Passenger

It was around midnight when I reached the railway station. Thanks to the festival season, a confirmed reservation status was a distant dream. The station was virtually deserted, barring a handful of voyagers who had arrived in the previous train and were making their way out into the town. There was no clamour of Auto walaahs and taxi walaahs unlike that of the big city I was so used to. I managed to wake up the lady at the ticket counter. The expression on her face portrayed me as doing a heinous act, trying to legitimately buy a ticket as she handed me a general class ticket for my destination. Bengaluru.


With my trolley bag, I moved on to the second platform. There was nearly an hour to go for the scheduled arrival of my train. That is, if Indian Railways does the noble and improbable act of driving my train somewhere close to an “On Time” status. I grabbed a cup of coffee from a stall on the virtually deserted platform. God, coffees at railway stations suck big time..!! High time these people think of renaming the brew and maybe applying for a patent for it. Coffee...!!!!


I moved on. Found an empty bench. Not as if finding an empty bench in a deserted station in a sleepy southern town in India was a strenuous affair. I sat, grateful to the “coffee”. That was the only thing that could keep me awake at this time of the day. Aah, how I longed for a bed to sleep. It was not to be tonight. Reservation status blank.


It was when I threw away the coffee cup on to the track after finishing and thinking what next to occupy myself with when I noticed a girl walking in my direction. She stood out of the crowd, simply by her conduct. Her attire, her countenance….and the fact that she was talking on a mobile phone made her stand out in the skimpy crowd. Plus maybe the fact that she walked towards my direction and settled herself on a concrete bench adjacent to mine.


Who was she talking to..? Her boyfriend...? At her age I had stood at this times at a lot of railway stations. But that was a time when people were a lot more restrained. But not youth. In the prime of youth, when we used to travel in groups, we literally used to make every journey a celebration. And the time spent waiting for station were always memorable. Laughing, shouting and commenting, we really used to make our presence felt. Aaah..those thoughts, they never cease to make me nostalgic. Surely not now, when you are standing almost alone in a small station, almost uncomfortably silent.


Except for the girl talking on her phone.


She cut the call and moved closer to the tracks. It was clearly visible – the tension on her face. She so badly wanted the train to come. To get on with the journey.


At last the Railway God smiled..!!! The train arrived. I got in and managed to find a window seat. And imagine my surprise when I found myself staring straight to the same girl talking on the same phone sitting right across me. I debated whether to initiate a conversation or mute myself when the girl accosted.


“Excuse me, what time will the next station be..? I have to recharge my mobile..."

“It’ll be nearly an hour and half from here. You can use my phone if you want to...”

She politely declined and I thought I saw a hint of a small smile spread across her face when her mobile buzzed again. The traces of the expression I thought I saw vanished in a flash.


“What did he say..? Uncle..? Aunty had promised she’ll convince him...”

“Please...don’t tell me there is no change.”

“Okay. Call back if anything comes up.”

My curiosity augmented manifold. The feeling was intensified when the expression on her face further deteriorated. It was evident, she was controlling herself from not sobbing. Was the person in front of me facing the deepest crisis of her life..? May I help..or will it be inappropriate to ask..?


The whimper of the phone cut into my thoughts again.


“Amma please. You just need to say a yes. If you can’t do it, no one else can. I know Appa loves us. He can’t do this...”

“Amma he won’t do it. He can’t. He loves me...”

It seemed Amma cut the phone because she was cut in the middle of the sentence. What did her father do that is causing so much distress in her..? Whatever it is, it is really tearing her apart right now. My thoughts raced faster than the train as she put the phone back into her handbag with a deep sigh. In less than a minute it was back to where it belonged – beside her ears.


“Appa...no you’ve misunderstood the situation. It was never quite the way you perceived...”

“Amma can’t live without you. And you know it...”

The conversation tapered off. But what was the matter. Was her parents on the verge of a separation..? But...how can they do this to her..? Couldn’t they think of her before doing something this catastrophic..? My psyche was flooded with questions. And the gentle breeze fluttering across the window was so comforting for a tired body and it was just a matter of times before I had dozed off.


An unfamiliar ringtome woke me up in the dead of the night. It was her phone buzzing on her seat. “Uncle” came printed on the display. She was nowhere to be seen. Good God, where is she..? Did she commit any suicidal act..? I found myself very depressed with that thought. There wasn’t anyone I could ask...everyone else around was sleeping soundly. Clenching her phone in my wrist, I dashed across to near the toilet.


Thank God, she was there. I was shocked seeing her expression, she was uncontrollably sobbing. She took the phone from my hand. Undecided what to do I hung around there for a few seconds. When I felt that my presence was dissuading her from speaking freely on the phone, I made my way to my seat. I could make out pieces of the conversation on one side.


“But I had told them it is not true.”

“Uncle, please. Do try once more. No I haven’t given up hope.”

I waited, anxiously. For her to come back. It was actually a tug-of-war going on – between an extremely tired body refusing to lay awake and an anxious mind preventing the slumber to come its way. It took the better part of an hour for the former to win over the latter but it eventually happened. And all the while I had waited her to come, to know what happened. She didn’t come.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I was woken up by the continuous clamor that came with the Bengaluru railway station. Aaah back Bengaluru. I got up from my seat and stretched myself. It took a moment for me to come to my senses and that was when I realized – the girl was no there..!! Neither was her phone or any of her belongings. Cursing myself for sleeping the way I did, I rushed to check the either end of the compartment. It was empty, there was no one there. It seemed it had been around 5-10 minutes since the train had arrived at the station. She might have alighted and made her way. Or she might have alighted at some earlier station. Or she might have...no it can’t happen.


The train..had completed its journey. I had reached my destination. All of my co-passengers had. Well, did she reach her destination..? I don’t know. I wish she did. Maybe I believe she did...

Suicide

No. I can’t. I simply can’t. All this cruel world has given me are a set of shattered dreams and unfulfilled promises. I just can’t.... No more depressing mornings, no more numb evenings I want to see. All I want to do is to slip into a deep slumber. A peaceful slumber, a few metres under beneath the lap of this earth.

All I want to do...is suicide.

A ramshackle Wilkinson Sword blade was the weapon I found after scanning through among the rubble in my bedroom. My right hand glanced along her surface, feeling its deadly smoothness. But the question remained....which hand – left or right..? Which one was destined to provide me the path to nirvana? It was tough to decide. After a lot of forethought and afterthought, I made the call. After all, I had to make the call. So be it my left hand. A snort of derision spread across my countenance as I stared at my right hand. “Huh, you call yourself my comfortable hand, do you? But when the need came, your other half stepped forward....”

Caressing the matrix of bluish-greenish blood vessels adorning my left wrist, I moved towards the window. Hopefully one last time. A gentle breeze, I reflected. “This year, the summer wasn’t that very hot. The new Air Conditioner didn’t turn out to be a good investment. And I really don’t know why people want to increase the air conditioning capacity in the office. I very often end up feeling really cold out there….” The breeze began to play with my hair. Irritated, I started putting my hair back to its place. “Next time I go to barber shop, I’ll make sure he really trims it to the maximum possible extent. A military cut style....”

It is then when I noticed a piece of paper fluttering on the table adjoining the window. Gas cylinder bill. S**t, today is the last date. If I don’t pay up, those people are surely going to disconnect my connection. I can’t afford to run after reconnection formalities, I really can’t. Switching on my computer, hopefully one last time, I made the payment online. Ufff, what a relief. Thank God, I remembered at least today.

I brought the blade closer to its intended destination. And I thrust myself onto the rexin settee.

Hey, what the hell am I doing..? It’s hardly been a month I bought the new settee. And if blood falls onto it, the stains are really going to be tough to eliminate. Immediately I pushed open my closet, took out a white towel and spread it on the settee. Thank God, at least now I remembered....

At last, hopefully for one last time, I closed my eyes. I hardly felt any feeling the infinitesimal moment the blade slit my left wrist.

I opened my eyes hoping that I’d be half dead. All I saw on my left wrist was a pore, slightly bigger in size than nanoscopic dimensions. I cursed myself. Someone who can’t even keep a sharp blade in his apartment ought not to live...

In a moment of rage, I threw out the Wilkinson Sword through the window and paced my way to the kitchen. A knife...a decently sharp knife.

It was when I entered the kitchen that it dawned on me. Oh... I forgot to keep today’s milk in the fridge. How forgetful can one get... I nearly about screwed up my bed coffee tomorrow morning... Thank God, I remembered at least now...

At last I found the knife. Carrying the knife along with me, I came back to the living room and was just about to sit on the settee when the clock facing the dirty Formica wall unit, embarked on its 9’O Clock chime.

Good God… 9 already? Wasn’t today the semifinals of Indian Idol...? I think it will be that curly haired guy Karan’s day today. He really outperformed the others in the initial elimination rounds. He should make it through to the finals. My fingers found their way to the remote control lying idle on the sofa and closed in on the Start button.

Do let me watch today’s episode. Indian Idol, hopefully one last time. I can always suicide tomorrow, can’t I....

The Unvoiced Ruminations

When you "try" creating something at the end of a very normal day in office, it is highly probable that it ends up looking quite like the piece below. Nonetheless, Nostalgia deserves a pardon I believe.... and lot more other chances. To apologize...!!!

Loved you for epochs did I,
and still... the love remains.
Desired for ages did I...
...to catch a glimpse of you,
behind the vibrant peepal tree,
shadowing my college campus.
Still remember afresh,
the solemn moment,
when I saw that smile for once, the firstest,
under the shade of the umbrella,
a romantic monsoon eve.

That flashes of a smile,
painted a thousand colours in me.
But...where did she disappear,
a word unattered...
The musings of adolescence transformed,
you grew up...
You were a wife, you became a mother.
Those nights I dreamt,
those nights I painted,
colours to my life.

Never ask me to forget those days,
those days we were together...
those days we laughed...
those nights we quarreled.
The love you gave, graced my heart.
The two of us, on the path of love,
hand in hand, the bantering rains...
...they added their charm.
Did we know what we desired…
did you know what made you wait for me...
...in the mangroves, in the canteens...
I did know...I did.

Dreamt together we did...
little did I dream, about unfulfilled reveries.
Often seconds shaded themselves between hours,
When I waited...for my angel to come.
You for me...me for you,
I dreamt...beyond the heavens.
The me in me, wanted the you in you.

Another day it was...
...not quite the same as yesterday though.
The glorious bubble burst that day,
the day it dawned we won’t be together...
for life.
Like a craven started crying did I.
I don’t have anything for you dear...
...except...this drop of tear.

Was it a fantasy...
that you dream about life when you haven’t understood it...?
Much did we crave to be one,
but someone from up above seemed to tease...
The stab still remains, in the heart,
all I console, believing it’s all been for good.

You...
you gave me a lot to think.
Like the excitement of an odd summer rain.
Even today...
...all I have, is that bundle of memories.
The memories called...life.

The Road Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

The Road Not Taken
Robert Frost, 1916



Once I was small,
I longed for the skies.
It was bad; you couldn’t touch the moon,
until my poppa lifted me on his shoulders,
the moon...it was closer now.


“Grow up tall, grow up fast,”
poppa said.
I yearned, to grow up...
...to grow up, be like my poppa.


Was interest that propped me to school.
I asked my miss,
“Why is A for Apple?”
The cane rap on my knucklebone couldn’t cameth faster.
I didn’t know that she didn’t know,
maybe she didn’t know that I did want to know.


It was then I saw the fork,
in front of me they diverged.
One path was weeded,
rhododendrons blocked my horizon thence.
Maybe I never bothered to sift through
the floral undergrowth.
The cleaner path was the one the multitude took,
aaahh the horizon...was so easily visible.


I took the path the bourgeois took.
The road not taken...
...remained the road not taken.


Emerged out to the outside world,
In “flying colours” they said.
“Wish you luck,” they said,
“Got a great life ahead,” they said.
Only I did know, that I didn’t want this life.
The me in me died,
as with the answer...to my kindergarten question.


Into a job meandered my life,
all I cared for was the coffers status.
The hackneyed my boss was,
the coffers touched the skies,
never did I attempt to.


I took the path the bourgeois took.
The road not taken...
...remained the road not taken.


I still aim for the skies...
It’s just that now I simulate my sky,
Just below the ceiling of my home...
I take the path the bourgeois take.
The road not taken...
...still remains the road not taken.
And that....has made all the difference.

Amma

His amma was past eighty. Well past it. Her hearing prowess was such that an explosive gunshot would hardly tickle any of the handfuls of live cells in her ear drum.

She was trying to cross the road. Not exactly bustling by his mundane standards but still a far shot from empty the road was. As the honking from the majestic four wheelers filled the air the weak acoustic system in her seemed to pick up beacons of noise. He could sense the shiver in her hands which he was holding. Her view through the foggy screen called cataract didn’t reflect the familiar empty street it was a few years ago.

Today, the only thing familiar about the street.... was unfamiliarity.

The touch-me-nots on the roadside seemed to stare at her as if a mysterious and unfamiliar visitor had thus encroached upon their peaceful dominion. Seemed to whisper they did, “Never seen you here before dadiji...” Shaking his reveries away he tightened his grip on amma’s hands. It ain’t the old way anymore. Careful...

One part of him doubted. If the pressure of his grip were the reason for the grimace on her visage. Maybe her octogenarian limbs would’ve found his energetic grip a far cry to handle. Maybe, she didn’t quite relish the midday heat. He never volunteered to consider if his presence made her uncomfortable...

The same set of hands that once lifted him to the skies, so that he could touch the moon. The same gentle pair of hands that used to thrust steaming hot sambar idlis into his mouth, which gave him the power to run away before she could fetch another idli from the kitchen. Those pair of hands now looked a little less energetic than a withered throw-away drumstick leaf.

Out of nowhere, he was thrown back a few decades in timeline. To when he was in fourth – fifth standard at school. She used to wake him up early in the morning. That was when he did his homework assignments. After homework he would always try to feed their cow and play with her. But amma used to chase him away and make him open his textbook and read out aloud. When she was finished with preparing the breakfast, she would come and take him for his bath. The bath used to happen behind the house, in nature’s haven. He used to love to make bubbles with that 10 anna Medimix soap. And half the soap would be wasted in his bubble generation activities. Mostly amma used to smile. Secretly, he used to wonder if she also used to do the same. He never asked.

It is a universal phenomenon with mothers while bathing their children. Scrubbing is all but an understatement as she used to go about “cleansing” his body. So much so that he used to sometimes wince, “Ammaaaa.... It’s paining.”

He couldn’t really comprehend the pain she felt on hearing those words of his.

Amma knew. That her hands weren’t made of satin. He found it hard to believe they weren’t gentle. In the mornings, when she used to go for the municipal corporation’s street cleaning activities, her hands would be bruised by the abundant thorny weeds. Tiny red spots of blood would adorn parts of her hands for as long as he could remember. In the afternoons, as a result of cleaning utensils at neighboring houses using acidic soaps ended up squeezing out puss from a lot of her wounds. And the stint at the dhobi ghat from late afternoon to dusk, washing clothes used to heal her wounds miraculously. Leaving brownish spots and ruggedness for residue. Gentleness long deseted whatever physique was left of her.

Gentleness. It long deserted him. In the run to attain a better life, he had left behind his life. Never did he recollect a moment he touched her wrinkled pair of hands with a cauldron of love she so richly deserved. Oh yeah, he did it a lot. When he was a kid. But then, he studied. He grew up. He became big. Big...?? Big....

The coffers grew. He stopped walking. He started running. He stopped running with the world. He started running the world. His official “stature” demanded that he reside in the sixth storey of a residential apartment in the heart of the city. And as she did not want to be left alone with her cobweb of thoughts, amma came along with him.

There was no one to redraw the kolam in front of their house hence. And as they say, an idle home is a termites’ paradise. And when the number of exotic species in the periphery of the home increased, he put a mensum price on the structure. Tenants moved in.

It was a Sunday evening, over tea when his mother expressed the desire to go to the village for a visit. To see the house, the everything that once comprised her world. And that was how they ended up back to where it all started.

Getting out of the car that was parked opposite the gate in front of the road, she stared from in between the grills of the gate. “Is this my home?” she might have wondered. As if to confirm, she looked to the left – aaahh, the guava tree was still there. With a measured degree of certainty back into her countenance, she turned back to look at me.

Who stays in our house now?

They’re a family. A bank employee, his wife and their two kids.

Errr.... Amma... You want to get in...?

Are you teasing me? They have the keys to the house, don’t they? That answer threw him aback. The guffaws of the midday sunshine possible made her eyes flicker. Good. Hopefully she didn’t see the expression on his face the moment the last of those words left her mouth.

By the time he made a tour around the periphery of the house and got back he saw his mother going down the stairs in the direction of the parked car. “ Seems the mangoes are falling off before ripening. Maybe some little attention would do good. I’ll ask the people here to contact the Agriculture Department for.... ”

His words were abruptly cut short as she turned back at him and said, “Let’s go.”

The two words pierced through him like shrapnel emanating from a bomb explosion. If only he could call up the tenants a couple of days in advance to inform them of their visit. If only he could somehow get the doors of her home open up to her once. Just once....



“Sir, we’ve reached your home.” He was woken up from his reverie by his chauffeur. “Oh, thanks Mohan as ever for the smooth ride,” he remarked. The chauffeur smiled. He would manage to get a hike for Mohan sometime at the start of the next financial year. After all, someone who made his fifty-odd kilometer drive from the city to this village daily, a comfortable affair, ought to be rewarded to his satisfaction. Mohan had been with him since he decided to shift from the hassles of the city to the dusty silence of his village, along with his mother. A week after that village trip.

“I hope she’s prepared payasam for the night, as I had pleaded with her in the morning. All day along I’ve been dreaming of it in office.” His thoughts thus, he opened the gate to the house with verve. The gate to the smaller pleasures in life...

Work

A piece dedicated to my colleagues in my lab. A bit of sarcasm and a lot of masala used, which in no way reduces the respect I have to my Professor, a very respected and knowledgeable person. Some day if I become anywhere near where he stands right now, I'd take no better testimony than something written about me on a sense as much or more sarcastic as this.
And as this had been penned over a few evenings after getting back to room, on a frame of mind I'd not exactly term as one fit for writing. I guarantee this piece of prose to have an inferior quality when compared to a lot of other articles of mine......




{


Crap. But I just thought I had pressed the Snooze button in my mobile under thirty seconds ago. How awesome it’d have been if I could freeze time now. Would give a fortune for that. Fortune…ha!


As the legendary Swaminathan in R. K. Narayan’s Malgudi Days opines, so very truly, Monday mornings are undoubtedly the worst part of the week. Coming just following the ephemeral weekend. (God, why did you make only one weekend a week….) With words of appreciation for Swaminathan and with enough gaalis to the Sun to make the appearance over this metropoiltan area this early, my hands moved in an error-free naturally-imbibed, instinctive course to the snooze button of my mobile alarm. As if sensing my mentality, which it nowadays seems to do very predictably, my mobile too resumes its slumber….for another few minutes till the “snooze” module in its code gets interrupted all over again. Bless thy, who invented the concept of snooze…. And God, do send me the name of thy who invented alarms…. I’ll do the rest.


Interrupting my chain of thoughts for the infinite-th time already in the hardly 8 – hour old day, the alarm module in my phone starts its cacophony all over again. At last the negligibly sliver conscious part of my mind triggers to active mode from sleep mode and the nervous system in my body generate the signals to my seemingly (maybe, a tad hopefully !!!) hands and legs, “Wake up idiots, you go to go for WORK !!!!”


At last, the physique starts to succumb to the perennial reality. One part of the body votes, “Lo bhai…ab toh uth jao. Jaana hai....” But the ruling party, which still holds the majority vetoes it, “Five more minutes....just five. No more than thazzzzzzzZZ zzz….”


By the time the no-confidence motion is brought into picture, the whole part of the body stirs up in a jolt. The same mouth utters the two sentences in sequence, “S**t, its already nearing 9...How is that I daily end up getting as late as this? ” and “Damn the guy who invented the snooze option...”


With a visit to the washroom as brief as it can get ( I do keep telling myself, “Yaar time nahi, time nahi....got to go fast..”), after a handful of minutes, I find myself cycling ahead to the harsh realities of my lab. The ethos they call research. I don’t care even if an asteroid is right now plummeting directly towards me from the heavens, with an estimated impact in T minus 30 seconds. Because any day, I’ll prefer a crashing asteroid to a bashing Professor, errr...my boss, to speak.


As ever I am infallibly greeted with scornful visages. God, you created men, you created women…both of those are manageable. Need you had created bosses, at least in hindsight....? I try to display the little amount of Colgate that hopefully is still present in my demeanor…. too old ploy. And with the sthaayi bhaav, the resigned expression, I settle down to my “workstation.”


The day…just began.


I sure will not blame a person for expecting stuff that change the world from me every alternate hour I spent in front of my whitish command prompt, grinning at me from inside the depths of my laptop machine. But I only can pity with someone who expects the same from me a couple of weeks after he’s seen me work.


After a couple of hours staring at my laptop, trying to contribute whatever little I can to bug enormous Anaconda level codes, I am stirred back to the world outside computers when I hear a sound from behind, “Chalo chalo....lunch time !!!!” Looking at my watch, I realize that its break time at work time – lunch time....


A sixty minute break covering the sojourn to and from one of the canteens in the campus, which (in)conveniently is located a little far from my department is a very refreshing part of the day. Topics of varying degrees make the cut - from Linux kernel to dressing sense of modern girls, from engineering technology to weekend movie at the Gymkhana. Well, anything under the sun. Or over it, for the matter. And by the time we return, the Omnipresent (ohh no…it ain’t construed as the God anymore….that title was recently handed over to the person they call boss…) is standing at the gate, reminding me of the chowkidaar at my village. The countenance says it all – somebody is not too very happy as the timer set for our lunch break had expired nearly an hour ago.


Again life. Sorry....work. The midday sun beating through the window fall is so attractive that it almost invariably lures one or the other guys to sleep. There are some things a coffee can’t prevent. If you ever care to doubt it, send an insomniac to my department.... I swear I’ll get him to sleep like a baby within a week.


Around the time the Big Ben announces mid day in London, Bengaluru, five and a half hours ahead, slips into yet another of its romantic evenings. And the pristine surroundings at the campus add so unique a charm to the setting sun that people, who once you thought could hardly think of stuff beyond header files and pointers, start giving you philosophical lectures on Shakespearean concept of romance and Wordsworth school of poetic thought. Its chai time and the next hop is the bakery near to my department. I ruefully make a trade-off of the rich blended canteen coffee and the evergreen helping of Bhel Puri for the extra overhead incurred in terms of the time taken for a shuttle to and from the canteen.


Back from the chai break is when the janta decides to unwind. The wireless network of the institute gets a little busy as people from our labs start their networking on the social front. Facebook, G Mail, Orkut, Picasa…. Thus opens the cloud, often accompanied by visages ranging from guffaws courtesy a Facebook video or a gentle smile, courtesy a picture of college days.


There is this day of the week where there is a weekly meeting, where Professors (Goddd, I thought singular form itself was too hard to handle…. You invented plural…) sweep down on we, the “engineers” like vultures closing in on their prey. The whole spectacle starts off with a musical chair contest – who occupies the seat farthest from the table. I really admire those Professors who perfectly know what I do not know, because they never ever ask me something I know. One of these days I really got to conduct a sting operation video of the meeting and send it over to the National Human Rights Commission. Let them know what is happening.....


Thankfully, this just one day of the week….


As the clock moves further in the direction in which it has traditionally kept moving since its inception, the thought of dinner and home sweet home start corrupting the minds of the peers. But the big hurdle still remains – send the day’s work update to the Boss. Oh shit…. Surely I can’t write about the afternoon discussion we had on the merits and demerits of Bru and Nescafe coffee…. Or the evening chat we had on the various flower trees that adorned the Gulmohar Marg. This is when the Dan Brown-ish element in each of us kick in. Literary merits are stretched to their limits as (farzi !!!) pedants discuss elaborately at length and at last compose vintage mails, the curtain-downing act of the day. And with the eternal satisfaction of having done something revolutionary, the expedition back home begins, least bothered about the repercussions of the sent mail which is sure going to reverberate in my inbox first thing tomorrow morning.


All that tomorrow. All that after a real good night’s sleep…..


}


Uhh oh… guess I missed out to add the while(1), which should’ve been the opening line of this post…..

His Holiness of X-Point

The sage of X-Point sat on the culvert at the cross roads, cross legged with a plain visage and a composed gaze, concentrating completely on the maid buying karela yards off. In front of him was a little less holy, but nonetheless holy disciple, squatting. Worshipful, deferential and all attention.


A passing crow lightened itself. The reverent found himself at the wrong spot. At the wrong moment. A groan, a look of frown, rage and frustration, the latter two almost completely dominating over the former bhaav.


His eyes rolled over to the spot.


“The vicissitudes of Kaala,” so began the reverent, “are truly tumultuous. We maanav raashi....eat the fruit of our karma. We are all misfits. Ethereally, to be sitting on this unholy man made structure at this very moment when this emissary of Yamaraj acted, is a real misfortune. But it was scripted in His abode and whatever the script, we are mere actors. We come, we act, we perish....the stage still remains for us to come tomorrow, the next janma. Sacrifice and resignation....is the key to nirvana. ”


At the chauraha, an urchin hurled a stone at a limping dog. Being an amateur, he missed. The dog. But not the disciple’s clean shaven head.


“Aah revered. Sacrifice and resignation….what a noble thought !!! O Gurudev, may I rise and impress upon that young aatma the wickedness of his action? That the path to naraklok should best be avoided? Oh revered, do excuse me a moment.”


The disciple sprinted after the urchin, who was a trifle slower than himself. But a couple of dogs too joined in although finally the forces of truth and sacrifice prevailed over himsa. He cuffed the urchin soundly and came back panting. He took a while to compose himself, brought back the tranquility he left over from his run and settled down beside his Guruji once again,


“Sacrifice and resignation…. How illuminating those two words seem to me. It seems as though someone has just cleared a pool of mud water that had formed in the annals of my shallow mind. The keys to life beyond. The key to nirvana. Please continue… Swami.”


X-Point resumed his discourse, “ Calmness....an unquestioned acceptance of all that fate flings at thou. The perpetual salesman Dale Carnegie did ensconce the truth when he said to co-operate with the inevitable. I have always admired the serenity of the cauliflower. If ever I were asked to explain tranquility, I would simply place a cauliflower in front of me....and remain muted. For it, calmness is not ethereal, it is eternal.”


“Learn to admire thou son…” the prophecy thus continued, “ Learn to accept fate the way the cauliflower takes it – unflinching in acceptance. You cut him, you boil him, you garnish your table with him, you eat him. And he....what does the pour soul do?”


The ever attentive pupil couldn’t suppress the doubt lingering in his mind, “But the wicked cauliflower… o Swami !!! What about them? You serve them to your peers after mincing them, frying them and spicing them. What do they do? They do all but bring pain to the believer of Lord…. He who was ignorant of the existence of the wicked seed. They give you diarrhoea.”


“Silence Vyasa,”growled the hermit.”It is your greed that compels you to eat more cauliflower than prescribed. The perfect amount of the sabzi never did a Lord’s true believer any harm.”


“But my Lord, does not the cauliflower commit an atrocious deed? Doesn’t it offer its soft and succulent body and entice the beholder into sinning? Although a believer of Lord, poor mortal amen’t I? How are we supposed to resist the wonderful seductress of the vegetable kingdom?”


“O idiot! You are deluded and corrupted. You have changed the gender of cauliflower with a sentence and brought Woman into the picture. Woman....is a maya. She is a source of temptation.... The repository of all the evil in the world…. The earthly avatar of Satan.”


X-point unfolded his legs and shook himself up from the culvert. The maid was returning after buying a week’s ration of vegetables from Pappu’s dukaan. As soon as she crossed, the disciple was mesmerized the smell of jasmine emanating from the bunch of flowers she sported on her hair that he didn’t notice his Guruji stretch out.


“The path to one's self is never straight. There will be a light to guide you, but you must recognize the light. You must also see through agents of Satan. Aaah vanity. Let us follow this path. Do not mind that maid before us. She is a test.”


With an expressionless visage yet a pair of gleaming eyes, concentrated fully on the maid’s behind, the sage started to amble along.


A couple of steps behind the disciple followed suit, the disciple. Deferential, silent....and eyes focused. Where his Guruji had taught him to focus....