Boredom Wrote This

I woke up this morning and the first thought I had was that it had been two days since I brushed my teeth. Then Cookie jumped onto my chest and wagged her stupid tail.

In between the lungful of foul breath and dim-witted dog I was thinking; there is a limit to how many mornings a man can take of getting up with nothing to do. I was feeling so useless, it hurt a little bit.

WARNING: Excessive Boredom can cause your Head to Explode!!!

Anyway, I grabbed the newspaper.

I wish the papers had an infinite amount of news, followed by page after page of celebrity gossip and finally an endless gallery of gloriously intelligent women with brilliant boobs. Okay, okay I get that most people lead these really busy and kickass-grade awesome lives, (or so they tell themselves) and therefore have no time to briefly glance over more than 16 pages of news.

But there IS a market out there for The Infinite Times. ME!!! I am all for a newspaper that takes a full day to read, making it impossible to run out of things to do.

***

Just so that you know, I’m actually the epitome of dental hygiene and also the International Face (teeth?) of Oral Care for Patna. Oh well, I was the obvious choice, apart from owning the only electric toothbrush in the city I am also the only person, who knows how to, and does actually floss in Patna.

Sometimes I do such a fine job of brushing at night; I wake up with teeth so sparkling it’d be a shame to clean them immediately. The respectful thing to do would be to wait till after breakfast. But then some days I forget about it.

And so yesterday I had planned an epic, larger-than-life, post-dinner oral experience. It would begin with an elaborate fifteen minute session of power-flossing, which is basically normal flossing rigrously continued, till there is considerable bleeding. This would be followed by a two minute session of thorough tongue cleaning, ending in a coat of toothpaste (Colgate Active Salt) left on the tongue to destroy any remnant bacteria. Then a round of scrupulous brushing (toothpaste: Meswak, for variety and hence motivation). To end things on a high-note I designed a shorter second session of nuanced flossing and finally a gargle with industrial strength mouthwash.

You will never have to visit a dentist if you follow the above, and you will also be unanimously declared the most boring person alive. But then that’s a small price to pay. Also, a small warning, all this effort can make you hungry and you might feel mildly stupid if that were to happen.

So, anyway, I had it all planned and everything, but I fell asleep before dinner even.

***

If early man was never hungry he’d just have stayed back in his cave and led a life of intense sexual debauchery and passionate laziness. We would all be early men still! Now it’s debatable whether we’d be happier than we are now. I mean a life without any progress and hence no antibiotics or ipods can be painful, but at the same time there would be total absence of a lot of the evils of modern society - religion, clothes, wars, economic depression, Paris Hilton. I think it’s a profound question, beyond the scope of this blog. Maybe you the astute reader of this fascinating online journal could share some thoughts on this.

God’s a smart cookie that way, he could’ve made us without stomachs and with solar panels on our backs and ultra efficient wind turbines for ears but instead he forced us to move our asses by giving us an appetite. With that thought, I entered the kitchen, hoping it would give me something to do.

Severe boredom on its own can push man to accomplish much, but if it happens along with acute laziness then it’s a bit like stagflation, wholly unproductive.

So anyway, I didn’t feel like toiling over flavoured mashed potatoes or spicy mutton curry. Instead I just made some stupid masala to sprinkle over tea, to make my morning chai maid-proof. That woman has an honorary doctorate in the techniques and intent of turning tea into poison.

***

My home’s not exactly the repository of remarkable things to do. I mean the folks are awesome and Cookie is a whole lot of fun, but they sleep way too much to be of any real entertainment value. So I headed to work, on a Saturday!!

***

Desperate times can push a man to do the unthinkable, in my case, striking a conversation with my driver.

Prem Nath (Love God)! Hah, and you thought drivers were always called insipid names like Dubey or Choubey or simply Driver.

Now Prem Nath is no ordinary driver, he is a man of profound depth. He is a meek, deadpan depressed sort of fellow, no one has ever caught him without a frown or heard him speak beyond a few words and his first wife eloped with another man soon after the wedding.

But there's a colourful side to him; he paints his nails red and immediately married a second woman who the maid says is way prettier than the first one. Almost like saying, take that bitch! Except, like Droopy, Prem Nath would say it cheerlessly.

He is a dreamer; if I don’t tell Prem Nath to turn left for office; I run the danger of finding myself in another city. Sometimes he will just slow down the car and be oblivious to the subsequent violent honking and middle fingers. You have to poke him gently out of his abstractions, and he will respond by travelling faster than light and jumping all signals.

So anyway, I thought I’d talk to him.

Me (the God of Small Talk): What’s with the traffic? Is there a rally?
No Reply, my employer ego deeply hurt but not badly enough to forgo experiment.
Me (the Saint of Never-Give-Inn): I think there is… Prem Nath??
Prem Nath: (with disdain and mostly to himself): There seems to be a jam, hence all the cars.
There is a pause in the Universe; then the thunderous vibration of his philosophical account makes the car wobble a bit.
Me (shaken and stirred): Oh.

***

When you come to work on Saturday only to repel boredom there is a high chance of failure. But then what are blogs for?

A Treatise On (out of) Free Time

In a stunning turn of events, Freida Pinto, the stylish lead actress of Slumdog Millionaire has been found hiding a secret husband whom she married in her free time. Ms. Pinto, in her defense, has sent out a photograph of said husband through her publicist. Globally, fans heaved a sigh of quick and forgiving relief, the common opinion being, who wouldn’t hide him?


Just so that you know, Author wishes her all the luck and isn’t even mildly perturbed by her shenanigans, he never really found her hot enough. :-P

Also, just so that you know, the guy in the photograph is not the author, even though there is eerie resemblance. He now feels stupid about a couple of things mentioned in the first paragraph.

***

Moving on, researchers at Princeton University have used modern brain scanning apparatus and an obscene quantity of free time to conclude that men are more likely to look at women as objects if they view sexy pictures beforehand. Such images they claim; turn women from people to interact with to object to be acted upon.

The obvious corollary they further added, sexier the picture more the objectivising.

Now men the world over are appalled. Our integrity has been questioned; the respect we give to bikini clad women is under doubt.

Such is our collective disgust and so aghast are left we, that it is our decision to not make any formal comment on this frivolous experiment that uses ambiguous terms like ‘more likely’ and cheap phrases like ‘sexy pictures.’

But author, having somehow, out of sheer luck, a lot of free time at work today, decided to construct an argument against such a baseless assertion.

The aforementioned scientists are not a collection of Nobel laureates, they haven’t discovered each a unique galaxy, nor have they a solution to the deepening financial crisis or world poverty.

Their last piece of earth shattering research, for which they traveled across the globe, on tax payer money, apparently to get an unbiased sample set, was to effectively prove that dogs are, more likely, to yawn in the presence of a yawning owner.


I think the discerning followers of slowtumblinglife needn’t be given more proof of the utter irrelevance of such a theory.

***

Do you know that Facebook has 175 million users? That if it was a country it would get a permanent seat in the UN Security Council? (Uh Indians, sorry to be the one to break this news to us, but size alone doesn’t matter. You have to be cool in other ways too, like have a lot of money and all. Just like to be taken seriously at the WTO you have to control more than 2% of World Trade.)

Do you know that it’s growing at the rate of 5 million users per month? That this would make it the fastest growing state in India? That 800 million photographs are uploaded every month? That 2105 million status updates, 7987 million wall posts, 675,000 new groups, and countless stupid pokes are made every month?

Now of course, all this happens publicly, and people actually spend their free time collecting friends to show off, getting a life only so that they will have pictures to put up and joining groups trying to get a life. Yes! It’s a complicated chain that feeds on itself.

Anyway, people are secure doing all this, because they control their privacy settings and have their own secret passwords. (People believe anything, they are cute that way.)

So anyway, facebook decided a few days ago that it would store all this information permanently. Like even after you delete your account and all.

And this just made everyone mad. From Arkansas to Asansol. From Aaj Tak to CNN. The Aaj Tak guys of course showed stock images of Orkut, and Anderson Cooper, who is a real life Benjamin Button, looked fake-distressed.

But I don’t get it, I mean people who had been bringing down facebook servers in their free time with minute to minute photographs of their weddings, their kid’s first step, last diaper, third word, their trip to the front lawn are now protesting??! All the information they willingly put up there, which was anyway on public display, is now infringing their privacy?

People will protest anything. Without thinking about it. They will just make a big deal of anything. I mean if you see the discussions on this, people talk about it like it’s the end of the world.

***

In his free time Michael Phelps smokes a Bong, which is fine by me. Also he has surely not had a lot of free time, to make real friends. The kind that wouldn’t click him doing something that could take away all his medals.

So anyway, I’m done with my free time here, also done using italics. I mean that’s the thing with it, right? The moment you do something about your free time, it’s gone.

***

If this statement is true, then this was a great post. (Hint: Think about it.)

The Anti-Thirty Stimulus Plan

So anyway, I was really pissed. And it’s not one of those moods brought on by Mondays, I don’t get that mood really. I mean, c’mon!!! Ok, maybe my job’s really beautiful and the net connection at work is ultra awesome, but still. Most people crib about Monday like it’s a colleague or the government. I mean they get really personal.


Okay so we are going off track. I was saying I was in a bad mood and all. The thing is this being five-years-away-from-thirty business (why don’t we oscillate between 18 and 28 nine times before dying, Oh GOD, where was thy imagination????) is really getting to me. I mean around the time of my (Happy) Birthday, I thought I’d get over it in a week or so. Just like the morning horoscope, I mean I take that very seriously too, in the loo I really think about it, but then I forget about it…

So if it says, “Today you will be very successful at work, find love and while you are at it you will also resolve family objection to your behaviour through delicate negotiation,” I really think about it.

Love eh? In Patna eh? Wonder how that will happen?? Then I construct a plausible real life situation. Hmm it is likely that Winona Ryder would take a flight to Patna, obviously we’d fall in love, and of course she’d want to marry… (Who wouldn’t??) All this popularity will get the folks to behave, also the company would HAVE to move me out of here (that being the definition of ‘very successful’ in my line), I mean there aren’t a lot of Hollywood movies being shot here currently, or shopping malls to steal from. My spouse has got to have a real career option and all; my company is very understanding that way.

Anyway. I really was pissed. I mean I was taking a close look in the mirror, and it began with a single strand. Then there were three more, and then a few more and this continued till I counted almost thirty fucking strands of completely white hair. (Aren’t they supposed to get grey first? Or is that just a saying, grey hair?) They really were white!!!

This just set the ball rolling, because then I looked at my waist which is at an all time high in terms of reach, my triceps have disappeared, my teeth were fairly white, but then two of the front ones are actually more than 70% artificial filling, so that doesn’t really count, I can be brutally honest with myself sometimes, loud ipod and chronic bacterial infection are causing steady loss of hearing, memory is weakening too, my nose is the size of the moon (okay that has nothing to do with being nearly thirty).

So anyway, this really made me angry. I mean what the hell; I was already thirty in many subtle ways. The damage had been done!!! And so I sat there, eating Choco Pie for breakfast and thinking about it, my life really needed a bailout package, just like everything else in the world.

I mean I do do a lot of things that are fairly cool, like I can make mashed potatoes that could compete with TGIF’s recipe, I have this blog, I get decent traffic, though 65% of it is me, albeit from two separate IP addresses, I have a dog, and well there are a lot of other things. But I need something else, something that is the very definition of cool, something that will turn me 18 again and cover me in the awesome glow of heavenly coolness.

And so I was thinking about this all day. And then it hit me.

Roadies, man!! I mean what could be more cool?? Have you seen those guys? It’s intimidating sometimes, the sheer intelligence of the women, the suave Sardar Ji, the sense of style that precedes the Bengali woman, and Dev’s (fat guy’s) obvious confidence. Taken together they define our generation, that’s who we want to be. That’s who we can be, if only we buy the merchandise. The utter brilliance with which they strategically plot against each other, the rip roaring humour, the passion with which they curse, the panache with which they stage romances, the diligence with which they often fail their moronic tasks.

Ok, so I have found my true calling, the time has come for me to take the road less traveled. So what if my friends will lose respect for me and then just drop me? So what if I will be laughed at on national TV? I stand to win almost eighty thousand rupees for only a few months of countrywide shame. And I could even be on Bigg Boss, Season 3 (Shilpa Returns, again)!! So what if I will have to say things into the camera in English and then translate the same into Hindi? So what if I don’t know how to ride a bike? Oh… Oh Shit…

Nach Baliye??

Terminator - Valentine's Day

I mean it was an ordinary Valentine’s Day and all. Most people were celebrating love and much indiscriminate sex was happening around town. Those who were kept out of this revelry, were seen grumbling, “How shallow. Don’t they get it?? It’s such a corporate hoax!!” Then they drowned themselves in their sorry drinks. Like I mentioned an average V-Day; which was made truly impressive by the following.

***

Out of nowhere a giant ball of tacky sparks appears in a remote LA corner. You guess right! The Terminator is back, and he is naked!! Of course the nudity doesn’t embarrass our man till we hear the tender buzz of forbiddenfruit.exe. Immediately T2 blushes, but mind you, only slightly. He is after all the epitome of badassery.

It’s early morning rather than late in the night, the guys in 2029 screwed up big time man.

“Sthoopid Humins!”

So our friend hits a bus stop, and its overflowing with kids.

“Mommy that man has such a B-I-I-I-G!!!”

“I KNO-WWOW!!”

ff.exe starts to groan with embarrassment.

Our T2, puts up an awesome display of steadfast purpose and unwavering concentration, ignores all the hot Mommies and locates with pin-point accuracy the one man at the Bus Stop. He does have his doubts about him, but when you are super-mean, you couldn’t care less.

“I want your boots, your shirt and your pants!”

"Momma always said life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get."

T2 grunts, “Whatever??!” and in little less than three seconds Forrest Gump is lying naked by the street and our man of steel is dressed in a blue check shirt, fairly comfortable running shoes and khaki pants. Of course he looks a lot less ominous, but T2 doesn’t know it, there being no FTV.exe.

(“Stupid Humans!”)

Anyway, the man-machine proceeds to fulfil his primary objective. Then he stops. Then he turns and walks back. Gump is thinking this is worse than Vietnam.

But the T2 only wants his hat. And his Box of Chocolates.

“I gotta find Bubba!”

“Jenny never will marry me now.” “This sss-ucks!!!”

And then in a moment that has moved many to tears and touched their souls permanently, Forrest got up and started to run. Whilst running, Gump yells to T2, “I’ll be BACK!!”

It’s a catchy phrase, thinks the Terminator, got a nice ring to it. “I’ll be Baak!”

To stop our man of action from wasting time mulling over his newly discovered punch-line, NortonAntiTrivial makes him kick the back of his own head. It’s a complicated manoeuvre if you think of it, one only he could have accomplished with such élan.

Moving on. T2 seizes a bike in proper Grand Theft Auto fashion and begins his search for John Connor. The crazy boy seems to be all over town, it being V-Day and everything. And both T2 and the T-1000 can’t keep track of him, plus the weather is horrible, so they are getting held up in traffic and all. But being robots, they don’t have a life, so they continue searching.

Foolish Man: (laughing hysterically) Dude the pants don’t fit you.
T2: Do you know John Connor?
Foolish Man: (still laughing) NO!!!
T2: Ok. I want your pants.
Naked Foolish Man: But Dude?? What the fuck??
T2: Life’s like a box of Chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get. Momma used to say.

T-1000: Do you know John Connor?
133rd Irrational Person: (slightly confused) No?? Should I ha…
[the T-1000 impales head]

So this goes on till the afternoon. And the T2 exhibiting spectacular lateral thinking; enters a bar in search of John. It’s packed and people are all over each other. Anyway, the Terminator starts to look for the Connor kid in that twisted mass.

Suddenly, a drunken slack sort of fellow, holding a White Russian in one hand bumps into our man and pours the drink all over him.

T2: Dude??
Man: Huh? Yes…
T2: Dude!! What the fuck??
Man: Yes… It’s The Dude himself. Do I know you Sir?
T2: Do you know John Connor?
The Dude: Well, I could. Why don’t you replace my drink? And lemme rummage through my thoughts? I dig your style big guy. Are you sure we don’t know each other?

Over drinks the T2 explains his predicament.

It’s a philosophical doubt, Do Robots Have Luck? Anyway, our man of steel seemed to have a lot of it. John was The Dude’s connection!! The Dude offered to take T2 to him, and while they waited for him to finish the drink, The Dude explained the significance of V-Day. He also explained how and why he was being chased by German Nihilists.

Suddenly –

The Dude: Hey Big Guy..
T2: Yes?
The Dude: That lady’s totally checking you out man.
T2: Fuck!! Yes... (Getting up) I’ll be baak!!

T2 returns in a moment, Bridget Jones wrapped all around him.

The Dude: I DIG your style man!!
T2: Yeah Dude!!! She be my Valentine. Bridget, Dude. Dude, Bridget.
T2: (whispering to The Dude) Dude she’s wild.
Bridget: (looking swollen, drunk, and foolishly happy) It’s a truth universally acknowledged that when one part of your life falls spectacularly to pieces another begins to look up.
The Dude: (whispering to T2) Big Guy, you think she’ll be cool with the, you know, the robot bit? No problemo?
T2: (Whispering back.) No Problemo! It’s V-Day!! It’s only a fling dude.
The Dude: DUDE!!! I love you.
T2: Yeah, well.

Outside the severely worsened weather and Bridget’s size force the three to take The Dude’s car. They hunt down Connor. The fucking runt gets T2 to rescue his mad mother. And all he does during this time is smoke up with Bridget and The Dude in the car. Then Mad Mom and Co. recover the chip and destroy the Cyberdyne building. The T-1000, who in the meantime has reduced average life expectancy in Los Angeles by 8 years, is always a little too late. Anyway, there are spectacular action sequences; the T2 is sprayed with bullets, Lebowski manages to hold on to his White Russian, Bridget and John look stoned, Mother Connor looks all violent and angry and scratches “No Fate” on every available surface using her knife and nails, but is of amazingly little help.

Anyway, the groups brilliant idea of saving John and hence the world seems to be to try and avoid the T-1000 till 2029. And this leads me to the next philosophical question, What Would Happen if the Robots stayed on till 2029? That’s where they were sent from! Anyway, there is no time to consider such inane matters in a breezy Hollywood movie.

After a few hours of running, they arrive at a busy intersection. Bridget needed to go to the loo, and so everyone else also decided to do their own thing. They stop outside a resto-bar and Sarah scratches “No Fate” on the road, The Dude pours himself another White Russian, John steals from the ATM and T2 stares into space. All this while the weather just keeps getting worse.

Suddenly –

T2: I need a vacation.
The Dude: Dude, isn’t this some vacation already?
T2: He’s baak you dipshit!

The T-1000 starts to run towards them, only 500m of road and one intersection lies between him and John. The Dude hides his drink, Bridget has fallen for one of the waiters and is now torn between him and T2, T2 starts to take aim, Sarah just yells and shows middle finger, again of no help! John isn’t done robbing the ATM.

The T-1000 was at the intersection and audiences were ready for another magnificent round of action when almost a thousand naked runners swamp the scene. The T-1000 is held up in the ensuing traffic snarl.

It’s Forrest Gump!!!

In just a day, he has convinced a mad many of the power of naked running when it comes to solving life’s greatest perplexities.

T2: Dude!! How’s Jenny? And Bubba?
The Dude: Nice Chocolates man. I really like what you have here, with your nudity and all. Very progressive. Have you found Jesus yet?
Sarah: You fucking idiot. You are going to die!!! All of you!!! NO FATE.
Forrest: Momma always said dying was a part of life.
The Dude: Whoa man!! Cheers to that.

Then Forrest being the incredibly nice guy he is; hugs T2.

Forrest: You showed me the way. Thank you.
The Dude, Bridget: Awwww.
T2: AWWW.
Sarah: No Fate.
John: We have $5700.

In the meantime, the T-1000 has seen to it that Gump’s followers would never ask another question of life or anything.

He starts to walk towards T2. The weather is so horrible, and it’s so bloody cold for February that you wonder what’s wrong. The Dude hides Forrest in his gown, Bridget and John are too drunk to feel the cold, and Sarah and T2 are just too badass.

But then this isn’t your normal snowy winter evening. It’s the Day After Tomorrow!!!! And as luck would have it our T-1000 is directly below the eye. Of course, as is logical, this freezes him. In a moment of quick thinking, The Dude finishes his drink and throws the heavy old-fashioned glass to T2.

T2: (hurling it at the frozen T-1000) Hasta la vista baby…

Audiences stand up to clap. But there is no time for it as the eye is slowly moving towards them. T2 asks them to head indoors. The Dude and Gump collect shattered pieces of the T-1000 and put them into two separate plastic bags. So that’s the end of him, rather ingenious I should add.

Anyway, so inside they start to smoke up and all again and it gets pretty cozy. Sarah and The Dude get to know each other and all. So there will be two Connor brothers and everything it seems. The world is safer.

T2: Dude!! What the fuck??
The Dude: She’s wild too man.
T2: L-O-L.
The Dude: So what’s the plan dude? You staying? With her? I mean you have that whole future robot thing going and all??
T2: No problemo. It’s V-Day dude, I’ll just ask her out and all.
The Dude: The waiter?
T2: Terminated.
The Dude: (To audiences) I dig his style man. This Dude abides!!

***

BONUS (So that you will come come here, and not just FB): For Hindi Version of Wish You Were Here, check Comments Page!!! :) Also any other requests for translation are truly welcome. (I have nothing to do, even on Sundays!!!)

Paper Hoarding Dustbin Expert

In the planet of the dustbins, there are some that are first among equals. Primus Inter Pares. These celebrities, these super-achievers of the trash-keeping race can be found in quaint corners of our bedrooms and living rooms. Their Royal Hollownesses are never disgraced with the filth of the kitchen or the stench of the loo. Spent tea leaves and severed carrot heads for individuals so regal?? No Sirs! Not in this world.

They are attired more often than not in shimmering aluminum or if the owners are of the Fab-India cult, they’d be handmade with delicious care and a surprisingly uniform set of irregularities to insist on the handmadedness. Sometimes they might come with wooden frames and linings made of soft silk. The ignorant onlooker could be forgiven for mistaking such a work of fine art for the owner’s coronet.

With royalty comes joblessness. (Prince Charles?!! ) So these friends of ours collect tiny titbits of polite garbage like connoisseurs of only the finest wine, and take a month before being ready for the obligatory trip to empty their tummies.

Unbeknownst to them, these ultra cool superbins are keen observers of household history. They have days of family life and secrets lying within their emptiness.

The one in my bedroom contains more than a dozen Choco Pie and Cadbury wrappers and a month full of used Johnson’s buds and floss. (I like to remind all dustbins of their place in the larger scheme of things.)

There is absolutely no paper; I never ever throw away any paper, no ATM receipt, bill, scrap, random sheet of data. I am a compulsive collector of the ragii papyrus. And I have been at it for years. Every bag I own has one compartment reserved for all the paper that accompanied my life for the years that the bag escorted me.

It began rather harmlessly. In college, everyone generally agreed that I couldn’t be more absent minded. It was a common fear amongst my friends that someday I’d start chewing water during a meal. Very soon my friends convinced me of my disability. Treacherous people they! And a strange paranoia enveloped my innocent soul.

What if someday, I lose something so important that it could fundamentally change the course of my life and destine me for eventual and spectacular failure??

And being not a man of small measures, I decided on that very day this existential question appeared in my troubled mind, before stopping to probe what could be so important, (i think the exact translation from Hindi would be) without seeing Aao or Tao, that I would collect every scrap of paper I ever came across in my life.

So my dustbins never have any paper. There you have it; they can tell you a lot about the person too.

What story does your bin tell?

In the Mood for Love

“I do.”

But he was certain that most people didn’t stop to look at themselves in the mirror. He did it fairly often.

It had bothered him forever. He felt anger, expressed joy, shed tears, laughed out loud, remembered fondly and cursed silently. But who was this person that looked back at him?

The longer they stared at each other the more unfamiliar they grew.

He knew that if he did this long enough he’d lose his mind. So he’d break the spell by speaking to himself or by twisting his face into some awkward shape.

She had no way of knowing this little detail of his life. In fact D. kept her away from infinite such details.

“You cannot be in love with someone once you know everything there is to know about them,” he had said when she objected to all the secrecy.

***

He had been standing there waiting for her for about half an hour. Thankfully she looked particularly gorgeous that afternoon.

***

They had first met years ago in college. And there’s was a case of what is usually not known as love at first sight. Anyway, as time went by, they fell in love.

Falling in love was highly overrated, he thought. Sometimes people fell in love over coffee, a single interesting conversation and/or a long kiss. Of course others took longer, but even then, everyone made too big a deal out of, what was essentially, nothing more than a matter of chance.

It had rained heavily the previous night and by the morning the weather had only worsened. Most students stayed away, and the college promptly declared a non-working day. Therefore it wasn’t odd that D. found himself alone in the library with nothing much to do than to talk to her. She had taken the bus to campus, and had no way of returning home before the afternoon.

So their undying love was merely the outcome of bad weather, lazy students, lazier authorities, and his random decision to walk into the library instead of the canteen.

“You mean more to me than anything in the world.”

Every time she’d say this he would hug her. Of course he found it foolishly sentimental. Thankfully she wasn’t the kind that said such things on a regular basis.

D. found relationships insufferable, much like the unbearable feeling of looking into a mirror.

“Why must there be this affiliation between two people who are in love? I think relationships end love!!”

It was this slight abhorrence that always gave him the upper hand in a relationship. She was always the one holding on to him. As time went by, he started to enjoy the feeling, then to expect it of her.

“What does it mean to love someone?” D. had often wondered standing before his mirror.

But he was certain of the times he hadn’t loved her. After the first few months he couldn’t bear to be with her, he couldn’t bear to give up all the time she needed, he couldn’t bear her incessant messaging and occasional tears. But then as time went by, things settled down a bit, either because she had had her fill of the necessary ceremonies or she just gave up. And yet D. didn’t know if he loved her. All he could say with some certainty was that the relationship didn’t bother him as much. Then a few years into it, he found things were getting too insipid.

“Being with one woman is boring man!” he had drunkenly declared to the other guys.

He fell out of love with her again. He met, flirted and even pursued other women, at work, in college, randomly and at parties. She had no way of knowing any of this. D. lied to her all the time.

“Why do you need the reassurance? What would I be doing here if I didn’t?”

Sometimes he’d play with her imagination, “I think anyone can be in love with two people at the same time!”

“No…” she’d say nervously.

D. was surprised at the little luck he had with other women. They were mostly stupid, or unattractive, or without grace, or completely rude. And if they were even vaguely acceptable, they required far too much effort. Also by and by he became aware of an unsettling thing; he would more or less look for her in other women. So he returned, and since then he had been honest and loyal to her, even privately. And yet, D. didn’t know whether it was love or simply convenience.

Time moved on and he maintained his upper hand by being generally aloof, all this while, love continued to be fairly random and perplexing, like when it displayed its incredible ability of bringing a man to his knees.

Just hearing her rave about some guy from work, D. realised that the other man could make her happier, or at least as happy. If he had gone to the canteen that rainy morning when classes were bizarrely called off and she had met this man later in the bus, things could have been very different.

That evening he was especially nice to her.

***

The relationship outlasted all of his digressions. You could say that it kept them in love, somehow.

What of her digressions? D. never really went there.

***

Years passed like this. And as he watched her walk down the aisle that afternoon, D. thought of everything that had happened, then he smiled; the clouds had spent the previous night washing everything grey just like the first time they met.

It was only a matter of chance.

He still had his doubts. But when you have been with someone for fairly long they begin to define you. You look into the mirror, and you still can’t recognise the person looking back. It still drives you crazy, except now, instead of making an awkward face, you just look at her and she says, “You mean more to me than anything else in the world.”

Maybe that’s love?

“I do.”

Dream Girl

“It’s strange, I dream the best dreams in the world and yet my life is about as ordinary as any.”

She wasn’t even looking at him.

“If I could, I’d go someplace where dreams came true all the time. Not wishes. Proper dreams. Mine have to be the most amazing dreams ever.”

It was an odd wall that the two of them sat on. It began abruptly but with much purpose, then it ran a few feet before giving up and collapsing as unexpectedly as it arose. From the village it looked like a slender headless shoulder overlooking the river.

A sudden breeze interrupted his monologue. He watched as her soft hair were taken around in tiny waves and slow brilliant swirls, and said to himself, “God! She is pretty.”

“You are pretty. Beautiful.” He reached out for her shadow-face with his shadow-hand.

It made her blush, but she also cracked a frail smile.

“What if we are actually our shadows?” “Have you ever thought about it? I once had this elaborate dream where my body was just that, a body. I was actually my shadow!”

Both of them paused and suspiciously examined the dark outline glued to their lives.

She wondered if she was sitting on the wall because she wanted to; it was possible that she was there only because her gloomy friend craved for a swim? Staring at her shadow ripple across the cold river she couldn’t really make up her mind. What was her mind?

Did his shadow love her shadow more than he loved her? There was no end to this speculation. Was he only playing out his shadow’s love?

Mala was as beautiful as he was ordinary. They were, however, both equally crazy.

“Where do I get these ideas from?”

“I don’t Mala, I just dream them. They visit me at night. Maybe, maybe it’s you who is strange. And because I am with you all day, I get these strange ideas at night?”

“Okay, I was only kidding. A joke? Now don’t go silent on me again.”

Mala was born mute. But he had often thought that even if she could speak, Mala would choose not to. She went about her life in a way that didn’t require her to speak. She had no questions to ask of anything or anyone, no anger to express, no gossip to exchange, no lies to tell, no favours to request for, no words of love to be shared. In many ways you couldn’t tell Mala from her shadow. They were both equally inanimate. But Mala was as uniquely intriguing as her shadow was ordinary.

“You know, I could spend my entire life with you. Would you be able to? I guess you’d be. Ya?”

To begin with, everyone had loved Mala. She was far too lovely for that little village with a strange aimless wall. But then news of her muteness spread, and the admiration quickly turned to sympathy. Slowly Mala’s place in the life of the villagers began to resemble that of the wall. The wall was too big and she too pretty to be completely forgotten. But Mala and the wall served no purpose and were, as time passed, duly ignored.

“Ya??? Hmm. Doesn’t matter.”

She wasn’t even looking at him.

In the village, all the kids went to the same school, and the same teacher taught all of them, irrespective of age, the same lessons everyday for a week. Then the classes repeated themselves. This would go on till the kid grew old enough to get married, or the teacher passed away, or till the river climbed over the wall and destroyed the village.

He met Mala at school. And while she was instantly ignored, he received a lot of attention. For the first few months there wasn’t a day when he returned home without a bruise and a nasty nickname. You could say that theirs was a friendship born out of a process of elimination. They were both removed from the lives of everyone else at school.

He had a large nose, was exceptionally scrawny, and his father lived with another woman in the city leaving his mother and him behind. This nearly drove his mother mad and he was left an orphan for all practical purposes. Mala, however, barely took note of this, and even volunteered to listen to his long sorry tales of missing his father while he grew up and hating his nose.

Since then their friendship had grown. They were forever with one another, in school, by the well, walking past the fields or sitting aimlessly on the wall.

“What if there are people that eat our dreams at night, Mala? I mean, not people, but things we can’t see?”

“It could be true?!!” “Why else would we have such brief dreams before we wake up?”

“Mala, you bum, all you see are leftover dreams!” “The good bit is eaten up while you are snoring away.”

“You DO snore.” “Snoring has nothing to do with being mute!!”

“I’m not dumb Mala, I only have a large nose and no father!”

“But think about it?” “Who could it be?”

“Maybe you can stay up tonight, beside me, and check?”

“I have the finest dreams in the world Mala! The dream-eaters will surely come to feast on my dreams.”

She thought of her own hollow dreams. Even if such a tribe of dream-eaters existed they’d waste no time on her. What would she have to do to dream? Talk?

He thought of the others in the village. All they could dream for was a good monsoon, or a healthy child. They had absolutely no imagination and little ambition.

“Where do you think they’d be Mala? These creatures? They’d meet us don’t you think?”

She was looking out into the horizon. The sun was beginning to set and it cast a long shadow of the two of them over the village.

The gentle breeze returned, and this time Mala smiled widely and let her hair dance in soft flutters. He thought to himself, “God, could she look any prettier?”

“You know, you are the only one I can tell these things to. No one else would understand.”

He closed his eyes, and really wished he was somewhere else, where dreams came to life. Proper dreams.

***

“Poor boy!”

“Yes, the wretched man left the two of them. Did he leave any money?”

“I don’t think so!”

“He seems to be going mad like his mother; have you seen him? He sits by the river, on that wall, all day speaking to himself!”