Flower Story

"Why don't you tell me your story?" she asked. "You write so well, am sure. Even your e-mails reek of poetry and incomprehensible words."
"Is that an insult?" I asked.
She laughed. "I mean well. You do write well. So why don't you read me a story?"
"Well, am not sure if you would like any of them..."
"You think I won't understand them?"
I knew there was a trap being set and I had to avoid it in three seconds.
"They are very ordinary stories...too much nonsense."
"Ok..." she drawled. She looked at my notebook and pointed at a page. "Read me this one"
"Oh! That's not really a story. It happened to one of my friends and I wrote it for him"
"Wow! Now you have friends who supply you with stories also. Are you writing one about me now?"
Trap number two?  I laughed lamely. "Ok here goes the story of Ranga and his Pushpa." I said clearing my voice.
"A Madrasi in love with a Punju chick, is it?"
"Well...yeah kind of. There are chicks from other parts of the country as well, in it."
"Nice!" she said approvingly. "Start."

"It all started some twenty five years back, when Ranga was in his seventh standard at the Sivamani and Sons Matriculation Higher Secondary School, a horrible school that was tucked away in an unfashionable corner of T Nagar, Madras."
"I have been there!"
"Where? Sivamani and Sons? That's my school you know."
"No. T Nagar. That's where that Nalli saree shop is no?"
"Yeah."
"Go ahead with the story, please."
" His classroom overlooked a tiny apartment and lovely little Pushpa who had bunked class and gone home during the lunch break, waved at him from her balcony. There she was in a florid pink shirt that beamed up her smile across the few hundred meters that separated his classroom window from her sun kissed balcony. The gentle sunshine bathed her luxuriously. Her black hair caught the breeze and she shook it around a bit to bring it under control. She was eating something from a plastic cup with a steel spoon. He imagined it to be a soft white Marwari sweet, which you take in small bites so that it can last forever. He was terribly fascinated by Pushpa- fair skinned, flirtatious, Hindi speaking, precociously well formed, bubble gum chewing girl of his dreams who could entertain him better than any Roja or Kushbu in his late night departures from reality. Soon life would imitate bad art and his chemistry teacher would stand beside him and stare out of the window, provoking much laughter from all around including from across the balcony, and whack him with a heavy notebook. And that is how Ranga fell in love with a name."
"Haha! Kushbu! You South Indian men all like these big women no?"
"Well, not all of us. You are not big and I like you well enough." I realized that she might take this meager attempt at flirtation really badly, only after I heard the words escaping my mouth.
"Thank God I am not like them. I hope I never am like that."
"Fair enough." I smiled as sweetly as I could, begging the forgiveness of Nagma, Roja, Jyotika and all their ilk for that treachery.

"Ok so...Seven years later he met a Priya, reading a book next to him on a train from Bangalore. Bespectacled in an irresistibly sexy way, she turned the pages of the Agatha Christie very fast. Ranga knew little of Agatha Christie. He knew somewhere in the pages of those books, there lurked a Hercule Poirot -a French detective with a strange mustache. He asked if she like Poirot. Priya seemed extremely pleased by that question. So delighted was she that she closed the book in one quick smooth movement and let it thud down between them on the seat. She told him that it was a terrible book and it belonged to her friend. They talked about career choices, movies, AR Rahman, boys and girls they seemed to know in common through complex relationship webs and then she excused herself to go to the toilet. Ranga planned to follow her after a minute and stand by the open compartment door. He would invite her over. Much conversation would resume. Gentle breeze will push hair strands for him to settle against a beautifully formed ear...Ranga opened the book to see what it was about.
"Pushpa Raghuram Book no. 127. 1998" it said on the first page, written a cute cursive hand, in pencil.
His heart sank. Surely it couldn't be the Pushpa who had dropped out of school after tenth standard."

"Ooh! Nice touch! This Madrasi boy has got it for this Pushpa babe uh?"
"Well...see it's not technically the same Pushpa. I thought that would be very cool, you know. Like the name follows him around and all."
"Why?"
"Well...I don't know. It seemed like a good idea. Fate. Irony. That kind of stuff."
She rolled her eyes and smiled. I looked away.
"You don't like it do you?"
"No!" She took five seconds to finish that word. "It's really nice and sweet."
I continued reading it out, encouraged.
"The Pushpa from his school would have struggled to finish a collection of ten nursery rhymes, he knew. Although, he also strongly believed, that someone blessed with the kind of largess that she possessed, need not be burdened with the material pressures of learning anything. He wondered who this Pushpa could be. Would she be a well-read stunner,bespectacled and tall and dark haired and lusty, in ways Priya could only partially be?  Ranga opened the book and breathed in it's perfumes to get closer to her.
"Don't you just love the smell of books?" said the voice that stood behind him. She was back and she beamed at him. She took the book and sniffed at it and beamed again. He smiled lamely and asked her if she wanted to share a cutlet with him at the next station. While plying her with cutlet and tomato ketchup he would ask her about her friend Pushpa."

"So all the women in your stories read books and all, uh?"
"Not all of them. In fact in the end of the story there is a rather illiterate Pushpa."
"But all pseudo-girls your hero likes I can see. I tried reading an Agatha Christie once. Man! It was so boring and obvious. It seems she was a manic depressive that woman. No wonder she kept writing these mystery stories."
"Really? Agatha Christie was a depressive?"
"Yeah. Seems she even faked her disappearance once. Nut case."
"How do you know all this?"
"Well... I read, you know," she smiled. "I don't read all your big French stuff and all, but it's not that I don't read at all!" She looked so beautifully angry that I apologized profusely for offending her in any way possible.
"Arrey...I am just pulling your leg. Haha! Continue with your Ranga and his Punju babes..."

"A week after their journey together, Priya called Ranga and asked him if he wanted to see the new Matrix movie at Satyam cinemas. Ranga asked if she was bringing someone else along, to which she replied with an “of course not” that scared him with its boldness. Self-assurance in women was a frighteningly attractive proposition."

I paused to see if she would object. She was busy texting someone on her i-phone. She looked up and said without a pause "I am listening go on" and tapped something on the screen and put the phone back in her handbag. 

"How old is this story?"

"Not very."

"How? Matrix was released when I was in school. Do you know if Keanu Reeves is still acting?"

"He should be. So...He bought her a tub of cheese popcorn and while she crunched and chewed busily, he guided the conversation towards the Poirot mystery with great dexterity. They talked about Keanu Reeves..."

"He was so cute."

"... Al Pacino, Godfather, gangsters, Sherlock Holmes, mystery novels..."

"See...pseudo!"

"... and finally, when Ranga realized that the width of his knowledge was stretched beyond limits, he asked her if she still had the Agatha Christie she was reading at the train.

She had given it back to Pushpa just the other day. May be she can get it for him the next time they met. He was distracted briefly from his pursuit of Pushpa by this promise of a next time, through the remaining length of the film.

At their next meeting at a café at Nungambakam, she passed on the book to him. They talked of her school days, her friends, the girls who bullied her and her life at college. She confessed her huge crush on Tom Cruise, at which he felt a gush of jealousy. She told him about her love for Kamal Hassan’s films and how she wished everybody else could make movies as intelligently as that man could. At some point he ceased listening to her and started examining the book in his hands. It was covered with a transparent plastic sheet, the way the British Council Library protected its books. The pages were still crisp white and at page 97 there was a little fold on the top of the page. Maybe Pushpa had never got beyond that page. Did she have to go all the way to her place to pick this up, he asked with cunning gratitude. Oh no, she lived in that area only, she said. All she had to do was stop by on her way here and pick it up for him. She beamed at him, with the pride of having pulled off something for him. He smiled back and smelled the pages of the book. She laughed."

"Nice. Listen, Lalith, I have to go now. I have a meeting with a friend and I will have to get ready."

"Oh! Cool! So I will read this to you when you get back home?"

"I don't know when I will be back. My friend is making all the plans. So I will keep you posted ok?"

"Sure. So do you want me to drop you home?"

"No it's fine my friend will pick me up from the mall. I have to do some shopping also."

"Great. Do you like this story?"

"Of course" She took five full seconds to finish that word, with smiles, rolls of eyes and a pat on the arm. "It's very cute."

We met several weeks later for ice cream at Corner House. She spoke eloquently on the defects of canned peach in her peach-melba and then when I least expected it she asked "So did you finish that story of your Ranga and Pushpa?" with what would be her version of the mischievous smile.

"Oh long time back. It was already finished when I read it to you."

"So what happens to them?"

"Well it goes on for a bit after that."

I wasn't really sure if she would want me to read the rest out to her. It would have been gratifying if she had. My powers as a storyteller would have been sanctioned. But I was sure reading out a story was not the way of getting any where with this woman. A better peach melba might have worked wonders that my story surely never would.

"Does he marry your Pushpa?"

"No. He marries Priya!"

"Why because she is also Iyer?"

"I don't think I thought of that angle in the story. And am not sure if Ranga is Iyer either."

"Your friend is not an Iyer?"

"Which friend?"

"The one who's story you told me this is."

"Oh Baloo! Well, not everything in it happened to him. He is a Bong actually."

"Ha!"

"So do you want to read it out to you now?"

"Hmmm...no just tell me how it ends no."
"Where did we stop?"

"He sees this girl Priya and goes with her to Matrix and she gives him this book from Pushpa..."

"Ah! Cool, here's my notebook and here's the story...Ok...So... Ranga spent several hours in his room planning his search for Pushpa. The book would be the first clue. He took up the bulky telephone directory and looked for Raghuram The names were helpfully sorted by the area they lived in and so there turned out to be just twenty Raghurams in the Nungambakam area. It was 8 30 and might not be too bad a time to call asking for Pushpa. 9 would be dinner time and arise suspicion. So he called seven numbers without success. A deep male voice picked up the eighth one and shouted “Ei Pushpa, call for you only!” before he could finish his question. It was a sweetly childish voice that said hi like it was so pleased with whoever it could be on the other end of the line. His mind froze over. A spider seemed to crawl somewhere deep within his stomach making its way up to his throat. The hand grasping the telephone receiver became wet with sweat, and his tongue dried up. He knew that this was how love felt like. Should he use another voice? What would be the best excuse? He realized he hadn’t planned it out well at all. He apologized hastily and cut the call, while she chirped a delightfully surprised sounding “oh”.

"Are you reading the story fully?"

"Yeah"

"Why don't you just skip here and there. I will give you time till my ice cream ends. And there is so much peach in this thing anyways. Uff! It will take me half an hour to finish this only at this rate."

"Do you want to get another? The DBC is good here."

"Oh God! No! Then I will have to do half an hour worth of cardio tomorrow. As such I hate cardio so much. So go on, now. You have twenty minutes. Tick tock tick tock."

"So he decided to visit her. He would carry the book with him... anyway's he goes rings her bell and runs away without meeting her. He gives the dad or someone the book."

"Hmm..."

"He ran back home and called Priya that evening and told her that he loved her."

"What an asshole!"

"Yeah!"

"Four years and a city or two later, Ranga was in bed with Priya. He woke up to her singing to him. She always chose odd songs to wake him up with- it was King of Pain that day. Normally her songs entwined with his waking-up dreams and everything from rats on slides to courier boys would suddenly lace his last wakening thoughts and confuse him. That day he woke up wondering where the black hole in the sun was. "

"These days I can't listen to anything but music with no words in it. Nice dreamy quite tracks. That's all that I can take. I have been asking my gym guys also to change the shit that they play when I work out."

"He had dreamed of Pushpa. A brown haired, dark witch of unspeakable powers. She could take your heart and turn it into strawberry pudding for her black cat. She fed on sailors tears and the lost negatives of photographs. She screamed his name out from the perilous dark pits of a cave like a Shelob waiting for him, waiting for him. He was so much in love with Pushpa that he would have volunteered to do the heart baking procedure himself, and helpfully stir her pots and lick her fingers.

Soon Ranga found himself incapable of doing much in bed with Priya. She just had to shake her head and he could turn himself on. That was the norm. That night was not normal. A strange sickness would latch on to him and make his mornings uneasy. He would spend half an hour every morning at the toilet, he who until that night would normally be done with those rituals in minutes. He would feel his mind emptying out through his bowels. Priya slowly stopped singing for him, on mornings. The Ranga-Priya household was settling into uneasy silences and prolonged toilet visits. Love was ebbing away."

"There goes the last peach. Finally! I don't like this at all."

"I know, you told me."

"No, not the peach melba. It became ok after the ice cream melted. Your story. It started off so cute and all and now you are making it very depressing. Why? Did all this happen to that Bong boy?"

"No. Well...see, it's got a bit of me in it also."

"You aren't married!"

"Yeah..."

"What! I thought you would write all happy stories and you end up writing something very depressing and complicated."

"I actually thought it's funny- the way he keeps obsessing over some Pushpa when he can actually have so much fun with this Priya."

"Men!"

"Well...it is actually about us men only"

"You guys are all the same. You can't commit. You don't know what you want. I think you guys never grow up."

I pushed the can of empty ice cream around blankly.

"Let's go", she said.

On the five minute drive to her home, she stayed silent for a minute.

"So how does it end?"

"Ranga and Pushpa?"

"So he goes and has an affair with some woman called Pushpa. Priya and he separate and then he goes of on a pilgrimage. There he meets a goat called Pushpa and dedicates his life to nurturing and taking care of the goat and its progeny."

I was quite proud of the way the story ended. I liked the goat.

"Your Beng friend slept around while he was married?" she asked with that smile of mischief that she could do so well.

"No. He tried to but failed."

"What do you mean failed?"

"Well he never got around to doing much."

"Your friends are strange. They are all like you only no. Crazy in the head."

I smiled.

"I will read just the last part for you. I think it ends well."

She looked like I had asked her to tell me what the square root of three thousand five hundred was. Then she smiled and said "Ok" one hand already on the door handle of  my car.

"And so Ranga sat, bald, skinny, alone in a bus stand in the middle of nowhere. Forty five year old  and looking like he was sixty,  he decided to sell all that he owned to whoever would buy it and travel the country alone. He would embrace his religion and sleep in temples and eat free-lunches. He would entertain passing kids with poems and stories. He would never stay in a town for more than three weeks. He would move ever onward, never visiting the same place again. He was now somewhere in Bengal, trying to decipher the language. He dropped a picture postcard addressed to Priya and his son from every big town and sometimes he would write it in the language he had picked up. He was busy looking up the Bengali word for chemistry. The Learn Bengali in Thirty Days was not very helpful. It had options for food, greetings and phrases to say that you were sleepy and wanted to get off at the next stop. It ignored chemistry.

A woman approached him. She was dark, obese and fifty years old. She did not speak politely, although what she wanted was a favor. She was not the type who could tell him what the word for chemistry was, surely. She wanted to know if she could leave her goat with him, while she went to make lunch for her son. He smiled at her gently and nod. She dragged a white, stinking beast with a beard and tied it next to him. It had a bell around its neck that jingled sweetly. She warned him that the thing could eat through the rope easily and the only way to stop it from doing anything was to shout its name very loudly. What would the name be he asked her. Pushpa, she said. She tied it around the pole of the bus stand’s shelter. She opened a pack of Khaini and poured the contents into her mouth. She did not thank him. She said she would take approximately half hour. He told her his bus would take another hour or so to come anyways. She looked at him suspiciously for ten seconds, then made up her mind and walked away.

So he waited for her to disappear around the corner. He approached the goat gingerly. It looked at him with disinterest. He would put his hand out and feel its ears. “Pushpa” he said gently. The goat looked the other way. Ranga bleated discreetly and tried to snuggle against its neck. “Pushpa” he mumbled and started singing a sad song."

"The Bengali word for chemistry is rasayana. Like it is in Hindi only." She said that like she expected me not to know the Hindi word.

"Oh!"

"Anyways. Cute story. Talk to you later. Bye!"

She took three seconds to finish the word and slamming my door shut, walked home.

Festive Offer!!!!

Come here, love.Give me a kiss. Will you let me snuggle in and give you a cuddle?
What do I want? Rub soft noses, perhaps? No?
Fine! Let me gossip in your ear. Let's play love games and sweet hurt.
Let's race to switch off lights.

How about a joke?

Ah! You would like to break ice first. Chilled out time indeed!
I will tell you what I had in mind. Exult! That's the word. Dance in joy!
Jump into an air bubble and poke a hole into a star.
Let's take shelter from the rain- this hard driving exhausting rain.Hide in the shade.
Let's take turns at a second guess and go nowhere in particular. A bit like those days we drove around in a car- you and I.
There is so much on offer tonight. Deep discounts. Cut Prices.

Don't be late!

Easy holiday afternoon

“I would like something to do” said the boy. His sweaty hands scrubbing treasure from his pockets. He found glass marbles, pebbles, matchsticks, piece of wood, two coins and a picture of Jesus Christ.

“I would agree with you” said the other one, of age seven or eleven. It doesn’t matter much because he was as bored as the other.

The boy scratched his black brown hair. Like a rat scurrying in a blanket, he made ridges and curls and snowflakes.

He made pop sounds with his tongue and looked vaguely lost: his cotton candy mind racing.

The sun was high up and the streets were all dry. The window sights were sad scenes for two bored souls.At two in the afternoon, life was at a stand-by.

They passed seven whole minutes observing a vegetable cart going "Thakaaaali! Venkaaaayam!". Three minutes and five seconds, shouting like lewd buttons at some unsuspecting little girl who retorted "Poda loose!"

That kid...she should have known better than to think of an answer to the question posed from the window above.  Two voices asking her if her knickers were brown.

And then...they got busy with each other.

One climbed high- really high. To the top of the book shelf. 

He pounced. His body arching. Feet spread out to cover air and wind, earth and paper. Like a ray of light bouncing of mirrors. Arching. Bending. A voice screeching. On to the back of the unsuspecting other.

And they rolled around over carpet and dust. Over spoons and bowls and wooden caskets. Into poems and songs and wool balls. Above and beyond the framed picture of thatha, who was looking nowhere in particular, in the year 1965. They smeared ink bottles .A laptop and pickle jars. Frozen butter. Flying like asteroids without an agenda.

They rolled and rolled over each other. Spilling and fluffing hair and sweat and laughter.

Until they were done with whatever it was that might be called play.

They lay flat on the floor, backs to the wood. The basked in their thoughts that muddled with dreams and plans of world domination. School master and homework. Kittens, cricket balls, ice cream cones. Bleeding noses. Spiders. The numbers twenty nine and forty five.

One dozed into dreamless slumber while the other scratched an itch that wasn’t there.

He wondered whether eating an orange might be a good idea.

And then...it happened.

She was perched outside, high over trees and lightning catchers, like a bird of stone. She was stroking her hair, pale eyes staring lidless. Her gaze cooled the air draining it of hope. Weighed down by wings, so lightly, the wind hissed into solemn submission and despair.
She hunts alone-nights and evenings,sordid mornings that wake up wrong. She blows chill mist through the ears into the listening soul.

And now...they had her despairing attention.

Loneliness, with frozen wing tips, brushed their hair, head and heart within.

The mirror threw back confounding shadows in the ominous amber of electric lights.

They could cling to each other but were too proud for that.

Traps and plastic baskets, live wires and fires were waiting to burn, hurt or eat alive from darkness under a bed.

So they threw up their heads to some mother above, streaming starlight at them from the night sky. Through the darkness, diminished by street lights, late traffic and whores, they mewed like babies and howled like the wretched-baying out a prayer at the moon.

Kara Saved?

At two years and nine months Karasura was giving enough reasons for his demonic parents to be very proud of him. His propensity for evil was immeasurably varied and thrilling. He squished ants and spiders with gurgling glee when he was all of five weeks old. Carefully collected photographs in the blue and violet “Our Little Flower” album that his parents maintained with loving indulgence chronicled his infant steps into the cavernous dark comfort of evil. There’s the one where he tripped the day care nanny with an innocent little side step – five months and twelve days. First terrible tantrum that could at its mildest deafen human life within a three kilometer radius- six months and eight days. Wanton carnage of neighborhood house- eleven months. Attempted sexual assault on pretty little Tanya at pre nursery- eighteen months and nine days. And so on.

So when Kara’s parents came across the below advertisement tucked away in the Obituary column of their daily newspaper, they could do little but exult.

Launch your Child into a Career of Evil. Horness their potential the old way. The sure way. No new fangled  brouhaha. Just sheer Talont tapping. Contact us now!

Contact they did and found out that the advertisement came from the truly unpleasant highly unrespectable pinnacle of His Unholiness himself, manifest malevolent presence and true leading shadow for the discerning evil doer. Thus, Karasura was entrusted into the two year career program at the tender age of two years and two hundred and fourteen days with much jubilation amidst the demonic race and futile moaning and groaning amidst the do gooders and the impotents.

Kara found himself a little out classed in his early days in the class of sixty six. He was easily repulsed by the girls in the class who were mostly being trained to be exceptionally evil witches.  His mild attempts at evil against them had resulted in toad transformations, wretched illness and family line curses. The boys were more accommodating and indulged in back stabbing, merciless thrashing and friendly dismemberment.  However soon they all realized that Kara’s talent for scheming and plotting great evil was unrivalled. This led to further thrashing and cursing- only bettered by the lacing of warm envy.

Most classes were taken by two disciples of His Unholiness called Nadhu and Keru who also happened to be the evil incarnation of two extremely wicked asteroids that frequently demolished planets with intelligent life and attempted solar flares and eclipses. Kara had been their fan since the day he was born and had used their methodologies in his neighborhood carnage experiments. So had several of the other boys in his class.

His Unholiness was of course a presence felt and cherished but never really ever even glimpsed at by any in the class. The only ones who ever got to see Him, or so the folklore went, were the ones who experience break down of some kind. There are cases whispered about trainees who woke up one day distraught at the stereotyping of evil or questioning the nature of moral duality. Some supposedly have even experienced a mild form of depression that could manifest as compassion for the impotents. Such were the cases that got to meet His Unholiness and not much is ever heard of them again. Such cases were too rare anyways. A once in few centuries phenomenon- if folklore is to be believed. Folklore, but, is for the weak.

Kara’s progress was swift and promising. At the end of his first year, his parents received a list of his meritorious achievements and there was much joy and evil revelry in their neighborhood for a week, till a God was sought to intervene.

Kara had purged through sheer scheming genius fourteen of his classmates by inciting a little war that had all of them killing each other in great merriment. He had been so magnificently revolting that ten girls and nineteen boys had grudgingly accepted him as their Great Leader. This was a stroke of genius. The declaration of Leadership was done with such unholy style that eleven trainees switched sides and became good. They were of course eliminated from the race. There were only eleven trainees who remained undecided or as prospective rivals for Kara in class in year two.  Four of them were fallen angels, who are more often than not known to be more style than substance. Three were girls, who after a while decide to get married to a demon and move on, sooner or later. Two were hypocrites who are prone to get very confused about their stance given the right amount of time. One was on his way to becoming an atheist and nobody ever took some one who took himself so seriously, that seriously. That left Basma as the sole true contender to Kara. And Kara knew better than to take Basma lightly.

Basma was the kind of demon whose cunning rested in being mistaken for someone good by the non demon world. Most of his acts looked so well intentioned. His demeanor was kind and almost ridiculously foolish; as if he was incapable of anything, why bother about him doing something evil. This was of course a façade. He tricked people by being the helpless baby tapping into their potential for good and leaving them as dry shells. His well intentioned acts of forgiveness, warmth and charity were subtly calculated measures for future profit. Basma’s parents ran the business wing of the Demonic universe and you could see that he had learned well the dark subtleties of being evil at such a tender age. After all he was a good nine months younger than any one in his class and well below them all on the weight and height charts- he was actually still measurable on them. A true demon by age three should be of proportions beyond any chart.

Kara’s parents were worried a bit and wondered if they should start a penance- a terrible and long penance that would shake the firmament- for his victory. They did start the penance as well, but out of sheer habit were sidetracked at the time of wish fulfillment and asked for collectible Wonder Woman play cards instead. They were tricked by the Gods.

When Kara heard of this he was understandably furious and after a few days of unleashing arbitrary cruelty and violence on his classmates and the world at general, he decided to vindicate his parents faith in him, by coming up with a fool proof device to outsmart Basma.

The opportunity arose in his eighteenth month at the Training, when the Fourth Anniversary Celebratory Parents Teachers Meet was announced. Demons from across the known universe would be invoked and invited to interact with the two Teachers, indulge in mutual hatred envy and occasional hero worship, collect autographs, cheat en masse and thus participate in some unfettered celebration of evil. Their descendants and/or wards would entertain them and even come up with a play soaked in depravity for them. By default Basma and Kara were made in charge of the entertainment and asked to share credit -if they managed not to kill each other- for the direction of the play.

Both budding demon geniuses realized that this was their sole opportunity to establish unquestionable sovereignty in class. Kara took the lead. Kara started a cleverly envisioned newspaper that detailed for a month the preparations for the Meet and fed ribald sleazy stories to keep the class entertained and enthusiastic through the days of groundwork. This was just an excuse for a smear campaign against Basma. Every day the paper carried an article on Basma’s benevolent deeds to mankind, much to the revulsion of the readers. Basma was forced to reply every day through a Letter to the Editor, justifying the deed and explaining the true evil intent behind it. His letters were poorly written and he tried so hard to balance self explication with some vagueness around the evil master plan, that it led nowhere. An evil master plan once revealed is never the same and most often just comes out sounding ambitious, ill conceived or ridiculous. Some were shocking and nicely depraved but lost their impact when they went through Kara’s horrid editing team.

A week before the Meet, Basma was nowhere to be seen. Demoralized and vanquished he wrote an anguished final Letter to the Editor, admitting defeat and hailing Kara as the Great Leader. He then to all appearances isolated himself for deep introspection – the kind that normally leads one into a philosophical labyrinth and a meeting with His Unholiness.

Kara’s joy could know no bounds, and that was not any different from the norm. Demons are known to be thus. His parents came to the Meet too. Other demons tried to poison them out of sheer envy, much to Kara’s parents pride and joy. The play that featured every form of imaginable badness and some beyond was hailed by everyone as fantastic entertainment and the theatre was destroyed in appreciation. Two actors were also killed. Basma’s parents sulked around and were invited to come for some private counseling the next day by Nadhu and Keru.

When all the fun was over and the demons from across the known universe were finally exhausted and ready to call it a day, Basma emerged from his isolation and tried to slip unnoticed into Kara’s End of Meet class meeting. His parents who were on their way out noticed him and pretended to look elsewhere in shame. Kara noticed him too but pretended to be too busy stroking the vipers on his demon girl friend’s head.

Basma walked up to Kara and whispered the strange and terrible truth about life and after life in his ears. Kara’s masculine chest drooped. His fingers entwined into a viper and they bled profusely, bitten by his ignored girlfriend. His talonts were forgotten. His vim, a whimper. He looked at Basma with silent red eyes, pleading mutely to tell him that was not true. Basma just kept standing around looking his old ridiculously helpless self. With little hope and future, Kara the Great Hope of the Demon Race, took Basma’s extended hand and walked silently into shared isolation and depression.

Folklore says that Basma was long dead and what Kara saw was an illusion- a trick by the Gods. The truth about life and the afterlife can never be for a Demon to know, it says. Folklore, but, is for the weak.

Space    Bar
 
It’s not easy being a bartender when you are far away from home- light years away. The hyper space jumps curdle your pinacoladas. Zero gravity blips upset the muddle in the mojito. You get to meet all sorts in a regular bar –mostly the usual drunks. A bartender in space meets the same drunks in all sorts of colors. It’s a job and there can be worse ones.

I am a super luxury five star rated bar tender. I got this job through a wager. I serve drinks all day or night, depending on how you define time here, to some twenty really lonely people- regular blue collar types- up on a star ship dock. It’s a harbor ship- a floating waterfront- that’s hanging somewhere between two planetary collectives in the milky way. At times, I think I am dreaming all this up. I might have had two pills too many –some old bugger passing it to me as a tip and I go ballistic-space diving sky rocketing ballistic.

Space travel is way back in vogue. There are all kinds landing up at the bar suddenly and ours is the top of the tops-rated highest on barsofthegalaxy.com. Vague life forms hanging on as arm candy-reptilian, ovoid, vaporous and intelligent blue. They all want screwdrivers and long islands. They get hammered and tip lavishly with gadgets, pills, advice and occasionally, money. They love me.

I play my part behind the bar, serving up drinks, listening to chatter and nodding my head, dancing with mixers and shakers and glorious rock and roll.

The characters of this story-the main ones- are as follows. You might encounter the occasional sauntering in of one or more distraught souls in need of the comfort of alcohol, but they are props, bystanders, collateral.

First there's this girl- I call her Lucy. She claims to be dating this crazy money loaded blasphemous amoral gangster back on earth. She flaunts the diamonds here in the sky to prove her point. She is loaded by gangster and the almighty in ways that command awe from any man with a sense of duty to the human race... you know...the one about being fruitful and multiplying. She is dangerous, vaguely depressed and acts like she has nothing to lose. She tips well. She wears them stones on the soles of her space shoes. Pink Margarita –cranberry or strawberry – is what she gets hammered on.

Character B is a bizarre man-  I don’t know his name. He is the chief engineer here. He looks forty something and acts like he just turned twenty three. He drinks shots- tequila mostly– and looks around to see if anyone is impressed. People were impressed twenty months back. Now he is another drunk, who has a lousy temper. He is mad because Lucy does not care for him. Lucy is in the administrative department and really doesn’t give two swings of Thor’s hammer for him. It drives him crazy. When he gets crazy he boasts of his on-board sexual exploits. Mostly false and almost inaccurate.The drinking is getting to him and he is getting fat around the middle and the face. He never tips.

Finally there'sa decrepit white pygmy shrew called Benjy, who with his evil red eyes has made his way up into the ship and the story through inexplicable circumstances. He’s a bystander-collateral etc and he’s the protagonist. The catalyst. Something or the other. He eats up lime I keep for the mojitos and the Cuba Libres.

Other characters can be safely ignored.

When Lucy walks in, there's already Jim, sitting at the bar table, discussing the state of affairs back home with Jo and Jnan. Jo is feeling up Jnan’s thighs below the table, because she is bored and doesn’t want to hear about earth anymore. Jim’s features make him look Korean but he claims some African descent. Anything’s possible these days. They are technicians who help lubricate the systems on docking ships. They are not going anywhere. They will chatter on, while Jo ignores them and drifts in her mind with me at a distance, observing and being observed observing. I serve them up whiskey on the rocks with a smile and my trademark click of the shoes.

So, Lucy walks in. She takes brisk steps full of purposeful intent. She is in Star Trek in her mind. She dresses in red jumpsuit that’s tight as a rubber wrap. No man will complain about that. She shakes her black hair loose and kicks her diamond studded shoes away as she glides into the barstool on the other end-far away from the three Jakes from Chinatown. Strawberry Margarita for the pretty lady I ask. She nods with a smile she reserves for me. I do the ritual. I shake the ice and strain, dancing like Bowie on gasoline.

When I serve it up for her with a slice of lime carved like a crescent of Jupiter, she asks if the stories one hears of the Gods are true. I lean in closer, leaning across the white starch white bar table, making like I cannot hear her, but I just want to smell her once more. I lean in close to her ears.

Will there really be a God making rendezvous one day she asks. I smile and look pleasantly dumb. That's what I do best. She lifts one eyebrow and looks away without a pause. No man can bear to see her that way. I break the third barrier and I tell her that I believe we are as much gods to these strange beings, we meet so often these days, as they are to us.

May be we look perfect to them or sound perfect to them, I tell her.Maybe they are yet to discover the magic of alcohol and the sublime art of making a drink. Maybe they have never known how to love a woman. Maybe they don’t know what a woman is.

Benjy squeaks from behind. He crawls up the display shelves and noses at the Imperial and the Martini bottles. He claws at the Barrel Reserve Cuban rum and dances around it, turning head around tail thrice. He stares fixedly at Lucy with those red eyes. I give him a slice of lime. He takes it in his paws and gets busy.

Lucy lights a cigarette and blows pensive smoke rings staring back at Benjy. Jo taps at her glass with the index finger. I pour her the Irish till she says stop. The other two Js are forced to drink their glasses up, looking at what she was fixed. I pour them their drinks. The oldest trick in the bartender’s manual and it always works- even ten thousand miles up high. Get the woman drunk and the men will follow twice as high.

The engineer walks in looking per-occupied. We are playing some synth pop rock tonight. He looks that way no matter what plays or who is in the bar. He thinks it makes him look serious. To me he always looks like he has lost a penny in a stack of seaweed. He takes the stool next to Lucy, pretending not to notice that she was there. It’s a sham. He is made that way. Some people are. He looks at Jo instead and nods a casual superior nod. The poor girl is too drunk to pretend delight and gives a pale imitation of sweetness. Lucy keeps blowing her smoke circles.

A shot of vodka he says. I take out a shot glass, pour him a forty five and I wait. He downs it in one go and slams the shot glass down. I pour thirty. He downs, slams and does his looking around. He has no one to look around at but Lucy, Benjy, three drunk Js and I, none of whom look impressed. Benjy lets the slice of lime drop loudly on to a steel ice bucket.

We will meet someone today, he says. He might be a sod, but he is still a customer so I ask if it’s an earth ship that he is expecting. No he tells me and tries to give a look of significance aimed at Lucy. He is waiting to make new contact, he says. Lucy feigns disinterest but is listening intently. We make contact in T plus twenty one earth hours he says with deep gravity in his voice. Even the three Js are listening, but they figure this might be information that they might get hauled up for knowing later. So they ask for the bill frantically which I stream into their systems and they accept gratefully and leave. They don’t leave too well and upset a few stools in anxiety but it’s not an unmanageable mess. I excuse myself from behind the bar to go set the stools right.

He leans towards Lucy who stiffens a bit. He looks a little terrified. This time the contact has been different, he says-There are stories floating in the ether channels. There are stories of Sea creatures in five planets that are giving birth to human babies. There’s a miracle maker flying around dropping his divine seed and he chooses to dock here, he says in a whisper. He looks around for me. Says he will have the Blaster please.

I have made that just once in this bar and it almost killed him. I look at him once to see if he is sure. He is. My Blaster is thirty of Beefeater, five of Drambuie, five of a bitter and ten of my own little sauce made from fermented blue pepper fruit, orange peel, lime and pickle juice. It can kill if needed. Benjy is hanging around the Beefeater again. I feed him another slice of lime and make the drink. I mix it up in an ice shaker and strain it into two shot glasses. One for the lady I smile. Smarmy sweet talking slimy old me. Lucy shrugs and takes it up. She signals cheers to us and raises her chin up as if she has to get the shot go straight down.

He forgets to slam his glass down. Lucy gasps a bit, moans. The engineer has his head in his hands and says it's beautiful three times. He flings himself at Lucy’s breasts. She swats his hand away and he loses balance, but does not fall. He has tears in his eyes and sobs how afraid he is. He lays his head on the bar table and passes out. Benjy is scurrying next to him with evil flaring red eyes. Lucy looks transfixed at the two of them. The engineer froths just a little at the corner of the mouth and ceases to breathe. Benjy makes his way back to the Barrel Reserve and is never seen again, at least by me.

The synth rock gets louder thanks to the auto loops. It’s time for at least five more people to drop in. Lucy looks absent, less self assured. She seems to shiver. She is looking in silence at the bottle Benjy disappeared behind. After five minutes of silent shivering, she makes to get up and leave. The Blaster is getting to her. She tells me she will be around later. She emphasizes the word in this hushed up tone. I nod and thank her for picking up the engineer's tab. She glides out as two girls walk in asking for karaoke. She walks streaming blue and green diamond light.

I serve drinks, wipe the table and clean up the bar. They take the engineer away. They will try to resurrect him. They know I am not to blame. Lucy can be a suspect. I am not sure if I have anything to defend her with if it came to it. It’s not my business and I really can’t explain anything anyways.

Lucy keeps her word. She comes back twenty hours later, when the bar is finally quiet. She doesn’t speak. She takes the Cuban Barrel Reserve and pours golden rum into the suction basin.  She mutters a rhyme in a language I know but seem to have forgotten. She does it with an air of austerity, like she is pouring sand into a good old fashioned grave. There are no diamonds on her any more. She turns to me and kisses me like her life depended on it and I oblige. As we make that strange creature with two humps the ship makes its final contact. I am wide awake.

Jedi Academy

The shadow tried to creep in on him very often. He spotted her (for it was a she-shadow- a shedow) shimmering quietly in cheap disguise, on car mirrors in the parking lot. She pretended to be singing to herself in a corner there, here, there again, while he sipped on coffee from a paper cup pretending to have a conversation with a manager. The shedow was so devious in her methods of staying unnoticed that she begged and demanded his full time attention. She was peeking through cracks in the wall in the grocery shop. She wanted to argue on his behalf with a taxi driver long after he had left the greedy taxi in exasperated door banging. The shedow was taking over his life.

The shedow tricked him into doing things he hadn't caught himself doing for  long. She held his strings, white and coiled and all tangled up in neat strands hanging from a little wooden cross. She pulled and tugged him into a mad dance- all elbows and knees jutting right left up and down. He could hear her laughter from distances he did not seem capable of judging, like song birds and dark clouds promising rains. He took off the hat and bowed twice in rhythm, when he could.

She made him look around for Joni Mitchell albums from that tumbled down box where his music lay amidst three hundred jewel boxes. Strings, darned strings made him sing along with longing desires to shampoo and proud announcements of drinking capabilities.The shedow fed him books he had moved on from. She promised in silent gestures to read stories for him, between sleep and work hours, at lunch, breakfast and smoke breaks. The stories made no sense. They unraveled at best into confusing words that just wanted him to feel better. They cut like a jangling guitar and mostly starred a nude girl who floated up to space on a fine day, leaving behind a dog, a chess board and a lover boy who was too busy writing her letters to notice that she was looking down at him from far above.

The shedow suggested he stand for election and drew him a mechanical elephant doll as his party mascot. Astute political conversation about imaginary worlds and states and monarchies, steeped in arcane conspiracy theories, filled his newspapers. The letters slipped and slimed in and out, forming jumble word puzzles and comic strips for his reading pleasure.

He caught her darken his shoes now and then, as she climbed up very quietly- slowly like a creeper- a grey brown colourless, darker shade of whatever color his shoe or the light that caught his skin, was. She felt like an icicle but not delicate enough. The shedow was far too happy in her incredible state of being and rapid growth to allow time for subtleties.

Her preferences took over soon. She stacked his shelves with peppermint tea and strawberry honey. She carried in African masks and talismans that one could suppose were made by the Mohenjadaro civilization, if either had existed. She smashed his empty glasses for fun and swept them up quietly into the bin- if he could help a bit, of course. She ordered eggs for breakfast with toast and butter and asked if he liked marshmallow ice cream.

At nights the shedow chose empty spaces to linger in and he could hear her trying to find words to rhyme with blue olive scarlet and floor. The shedow would burst into song at odd times and keep him awake wondering what the dogs could be up to. She introduced into his life, unknown to his free will, a mandolin, a parrot and an eye patch.

One day he figured that if he stepped out into the light at mid day, into thebarren dusty deserted road that stretched nowhere and beyond, he could make the shedow disappear. She could melt, soak off and evaporate and sublimate where possible and travel up and down as wavy little curls. The shedow could drip and weep away, washed off, clambering down in a double helix that was fast disappearing.

Somewhere near the very end of this extremely unscientific process, he gave up and walked back to where he belonged. The shedow was quite happy too, having passed the test. She slipped into his head the next night with her set of poems and eye patch and parrot. He ceased to exist.

Helter Skelter


Frog told me that he would call. I am waiting for that god damned call. The spot light's on me, I know. I am on stage- the chairs in front of me bereft of an audience. Wood paneled rough huge stage, with me- alone -facing a red phone that's off the hook because that's how twisted our love story is. We have bizarre conversations in our heads- this phone and I, playing out tapes of our life's little pasts and futures and we look at each other with such remorse and sadness and rabid happiness on how it's all over now. And we want some more. Most times we don't make sense. So screw you Frog. I am waiting for your call which will never come, like it never does because the phone's off the hook. And you make me believe that our love's so cool and special that we can will miracles to happen. You conned me there. So I am reading out this letter of love and hate for you because we are done. Done with each other. Never more.

Dear Frog

My heart explodes with such love for you that the four letter word is lava not love. You however do not deserve it. I wish I could drain you off my memories and shed away the blue ink into a bottle and throw the bottle into the sea and lose the bottle. Good bye.

Love

Kay

That's beautiful isn't it? It's succinct and tells you how I feel about Frog and why this is over. I have this vague feeling growing stronger as I read it loud once more, that he is too dumb to get it. At the expense of artistic brevity and poetic justice I insert more lines. I thought of some great lines yesterday for this but they seem to evade me. I shall make another attempt at it now.

Frog
I believe love operates on five principles and I think you work outside all of the below and above. I will make you understand this by stating these rules and using ample examples from our life so far to illustrate how you are such a dead end.

Rule 1

The loved is not greater

The lover not smaller

For sooner or later

You are one or the other

I think the word I am looking for in the second line is lesser, but you get the point.

Rule 2

A man speaks to woman

He asks of her

Is love a shadow

or Strange light.

In the morning she leaves

Now this will need explanation, although I hate having to explain myself to you all the time. And I think that's the message, so there.

I am interrupted here by the cleaning lady walking into the hall. I am mistaken. She walks in from the exit door at the back of the empty hall, a hundred rows of empty chairs away. Some one has bought a ticket for the show. Poor Soul. Maybe I should tell her that there's nothing on right now. I can see her. She is all legs and blue short skirt and can't be true. My mind's playing tricks with me because Love is such a wretched thing. She is here for real. She sits in the front row, cross legged, blank and inviting. Will she take me home if I put on this show for her? Frog? What Frog? Time to churn on the charm.

Did I see that phone shiver a bit like there was someone on the other end? I pick up the red smelly receiver and I hear the dead buzz.

Rule 3, Frog, is that you do not let love lose its way like a complete unknown, you know, with no direction home...you feed it, nourish it, you nurture it and water it every day. The neglected heart wanders. And you turned me, the super girl of your life into wander woman. I hate you for that.

Look! If you think that it's turning insipid you are right. What do you expect? Here I am torn between eternal love breaking to pieces and tall slim infinity blue skirt there of the long face red pout slender curve and warm warm body. It's not easy. But life's not easy is it? Speaking of which,

Rule 4, Frog

If x is > y and y is < z are prevaricates and by axiomatic assumption we know that x^2+y^2 is < z^2 then how does one prove in five easy steps that x+y may or may not equal z+x given x,y,z is >0 for all x,y,z ?, Try solving that you self important practical headed son of a bitch.

A man has moved in while I was busy challenging Frog on an intellectual level. He is sitting next to that impossible girl and he is tall and well built with a head full of long hair to tell me she is out of my league. Of course she had a date and she chose to date here.

I can hear Frog. Sweet sweet little loser actually decides to call me. I prance wildly on stage, possessed by his voice croaked by the ten thousand hundred and five cigarettes, the dull beautiful smoked and aged and matured to woody perfection sound to which my heart beats. The date couple blink at my performance and exit stage left.


You called, I say, joyful. I can hardly hear him speak. He makes no sense. He warbles and mutters and yodels and croaks and chokes and recites two lines. He cuts the line and I am back to staring at that red  phone below a spotlight in an empty stage in a silent hall.

Dear Frog

I can't think of another rule because it is you who rules my heart.

I miss you so much

Love

Kay

A Hard Day's Night

He sat facing the wall in a blank empty white room, his chair turned against hers, eyes peeled wide at a screen. Her perfume was of dried orange peels soaked in vanilla essence. The sickly sweet smell invaded his nostrils. His ears were gently tortured by the rustle of her clothes. Net result: he retained nothing. Or next to nothing:
Step 1 Press O five O four Five hem
Step 2 ...
3 Thoughts on how if they survived what ever they were going to be made to go through, he might find true love -assorted feelings on abject nature of current existence, reality shows, never remembering how he got there and the fine bust line of the game show hostess and cut red and blue wire
4 Cut green and red wire.
Step 5 And Welcome home you happy couple.
It would turn out to be farce executed to perfection.

The lights turned bright yellow and hot. He blinked thrice. The cameras whirred and zoomed and panned and trolleyed. He was facing her. That’s one way to look at it. He was staring at her large invitingly exposed cleavage, coiled and wound and caged within a dark green brassiere whatever. Her face was the not disappointing Caucasian blandness of white skin and blond hair, whose features were sexily masked by large over sized sunglasses.He took deep breaths to look calm and collected. He conjured a dull uninterested sneer to convey to the larger audience how his life could go ahead unfazed by such brazen sexiness. Should he pause to register what she thought of him? That would break his heart surely. He looked cool and ignored her, slyly letting his eyes roll , every twenty fifth second, over that copious vastness within the green stretched cloth.

When he tuned back in, they were in the white room on their knees. On the wall facing them, was a large black hole and she on all fours trying to peer through it. She had this beautiful accent which sounded so right.

She was asking him looking up at him, bent over that hole.“Do you want to go in first?”
“Aren’t we supposed to make conversation for the first five minutes?” he asked eyebrows knit to show  confusion. The rules changed so fast that he could make them up as he went and all would be Calvin Ball. “Of course” she rolled her eyes and feigned disappointment.

“I am He”, he told her helpfully. “I have eliminated five unbelievers in games of might, wit and random suggestion”
“Hi!” she drawled, her upper lip and bosom beaded with little droplets of sweat from the heat of the lights. He blond curls covered and uncovered her ears. “I am Lana Marn. I am a blacksmith. I run a charity organization called Bang’d and Nail’d.”

With puns like that, she had to be a call girl-a high class one, or a porn star. He played cool. “And what do you do in the evenings?” the laughter track in his head, the audience and the gentle hostess tittering in unison. “The five minutes are up love”, she winked. “We have thirty minutes to save our hides. You go in first?” “After you”, he said, ever the gentleman. Lana crawled into the hole and He followed her, safely behind that tightly draped behind that looked like a challenge to his male virility. A voice in pre recorded tones of robotic precision said “you have twenty nine minutes to diffuse the bomb. Good luck. Click”

This must be the final round. The do or die or was it do and die?, He wondered. The subtleties evaded him. The objective was clear. They had to diffuse the bomb in thirty, twenty nine, twenty eight minutes through a five step procedure, which the wall had briefed him on in accentuated exhilaration conditions. He had to remember the guide and follow it step by step to safety. Television ratings do well with a death on air.

The end of that singularly well crafted hole was a stainless steel floor that curved around them- just enough space to accommodate their crawling bulks. Lana stretched her legs lay down on her back, facing him up from below, green largeness first.

"Look", she said, her pretty face pouting red lips to show concern."We should call the number for help. Do you remember the number?"

“Ah Step One…Zero Five Zero Four…”
The dialing panel appeared magically in green fluorescence on the steel curvature above her. He heard the camera, enclosed cleverly to cover all directions, zooming in, straining , giving those tantalizing assets of hers the stardom they deserved. She looked at him admiringly- like such intelligence deserved a favor returned. He knew that look. She took one gently filed index finger and nail and punched the numbers. “Hey wait”, she said. “It’s asking for a five digit number and you gave me four” It was a delicious little whine- confused, funny, sexy.
“Hem” He muttered. That was amplified- laughter track inserted. Somewhere.
“Uh?”
“Five”
“Okay” she nodded, her chin moving up and down. “Yeah! That was right you were boy!” she said. “Now to look into the plumbin’” she whispered in fake huskiness
He knew those lines by heart. Bang’d and Nail’d indeed.
“What seems to be the problem ma’am?”
“You know... it keeps gettin’ very wet at the drains”
“Oh well ma’am you need a new shaft and maybe some drillin’”
“I was thinkin’ more about somethin’ to do with the pumpin’”
He can’t get a line wrong. Else boom.
“That’s hard work ma’am”
“Why don’t you go down and take a look?”
“I’ll be darned ma’am it sure is wet down here”
“Well you ain’t licked are you?”
“A screw there, some hammerin and some nailin here and we should be alright ma’am” (applause)
Credit worthy applause that was. He had played it well. They had filled in ten minutes of solid air time. He had taken his time and seen it through.

Lights off. Steps 3 and 4. The air around them cooled. It was cold, the touch of stainless steel against skin. Two little panels opened gleaming eerie orange light into their faces- one from over her face and another just behind her head-on the steel floor. Each had a set of three wires-red, green and blue- thin plastic wires that looked so small to terrify him.

Her face was  heart wrenching childlike concentration- on a figure modeled sculpted and refined for child bearing.
“So I’ll cut the ones on top and where’s the other?”
“Behind you”
“You get them…Thiger!”
Fine. He stammered here. The obvious did that to him. If they had scripted everything so far, then they got him where it hurt.

He crawled over her and eased himself into that soft, welcoming flesh that softened just a bit like a pliable pillow and warmed him. This was monstrous. He cursed and he shivered and grew. He had no clue which panel went first. Blue and green and then red and blue, seemed a good possibility. His mind clogged as blood drained and rushed to the one part of his body he did not need to preserve his life at that moment. He tried to think of ridiculously boring entities- differential calculus- but that reminded him of his lady maths teacher. World War Two helped until she heaved below him and the thought dissipated. He surrendered to his worse nature.

The mechanical voice reminded him that they had ten more minutes to doomsday. That was unhelpful, because the fright strengthened the hardness.
“Cut the crap and cut the wires you fuckin idiot” Lana shouted, the sweetness drained out of that husky voice. “And tell me which ones to cut on mine”
That cursed laughter track. Close ups of his face and hers.

“You cut the green and red” he said, shuffling, slowly moving, thrusting slyly despite himself, facing death.
The orange glow above her face deepened and there emerged a Goddess, descending from it slowly, like She was suspended through thin steel wires. The Goddess announced that He had passed the test, grasped his hand gently and lifted him up and above- floating up through dark skies, milky ways, star bursts and tremors. Below him the explosion filled everything with fire and brimstone and tore her flesh apart.

He woke up. His head protested wanting more sleep. His eyes focused. The strange taste in his mouth turned to sawdust. He thought he was alone in some darkness of the middle of the night saved from a nightmare. He was wrong. Soft feminine voices on his left , tender gentle touches to the left, right and centre that went “There, there, there…” He slipped back into the loving embrace of those heavenly virgins and slept.

Record Label

He heard the question floating up to him from around two and three fourth’s feet above the ground, way below his accustomed line of vision. Caught off guard, he took his eyes of the heavy white and blue led light of his Black Berry. File boards, screens and passing men and women jolted upwards and out of the tilting frame and his eyes focused on this mess of black hair and wide earnest eyes.

"You are Laloo aren’t you?"

The voice was deep and masculine, like that of a rounded joyful tenor who was puffing up to introduce himself as the cool hairdresser of the town. Laloo tried apprising the situation with a lazy uninterested look, couldn’t sustain for it more than twenty seconds and asked, muttered, mumbled, whined “Yeah…and who are you, kid?”

“I ain’t no keed” The face contorted into an angry redness which made the upper lip perspire. Laloo noticed the first emerging line of a shaved moustache now, but thought it would be cool to continue in the condescending adult vein. “Where’s your mommy?”

Somewhere between the “mom” and “ee” Laloo realized the not very ordinariness of the situation. That unpleasing stark yellowness with dull leaden carpeting that he came to every day, to work amidst busy people who typed and called and walked around looking very busy, was not the kind of place where dwarves/midgets dressed like Figaro walked up to you from nowhere, distracting you while you were getting yourself set for a con call. The “?” was hence sounded out with a hesitating hushed whisper that indicated respect, confusion and slight fear.

The Dwarf caught that change, being used to such tonal fluctuations. They were every day occurrences in his interaction with human life and where he came from they had a word for it, which could roughly be translated as “time to cut the carp and get down to it”, although that robs the word of its poetic beauty and its rough sexiness.
“I am heere to help you deesign that beeer label. Shall we start?”

This was cosmic stuff. Two nights back, two of the Gods Laloo worshipped had brewed amber and gold, chilled and frosted, in his dreams. It was the purest Belgian beer, spiced with olives and cardamom and chestnuts, the color of oranges in warm sunshine, that tasted like a fruit market gone deliciously wrong. They served it to him in a large silver chalice that was polished so well that it reflected the liquid within outside and glowed in the warm bright amber. He sipped the cool froth and liquid as Athena and Horus looked on and smiled beatifically. From then on the dream twisted into something strangely unmemorably sexual and he blushed at the lost recollection of it.

And now here was the sign that all that was not in vain. There was a purpose to his life after all and the Gods did exist outside of dreams and books and vases and museums.

They started walking back to his desk, Dwarf and Man, with the Dwarf taking long strident steps to lead the march. Laloo tried making conversation. “So what’s your name?” “Are you a friend of Athena’s?” “Are you allowed to drink?” “How old are you?” “Are Dwarf women also called Dwarfs?” “Where’s your beard?”

The Dwarf walked, head bent down as if in deep meditation and arms folded thoughtfully around his chest with the chin almost resting somewhere close to the neck. He had a placid growl, if that could be the expression to be used, that unnerved Laloo and made him ask several meaningless questions in a go.

When they reached the glass cubicle where Laloo stored his coffee mugs and laptops, the Dwarf deigned to answer a few questions. “My name is not important, I dated Atheena a long time back, I am older than the rock your beelding stands on and I can drink you down man to Dwarf any night and take you home to your momma” Laloo ignored the taunt and focused on what was most relevant. “Dated?”, he asked.

“Let’s begeen” said the Dwarf with the unimportant name. He said “begeen” in a mind numbingly awesome deep voice that exuded strength of purpose and the gravity of the said purpose. He also muttered two short sentences that sounded like four short sighs and that indicated a prayer to the Gods.

“Have you configured the bottle?” he asked looking around as if he expected to find the bottle on the table there but knew better , knowing Laloo’s incapability at doing anything great, not to expect it. That grated. If there was one thing that set Laloo off on missions no one could stop him from, it was when someone acted like they knew better and expected nothing less than ineptness from him. That was perhaps the only thing that could rouse him into marvelous action and fabulous feats of power and creativity. He did.
“Here’s your bottle.”

He took up a pen, flipped over a magazine that carried an inviting picture of Wonder Woman on its cover and drew rough blue outlines of various beer bottles. He craftily drew one that looked like a well endowed woman. Two, in fact. Three were stout, short dwarves, three linear elongated conicals and two which paid tribute to mount Olympus. The Dwarf made an annoying sound with loud breathing at each design and finally nodded at one of the conicals. “That looks bad but I can make that good.” He paused and added helpfully “The rest are reelly bad”

The Dwarf with the unimportant name attacked his design with a religious fervor. He produced a clean white A3 paper and made Laloo draw a neat larger outline of the bottle. This done he proceeded to cast it on the floor, went on his knees and bending over it like a five year old in a crayon company sponsored art competition for world peace, worked his magic on it. He filled it with a ring of runic letters that were finely etched at the foot of the bottle. He gave the front label a beautiful dome like shape that reminded Laloo of the evening sky over the Bay of Bengal. Creepers and mythic creatures filled in the spaces. He blended black and green and yellow and cream to create a color that looked like amber but was infinitely sadder, darker, peaceful and tempting. And that was the color the dome took. In it he poured his infinite creativity, his power, his will to mine and craft and admire. Tears filled Laloo’s eyes at the sheer beauty of it all. The hands worked like two inebriated lizards, swishing here, curling there and creating a silent racket- like a mating ritual. In dark blue bold letters that curved around themselves he wrote the name of the beer on the label- Calebras- that looked, sounded like an invocation and the very reading of it made Laloo fall on his knees with a prayer for forgiveness. Having written 5% v/v and 700 ml in small delicate cursive font and shaded the entire bottle a golden amber to indicate the brew inside, he looked up and gave a proud, happy sneering smile at Laloo. “Now it’s good!”

Laloo had to find a fault and rather unconvinced himself muttered “Calebras” and then said it twice a little louder to make it look like he was tasting the word in his mouth and looking very omniscient said “ Can we look for a better name?”

The Dwarf snorted and walked out of the glass cubicle. Before Laloo could try stopping him, he had left the office and disappeared to wherever he was from.

Laloo took up the paper and looked at if for five whole minutes. He could discern little stories playing themselves out there. He could make out thinly disguised Gods and demons at war and at love and he could even see himself in that tapestry with almost all creation, busy getting drunk in their own unique way, all blissfully happy and satiated.
If there ever could be a message from the Gods, then this was one to him.

He clasped it to his chest and rushed out of his office into the open to find the Dwarf with the unimportant name and thank the Gods for this beauty. A lightning thereby struck him from the blue sky and burned him to a crisp.