Cowardice

I am a fiction writer. Which by default means that I am capable of and I love to spend most of my time in that place which is dramatically disconnected from reality. While some are in awe of me others think I am a coward. If I am truly honest with myself I would agree with the latter.

It is fairly easy to build a random world where you get to play God. But to face the truth? That is a scary proposition indeed. Reality is as wonderfully horrifying as the fictional world it inspires. All those conspiracy theories which make best sellers and block busters have their roots in the very real world we operate in. And THAT is terrifying. Which is why today I openly confess to being the biggest coward there possibly is.

I am not proud of it. But it is who I have become.

I can argue. When the argument is about something I am passionate about but involves no active participation on my behalf, I launch into it equipped with an arsenal of words that can render quite a few minds speechless. But when the argument is about something that really matters, I paste a polite smile on my face and am content to be the fly on the wall. Like a Political argument on which party should come into power and who deserves to become the Prime Minister.

It IS my country. Whatever the outcome of this political drama; it IS going to affect ME. I know that. I understand that. Yet I resolutely refuse to be drawn into a political debate of any kind. As the elections close in upon us I wake up every morning with my heart beating in my mouth. I have had one nightmare or another about what India has turned into and takes a while for me to realize that the comfort of a very dysfunctional but familiar India has not been snatched away from me; yet.

The one culprit for this restless, agitated state I am in is Imagination. I am cursed with an imaginative mind. When someone screams ‘murderer’ for Modi and when I see videos and images of the Godhra riots being dug up and plastered all over the internet; I immediately see him as the villain with Dracula fangs, holding a dagger dripping with human blood. He does not fit into the mold of the responsible leader who should be governing my country.

Likewise when I read about the CIA links of Arvind Kejrival, his muffler turns into a ninja mask and there is an entire sequence of stealthy samurai action involving the robbing of some bank or the other which unfolds in my mind’s eye. I do not see him as Robin Hood or some gallant savior; instead he becomes the glib talking villain of a well-made Bollywood flick. Does it comfort me to see him as a leader of this nation? Definitely not.

Every time I make up my mind about placing my faith in either a political party or leader there is an attack! I am bombarded with comments and accusations. I am made to believe that I have no sense of who to trust and who not to. People I have known for years sound hostile and behave like ill-mannered ogres. Once they have let their aggression pour out through their actions, expressions and words, they will huff and puff from the effort that it has taken and shake their heads and tell me, “you are educated. Take an informed decision.”

I want to scream that I am trying to take an informed decision! Just give me the space to. As if reading up on and listening to both sides of the ‘competing’ parties is not confusing enough, I am forced to deal with the opinionated impressions of those around me. In a matter of seconds the atmosphere turns from wise to silly! And it is not the nice kind of silly either. It is that kind of silly which makes parents want to use the monster under the bed to discipline their children. Completely unnecessary, grossly indecent and scarily inhuman!

The coward that I am; I cower from this show of violent thoughts. I run from the aggression of clashing egos and rage-blinded words. I feel like that Alice in Wonderland who has been stripped from her Wonderland and is now left fumbling in the scary real world. Everywhere I turn a monster lurks.

Perhaps ‘Peaceful Politics’ is a myth that stemmed in Utopia. But peaceful people are very real. At least they used to be… until political debates became more personal. Until every discussion became less about information sharing and more about proving that you had made the right choice.
And then I turned into a coward. I am not proud of it. But it is who I have become.

The Blue Elephant

The Blue Elephant stood there looking lost in a pile of fancy white handmade paper with red ribbons strewn in front of him. His soulful eyes gazed passionately at the two women who were squinting their eyes at him.

"A blue elephant," the one with short hair and a slightly pointed nose muttered in a husky tone. "How odd." It was neither and exclamation nor a statement. She said it like she was stating the obvious. Maybe a blue elephant was an odd phenomenon in their lives. 

"What could an elephant signify?" The other woman asked. She was beautiful. She was shorter, much shorter than her female counterpart. Her luscious black hair flew carelessly over her shoulder. She had big, round, gullible eyes which mirrored the insecurities of her heart. 

"Blue Elephant," the first woman corrected her.

"Fine," she conceded rolling her eyes. " What could a blue elephant signify?"

"Elephants are supposed to signify auspicious beginnings," came the half-hearted suggestion. "You know Ganesha  and all that mythological jazz."

"Beginning of what?" She asked confused. " And besides neither of us is the religious types."

"Maybe it's a hint at a wedding," she scrunched up her nose. "Not that I am in favor of a wedding of any sort. But just saying."

"A wedding?" She scoffed." I can hardly boast of a relationship! Where does a wedding come into picture?"

"Well, a beginning of a relationship then," she said in a matter-of-fact way. 

"You mean he wants to get to second base?" She frowned

"By he do you mean the elephant or your boyfriend?" 

"Right."

"Ok. Define first base."

"What do you mean?" She turned her gorgeous black eyes to her friend. " What could first base be?"

"It's relative. Each has her own definition of the bases you know." She folded her hands across her chest. " For all we know the blue  elephant thinks first base is all there is!"

"We've kissed!"

"You and the elephant?"

"Right."

"Kissed like? A peck on the cheek or full throated gagging?"

"Is that relevant?"

"Only if you want to know what the blue elephant signifies!"

"The tongue-in-cheek kinds.." she muttered

"And you have never gone beyond that?"

"Oh you know we have been touchy-feely. I mean who isn't?" She argued defensively.

"How touchy-feely?"

"Irrelevant!"

"Blue Elephant?"

"I am just going to call him and ask him why on earth did he gift me a blue elephant" She got to her feet to grab the phone.

"Maybe he thinks you are fat and you need to shed some pounds!"

She paused mid-way and turned. "Do you think that's what this is all about? I mean you know last week at Diane's party he did comment on how he liked me a little fuller! Was he being sarcastic?"

"Could be." She shrugged her shoulders. " You know how men just dont know how to be sarcastic the right way."

"I better call him. I hate misunderstandings!" She declared and snatched her cell phone off the kitchen counter top. " Should I call him or should I text saying thanks for the gift but why a blue elephant?"

"Maybe he is gay and just wants to say that you are cute and cuddly like the elephant," she continued reasoning. " Maybe his favorite color is blue!"

"If he is gay shouldn't his favorite color be pink?" She argued back. "Besides he is not gay. First base, remember?"

"Gay guys can kiss very well."

"You would know!"

"I am just saying."

"I am calling him!" She punched in his number before she could change her mind.

"Hey! Erm.. thanks for the birthday gift!" She waited till he wished her. " Did I love it?" She repeated after him. " Here's the thing, I could love it depending on why you gifted it to me...."

"It reminded me of you," he whispered.

"What?" She squeaked! "Why on earth would a blue elephant remind you of me?" She demanded.

"What blue elephant?" He asked. "Oh no!" He groaned. " I must have pasted the wrong address on the wrong parcel! The Blue Elephant was meant as a gift for my five year old niece. I guess she received your perfume bottle...."

Men and Delusions

Freedom! So this is what it felt like to be truly free! He smiled and stepped on the gas. The open skies looming above the soulless highway whizzed past his two year old Honda. He turned the knob on his dashboard and “I want to break free” vibrated against the closed windows of his air-conditioned car threatening to shatter them into invisible fragments. He jerked his head forward with powerful thrusts as he screamed the lyrics aloud. He gripped the steering with his right hand and rested his left hand on the gear stick to command the car to his bidding. A quick glance at the dashboard informed him that he had been traveling for a couple of hours. Another couple of hours to go before he could meet Dev, his roommate through those crazy college years.

At the thought of Dev, he smiled some more. What a weekend this was going to be! Dev was possibly the only being alive under the sun, who hated cleanliness as much as he did. Who loved disorder with the same passion as he. Who courted insanity with the fearless heart of a love struck Romeo. Dev could drink more than a dozen beers in less than an hour and he would not mind throwing up right where he was sitting. He remembered Kaushik’s birthday party. Kaushik’s parents had gone out of town and so they had decided to party home. Partying home meant more booze, less money. It was perfect. Kaushik had challenged Dev to drink fourteen beers in less than thirty minutes. If he accomplished that Kaushik would treat Dev to fourteen more beers.

They had been sitting in the very exquisitely decorated living room of Kaushik’s house. A nice beige carpet rested beneath white sofas. A designer centre table curved around a potted exotic plant with red buds or flowers. Seven of them gathered around the center table. Some of them were sprawled on the sofa while the others had made the carpet their home. Dev was resting his back against the three seater, when the challenge was issued. Never the one to back down, he accepted the challenge. Fourteen beers were lined on the delicate glass of the very expensive table. The hooting and cheering began the minute Dev picked up the first brown bottle and touched it to his lips. Kaushik pushed on the timer.

Twenty seven minutes later Dev had drowned fourteen bottles of beer. Kaushik groaned and headed out to fulfill his end of the bargain. Dev grinned at all of them and leaned back. He pushed his head back and closed his eyes. All of them were in awe of Dev. He was their new Hero. Without warning, Dev jerked his head forward and threw up a stinky green mass all over the thatched beige carpet. There was a stunned silence. A second later a choked gurgle filled up the silence as Dev barfed up some more green yuck. The stain on the beige carpet increased. Everybody’s eyes widened, but nobody seemed capable of movement. Only Dev, realizing he was soiling an imported expense struggled to get to his feet. He slipped in his own vomit and on his way down, threw up some more green stuff which splashed all over the spotless white sofa.
Kaushik arrived and promptly burst into a nervous ‘Fuck’ brigade. Dev by then had passed out in his puke and seemed content to sleep there. The rest of them had just shrugged their shoulders and carried on drinking; completely ignoring Dev and the stinking mess he had created.
Now that was a guy’s life!
You did what you wanted to do, when you wanted to do it and you woke up the next morning, to sort the mess you had created the earlier evening. You did not planning for a mess, which might never occur and waste your time chalking up contingencies for the might-just-never-occur mess! But that’s exactly what you do when you get married. You plan, plan and then again plan some more. Not that he regretted marrying. Never that. He just wished married life was not such an organized entity. He wished he could leave his shoes in the bedroom and sip his tea on the pot. He did not want to have breakfast on the table and he wanted to leave his wet towel on the bed for days on an end. Towels had a way of drying up.
Dev wisely hadn’t married. He did not believe for one second that marriage would change Dev anyway. Dev was incorrigible. And he was going to have a fantastic weekend with his incorrigible buddy.

Still humming on a sore throat, he swerved his car into the parking space of the given address. He whistled at the tiny row house sitting behind a tiny manicured lawn. Either Dev had developed a green thumb, or he had married without telling anybody. He could already see his weekend going downhill.

On a heavy heart he grabbed his bag from the backseat and pushed the doorbell. Dev opened it in an instant and enveloped him in a warm hug. This couldn’t be so bad he thought as he patted Dev’s back.

“Did you get married or something?” he whispered, just in case Dev’s wife was at home and could eavesdrop.

Dev laughed out loud and shook his head, “Girlfriend,” he whispered back with a wink.
He breathed easier and smiled wider. Now girlfriends are not such a bad deal. In a worst case a girlfriend can be let go without much remorse. With a wife that equation changes. He walked into a neatly kept living room and flung his bag on a rich brown leather sofa, as he responded to Dev’s mundane questions on automatic. Dev lifted his bag off the sofa and enquired about his job.

He was about to seat himself on the sofa when Dev grabbed his elbow and tugged him back. “Shoes off the carpet!” he hissed. “If Mia sees a shoe stain, she’ll go berserk!”

THE FAREWELL

Her heels clicked on the damp cobblestones as she hurried to reach the book store. It was only eleven in the morning, but the sky was already gray. Rain drops scattered with reluctant softness on the jackets of the pedestrians. Cumbersome journey, they must’ve have thought before they started. Like she had thought, before she had stepped out.

Was she really comparing herself to stubborn drops of rain? Is this what they called mid-life crisis? She; a very successful columnist of the bold metropolitan weekly “The Sensuous Woman”, was heading towards that point in life, which everybody avoided. Her pace quickened of its own accord and her angry footsteps kicked at the cold and invisible wind around them.

She had spent the past six years writing about how every woman could be stellar if she wanted to. In bed and otherwise. She had written about how ‘attractive’ was just a preconceived notion, subject to change at the drop of a hat. Yet, as she stood and eyed her thirty three year old face in the mirror, she had failed to convince herself that she was in any way ‘attractive.’

A man who had just stepped out of the bakery looked at her and smiled. He was not unattractive. She returned his smile and quickened her step. He wasn’t following her. He was headed in the other direction.

Bookstores were forever inviting her to a reading of her very own column. “Its good publicity!” her editor had insisted. And so she had attended courses on voice modulation and agreed to her first ever book reading. The bookstore was filled with women who had read her column and had come to check whether the author of the scintillating “Viva Secrets” actually merited their admiration. By the time she had finished reading, the three hundred female faces were radiant. Like she had just helped them achieve the perfect orgasmic climax. Maybe she had. She would always write about how voice and tone were imperative for the perfect pleasure.

Laughter resonated from somewhere within the café. She so wanted to pause for some coffee herself. But she was running late for the reading. You should never keep an expecting audience waiting, they begin to lose faith in your goodness. Just another block to go and she would be at ‘Pages.’

Her readings had become so popular that bookstores now sold passes to women to attend those. Posters were put up a week before the event. Maybe the success had gotten to her head and maybe her work had really lost its touch. But she didn’t want that rubbed in her face by her editor. She was being fired from her job. Someone new with a fresh perspective was being recruited. Yes, the editor’s niece definitely had a fresh perspective.

As she neared the bookstore, the rain began to fall harder, urging her to step inside quickly. She was greeted warmly by the store staff and handed a warm cup of coffee. She had five minutes before her reading commenced. All night she had thought about turning this reading into her farewell speech. Should she be sweet and nice? No, she decided as she downed the coffee. “Viva Secrets” was about the secretive woman, the one which she keeps hidden from the world at large. She would do justice to her column, by revealing her darkest secret. That would be her true farewell.

“Hi!,” she said into the mike as she took her place behind the pedestal. “I am Mag Stewart, 36 years old and a virgin. I have never had a single boyfriend and I have never been kissed. “Viva Secrets” is about me. About everything I ever wanted to be. It is not about being you. It is about being a woman…”

Mom and Friends

Rather mom and ‘her’ friends! My mom has a very few friends, her meager social structure does not extend beyond the confines of this country. Language problem, you see. She is not very comfortable conversing in anything but good old Hindi and if you can’t trade gossip, then you can be friends. English comes as a close second, but talking in English qualifies as a compromise.

Anyways, so it is very rare for me to be present at any of her social gatherings. I hate traveling. My unwilling mind, further instructs my body to not take those ten huge steps from the bedroom to the living room. So I guiltily stay locked in my room and tap away on the laptop. The only thing which will entice me to embark on this arduous journey, is perhaps the presence of a good-looking guy, who does not look like the aunty’s son (which he is) and is definitely bound to break my heart. The masochist in me…. Really!

Such an event, is like finding a lice on a bald man’s head. Could happen, only by accident. And accidents do happen. So when I walked in home, one breezy evening, I see this handsome gentleman, sipping tea from my mom’s favourite China set and politely indulging her and her friend, with his breath-taking smile. My mom having noticed me, smiled and waved me in for introductions.

My heart is thumping so hard, that I am afraid I am going to wake up my sleeping dogs and send them into a barking frenzy. I manage to remain Ms Super Cool with the right amount of attitude and seat myself on the settee opposite his. I have just patted myself on the back for handling myself so well, when the aunty says,

“We were just telling Chotu, what a cute little kid you were.”

I was? I already sensed my smile faltering

“Remember that time when you were three and we had gone to Shashi’s wedding? You peed on poor Shashi’s wedding Sharara! Ha ha ha ha….!” She laughed remembering the incident which had probably disgusted the bride then, scared the three year old me into peeing some more and mortified the current me into silence.

Why were they discussing my most embarrassing moments anyway? I could sense the oh-so-cute ‘chotu’ imagining me standing on the frills of a red wedding sharara, peeing in my pants. I felt as elated as a squirrel caught stealing a nut. The difference is, that the squirrel runs away with the nut, while I just wanted to run and hide into the hole, without the nut.

“ and…” My mom was saying, “Chotu was there too. He was just seven then. But he remembers it too! Ha ha ha ha…”

Even Chotu’s smile had broadened to accommodate an almost laugh. Of course Chotu would remember! Even he did not, he would darn well picture it now and remember ‘that’ picture for the rest of his life.

Seriously!!! Mom and her friends and well, their good-looking sons!!!

Window Shopping

I went window-shopping.

I shopped for everything, but for those items in the window.

It was not my fault! I was in very encouraging company. Every time I ‘ooohed’ the smart brown bag, stocked strategically on the glass shelf, my companion nodded very understandingly.

“Leather,” she said reaching out to caress the rich brown texture. “Italian leather!” she admired.

My appreciation glinted in the greedy sheen of my eyes. Brown Italian leather, is like dark brown chocolate for the depressed mind. It works wonders!

“Pretty!” I said. The most painful understatement.

“It would hurt, wouldn’t it?” she asked looking at me and drinking in my painful expression.

“What would?” I asked, so completely baffled.

“To see someone else clutching this beauty and trotting around!” she said turning to look at the bag.

For a moment I actually picturized the situation she had so briefly described. The pain was so unbearable that five minutes later I was signing on the credit card slip spewed out by those maniacal machines at the cashier.

I walked out with a feeling of pride. I walked out poorer than I had thought I would be. I walked out with my companion who had led me to financial ruins without an agenda to do so. My companion hadn’t picked up a bag.

Brown Italian leather bags!