As I am feeling this blog is becoming more about personal things, I have started a new blog http://dasonomics.blogspot.com/. I hope my regular readers will be interested to read the general issues that I write in that blog. I am preparing my first post for the new blog and it will be put up soon. As far as this blog is concerned I have decided to start writing short stories(unlike the last post which was a bit satirical). Hoping everyone would appreciate it.
Sunday- The birth
I can’t open my eyes, but it seems my mind can tell, there is something wrong with the way the world sees me. Everyone around me is devious and is waiting for an opportunity to hunt me down in the one week I am alive. I don’t want to fly and for heaven’s sake give me some privacy.
Monday- The learning
The sun’s rays are hurting me and the heat in the nest is unbearable. Why was I born? All the birds around me are trying to start a conversation with me. I don’t want to listen to the empty chatter .My mother said the prudence is the highest virtue and she would guide me throughout the week. The whole week I would try to avoid bad company and will maintain my reputation intact.
Tuesday- The outburst
Today on my third day in the world, a wily bird tried to socialize. It said it knows me from the day I was born and my voice is truly captivating (which incidentally I am aware of). The wily bird is very famous for its grandiloquent gestures and I hate it when it becomes physically intimate to me. I hate when the wretched one touches my body.
PS: My mother also hates him
Wednesday-The friend
Every bird in the forest is attracted to my friend, but it is attracted only to me. Maybe it likes the fact that I am a prude. Prudes are so rare these days. I think I am a prized catch for my friend. I sing like a peacock and look like a nightingale. But my friend is always courting me and I don’t like that. The last thing I want in the three days left for me in the world is a bad name. Today my friend invited me to fly with the flock. I was shocked and rejected the offer outright. What a shame....whew......
PS: My mom hates my friend too
Thursday- The epiphany
Today I peeked out of my nest and saw the beautiful forest. I wanted to fly at that moment. The sun was beautiful in the morning sky. I was alone on the tree and saw the birds from another tree flying off. I joined them and it was nice. We saw rivers and mountains in our flight. The new birds are so warm and I spent the night with them on the topmost branch of a new tree. They were all excellent mates and I am sure I will bear good children like me.
PS: I can’t see mom. Can someone tell me where it is (but please don’t bring it here)??
Friday- Memories
I saw the wily bird today when I was with my new friends. It looked so nice. Though I am now in a different tree it greeted me. It is so nice of it to have remembered me after 2 days .I hope it will meet someone as good as me and will end up on a tree as high as mine. As I was in the middle of procreation I didn’t ask it about my neighbors in the old tree.
PS: I laid 20 eggs today. I ate 5 of them and my mates ate 5. I will groom the rest like the way my mother groomed me, truly in the prudish way.
Saturday- The death
I felt weak today, but I flew to my old nest. I did not see my friend there. I was so eager to tell it about my new mates. I talked to all the birds, I avoided 5 days ago. They are all so good mannered. I went to see my mom, but it is dead. I saw the beautiful evening sun, and knew how foolish I was to scorn it on the day I was born. Then I flew to my new home where I saw my mates all dead and my children trying to open their eyes. I flew to the river to drink water when suddenly I felt my wings were powerless. Before I fell into the river, to its depths forever, I saw my reflection for the first and last time. It said to me ‘My name is women. My opinions are as strong as a bamboo. It will never break. But I am flexible. I can bend as much as I like. My ethics are for sale. I live for a week and lie for 7 days. Half a week I play a victim and the rest I use to create victims. Help me from you, who is about to tell the truth. Feed me with lies. Pamper me so that I can predate on you. My name is woman, and those who disrespect me are cursed to live in hell. ’
It was 10 years ago that I danced to the tunes of ‘Thriller’, infront of a big audience (My friends in college would die of heart attack if they hear this. If they know one thing for sure about me, then it would be the fact that I am a pathetic dancer), it hasn’t been much time since I nearly fell into a sewage tank of a plywood company when trying to get away from the watchman, not long since I nearly got arrested for drunken driving when the driver of the car tried to clean the window with his elbow forgetting the steering. How many tourists visiting Goa have visited the historical Calangute police station???How many of you know real life unnikuttans who asks their grandmothers at the age of 3 whether they did tubectomy(yes vinu this is the new story I got from your chorifyin past). And most importantly how many of you have the most wonderful cousins who are your best friends for more than 20 years.
1 The whistle
I saw Ranjith chettan(he occasionally gets angry when I call him Ranjith, so for once I am adding the chettan suffix ) for the first time as I can remember outside Trivandrum airport when I was 4. In the taxi back home I gave him a whistle and said it can stop buses, we have been friends since then. We have done all the crazy things in the world .Impersonating the characters of the cult movie ‘orkkapurathu’ was one of our favourite sport. This artform named ‘pottankali’ has been our family’s sport for decades. My favourite memory of Ranjith is when he was hit by cycle at night. All my elder cousins were quarrelling with the cycle driver when I suddenly noticed Ranjith’s absence. I looked all around but could not spot him. Finally I saw him searching for his mundu(dhoti) under the cycle tyre. He has religiously avoided mundu since then. All my wonderful summer vacations were with him. We played everything from cricket to ice hockey. Our summer vacation usually ended with pooram vedikettu when we would stay on top of the tallest tower in thrissur with Praveen (ranjith’s neighbour who too became my very close friend) to view the visual extravaganza from 3 in the morning. Once we got the top floor all for ourselves (because Praveen owned the place) on pooram day and we literally turned that place upside down. It was most memorable summer vacation .
2 The chori...
He used to be an anathema to me in the past. We used to fight for everything from mock wwf to getting a side seat in an autorickhshaw. The most irritating of all my cousins is a mellow cat these days. I have seen so many dramatic transformations in my life and from all the people who reinvented themselves to be more acceptable , the vibe I got was they prefer to be the old villain and tell f*** u to everyone. I am sure Vinu is frustrated to death to be the good Samaritan.
What should I say about my eldest nephew(who saw this world and its ways before his ammavan)???I don’t know when he started to pour into my serene life like a hailstorm and stand on my nerves like a bulldozer. He might be the first person to whom I would have addressed all the swear words. We were never good friends till we started practising pottankali(where we again fought to get the lead role.Incidentally ranjith always had a compromise putting him up as the lead). But destiny made us both engineers (think of the situation when worst enemies get stranded in a deserted island, they have to make peace to survive right???) forcing us to cooperate. But I took revenge by making him jealous of all the glossy stories involving women (which were all exaggerated and mostly concocted) in my college. Palakkad was so devoid of women that his unease and enthusiasm to my fake stories earned him the title KADI.
3 Appu(nothing describes him better)
How many of you are lucky enough to live the American pie series(the later and more bitchy ones). Think of the fourth part (the naked mile, especially the first scene), that is almost the story of appu. Almost all the hilarious things in that series have happened to this young man. This conclusion was proved time and again with strong evidentiary backing (instead of just word of mouth publicity). He is one person in our group whom we truly envy. His attitude and guts are ineffable. I can’t count the number of times he played the elder in our group. Appu never was the youngest or the novice in our group, he still guides us poor ignorant humans in an array of subjects. Most of his stories are more hilarious than the others, I mentioned here. But unfortunately I cant post it here. He was and remains to be an enigma for all of us.
If I write on about the fun we had as a group, it would soon outnumber the posts I have put in this blog. Each day we were together deserves to be called legendary (to borrow Barney’s dictionary) . Our relations were tested time and again by the fragilities of bigger family tensions. But we were lucky and strong that we survived. Sometimes God makes gifts for you even before you are born. My parents, my sister are among those gifts. I am lucky to have one more gift in the form of my cousins (forgive the cliché, but its true).
The only article Lady Fortuna has no control over is your behavior
- Taleb
During September 2008 I wrote 3 posts which I never published in this blog. One of the posts is still in my drafts. All of them dealt with the sudden breakdown of a very close relationship, I had with a person. Finally I decided not to write something on that bad period(of shock and anger). Then I recently saw just in front of me two of my very close friends moving apart. They seem to have a reason to fight and never to be friends again, but for me their issue is something which could be solved, if tried. But my post is not about my fight or their fight. It is about this thought that always crosses my mind, why do we fight, why do we hate and hate so intensively our closest friends. Why cant we remain friends(not close friends of course) just friends and never foes. Why do best friends end up worst foes....
For me in the short span of 23 years I managed to alienate 2 of my very close friends and I am not even in talking terms with them. I do not want to be judgmental by passing a verdict on whose mistake was it anyway. The most apparent explanation for this dichotomy of love and hate towards the same person is that our expectation from people close to us is very high. There is no room for even a small let down. We cannot tolerate even an iota of infidelity from our close friends. So when they cheat like everyone in the world(it is very normal and human....) we act like Caesar stabbed by Brutus from behind and give a Mark Antony like speech(mostly we lecture our mind)victimizing ourselves. We find all the reasons in the world to justify our losses as a result of our friend's actions. This aggravates our pain and eventually the hatred towards the person concerned. Then the hatred level is maintained by occasional mud slinging at each other as an attempt to vindicate our stands. Thus are we really wrong at remaining foes, why cant we act like adults and stop fighting. Why cant we be best friends again and trust each other like never before.I beg to differ only on the last point......
My point here is after a colossal letdown sometimes the people who are magnanimous enough to take up the initiative and try to mend the issue forget in their self righteous air that cheating creates cynicism and cynicism goes on to become distrust. Friendship can never go to higher levels when we don't trust a person. Caesar and Brutus can be friends again in another life, but Caesar will always watch his back when Brutus is around. So for Brutuses to complain why Caesars are always extra cautious and in the process a little indifferent when they are around would be frivolous. For Caesars to confide all his thoughts,secrets and tactics to his newly forgiven friend Brutus would be just idiotic. You can be friends with a person who stabbed you from behind if you are kindhearted, but even Jesus will not dare to sleep with Judas once again after the ordeal he went through.
Finally before I end I am not characterizing anyone as Caesar and Brutus or worst Jesus and Judas. The point is for us, simple mortals we equate ourselves to Jesus or Caesar when we are on the receiving end. We cannot love and trust someone who cheated us like never before, but we can be friends again, but just friends.....