The Kid Saved the World!

"Kids are funny little things, eh?"

Indeed, friend of mine, they are!

Who else can be so, so... kidlike?! So, amazingly kidlike!

It was an unusual day, considering how 'outings' had been going; or how they hadn't been going. It was the first outing in weeks! Although, for some reason, which I am absolutely sure of, I did not feel like going out. I ended up going out, anyway.

There was a nagging feeling at the back of my head: a constant worry that I was not able to place my finger on. Three of my best friends were my company and yet, peaceful thought and cheerful smiles seemed to be distant. Not unreachable, just distant!

That evening, there were doughnuts and pasta and Vada Pavs; if you leave the pasta out, the other two should have lessened the distance by a lot! That belief seemed like a mirage. The constant worry persisted, undaunted, unaffected.

We walked to this shop, nearby. It was a tiny shop selling toys, stationary and plastics. While the three of them looked at the things to buy, I walked to a side and looked at all the toys in the basket. I recognized some of them- remade and given a more modern design and effect. There were days when I played with their prototype models. Those were the days when constant worries were about toys, ice-creams and chocolates that would only reach me if the parents nodded their heads up and down. That day, the constant worry was about something I didn't even know. The mysteries of time? The strangeness of foreign lands? The unfamiliarity of new faces? No idea!

The other three had begun to walk out of the shop; they bought a bottle. As I turned, a kid, no more than three or four years ran into the shop and stopped right in front of me. He looked this way and that and it seemed like he had found what he was looking for. The kid was like the glow of a firefly, serene and graceful! He looked right into my eyes and threw his hands up. I understood this gesture, picked him up and held him in my hand. As soon as he got into my arms, he looked away. His eyes turned towards the thing he was looking for: that squeaky ball in a basket he was not able to reach. I took him closer to the basket. He took a ball into his hand and observed it like a miner observing a freshly unearthed gem. The kid had no worries.

His mother came along, seconds later and she saw him in my arms, holding a ball in his hand. She laughed and asked the kid to say thank you. The kid replied "thnkoo" without even bothering to look at me. His eyes were made for the ball. Then, his mother said, "Put him down. There is no other way he is going to get off" and smiled at him. I put him down and walked away, with a smile.

The worries were now distant and the smiles were hugging me. The kid had shown me something I had never observed, before. He showed me innocence in ignorance and arrogance. He told me that the world would end if he did not look at the ball the way he did. I heard what I had to. 

There was innocence in his ignorance and arrogance. The world would have ended, that day, if the kid had not looked at the ball the way he did.    

Inkblot

Poor beginning, poor childhood,
Poor learning, poor adulthood.

This is the life of our Typist. He never had much at any time in his life. His childhood was a car made of plastic bottles and their plastic caps, his teenage was a fictitious movie made from a movie poster and his adulthood was a tiny, dark house and an old typewriter. His earning, on the best of days, was 50 rupees.

For years, our Typist sat outside the post office with his life, his typewriter, typing letters in Hindi, for ten hours a day. English was a luxury he could not afford. His life was upto his typewriter. His typewriter was heavy, and so was his life. The cost of "life" was a heavy burden. He typed his own life's story everytime he pushed a bead. At 65, he still authors his own life.
After years of having that spot outside the post office as his sheet of paper, it didn't look like he needed some place else to go. The neighbourhood knew that there was an old Typist who sat outside the Post Office, who would write a letter for them whenever they wanted.
I can't say if he was happy with the story he had written for himself. But, he did the same job, everyday, in that same place, without saying a word. Grief and despair don't come to you when life is being harsh. Grief and despair come to you when there is nothing left to call it, "life." One day, there came a time when he felt grief.
It was a Sunny day with the regular bustle of the street outside the post office. The Typist was sitting there, looking around, nothing to type. Maybe, it was one of those really bad days. What day isn't so bad when you can't keep up with society? Or when society doesn't let you keep up with it? It was the same neighbourhood, the same people who recognised the Typist and whom the Typist recognised, but, without a greeting or a smile. Years and years of sitting there like a statue and no one cares. Does he? I don't know.
Years of having people he recognised around him couldn't prevent what happened, that day.
A man clad in khakhee, stars on his shoulders, badge on his chest, neatly combed hair and a better life than our Typist, stood tall in front of him. Hoping for a customer, the Typist looked up eagerly, with a tinge of hope that it is just not someone who needs directions. His mouth was open and he had an expression of humility on his wrinkled face. His eyes glistened with something only a person in the most desperate situations can show. He waited for the man to say something.
"What are you doing on this street?," asked the man, with pride and high-handedness.
The Typist replied, "I type letters, Saab."
The man asked, "Do you have permission to do it?"
What permission was he referring to? No one had asked him that since the time he started typing. "It's time to close shop. Go home," said the man with force and threat.
The Typist stared at him with doubt, disbelief and shock. Words did not come out of the man, this time. He pushed the Typist away from where he was sitting and, with a stroke of his hand, pushed the Typist's life off the stone, onto the road.
The Typist took a second or two to digest what was going on. He ran to the man and begged him to stop. He made for his feet, but, only ended up getting hit by the man's hard, black boots. The rock hid his typewriter. But, it did not hide the man who continued to crush it under his boots, like it was a soft-drink can. What's a soft drink can to one is a source of life to another. And our Typist's source of life was the man's soft-drink can. The last thing our Typist could do was join his hands and beg someone so much younger to him to stop doing whatever he did.
The Typist's paper, suddenly, wasn't the same. In a span of ten minutes, everything his life stood for was alien to him. He looked over the rock and saw his life lying there, broken. More broken than it ever was. The strings of the typewriter were torn. But, for him, the strings of life that played his tune were forever broken. The typewriter's casing broke, the belt was torn apart, nothing seemed the same. He left his sheet of paper there, without any weight on it. He took his broken life to the only other place he could call, "home."
The wind blew and the sheet of paper flew away and told the Typist's story to all the right people. The man was taken care of. The Typist received two new typewriters.
How does it matter anymore? A broken life could not be stitched back with this thread. The Typist accepted these typewriters because his life, even if it was broken, could not afford to stay on a busy road. It would be crushed. He had to push himself to a side and wait for someone to place him somewhere safer, if not better. 
He went back to that place where it all happened. There was no paper. Whatever was left was only an inkblot.

Flower Basket

It was a fun-filled evening at Eat Street on the banks of one of the most grandiose lakes you will ever see. It was 9 o'clock and something beautiful caught my eye.

Right outside the long, green coloured Eat Street building, stood a bald-headed man. He was tall, perhaps around 5'11'', wearing a white shirt and dark-coloured trousers.  In his hand, he held a long, white garland of flowers. A garland whose aroma reached me a few metres away as if I were holding it in my own hands. For the first time in my life, I was instantly awestruck by flowers. I thought they were the sort of mallepuvvulu (Arabian Jasmine) that I had never seen before. They were fantastically white even in a blinding yellow light. The smell kept grabbing my attention.

The man stood, putting all of his weight on his left leg as if he had waited for a long time. I'm willing to bet that he had been waiting for a customer for a long time. His face, unlike his posture, was still eager and energetic. He had been staring at the exit of Eat Street while I was observing him.

A man so immaculately dressed, wearing those naturally dreamy eyes and holding such fantastically beautiful flowers should have been a girl's dream, quite honestly. It should have. Not a single woman exiting Eat Street bothered to look at him, who was incessantly staring at every person coming out of that building. I remember a time in my childhood when women used to crowd around bandis selling flowers in huge flower basket. I remember when all the women and girls I knew would flock around the flower vendor and buy many many muras. I remember when vendors did not have to worry about their flowers rotting and dying away. Flowers in the fairer sex' hair was as common as men with bikes. I remember early school days when my teachers used to fill the classrooms and corridors with the aroma of fresh flowers, a lively bunch of flowers. I remember my mother filling the house with the aroma of flowers. Flower vendors were guests as frequent as the rising sun.I don't see that anymore. It's all the smell of Tre'Semme and Lo'real and Livon and Dove and Pantene and Sunsilk and all-the-others; an artificial smell that just rests on the hair for a few hours.

All these women who got out of the building went straight into their cars and vrooooom! I looked down at the flower basket the man was keeping his flowers in. It was a towering pyramid. Untouched flowers, not sold, not taken. Untouched. The sort of state that makes vendors worry about their livelihood. Flowers won't stay that fresh for more than a day or two, tops. Letting the flowers this man was selling die would be a sin far too great for mankind.

My mother loves flowers in her hair. Mainly the fresh and lively ones. Mainly the ones with an enchanting aroma. Mainly the ones this man was selling. All this while, the man had just taken me to be a passerby. AFTERAAALLLL, I'm a new-age boy hanging out with other boys. I would, obviously, be the last person he'd expect who would buy flowers. Even as I moved towards him , he didn't look at me as a prospective buyer. Only when I asked him about the rate did he consider me as a buyer. Perhaps to his amusement, I mispronounced the word used for the measurement. I asked, "Oka Mula entha?" (How much does one Mula cost?) He replied, "Oka Mura iravayi rupayilu" (One Mura is 20 rupees). It then struck me that it was 'Mura' and not 'Mula.' He added to his reply, "Rendu Muralu theesesukondi, muppayichchi" (Take 2 Muras for thirty rupees). I wasn't too sure about it. But then, his patient wait for a customer, all the thoughts that ran through my head before planning to buy it and the thought that my mother likes it convinced me that I should buy 2. What am I losing? If anything, he might have lost ten bucks. But then, it's better to sell it than to let all of it rot, isn't it? It is a sin, after all.

As he unfolded the garland to cut the measurements, the smell; no perfume would have been a match to it. It may be right to say that expecting to come across something so amazingly fresh would be foolish in today's world of industry and artificiality. These angelic flowers were beyond anything. He packed them in a polythene cover. I paid him and then, he continued doing whatever he was doing. The polythene was bloating up, as if it found it difficult to contain all the aroma. As I pushed against the bloat, the aroma rushed out and filled the air. I made my way home. I bought a gas balloon on the way. It was heart shaped and danced merrily to a beautiful song at the railway station. I gave it away.

My mother loved the flowers. Perhaps, it was the last thing she expected to receive at 10P.M in the night, from me. Doesn't matter. She was happy. She liked it. Then, she told me that they weren't mallepuvvulu. They were Verajaji (Juhi).  If I am obsessing so much over flowers, I am sure they are some of the most beautiful creations.

The day has ended with an aroma of joy.

Shed a tear

When you don't know whether to feel happy about a memory or sad, shed a tear. A tear can be both

A Train of Thought Lead Me Home.

I came back home today. The day has not been all that great.
But again, the days haven't been good for quite some time. Thoughts have been bothering me, one after another and it is for the first time in a very long time that something like this is happening. Immunity has its holes.
I participated in a quiz today and I performed miserably. I haven't won or even qualified in any quiz in the past year. But, as my friend had made me believe, it was the beginning of every quizzer in college. Today, was a whole new level of screwing up. One more added thought. All of these, they made me question where I was going and where I had been going in the past year. I just built confidence and enthusiasm to do things, did those things, achieved things that others didn't. But, today, I did not see the point. I've helped people before and their reactions to the help always used to bring a smile on my face. Today, even those made no sense. "Why did I help them?" Nothing seems to be making sense, anymore. Not having company is like a singularity pulling my mind towards disaster.
I was to go to dinner with my friends after the quiz. The quiz had done enough. I tried to pick myself up. Then, I saw a message that sent me back into turbulence. We cancelled plans to go for dinner but decided to meet, anyway. One my way to his house, it started to rain; rain like you wouldn't imagine. The raindrops were like the wind, everywhere. Clouds and rain were my panacea. They didn't work. They further worsened the darkness in the mind. I cancelled all the plans for the day and made a run for the station, unable to see anything through the rain. I ran like it didn't matter. I crossed the tracks like a parkour runner, with a train approaching me. It just didn't matter. I waited for another train, so that I could go back home for no reason. Just go home. I waited for the train, drenched. The shirt took a darker tone, the pant was pitch black, my hair was fuzzy and the spectacles were fogged. I didn't care. It didn't matter. It was raining, what would anyone expect? The train was filled with people I didn't know. Yet, they seemed like people I could find respite in. People going somewhere, for some purpose, however similar it was to mine. I just reached a stage where I wasn't willing to recognise my own purpose. I had given up on the thought of fighting something that was retarding me.
I got off the train and it was still raining like it were wind. I walked through the drenched crowd, eager to get a train home or wherever they were going. My thoughts weren't slowing down, weren't cooling down. They weren't burning either. They were on a constant simmer; chained to a frying pan, sizzling slowly. That's more painful that just turning into ash. I gave up my usual methods of respite. It was raining heavily. I was in the neighbourhood. I could've bought ice cream. I could've gone anywhere I wanted to. Instead, I gave up. I just sat down on a bench on the platform. Sat and did nothing. I didn't know what to do. I didn't feel like going home. I just wanted to sit down. The rain blocked out any other sound. The announcements were a distant echo. I just sat there and let the thoughts run for as long as they would. Soon enough, I realised what a bad idea that was. I tried to think of those days before the turn of the year, school, the first days of college. Every single good memory got washed away by a wave of memories that reminded me of where I had come to after all that. Questions popping up; unanswerable, unquestionable, unbeatable. Questions after a questions were eating up the insides. I let them, because I couldn't do anything else. I surrendered. I was about to raise the white flag when a man came and sat next to me. He must've been in his forties. His beard was white and his hair was white in certain parts. He was wearing khaki pants, black sports shoes and a checkered shirt and was carrying a lunch box. The pant reminded me of my school uniform. Strangely enough, it looked like one of my old uniform pants. Didn't matter. This man, for some reason, was like a candle to me. I decided to look up and see what was going on. It was just the usual train station. I felt like making conversation with him, but, I didn't. I didn't stop looking, though. As the thoughts continued to eat me up, a train stopped at the station. I saw some people get in and some get off. It reminded me of time. It reminded me of how times bring some people and take some people away. If we're lucky enough, we see the same person again or, they're gone forever. So are the times, if we're fortunate, we'll never see such a bad time again and that gave me some hope. I tried to fight back. it worked a tiny bit. I looked at the man and there was an ant crawling up his back. I brushed it off. He looked at me and I gestured as to what I had done. He smiled, I smiled. I don't know why. Still sitting there, I saw a police man walk by. I was staring at him and he was staring at me. I decided to smile. He smiled back, thinking I was laughing at the incessant rainfall. The man sitting next to me smiled, too. After a while, I finally asked the man where he was going, because, I didn't. He named a place that I knew was far away. Very far away. In that rain, even more further away. Yet, he was waiting for that opportunity go home, where he can finally rest. I laughed at the distance. He laughed at the distance. There was silence again. The man gave me something I couldn't really fathom, at that point. It stopped raining. I decided to go home, for some reason. Even though I felt like staying till the man caught his train which was more than delayed. Yet, I decided to go home. I came back and didn't feel all that good. Certain happenings further disturbed me. But, as I am writing this article, I am able to fathom everything that sitting on that bench showed me.
Everyone is always on a journey. Some know why and some don't. Some trains are just not ours, like some days. Some trains are entirely ours. The others depend on how packed they are. No matter what we do, at the end of the day, we want to take that train home. I did everything I did, however it is affecting me and however it has affected others, to take that train back home, a place which I can call mine, which I can design, which is where I find rest with myself and provide warmth and comfort to others. That is why I helped people. To show them the glimpse of home they were away from. By trying to put a smile on their face and by trying to make them feel the warmth and comfort of some place they could call home. While the present train isn't mine at all, I'll find my way home, somehow. 

A moment's wait

Staying away from home, I usually have my dinner in one of the stalls across the road. They reassure something that I have always believed in; the roads are a sad place.

Every evening, I see a lot of beggars asking for money, while a lot of people and I just ignore them or feel sorry for them and continue eating and filling our stomachs in front of someone who might not be able to eat anything at all. I ofcourse feel sorry for them and feel ugly about myself, but, reality's reality. It's often that in these cases, you don't think beyond your own needs. There are two specific persons who come to that area to ask for money. One of them is a young girl and the other looks like her father, blind and perhaps, mentally challenged. The father walks as if he walks and his head is tilted towards the sky. He constantly keeps nodding it from side to side and his eyes are white. They go around, like every other economically devastated person in hope of getting something to sustain on.

One particular day, while I sorrily denied them any money while eating my food, again, they went to a man to ask for some money. The  man was extremely tall and well-built. He was half-bald and looked like someone I knew (He wasn't that person). He had just lit a cigarette and was smoking it like a professional. While his other companions and friends had denied them money, he stopped them. He literally blocked the way they were taking to go to another place. This caught my attention. I stopped eating and looked at what he was going to do. He lifted his hand to his face and shot up three fingers. Logic dictates, as it was true, that he had asked the father, "How much is this?" It did not look like the father replied. The daughter tried to escape, but, he blocked their way, again. It made me angry and question his actions. All this time, he had a one-sided smile on his face. It ticked me off further. But, well, what could I do? I was just another person with a mind to prevent such humiliation and no body to do it. The man asked the father, again, "How many fingers am I holding up?" It was almost as if he was doing it for his own entertainment. The daughter replied something that I could not understand. The man spoke with the daughter for some more time, asking her questions. I tried to place myself in their shoes and think of how devastating it would be, for someone to doubt my disabilities and plight. I wouldn't have cared, after living in such conditions, about what other people thought when they had heard me. I would just feel devastated about someone questioning my disability just for their entertainment. I do not think that the father even replied to any of these questions. Maybe, he wasn't able to. I was watching this scene and I felt really bad. But, then, something magical happened.

The man who seemed to be taking fun out of their plight was not some bully I had thought him to be. He was being a kind man. The man did not intend to add salt to a wound, he sought to add medicine by sharing the pain and knowing their story. He was making conversation with someone no one would. He was being friendly. I know this, how? Soon after the daughter and the man finished talking, he pulled out a fifty-rupee note and gave it to the daughter. The daughter took it and went away. I don't know if she showed any expression of gratitude. I don't know if the man felt good about it; maybe he did. I would've. He calmly walked to his group of friends and smoked his cigarette, nodding to some chat his friend was having about office.

This scene made me smile. A moment ago, I felt like thrashing the man and a moment later, I felt like felicitating him with the highest humanitarian award that there is. I'm thankful that I had waited that moment, because, it gave me a gem of a memory that I will cherish for a long time.

Piloting a Spaceship

It must be my obsession with scientific things or my obsession with space and its wonders. I'm having dreams in which I'm learning how to fly different types of spaceships. 

A few weeks ago, I had a dream in which I was a secret agent, along with two other friends, working for an extremely secret organisation. The case was one of extreme risk and secrecy involving something that would decide the fate of Earth. While working on the case, I come to know that the 'something,' a piece of information stored in a pendrive, is gone. So, I investigate into where it could've gone. It was some building I had been in before. Big, yellow, glass windows, trees and plants inside with a glass roof. So, I went in, with an entire team of agents, knowing what I'd be dealing with in there. But, what I did not expect, was one of my friends being the rogue agent who stole the piece of information. This 'friend' was someone I could not recognise. She shot my other friend and shot me, taking advantage of the shock we were in. As my eyelids slowly shut themselves, I saw the roof open wide and then, something took off.
When I opened my eyes, I was in a place I did not know. The place was dark with small yellow lights flickering in certain places. There was window, and it was dark outside. I was lying on the floor and the gravity felt weird. It was different than the gravity I was used to. The temperature felt synthetic. There were some 'beep' sounds in the background. I got up and went to the window to see where I was. It must've been a dream, because, right there, in front of me, was a blue star with planets orbiting it. I was in the orbit of one of the planets which was entirely blue. I looked to my right and inside there, was a room with bigger windows. In the middle of that room, there was something that looked like a column with a plate on top. As I went closer to it, I saw buttons and other things on it. On one of the screens, there was an image of something that looked like a flying saucer. It did not take me much time to know that it was the spaceship I was in. It was black in colour, as if it wanted to hide itself in Space. I did not remember I got into the spaceship. I did not know where I was. But, none of this was shock to me. It was as if I knew that interstellar travel exists. I was in one of those star systems. There was life on the planet below. The ships flying in and out of the planet made it clear. Then, I placed my hands on the "plate" and the ship made a sound, as if it got activated. The outer rim of the saucer started rotating. Then, I pushed the plate forward and the saucer tilted forward and moved. I pulled it back and it moved back. With each push or pull, the outer rim moved faster. There were no buttons, really, than ones which looked like they'd be activating the weapons bay. Something I did not want to do, with an alien planet below me. I had a thought about finding out where I was and message Earth. Two holographic screens opened up. One of them showed me where I was in the galaxy. The other patched me through to Agency HQ. The technology in the ship, everything which was not weapons, worked on telepathy. The navigator showed me that Earth was a few star systems away. The communicator showed me people who were shocked to see me. The director of the Agency, a wrinkled, old man with square spects dashed to the screen to talk to me. I told him whatever I could recollect and he ordered me to return to a world in danger. I knew I had to go home. So, I pushed the panel forward and backward again, to check if I had got it right. Then, sideways to see if I had go it right, for sure. Ascent and descent were, again, telepathic. With the basic knowledge of flying an alien spaceship, I made way for home, or, as far as I could go. I did not know what the saucer ran on or how far it would take me or whose it was. I had to get home.
I don't suppose I'll ever know if I had reached home and looked at what was happening.
Maybe, now, I can fly a spaceship modelled like a flying saucer.

Last night, I had another dream. I was with Sandra Bullock from 'Gravity' and Anne Hathaway from 'Interstellar.' We were on a mission to rescue Earth or, perhaps, the people on Earth. Anne and I were trainees and Sandra was the trainer. This ship wasn't a flying saucer. This was a long spaceship that could carry lots of people. The cockpit had just enough space for three people, unlike the saucer's. Everything was physical, unlike the saucer, which was telepathic. The yoke of the console was between my legs, just high enough to reach my hands. My feet were on two pedals. To my left was a tool that would help me determine fuel ignition and speed. Two other similar consoles lay to my right and to my left. Sandra was sitting to my left and told us about the basic controls. The pedals were brakes. One of them was an air brake. The cockpit had small windows; narrow ones just enough to look ahead and slightly above or below. I was sure that this ship belonged to Earth. Next, Sandra taught us about ignition and speed. She asked us to slowly push the throttle ahead until it reached '6.' I pushed it till 10 before she completed her sentence and blew the ship up. It was a simulator. So, no harm. The next time, I heard her properly. She told us to push it till six, slowly and to leave it. The throttle, apparently, would calculate the need for more ignition, if required, when taking off. So, the second time, I did it right. We were off! The next thing she taught us was landing. She told us that the landing would not be vertically down, but, horizontally in a landing bay. So, we had to fly the huge, enormous, gigantic ship close to the landing bay, whose gates must've been huge, and wait till we felt a magnetic pull. This was to be our path to follow. As we would enter the landing bay, we had to eject anchors. The anchors weren't big, metal flukes, but, bulged, metal parachutes. When ejected at the right time, they would get pulled towards the magnetic 'anchor pods.' The anchors had inertial balancers so that the ship wouldn't rip itself apart because of being stopped at that momentum. It was pretty to look at. The next thing she taught us was the procedure to follow in case of the ship crashing or when under threat that would cause the mission to be pointless. There was a button in cockpit that, on pressing, would take hold of every life-form by deploying a blue bubble around them. It was supposed to be an air pocket and something that would fly them to nearest human establishment, as soon as possible. It was fun to look at.

So, I'm learning how to pilot spacecrafts.