Story for Children - Chapter 5

or

A for Adult Story - Chapter 1

The night little boy, V, witnessed, in person, the philosopher Bob expertly woo his six strings, he knew he would lose much sleep. The following nights were spent in pure torment. Drenched in soulful melodies rendered by Bob, V found himself violently thirsting to meet this myth, kiss his feet, serve the legend. Thus is the birth, the genesis of obsession. V could think of nothing else. Bob everywhere. Bob in everything. Food, delicious or otherwise, reeked of Bob. Routine work reminded him of Bob. Mindless gossip distilled to impromptu soliloquies on Bob. Sex, Bob. Wine, Bob. Music, Bob. Books, Bob. Bob, Bob, Bob, for eternity.

His friends were, not surprisingly, quite worried. "He's slipping to the sky," they would hwhisper. "Bob possesses the eerie power to set his lovers upon the route of no return, where no destiny exists to stir hope in the bosom. If V persists in this destructive love, we will lose him forever to the sky."
They spoke gentle words to him, offered gifts, tried diverting his mind to more fruitful hobbies, like horse riding. Their efforts were hopelessly doomed from the beginning. By the time they got wind of this insidious, one-sided religion, V found himself swirling, puppet like, in the rough storm unconsciously inflicted by Bob.

V spent more time with himself. Energy, he thought. This god brings me energy, while being curiously tiring, too. He slipped into endless worlds of mirrors. He met fellow Bobists living in his reflections. He needed no one else in his life.
"I need..," murmured V to himself softly. "Olive oil, mint, pesto, rice, herbs…""Excuse me… oh, I'm so sorry… Let me help you…"

V frowned. Stupid little girl, fucking bitch, he swore. Feet drenched in sunflower oil, he did not feel very forgiving.
The little girl stopped, suddenly, noticing his choice of music. "You listen to Bob!"
V nodded curtly.
"Whoever thought my loser-brother's music would be followed this wide!" She chuckled.

V froze. His blood pumped furiously through his veins. Bob's sister… he felt the urge to press his lips to the girl's. He felt himself grow. He fought the urge to lose himself in her tresses... He turned to the girl for the first time since their meeting.
Petite, with curly tresses, the little girl stood before him, glowing. Her eyes were liquid green, her lips cherry red, her skin toned down brown. The fingers were thin, lined with cuts – the gift of loving the six-string.

Story for Children- Chapter 4

And so it all began. The little boy would religiously wake up at 4 o clock each morning and begin his holy rituals, starting with the ablutions and ending with prasad. He was careful not to wake the little girl, though. She would wake up at 8, drink her tea and leave for office, only to return at 10 pm.

The little boy spent all his time meditating in front of the altar, of course. In his mental and spiritual absence, the little girl took care of the house; she swept, washed and cooked like before. As days went by, the little boy began to see progress: he began to understand what the bottles were discussing. Strangely enough, the discussions seemed to be a seamless loop, like thus, barely discernable because of the slurred voices:

"The Queen it is, with her glittering diamonds." - This was a rough, Russian voice.
"And the jester by her side." - French.
"Oh, I say, seven for heaven!" - British, of course.
"Why, you.." - Angry chorus.

After which it deteriorated into dreadful, angry buzzing, like flies. After the buzzing died down, the conversation picked up from the beginning all over again.

The little boy simply did not know what to make of it. This was going to be a tougher ordeal than he ever imagined.

Story for Children- Chapter 3

"Did you know, tortoise, that polar bears are actually nudists evolved over the years?" The yellow tortoise bobbed at her feet, clearly startled.

"When early man introduced the concept of clothing, there was a section of society that begged to differ. The nudists set up a colony in the Arctic, far away from their hitherto fellow men. As time passed by, the nudists evolved into creatures with heavy fur to protect themselves from the biting cold. We know them as polar bears."

The little boy, who was following this carefully, was flabbergasted. The little girl was either clearly mad, or sagely beyond her years. The little boy could glimpse the Bottle on a shelf nearby, and tried to softly make his way to It.

SQUEEEAAAK!

The little boy looked around, startled, and realized that he had stepped on a blue giraffe near the door, which had squeaked loudly in turn. He sheepishly met the little girl's mildly surprised gaze.

"Hello, there," he ventured. And, feeling obliged to render an explanation, "I came in through the bathroom window."

"Wasn't it dreadfully slippery with all the moss growing on the walls?," she asked, in mild concern.

"Oh, it was OK, I managed quite alright."

The little girl smiled mildly. She was turning out to be a very mild person.

"Can I help you in any way?" she asked.

The little boy narrated the entire story to her, with some passion. The little girl listened sympathetically.

"So, you came back for the Bottle," she said. "You're welcome to be my guest to have it."

She led the way to her living room, where all the Bottle stood in resplendent splendour in the midst of the other bottles. The little boy stood before the holy scene for awhile; he could not be sure, but he thought he heard conversation from the altar, from the bottles themselves!

"Can you hear anything?," he asked the little girl.

"Why, no! Do you? I expect it's the neighbors. They do carry on so. Their parents were recently married, you see, and are on a honeymoon. When the cats are away, the mice will play!" she ended wisely.

The little boy fell silent. He knew what he must do. He mustered courage.

"May I stay at your place for some time?"

The little girl cocked her head mildly and looked seriously at the boy. "You're welcome if you want to," she said. "I'm gone most of the day - I work in an IT company, you know - so you should find it comfortable here."

"What work do you do?"

"I am a Self-Motivations Catalyst. I help people stay motivated in their work, and help them see a future in the company."

Story for Children -Chapter 2
The alcohol shopkeeper was in good spirits that day. He was always happy when the little girl paid his shop a visit. She was, in many ways, a divine sign that alcohol was his true calling. You see, once upon a time, the shopkeeper had been a sweets vendor, and had owned a famous bakery chain called 'Iyengar Bakery.' Due to a series of unfortunate circumstances, the shopkeeper woke up one day to find the the Key opened the door no more. He made do with what he had, and became an alcohol vendor, owner of the famous alcohol chain 'Iyengar Bar.' His is a different story however, and we shall discuss him another day.

The character we are concerned about, at the moment, is his son, the little boy. When the shopkeeper got back home after a hard day's work each day, he would bring a gift for the little boy: a vintage alcohol bottle. He would often tell the little boy the story of the lost Key and the mysterious, divine circumstances that led to his being an alcohol shopkeeper. To his mother's consternation, the little boy listened very devoutly to these stories, and soon began to equate alcohol with the Divine presence in his life. He would religiously store all his father's daily gifts and then perform an elaborate ceremony involving flowers, incense, and empty alcohol bottles.

After many days of austere practice, the little boy was gifted with what he considered a divine vision: a vision of the Bottle that would save humanity. The Incarnation, he saw, would be in the shape of a Happy Buddha carved out of translucent green stone. When his father received his gift from Korea, a cheap arrack in the form of a Happy Buddha and carved from translucent green stone, the little boy was awed. The Bottle had chosen his humble home as its Headquarters to work It's magic from! Under the watch of his apalled mother, the little boy intensified his rituals and meditated upon the Bottle constantly.

While meditating one day, the little boy felt a disturbance in the divine aura surrounding him. He opened his eyes to see his father sell the bottle to a little girl. Distraught, the little boy surreptitiously followed the little girl home to try and coax the Bottle back to It's abode.

When they reached the little girl's home, the boy was startled for a second. The house was crooked so he had to crane his neck to make it look alright. After the initial moment of confusion, the little boy climbed up the pipes and entered the house through the bathroom window. He slowly made his way around, when he noticed the little girl in the bathtub with her back to him.

The little girl was dressed in a bright pink bathrobe and had a yellow tortoise floating near her feet. She seemed to be narrating a story to put it to sleep.

A Story for Children

There was once a little girl who lived by herself in the city. She lived in a strange, lopsided house, which made you want to crane your neck sideways to correct its defects. During working hours, the little girl was a successful businesswoman, but after work, she was the most meticulous collector of alcohol memorabilia as a little girl could be.

The interesting part was that she never drank a drop of alcohol herself. Oh, no, not she. She simply loved collecting her beloved bottles and stacking them on the shelf so that the sun rays passing through would soften the whole house in an amber tone in the mornings. On weekends, she would sit in her rocking chair and watch her clothes dry in the sun, content, while liquid amber sunshine washed over her. Unfortunately, this meant that the bottles themselves were always drunk, bring full of alcohol all the time. They tended to quarrel a lot among one another and delve into deep philosophical conversations, talking the most horrid nonsense you've ever heard.

One evening, the little girl went to the nearby alcohol store to see if there was an alcohol antique she could buy. The store keeper was joyous to see her. He considered the little girl a valuable, if scandalous, customer.

'Why, hello little girl! What will you have today?'

The little girl surveyed her options, a little disappointed. She realized that her collection was quite extensive, and it was becoming harder and harder to find a fascinating bottle of alcohol.

The store keeper saw the chagrin on her face and thought hard. He then quickly ran in and brought out a queerly striking bottle of alcohol, shaped like a happy Buddha. It seemed to be carved out of translucent orange stone, with the features beautifully defined. The little girl could not take her eyes off it.

The store keeper smiled benevolently and named a price thrice the cost of the cheap Korean packaged arrack he had received as a gift the same morning. The little girl bought it, thrilled, unable to believe her luck at having obtained what was clearly a rare piece of alcohol art.

She took the happy Buddha home, and placed it among the rest of the bottles, in the center. The others were immediately suspicious of a new comer who resembled the unfortunate union between a family member and a pot.

The happy Buddha smiled at them happily. 'Hello there, pleased to meet you,' he greeted them politely. He did not seem to be inebriated.

To be continued...

How to Avoid Cancer
or
Frog Fiction

We were at the tail end of the queue in a grocery store within an overcrowded Bangalore mall. It was Sunday and she had offered to 'teach' me how to make good pasta. The severe dearth of female company for several months had made me accept the offer and renounce my curd rice-pickle for that evening.

A couple from the northern part of the country made amorous hindi cooings with semi make -out moves, in front of our trolley. The man at the adjacent counter subjected the billing assistant to complex mathematical calculations involving his sodexho coupons.

"So", she said, " you love rains because it brings out the frogs..."

"The rains in green fields, hostel campuses and the rains at home...not the ones here in Bangalore..." I was busy watching the coo couple in front of us. Their turn at the billing counter had come, which gave temporary relief to the groping.

Our turn at the counter arrived.
"You forgot the olive oil!"
"No, I didn't. It's expensive..." I tried to explain
"You can't make good pesto without olive oil"
"What's pesto?"
She looked irritated by my ignorance.
"Go get the olive oil..." she whined

I ran across the queues and the aisles and plonked a small bottle worth 150 rupees at the counter. She looked pleased.
The bill exceeded 500 rupees. Hidden costs.

We were walking home.
"I love the way they hop," I said
She raised one eyebrow in incomprehension.
"Frogs..."
"Oh!"
It was a topic which had ended at the queue, I realized. I felt quite silly and remained silent.
"Go on..." she gave her indulgent smile.
I felt encouraged. I put on my "lecture time" voice.
"There are so many creatures that walk, run, go on all fours, fly...but these are the only guys who do that cool hop thing"
"Okayyy..." she drawled
"And also when we dissected frogs at school in biology classes..."
"You guys used to cut up frogs at school?" she winced
"Didn't you?"
"I took up accounts just because I hated this dissection stuff..."
"Anyways...we had to nail the drugged up frog to this small wooden board and every time I did it I felt like I was crucifying a saint, a prophet..."
"Perhaps the only guy who associates the frog with religion...and I am cooking pasta for him!"
I gave a grateful smile.

She made pasta in some white-green sauce which tasted terrific. She ordered me to help out with a few culinary procedures, but when I goofed up on the first few simpler orders she let me watch her do the cooking as the honored spectator. She was graceful and quick and efficient.

"So do you like the pasta, frog-worshiper?" she asked
"Gastric orgasms shake my body and soul!" This was an old "funny line" of mine.
She seemed to like it.

When the pasta was over and we sat in awkward silence, I continued " Sometimes, I think, I am this frog prince in reverse"
I was feeling particularly good about the evening and she was a pretty girl. Also we were having my reserve Jacob's Creek.

"There are these frogs in fairy tales which turn into princes when kissed...while I am a frog that somehow has turned into a man and will turn back into a frog sometime. Hence the fascination with my kin"

I realized I was drunk. I should be trying to get a kiss out of this entire deal, I thought, not talking rot about frogs.

She smiled and went "awwwww".

“Maybe you need a kiss to turn into a frog!"

"Yeah from my true love, where ever she may be"

She looked at her watch. She told me it was getting late and she better be leaving. I thanked her for the pasta and opened the gate for her and waved goodbye.

She hadn't bothered to wash the dishes. I got out my dish washing soap and turned on the tap at the kitchen.

Brand Awareness- A tale of horror

(Here's a short story I wrote a while back...one couldn't avoid the semi-autobiographical touches!)

He realized all was not well with him when he caught his parents staring at him incredulously. In fact mother looked very worried.
“ You skip programs on TV to watch ads,” she said.
“Marketing ma,” he said. “ I need to know what’s happening in that free for all chaos called the Indian market. There is a paradigm shift happening in it that necessitates value added marketing to overcome its constraints …”
“You worry me,” she replied quietly.
He couldn’t understand it. After all his entire undergraduate life had been punctuated with pithy little sarcasms from these parents on his passion or rather lack of it, for academia.
Now, when he finally seemed to be doing something in that direction-there was cause for worry.
So he called up his friend and asked him if there was anything wrong in watching advertisements. He explained why he felt there was no cause for alarm and gave him some statistics on how American kids always preferred ads to TV programs and how they all happily turned into rabid compulsive spenders.
He also added helpfully that there was a marketing term to describe such behavior.
“You worry me,” the friend said.

He realized it was time for some deep introspection. It was true. He was in the cold steel grip of some terrible disease. He decided to take a walk alone and sort out things for himself. His head was spinning. At odd moments in the night he could hear voices whispering long convoluted sentences into his ears. The stench of management jargon assailed the nostrils.
Realigning core competencies, asynchronous transitional, said the evil voice in his ear. The only way to drown this diabolic drone out, he figured, was to spend some time at the little bookshop round the corner.
On his way, a pretty girl passed him by- his neighbor’s daughter. She smiled at him. She stopped. “ How are you?” she beamed.
Here, he said to myself, is a customer of the future. A young woman who will consume, spend, watch ads, rear children that are brand conscious morons – he needed to target her, segment and then position for her types. He needed to get into her mind.
“Hello”, he said with his harmless type smile. ‘You needed to get them to lose their guard before you get down to the research part’ said a voice in his head
“Where you going?” she asked
“To the bookshop”
“Same here…mind if I tag along!”
“Sure”
An eager research subject-every marketer’s dream. His spine tingled. Maybe he should start, he thought, with her food habits. He had read somewhere that women are what they eat.
“You’ve seen the new restaurant down the street?” he asked her…
Soon lovely brown eyes were telling him her preferences in fast foods, service quality expectations, spending habits…great control had to be exerted over himself as customer insights filled his body and soul.
He gave a huge moan of delight that must have sounded to her like a cry of great pain. She stopped talking mid-sentence about the way rotis are made in restaurants and stared at him… blank.
“You all right?”
He excused himself. They had reached the bookshop. He needed to be alone with the books, to get his mind off his affliction.
The bookshop was crowded with people busy browsing their way through the latest best sellers. Point of purchase advertisements for music CDs and computer games beckoned the unwary. Clever and strategic placement of ads he told himself...perfect eye level placement of products.

And then it happened.
He found himself dragged by an invisible force towards the shelves where the management books were neatly arranged.
Consumer behavior…he carelessly skimmed through the pages of the first book he laid his hands on.
“Indicative of future prospects, failure to enter solution mode interfaces brand equity” it told him.
Not many would have understood that. But he did. It was obvious. There was a message in all of this and no one seemed to know about it.
He took out another book and read the first line his eye fell on. Kotler…“ Premier Customer experience helping markets focus on immediate objectives…” Glorious! It was a jig-saw puzzle just for him and the pieces were all falling in together on that momentous day.
He went from book to book and hungrily turned the pages for those meaningful lines.
He had to tell some one the deep secret he had suddenly uncovered.
There she was, his very own pretty brown eyes. She caught the mad gleam in his eyes and asked “You sure you alright? You worry me!”
He told her about all that he had discovered, of his great revelations.

Segmentingtargettingpositioningcustomerdelightbrandidentity

brandperceptionmatrixdesireactivationmodelmarketskimmingparadigmshift….

The words flowed like an endless torrent as he shared his enlightenment with the world at the top of his voice.
She screamed.

The doctor and the nurse were smiling at him. He had been there for three months. The nurse held out two little pills in her hands. Choose one…he chose the red pill and studied her reaction. Cunning method of finding out the subject’s color preferences he told himself. Could be useful in packaging studies to develop optimal marketing mix…

Biograph

History- Personal

I was 18. I was on one of the then obligatory 'family temple tours'. These temple tours were dreadfully boring exercises in ‘holidaying’ which involved traveling for almost a week, up and down the Tamizh state as a familial group in a cramped up wagon. The few times you got to step out of the vehicle, you were ushered in to a crowded place where you elbowed everyone to try to get a glimpse of a dark idol wrapped in dhotis and/or silk saris, lit dimly by the flicker of the aarti of a money grubbing priest.

On this particular trip, I was in the midst of teenage existential angst and rebellion. I had decided to sulk through the entire trip by sleeping in the back seat when all at once the vehicle passed by an old and semi abandoned temple standing uncared for, in the middle of a non descript village.

This ruined and abandoned affair which I had to convince the entire family to pop in by, turned out to be Gangai Konda Chozhapuram. There was hardly anyone there amidst the gargantuan ruins and the sole priest/ in charge narrated the history of this ruined city. I fell in love. To my mind, forever fixated on the romance of ruins and ancient stones, this was my own paradise.

I must have run around the place with my jaw down for a long while, until I was pulled out to fight out the next crowded temple. I promised myself that I would keep coming back.

After 10 years of dreaming about it, I managed to get back again this week. After the same ten long years my mother tricked me into a temple tour again. But this time, I fixed the itinerary (Chennai - Pondy- Chidambaram- Sri Rangam ) and made sure that it included Gangai Konda Chozhapuram. And to be doubly sure, I volunteered to drive the 650 odd kilometers involved, in the two days of leave I had from work.

On the breath taking-ly picturesque rural ‘by-pass way’ dotted with sunflower fields, lotus ponds and Village deities from Chidabaram to Trichy I drove by a curiously lonely temple in the midst of one more of the hundred odd villages on the way. I had stumbled upon Gangai Konda Chozhapuram again!

History

Gangai Konda Chozhapuram is a proclamation of an astounding victory. The ruthless Chozha armies had conquered all land till Bengal under the reign of Rajendra Chozha. The Chozhas, thus, controlled quite a huge territory around 800 AD from Sri Lanka in the South to Orissa and Bengal in the North- East.

To celebrate this victory, Rajendra shifted his capital from the traditional Tanjavur to the new city that he built for the “Conquerors of Ganga”. This city of Gangai Kondan continued to be the Capital for close to 8 generations of the Chozhas. All that remains of it now are some scattered ruins and this magnificent temple. The temple itself was built to rival the great Brihadeeswara at Tanjavur, built by Rajendra’s father Rajaraja. Gangai Kondan’s imposing tower is shorter than Brihadeeswara’s but wider. Rajendra was inspired by the Sun Temple of Konarak, newly under his realm, to incorporate design elements of the ‘Chariot of the Sun” prototype.

No one is quite sure how such a great city fell to ruin. Most attribute it to the vengeance wreaked by the sudden but brief resurgence of the Pandyas; some others to the usual earthquakes and disasters. It seems that almost all of the existing houses in Gangai Kondan were built with ancient bricks pilfered from the ruins- a still extant practice that has been on for centuries!

Religion

The imposing sculptures all around Gangai Kondan are an intoxicating mix of religion with personal history.

Sample this piece representing the crowning of Chandikeshwar. Who posed as Chandikeshwar here is anybody's guess.



The most awe inspiring sight for me in all of Gangai Kondan is the Shiva Lingam in the inner sanctum. Alone in its gigantic presence, the prismatic form of the idol is unspoiled. With less than 5 people around at any given time, the imposing figure resides in an ancient stillness. I offered the priest the white lotus my mother had plucked at a nearby village pond. The flower sat alone on the cusp of the Lingam as its sole adornment.