Tag: Short-Story

Splash

On By Abhiram RIn Short-Story1 Comment

He was halfway there and in no real hurry, so Raman walked as he had for the last few kilometers – leisurely and easily. It had been a bumpy start to the day, what with his vehicle’s engine seizing on the way to work and needing to be dropped off at the service center and his tripping on a loose brick on the pavement on his way home and landing face down with his palm attempting and failing to break his fall. He’d taken the day off, rested and on receiving a call from the service center a few hours later, decided he’d walk back and fetch his vehicle. Things were looking up now. And as he continued on his way, so did he. But the clear sky that had welcomed him out the door was now a shade of grey. He quickened his pace, but he could not outrun the clouds that seemingly instantaneously, growled and burst into lightning, thunder and a downpour that had seemed impossible just a few minutes ago. Raman was flat out running now. Had he paused to think, he might have taken shelter at a nearby shop or under a bus stand. But in his mind, all he wanted to do was reach the service center. So he ran, taking care to jump over puddles and loose stones, not wanting to trip a second time that day.

In his urgency however, he didn’t notice that he’d run off the pavement and was now running on the side of the road. Bikes and cars sped past him, just as eager to get to wherever they were going. After about a kilometer of running, he stopped and panted for breath. The weight of the wet clothes coupled with the stress of running left him gasping a little and he waited to regain his composure, still unmistakably getting drenched however. Just then a car, a blue sedan came speeding past him and mindless of the puddle next to him, splashed into and out of it, leaving an extremely brown pair of pants and shoes and an extremely angry wearer of said attire. He yelled pointlessly at the car that was long gone and then stopped, disappointment and rage lingering on his face. When he’d regained his composure, he wondered if he should just return home, change into some dry clothes and come back for the vehicle later. But he was almost there and he’d have to get drenched to go back anyway. Might as well power through and complete the mission at hand, he told himself and forged on. Soon he found himself at the mechanic’s shop where a burly man and a young boy were hard at work, tightening screws and fixing things that probably never fixing. At the sight of this dripping, disheveled man, the owner immediately dropped his screwdriver and beckoned Raman to sit on the stool he’d just gotten off of. Looking at his state, he whispered something to the little boy and the latter ran off into a small room in the shop. It took the owner a few more seconds to recognize the customer that had dropped off his vehicle in the morning. He listened to Raman’s day of woes, entries that had come pouring out the man with very little poking and meanwhile the little boy had returned, two hot cups of tea in his small hands that he offered both the men gingerly, but with a wide smile. It was only when the kid sat down on the floor next to him that Raman noticed the kid had a prosthetic leg. He looked at the mechanic, questioningly and was told about the accident at the shop a few years ago that had left the child maimed. They’d explored a few options before deciding the child needed to have a way to walk again and found a sympathetic doctor who had treated the child free of charge. The once ever-cheerful boy had spent months in pain and teary struggle, adapting to this new appendage. Raman listened to it all in silence, his eyes locked on the boy who had now resumed tightening a few smaller screws on a part of a vehicle, humming a tune from a familiar song.

Once they’d finished drinking their hot beverages, the mechanic took Raman to his vehicle, showed him the estimate and gave him the sign off. Raman was only half listening now, his mind still on the cheerful disposition of the boy who had apparently gone through so much at such a young age and had somehow managed to find a way to smile despite it all.

Before he left the shop, he shook the owner’s hand and then went over to the boy and thanked him for the best tea he’d ever had. The boy gave him a glowing smile and Raman patted him on the head.

As he rode back, the clouds having cleared up, he was still full of thoughts, a mixed bag of shame, pride, gratitude and contentment. The roads were still a mess though, he noted amid these thoughts, and slowed down as he saw an old man walking off the pavement by the side of the road and in the opposite direction.

He gently rode into and out of the puddle directly next to the old man, taking care not to splash on him even a little.

T is for Tripping

On By Abhiram RIn AtoZChallengeLeave a comment

Most days while on the road, I normally have an objective, a destination and a reason to be traveling but that day I found myself with a lot of time and I was in no real rush. So I took a normally forgotten turn on a commonly traveled road just to see where it led. It opened up to a pathway on one side and a lake on the other. An unfenced lake.
At one point on the road, it became clear that vehicles weren’t the way to travel any further. Instead there was a semi spherical wooden thing that people were seemingly supposed to get in and slide down the rest of the way. There were a bunch of these arranged alongside a wall on the left side of the road.
I got into one and set myself in motion. It was very cool. I slid down the road and up when the road curved up and sideways left and right similarly. When it finally stopped, I was precariously (I’d just noticed) close to the edge of the lake. The water was sparkling under the sunlight. I forgot myself in the shimmer for a bit. Then I looked around me to see where I’d ended up and that’s when I spotted the sign – “Beware of snakes”. I immediately decided my little trip was over and set my semi sphere in motion down the nearest slope again. This time after a little while it stopped suddenly. And while I was examining the reason for my abrupt halting, my eyes fell upon a heap of a coil sitting motionless. I decided I wasn’t going to wait for it to move and ran, semisphere dragging after me. In the hurried motion, the part of the semisphere I was holding broke from the whole into my hand and the rest of it rolled away into the water. But I was so panicked to understand what happened that I kept running. I ran and I ran and hoped to run up to my vehicle I think but on the way, I tripped and fell. And passed out.
When I woke up, I saw a pair of beady eyes staring down at me. My vision cleared up and I realized I was face to face with either a mongoose or a badger, not knowing which because I’d never seen either in the flesh before and even the pictures I’d seen weren’t very clear in the difference or I’d just not paid enough attention. The latter is more possible. It must have been the shock of the sudden sight but I passed out again.
I woke up this time in the safety of my bed. I rubbed my eyes groggily and decided I must have dreamt it all. “These dreams are getting way too realistic these days” – I mulled. I fell back again on the bed, my head hitting the pillow with a heavier thump than I was used to. I felt under it and retrieved the reason for the thump –
The piece of the semisphere that had broken….

Sunsets

On By Abhiram RIn Short-StoryLeave a comment

He walked barefoot because the gravel felt like acupressure against his broken, aching soles. Even the occasional pebble’s jab did not bother him much, because by now, pain had started to feel like a relative, that kept visiting even if you kept changing residences to avoid them.
He smiled to himself as he reached the end of the cliff and looked to his right. “Well? This is it eh Fluff?”, he addressed an imaginary dog that had already met its untimely demise a few days earlier.
The late-evening sun from this vantage point looked glorious.
Instead of jumping immediately like he’d intended to, he groaned involuntarily, as he bent and sat down at the edge, letting his tired legs hang out down the side of the cliff.
Looking at nothing in particular he tried to reflect on what had happened over the week but at that point, he drew a blank, as if the walk had drained him of memories as much as energy.
Oh well. It didn’t matter, did it. He was already here.
He pressed one tense hand to the ground behind him, as if to no longer postpone the final task he’d set for himself when he heard a loud “Woof!”.
Turning around to see the source of the sound, he saw a snowy mass bounding up to him and halting at his side. He watched puzzled at this white pup with wide eyes staring back at him with what seemed to be equal bewilderment. After a few seconds, it nuzzled the hand he’d placed on the ground and sat next to him. Still surprised, he patted the now resting pup and relaxed. The soft coat under his palm quivered gently and steadied.
He sighed and looked at the sun again.


It hadn’t set just yet.

Ants

On By Abhiram RIn Short-Story, Shorts3 Comments

I don’t know anything about ants

On my kitchen platform sits a steel plate. This is not the permanent position of said plate. It has been placed there only temporarily and at the time was for the purposes of holding something that will be described in the very next para.

The steel plate, last night, was filled with some quantity of water, perhaps to the 75% mark and squarely in the center of the circular plate sat a plastic container which housed, as of that moment, 2 Gulab Jamuns.

It was 1 AM and I found myself at the crossroads of DecisionLand. On the one hand, there was the healthy, sane option of brushing my teeth, drinking a glass of warm water and going to bed at (what is now considered) a reasonably early hour. On the other, there was the far more tempting, but highly detridental option of tiptoeing to the kitchen and gorging on the gulab jamuns that had been procured earlier that evening. Why, you may ask, must an adult tiptoe in the comfort of his own home. But this is the vice of a habit developed by an individual who has been a minor for some years longer than he has been a legal adult.

Anyway, I found myself in the kitchen with my hand on the plastic container before the results of thorough deliberation were out. And it is at this point that I noticed One ant. A lone warrior, clinging to the side of this container and if it had eyes that I could spot, possibly they would have been full of focus waiting for this precise moment when a human would come and unblock its way to what-it-had-no-doubt smelt its way to – sweet, divine ant-treasure. I wondered how it had made its way across the body of water in the plate but did not linger much on it. Meanwhile, evident that things had not gone the way the Warrior Ant had planned, it darted in the direction opposite the cover sensing perhaps that I had spotted it before the cover was opened. For good measure, I lifted the box out of the “pool” and decided to open it held in my hands, away from a place of familiarity to the Warrior, who had by now dropped into the water below. And it is at this point, that I noticed an extremely disturbing sight. Close to 20 more ants lay scattered in the water, some hidden from view by the box that was now in my hands, and some in plain sight that I had simply not seen. These were Warriors who had not made it to the Holy Jamun Land :O My mind at this time was racing with multiple thoughts, some for the Fallen Warriors, some about the box in my hand. What if the Warrior was just the last one who was about to enter the box and many had already succeeded and were now already partaking of its contents? What would I see when I opened the box?

I stood in silence for a few seconds contemplating the possibilities. It was probably a lesser duration than I exaggerate at this point, but the thoughts were there. “Let’s assume that the worst has not happened”, I thought, “and that this singular Warrior was the only one to make it. “. How did he (not necessarily, might have been a Wonder Womant as well, but for the purposes of this anecdote) make it? Had there been a plan of attack? Was this the leader of the troop? Had the army decided that it would be sufficient if one mant made it, for the greanter good? Was this the ant version of a heist? Did ants have heists? I’d learnt in the few minutes that I’d concentrated in my biology classes back in school that there was fierce collaboration in ant colonies, but was this a part of it?

I moved closer to the platform and looked again at the fallen Warriors….Noble souls, one and all. They drifted there…unaware of their sacrifice’s futility. I placed the box on the side and sadly emptied the contents of the plate into the sink. This was the order of Nature and I was a cold blooded ant disposer 😦 I refilled the contents of the plate with some more water than before, making the moat a little harder to wade than before …My heart wept for the sacrifices to come as I thought about the next batch of Warrior Ants that would indulge in the pursuit of sweet fortunes..And my mind decided. No more.

There would be no more mindless sacrifices. No more Ant drownings.

Not on my watch.

I opened the box and popped the last two Jamuns in my mouth.

Time to brush and go to sleep.

J is for Jealousy [#AtoZChallenge]

On By Abhiram RIn AtoZChallenge, The Subbu Chronicles1 Comment

Subbu’s jaw dropped.

“And I got this for my last birthday”, Mani said as he produced a white, shiny Hot Wheels car. “And this one was for my previous 95 out of 100 in Social Studies”. Another item emerged from the bag that seemed to hold an infinite supply of toys – this time a GiJoe. It was the short break hour and Mani had decided to exhibit his collection atop Prema ma’am’s table that day to his huddled group of gawking, incredulous classmates. “Mani”, Subbu asked when he finally found his voice, “What does your father do?”. This endowment of seemingly hundreds of toys could only be justified if Mani’s father owned a toy shop. “Don’t you know da?”, Mani asked with a mixture of condescension and genuine puzzlement, “Your father and my father are colleagues at the same company.”. The knot in Subbu’s chest tightened and he found himself looking at the bench lost in thought about the unfairness being meted out to him by life, his parents and everyone. He had scored a lot of 95s as well. Mostly in English, but it counted, didn’t it? He was shaken from his reverie by Murugan who was by now staring daggers at Mani. “He thinks he’s some sort of big shot just because he has more toys than us. We’ll see who’s smiling when something goes missing.”. Subbu didn’t like the glint in Murugan’s eyes but he didn’t want to antagonise his friend, so he meekly nodded hoping his face didn’t betray his conscience.  Mani had just finished displaying a tiny He-Man eraser (that held in an outstretched plastic hand a small, but sharp plastic sword of sorts, sharp enough to prick any of Subbu’s mental balloons of happiness, if any were left), when Prema ma’am walked into the classroom and Mani hastily replaced all the objects back into his “akshayapatra” of a bag and the rest of them hurriedly took their places in their seats.

Later during lunch, Subbu spotted Mani frantically looking for something. He had an inkling as to what might have happened but he innocently went and asked the worried boy, “Mani, are you searching for something?”. Mani looked up ashen-faced at Subbu and said, “My brand new kaleidoscope, Subbu. Have you seen it?”. Subbu thought Murugan might have something to do with this missing tube of mirrors but he shook his head vigorously…perhaps a little too vigorously, for Mani surveyed him for a few seconds as though the location of the missing cylinder was marked with an “X” on Subbu’s forehead, before resuming his search under the desks. The latter stayed there a few more minutes watching the former struggle before sympathetically patting him on his back and walking away. 

As he moved away from the seeker he saw Murugan, standing a few benches away, looking at Mani with a satisfied expression on his face. “See how he pitifully searches for his Parker Pen”, he smirked with a whisper once Subbu was within earshot. Subbu furrowed his eyebrows – “Parker ..Pen?” he thought, but not aloud. “Now Mani has lost two items, only one of which he has noticed missing”, he brooded. “Subbu?”, Murugan enquired, “Do you think we should keep it for ourselves or break it?”. Subbu frowned. Of course, he had been jealous of how many more things Mani had and maybe a tiny part of him had revelled at the thought of Mani grappling with the loss of one of his prized possessions that he had “shown off”, but was he, Subbu, an evil person? What would Harry Potter do? He pondered the paths his heroes from fiction and mythology might take if faced with such moral questions and decided with a resolve as a wave of shame washed over him – “No”, and prepared himself to patronise Murugan for his action; but the thief had vanished out of sight and Subbu’s eyes wandered back to a still worried-looking Mani. He walked back to the bemoaner and said with the tone of a savior, “Don’t worry Mani, I’ll help you find your pen…err..telescope.”, he corrected himself as Mani looked at him quizzically. “Kaleidoscope”, he was corrected. Subbu adopted a loftier expression all the while muttering to himself about having overcome jealousy and being the bigger man and yet being corrected by ungrateful monsters. As he bent under the desk himself, he wondered if he should bring up the topic of adequate compensation with his parents and ran a possible scenario over in his head about how that conversation with his father might go –

He would gingerly broach the topic – “Appa, Mani had brought 4 HotWheels cars today.”
Appa would remark only partially listening – “Mm Hmm.”
He would repeat the premise for father’s benefit.
Appa would feign interest this time and look at him as if to wonder why this sentence was being posed to him.
Then he would ask for an increase in number of cars for himself and let the chips fall where they may. He had no idea how Appa would react to this new man with a spine, but he was prepared to try, for justice’s sake.

For the second time that day, he jerked back to reality only to notice that he had wandered off to the opposite row of benches on his knees, all the while, trying to look for Mani’s kaleidoscope, obviously unsuccessfully. As he prepared to abandon the search, he spotted a glint of something shiny by the trash can situated at the left end of Prema ma’am’s table. He rushed to it and picked it up even as it came undone in his hand, the glass pieces smashed to smithereens. It would seem that in Mani’s haste to pick up his things, this tube had fallen to the ground and scattered. He brought the remnants of the tube and the bad news back to Mani. The boy took one look at the glass pieces and started weeping profusely, spluttering pieces of speech from which Subbu gathered that Mani had had to sweep the entire house to get his Appa to buy him this what-was-once-a-fine-bangle-piece-displayer. Subbu felt even more sympathetic towards this boy and thought he should probably, at this point, not add insult to injury by enquiring if Mani had noticed anything else missing from his Bag of Wonders. By this time, two more of their classmates had arrived by Mani’s side and had begun consoling him. Subbu felt confident about the moral support Mani was receiving and decided to confront Murugan immediately, chide him, maybe teach him a lesson or two about the virtues of honesty and the horridness of jealousy and get the pen back to Mani before the latter even discovered its loss – surely the poor boy had suffered enough already.

His thoughts and actions were interrupted by Prema ma’am walking in again with an expression of what he could only surmise was absolute rage. She slammed the notebooks she was holding onto her table and dust from 1947 rose up to fill the air in the classroom, it seemed.

“Everyone take your bags and keep them on your desks”, she said, in an icy tone. Subbu blinked and looked around at his classmates who looked equally clueless.

“One of you has stolen my Parker Pen and I’m going to find out who.”

I is for Ignored [#AtoZChallenge]

On By Abhiram RIn AtoZChallenge, Short-Story1 Comment

“Whoaaaaaaa”, he yelled, a sound only he could hear. One second he saw the clear blue skies and in the very next, an expansive patch of brown mud and this pattern repeated as he rose into an arc and his ascent slowed to a halt and then he descended in the same topsy-turvy fashion with increasing velocity before crashing onto a rough surface that was immediately engulfed in darkness. He blinked. He could see nothing for what seemed like ages, but heard muffled voices in a tongue he’d come to understand in bits and pieces – some words more familiar than others. He’d learnt a lot of things over the years. He knew his name was what his handlers called “fifty paisa” , but he was always spoken about carelessly, it seemed, with lesser reverence than others of his kind.

“Heads”, he heard someone call out. And he knew his outing for the day was almost done. A brief glimmer of sunlight when one of the voices would whoop and the other would groan (he’d come to distinguish these sounds over time as well). And back into the recesses of a velcro covered, stifling enclosure he’d go with the rest of his species for company – who didn’t say much but sometimes brushed against him involuntarily. 

He closed his eyes and waited for the familiar scrape of velcros indicating his nap-time. But it never came. Instead, today, he found himself being slipped in a crevice of sorts lined with material he was unfamiliar with. He fell and waited for a landing but he kept slipping further down, grazing a surface, rolling slightly and falling through another hole of sorts for a duration only slightly lesser than the time it had taken him to down the arc moments earlier. “Thump”, he fell face down on something hard and dusty. He whimpered. Again, no one heard him. He waited for some agent to retrieve and return him to his familiar surroundings. No one came. He kept waiting even as dust settled on his side that faced the skies. Once in a while he felt enormous pressure on his backside, but it was always a hurried application that was immediately lifted. Initially he mistook those events to be rescue missions. But they weren’t and he stayed where he was.

After a while, he felt something he hadn’t felt in a long time. He felt akin to what we would describle as …moist. “Patter”. “Patter”. “Patter”. The sound accompanying the object that caused the wetness kept hitting him and eventually he felt himself rising slowly. From his vantage point, all he could see was the surface he had been lying on but from a slight height through a medium he could not explain, but it wasn’t clear. Now this surface seemed to be moving and him along with itself. He felt himself being rocked gently initially – back and forth – and then the surface began pushing him. He kept moving for a while and then fell sharply. Another thump. This time he’d fallen face-up so he could see the new gap he’d fallen from – one among a series of adjacent gaps. By now, the skies had cleared up so he could see the skies but the view was punctuated uniformly by the surface above.

He sighed in resignation. As he felt the moisture slowly abandoning him, so did hopes of his being rescued this time.

Not that it mattered to anyone.

E is for Exam [#AtoZChallenge]

On By Abhiram RIn AtoZChallenge, The Subbu Chronicles2 Comments

“Are you ready?”, the voice on the phone asked Subbu. Subbu didn’t feel remotely ready. But his response didn’t matter either way. It was 7.30 AM – time to leave for school. The dreaded exam week was to commence that day. He mumbled something incoherently and placed the receiver on the telephone. “Subbuuuuu, late aachu da. Breakfast saapdu!” [Subbuu, it’s late already. Finish your breakfast!]. He wasn’t hungry. In fact his stomach felt like they were full of polymers of isoprene. Why was he thinking about rubber now though? He should be mentally wading through the rivers of the world and jogging through the various farms of India. Geography had never been Subbu’s strong suit and yet, that was the  mountain he had to scale that day. He sat at the table obediently though and looked at his plate. Rice and Chapati.. Rice and wheat.. Bihar? Chattisgarh? No no.. The maximum production of rice was in West Bengal and wheat, in Uttar Pradesh. He tried to come up with mnemonics to avoid forgetting that as he poked at a chapati. His mum yelled at him again and he hastened to finish it. His mind was still buzzing with random keywords he had associated with lengthy paragraphs as he tied his shoe laces and noticed that he had worn mismatched socks. Well, it was too late to do anything about that now. He prayed that the class monitor would accept his offering of one Yummies packet and overlook this error during routine assembly checks. The school bus arrived and the driver honked rhythmically as usual. Subbu got on and waved absently to his mum. Was K2 the tallest mountain in the world or did that honor belong to Everest?  What was Kanchenjunga then? Wait, were K2 and Kanchenjunga synonymous? Aaah! He didn’t know anything! He moved to the back of the bus and squeezed in between two bulkier boys. Then he picked out a textbook with a slightly worn out cover and opened it to a page at random. Anything was worth revising. Itanagar was the capital of Arunchal Pradesh. “Itanagar – AP, Itanagar – AP , Itanagar – AP”, he chanted in a low voice. He remembered talking about capitals with his dad the previous evening. He had asked the old man what the capital of Telengana was, confident that he wouldn’t know what it was. Subbu’s dad had disappointed him by not only telling him the correct answer, but supplementing it with more historical information – “When we were studying, Andhra Pradesh was one state. Ippo daan kanna pinna nu state mela state pannindirrukange” [“It’s only now that they’re creating new states left, right and center”]. Subbu didn’t care for this new bit of information. Actually, he felt cheated that he was having to consume more nonsensical facts than his dad. He resumed memorizing the rest of the capitals of states and moved on to a chapter titled “Weather – seasons and their importance”. Subbu groaned. In Bangalore, it was summer but it had just rained heavily the previous evening. This completely contradicted what this – he flipped to the first page – this Veena Bhargava was telling him about Karnataka’s weather. She would have him believe that climate change was periodic and that there were months beyond which Summer would not last or months in which there would be no rain. He made a note to word a strong box-format letter to her after he got home. Maybe she would discard it though. He wasn’t sure if adults were in the habit of receiving letters from 14 year olds. He shook his head and continued reading about how Cherrapunji had the highest amount of rainfall in the country. What was the capital of Cherrapunji again? Wait. Cherrapunji wasn’t a state. He gave the page a distasteful stare and looked around at everyone else. Their peaceful expressions agitated him even further and he started flipping pages at random. He shook his head and decided he wouldn’t let this faze him any further. He leaned further into the book in an act of increased focus and started reading about soils and their significance in the plantation of different types of crops, about earthquakes and tsunamis and their places of likely occurrence. Mental images of everything he had read blazed through in his mind, and at that point, he seemed unstoppable, when the bus came to a slow halt. They had reached school. He hurriedly closed his book, suddenly feeling more unprepared than ever and got down from the bus following the long file of students ahead of him. He walked into the classroom and saw huddled groups of students everywhere, no doubt trying to cram in one last satellite’s name before the call for assembly. He wasn’t going to try anymore though. He quietly sat at a desk closest to the door and waited with his head on the desk, trying to recall any fact he could.

After what seemed like an eternity, he heard swift footsteps enter the door and instead of his P.E teacher’s voice, he heard his class teacher call out, “Children!”. Subbu looked up, confused. “I have an announcement. We’ve just had news that a low-intensity earthquake is about to strike parts of Bangalore. The Geography exam has been postponed to tomorrow. We will be arranging for the school buses to drop you back home. “.

“Dei…”, Subbu thought..”Bangalore was not listed in that chapter only no da!”.

D is for Doodh* [#AtoZChallenge]

On By Abhiram RIn AtoZChallenge, Short-Story1 Comment

Padma sat by the window reading “Harry Potter and The Order of The Phoenix” for what was probably the fifteenth time. She’d already binged through Goblet of Fire. When she reached the chapter “Silver and Opals”, she looked up for the first time in three hours and out the window. The road outside was empty save for a cat that was scratching the neighbor’s door on the other side. “What if that were Minerva McGonagall?”, Padma thought to herself and chuckled, amused. She decided to give herself a break, leaned against the wall adjoining the window and closed her eyes, her mind buzzing with thoughts of Voldemort taking over Harry’s dreams and wondering if she might fall victim to that too, if she fell asleep just then. She’d just closed her eyes when the doorbell rang. “Now? Really?”, she muttered and made her way unwillingly to the front door. She peered through the peephole cautiously, but there was no one in sight. She slowly opened the door and heard a shuffling noise at her feet. It was the cat she’d seen, trying to nudge past her legs and into the house. Before she could make sense of the situation, it had already made a dash for the living room and paused at the edge of a straw mat by the poojai room. Padma, still bewildered looked outside one last time before she closed the door and wondered who had rung the doorbell. Surely, it wasn’t the cat?! She shook her head. The doorbell mystery could wait. There was a stray cat in her living room. She frowned and stared at her intruder who had by then decided that the mat was an enemy and must be destroyed. Padma meanwhile, had gathered her wits and gently started tiptoeing towards the cat; although what she would do once she approached it, she hadn’t thought about just yet. The cat was still pawing away at the mat, its concentration unwavering. Padma was now within petting distance from it. Now came the almighty question. What was she going to do? What could she do? Shooing it would only drive it deeper inside her house. She couldn’t just pick it up and take it outside her house.. could she? No, that was out of the question. For starters, she had no idea How to lift a cat. What if it scratched her face? No. That was out of the question. As she pondered, she slowly sat down behind the cat. Now she was level with its tail and just looking at it with a vacant expression, head tilted to a side, unable to decide what to do next. Meanwhile, the cat, who had evidently felt an alien presence around it, stiffened and looked around and with a loud and startled miaow backed a couple of steps away from Padma, who was equally startled by the feline shriek. Both looked at each other, the cat with its paws slightly lifted, ready to flee and the human with her hands behind her on the floor, a confused expression across her face. The human acted first. She raised her hands , in an expression of resignment and surrender and mouthed, “Okay, calm down. I am not going to hurt you”, even as a voice in her head said “You are talking…to a cat.”. Another voice in her head said “Yeah, what if it doesn’t know English?”. Padma chuckled for the second time that day having amused herself again. She shook her head again. “This is not the time, Padma.”, she thought and began inching away from the cat. Slowly, she got up and walkedto the kitchen, all the while watching the cat through the corner of her eye. “I might as well get you some milk”, she called out, still aware that her visitor probably didn’t understand the noise that the owner of the house was making. She heated up a bowl of milk to a moderate temperature, took the bowl and placed it cautiously at the edge of the now-somewhat-worse-for-the-wear mat. The cat looked up at Padma with wide eyes and then at the bowl of milk still not moving from its position. She took the cue and backed away. This prompted it to approach the bowl and sniff its contents. Satisfied, it dipped its tongue into the milk and started lapping it up, its eyes initially on Padma and eventually on the contents of the bowl. It must have been really hungry, for it finished drinking within a matter of minutes and placed a foot on the bowl when it found that there was no more milk to drink. It looked up at a smiling Padma, who was glad that her offering had been so well accepted. “Do you want more?”, she enquired, not really expecting a response. Those expectant eyes were answer enough and she went back to the kitchen area to heat up some more milk. This time however, the cat followed her and began poking at the slippers she had left at the entrance of the kitchen. She refilled the bowl and placed it again, this time closer to the cat that did not inch away, but was looking intently as the bowl moved from human to floor. The pace at which the bowl was emptied this time was even quicker, but it evidently sated the cat’s hunger, for it did not look up again at Padma, but moved towards its favorite torn-up mat and lay down. She heated up a glass of milk, this time for herself, picked up the Harry Potter book from near the window and sat next to the cat. She took a sip of milk and opened the page to Silver and Opals and started reading out loud, a gentle palm on the cat’s head – “Where was Dumbledore, and what was he doing?…”. She paused. “What was Dumbledore doing, Minerva?”, she addressed the cat, took another sip of milk and smiled.

(* Doodh is the Hindi word for Milk. The idea here is to convey the ease with which bonds are formed between a human and animal with something as simple as a glass of doodh. There’s no deep meaning here. It’s just a day in the life of a person, that took a minor surprising turn, but ended up being a pleasant experience in the end.)

C is for Chamathu* [#AtoZChallenge]

On By Abhiram RIn AtoZChallenge, The Subbu Chronicles1 Comment

“Trrrrring”, the alarm went off and he woke up groggily. “ Uthishtothishta Govinda Uthishta Garuda dwaja Uthishta Kamalakantha trilokyam mangalam kuru” , MS Subbulakshmi’s voice rang through the air even as his parents were yelling at each other over what he was sure would be trivialities like who’d let the milk boil a little too long or who forgot to put out food for the crow. He frowned. So much noise. And his day hadn’t even started yet. He got out of bed and let out a sharp yelp as his right foot touched the ground. He had stepped on a pin he’d told himself he wouldn’t step on when he saw it fall from the bed the previous night. He examined his foot and rubbed it where the pin had poked him. No blood. That was good. It was a Saturday, but he hadn’t the leisure of a typical weekend. There was to be a function at home and a lot of guests were expected. So he had to get ready quickly and appear presentable to greet (ugh) people. Normally he would have vehemently rejected this order from his parents and gone off to Venkatraman’s house to play cricket for the whole day, but this time there were bigger things at stake. No sooner had he gotten ready and dressed up when his mom called out, “Subbuuuuu!! Poi paal vaangindu vaa da” (Subbu, go and buy milk!). Subramani had just made up his mind to catch up on the latest cricket highlights on Star Sports before the day’s chaotic scene would set in. This milk-buying very much cut into that scenario. He chose a plastic bag from the bunch of plastic bags at the end of the kitchen and walked out, muttering all the way about God and his plans to thwart his plans in life. As he got to the end of the road, he looked out of the corner of his eye for the dog that was his sworn nemesis on this road. This dog (“Veerappan”, he had christened it), had only one mission in life. To bark at Subbu every time he crossed “his area” and on days that he felt not-so-lazy, chase him down the road to the corner where 3rd main ended and Murali Stores began. Today however, Veerappan seemed to be contently sleeping on the mat someone had laid out for him. “Lucky dog. No dog functions that he has to wake up early for”, Subbu thought and continued walking past. He greeted Murali uncle, bought the milk and made his way back. Out of habit, he looked for Veerappan again. This time, the dog was missing. Subbu’s heart skipped a beat. He looked around and sure enough, Veeru was standing right behind him, growling. Subbu , without a second thought ran with Veeru close behind his heels, or so he imagined. When he no longer felt chased, he looked back, only to see Veeru in the distance, sleeping, solemnly. “WHAT. Argh.”, Subbu walked the rest of the distance wondering what had just happened. By now, there were a few vehicles already outside the gate and he warily walked in, not wanting to chit-chat with anyone right then. “Subbuuuuuu”, a voice called out. He closed his eyes, rearranged his face into a pleasant smile and turned around to face a rotund, elderly woman, with a glint in her eye and a wide smile that was accentuated by badly applied lipstick. It was Shyamala aunty, his mom’s second cousin. “You’ve become so big!!!”, she exclaimed. “Yes, well the Earth did revolve around the Sun multiple times”, he wanted to say, but he settled for just continuing to awkwardly smile and wonder if 10 seconds was sufficient time to start backing away slowly like Michael Jackson or if he was supposed to actually say something to her. He decided on the former and backed away successfully into the house and into the kitchen where he disposed of the milk packets. His first mission now complete, he thought he’d close the door to his room and relax for a few minutes before the poojai started, when his dad called “Subbuuu, yaar vandhurkaa paaru” (Subbu, see who’s at the door). He groaned and ambled to the door. It was Murali mama  and Co. The fake smile again in place on his face, he greeted the family in and told them to sit on the chairs that had been neatly arranged in the hall for people who arrived to be seated on. He mentally bid the cricket highlights goodbye and waited obediently on the guests that continued to pour in. His face, ever the picture of cheeriness, Subbu flitted around the house, giving people glasses of water when they asked for it or even just looked like they wanted it, serving pongal for breakfast and later lunch. He even went along with the Poojari’s requests to go and buy bananas for the homam offering, braving Veerappan again. By the time it was 5 PM, Subbu was thoroughly exhausted. But the fake smile as he bid all his relatives goodbye did not fade.

As the last of the relatives trickled out, he went inside and sat on the sofa, furiously debating if the time was right to broach the topic he had been thinking about all day. Then he made up his mind and walked up to his dad who was in the kitchen making coffee for the 5th time that day. “Appa”, he asked gingerly, “You said if I was chamathu today, you’d buy me that Harry Potter book no?”. Appa peered at him through his glasses. “First you finish your exams next week. Then we will see.”

Subbu walked back to his room with his head hung low. He could have atleast utilized the day for studying.

(* Chamathu means well-behaved or good/disciplined in Tamil – an expected trait repeatedly thrust by parents on unsuspecting kids)

A is for Adieu [#AtoZChallenge]

On By Abhiram RIn AtoZChallenge, Narratives, Short-Story3 Comments

He stood at the back of the crowd, not wanting to be a part of it, not wanting to talk to anybody. Everyone had varied emotions on their faces – sadness, indifference, even joy? But they were probably happy about something else, surely. A funeral was not really place that induced happiness, even if it was for someone who was your mortal enemy. And Vincent liked to think he hadn’t made any enemies in his lifetime; well, none that would attend his funeral anyway. It was an odd feeling, to linger around, incorporeally, within spitting distance of his own physical body. It was also funny, in a sense. When he had been alive, he had often wondered what people really thought of him. A deep sense of insecurity and cynicism had always shrouded him in social settings and he’d always questioned if any of what was happening around him was real. If the way people spoke, the things they said, if any of it was genuine. He had heard a tale as a child, of a king, who would often disguise himself and wander around his kingdom as a commoner, just to find out what his people thought of him as a person. And Vincent had been very taken with the idea. But it wasn’t practical obviously. And now that he was dead, but lingering in spirit, he was doing the very thing he’d always wanted to do. Well, it wasn’t the same. There was nothing he could do with whatever he learnt, but it was…something. So he leaned against the wall behind him and listened. “He was such a friendly person, always ready to help”, a woman sniffed. Vincent inadvertently smiled. Of course he’d always helped Julia. His only regret was that he’d never asked her out like he’d wanted to. “Really?”, Archie exclaimed, “He was always busy whenever I asked for help!”. Hmph. Archie had been such an annoying person. Vincent had, for the longest time, out of the kindness of his heart, always picked up the phone whenever his classmate, Archie had called, even after graduation. But it seemed after a point, that Archie had always required help, maybe a little too much. And eventually, he, Vincent had stopped answering Archie’s calls. He could hardly be faulted for that. He got tired. “What about all the times I Did help you Arch?”, Vincent muttered to himself. In another corner of the room, John and James were laughing away. “I know right!”, John guffawed, “What was he thinking putting him on as striker?”. Vincent rolled his eyes. He wondered why they’d come. Maybe they’d just seen this as more as a way to catch up and less of a scene for paying respects. His eyes wandered around the room as he saw other familiar faces, and some unfamiliar ones. The air grew silent as the priest slowly stepped up to the pulpit and called for the eulogy. He watched his sister, Mary slowly walked up, ashen faced. She had undoubtedly been crying. Vincent watched as Mary spoke about her version of his life. How he had been the best brother ever. “Thanks for lying, Mary”, Vincent thought. They had been close as children, but had drifted apart as adults, only ever meeting for the holidays. But still, those days Had been fun. He continued to watch as Mary finished her speech and his best friend, Tom took her place. Tom’s tone was less bleak. Trust Tom to liven things up even at a funeral. He even told them about an embarassing incident that had taken place during college that they’d sworn they’d take to the grave. Well, a promise broken eh Tom?

The ceremony ended and people were beginning to say their goodbyes. First, to Vincent’s body in the casket and then to each other. As he saw them leaving, his thoughts went back to the final moments before life had left his body. He never saw the car coming till that last second when he did. His whole life had flashed before his eyes like in the movies. Or had that been the headlights of the car? Why hadn’t he felt any pain? Why wasn’t he given the chance to fight for his life? ….Would he have fought though? He didn’t know. Now it all seemed pointless anyway.

He sighed deeply. Is this how death was supposed to feel? … Hollow? Then again, why should death be any different than life? He smiled to himself at the grim thought and slowly walked out of the church with his hand raised high and waving adieu to an imaginary crowd behind him. Everyone else had already left.