Credit cards, iPhones, western toilets – what do they have in common??

Credit cards, orthotic shoes, western toilets, Prime membership, lounge access, gyms and parks, iphones, Audis and Benz’s, vacation at exotic resorts, meetings and deadlines, Netflix and binge watching – why do your lives have to be this complicated? Why don’t you stop burning yourself? Cities make our lives more complicated.

Pause, take a deep breath and realize where you are heading to? A dream car, pent house, luxury vacation suites, children at ICSC schools. Is that all you really want in life? REALLY??!!!

Life is all about choices. You have millions of options to live, endless permutations and combinations to choose from. Life happens whatever way you choose.

Most people do not have guts to make their choices. In my opinion, people are scared about people. Every one pre-sets his/her life based on the fancies of the community and society they live with. People are so much scared of social and status risks. People are scared to stand out from the crowd. People want their lives to be admired by others and set their life goals accordingly, which on the bigger lens is that people tend to live someone’s else’s (meaningless) goals.

Lately, I see a lot of people set goals in line with financial upliftment. No one is ready to give up any money that is about to fall in their plate. Even if you earn in lakhs and lakhs, you’re still not satisfied. Those who crave only for financial upliftment never get satisfied in life. They always want more and spend more. They are scared of spending too much, scared of social prestige, peer upliftment pressure, and scared to stop earning.

The tendency to be richer is often an attention seeking behaviour. You seek attention through the costumes and brands you wear and own. Is it the attention that's given to you or to your things? Not that you are being the brand ambassador, but that you are paying for the products and promoting the brands rather than getting paid for advertising them. All in all, you are tempted to buy them, and you tempt others to buy them, in name of social standards and fashion. On the other side, the brands have their businesses flourished at the cost of your money, labour and life. Rather seek attention through your expertise, dedication, sincerity, hard work and humanity. 

People spend everything they earn purely for businesses to flourish. Birthdays, valentines' day, parties, treats, and in recent times tourism - such events are designed to make you spend. Work hard, earn, spend, repeat - is that all in your life?

You’re not a money vending machine. You have all the liberty in this universe to live however you want. The choice is yours – either you grind yourself like Robert Frost’s Apple Picker or get enlightened, shred off the myths and take a breath of life in you.

Life is not just about getting rich. Of course, I agree there are some financial commitments to everyone. But I strongly say, most of us already earn enough to pay for our necessities. We always strive and earn for luxuries, which are endless. There’s always someone richer than you, there’s always another brand costlier than what you can afford. So, are you gonna chase those until the end of your life? What’s the point in living? Do you want to live or just survive?

My point is not to force you not to earn too much, but to re-confirm what you really want to do with your life. Personally, I have the freedom and guts to do what I want in my life. I am not chained to worldly fancies, luxuries, and social statuses (though my parents feel ashamed of me being like this).

I once worked at a café where I used to take orders, serve bills, and clean tables (Not really for money, I was easily earning 7k working on a web copy for an hour at that time). I thought working there was fun and it was. I have also given English classes at an international college in Thailand. Both the works were fun to me. I have accompanied selling pani puris, cotton candies, popcorns, raw mangoes at the beach along with those vendors – all for an evening each, as a part of getting close with them. I listen to their stories at that time and live their life for one evening. None of these fills my purse, but all of these fill my soul.

People who listen to my stories usually prejudge that I do have financially settled parents who can fill my purse as much as I want and that’s why I quit jobs easily and wander effortlessly. The truth is I do have them, but I have never ever brought a penny from them, right from my college-hood, and it is my strict policy. I did part times and freelance writing since college to pursue my dreams that strengthened my purse and portfolio as well. None of these jobs seemed burdensome to me, but working 2 hours a day at Infosys with monotonous work that benefits no one galls me, and seems burdensome and tiring to me. Luckily, I am a minimalist, so I naturally do not have much spending tendency. So, even a 25k seems enormous to me. I have easily spent 1 lakh rupees in a go and lived with 7k for a month in Pondicherry.

Life is a big canvas. Why do you want to use a single colour of crayon while you have a box of gamut of colours? You choose – either to keep it blank, crush it or fill it with as much colours as you want. Maybe you want to learn to play Violin, or do choreography, or teach poor students, or delve into religion, do astrophysics, write stories, or just listen to stories of other people from different worlds, explore the sea, do farming, or be a saint on top of hills – make your choice and choose your colours. Who’s there to stop you other than your mind? Of course, you will not earn in millions, but you will also not be begging in the streets. Life always gives you a way to earn for your necessity, but earning for luxuries is selling your life for luxuries.

In clear terms, I don’t ask you to come to the streets and sell snacks. But would you still go to work every morning, even if you are not getting paid for it? If you say NO, you should probably reconsider the way you live and it is not too late to start living your life the way you want. Work hard on things you love. Seek answers to all your questions. Have no regrets when you die. As Steve says, "Love what you do and do what you love", be it at Mayavaram, Maldives, or Mars, go for it. 

We only live once. Why waste it just by earning all your life?

Here is Steve Jobs, the most sophisticated philosopher and technology pioneer's Secret of Life.

 Me, AJ, and a slice of our chronicles

--- A memo from my diary dated on 31/03/2022, when I was stuck in life.

It’s 2.30 am, I stand beholding the vast, dark blue sky, constantly caressed by the moist, feather-touch, seductive breeze of Coimbatore. I couldn't rest my mind, repose, and surrender it to sleep. The one thing that keeps on itching in my mind at this time is that I miss my travel buddy AJ. Every film and novel featuring a travel freak protagonist showcases extroverts as hippie travelers. But we were extreme introverts, both of us, and we were just 17 then. Just 2 of us geared up to encounter the whole world(there was another girl, but she left us as she couldn't tolerate us). We would walk from one village to another on the outskirts of Kumbakonam under the scorching sun of May, and you wouldn't believe it, without a single penny at times. And even when we had bounty cash at hand, we preferred to walk under the piercing sun for kilometers, and when it's not hot, we’d love to walk barefooted. Barefoot gives us a natural connection with the Earth. We have astonished our peers while trekking up and down a hill barefoot. We have sat for hours gazing at the empty, wide sky. And we have discussed how a fall of a leaf is significantly interesting and about energy, vibrations, DNA memory, mystic forces, evolution, and hours on Shelley, Shakespeare, Byron, Bharathi, Kambar & Kalki, and history and geography. We had our eyes swollen when we had our hands on the samadi of Adithakarikalan’s right hand. We've amused people by gazing at one statue for an hour long. We have witnessed sheer magic both in travel and life together.

How did we catch up?  I had planned a trip to cover almost all the places mentioned in Ponniyin Selvan, with a crew of 11 girls. 11 tickets were booked prior and I was ready to veil out the places with historic elucidation references to them. At the last minute, all the 11 tickets got canceled, leaving us all in disdain. The train would depart at 12.30 at night, and it was already evening, too late to book Tatkal as well. However, I was determined to travel alone in the unreserved coach all through the night. And that's when she turned in, with the same guts and determination to catch Vandhiyathevan’s trail. We stood in the queue and always liked to be one of the commoners. We never liked by-passes, cabs, and luxury. Despite both our families insisting on being so, we were minimalists trying to be transcendentalists.

We learned bird-watching together. We fell in love with iconography at the same moment, at the same spark. We researched and found a legend whom we randomly saw from afar, approached him, and finally stayed at his home for a couple of months. Thanjavur, Kumbakonam Darasuram, Thirunageswaram, Pazhayarai, Thiruvarur, Thiruvaiyaru, Chidambaram, Mayavaram, Poombuhar, Gangai Konda Cholopurom, and outskirts of these towns, we walked together in quest of intellect and with all the comfortable snug of love and humanity from the society.

We sit on the entry-exit way in the trains, sleepover in temples, eat at random strangers’ houses, and walk in the streets day & night. When tired of walking, we knock at a random house and ask for water. Surprisingly, we have always been offered more than water every time. We have knocked on a lot of doors like these and what happened inside each door were epic stories each, by themselves.

One afternoon a couple of miles away from Thirunageswaram we knocked on a door. It was a typical Chettinad house with mutram & all ancient, extinct things like ural, ammikal, aapai, mutram, thinnai, kenaru, and much more. Surprisingly, the old man in the house was manually weaving silk thread into the cloth with the manual mill. We were astonished to witness those. They first offered us some water and then a pail full of nannari sarbath, then they toured us the whole house, and explained how the silk thread is woven, and offered us lunch. I'm always excited to look around but always too hesitant to take things from them. But AJ is super-cool with that and she already sat down at a plate. She felt the whole world was organic and all people as one, everyone was our kith and kin. And after lunch, we talked for a bit and the TV featured a black & white film, Kalyana Parisu. We, along with the whole family and a neighboring little boy were immersed in the film. After a while, I turned to her and was surprised at what she did. She stretched out on the floor with legs straight and a hand at the back of her neck and gently drifted off to sleep like the lord Ranganathar. She has always been lively, spirit-brimmed, and so full of humanity. 

Nothing was ever complicated to her. I was often amused and rather shocked by her incredible art of simplifying things. It didn’t startle her when we were 40km away from the place where we lived and didn’t have more than Rs. 7 at hand. It didn’t startle her when we decided to spend the night, without speaking a word, until sunrise on the beach, watching the Pourmani with binoculars. She got married to a man, without seeing his picture or any preconceptions. 

And once we walked down into an abandoned, ancient subway trying to follow the path of Vanthiyathevan, violating the barricades. After a few meters, we were muffled by crude darkness. We went blind and moved forward, groping and probing with hands and legs. We steer cleared the spider web veils and proceeded. At one point, we were shell-shocked by the screeching sound of bats gushing out of the cave, bashing each other. It was extremely spooky and we ran out of the subway cave in terror.

One night, a random girl came to the room where we stayed asking if we saw something. We talked to her for like 15 minutes and 4 hours later, in the early morning, she was in front of our room and wanted to join us to find trails of Marudhanayagam, all with our ruggedness and spirit to explore. It takes immense courage to hang out with hippie freaks not knowing where we were going, also by walking. We taught her how to decode icons at temples and brushed her up with some history. We crossed the Khan Sahib canal walking and traversing it with live crocodiles in the marshy land.

We were the luckiest creatures in the universe as we have savored all the humanity and love this society has ever got. There were hundreds of stories in each village we visited.

The task assigned to us was the most interesting thing I've ever done in my life. We'll be given some clues in Thanjavoor about a piece of history or a particular historic figure. The answer will be in another town or village, mostly in deep interiors, (no one in that residing locality will know that there’s historic evidence and its significance). We we'll not know where it is and have to find out the right iconography and historic evidence and report it back at Thanjavur. That's what we did in all these towns & villages. Each iconography that we decoded tickled our senses and levitated us. And we'll be rewarded with literature lectures for our chronicles. Life was at its best!

 

It was the time when everything was fascinating and incredible. We owe all these to Dr.G. Deivanayagam, the discoverer of Chola temples at Bhujang Valley, Malaysia, and a phenomenal historic contributor with more such discoveries and authoring more than 80 books on art and history. His father Dr.Govindarajanar was the discoverer of Kannagi Temple.

 

Travel was never a mere journey for us, it was like going back home. The wide-open Earth and society were our home. We never talk about these things to people because most people won't even believe what I've written so far (what If I write all the miracles that happened in my life), and to the majority of the crowd, these are not interesting.

Looking back and forward, those explorations were the best part of my life as I've learned what life is, what people are, what people can be, the art of simplicity & minimalism, along with humanity, history, iconography, comparative literature - all in one stretch.

I don't know what kept you occupied in your 17, 18s. But in my 17-18, I was in paradise, determined to walk in every street of Tamil Nadu. The sand, the plants, rats & lizards, wells & canals, people, food, barren lands, even the difference in the greens of leaves matter to us, we loved it all and owned everything. These were the foundation and best parts of my life, and AJ is a great contributor to it. She's married and now a mother. After her, I never found a good companion to travel with. Hope to travel with her again and her grown-up baby. 

 

 

Lit grads and engineers live in two different universes

As a content writer working in an IT-based company, I have never met a colleague in the same stream. I will always have to sail alone in the boat. I am packed inside a horde of engineers – even SEO analysts and marketing leads are usually underlying engineers.

After popping out of college, I have never met a literature guy. Other school buddies, cousins and acquaintances will also be some sort of engineers.

The discrepancy arises right from the basics. While languages are Tamil, French, Latin, Sanskrit and a form of art to us, languages are Java, Bootstrap, PHP, Python and form of code scripts to you.

Someday, you casually ask what I did over my literature course and how things work there. When I try to fill you in, think of my situation when trying to explain the metaphorical stances, oxymoron, metaphysics and Zeugma (oru potut pannmozhi, if you know Tamil).

And engineers never, ever, ever, read between the lines. The concept of reading between the lines makes them excited when explained, but they never sense a spark reading between the lines. Lit grads, don’t try to be poetic with them, spit it out in plain terms.

And most engineers think we read and write stories academically. Nope, that’s not it. We read a story, get into it, cry and laugh with characters, spot them out in the real world, dissect the novel into bits and make a thesis on what happens in a character’s mind when he leaves a pause, why he thinks so, how destiny plays role, the metaphysics and all those decoding stuff, at times even more than what the writer had thought.

Well, cinema is a visual form of literature. I am happy that engineers do enjoy cult films and gold-rated films, but they always turn down the classics. It is always the innovation, exuberance and conceptualization that stun them in films, but never the characterization, metaphors and catharsis.

We gleam in the sight of engineers at least once along the way – mostly when they need to write an e-mail. Mails, profiles, birthday quotes, invitation content and notifications – that’s what we do with all the brilliance earned from the masterpieces of Byron, Shakespeare and Milton. And at this, they feel like they have leveraged our skills efficiently. However, I am really happy to help you, but these are not even close to literature!

Literature is far more than language. We don’t read grammar and alphabets. We dive into deep literature (like Kambaramayanam and Silapadhigaram, if you know Tamil).

Each person we see, even you, we have a relatable character from Britain, Russian or Tamil fiction. We can better understand the pulse of your emotional and behavioural patterns. We mostly seem insensitive, because we have seen it all, already.

When you look at how the instrument works, we look at how the music works. Every perception, comprehension and expectation from life differ for literature dwellers and engineers. We know how to slow down and penetrate through time, you know how to time travel. We walk on the roads you build and work on the software you design, and you need us for bed time stories to read to your kids. You become us when only you fall in love!

It is fairly acceptable that you miss out on the mild music of life and literature, when you run the design, implement, test and deploy marathon. Like how you can’t get into our world, codes are also far from reach to us and need experts to get the world up and running. But, we are here to document everything, put your excellence and its impact into paper, with all the aesthetic essences, as intellectual and artistic resource for the readers of the next 100 years.

 

So, if you are a hard core engineer, yet inclined on books and literature, let me know that you exist. (I know some exist, I’m not a literature stereotype)

x

Why I Want to Quit My Job

I don’t want to wake up with the alarm, run hurriedly to the office, write something, and get back to sleep to run the same tale tomorrow. Adoring the beauty of the moon for a couple of minutes while waiting for green in the traffic is not sufficient for me. I want to watch it, nightlong, watch it crawl from the east to west, tell it all my tales, and wake up watching it with the baby blue background in the morning. I could tell time by looking at the position of the moon. Life was beautiful with that.

I don’t want to ride past a new poster, a new building, a new set of people begging on the streets, in the rush of not getting too late to the office or in the tiredness of getting back home. I want to realize the new happenings in the city, I want to know where the people are from, where the tree on the roadside disappeared, and where the sparrow built its nest after the rain shattered its house. What is life without minding anything around you, and discussing national and international politics?

Taking a shower in the river every morning and basking alongside the paddy fields can be too much of desire, but bathing and drinking salty water and eating flavoured shit have become ordinary today. The restaurants and food houses offer special packages of zero nutrition. And the insta feeds and youtube reels are sheer stupidity that lack the sense of humour and wit. It is pathetic to see people who admired Nagesh and Crazy Mohan laughing at cheap memes and senseless comedy. 

The professional life ties me with the mobile and laptop all the time, right from the alarm, diet schedule, notifications, entertainment, education and what not. I am exhausted with these. I have been alone all my life, but I feel alone only when I started using my mobile.

And every errand of the day is networked to work life. Too much physical activity during weekends affects my weekdays in the office. Too much cinema on the weekends incinerates my eyes, which again affects my work cycle. Too much reading on the weekends affects my weekend cleaning and sleeping orders that again affect my work life. Plus, reading has a major disadvantage – it always gives you the steroid to unfetter yourself from the mundane life and get into real life, too much philosophies affect your mundanity and persuade you to quit your job.

If you are a working professional, you need to sacrifice your life, all of it, to fulfil your financial and professional needs. You will go far from reality and run a never-ending marathon. But what’s the point in it? You only live once, why waste it unknowingly living someone else’s life? How happy are you at work? Or are you waiting for the weekend every Monday morning?

If it is that tiring, it is time you reconsider your life-flow. You don’t have to do it, just because everybody is doing it. You don’t have to postpone your vacation just because you have some pending bills or not to miss your savings scheme. It’s okay to postpone a bill, it’s okay to save a little less. But it is not okay to miss your life. We only live once. 

People and their faces

Can you really describe how your face looks? Your jaw line, eyes, lips, ears? Well, I can’t. I can’t get a picture of myself in mind. I never stare at the mirror, only a matter of a second or two to check if my hair sets presentable when I go out. If I am asked to find my face out of three to four slightly morphed faces of mine, I might not be able to do that.

I know that my eye lashes are longer than the usual, it bashes against my specs often. I had pierced my nose and so I could tell that I have a slightly sharp nose. I really have no idea on how the other elements that constitutes my face looks like.

I can’t clearly define my granny’s face, neither my dad’s, nor my friends’ faces. May be I haven’t been with people for a long time, really. I have been with an incredible mix of people at unimaginable and impractical situations.

A woman had helped me as I got stuck alone when the rain raised up to my knees in an abandoned bus stand at 12pm. A random guy who gave me his shirt when our vehicles collided in an accident. The family that boarded me home just because I was curious to look around. A fellow passenger who cared if I had food. The auto man who let me drive his auto, even if we can’t speak each other’s language. The old lady who took me home and offered food when I lost my way. The sea diver that I held hands with on the base floor of the sea and back to the ship. The uncle who gave me his binoculars and taught me how to identify birds for the first time. The ladies who dropped me to the room just because it was 2am. The guy who rescued me from the dogs and paid for my bus ticket. The bhaiya who accommodated me in the lorry down the hill. And a lot more than you could imagine and too personal to publish.

People are priceless. And kindness is abundant. I never asked a word in all these situations. All of these kindness was rendered unasked, unconditionally and without expecting a penny or an opportunity back.

I just don’t remember their faces at all. I am not sure if I had thanked them all. Even if I stand in front of them, even if I am pleading to thank them if we meet again, I could not even recognize their faces. But all their faces are the same. It is the face of kindness, compassion and humanity. It is the face of God, the essence of humanity, even a pinch of it interred underneath your busy life.

I see them again when I see someone rendering love to random people. I see them in the girl who stands up in the bus leaving a seat for a granny. I see them in the man who buys things from road side vendors roaming around under the piercing sun. I see them in the mirror when I find myself brimmed with unconditional love towards the society.

So, how do you see yourself? We always live in someone else’s kindness. It’s our turn to give it back. Act now.

 Am I myoclonic?

**I am writing this out not just because I’m more articulate while writing than speaking, but that people don’t usually give time and space to hear tales of others more than a minute. So, here is to the ones that are comprehensive and compassionate enough to listen.**

I freaked out a guy at office as I startled, jumping off the chair, when he called out my name amidst the silent air.

I had screamed out loud on my dad’s footstep when I was reading a book.

The click of the switch had made me jump. Chirp of a lizard, door knocks, zips, sudden sound of TV after the power cut – I have sprang off screaming for all these.

I experience shock and spasm on hearing mild sounds in solid silence. These are completely involuntary, before I realize the sound in my brain I am already shocked.

Would you believe that I brutally scream in the nights when the door hinge makes noise? We have am imbalanced door that can’t be shut. It freaks me out so much that I would raise up from the bed screaming on the jerk whenever I hear that sound.

That puts off my friends’ sleep and I get complaints every morning on my creepy behavior at night. The sad part is that, I would be too asleep that I could not even realize myself screamingly sitting up on my bed.

The twitch is usually quick and brief when I am awake; brief but with amplified heartbeat when I am asleep.

But I am generally very normal with sounds, I can tolerate higher range sounds, crowd noise, whispers, murmuring, yelling, I am absolutely normal with everything.

Temple festivals, parties, waterfalls, movie theatres, ambulances – I’m not startled. Any type of noise in a moving environment is fine to me.

But a drip of water, a footstep (not a thunderous one, rather a hazing one) or even a sigh – that’s all it takes to startle me, when it breaks the silence.

When I ask Google it says that I am myoclonic and this is a symptom of an underlying disorder.

But am I really that??

Well, it’s there for everyone. I am just a bit more sensitive than you all. You are more sensitive than other creatures, may be.

Crackers induce an involuntary jerk in some people, a wild scream startles some, transformer explosion, sudden high pitch tones in thriller films, sudden barking of a dog when you walk in the streets – have you ever experienced involuntary jerk upon these in your body?

You don’t do it intentionally, it happens to you – just like the hiccup.

Otherwise, I love natural sounds.

I relish the mustards sputtering, ticking of the clock, water dripping in the tub, keyboard taps, flip of the paper, the sound that a pencil makes sliding across the paper. I even presented myself a black slate for my birthday, just to enjoy the friction that the slate pencil makes against the slate. Whenever you start a new stroke and the first letter of any sentence on the slate would make a thud, and the adjoining letters would ride with a kara mura. The sounds are exquisite with a fresh slate and a slate pencil is always better than a chalk.

You wouldn’t believe that I would hear my heart beat without having hands on it, not just during meditation, but whenever I have my mind steady. I could listen my heart thumping, in the traffics when I wait for the green. It’s louder when I sit alone.

 

Well, not that everyone should have a condition to deserve your kindness. Let us not wait to pour out our empathy until the condition compounds to the stake.

When you see someone in depression, let’s not wait to go talk to him until he gets serious and takes pills.

If you see someone falling, do not wait for her to fall to render your suggestions.

You are not going to lose your wealth when you give a Rs.10 to a co-passenger who lost his purse.

Don’t feel bad to buy one more food parcel for the granny who’s starving in your street. Don’t wait for her to ask you. See if she has a blanket in winters and umbrella in rain.

Don’t hesitate to offer the boy who lifted 15kg gas cylinder all the way to your kitchen a glass of water.

It is okay to sit and share a cup of tea with the one that cleans your drainage.

It is okay to have a friend with disorders. Understand if he’s allergic to something. Don’t judge them. Just because you are fine with somethings, it doesn’t mean the other person should also be comfortable with that.

We are all kind-hearted enough to caution a fellow passenger to take off the bike stand that he forgot to, kind enough to mourn for Sushant Singh who you have never seen. Let us not hesitate to evoke and express the kindness that’s in you. It costs you nothing, but love.

Remember, we always live in someone else’s kindness. It is our turn to give it back. Act now.

The Slip

Every one of us has a werewolf inside, grappling to gush out of a leaky hole, dripping its flesh and scent at intervals. There is always a moment when you are utterly captivated and harnessed by your werewolf. The pull from the werewolf would feel like gravity, it seems like an inescapable one. But there is a pause, a very mild yet deep, at the brink of every transformation. 

The decision you stride on at the pinnacle of the pull defines you. But all these would happen in a snap, lesser time than it takes for a lightening, a blink of your eye, before you live a whole second in it, when you’re half way out of that one whole second. It just took a second at Hiroshima to shatter Japan forever. If that Little Boy had some conscience, would it have had second thoughts at the time of blasting? But sure that there would be no guilt.

Howsoever, guilt may seem like a sin, but there is no point in it because it is futile in the aftermath. It is furthermore destructive. It cannot bleach the sinner white. The sinner becomes the victim forever. Can’t there be a place where there is no sinner and victim?

 

1

She had something. She was a seasoned young woman, very formal and professional at work. She had a lot of privacy policies and never unveiled her personal life. Nobody knew if she could ever cry or slouch depressed. She was a perfect blend of valour and delicacy. She appeared dauntless at times and tender at another. People who saw her dauntless would never believe that she could be tender, and those who witnessed the tender in her thought that she was meek. But she was both, knew clearly when to show what and how much to show. 

He had known both of her, but she always opened the tender side for him. And he was a hero to her. He was a great ball of candy for her to assimilate as an ant. She had worthy takeaways each day from him. Things uttered by him gleamed in her memory. He was the one she liked to listen, follow and explore. She was escalating her productivity and the content she produced were all hits. She was using up all her potential. She was living at the best she could ever live. He opened new vistas of knowledge to her. She brought in an influential progress in life and career. She became the best version of human. She owed all these to him. He was pivotal and influential at all these.

He was really all of these.

He was an influence to a considerable crowd. A patriot, social worker, monetary benefiter for many – a hero, the one people around would love to come and talk to. The organization was built from scratch by him. He was a one man army.

He could draw aesthetic criticisms on a fall of a leaf, stretch hours on literature, society and political themes. The way he loved nature was inspiring. He hung with a local crowd to observe the societal and environmental happenings.

The relationship was that of a boss and an employee between them. But the way she handled things, the extremes that she could toggle between, the compassion she had in her tone, the energy she reverberated on some topics and the choice of words that she made gained his attention. He was rather inclined to her. She could incredibly sprout out on everything that he sowed. The organization was on the zenith of productivity.

It was a business trip. Just the two of them. Once exhausted with the business talk, they had a whole gamut of things to talk about – literature, music, history, society. The clock ticked 11, the night air muffled the hotel room with silence.

They were on Fur Elise. She had Beethoven brimming her mind as she recounted his confession to Therese with his masterpiece. There was music spilled over the entire room. She was rather clad and infused by the musical air.

His intentions were already contented. The way she ecstasizes Fur Elise steered him, it was like a paradise to him. He was gauging the length of her fingers while she swayed her hands, the ecstasy glimmering in her eyes, the long eye lashes that were gently thrashing and else of feminine beauty. She had an elegance, in the way she spoke, walked, dressed and even the way she kept mum.

An idea of consumption, oozed out from within. The idea escalated in energy as she kept on talking. A dilemma bashed the walls of his mind, throbbing and breaching with each bash. She was genuinely innocent and was trying to transport him to a musical universe. But he was transported with something else of her.­

She kept on talking. The swing kept on thriving in speed, sparking due to friction. He could hear neither her nor Fur Elise. All that he could hear was the groan of the werewolf and the sound of the pendulum inside him. She locked her eyes with his, asking him something. The pendulum stood still. The next swing had ardent potential to fire flood the whole place.

The brim- that’s when the werewolf exercises the whole lot of magnet on you. At the brink, you will be in the empire of trance. But there is a vent, minute and almost invisible. You will never know that this pause is going to be the game-changer, whatever way you choose. He had the feel that Dr Faustus had when he blooded his signature to Lucifer – the idea of consumption.

The idea overtook him, plagued his conscience, plaited his whims and fancies together and urged him from inside. She had a pause. He had the next swing. The werewolf is out of the cask.

 

2

It was not the first time the werewolf coming out. The werewolf had met many such enticing girls and women. His wife never knew these, or acted like she never knew these.

A staunch thrush – she ran off to the balcony from his clutch.

It ached her. Not because of the mess that happened, but for the folly that she had been bearing all these days. It was an acute ache.

His mind changed its robe on a sharp note. His colours started to change. He grew into a rustic creature, his mind with a scent of shit. The desire was overshadowed by anger, aggressiveness, and vicious-ness. He was raging. Something suddenly bashed his thoughts. He had seen her fierce face. What if she pulled him to the streets and buzzed this to people. She had the valour to do it and had capabilities to rouse people. He suddenly developed a sense of disgust upon her, he saw her like a wretched and repulsive woman. He was planning on stuff to escape from the sentences she would portray against him. He was rather planning on points to accuse her with. He was tightly packed with fury and blind revenge. He started to cast detest upon her. He could not take up the insult imposed on him by a girl half his age.

She was standing in the balcony. 

It had been an hour after the ordeal. He forwarded to coax her, sooth down her rage, just to escape from the acquisitions. He laid aside all his rage and aggression and said, “It is quite natural that a fragrant flower attracts the one who smells it. And there are times when things go beyond our hands. Come on, be a sport”.

He had been treated in many ways in such ordeals. Women have yelled “Are you not ashamed?”, thrown curse words upon him and his family, enjoyed him and his services, called him back at intervals. But she gave him a plain and ambiguous look. He could not discern what stays underneath it. The most important part is that he could not ignore it as well. And he felt rather insulted by the look she threw at him.

Time was pecking at him, it had been an hour since his coax. The plain look had been grinding his mind, rattling his peace. A sense of guilt gradually started oozing out. The tender essence of her slowly started to crowd his mind. He realised the monstrous phase of him and his brutal endeavour with the tender girl. How brutal it was trying to efface the tender elegance? How easy it was to scratch her faith? He felt like an arrow-stricken animal, he was guilt-stricken indeed.

He walked back to the balcony. She was with a pen and paper, scribbling something.

He was anticipating either a frail and glimmering look or a fierce spillage of wrath in her eyes. But what he encountered were a pair of pristine eyes still gleaming with absolute radiance. There were no strains of tears. She seemed celestially pristine and stood as if nothing happened.

This stammered him. The damsel’s eyes this time pushed him into valleys of bafflement and rather choked him with guilt, more than he could bear.

He wanted to retreat his aggression on her and patch up the mess. His eyes were brimmed with guilt and too fragile to meet hers. She extended him the paper she had been writing on.

It read, “I regret for everything from my side that contaminated you. It is quite natural that the scent of a flower prompts the one who smells it. But the same entice ditched Eve when she tasted the apple. It is after all the human instinct. Everyone arrives to this place at some point of time. It is how soon you get out of it that defines you. But you are not an ordinary human. You are someone to influence people, push them for a better self. You are a super human. Please don’t ground yourself with ordinary matters.

Lots are things that I owe to you, learned from you, not just from what you taught, but also from what you are. Now, it is my turn. Let’s work together to help you get out of it. Such ill-thoughts hinder you from savouring a big piece in your life. Let me show you how it feels being platonic with a woman, how having a true friend feels like. Let us add a new tint to your palette.”

It further read “It was just your monster out of your cask. You are not the werewolf that changes in the full moon.”

He was indeed waiting for “Are you not ashamed?” or a slap from her that would redeem him from the sins. For the first time, he staggered, like a child that’s concealing the weep.

She saw a gasping child in the grappling werewolf and she had the whip to tame it down. The werewolf melted down, like the casting iron, onto her arms. There was only fumes, no fire.

#Jaye