I want to read those nice blogs..I want to read important news so that I can talk authoritatively based on facts rather than about my opinions and views..want to read and understand economics and politics and history .. add a word ‘world’ behind each of the above.. I want to read those umpteen books I can have access to..those comics I never read..want to read children novels, fiction, science fiction, philosophy and those odd romance novels ..

I want to watch all movies possible..and if possible write reviews there by improving my command or understanding..listen to all songs possible..watch all the plays possible..

I want to spend great time meeting all my friends..want to talk away the time..want to spend quality time with family..

Want to travel a lot… travel unusual places..villages..remote corners of Karnataka/India as well as want to visit exotic places of the world..visit all continents..visit all the wonders of the world..explore Europe..stay for some time in some of the places so that I really understand and experience the culture rather than just visit-smile-take a photo as a tourist..possibly own an island..

Want to learn some art forms…like theater..film making..something other individualistic..want to learn some fighting techniques..

Want to have alternate sources of money that I am not forced to work, but yet I work due to the sheer love of doing something ..making some difference to society by my work..and some how incorporate my some other wishes as a part of work rather than having to live two lives..

Want to live a long healthy and wealthy life and also having well wishers and close family around me always..

Want to make people smile at me whole heartedly..and cherish my presence and company…and leave behind cherishable memories…

**
There are only 24 hours a day.And __ years. And I can be present at only one place at a time and do only one thing at a time.

Here is to my 29*. Damn.

*: Belated, reason should be obvious by now.

As usual comments are welcome and appreciated. Also, what name would you suggest to the story ?
__
The usual day of Borak was to lead sheep up the hill for grazing, or to the fields at its bottom, to sleep under the shades of a tree by keeping his pet sheep with him. Drink water at a near by pond, and if he packed and carried food for that day eat it. Most days, it is only water that quenched his hunger too. At dusk, his important task was to count the number of sheep. If they matched the morning count, he is quite relieved. Else, it is the search across the fields and the hill, the thought of the task itself was scarier.

His counting methods were simpler. He collects, in the morning, the number of stones as exactly as the number of sheep. So evening, he discards a stone for each sheep. These days, if only one stone is extra, he aborts the stone rather than reproving the search for the last sheep. The only problem, if it happens quite regularly, there is a chance his father might find out about it.

Some days would be different. Like the day when he met few children who were of his age, wearing all similar clothes, marched right across him and he stood amused. Where do all these people go together and why do they not have any herd behind them. From next day onwards he made a point to come to that spot right at that time, so that he could try to make sense out of it. Soon enough he learnt, they go to a place where they have lot of fun. But his father said that was untrue, and they were taken to be punished.

Some of those people were benevolent to him and gave their food to him. Those days he overslept. Often waking up from the nightmare of having lost more than one sheep. Those days he felt even more scared to return home than normal. His father was a drunkard who berated every action of Borak accusing him of making attempts to steal his clandestine belongings.

Stood besides the place where those children went to get punished was a rectory. Borak decided to follow the children that day and hid behind the rectory. He noticed later that there was nothing happening that remotely seemed like punishment except for an old man saying something loudly and other children repeating it. It didn’t seem like any fun.

He didn’t realize he had spent quite some time there, and along with it lost a few sheep too. More stones than the number of fingers were left extra. This horrified him. He searched for lost sheep till late, but found only one. He decided to part with his beloved sheep and made it a part of herd to be returned to father.
More agony was waiting at home. Not only his father beat him almost to death, accusing him of selling the extra sheep, the very act- selling the herd- which he was about to do.

On being woken up, Borak realized that his herd – along with his beloved sheep – and his father were missing. After crying half a day, Borak felt, his going to that place – where other kids assembled for punishment – was indeed a place of severe punishment. And his going there has definitely resulted in his punishment – what else could explain his current fate.
__
Words were Berate,Benevolent,Reprove,Clandestine,Rectory

As usual comments are welcome and appreciated. Also, what name would you suggest to the story ?
__
“Oh Sottu … come .. lets go there…I see a throng in the field” shouted Kitta on top of his voice over to his neighbour while keeping his eyes transfixed on the far field on an early morning. The early mornings for these kids, during this summer vacation, is the most exciting time of the day. Dads getting ready to office, mothers busy in kitchen, these kids are left to themselves – save the worry of homework for the later part of the day.

While most of their classmates preferred to wake up late, these two guys, as if competing with each other’s energy and enthusiasm, wake up early and find new ways to entertain themselves – be it a beach hockey played with a cricket bat, or a stroll to a nearby police station. Yes, police station – a place where any normal children would forbid themselves from going, these kids were brave enough to go near it. They overheard the conversation, came back home and enacted the same, often tried to find a solution by one acting as a police and the other as another party in the case.

Summer vacation, was perhaps the busiest time for these two kids. Often they built a castle from the empty matchstick boxes and cigarratte boxes they collected through out the year or sometimes just spent entire time reading a book together and enacting the story by themselves. Their passion and curiosity was uniform in fields ranging from science to astronomy to history to mythology.

Sottu, who was hurriedly brushing his tooth, swallowed half of it in a hurry and washed his mouth and ran hurriedly to mother asking her for a pair of dress. She was preparing pooris – his favorite breakfast. While watching her prepare, he also noticed, her work carefully. She was preparing the round shaped objects from the flour. In between she was stirring the delicious-by-smell sagu by left hand while using the right to fry the already prepared ones. He was quite awe-struct at the rapport and speed of her eyes and hands.

Lost in the observation, he was again alerted by the shout of Kitta, who was now shouting on the top of his voice and in absolute hurry. “If we don’t run now, we can’t see what others are already seeing… come fast, this is my last call for you, I am going otherwise.” Sottu quickly responded “WAIT, only a second”, without waiting for his mother to give him clothes, he put on yesterday’s and ran outside the house, neglecting his mothers question “When are you returning?”

Both ran towards the field where more people were joining every minute, this usually happens during an accident scene. But this was no highway, it was a big playing ground. Both the kids squeezed in between the people, shoved and managed to go to the front of the gathering. They were astonished by the sight ! It was a dead huge bird and not known to alive in this era. Sottu said “Oh my !! Was it hiding in our town ?” Kitta replied “This bird has been surely obsolescent..probably from dinosaur era”. Both were, like other people there, not stunned by only its gigantic size, but more about the mystery behind its finding in that field now.

While Kitta looked at the sky for some clues, Sottu looked at the lorry that stood at the corner of the field. The lorry looked dysfunctional and aborted. It surely wasn’t there previous day, recalled Sottu. He grabbed Kitta and pointed him towards the lorry suspiciously. They tried to look for any other hints at the spot. On finding more crowd and camera men coming to the spot, they both deserted and headed towards home – discussing the possibilities of that bird being there.

That night, Kitta said Sottu, let’s keep a watch on the lorry. Sottu had other star gazing plans, but that could be put off to some other day, he thought. They both went and hid themselves at a considerable distance for long time in the night. Nothing happened, they returned home with mosquito bites. Sottu suggested they could watch the lorry from home using the telescope he was hoping to use for star gazing. For next few nights they watched the lorry in the night, while searching for clues about the mystery in the day. They visited local library to collect the information about the bird, they tried to obtain the lorry registration information and also learnt how the bird was being moved out of the city to a museum in the capital city.

After nights of result less watching in night, in addition to the scoldings by their parents, they finally decided to try one last night. That day, the bird was moved out of the city. And finally some people came to take the lorry. Sottu and Kitta jumped out of house and followed those guys.

Rest, as they say is, history. The local lads had become world famous in the small town, thanks to the front page city news paper article “Kids help bust a smuggling racket in town”
**

Few lunch break after the school re-opened were filled with sessions of question and answers by their classmates. And their explanation of the story in animated style. “That night …we were sure some one would come and take away the lorry..we knew it.” “They pushed the lorry till some distance ..so that the sound of it does not disturb ..when they started it, we both jumped into it.” “It went for a long distance..we tried hard to keep us awake. Finally it stopped and we got down and hid behind the bushes…..”

In such detail their narration went. The newspaper article had put it briefly thus:
“Two kids who were suspicious of a lorry parked in the field for few days, decided to follow it. They found that that lorry was one of the lorries used to smuggle various illegal goods out of the city. They were waiting for this day when the entire police was diverted to the transport of the huge bird, which was a fake replica these smugglers created and planted in the heart of the city few days ago.”

Sottu and Kitta waited for their next vacation adventure !
___
The words were : obsolescent, throng ,rapport,passion,forbid

The story is about a prince who opposes his marriage until he falls for a beautiful woman, Sadarame. Sadarame’s father & grandfather are cunning misers and demand to be crowned in exchange for the daughter’s wedding. King, very eager to get his son married, accepts to this demand. Sadarame and her husband, wander away to another province and find it difficult to survive having exhausted the money.
Sadarame’s husband approaches the prince of the land, who is lusty and lures Sadarame for marriage. She hatches a plan for delaying marriage and plans to escape with husband. Again, a thief overhears her plan and acts as her husband and takes her away and ask her to marry him. She again manages to escape from the thief and lands in another state, and remains impersonated as a man. She, having survived a challenge qualifies to marry the princess of the state. She discloses her true self to the princess, yet remains king until she finds her husband back. After which all three stay together (yeah !), and the cheats get punished.

Main plot as described above at times looked like a thin sketch, it was about other parts – often the side track, that evoked much laughter. For example, of course the masterly act of the thief by B Jayashri herself is priceless – her energy level, her lung power, her singing – and that of a male thief’s make-up was wonderful. And then there was a drunkard singing and mouthing dialogs – his acting was brilliant. The song sequences – the actors singing themselves with simple lyrics – were though good (esp by the hero), but it eloborated too much than required at places. Likewise a scene of bargaining and cheating by Sadarame’s father went on and on. Also I could not follow many Telugu dialogs spoken by him. But Dingri Nagaraj was fantastic and had the audience split with his timings and humour. I also felt, may be this play required more than 2 hours of time and they did considerable editing – especially the challenge which Sadarame wins, was just told in words and had no scene to it and looked abrupt. It reminded me of the TV channels chopping the scenes to accommodate advertisements. Wondered why there was no character introduction at the end of the play. Finally a mention has to be made about the colorful and eloborate stage preparation mostly with the apt giant screens.

Overall: As the pamphlet suggested, the play displayed “navrasas”, the humour being very strong. As such it was an enjoyable experience. The story let me down, but the performances were superlative.

I cherish both travel (especially train or bus travel, esp relaxed ) and company and talking a lot and of course - traveling in Europe is a long time dream .. the concept of hitting wavelength with a stranger and roaming around the streets carelessly (not having particular checklist of places to visit) itself sounds like a fairytale, no wonder I like the movie..

Will talk about the movie and its sequel ( which I didn’t like as much as I did the former) some other time. Right now the video : Before that, just one more point - if the recession takes away my job, I guess all I need is to find a lake..and hang around there..and ask the strangers - “don’t give me money, give me 5 words .. I will write a story, if you like it … ” Heh ! I may not be immensely talented writer, but do come and encourage me
Now enjoy the clip.. Milkshake !

Daydream delusion
Limousine Eyelash
Oh, baby with your pretty face
Drop a tear in my wineglass
Look at those big eyes
See what you mean to me
Sweet cakes and milkshakes
I am a delusion angel
I am a fantasy parade
I want you to know what I think
Don’t want you to guess anymore
You have no idea where I came from
We have no idea where we’re going
Launched in life
Like branches in the river
Flowing downstream
Caught in the current
I’ll carry you. You’ll carry me
That’s how it could be
Don’t you know me?
Don’t you know me by now?

I realized it is similar to the Playback_Theatre concept I had watched during the play “All you need is love” where the audience throw sentences/story and actors act.

While C is yet to come up with her version of story, this is my attempt to create a flash fiction, using those words. It would be nice if Aurorawonders and C each could dish out something

Readers, can you guess the words ?

I am using a fancy tag - ThrowWordsGetFiction as I intend to do few more of these.

Since this is my first attempt to “create” something, your comments are welcome and are appreciated.
___
Meetu sat there, alone in the corner of the pub. It was unusual for a pretty young woman to be sitting alone in a crowded pub in this town. But everyone was busy with their, umm.. drinks. Few couples did a spirited jig, probably at the celebration of one of their engagement, and got tired and sat to sip second round of drink. Pub, like temple, is one of the few places where one gets to see happy and sad people at the same time. Some cheering the beer, some reclusive, like Meetu.

Enter, Novian, an optimist by other name. “Optimism, is often a result of helplessness.”, his friend Jignesh usually taunts him, but he knows better. Money for him is a game – he loses some, he wins some. Unlike hearts, which he always wins. Novian, intended to party tonight with a gang of his friends, who usually tag on to him only due to the weight of his pocket and leave him soon after that weight transforms into their stomachs’ weight, but at the last minute decided to be lonely and dropped into this new place. He had never been to this pub, not even during his pub hopping session in April – usually accompanied by girlfriend hopping session – by mutual consent.

Novian noticed Meetu. “What a serendipity !” he thought to himself. He could make no mistake – this was the lady who was seated in front of him during his previous visit to Race Course. He had lost quite an hefty amount of money that day in horse race and yet he realized he hadn’t drowned himself in a melancholy that day. It was quite unusual. He had tried his best resources to locate this girl and today he finds her just like that. Never to believe in stars, he thanked his that time. Beliefs last only till next change !

As is natural, he progressed towards her. He probably had misread her just like a driver in the dark miscalculates the danger when the on coming lorry has only one light on. Yet, he approached her – if not to floor her right away, he felt confident to woo her over the time.

To his surprise, she knew him. She talked to him easily. When he tried to know her reason for lonely visit to pub with a painful look, she opened up all too easily. Said, she feels cheated. Cheated by boy friend, cheated by parents and by colleagues at work. His face turned pale and struck with horror and disbelief as if he has just seen the Tsunami approaching, when she said her boy friend was Jignesh. His very friend, who had ‘helped’ him in searching her, but didn’t even let him know ? That thought drifted Novian to his own world, her words barely falling on his ears but getting lost in the noise around. Today Novian may have deserted his friends, but his friend had him, long back.

He left the place silently. Tomorrow is another horse race. “Optimism is…” as his once- friend Jignesh used to say.
___
Notes:
1. I wanted to keep the story very, very short. Lack of time.
2. Had to discard an ending I first wrote- while trying hard to keep from sleeping, as it was too abruptly off-the-cliff.
3. What would be the title you would have given ?
4. If you guessed the words good, let me know that you did. Otherwise here are the words – Serendipity, Melancholy, Party, Horse Race, Reclusive, Tsunami,April, Lorry.
5. This is shockingly similar to what I had written years ago, and I realized after I wrote this. That way my next one is much different (It’s already written!). Stay tuned.
6. No, this isn’t autobiographical or anything related to anyone I know. Heh! Trust me, real stories I know sound even more unreal.
7. Also, this isn’t reflective of my mood or anything. Heh!
8. Any comments, ANY, are welcome.

As I see, luck can take you only till a point

and continued,

after that, it is all again luck.

Funnily painful. Or painfully funny.

**
These days, my biggest problem is to communicate and clarify to others, that I am not negative (pessimist) and at the same time, I am not a positive person (optimist) - I am (or at least want to be) at the middle ground. And that I am comfortable being there..and that I am quite sure that my mentality does not affect any outcome, but everyone opposes me.

But the problem is at times I get myself confused what I am.

Am I positive just to console myself and just because it is good to be so ?

**

It is bad already that one has to justify himself..but it is worse, when I fail in that..

The side effect is a conclusion which is quite as useless as it could get - hopelessness is not the worst pain…it is helplessness.

**
Am I really as strong as I think I am..or as much as I wish..or as much as I come across..or as much as I try to show ?

**

Does it really matter .. to be strong from outside when I realize that is not me from inside.. to be positive on the outlook when I realize deep within that many things don’t make sense..
[Including the consolations generously offered that again rely on .. hope, future ... the shallow ones which the offerers too realize does not make sense when offered back when they go through a lean phase. I feel guilty for being evil in returning their favours and smiling under nose to have made them realize how shallow their words were..yes I am an evil guy, sometimes.. ]

Does it really matter that I laugh..and make others laugh..when all I want to do is cry out loud standing atop a hill till I get tired and watch the sunset alone and fall asleep counting the stars ?

Iron Maiden, Anoushka Shankar, Pankaj Udhas in palace grounds on consecutive weekends.. wow.

So diverse and vibrant ! Bangalore, currently, is as high as it could get wrt to cultural events I guess.

There were multiple parts to the show - the first one being, what they called, “fluids”. Answers to questions like “what does love mean to you”, “what would happen if there was only love”, were collected from audience and the actors on stage enacted a depiction of it. This happened for few rounds. What was interesting in this was in the way the actors enacted the meanings - it could be straight forward interpretation, or by adding a touch of humour, or by a means of sarcasm. It made me realize there were many ways of looking at same thing and I feel if ..if I can creatively imagine on the similar lines, my gazing-out-of-window-during-busy-traffic-hours could get just a little more engaging and colorful.

There was a round of fluid for the audience reactions to the show…which was a nice touch.

Overall some of the interpretations were not convincing to me..or may be it is just me, I can’t take all ! But some others were apt. And there were many hilarious moments - especially when we are aware that it is impromptu show - the timing and situational comedy was good. As an audience later said, the process and in turn the actors seem to be very intelligent.

The second part was about depiction of a conflict. A deep conflict, for eg, in the second show an audience mentioned “Is love enough for marriage, should one marry at all, or isn’t there a life beyond that” as a conflict. It was a conflict to me few months ago and I found an answer - two infact , one the ideal and second the practical - and it ceased to be a conflict to me. However,in the show, it was a much welcome conflict to ponder upon rather than other futile conflicts that could have come up. Conflicts too, were enacted by three pairs in their own way and the audience-whose conflict was selected- was given a chance to choose which of the three pairs came close to what he/she had in mind. It must have been an unique and strange satisfaction to see the demons/thought of the mind take the form of words and interpretations and en-act on the stage.

The third part was, the actual story being enacted on stage. For this, one of the audience was asked to narrate their story and the actors will act the story in a dramatic way on the stage. The story in the first show was about a job-seeker being helped with a bus ticket by a stranger was not strong on the plot - as per me(because personally, have been through very strong emotions and turmoil…) The emotions or the story wasn’t as profound as the second show’s story. However, the actors did a nice job of highlighting the north-south divide which was just an after thought in the story but it took good shape in the play.

(However as an aside, those who complain about the north-south divide troubling them in Bangalore - in my Bengaluru which embraces everyone without complaining - should really go to Chennai(I did live there, to support my claim) - as the character does go, in this story. Ironically, that character must have realized what a comfortable place Bangalore is, compared to Chennai; I wished this could come out in the play - but it was out of context I guess.)

Comparatively the second story,that of a grandson who hated his grandfather for his discipline while he was alive; but after reading his diary realizes how much care and love his grandfather really had towards him; the soft heart he had beneath the hard outlook. This plot was profound and had a depth of substance; and the actors did superb justice to it.

As is evident, the half the strength of part of the show - for a viewer - lies in the story. If the story is quite substantial - as it was in the second show than the first - the play results in an experience to remember. More the depth-> little more the duration of the play->better the engagement with the audience and a better experience/memory. The co-ordination, flow (the speed), energy and performance as a whole - with acting and music - was quite an entertaining and engaging experience. The only grouse is, this format requires a good story from the audience.

That said, the joy to see one’s story on stage, in full colour and music, must be overwhelming ! Especially to a person like me - I see my story or can relate to an incident or a personality in most of the movies;either to me or to a person I know. Again I was silent for most part of the audience interaction - except for one or two sound bites - otherwise just trying to capture and dissect; to assimilate and analyse the audience’ thoughts and beliefs. But one day, some day.. I will have a story - a grand one.

Uff, the perils of an interactive theatre. And aah, the joys of the same.