact that he is used by individuals and companies to negotiate with gangs in central Asia and east Europe. He told us that Anju’s husband, or ex-husband - Ravi- worked for his company, got kidnapped while working in Russia, and as HR head of the company Mr. S is doing his best to get him released, and for that purpose they have established links with Boris. He knows nothing about Boris except that he’s met him a couple of times and engaged him on the case. Boris is supposedly trying to find out who kidnapped Ravi, and so far he hasn’t been able to do it. Mr. S doesn’t know – and doesn’t want to know- anything more about Boris” Sunil concluded his observation.

“Yes, Right. We have to find out more about this Boris” I replied.

“Yeah, get involved with him. Go kill yourself” Lola shouted from the kitchen.

“Anuj is right Soniya. We have to find out more about Boris. That is our only chance.” Sunil came to my defense.

“Why do you have to Ruffu?” Lola came out of the kitchen, and stood near at the passage between the hall and the kitchen. “Isn’t this percolating into your thick skull- he’s a dangerous goon with connections with killer gangs and mafia and politicians all over the place. Why do you need to court trouble?” she was begging me now.

I was silent for a while. Even Sunil thought it best not to say anything lest he created a difference between husband-wife.

Suddenly Sunil’s mobile phone rang.

It is Anju, he whispered and picked up the call and put it onto speaker.

“Sunil, Sunil. Where are you? Don’t go into your office under any circumstances. Boris is waiting there for you” she sounded nervous and frightened.

“And who is Boris? And what business does he have with me?” Sunil was being careful.

“I will tell you about him when I meet you. And he knows you have his tab. I don’t know how did you manage to get it, but he has traced it to your office. He is waiting there with two of his goons” Anju’s frightened voice came out of the phone.

After a short silence, she asked “Where are you Sunil? I need to meet you. Now.”

Lola, me and Sunil looked at each other. There was moment of silence during which we looked at each other and tried to decide what would be the best thing to do at the moment.

“Tell me Anju, why should I believe you? What guarantee do I have that you don’t have Boris listening to you right now?” Sunil finally asked.

“You don’t understand. I am in the same position as you. Boris thinks I am working with you and taking him for a ride. He thinks for some reason, I stole his tab and gave it to you when I met you earlier this evening.” Anju’s helpless voice sounded.

That seemed like a good guarantee, the Russian mafia man looking for her blood as much as ours. She was in the same shit as we were.

I passed the address to Sunil, who read it out to Anju.

***

Anju came right after we had finished having dinner.

If she recognized me from the airport last evening, she didn’t show it. Maybe she thought I was too insubstantial to be worried about, or maybe she truly was afraid of Boris now.

She looked totally different now. She was wearing a salwar kameez, and as she sat on the edge of the sofa fidgeting constantly, straightening her dupatta, pushing back her hair from her temples, scratching the sofa’s arm with her fingernails from which the nail polish had begun to fade- what a transformation a mere 24 hours had brought, I thought.

She was directly talking to Sunil now.

“Sunil, you have to trust me. We both are in grave danger. Boris is looking for both of us”, she held his hand, trying to beg him to believe her story.

“First tell me who is Boris, and how is he connected to you?” Sunil said in an indifferent tone.

“Before I came to you, I went to the company’s HR department- they engaged Boris immediately as they had done something similar in another case. I came to know about Boris through their HR head”

“Why did you come to me then?” Sunil asked flatly.

“I came to you because I felt they weren’t getting anywhere. Even Boris wasn’t getting anywhere- usually he makes enquiries and finds out which gang did the kidnapping, but in this case he had been enquiring for over a week now without success. This made him feel that the case was beyond hope. He told me and Mr. Shashi to give it up- most likely Ravi must have been killed, he said. But I didn’t want to believe it. So I came to you, without him knowing.”

“She is lying” I suddenly interrupted. “She is lying. She came to your office along with Boris.”

Anju suddenly seemed to notice me now. “Excuse me?” She asked. “And who are you? And how dare you call me a liar?”

“Miss No-Problem. Remember our short encounter at the airport CCD yesterday?” I asked in a sarcastic tone.

She looked at me for a long time. After some time it seemed she recognized me, but she still chose to ignore me, and decided to talk to Sunil instead.

“Sunil, you have to believe me.

“She is lying Sunil.” This time it was Lola, who had been silently observing Anju all this while, who interrupted.

Anju seemed to lose her temper now.

“Listen. I don’t know who you people are, but..”

“They are my people” Sunil declared.

“Ok, whoever they are, they have no right to call me a liar in this way” Anju said, still fidgeting with her dupatta.

“Oh yeah?” came Lola’s immediate reply. “Then tell us whose baby is it? The one you are carrying?”

I was stunned. Even Sunil had a disbelieving look on his face. Only a woman could have noticed it, I told myself. So that is why she was carrying that helmet when she went to visit Sunil, to hide the small bulge in her tummy.

“Hey, that’s very personal”, Anju went into defensive.

“Anju, if you are going to win our trust, you have to tell us everything truthfully” Sunil told her, in a softer tone now.

There was a long pause. And then she replied.

The answer threw all of us completely off-guard. This gave a whole new dimension to the story.

(to be continued)

The Case of the Mysterious Messages - Part 7

2013-08-20T23:54:00.004+05:30

Note: This is serial fiction. Please read the previous parts before starting with this one:

Link to previous part : http://ashrafchoudhury.blogspot.in/2013/08/the-case-of-mysterious-messages-part-6.html

Both Lola and I gawked in amazement at the turn of events. Since we didn’t know what else to do, we disconnected the call.

Lola looked at me, unable to say a word. I, too was stunned into silence on seeing my father-in-law’s sudden appearance on the scene. Was this going to turn out like one of those many Bollywood flicks where your own father-in-law turns out to be the bad guy?

“We have to call him back” I decided.

So Lola gingerly connected the call again. And yet again my father-in-law Mr. Shashi Sinhaappeared on the screen. He looked angry and very frustrated.

“Hello Boris? Where have you been, man? No news at all?” Mr. Shahsi’s voice came out of the Tab speakers.He appeared to be frustrated at the moment.

Lola peeled off the ‘post-it’ note from the camera so that we were visible to the other caller now.

“Soniya !!” he looked equally surprised to see his daughter on his tab.

“What the hell are doing with this Tab? Anuj, you there too? ” my father-in-law looked genuinely surprised now.

“We can ask you the same question Dad?” Lola aka.Soniya (yes, that was her real name) demanded from her father.

I realized that Lola had pinched the wrong Tab. Obviously, this tab didn’t belong to Anju. It was the Russian guy’s Tab.

“Look dad, it’s a long story. Let’s just say that we are in possession of Boris’s tab now, and he is involved with a kidnapping case”, I put it as briefly as I could for my father-in-law.

“I know that. But how do you guys know about the kidnapping?” he asked, genuinely surprised.

“Dad, we were following up on this kidnapping case, and I happened to pinch your man Boris’s tab” Lola told her dad.

“What??!! Pinched Boris’s tab?? Are you crazy?” he shouted.

“Tell us what does this Boris guy do for you? Does he kidnap other people for you, dad?” Lola said in an accusing tone.

“Rubbish. And do you realize what have you done?” Mr Shahi asked. “You are in grave danger now. You have got involved with one of the most dangerous Russian ransom negotiator in India today.” Mr. Shahi’s voice was shaking and stuttering as he said this.

“What??!!” all three of us, me, Lola and Sunil, who had been silently observing the family reunion, squeaked together at once.

***

“Bhaiya, Whitefield”, I told the auto wala.

We had left my car behind, fearing Boris might have seen the car earlier.

Mr. Shahsi had instructed us to immediately switch off the Tab and reach his office in Whitefield as soon as we could. Boris, the dangerous man that Mr. Shashi told he was, surely would have discovered his tab missing, and he would definitely try to trace it back using the ‘Find my Tab’ function. He would get the GPS co-ordinates from where the tab had last been operated, and he would come for us.

So we had to take Sunil with us too. The senior man was not very excited to have to join a bunch of youngsters, but he had no other option.

We reached Mr. Shashi’s office on fifth floor in another fifteen minutes. It was almost late evening now, and most his employees had already left for the day.

Mr. Shahsi ushered us inside his cabin with great urgency. We introduced him with the private investigator Sunil, and briefed him about our story and our suspicions as briefly as we could.

After we had finished, Mr. S took a deep sigh, and loosened his tie.

“It’s a pity things had to turn out this way” he said in a sad tone.

“What do you mean Dad” Lola asked.

“Ravi was one of our employees, one of our very best. He was sent to Russia to work on a new project for a Russian petroleum giant. He was doing a very good job till around last month. Then suddenly two weeks back, he suddenly disappeared. He stopped showing up at work, and we haven’t been able to reach him on his phone either.” Mr. S explained.

“Initially, we thought he had gone off on an unannounced vacation somewhere. My clients were very disappointed with my employee’s conduct. Then last week Ravi’s ex-wife Anju came to see me at my office. She told me that Ravi had been kidnapped, and that his parents had received a ransom call. That’s when I called in Boris. He had worked for us last time something like this had happened. His job was to reach out to the kidnappers, who were probably hiding somewhere in Russia, and negotiate the ransom deal. Our company was ready to pay the ransom money, in exchange of the safe return of our employee. We just didn’t want any bad publicity. And that is the reason we turned to Boris instead of the authorities. “

A lot of things looked much clearer now. I looked at Sunil, who had been silent all this while.

But there were still a lot of questions that were yet to be answered.

What was Anju doing roaming around with Boris? Was she genuinely concerned about her husband’s disappearance? The messages that we had intercepted so far from Anju, whom were they meant for? Where was Ravi at the moment? Why did Anju lie to Sunil?

(to be continued)

The Case of the Mysterious Messages - Part 6

2013-08-18T01:16:00.003+05:30

Note: This is serial fiction. Please read the previous parts before starting with this one:

Link to previous part : http://ashrafchoudhury.blogspot.in/2013/08/the-case-of-mysterious-messages-part-5.html

The mail ended there. It had ended abruptly.

I looked up at Lola. She looked disappointed.

I was stunned. It was as if a child had been promised a candy, and all of a sudden he had found the shop closed.

“So what happened next?” I asked Sunil excitedly.

Sunil was looking at us closely, examining us, reading our expressions probably? He was silent.

“Sunil, what happened after that? Was Ravi really kidnapped?” I repeated my question.

“Yes, I haven’t been able to verify the facts, but from what she told me yesterday, Ravi was kidnapped when he was on an overseas assignment, working on some software project for his company.” Sunil explained.

“Hmm. Do you believe her?” Lola asked.

“She said that his parents had received a call from someone who was asking for one crore rupees in return for Ravi’s life.” Sunil replied.

“And what about Ravi? Have they not been able to contact him or anything?” Lola asked again.

“Ofcourse not. His phone is unreachable, and he hasn’t contacted anyone, or reported to work since the last three weeks.” Sunil explained irritably. “Don’t you think that would be the first thing I would check before taking up a case?”

Lola was silent now.

“So what happened to the ransom money? Did they pay it?” I asked, eager to hear the rest of the story.

“Her father in law told her that he had scratched everything out, and could manage only fifty lakhs.” Sunil was now cleaning his glasses, blowing into each glass, and wiping them with his shirt.

“Then she realized that her father in law wanted her to pay the remaining half of the money, and she lost her temper, and threw them out of her house. I mean, after what she had received from that family, any lady would have done the same thing.” Sunil had his eyes closed now. He had pulled back on his revolving chair, and he was silent for a while after that.

I thought about the pretty lady that I had met last night at the airport. It seemed strange that a person who appeared so strong outwardly could have allowed her in laws to harass her. But then, what else could she have done other that walking out of them?

“And then she approached you?” I asked Sunil.

“Yes. She didn’t trust her greedy in-laws, and wanted to be sure that Ravi had really been kidnapped. She wanted to be sure that her in-laws weren’t playing a trick on her.” Sunil explained.

“And the strange part is that her father-in-law wanted her to pay the remaining fifty lakh amount, and that was the exact amount of money she had, summing up all her gold and bank balance. How, on earth, did he know that?” Sunil added, getting up and now sitting upright on his chair.

“That does smell fishy, doesn’t it?” Lola spoke after a long time.

“Yes. And that is why she wanted me to check upon her in laws. And that is why she had hired me” Sunil added.

“So what else have you found out about her in laws?” I asked Sunil.

“I didn’t yet get a chance to check upon them yet.” Sunil replied matter-of-factly.

I was surprised at this. It had already been two days, and he still hadn’t done anything that he has hired for?

“You are not telling me the truth, are you, Mr Sunil?” I challenged him.

He looked up at me suspiciously. “And why is it that I should tell you anything? It’s between me and my client?”

“You don’t trust her story, do you?” I asked him, my famous crooked smile appearing as I looked at him intently.

Sunil looked back at me, staring deep into my eyes. I stared back. For a moment we were staring back at each other, trying to read what was on the others mind.

After some time, he shook his head and said slowly “I don’t know. Something about her doesn’t seem right. She hasn’t been overly frank with me till now?”

“What do you mean?” Lola asked.

“She has been hiding things. Small things. Lying to me actually.” Sunil said, checking his reflection on his glasses.

“Like?” I asked.

“Like she had a helmet in her hands, and she told me that she had come here on her scooty. But something about her appearance told me that she hadn’t ridden all the way here. Her hair were all proper, and her dress, it wasn’t usually what a woman would be wearing if she had been driving a two wheeler” Sunil said distantly.

I suddenly remembered the helmet in Anju’s hands. This man was good. I myself hadn’t thought about it. And the dress. He was right. She had been wearing a knee length loose dress when she had come to Brigade road.

“That is why after she left, I followed her to check if she had really been telling me the truth” Sunil said. “But before I could verify my suspicions, I collided with you”

“She was lying. She came here in a car. With that foreigner” Lola screamed. Obviously, she hated the guts of the other woman already.

“The question is why was she lying? And who is that foreigner? And what is she doing with him” Sunil asked.

“From the messages that we have intercepted till now, it surely looks like she is having an extra marital affair, and is cheating on her husband. Maybe it is she herself who has got him kidnapped.” Lola said, her voice filled with detest and anger for a woman who could do such a thing. ‘My innocent wife!’ I thought and smiled to myself.

“But why would she hire me then? It could get risky for her, couldn’t it?” Sunil asked.

“And why would she need to get him kidnapped? She was already getting a divorce from him, remember?” I added.

“Questions. Lots of questions. And no answers” Sunil said in a sad tone.

“We may have some answers here” I heard Lola say.

I looked up at her. The mischievous smile was back on her face, the same smile that she gave me when she was in the right mood. The same smile that she had given me when she had got on the car on Brigade road.

“Lola” I asked. “What is it that you have done now?” My heart was in my mouth.

“Relax Ruffu. I haven’t done anything bad. I have just pinched this” saying this Lola pulled out something from her purse.

It was a Tab. Anju Bhat’s tab! The one she had been using at the airport yesterday!

“Wow Lola ! Way to go, girl!” I shouted excitedly, jumping up and down, and kissed her on her cheeks.

This was one of the rare moments that Lola actually felt a little shy.

We unlocked the tab, and the first thing that appeared on the screen was Skype. Lola immediately tried to dial the last called number, but I stopped her.

I looked around, and found a piece of ‘post-it’ and stuck it on the camera. Then I gestured to Lola to make the call.

The user was a ‘Mr. S’. We heard a ringing, and immediately it was answered.

I froze when I saw the man in a black tie who answered it.

Lola almost dropped the Tab in surprise.

The man on the screen was none other than Lola’s own dad !

(to be continued)

The Case of the Mysterious Messages - Part 5

2013-08-16T22:22:00.002+05:30

Note: This is a serial fiction. Please read the previous parts before starting with this one.

Link to previous part : http://ashrafchoudhury.blogspot.in/2013/08/the-case-of-mysterious-messages-part-4.html

Mr. Sunils’ office on the first floor was warm and comfortable. All the furniture around the office looked like antique pieces, notwithstanding the fact that they were expensive pieces of furniture. His teak study desk appeared as old as the man himself, but we knew better than to ask him about it’s worth.

Obviously a well known and experienced private investigator who has done well for himself, over the ages, I thought.

“So tell me your story”, he asked, sipping tea from his delicate crockery set that had just been brought in by one of his servant.

“Tell me everything, from the beginning, how did you get involved with this woman”, he commanded.

I started with the airport scene, told him about the facebook private message she had left me, how I, with the help of a friend of mine, had hacked into her inbox, and extracted information about today’s meeting on Brigade Road,and ended up telling him how we had followed their car to his place.

He was silent at the end of the story. He appeared to be lost in thought for some time.

Then he spoke up again.

“Your story does throw up a lot of light upon a few suspicions I was having about her”, he said.

“You said the man appeared to look like a Russian?” he added as an after thought.

“Well, I am not sure. But yes, he did look Russian to me”, I replied.

“Hmm, that makes sense”, he hummed, biting the end of his spectacle handles.

“Don’t mind, but it makes no sense to me, Mr. Sunil”, I said in a frustrated tone.

“It will, after I tell you the complete story” he said.

“I was out of town when I received an email three days ago from a woman who wanted to talk to me about something that had been disturbing her for a while. I arrived in Bangalore only yesterday, after receiving her mail”, Sunil was now looking into his laptop screen, trying to read something.

“It was me, she had gone to receive at the airport when you met her yesterday” Sunil explained.

“Here, you can read the mail yourself” he said, as he turned the laptop towards me and Lola.

I stared into the laptop screen. ‘Dear Mr. Kumar’ it began. It was from an email id that I had already seen earlier anju.bhat23@gmaile.com

“I found your details by googling; was very relieved to find someone who is from this area- whom I can access easily, and you, also having years of experience in this field, makes me very comfortable in sharing my troubles with you.”

The mail continued. “I want to consult you and seek your help on a matter that has become of utmost importance to me now. Can you give me an appointment on the coming Wednesday? To save time, I have jotted down a summary of the issue.”

“I am in such a fix that I really don’t know what to do at this point, and feel that some additional information will be of great use to me in making a decision. This is what I need from you.”

“Let me start from the beginning.”

I looked up from the mail. Lola was looking excitedly at me too. We continued reading.

“I am an IT professional and was working with Quanto Technologies 3 years ago- it was my first job, and I was barely 3 months into it when I met Ravi- and we fell in love.

He was good- in fact, wonderful to me. And by some stroke of fortune we were from the same community and there wasn’t likely to be any opposition from our families on that count. He bought me flowers and small gifts, and we spent a lot of time together. Even in the office we would spend a lot of time on Instant Messenger- but I never let that affect my work. I don’t think he did either.

He was senior to me by a year, we were in the same grade but he was expecting a promotion that year. As we interacted more, I came to realize that deep down he was very traditional and conservative. He doted on his parents, believed in superstitions and stuff. But I hardly thought anything of it then. The first of my big mistakes.”

The story hadn’t intrigued me so far. But I continued reading. Maybe they got married, and then the trouble started?

“We were married without any trouble. My parents and his parents met, and agreed on a few things. I was dead against any dowry but my parents’ argument was that in any case they would have had to give some even if they had fixed up an arranged marriage, and so I let them do whatever they wanted.

The dowry wasn’t insubstantial. My father had a good amount of land in the village and a couple of houses in Udupi, and he transferred one of them to my name and my mother gave me more than a kilo in gold; and then they also deposited a good amount of money in my bank account.

I went to live with my in-laws in Hyderabad, and things were ok for a month or so. And then it all started.”

There. I was right. The story drew me in slowly.

“I don’t want to go over it, don’t have the strength for it, but the fact is that they tortured me. Mentally, not physically, and it was all about money and property. They had gathered information on exactly what property my parents had, and they wanted half of all that to be transferred jointly to me, and to Ravi’s names.”

“I said no; I was rather violent about it, and banged doors and stamped around and all that in the initial days and they were quiet for a while.But then it turned nasty. They wanted me to transfer the house my parents had given me, to my mother in law’s name. I just couldn’t understand their greed, the reason for it. Now I think of it more and more, and conclude that that’s just the way some people are, irrationally greedy and cruel.

The worst part was Ravi- he never supported me. He was a real coward, so while he didn’t actually say bad things to me, he remained silent, not taking sides, and that was just as bad.

My parents kept urging me not to fight and to keep trying a conciliatory approach; at one point my father even suggested giving in to their demands but I was very firm. I was disgusted with them, and at one point, I could tolerate it no longer, and walked out on them. I walked out of Ravi and his family.

That was almost a year ago. I have collected proof of when exactly I separated myself, kept the rent receipts of the apartment I shared with two of my colleagues- because I read somewhere that Indian courts don’t consider divorce unless you have been living separately for at least a year. I was - still am- very firm on divorce. I was, by now, getting addicted to living on my own, without the bickering, and had determined to take divorce and then never marry again.

Then - two weeks ago, they came to my apartment in the evening. It was quite late, we had finished dinner and were watching TV and yawning when the bell rang and when I opened the door, and there stood the two.

I was so irritated to see them that I just stood there, not acknowledging them or asking them to come in, but then I realized with a start that my mother-in-law was actually shaking and there were tears in her eyes.

“He’s gone,” my father-in law said. “Ravi is gone.”

I thought he was dead, and didn’t know what to feel- I don’t think I felt any sadness but it was very startling, he was in very good shape with his cycling and swimming.

I asked them to come in. My friends had retired to their bedrooms, and we were alone in the drawing room.

“When did it happen?” I asked.

“He has been kidnapped. In Russia!”

(to be continued)

The Case of the Mysterious Messages - Part 4

2013-08-15T20:49:00.002+05:30

Note: This is serial fiction. Please read the previous parts before starting with this one:

Link to Part 1: http://ashrafchoudhury.blogspot.in/2013/08/the-case-of-mysterious-messages-part-1.html

Brigade Road in the evening is the place to be if you are in Bengaluru.

Lined up with pubs and restaurants and branded stores, it lights up in the evenings. Youngsters are often seen loitering on the streets, either roaming the streets after getting high, or meeting up with their dates in the various coffee shops or restaurants.

So, me and Lola sitting at one of the famous coffee joints in a corner table on Brigade road didn’t look suspicious at all. We were just two love birds spending some quality time at Café Mateo. The fact that we were a married couple, and were slightly older than the rest of the crowd too didn’t seem too difficult to apprehend. After all, both of us looked like we were a fresh out of college couple.

I had been able to convince Lola of my innocence, and even Shyamal had vouched for me over the phone. Finally Lola was convinced that her husband had mistakenly got caught up in somebody else’s web.

We both were intrigued by the mysterious messages. The one at the airport was a romantic one, the kind Anju Bhat must have sent to her husband or boyfriend. Or maybe she was having an extra marital affair outside her marriage, and the message was meant for her partner. The second message ‘he knows about us. u better not meet me now’ suggested that it definitely was an extra marital affair.

Lola got into the carriage because the extra-marital angle caught her interest. I, on the other hand, was intrigued by the sheer ease of the effort of the girl back at the airport. The way she had so innocently lied to me about using my network to message her hubby or partner, intrigued me. I wanted to see more of her, to see what she would do next, whom was she meeting.

We waited at a corner table for Anju Bhat to arrive with her supposed lover. We had already been waiting for more than half an hour and had only ordered two cups of coffee till now. It was when I was contemplating whether I will have to shell out more bucks for a second round of coffee, when I saw her arrive at the entrance.

She looked tired and disheveled. It seemed strange to me that less than twenty four hours ago she had looked so attractive to me at the airport. She was here with a man, tall, blonde who looked strong and powerful, the kind you wouldn’t mess with on the road. He clearly wasn’t from this city, for that matter, not even from this country. He looked like a Russian to me.

They sat at the first table near the entrance. I looked away, in case she saw me and recognized me from last night. I had my back to them in any case. Lola, on the other hand had a clear view of both of them.

“This is so exciting”, squeaked Lola. “Just like in the movies”.

I smiled at her. “I wish we could hear what they are talking about”, I said above all the loud noise and cacophony at the café.

“What are they doing now?”, I asked Lola.

“They are talking excitedly. The blonde is showing her something on a Tab. She is shaking her head, like disapproving or disliking whatever it is that he has just said. Now she is trying to convince him, but the guy seems unmoved. Now it looks she has given up and agreed to whatever he had said in the first place”, Lola was giving a good running commentary for me.

“Now, they are getting up. Maybe they are leaving. No, wait, her purse and his jacket are still on the table”, Lola continued.

“Oh, Holy Smoke !! She smokes, the bitch!” she screamed suddenly.

“Quiet, quiet”, I hushed her.

“They both have gone just outside the café for a smoke.”

“We must leave now. She must not see us.” I told Lola, quickly paying for our coffee.

“Let’s wait and see what happens next”, Lola said, trying to pull me back to my seat.

“If she sees me, she will connect something. I will wait in the car. You come after they are gone. We will follow them” I added, getting up successfully from my seat this time.

“Yeee, a car chase ! This will be interesting”, smiled Lola, sipping imaginary coffee from her already empty cup, looking very much like her favorite female detective Nancy Drew.

I waited in the car. I finished two cigarettes before I saw Anju come out with the foreigner.

‘Are they going to go together, or are they going separate ways?” I thought to myself.

I saw Lola emerge after them, trying to act normal. Too normal, in fact. Her Nancy Drew act was going to give her away, I thought. Luckily she came up to the car, unobserved.

She was smiling like the devil.

“What have you done , Lola?” I asked her sternly.

“What makes you think I have done anything?” she asked with a wicked smile.

“I know you well enough to know when you have done something wrong, Lola”, I replied.

“Later, later. Drive now. They are leaving. Quick, let the car chase begin”, she squeled, like a fifteen year old girl.

I put the car into gear, and silently followed the Ford Endeavour that was gliding smoothly, weaving in between the heavy evening Bangalore traffic.

***

“Shhh, be quiet Lola”, I had to hush Lola for the umpteenth time.

We were waiting behind a compound wall, a few meters from which the black Ford Endeavour had been parked.

It was a residential area in Indiranagar, a posh area, where Bangalore’s more rich and affluent types resided, inshort not the kind me or Lola could afford.

We saw Anju get down from the car, carrying a helmet in her hand. She got down and went up the stairs of a nearby building. It looked like any other house in that area, big, sophisticated and expensive.

Anju climbed up a few iron steps that went up from the ground to the first floor. The foreigner seemed to stay back in the car.

I parked our car a few blocks back; because as Lola thankfully pointed out, the car we had been following might realize that they had developed a tail if we parked too close. So we got down, and hid ourselves behind the compound wall, right next to the house where Anju had gone.

“Let me go up to him, and try to pick up a conversation”, Lola suggested again.

“No”, I said sternly. The guy looked the dangerous kind to me, and I didn’t want my wife near him until I had found out the truth about him.

We waited for around fifteen minutes, hiding ourselves among a line of bushes that ran around the compound.

Finally, she came down the stairs, still clutching that helmet in her hand.

“Quick, we have to get a photo of the license plate of that car before it gets away”, I hissed.

I looked behind me. Lola wasn’t there. She had already darted ahead of me, crouching along the wall, approaching the car with her I-phone in her hand.

“Lola”, I hissed, and ran after her.

The engine of the Ford Endeavour had just strated, and Lola was awfully close to it, trying to take a photograph in plain view of the street.

I forgot all about taking a photo of the car. My wife’s safety was more important to me at that moment. I ran across the street, along the boundary wall, not caring to remain hidden anymore.

Just as I was about to reach her, I felt I had hit a tree.

“Ouch !”, my head felt as if it would break open.

“Are you okay?” I hear Lola’s concerned voice.

I opened my eyes after a lot of difficulty, and saw a man squatting on the footpath, just like me, holding his head, and massaging it. Obviously we had collided into each other while running at full speed.

He picked up his spectacles from the foot path, and glared down at us.

“What are you fools doing, running around my property?”, he boomed.

He appeared to be in his mid- fifties. A senior man. So I wasn’t too afraid.

“Nothing Sir, my wife and me had lost our way”, I said.

“ Running around in the dark? With your wife trying to take photos of my visitors? Come one, you can’t fool a Private Detective that easily”, he said.

I was stunned, not knowing what to say next.

“Come on, why were you following my visitors like that?” he demanded again, this time in a softer tone.

“It’s a long story sir. In short, we suspected her for some wrong doings. And that is the reason”, I said.

“Seems like we are all on the same side when it comes to trusting that woman”, he said, and smiled.

“Private Detective, Sunil Kumar”, he said, and offered his hand.

Me and Lola shook his hand.

“Come inside. We have a lot to discuss”, he said, and invited us inside.

(To be continued)

The Case of the Mysterious Messages - Part 3

2013-08-14T19:20:00.002+05:30

Note: This is serial fiction. Please read the previous parts before starting with this one:

Link to Part 1: http://ashrafchoudhury.blogspot.in/2013/08/the-case-of-mysterious-messages-part-1.html

“So can you hack into her account or something?” I asked.

“And what good is it going to do you looking at her album photos?” Shyamal replied without even looking at me.

“I don’t know. I want to know how and why did she leave me such a message?” I said.

“What I am thinking is how she even found you on facebook. I mean, you didn’t give her your name or anything, did you?”, Shyamal asked, still looking at Anju Bhat’s profile on facebook.

“Ofcourse not. I told you she just asked me if she could use my hot spot. That’s all”, I replied angrily.

“Your ‘hot-spot’…Har…Har…I would let her use my ‘hot-spot’ if she wanted it hot’, joked Shyamal, making one more of his, pervert jokes.

“Hey stop kidding. How did she find me, what do you think?” I asked him.

“I don’t know man” Shyamal said, pushing his revolving chair backwards, putting his hands behind his head, and looking up at the ceiling.

I couldnot believe it. Shyamal Mitra didn’t have an answer!! I mean this was the guy, who had broken every network security firewall that ever was back in our Engineering College. The son-of-a-bitch was pure devil. He was considered a ‘geek’ and a ‘nerd’ by many, but being my roomie I knew him better than the others. Shyamal had a heart of gold. He could dig up the earth for friends, and he could screw you without you even knowing it, if you happened to be in his bad books. Fortunately for me, I had always been on Shyamal’s good books.

“Look, maybe the message was meant for somebody else. She was messaging somebody else on her friend list, but because she was logged onto your network, and you were continually refreshing your facebook, somewhere something must have gone wrong, and the message got duplicated in your inbox” Shyamal said with his eyes closed, still looking up towards the ceiling.

“Is that possible?” I asked bewildered.

Shyamal didn’t respond. Instead he got up, and faced his monitor again. He was searching for something.

“There”, he said silently, as he copied the email address from the profile page.

anju.bhat23@gmaile.com. He opened a few other windows, typed in a few more gibberish on his keyboard on a black and white screen, the kind of things you expect an ethical hacker to come up with. I waited silently for around five minutes, not wanting to disturb the master in action.

Shyamal went on typing violently on his keyboard as more and more windows kept popping.

“There”, he shouted moments later, punching the air as if he had just killed off his opponent in a Mortal Kombat match.

I looked at the screen. More white letters on a black screen.

Only now I could see that they were actually emails.

The Wizard strikes again. Shyamal had opened Anju Bhat’s inbox right infront of me!

“How on earth did you do that?” I asked in amazement.

“Haha. I am the greatest living fan of AnkitFadia himself”, he said, beaming with pride, as if I was to worship him after hearing that.

“Ankit, who?” I asked.

“Never mind”, Shyaml said, a little disappointed, and went on reading the mail subjects.

“Umm, nothing that strikes unusual. Only official emails here”, Shyamal said in the end, feeling dejected.

Then he stopped at one mail, and opened it.

‘hi imntombii have a problem with my andriod whatsapp,coz i can’t send and receive messages from my 3G simcard...also doesn’t work under wifidoes anyone know how to make whatsapp work on wifi ???’

“Who is ntombi?” I asked, looking at the screen.

“It is your girl.Her nickname on the android forums”, Shyamal said, still reading the email.

“Sweetie pie, your whatsapp is soon going to work, darling. Daddy’s going to help you out”, Shyamal was talking to himself, getting back to his keyboard.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“I am going to get you her latest message exchanged on whats app with anyone else”, Shyamal grinned.

“How?” was the only question I asked.

“In 2012, an unknown hacker published a website called WhatsAppStatus.net that made it possible to change the status of an arbitrary WhatsApp user, as long as you know the the phone number of the user. To make it work, it only required a restart of the app. According to the hacker, it is only one of the many security issues in WhatsApp. Also I have found out that there is an interface called WhatsAPI that can be used to to hijack any WhatsApp account” Shyamal recited, as he continued typing things on his screen.

$username = "phone number with international prefix but without + and 00";

$identity = strtolower(urlencode(sha1($username, true)));
$w = new WhatsProt($username, $identity, "Dani", true);
$password = 'VoxXYMWJfLgp+Pl6GF9Al48LFcY=';
$w->Connect();
$w->LoginWithPassword($password);

Things appeared on his screen, and disappeared as quickly as Shyamal went on typing heavily on his keyboard.

After about ten minutes, he finally looked up at me and said “There, your bird is meeting a dawg tomorrow on Brigade Road”.

I read whatever had appeared on the screen.

‘he knows about us. u better not meet me now. meet me tomorrow at 5 at cafe mateo on Brigade’

I read and re-read it three times.

“So do you have a date tomorrow evening?” Shyamal asked.

“Bye Shyamal. And thanks. I will see you when I see you”, I repeated the famous dialogue of my favorite Hollywood star Johnny Depp, as I waved a good bye to Shyamal.

(To be continued)

The Case of the Mysterious Messages - Part 2

2013-08-13T21:05:00.002+05:30

Note : This is serial fiction. Please read the previous parts before starting with this one.

Link to part 1 :http://ashrafchoudhury.blogspot.in/2013/08/the-case-of-mysterious-messages-part-1.html

Lola was her usual self, smiling and laughing, excited to see me. I always wondered how she managed to be so excited every time she saw me after coming back from one of her frequent business trips.

I loaded her luggage at the back of the car. She hugged me, and went on to brief me about all the minutest details about her latest trip. What her client Mister Mehta had said, what a bitch his wife was, and how jealous she had appeared over dinner. I smiled my ‘almost famous’ crooked smile, concentrating hard on the rain soaked road ahead. Driving after a rain always seemed so refreshing to me, especially when you have your darling wife beside you.

Lola was a wonderful wife, the best a man could wish for. She was loving and caring and all that, plus she understood me like a friend. We had been friends for almost five years before we got married last year. Her real name of course wasn’t Lola. But I called her Lola because, well, she was like that, LOL, always ‘Laughing Out Loud’.

“So what have you been upto?”, she finally asked me. “Met any hotter chick than me in my absence?” Typical Lola question.

“Not many”, I smiled, not wanting to reveal about my ten minutes of ‘No-problem’ encounter back at the airport.

I suddenly remembered that my mobile was discharging.

“Hey put this on charge, will you?’ I handed my phone to her.

“My pleasure, Ruffles”, she said, connecting my phone to the car charger.

I hated it when she called me that. It was her counter for the name that I had given her. I was ‘ROFL’ for her, it seems, Rolling on the Floor Laughing. I mean, that was the last thing anybody could call me. I mean, I wasn’t your always laughing type of guy. I was the shy and occasionally smiling guy, and that too a loop sided crooked smile, I have been told.

“Hey, you have a new notification on facebook.” Lola screamed as if she had discovered gold.

“What have you been up to on facebook, huh?”, she said in an accusing tone.

“I have invited the Queen of Britain for dinner today”, I sneered.

“Yeah?” she went ahead checking my facebook page, not that I minded it. I mean, that was her, typical Lola. I was used to her.

She was silent for some time. That gave me time to concentrate on the road.

“Ruffles, what is this?”, she said after some time. She sounded serious.

“What?” I asked, still concentrating on the road.

“This?” she said again as she shoved my phone right in front of my face.

“Hey, I am driving Lola”, I screamed as I hit the brakes.

“What is it?”, I looked at her. There were tears coming down from her eyes, which glittered in the highway street lights.

“Hey, Lola. What is it, darling?”, I asked in a smoother tone.

“What is this Ruffu?, she was crying now, as she handed my phone to me.

It was a private message on facebook from some girl called Anju Bhat. I had never heard the name before.

I read the message. It read “God knows how much I miss being with you ‘officially’. When this hell of an adventure is over we will finally come out in the open and live normal lives”.

“What?” I shouted out, unable to believe what I was reading.

“Lola, this must be some mistake. I swear I don’t know about this. I have never even heard of this girl before”, I said trying to force Lola to look at me.

She shook her face away, going on to saying things in between sobs. I could only make out parts of what she said. ‘Cheater’, ‘..am gone for two days, he finds a…’, ‘all men are dogs..’ etc etc.

I knew it was futile trying to talk to her now. I started the engine again, and started driving silently.

We drove in silence for the rest of the twenty five odd kilometers back to our home.

Lola still wasn’t talking to me. I too, didn’t say anything. I mean I had to look into the matter properly before I could say anything. I mean, you can’t feed your wife with rubbish. I had to have concrete proof before I could say anything.

Lola went inside the house without saying anything. She switched on the television, ignoring me completely.

“Lola, listen”, I tried.

She increased the volume of the television instead. ‘To lead a happy life, you must cheat on your wife’ stupid Arshad Varshi was preaching in an upcoming movie trailer.

I switched off the television, took my phone, and went into the other room.

I switched on my laptop, logged into facebook, and read the message again.

I still could not believe it.

I opened the profile of Anju Bhat.

God save me !! It was the same girl from the airport. Only now she looked less attractive on her profile picture. Most of the details on her profile were locked, visible only to her ‘friends’.

But I found out her Lives in was ‘Bengaluru’.

I tried to find something more from her facebook profile. Nothing much. I only found out that she works in one of Bengaluru’s many start-up IT companies. Then I googled her. Nothing.

Strange, I thought. For a girl employed in the IT sector, she was literally traceless on the internet.

The lights in the next room were off. Lola must have gone off to sleep, or was acting like she had. It was now raining a drizzle outside. Outside I could see the occasional flash of lightning.

I grabbed my jacket.

I knew only one person could help me now, and I had to see him. Now.

(To be continued)

The Case of the Mysterious Messages - Part 1

2013-08-12T22:41:00.000+05:30

I was getting bored !

I mean how long can you repeatedly refresh your facebook homepage to see if anyone had commented on the last pic that you had shared. Also, my silly Android phone was going low on battery.

I gave a long sigh, locked and pocketed my phone, and looked up after what seemed to be eternity.

The rain still hadn’t stopped.

I looked at my watch. Her flight was already forty minutes late.

God knows how much longer will I have to wait here.

Even my smokes were finished, and you don’t get to buy cigarettes here at Bangalore International Airport, unless you were inside, and past the Security Check. The tiny airport in my hometown seemed much better. At least you had the luxury of buying anything that you wanted even when you were waiting outside for a miserable flight to land. This is what I hate about large international airports. They are too freaky about cleanliness.

I was getting edgy. It had already been an hour and a half that I had been waiting for her flight to land. And then it had started raining heavily, and I had cursed under my breath when they had announced that the flight would be delayed due to bad weather.

I looked around. The CCD where I had taken shelter an hour ago had become quite crowded now. People were in fact sharing tables now.

I looked at my empty coffee mug. It had dried up and almost caught a stain now. I knew it wouldn’t be long before the waiter came and asked me to empty the table for other guests.

I sighed again, wondering what to do next, debating whether to get up and leave or wait till the waiter actually threw me out of the joint.

“Excuse me?” I heard the sweetest voice behind me.

Not one of the lucky ones to be usually approached by cute sounding dames, I looked back to check out who this sweet nightingale was. I bet she must be as pretty as her voice was sweet.

She was smiling at me, standing just behind my chair.

I looked up. She was cute, a wannabe-Priyanka-Chopra kind of look.

“Do you mind if I join you here?” she asked.

Deadly smile too.

“Sure, no problem. I was leaving anyway”, I got up, and collected my jacket.

“No, no. Please seat. I will leave before you know it.” She took the seat opposite me, took off her wet jacket, and dropped it on the adjacent chair.

I hesitantly, took out my low on battery mobile again, not wanting to ogle at her, lest she felt awkward and ran away.

Fifteen percent battery life. Enough for Lola’s flight to land, and for her to contact me.

I heard her ordering a cappuccino. I didn’t look up, lest the waiter saw me and asked me to leave.

I continued refreshing my facebook homepage. No new notifications.

“Excuse me” I heard the nightingale again.

“Do you mind, if I use your wi-fi hotspot? The airport wi-fi has blown due to the weather. Can’t even open a damn page”, she said waving a Samsung Galaxy Tab wildly, as if it were a piece of wood.

“Sure, no problem”, I sang again, the second time in the last three minutes.

I enabled the wi-fi hotspot on my phone, and dictated the password to her, knowing fully well that the fifteen percent charge left on my phone would go kaput if the hot-spot was enabled. But it’s not every day that a pretty damsel requested me for anything.

She smiled a thank you to me, and got busy with her tab again.

There goes my chance to hear her voice again.

I stole a glance at her. Colored streaked hair, expensive looking jacket, expensive watch and tab. Rich chick, I quickly did my calculations. It’s a wonder a rich chick who could afford such a costly gadget didn’t have 3G or gprs enabled on her tab. Obviously the Galaxy Tab comes with an inbuilt SIM slot, the gadget guru in me had woken up.

She continued doing whatever she was doing on her tab, her face now devoid of that cuteness, and the lines of concentration streaking harshly across her face. She appeared to be in her late twenties. No luggage with her. Probably here to pick up her man.

I too started acting busy on my phone.

Soon, they announced Lola’s flight.

“Umm, sorry, but I have to leave. My flights been announced”, I broke the silence.

“Oh, Sorry” the smile was back on her face. “I had completely forgotten. I am so sorry”, she said in her sweet sing-song voice again.

“No problem”, I repeated for the third time now.

I picked up my jacket, and got up from the chair.

“Thanks a million for letting me use your network.”

“No problem”. I would have rather added ‘Suzuki Samurai !!….No problem…’ too while I was at it.

I hated myself for letting girls use me as a carpet all the time. I walked ahead. I could now see Lola, waving excitedly at me from the Arrival gate.

( To be continued )

Misery My Friend

2012-11-29T17:18:00.002+05:30

I have known misery like no other,
Like a companion, it's always by my side,
Following me wherever I would go,
Never leaving me alone in the whole world wide.

Haunting my yesteryear and my today,
Like a ghost of the past, that wouldn't let go,
Flowing through my blood, playing with my soul,
Fire works over my body, putting up a good freak show.

I feel cursed, I feel broken,
Yesterday is gone, and backwards time cant fly,
Why cry for the dead, come, live for the living,
Today is here, and quickly it's brushing us by.

Do you remember the good old days,
Young and strong, you walked hand in hand,
The world watching you from behind,
You walked for miles on the golden sand.

It seems a long time ago,
When I was happy and unafraid,
Living for others, caring for them,
Coz' long back I cared less for my ego,

Ready to walk the extra mile,
Just to see your beautiful smile,
Do you cry for the days gone by,
For the days that will never die.

Power comes to the one who shows less care,
Someone had said, and was probably quite fair,
But Happiness comes when you show that extra care,
Power or Happiness, which one would you care to wear?

The show will soon be over,very near to the end,
I wish he wouldn't follow me to my grave,
He could leave me now, a goodbye he could now wave,
But he's still here with me, Misery, my Friend.

Killing of the Dreams

2012-10-30T19:22:00.000+05:30

"You need to wake up if you want to dream" - Paulo Coelho

He was a young dreamer,
Caught up in a concrete Jungle,
His life a mess, and
All his dreams he has bungled.

Young, playful and ever smiling,
He was a good kid, no different from the rest,
It was only when he grew up,
That his allegiance to self was suddenly put to test.

He played all his parts well,
An obedient son, a good brother, and a helpful friend.
Great expectations were placed upon him,
Through success and glory his life would wend.

He grew up easily and happily,
Under his parents protective shield.
All of a sudden, he now found,
His dreams and duties, too heavy to wield.

Not one to live and die in a well,
His dreams were big, and his needs many.
To travel the world, his soul he could sell,
Meet people in strange countries;
Won't give up easily now, you could tell.

The Jungle around him grew darker and thicker,
Deeper he got trapped in the corporate muck,
He fought, he cried, and tried as much,
But he just couldn't fight his luck.

Caught between the heart and the brain,
The right decisions he couldn't make.
The weight of expectations, dreams and duties,
He simply could not take.

Hurrying to make up for the lost time,
He is no more today, than a body dead.
God, save him, before like his dreams,
He reaches an end, very sad.

Quarter Life Crisis - The dreaded stage in the life of a Young Adult

2012-05-24T23:59:00.002+05:30

“If you're not confused, you're not paying attention.”

Here you are, approaching your mid-20s - the best time of your life, at least that's what everyone says. Your 'I am independent' claim now has the legal stamp of economics; the college campus lingers in nostalgia; 'work hard, party harder' is the new mantra.

You were always excited to grow up, and become like your Dad or your favourite Uncle. You had always wanted your own apartment, your own personal vehicle, and a wallet full of currency notes. Young , single, with money to blow and your whole life ahead of you. That's the terrific twenties when one can go from gym to party to the boardroom. Acne and awkwardness is left behind and there's a promise of great things to come.

But the euphoria seems to evaporate sooner than expected.

The adrenaline rush leaves a hangover that seems impossible to shake off. Disillusionment looms large with a million-dollar question: What next?

Dont worry. You are not alone. There are millions out there with the same questions in their minds, the same confusion, the same doubts and insecurities.

This is called the Quarter Life Crisis.

Anxiety, confusion, loneliness and self-doubt (especially after the excitement around graduation fades) are telltale symptoms and they are showing up everywhere: in the short lifespan of relationships, the frequency with which jobs are changed and the number of youngsters seeking solace in spirituality.

The transition from college to the real world sets the stage for the quarter-life crisis, hitting those in their early and mid-20s. Work, independence, new responsibilities, relationships hankering for "long-term commitment" and "meaningful" layers, all add to an anxiety not known until now. College life prepares you from the academic perspective, but the real world initiates you into what's needed to succeed. The tact to deal with bosses, the maturity to handle competition and the diplomacy to deal with irritating colleagues is all new.

This is the stage when you figure out the multiple ifs and buts in life, discover that you are not cut out for your job, leading to disillusionment. Many believe that the urge to compare (courtesy our rank driven education system) makes things worse.

The crisis crops up when there are no clear answers to the questions 'Who am I, what do I want and how do I get it'? Not knowing the answers to those questions leads to feelings of panic, confusion, or lack of motivation. It is a crossroads in life, a time when the real world hits and you feel like you are faced with decisions that you do not know how to make.

Despite well-paying jobs, good positions in MNCs and a luxurious lifestyle, 20-somethings are today looking for a more "meaningful" existence. The midlife crisis, it seems, has advanced courtesy the uncertainty that comes along with these high-paying jobs. Young adults have achieved "too much, too fast'' and are left with little time for themselves. They are young but have almost everything their parents had achieved when they had retired. But now they feel like they have met a dead-end. They want to do something 'different'.

Sometimes its the availability of too many options confuses young adults. After all in a world of too many choices – when even choosing a mobile ring tone is a difficult decision – working out what you want can be tough. It is becoming increasingly common for young people to make drastic career switches. The problem is expectations. They get disappointed easily as everybody wants more. Even a fat pay cheque can't keep youngsters contented today. They want more.

The 20s bring with them a 'nervous self-awareness'. Youngsters now indulge in a lot of self-questioning, which isn’t philosophical like ‘What’s my purpose in life’, but, ‘Oh god, are my friends going to do better in life than me?’ They choose careers depending on who pays more, and end up paying with their peace of mind.

At a call centre you will find many a disillusioned 23-year-old. The fallout of using different names at work, putting on foreign accents leads to an identity crisis. This identity crisis leads them to seek solace on online social networks where no one knows the true individual. Even the timidest of them all has more than three hundred online friends. But how many of them are actually 'friends'?

While some unburden themselves online, others take recourse to spirituality though quite a few change gurus as frequently as they do clothes. Many of the youngsters even sign up for spiritual sessions At these spiritual programs more than 70 per cent of participants will be aged between 25 and 35.'' Hardly only 10 per cent will be above 50.

As you approach your mid-20s, you experience the pressure to settle down. The girl's parents start looking for prospective partners. You haven't achieved much in life, but the pressure has already begun. It's like sitting on a time bomb. Men, on the other hand, complain of pressure to reach financial stability, like an unspoken deadline to be dealt with.

While most 20-somethings are serial daters, they are just as lonely despite changing partners. They often find themselves depressed and lonely because there is just no one who really 'understands' them.

Depression is fast becoming common among young adults. By the age of 32, most people have exhausted their goals and there is a need to redefine what they want to achieve. Emphasis has to been on quality of life. In this race, the youth have forgotten the concept of spending time with family. Young people complain of chronic fatigue and question the purpose of life. They are emotionally weak and need constant reassurance.

A quarterlife crisis though is not the end of the world. Regular counselling which increases self-worth can help people to look at their achievements and feel good about themselves rather than comparing themselves with others. A quarter life crisis is something to walk through with patience and compassion.

Instead of wallowing in self-pity or aimlessly switching jobs, quarterlifers can reinvent themselves, and try out new things, look to fulfill their dreams. Absence of short-term goals deepens anxiety. Because we start out at the bottom, everything seems far away for us. Break the long journey with short-term milestones. It could be acquiring skills, experience, even money. Keep the goals realistic. Seeing us achieve them will raise our confidence. Just don't let anyone else set milestones for you.

Instead of sulking over the 'fresher status', let's make it our strength. The younger we are, the lesser we have to lose - switch careers, try other departments or acquire new skills.

However, one shouldn't go ad-hoc. Follow your heart, but let your brain structure the approach. Avoid stumbling in and out of jobs in rapid succession. It looks bad on the CV. But if you really hate the job, consider a sabbatical or work on a voluntary project. Or else you should have the guts to call it quits. Just don't go about complaining about your job each and every day. You will slowly learn to love your job. Just like others have.

There's no clause that says you must take a job that seconds your degree. Look for change. Same goes for relationships. An important lesson of adulthood: Plans fail. Move to plan B!

Let's try not to measure how successful we are by what our friends are earning. Let's set our own personal benchmarks for success.

And if you haven't met the man or woman of your dreams, what's the big hurry?

If you are still unhappy, remember, we probably have more than 30 years to sort it out. And worrying will give you wrinkle lines!

All the very Best ! :)

The Cricket still Chirps

2012-04-07T03:31:00.005+05:30

The Boy's Story

“Dadu. Dadu, look what I found !” I just couldn't wait to show it to my grandfather.

Many times during our evening walks, I had asked Dadu who this woman was, and why didn't she have any clothes to wear. Dadu would always say something like the young lady was very poor, and dint have any clothes to wear. Any further questions I tried asking, or my any intention of finding out who this poor woman was, who was so poor that she didn't even have clothes to wear, were met silently by Dadu, who would then quietly light up his pipe, and wait for me to find something more interesting to do, or ask some other question, which could be more easily answered to a five year old inquisitive kid. Sometimes I would wait for Dadu to finish lighting up his pipe, and wait till he was peacefully puffing away smoke into the air. And then I would repeat my question again. Sometimes I would forget all about that statue, and get myself occupied with breaking twigs from the dry trees along the side of the hill slope, or trying to catch one of those colorful butterflies. Dadu would never stop me from trying to catch butterflies, or any other insect that happened to fly near me. He would walk quietly behind me, lost in his own thoughts, smoking his pipe, humming his favourite song. Sometimes when I walked too far ahead of him, chasing a lizard or a squirrel, he would call out my name.I ran as hard as my little legs could carry me, clutching in my hand tightly, but safely my latest discovery in the garden outside. My heart was racing very fast, like a horse racing against the wind, my mind, excited as a new born kid. I ran hard up the hill, past the stone statue of the woman without any clothes.

“Hari, Hari my boy, where are you? Don't leave me alone here. I will get lost”, and I would come running back to Dadu's rescue, catch him by his hand, and make sure that he doesnt get lost in the woods again.

“Dont worry Dadu. You will never get lost. I am here”, I would reassure him.

He would laugh every time I said that, leaving me wondering if I could be laughing like him if I was about to get lost in the dark woods by myself, and some body else had to rescue me.

I ran past the statue of the naked woman, ignoring her this time, climbed over the grand roots of the majestic banyan tree. It was a little difficult for me to climb over the banyan roots, specially since I couldn't use my hands now to grab the roots and pull myself up.

The 'thing' in my hands was wriggling now, trying to get out of my grasp. I clutched it more tighly, making sure that I dont lose my 'prize' before I could show it to Dadu. Dadu would surely know what it is, and why it was making that strange sound.

I passed under the colorful bougainvillea tree, and finally slowed down. The bougainvillea tree always brought a sense of calm to me, a feeling of pride that I had not got lost in the woods this time, and that I was finally very close to home. It was a sign of victory to me, symbolizing triumph over the endless winding pathways in the dark confusing woods.

I reached the garden now. I stopped running, and was walking now. I must have been walking quite fast, because Buddhu the old gardener stopped digging the ground, or whatever he was doing, and looked up at me. He was an old man, much older than Dadu himself. Atleast he looked much older than Dadu. BUt Buddhu liked to argue otherwise. Once Buddhu had told me that he was much younger than Dadu, and that Dadu himself was eighty years old. I didn't believe him. If Dadu could be eighty years old, what was Buddhu, a hundred?

I dont know why knew called him Buddhu, which meant 'Idiot', because Buddhu was certainly not an idiot. An idiot could never create such a beautiful garden as the one we owned. He loved gardening, and would spend the entire day, either digging the ground, or removing unwanted weeds out of the soil. Whenever I saw him, I could see Buddhu huddled up, sitting with his knees much upto his chin, with his arm pits resting over his knees. He could spend hours in that position. I dont know how he could do that. I had tried it many times, and I couldn't manage to sit in that position for more than five minutes.

Buddhu loved creating big colorful circles of flowers in our garden. He loved bright colorful strongly scented seasonal flowers like jasmine and honeysuckle. But Dadu preferred more delicately scented flowers like petunia and roses. But they both shared the liking for the bright gold marigold.

Buddhu had a wonderful sense of colors and flowers. He certainly wasn't an idiot. In fact, after Dadu, Buddhu was one of the cleverest man that I had ever met. Not that I had met a lot of people, but he was certainly cleverer than all those idiot men below the hills, who always could be seen standing outside the tea stall all day long. Although I wasn't allowed to climb down the hill, and go across the woods, but high up from the hill too, I could see them below in the plains, standing and laughing all day long. I didn't like them. They made fun of Buddhu. I have heard them. Even Dadu doesn't like those boys. Many a time he had pointed those boys to me and said “Hari, you should study hard. You dont want to become like one of those boys out there, do you?”

“No Dadu, certainly not”, I would reply fiercely. That would make him smile.

“But what will I become when I grow up Dadu?”, I would ask.

“Anything my boy. Anything you want”, he would say.

“Why, you could even become like your father”.

And then he would stop. He never talked about my father. Or my mother. If, by any chance I happened to ask him about my father or mother, he would always tell me “Grow up fast, boy. I will tell you your parents story when you grow up. Not before that”.

That was the only question, other than the statue of the naked women that Dadu had never answered me clearly. Other than that we discussed everything. Even though I was only five years old, I could discuss anything with Dadu. Weather, currencies, government, elections, sports, Hitler, Audrey Hepburn, Dubai, every thing.

I ran inside the house. I knew where I could find Dadu.

I found him easily. He was sitting in the hall, blowing away on his pipe, reading the morning newspaper. Dadu never missed the morning newspaper. He got irritated if someday the newspaper boy didnt deliver the morning newspaper on time. He couldn't have his cup of tea without his newspaper.

He didn't liketo be disturbed while he was reading the newspaper, and I didn't usually disturb him so early in the morning. But this was important. Really important.

“Dadu. Look what I found”, I shouted as soon as I saw Dadu.

He looked up through his half moon reading glasses. He didn't seem too pleased to have been disturbed.

I opened my palm, and showed him the little creature that was imprisoned inside.

“I have never seen an insect like this. What is it Dadu?”, I asked.

He looked into my small hands for only a second, and went back to his newspaper.

“That's a cricket, my boy. Where did you find it?”

“Deep under the earth. He was hiding in a small hole below the earth.” I said.

“I was walking in the woods, when I heard a strange sound, like a machine cutter continuosly twirling. I followed the sound to this hole. Then I poured some water which had collected after last night's rain. Then this thing came out.”

Dadu smiled, but didn't say anything.

I got a little upset. I had hoped Dadu would congratulate me on my find.

“Look Dadu, it has so many legs.” I tried to genarate some interst in Dadu.

It worked. He put away the newspaper, and removed his reading glasses, and put it on the table.

“Yes, They have six legs. Four are walking legs and two large back legs which are used to make very long jumps”, he said.

“And what is that long thing attached to its head?” I asked.

“ That's his antennae, used for touching and smelling” dadu said knowingly.

“And why was it making that chirpping sound?”

“Crickets have been chirping and singing for million years now. The calling song is meant to attract females and repel other males. The very quiet courting song is used when a female is near. Only signals from a male of her kind will cause a female to approach and accept him as a mate. An aggressive song is used when another male is detected” Dadu said.

“What is mating, Dadu?”, I asked.

“That is the process by which young ones are made”, Dadu explained easily.

He continued in his knowing voice “Crickets that live in trees and bushes usually sing only at night. Those that live below the earth generally sing both day and night. House crickets and field crickets make songs both day and night. Females of chirping and singing species have organs on their legs to hear the sound.”

Dadu knew everything. He had an answer to all my questions. He was my teacher, my friend, my guide, my father, my mother, my everything.

The Gardener's Story

“I don't think he should go”, the lady in the flashy saree observed.

“Yes, he already seems too disturbed”, commented another.

I looked at the boy, sitting alone in the corner, unblinking, staring blankly at the coffin infornt of him, which engulfed what once used to be his dear Dadu.

Sahib still looked so full of life. His face was glowing, his beard perfectly trimmed. It appeared to me that he was sleeping, taking his evening nap. It seemed to me that he would wake up any moment now, and call out to the cook for his evening cup of tea. He didn't like it when he had to wait for too long for his tea after he got up from his nap.

He surely wouldn't have liked to see so many people roaming around freely in his mansion. For while he was alive, he had the run of the house. No one ever visited his place. He kept mostly to himself, with his trophies, books, riffles and his grand son.

And now all these people had the run of the house. They were roaming freely within the house, touching and removing his favourite books, which even the servents of the house were never allowed to touch. They were moving freely from the hall to the sahib's private room, removing utensils from the kitchen, and littering the whole floor which used to be sparkling clean once upon a time.

Some idiot had even walked all over my flowers, trampled upon them, and killed them all. Anyway, I dont think there would be any need for a garden in this house anymore. There will be no need for me too. I will be jobless. I am a little apprehensive about what I will do now, where will I find another job at this age. Not many people are interested in gardens anymore, and even lesser people would keep a gardener for their garden.

The boy will probably be sent to an orphanage. He has no body to take care of him. He is only five years old now. What will become of him, God knows. The sahib has no relatives, none that I have met or known in the last twenty five years I have worked for him.

I wish the boy's parents were still alive.

I still remember that fateful day when Chota Sahib had returned from Kashmir. The sahib was not very supportive of him going to Kashmir as a new person in the first place. Maybe he had wanted his only son to join the army like him. But that was not to be. Chota Sahib never was really very excited about joining the army. He wanted to live like a civilian. Like us. The Sahib didn't want him to go to Kashmir during the time of the war as a news reporter. But Chota Sahib was adamant as always. He went there.

And when he came back after two years he brought a Kashmiri wife with him.

I still remember that day. The Sahib was very angry. They argued for the whole day. We could hear their voices from outside the house. The Sahib wasn't ready to allow a woman of another religion to run his house. He didn't want her to be his son's life partner. He refused to accept her as his daughter in law.

That's when Chota Sahib decided to leave the house with his newly wed wife.

The next day the Sahib got a call from the hospital that his son had met with an accident in the hills. Chota Sahib had been killed instantly. His wife breathed her last at the hospital in the presence of the Sahib.

But not before she had given birth to the baby boy!

The Sahib changed from that day itself. He was no longer the proud old army major he once used to be. He became very silent. He now kept to himself most of the time. He let the servents take over the house. He kept himself busy with his grand son from then on.

I have heard many people in the town say that the Sahib got his son killed.

I don't believe any of those stories. I am the one who had known the sahib ever since he was a young man. Yes, he was a proud man, who follwed his ideals and principles to the core. But he could have never killed his own son. Yes, they were not the perfect father-son pair. But he wasn't that tough. I have seen the Sahib weep many nights, holding his new born grand son in his arms after the child's parents were killed. He couldn't have hated the father so much, if he loved the small boy so much.

He was very dedicated towars his grand son. Why, I have never seen him lose his temper on the boy. He handled him lovingly,and answered his every question patiently.In fact he had nver even talked with the boy in a loud voice ever. He loved his grand son a lot.

I looked at the boy. He was still staring at the coffin. There wasn't even a single drop of tear in his eyes. He was staring blankly at his Dadu's face. His face was stoned, just like his Dadu's stone cold face.

It was late evening now. The sun will set soon. The last rays of the sun were disappearing behind the hills now. Soon they will carry away the coffin, and leave our Sahib deep under the earth. Maybe the crickets would give him company below the earth.

The woods are getting darker now. A few lights in the house had come on now. The birds in the woods were chripping away madly, maybe saying their last farewell to the Sahib.

And the crickets chripped away loudly into the darkness of the night.

Confessions of a Confused Mind

2011-12-06T20:31:00.008+05:30

I was there, sitting on d edge of the hill, high up from the rest of the world, a million things zipping past my mind, leaving me with a feeling of dejection and loss. I was there, high up on the mountains, much higher than where the ordinary and lazy mind would ever think of going.

All our life, we make a million plans, to do this, to do that. We make long lists of ‘Things to do before I die’, ‘Places to visit before I kick the bucket’. All we do is plan, and never execute them. And in the end we are left with nothing more than pages and pages of scribbled lines that once used to be our plans. We are nothing, just a bunch of over excited school kids, who know very well what they are capable of doing, the heights they are capable of reaching, but who, like the fox who didn’t try hard enough, and gave up saying ‘the grapes are sour’, would make the compromise, and then cajole themselves saying the goals you set, and the plans you made were a little too high and impractical, even by your own standards.

We are the ones who make the plans, we are the ones who are initially so excited about our dreams and ideas, and we are the one to kill our ideas, just because somebody else laughed at the futility of our ideas.

Would a mother kill her child just because somebody said her kid isn’t beautiful?

We are nothing but a bunch of hypocrites, living in a hypocrite society.

Why am I the way I am?

Why am I not like a certain Mr. X? Why can’t I handle similar situations as calmly as my friend Y does? Why do I get angry? Why do I say things in anger that hurt others so bad? Why am I so bad at apologizing to others, even when I know it’s my own mistake? Why do I let things go so bad that they go out of my own control? Why do I get distracted so easily? Why do I lose my focus and dedication towards everything so easily? Why is my excitement for everything so short lived? Why don’t I smile more? Why don’t I crack jokes like I used to when I was younger? Why am I so confused in life? What do I want from life?

I give up. It’s impossible. I am impossible.

How can somebody else understand me, when I myself do not?

A strong gust of wind blowing over the western sky leaves me cold and shivering.

I put on my bravest face, and put my head up to confront the cold wind.

‘Throw me if you can. Come on, try’ I yell back.

The cold mountain air calms down my nerves, and I begin to cool down a little.

It’s ok.

What am I getting so tight about? What is it that I am so unhappy about? What is wrong in my life that I complain so much about? I am not physically handicapped in anyway. I have had a wonderful childhood, and have got the best education that any parent would have wanted to give their child. I am smart enough to earn my living by myself. I have a loving and caring family, and wonderful friends who love and adore me a lot. I am never alone when I am sick. I never go to bed on an empty stomach. I wear branded clothes. I buy myself (or dream of buying) every fancy gadget that comes out in the market. I am single and independent, and earn my own money. I spend on myself and party a lot. In short, my life is going just the way I had always wanted to.

Then why the hell am I not happy in life?

Then, like a strong gust of wind, it hits me.

I remember a story somebody once told me.

A group of alumni, highly established in their careers, once got together to visit their old university professor.

Conversation soon turned towards life, and their complaints about stress in work and life.

The old professor listened to each one of them quietly, and after every one of them had finished complaining, he suddenly asked them for coffee. The group waited eagerly for their professor to return. He soon returned with a large pot of coffee and an assortment of cups - porcelain, plastic, glass, crystal, some plain looking, some expensive, some exquisite – and told them to help themselves to the coffee.

When all the students had a cup of coffee in hand, the professor said:

"If you noticed, all the nice looking expensive cups were taken up, leaving behind the plain and cheap ones. While it is normal for you to want only the best for yourselves; but that itself actually is the source of all your problems and stress.”

He continued “Be assured that the cup itself adds no quality to the coffee. In most cases it is just more expensive and in some cases even hides what you are drinking. What all of you really wanted was coffee, not the cup, but you consciously went for the best cups. And then you began eyeing each other's cups.”

If we consider life to be the coffee, and job, money, financial security and position in society as the cups, which should be of more value to us? Are we more concerned that the coffee should be hot, or that the cup should be beautiful and attractive?

If the coffee itself is cold, then the cup, however attractive it may be, is of no value. We can fight all we want over our stupid cups, comparing with our friends and others whose cup is the most beautiful, and expensive. We can go on fighting. But then we will realize that while we were fighting over material things, our coffee itself has gone cold.

Now, who wants the most beautiful cup?

Life is no different. Our family, friends and our own happiness is our coffee. If we let them slip away while we are busy making money, waiting for that latest mobile phone to be launched, so that we can buy and flaunt it in front of others, there is no bigger fool on this earth than we.

We will let our relationships with our dear ones fade away. Our heart will grow cold, till it can love no more. We can continue running after branded clothes, till we are no longer in good health to work anymore. We can buy all the expensive cameras in this world. But in the end we will find we don’t have any friends anymore to take pictures with.

I tell you, we are losing it, losing the emotional touch. If one day machines are to take over this earth from humans, we ourselves are going to be the machines. We are going to destroy ourselves one day.

I may not be the perfect embroidery of calmness and patience. But at least I know who I am. God has made me this way, and he loves me the way I am.

Yes, I am confused, big time confused in life. But so what? So are all the others of my age.

Many of us are dying to know the purpose of our lives. We want to know what we are doing in life, where are we headed, where will we be five years from now, what will be our status in society twenty years later.

There is no doubt that we seek answers. Each person has his or her own questions in life. Why me? Why do these things only happen to me, while all my friends just cruise through? Why do I have to struggle for everything? Why am I more unfortunate than others? Why does God want to test me so much?

We all have our share of questions. But it is also the same person who has to find those answers himself. We have to seek those answers ourselves through our own experiences along the journey of life. Maybe we do not understand now why certain things happened to us now. Maybe we are not meant to understand now. Maybe we are meant to just live it now, and analyze it tomorrow. Maybe we do not yet have the good sense of understanding why our life is moving the way it is.

Rainer Maria Rilke has said “Be patient towards all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves. Do not seek the answers, which cannot be given to you now because you will not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps, then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer. “

What a wonderful thought. Just thinking about it this way calms my nerves, gives me a true feeling of well being, and return to normalcy. Everything is fine. I was panicking and getting excited for no reason. I am just living the question now. The answer is still to be delivered to me.

Most of the times, we spend the best years of our lives trying to find the answers. And by the time we actually find those answers, the golden period of our life is already over. Before we know it, we are old and sick, with no energy to execute all those plans that we had jotted down on paper. We should not forget to live in the quest of finding the meaning of life or because of some unresolved questions in our mind. In the book of life, the answers aren’t at the back. We have to go through the book to find the answers. We have to make the journey. We have to live the journey to find out the destination. It is the journey itself that matters, not the destination.

All the happiness that I seek is lying just beside me. I just have to be compassionate towards others to find it.

Standing there on the mountain side I make a resolution.

Live simply. Love unconditionally. Give generously. Care deeply. Share heartily. Speak kindly. Work sincerely, Play cheerfully. Laugh openly and leave the rest to Almighty.

And with a clear mind, I climb down the mountain, singing merrily and whistling to myself.

Carry On

2011-10-25T15:21:00.001+05:30

If tomorrow the sun refused to shine
And your love's no longer mine,
And if I never get no more snow
I couldn't care less if the winds don't blow.

You know that time won't wait
And soon it's going to be too late,
Still you're driving me insane
And you know I need your love again.

Now, don't you let me down
I think you'd better take a look around,
Whatever the words that you hear
Somehow the meaning, to me, is very clear.

Carry On My Sweet Friend
There'll be peace When it ends,
There's a silver light beside you
Take the hand that's here to guide you.

Once you rise above the noise and confusion
And just get a glimpse beyond this illusion,
Even after you hear those voices calling you away
For once, I believe, you will not stray.

On a stormy sea of moving emotion
Tossed about like I am a boat in the ocean,
Towards the end of the journey, long and deep
I am tired, and now I must sleep.

The Unsung Woman - an ode to a Single Mother

2011-09-20T19:39:00.005+05:30

From a tacit,arduous sisterhood,
Only nineteen, and very young,
The league of extraordinary women,
Bold, beautiful and strong.

She fixes the sink and the car
And often she fixes a broken heart,
She changes the bulb,and the diapers
And gets the vegetables from the mart.

She wakes up the kid, and cooks for him,
Drops him to school, and then she will roam,
Selling soaps till the evening,
And run back to the second shift job at home.

She is the Accountant, and the Counselor,
She will cook, and listen to your worries,
She will clean, and bathe the kids,
At night she will read out bed-time stories.

Before he learnt to read the colors,
She taught the kid to tie his shoe-lace,
She will teach the son how to cook,
And the daughter how to maim a face.

At the stores, her head turns back,
When any cry of 'Mom' rings in the air.
She attends all the plays and the football matches,
To scream when her son scores fair and square.

She is always busy, and occupied,
Never gets the time to look sad.
But once a while, her face turns stone cold,
When somebody happens to mention 'Dad'.

But what makes a Good Mother, she wonders.
Is it patience, comapassion or broad hips?
Or is it the warmth in her bosom,
When she watches her child peacefully sleep.

Are you a Rider yet?

2011-08-18T20:58:00.004+05:30

Going for my many rides with my dear bike to endless places, be it the green jungles, the cool and winding hilly roads, the dusty village roads, or the long and straight highway, has taught me many things about life. Call it insanity or passion; call me another crazy thinker and philosopher, but I would still believe that riding on two wheels has given me enough food for thoughts to last an entire life time. Riding has long been my passion, and there are very few other things in this world that could bring a lusty smile on my face, or calm my soul like going for a day’s ride does to me.

Riding is not just about ‘Bored of work?? Let’s go for a ride this weekend’ thing. It’s certainly so much more than that. It is a disease, it is a self-obsessed job, it is a contract that a man has signed with his conscience to devote his youth to his machine, and to the beauty that nature has to offer. A rider is like an obsessed lover, who can see no reason or logic behind following his crazy dream. You can yell at him all you want, you can tell him it is not safe, it is not sane, but you still can’t stop him from getting up at five in the morning and push his lady to the petrol bunk, fill up the fuel tank, and hit the highways without any destination on mind. You can’t force him to go and take some rest because he hasn’t slept for the last two days straight. He knows it isn’t safe to ride without sleep, but crazy that he is, he will still go out.

I call it a disease because it is infectious. It easily gets transferred from one friend to another. And it is a disease because it can make you forget your other duties and responsibilities towards the rest of the world. It can make you selfish, it can cloud your brain, and your heart. A rider is like the crazy person who knows no reason or logic, he knows just how to start his bike, and disappear for the long day ahead.

And then they call him immature, and irresponsible. They say he is selfish. He doesn’t give enough time to his near and dear ones, puts his and other’s lives in danger, and is irresponsibly fast on the roads, and too dangerous on the curves.

But that is how amateurs are, not the real riders. An amateur will easily look up to the bike commercials on television, and start believing that bikes are all about speed. Yes, I agree speed thrills. It gets your adrenaline rushing, lets the bad blood get out of your system, and cools down your mind. But the question is how long are you going to run? You have to reach the finishing line someday. Then what? Are you not going to slow down even after crossing the finishing line?

If your answer is No, then you are not even worth sitting on your bike. You don’t even deserve to call yourself a Rider. Yes, you can call yourself a Biker, but not a Rider. There is a difference between a biker, and a rider. Anybody can become a biker. All you need to do is buy a fancy bike that has the capacity to take off on the road whenever you want it to, and then buy a stylish biking jacket and gloves, and a flashy helmet, wear a tee with some strong and bold quotation written over it (That is because you need the tee to scream out your attitude for you. You can wear the tee, but not the attitude).Yes, now you are ready to hit the roads, do a few dangerous stunts on the road, show off to the girls on the road, and you are ready to proclaim yourself to be a Biker with a super bike.

But are you a Rider yet?

Do you have what it takes to be a Rider?

Are you mature enough to tell yourself ‘No, let the kids pass. Let them fly. They are in a hurry, not me.’ Do you trust yourself so much as to take your pregnant wife for a day’s outing, or tell your five year old kid “It is okay son, you can hold me tight, and fall asleep. Daddy will take you home safely”.

A rider knows his and his bike’s limits. He knows what he can do, but shouldn’t do. He has the power in his hands, but he won’t do it, because he knows ‘with great powers, come great responsibilities’. He knows Fear, he doesn’t yell out boldly “I am not afraid of anything on the road”. He has fallen down countless times, and he knows what pain is. He knows how it feels like to see the tears in the eyes of your near ones. He knows how heavy the burden of the guilt feels like, and what it can do to you. He knows fear; he has been afraid; he has seen and felt pain, but still he is not afraid to take out his heavy bike, and disappear for days on the road. He is not afraid to take decisions in life. He knows how to take risks, but only when he knows his risks are going to give him results. Taking unnecessary risks seems foolish to him. He still doesn’t care much for himself. But he does care for the fact that others care for him now.

A rider is Calm. Whatever might be the situation, he always keeps calm. He might lose his way, his fuel might dry up in the middle of nowhere at midnight, but he will never fret. His mind is at peace with himself, and his brain works normally even in the most adverse situation, and it will keep on searching for the alternate solution. He will make mistakes in real life too. But he will never wait to cry over his mistakes or lament over the past. He just looks ahead, just like he does when he is on the road. He will keep himself on his toes, and keep thinking ‘What can be done next’. Even if somebody insults him, he will not insult him back. He will not be a dog with the dog.

A rider knows Respect like no one else does. He respects his bike, and knows it is his only means to reach home safely. He will never intentionally hurt his bike. He knows how to respect people and their feelings, and would never hurt them intentionally either. He respects people for what they are, and will accept them with their mistakes and follies. He has respect for the truck driver who helps him overtake, and signals him of approaching vehicles from the opposite side of the road. He has respect for the young kids who run amok on the road. He respects them, and slows down whenever he sees kids or old people on the road. He respects the traffic rules. He respects the system, and the laws of the land. He respects his parents, his wife, his children and his friends. He has a respect even for his enemy, and acknowledges his qualities and strong points.

A Rider is always Responsible on the road. As a rider he will know his duties and responsibilities on the road. He will never be a threat to anybody else, nor would he let anyone else be a threat too. As a person, he will never shy away from his duties in the society or family. At any cost, he will do what he has to do. Even if it means he is causing himself a grave loss, but he will never leave his responsibilities unattended. He will pay his taxes on time, pay for that loan his father might have taken, or take care of his sick mother, support and help his wife, and protect his children at any cost.

He is always confident. He is always clear about what he has to do, which road to take, or what decisions to make. He fears no one. But he still respects the feeling of fear. He is never confused about his actions or his decisions. He knows when to speed up on the road, and when to slow down on a bend. He always knows what he has to do, and when to do, and how to do. You will never get a ‘maybe’, ‘let’s see’ or a ‘I don’t know’ from him.

A rider is not afraid of loneliness. He knows he came into this world alone, and he will go from here alone. He doesn’t keep his own decisions hanging on the course of actions of others. If he wants something, he goes and takes it, alone if required. A rider always believes in Selfism. He doesn’t wait for others to show him the way. If he wants to go to that village he once saw, he will go there, whether anybody comes with him or not. He will never say ‘I’ll go if she goes’, or ‘I’ll do it if he does it’. He knows what he wants, or what he has to do, or where he wants to go. He will go there at any cost, alone if necessary.

A rider enjoys being silent. He doesn’t always go on blabbering about unnecessary topics which no one else bothers to hear. He knows only intelligent men know the importance of being silent. He knows how being silent sometimes, brings peace to the mind. He thinks more clearly when he is alone, and is surer of himself. He likes to get away from the ever banging loud music in the pubs and parties, and the irritating honking of horns on the city roads. He likes to get way from all those, and be at peace with himself, and seek peace. He doesn’t talk nonsense. He knows what to say, whom to say, and when to say. He doesn’t bark at the barking dogs. He lets them bark, till they are tired of barking, and then he makes them realize that all their barking has been useless and futile.

A rider knows himself and his bike very well. He knows and respects each of their limitations and strengths. He will never outstretch his or his bike’s abilities, and will take advantage of only their strengths. He will always stick to what he believes in. He knows that everyone in this world is different, and everyone’s thoughts vary in nature too. He won’t easily get affected by what others say about him. If he knows he is right, and believes he is on the right road, he will never change his road just because some passer by told him that the road is difficult. He will ride the difficult stretch of road, just to see how bad it is. He has been on worse roads before, and he will wait for the bad stretch of road to get over, and to hit the nice road again.

All the same, the rider respects others views, and listens to them. If somebody points out a genuine mistake in him or his bike, he will listen to them, respect their views, think over it, and then take his own decision. He is not ashamed to admit his mistake, and say Sorry when he knows that he was wrong. If there is a genuine mistake in him or his bike, he will put all his might to correct that mistake, and wait for the results.

A rider never lies, or cheats. He is faithful to his bike, and himself, and to all the people in his world. He believes only weaklings have to lie. He is strong enough to always say the truth, and he is not afraid to face the consequences of speaking out the truth. Truth to him is like finding extra fuel when your bike was just to go dry in the middle of nowhere. He hates lies, and hates people who lie. He believes facing a harsh truth is easier than hearing a sweet lie.

It is not easy to be a Rider, and not everyone can call themselves one. It takes a lot to be a true Rider, and it is not easy. But as they say, when you are destined for great things, you have to start early. You will reach there eventually, one day or the other.

We are not yet a Rider, but we are on the right way, and we know we will grow up to be a Rider one day, a true Rider who has all the above qualities, and many more. We will always have power on our hands. But what differentiates us from the bikers is how we use that power. A Royal Enfield has almost more than double the muscle power than any other hundred fifty cc bike on the road today. It can easily make mince meat out of them, if it so wants. But tell me my friends, have you ever seen a RE running uncontrollably on the road, like a wild banshee, creating trouble for himself and for others? It is always the weak who make the louder noise, and are always revolting, and complaining. The strong ones grace the roads with glory and splendor, like a true king.

Running around madly is passé. That is for the Boys. Now let the Men take over.
Happy Riding. Ride safe.

The Afterglow

2011-08-09T03:46:00.005+05:30

Let me share with you all, an experience that I had,

Hear me out somebody, before my mind gives up, and I go mad.

The experience has left me shivering to my bones,

And my nights have since been filled with fearful groans.

In the middle of nowhere I was stuck that night,

Searching for some signs of life, there wasn’t a soul in sight.

The moon had shied away, leaving me blind in the dark,

Feeling numb with fear, time had stopped for me, leaving its mark.

Hearing me breathe in the dark, something brushed against my leg,

Before I could look down, I fell down on my face, and away I was dragged.

My mind clogged, my body bruised, I was crying in pain,

As I was dragged farther, my cries for help went in vain.

Like a leaf flying in the wind, it dragged me into the forest deep,

And with a long battle cry, it woke up the others from their sleep.

Dressed in black cloaks, their face hidden from my view,

My heart skipped its beat, and the fear in me quickly grew.

They caught me by my neck, and tied me to the tree, tight.

Around the circle of fire, they danced and sang all night.

Through the slit in the cloak, their hungry eyes watched their next prey,

Somebody ripped off my clothes, shivering and naked I now lay.

The dark figure now approached me, with an axe in his hand,

I shouted, I cried out loud, as the heavy thing on my chest now did land.

My body shivered, the blood oozed out, it left me now, my tired old soul,

My assailant raised his heavy axe, and gave out a bloodcurdling growl.

They trapped my soul in a bottle, and threw it into the fire,

And as my soul burnt in the fire, I wriggled in pain, yes Sire.

It burnt my soul, my lies, and all my vices, that Fire of Hell,

And in the end, it strangely felt good, that I can now tell.

As if time had stood still, I was numb with pain, but strangely I now felt light.

I let them purify my soul, and never put up a fight.

All the evil in my soul gone, it was now white and pure,

They had cleansed my soul, I am sure.

‘You are now pure, do not hurry now, take it easy and slow,

This is your afterlife, and we have given you your Afterglow'.

Solitary Happiness

2011-07-02T04:11:00.002+05:30

The lonely sun gets ready to hide behind the evening skies,
A flock of birds, after the day's long journey, to their home now flies.
The strange mix of colors of the sky, orange, red and blue,
Makes me even more confused, unable to see what is true.
Never did I understand why, confused about how as well,
The things that you said, and the ones you could never tell.
And as I now lie under the dark evening sky,
I cannot help but ask myself, why me,why?
The darkness slowly grips the world all around,
The ghostly silence is killing, and there is not a sound.
Alone, my mind slowly begins to wander,
Will this too shall pass, will I be fine, I wonder.
Nothing more, I let the rain fall down on my face,
I have the world to conquer, long is the race.
All my efforts, all my feelings, down the drain,
Those moments, those times, now past the memory lane.
Can somebody hear me, I have been screaming for so long?
Is there nobody who can understand me, and finish this song?
Does life get any better, since for myself I have all the time,
And it's a statement, not a question, not a rhyme.

I Am

2011-06-17T01:28:00.003+05:30

For all those who talk about me behind my back,

The world as I see, you’ll never, coz those eyes you lack.

I appreciate your concern; I appreciate your zeal,

Thanks, but it’s all not required, why can’t you feel?

You laugh at me; you think I am lame,

It’s fine, I laugh coz I see you are all the same.

You hate me, you rate me, you despise me,

I don’t blame you, coz you ain’t me.

It’s better to be hated for what you are,

Then to be loved, if from yourself you are so far,

If you are loved for what you are not,

That type of love I have never sought.

I am only me, that’s all I can ever be,

No more, no less, don’t take a second guess.

I love, I live, I laugh, I cry,

I ‘ve wished sometimes that I could die.

Some days I am funny, some days I am not,

Some days I am in overdrive, and I can’t stop.

You may not like me, but it’s okay,

Coz this is me, and this is how I will forever stay.

Don’t try to fix me; I am not broken,

You can try to stomp on me, and douse my inner flame,

Try to squash my every ounce of beauty inside,

But trust me, for the consequences later, I ‘ll not be blamed.

I am shy, I am quiet, I am an angel in disguise,

I am loud, I am noisy, I am a devil inside.

You think I am a child, so let’s make a bet,

Coz if that’s what you think, you don’t know me yet.

You want to know who I really am, well, so would I I.

I know myself, so let’s give it a try.

I don’t try to be sugar coated; I don’t walk on egg shells,

I am what I am, that’s what I can only tell.

Never long for anyone from the past,

There’s a reason why they couldn’t last.

I am not a killer, but don’t push me,

You’ll never know from inside me what did you see.

No one can see the pain that we hide,

They are happy for us to keep it inside.

Our fear is our own; they don’t want to know,

Why should we involve them, why should it show?

The Perfect Ending

2011-05-26T21:12:00.004+05:30

The rain was falling hard outside.

It was a pitch black night, and nothing was visible outside, not even the old broken gate at the end of the compound, or the old and gnarled branches of the old gulmohor tree near the compound wall. Not that there was much to see and admire on that side of the road. Nothing even remotely interesting ever happened there.

Sixty five year old Mukesh’s house was the only house on that side of the hill where the light was shining. It was perched on top of the hill, like a brave soldier who had conquered the peak, but all his fellow companions had either given up or collapsed during the climb. The old house proudly stood there on top of the hill, never ready to give up its position at the top. No one else ever ventured even nearby. For one, the road to the top of the hill was a very steep climb, and there weren’t too many other people who were too interested in making the climb just to admire the view from the top.

Only Mukesh knew what they were missing by not taking the effort to reach the top, because the view from the top was breath takingly amazing. You could see the whole city below; you could see how far the city below stretched. At night, the whole city would be flooded with light, and from the top of the hill it seemed like a whole ant colony had been electrified, and lit up. The vehicles moving on the highway at the far end of the city were the working ants, always busy, and moving in a straight line and the bright light on top of the huge city tower in the center was the queen ant, sitting there in all glory, and commanding the worker ants to move around her.

Often Mukesh would take out his heavy arm chair from inside the house, and he would drag it across the compound, till he was very close to the edge of the hill. There, he would slip into the couch, and start writing his stories. The cold and fresh air blowing from across the hills cooled down his soul, relaxed his system, and brought out the best of the writer in him. And then he would write, he would make his pen bleed over the white piece of paper, sometimes forcing the reader to shed a tear when the main protagonist of his story died, or smile when the girl in the story finally realized that she was in love with the man.

Mukesh wrote the stories with a clean heart, and maybe that was the reason why all his stories were read with such enthusiasm in the city. He knew he wasn’t going to win a pulitzer or a booker prize for his books, but it calmed down his old heart when one of the school kid or the young girl from the nearby college sometimes sent him a letter, saying how much they loved his stories, and really would like to meet him sometime in person.

Mukesh never answered those letters. He didn’t want his relation with his readers to grow more than he wanted. He was scared. Years ago, when he was younger, and less known among the literary circuit, he had once received a letter from one of his reader, a young librarian from the local library, who had read his latest story ‘With Love’ and said she had fell in love with him after reading his latest love story.

Her name was Tanya. She wrote that she was deeply influenced by his story, and wanted to meet the person who could bring out so much love and emotions into his characters. She wrote that she was sure the author himself would be a very lovable and a wonderful person, full of love in real life.

He was young. And he was excited at the prospect of meeting a girl who loved his story so much. So the next day, they met at the ice cream parlor in the city. She was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen in his life. He instantly fell in love with her.

They made a very nice couple; two young people, very much in love, who couldn’t get enough of each other, and couldn’t stay away from each other even for a single day. They dated for six months. And then they decided to get married.

Mukesh felt he was the happiest man in the world. Everything was beautiful in the first year of marriage. Trouble started in the paradise after the baby was born. Mukesh felt he wasn’t ready to be a father, and take up the added responsibility of a baby. Slowly, he somehow felt the love in him dying away. The baby boy became the first priority for Tanya. Mukesh felt like a kid, desiring and yearning for love. He found out that he could no longer write beautiful love stories. His stories could no longer touch the readers, they no longer cried when the protagonist was sad, or got excited when she was happy. And in an act of complete immaturity, Mukesh one day left his wife and children behind, and moved to the house on top of the hill, where no one could find him.

Tanya couldn’t bear the insult and agony of the situation. She begged her husband to come back home, if not for her sake, but for the sake of their son. Mukesh remained unmoved, convinced that he didn’t love her any longer, and needed time to be alone with himself.

And that was when she decided to kill herself.

He was stunned. He couldn’t believe his eyes, or his ears. He couldn’t believe that their sweet and beautiful romantic story had met such a dreadful and insane end. It wasn’t the end to the story he had wanted, or expected. He blamed himself for everything, and spent a lot of his time crying. He missed her, and longed for her again. The love was back in his heart, but there was no one to respond to it now. Mukesh started feeling lonely. And the heart inside him died slowly. He became like the walking dead, living each day just for the sake of it, never being excited about any festival or occasion. His mind was still active, but his soul had left his body long ago.

He never fell in love with anyone again. He started avoiding people, and crowded places. He was hardly ever seen in public. He lived alone in the old house, taking care of his daily needs by himself. No one ever cared to find out how the old man was doing. He was dead as far as the society was concerned.

But his books again had found the same flavor as before. His stories had more pain in them than ever before. People loved reading the stories from the old writer who was dead for the society. It was like a phantom author, who once in a while came down with a story that was remembered for some time, and then forgotten. He became a known name amongst the literary world, but for his own city folks, who never ever saw him, he was still an unknown face, hiding from the world and the society.

He sent his son to a boarding school at a very early stage. He didn’t like his own son since the very beginning. He still considered his son partially responsible for what had become of his wife.

The boy grew up away from love and family, and obviously wasn’t close to his father. Some summers he wouldn’t even care to come back home, but instead stayed back at the school, or went off to a friend’s place to spend the summer vacations. He hated to spend time at hi s father’s old and shabby house on top of the hill. They didn’t even talk to each other. Mukesh would send him his monthly pocket money, and pay for his education, and that made him feel that his duty as a father was over with that.

There was a loud sound of thunder. Mukesh came back to his senses, and peered through the window. In the flash of the lightening, for a second, he could see the old gulmohor tree outside.

The window had been thrown open by the wind, and was now flying on its hinges, banging against the wall. Mukesh cursed silently under his breathe, and got up to shut the window. Just then, the lights went out, putting everything around in a cover of darkness.

Mukesh shouted a few more curses, and walked in the dark towards the kitchen, groping for a candle. It took him some time to find a candle. Every thing in this house took him some time to find. Years had passed now, but he still was not used to the fact that Tanya wasn’t there with him now, to keep the house in order, and put things in their proper place.

Finally he managed to light up the candle, and set it down on the old wooden table. He sat down, an old man catching the sides of the chair for support, while his old bones made rickety sounds, warning him not to try too many exercises.

He was lonely. He remembered his wife, her sweet innocent face swimming in front of him. And then she suddenly she burst out crying, accusing him of killing her. Mukesh immediately opened his eyes. He had had this vision a million times till now, but each time he would wake up feeling nervous and guilty.

He remembered his son. He must be around twenty five years now, the same age when Mukesh had met Tanya. God knows how the boy looked now. He hadn’t seen his face for more than fifteen years now. He hadn’t heard his voice for close to a decade now.

‘He must really hate me. There is no way he would forgive me now’. Mukesh thought to himself and sighed. He felt bad for the boy, the way he had treated him, for no fault of his. He was after all his own son, and he had treated him like an enemy.

Mukesh had been living in guilt for years now. But today something in him was paining. His heart ached; his left side of the body was dropping. The breathing was slowly becoming slow and irregular.

He clutched his heart with his right hand, and reflected back on his life, analyzing all the mistakes that he had made, and all the things that could have been avoided. He could have been a happy man today, and had a normal life, surrounded with his family. If only he had not acted the way he had. He was a sinner, and he knew God would never forgive him. He would never find peace even after he died. They would never let him enter through the gates of the heavens.

If only he could ask for forgiveness from his son, and hug him only once.

He then remembered his half written story. It was almost complete now. The girl had just realized that the boy loved her with all his heart. After all the problems in the world, she was finally convinced that he deserved a second chance.

The story just needed a good ending now.

“The end is the most important part of the story. You could write with all your heart and all your characters could be in the right place. But if the end wasn’t fine, then the reader would never be able relate to your story. The end made or broke the story. It is the most important part, yes”, Mukesh remembered his own words, and tried getting up from the chair. He just had to give the Perfect Ending to the story.

He got up with great difficulty, clutching his heart with one hand, and pushing the chair with the other hand for support. The other hand didn’t have much strength left in it. It gave way, and Mukesh fell flat on the floor.

“I just have to give the perfect end to the story”, he remembered. He collected all his strength and will power. He prayed to God to help him get up. He just had to write the end of the story.

Finally he managed to get up, and stand on his feet. He started walking towards his old study table. This time his legs didn’t bother him much. He was feeling light. His heart too, wasn’t paining now.

He thanked God, and walked slowly to his table. The papers were still there on the table, flying and fluttering in the wind. He sat down the candles on his study table on top of the pile of his old books. He pulled out the old heavy chair, which made long ghostly sounds as the legs scratched the wooden floor. Mukesh finally sat down on the chair, and picked up the draft copy of his unfinished story.

“She decided she should give him another chance.

‘We all make mistakes in our lives. Vivek is just another human being. He has committed a mistake. But the important thing is he realizes his mistake. Why, otherwise he wouldn’t have come crying to me last night’, Anita thought.

And finally she decided to call him. She picked up the receiver, and dialed in the number that she so clearly now remembered.

She could hear the phone ringing on the other side. She waited with bated breath, waiting to hear his voice again, waiting for him to pick up the phone.

‘Come on Vivek, pick up the phone now. It’s me, Anita’, she said impatiently. The call ended, and no one picked it up.

She dialed gain. This time somebody picked it up just after the first ring.

‘Hello, Vivek? It’s me. I love you, Vivek. I love you’, she couldn’t hold herself more, and started shouting over the phone.

And then the voice on the other side spoke, a heavy and deep voice. It was so unlike the sweet and calm voice she had expected to hear.

‘Ma’am. It’s Inspector Shukla here’, the voice said.

Her blood froze, and the hair at the back of her neck stood up. She knew the worst was yet to come.

‘Ma’am, there has been an incident here. Vivek is no more’, and with that sentence, her whole world came falling apart.

“Now, that is a perfect ending to the story”, Mukesh re-read his finished work, and stared admiringly at the last paragraph. It contained his signature style of an abrupt ending, the kind that no reader could even imagine.

A smile spread across the old man’s face, and he decided to retire for the day. He was happy now.

‘What an end that was’, he thought to himself, as he pulled down the covers, and fell into a peaceful sleep.

He woke up the next morning, with everything very hazy. He couldn’t see properly. There was a deep fog spread all around. He couldn’t even breathe properly. It was suffocating. He got down from his bed, and walked down the stairs. His knees no longer pained, and his body no longer ached. He was feeling like a young boy now, his spirits high, ready to enter a new world.

But where was this smoke coming from? He had to find out, fast, before it choked him to death.

He went downstairs, and found everything in disorder. All his furniture had been moved. The windows were all thrown open, and the carpet on the floor was no longer there. The wooden floor lay there exposed, naked and bare.

Mukesh was astonished. He was shocked, and angry.

“Who dared enter my house? Everyone here knows that I don’t like guests and pesky fellows nosing there way around here”, he thought.

“If it is some nosy kid, or a thief, I will kill him”, he cursed and clenched his fists.

The smoke was coming from his study room. He followed the smoke, covering his face with his hands. He pushed the door to his study, and immediately jumped back a few steps, as the old door came crashing down to the floor, baring the inferno inside.

Mukesh screamed, as the smoke now tried to find its way out through the fallen door. The study was all covered in soot and ashes now. Everything was burnt. Nothing was spared. Not even his collection of books, his furniture, his curtains, or his own copies of his published books. It was all gone.

He remembered his draft copy of his latest story, the one he had just finished writing last night. He ran towards the table on top of which he had kept his latest master piece.

It was gone, burnt to ashes. His only copy of the story had been destroyed.

He sat down on the floor among the ashes, and lay there crying. He sat there and cried, squalling like a child. He cried for a long time.

And finally when his tears were getting dried up, he heard the creaking sound of the door.

Mukesh got up immediately.

He came running outside, shouting “Who burnt down my house? Who burnt my house?”

He stopped in his tracks, as two men and a young lady entered the house.

They didn’t even look up at the old man, who looked so much in disarray and despair. They looked around the house, and started talking to each other. One of the men was dressed up in a formal official looking attire, while the other younger man was dressed more casually in jeans and a loose tee shirt. The other woman who seemed to be the young man’s partner was dressed in jeans and a bright shirt, and was holding the arm of the young man, looking around the house, observing it.

“Who are you? How dare you enter my house without permission?” Mukesh shouted. But the party of three people didn’t even look up, and continued their normal conversation.

Mukesh shouted again, and still no one reacted.

“This is it. They burn down my study, and dare enter my house. And then they ignore me in my own house?” Mukesh was very angry now, and charged towards them ready to throw them out of his house.

As he neared them, he heard the lady say “Sweetie, there hasn’t been much damage to the house. It’s just the study that has been damaged.”

Mukesh stopped. The lady was still observing the house, and then commented “It’s a beautiful house. It will look very beautiful after it has been repaired.”

“Yes sir, its very beautiful”, agreed the official looking man.

The young man looked around, and remained silent for a while.

“You haven’t seen it the way I have. I hated this place. I hated it so much. I couldn’t wait for the vacations to get over, so that I could return to the school again. I have seen this place the way you people can never see it. And trust me, I still don’t find anything beautiful about this place” the young man said sternly.

Something about this man looked familiar to Mukesh; something about the way he talked when he was not impressed, reminded him of somebody.

“I will have it repaired sir. You just come and have a look at it when it is done”, the older man said with a false smile.

“Fine. You do your best then, and let me know when can I come and check it out again. I won’t come here again. Just call me when you have to”, the young man said.

The other man nodded.

“And what did the investigating officers say? What caused the death of my father?”

“Sir, they said the fire in the study started from something small, maybe from a candle fire. And your father, God bless his soul, had expired of a heart attack even before the fire started.”

The other man didn’t say anything. He looked around the house one last time, and sighed.

“If only he had loved me, and treated me like a son, he would never have to die alone like this. We could have worked it out together dad. Why did you do this to me?”

They left, leaving behind the soul of Mukesh standing there in front of the mirror, trying to see his own reflection in the mirror. All that the mirror reflected back was the empty house, and the emptiness in Mukesh’s life.

He had spent his whole life trying to write the Perfect Ending, while his own end was not so prefect.

But not all stories always have a happy and Perfect Ending. Sometimes it’s better to leave the story half told. And that could be the perfect ending to some stories.