A New Dawn

He woke up; woke up to the same darkness that he woke up to every morning. He looked around and there was the same stillness all around. He tried to find something out of the ordinary but, as always, there was nothing. All around him was, everything was enveloped in the same dark stillness, save for the one fleeting faint ray of light overhead.

He grew more frustrated. At first, it only seemed natural, the darkness and the stillness. Soon though, he began to wonder; wonder beyond the dark, wonder of the one ray of light that kept appearing overhead from time to time, wonder about the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel.

The walls seemed to be closing in around him by the day. Either his enclosure was becoming smaller, or he was growing larger. He oft heard voices from the outside his walls of confinement, and had tried many a time to literally kick the walls down, but to no avail.

And so, he decided; decided that he had had enough; decided that he had been in shackles long enough; decided to break free.

Thus, he exerted, exerted himself, strained every last nerve and sinew and began to wade his way out of the stillness. Then strangely, as he began his struggle, he could feel the assistance of some invisible external force ‘pushing’ him toward his goal.

Buoyed by this, he soldiered on until he found an opening. At first, he gingerly pushed his feet through the orifice. His feet were free; free from the stillness. He experienced freedom for the first time. He moved his legs. With renewed vigor, he pushed himself until slowly he inched his way out of the confinement and soon, his whole being was free; free from the confines and shackles of the past nine months.

His baby blue eyes opened and he looked at the world for the very first time.

He had arrived.

 

As the morning sun, in the East, rose ,

In its glory, a great son arose.

From the depths of his mother,

Staring into the long blue yonder.

 

 

Cheers

 

Footnote : One day, I was just thinking about what a baby would probably feel inside his mother’s womb and there you go … This was actually an idea that came to me quite a while ago but because of my laziness more than anything else, I never did sit down and pen it, or rather type it down. But hey! Better late than never right J

 

 

The laces of change

Robert Smith was dressed in a brown tweed jacket. Under it, he wore a white shirt with blue pin stripes, and a pair of brown trousers. On his left hand was a Breitling timepiece, which kept time accurate to within 2 seconds a year, and on his feet were a pair of neatly polished brown leather shoes. On these shoes were a pair of well tied laces, the laces that were about to change Robert's life.

Robert Smith was late. This would not have bothered another man too much but for Robert, it was life threatening. Robert swore by his watch. There was a certain place that he had to be at a point in time, and he just had to be there. If there was something that had to be done at appoint in time, it just had to be done. He did not quite have Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, but what he had, bordered on it. He left home, walked the two blocks to the bus stop in a minute and thirty four seconds, took the 8:15 bus to the office and stepped into his cabin at exactly fifty one minutes past eight.

On this particular day, a Tuesday, he was waiting at the bus stop, as usual, and could see the bus approaching. It was 8:14 and the bus was bang on time. He liked that. That was when fate played a cruel trick on him. He looked down and saw something he had not seen for eight years, three months and four days (yes, he kept count!) For a minute he was taken aback. How could it have happened? He had been as meticulous as he had ever been and yet ... What then had gone wrong?

While he pondered on this, the bus came ever closer to the bus stop and was nearly there. What could he do? Well, he couldn’t possibly step into the bus now, not in his current state. What was he to do?

Now, Robert was a methodical man, and his brain was a calculating one. He based his life on logic, and that logic now suggested that there was time enough to right the wrong.

So, he bent down, leaving his briefcase by his side, and got down to the business of tying his shoelaces that had come undone, all the while still trying to work out as to where he his tried and tested method had gone wrong that morning. Being the methodical man he was, he put in his all into the act of tying his laces. The left lace went over the right one to form a knot. Then the right one was held, while the left was looped around to form a bow knot, which was then fastened by pulling at both the ends. Satisfied with his handiwork, and still a bit perplexed, Robert stood up, straightened his jacket and looked up… only to see the rear of the 8:15 bus in the distance.

For a minute, his sensed numbed and he broke into a sweat. Something somewhere had conspired and had made him miss the bus, HIS bus. Then, the rational side of his brain took over. There was another bus at 8:25. He knew the time table by rote, of course. And thus, arose his next problem ... The wasted 10 minutes. He decided to use it constructively. He decided to find out what had gone wrong in the process of his tying the shoelaces. And so, for the next 10 minutes, he rattled his brain, trying to come up with an answer to what had gone wrong. And while he was deep in thought, the 8:25 came and went.

Now, he was positively flustered, bewildered and shattered, all the same time. His world, as he knew it, was crumbling around him. Yet again, his cool and calculating mind took over. He now knew that there was a bus at 8:30. He knew the time table by rote, of course. And so, he waited. Waited with bated breath for the arrival of the 8:30 and as soon as he saw it in the distance, his feet started twitching, his palms got sweaty and he was filled with nervous energy. He would not be foiled. Not for a third time.

He put all his effort into concentrating on the approaching bus, and no sooner had it stopped and the driver opened the door, than Robert was in the bus. He got his ticket punched and settled in his seat. It was 8:31 and for the first time since 8:14, he relaxed. He was on a bus, not his bus, but a bus, nonetheless. This was good.

Sitting back in his seat, his mind was going over the extraordinary incidents of the day, when his chain of thoughts was suddenly disrupted by the most unusual site he had seen. The bus had started, and there was this woman, running behind the bus, and having caught up with it, was banging on the door and willing the driver to stop the bus. To Robert, this was a novelty. After all, bus stops were the place to get on bus, right? The driver did try to drive on, but the lady's incessant banging on the door made him finally yield to her demand and he stopped the bus and let her in. She got in, got her ticket punched and had more than a few choice words to say to the driver. Robert thought no more of this, and went back to his thoughts.

Fate, they say, raises its head in odd places. In this case, it sat itself down, right opposite Robert. 'I mean, can you believe the cheek of the driver! Not stopping for a lady and making her run behind it for two whole blocks!' she prattled, to Robert. Now, if the day hadn't had more than its share of excitement for Robert, this was scaling new heights. 'I mean, look at the state of the country', she continued, before pausing and looking for Robert, presumably for assent. Robert simply did not know how to respond. He just nodded. That was enough. She took this as the cue and went on about the problems of the world and her life. Robert was completely perplexed. Here was a woman, quite a beautiful one at that, one he had never met in his life, telling him about the problems of the country, her family and even her dog!

And so, she prattled on until suddenly, without warning, she got up and said, 'Gotta run. My stop!' and got off. Nothing more, nothing less. Robert was bemused. He was so shocked that he couldn't bring himself to even call out after her to ask for her name. Never before, had Robert encountered anything remotely this bewildering. It was ... different. Soon, it was his stop and Robert hurried out and into his office, later than 8:51 for the first time in about nine years (8 years and 278 days to be precise). The rest of the day was an anomaly with Robert desperately trying to make up for the lost 15 minutes. Yet, try as he might, he simply couldn't manage it. He was quite simply, too well tuned.

And so, the day went by, all the while, with the nagging feeling of something just not being right, and Robert went to bed that night, and as always, rewound the entire day. He had run through the entire day a million times. His thoughts kept going back to the lovely lady from the bus. Try as he might, he quite simply could not get his thoughts away from her. He decided that he would do something that he didn't think he would ever do. He was going to break his long standing routine and miss the 8:15 bus to meet the woman and make sense of what happened that morning.  He slept.

The next morning, Robert arrived at the bus stop at his usual time and saw the 8:15 approaching. Torn between what his brain and heart were saying, he decided to side with his heart, just this once. And so, he missed the 8:15, and indeed the 8:25. He got on the 8:30 and took the same seat as the previous day.  He waited for the lady. He watched her stop come, and then go by. He waited. He waited with ever fading hope that she would present herself again. Alas! His stop had come. Dejected, he went into the office, later than 8:51 for the second day in a row.

He was bemused. Everyone did something at particular a time right? How could someone take a bus one day, and not take it the next. It was bewildering. It was as if his whole life, a life that he based on the intricate mechanics of time, was slowly coming apart. Perplexed, he spent the rest of the day musing over this and his life in general. Soon it was time to leave for the day.

Robert waited at the bus stop for the bus. Not his bus, the one that came 15 minutes after his. When it came, he got in and took the same seat that he had taken the previous day. When the bus started moving, his thoughts drifted and he looked out the window. Only, for the first time in his life, he didn’t just look, he saw. He saw children playing on the street, people playing with dogs and others sitting at the corners of the road and chatting. It was novel, just observing these people. He realized that he had been so self absorbed in his little life, that he had just never cared to see.

And then he saw this site. There was this park. A park that he knew existed, but one that he never really bothered about. He now saw it, lush green with a beautiful lake in the middle. In the corner of the park, below a beautiful oak tree, he saw it. It was a park bench. All alone, in the corner, under a tree. It was quite simply beautiful.

On an impulse, he got down from the bus at the nearest stop and went into the park. He was quite surprised that he had acted this impulsively, but secretly, was quite happy that he had. He approached the bench, removed his jacket, folded it and placed it on the bench, rolled up his sleeves, sat down, took in the serene scene around him, closed his eyes... and breathed. He felt a whiff of life.

Change, they say, is refreshing.

Cheers

Footnote: Inspired by the movie ‘Stranger than fiction’ and the comic genius of the inimitable P.G.Wodehouse.

The equation of life

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the meaning of 'Nothing' is 'Not anything' .
That got me thinking and here's something ..

Nothing is not anything.
Anything is, well, any thing.
Now, any thing, is something.
Again, something is, some thing .. right ?
Cool.
So now, Everything is some thing. Agreed?
Super.

Now, everything is, ... you guessed it .. every thing.
And every thing, is certainly not every other thing.

Now, lets backtrack.

Everything is not every other thing.
Everything is not some other thing.
Everything is not any other thing.
Everything is not not not any other thing
Everything is not not nothing.

A double negation here.
Let us apply the rules of mathematics.
Negative of a negative is ... Positive.

So ...
You guessed it ...

Everything, is nothing.

QED.


So then, if everything is nothing, then what is nothing ??
Interesting eh ?

Cheers

Footnote: I was actually to give a presentation for about two and a half minutes on a topic of my choice. My initial topic was about the media and its sensationalism. But, as luck would have it, someone else spoke on that and I was just wondering on what to speak on when, in some context, I got the word ‘nothing’ ( maybe I got the word because, there was nothing in my mind at the moment! ). Naturally, my curiosity got aroused and I looked it up in the dictionary and ‘not anything’ was the meaning that I got. So I thought, why not give it a shot… Made this up in about 5 minutes… And well, the rest as they say, is History … And yes … This, as everything else,  is indeed nothing ...

Sin City

Italy, AD 2079

‘Old man Ves seems to be grumbling an awful lot today,’ said Fabio. ‘He has too much to complain these days, as all the old geesers do,’ replied Franchesco. ‘I can’t really see what he's upset about though. We have food, water and a living. Sure, crime is on an all time high, but what do you expect? I mean, it IS the land of the mafia,’ he continued in a matter-of-fact way.

Meanwhile, in a shady alley, not too far away, ‘The boss wants an even bigger cut from the cocaine market, Al,’ complained Danielle. ‘I think that the boss is getting too big for his own shoes. Looks like someone is gonna have to do something about it, and soon,’ retorted Alberto. And continued, ‘Say, what is it with old man Ves? What is he groaning and rambling on so much today anyway? You, maybe think that he's gonna finally erupt?’‘No way man. Haven’t you heard? Barking dogs seldom bite. Old man Ves is one such dog. Nothing more, nothing less,’ dismissed Dani.

‘I see the city for what it is. I see its true face. Steeped in layers of filth and grime. Hidden behind drug lords and criminal gangs. Murder, rape and extortion rampant in the streets. Children being made into slaves and peddlers at ages in which they ought not to even know the existence of any vice,’ scowled old man Ves.

‘It wasn’t always like this though. It was once a beautiful town. The most beautiful in the world and at its pinnacle, I stood. People were people then, and not the beasts they are today. There were flowing rivers and clean streets. Fields stretched in all directions and people lived real lives, not the sorry excuse for a life that they claim to have now. They lived those days. Today, they rat for an existence. It’s pathetic to even watch,’ rued the oldie.

‘Something must be done. No one is willing to stand up and be counted. No one has a spine any more. People are just happy to scavenge a living and let the town rot. After all, all they want is to be. It pains me to see that the world has come to this. Where is the bright sunshine and where are the vast open fields? Where is the laughter and merriment?’

‘All that remains is a sorry excuse for a town that was once glorious. I have given them a long enough rope and they don’t seem to be heeding to my warnings. I did not want it to come down to this, but I am afraid that I must take it upon myself to end this …. this farce,’ mused old man Ves, almost apologetically.

Thus seething in anger, Mount Vesuvius erupted, spewing his rage far, high and wide. He exploded in a blaze of glory, with golden lava flowing over the sides of the mountain and rapidly engulfing the entire town, burying all the filth and dirt and leaving it cleansed of the grime and crime.

Exactly 2000 years after a young Vesuvius has unleashed his fury on the unsuspecting town of Pompeii, he did so again. He then cooled down.

The town was in peace. After a long, long time, it slept, enveloping each and every inhabitant in a mist of slumber.

Footnote: This, I actually wrote for a competition, for publication in a magazine. I don’t think that they are going to publish it, so I though why not I publish it myself JThe last line, “The town was in peace. After a long, long time, it slept, enveloping each and every inhabitant in a mist of slumber” was given and we had to make a story based on that. Well, as soon as I saw that line, I remembered a story that we had in class 4 or 5, in our English text book about the town of Pompeii and what happened when Mt.Vesuvius erupted on that fateful day in AD 79. This was inspired from that. Also, people who read this, told me that there was a certain lack of continuity in the flow. I agree, but then I was working with a word limit of 500 word ( which I ended up exceeding anyway J ). Also, I imagined the setting to be like the city in ‘Sin City’ or Gotham City in ‘Batman begins.’ Well, this footnote has run into a foot paragraph, I see, but I felt that it must be told …

Cheers

They dont make 'em like that no more

I read a while ago about this place called 'Indian Coffee House', an institution in Bengaluru that was going to down its shutters very soon. There were glowering tributes from greats of the city like Ram Guha and others about how it had been a hub for the social and political stalwarts of the city for decades. Being a coffee afficando, I distinctly remember being really gutted about not having visited such a place, savored it and most importantly,

tasted the coffee.

 

Imagine my surprise and delight then, when, walking down Church Street ( parallel to MG Road ), I saw this non descript medium sized hoarding that simply said 'Indian Coffee House.' I thought it almost too good to be true. I read the board again to see if I had been right in what I saw. I mean, could it be? It was too good to resist and naturally, I went in.

 

To say that the place was 'bland' would not be an understatement. The walls were painted in an uninspiring tone of blue, with white splashed about here and there. The benches were of a plain wooden variety with equally plain wooden chairs. Most young people would probably be put off by this. After all, what sort of a "coffee joint" is this anyway? Well, it’s exactly that. A "coffee joint" in its truest form. Not the fancy ones that boast of English

music and couches. Just a joint that serves coffee, and my God ! What coffee !

 

I naturally ordered coffee and the bearer ( dressed in white, with a red turban), placed before me this cup of coffee. I say "cup" very deliberately because it was just that. A plain ceramic cup, no fancy logos or shapes on it, and a saucer to go with it, housed the coffee.

 

Now comes the best part, THE COFFEE. It was quite simply some of the best South Indian filter coffee that I have tasted. Not too light, quite strong, with the right amount of sugar. Perfect. It has to be tasted to be appreciated fully.( I went three times in a day and a half !)

 

The place also has other eats like French fries and scrambled eggs, just to name a couple. I tried the French fries. Not too good, I should say, but then, the accompanying cup of coffee more than made up for it.

 

To say that I fell in love with the place would be putting it mildly. I was positively floored.  A place that still has the old world charm in the midst of the modern and the urbane. I was really stunned by the kind of crowd that the place attracted. I could see old timers and youngsters in equal measures. It just goes to show that the place has still not lost its charm and that great coffee is, well ... great coffee.

 

 

Cheers