DIWALI 2012

HAPPY DIWALI 2012, ONE DAY LATE!

The sprightly urchin was barely more than one metre tall but he enjoyed tirelessly pushing the cart harder and faster. His six little brothers and sisters could not have had a jollier time jumping, wobbling and wrestling amongst themselves with carefree abandon while riding on it! Those playful kids thus formed a happy sight out of the window of my car, notwithstanding the after-thought that a count of seven only contributed to population boom!

            It was the last time on the vacation that I was making the two hour journey from my town to Guwahati to board the plane to Delhi and so I savoured every view unlike my previous lamentations!

            Two hours at the airport were spent without talk or food or drink but only gazing at the outside, at pretty air hostesses in colourful sarees, plentiful cute little kids gamboling hither and thither and mute televisions!

            There were very few people inside the plane and the loudest presence was a wailing kid who cried the whole time because his visibly embarrassed young parents did not know how to make him shut up! The air hostesses dedicated much of their time to the cute little half-pint to cause only a trifle jealous annoyance to a fat man with dazzling clothes and jewellery, whose bald head was an exhibition of ample testosterone levels!

            A taxi ride later and in total, after ten hours, I was back into my room with none of my room-mates being home! I frantically dialed the numbers of near-by restaurants to order dinner but to no avail. Thus, I had to exercise my own cooking talents and raced against time to make it to my hospital for night duty. The solitary auto-rickshaw driver initially declined to hazard out amidst the war-like onslaught of crackers but later on gave in to one dialogue, “I am a doctor and I must reach my hospital!”

            It was Diwali and I had overlooked that the whole day, right from the arrays of banana trunks alongside the road I travelled, the attire of the gorgeous ladies in the airport, the greetings of the crew of the plane and the several empty seats, the much more than normal illuminated view of the Earth from above, the deafening sound of the crackers while I was on the taxi ride, the closed restaurants and the hazardous auto ride to my hospital until I attended to many dozen patients who streamed in with burns to various parts of their body who were even then upbeat in celebration mode!

            Today, as I relax in my room in a post-night off, the whole thing is sinking in at last! The crackers are still bursting and the lights are shining bright!

THE STORY OF SKYFALL

ABOUT SKYFALL

A sleepy lady to the right for whom an expansive and cozy seat was like heaven and a stoic brother like Hans Bjelke to the left formed my little crowd who ultimately watched the much anticipated movie, Skyfall, braving the high volume of negative reviews the whole week!

            The opening ten minutes had good action sequences including Bond barging his motorbike against the parapet of a bridge to fall on a fast-moving train and while being on top of it, bending backwards in Matrix style in the last second to cheat death in a tunnel!

            The movie reached its zenith too early with Adele’s song! She lulled my lady into sleep and a loosened handgrip was cue that I could be all ears to only the Digital Dolby! My brother was similarly absorbed and thus my mouth could only remain shut!

            From that point, the movie degenerated and was no more solid and rather dissipated in random directions like formless fluid! The characters over-indulged in detailed speeches and too much sarcasm!

            The Bond girl had more than trifle resemblance to the late break-dancing King of Pop and all she did was shave his beard in great detail. The second fiddle Bond girl only died a hapless death with a glass of liquor on her head!

            Fortunately during this time, my lady was awakened by the giggles of the blonde villain and she made it bearable to watch the mad man recite a bad rat story and act out a  whim of gay overtures once just for the sake of it!

            The villain still managed to over-shadow Bond all the time probably because the latter was not helped by a school-boy ‘Q’ who gave him only a gun which was however no match to the one in the hands of the former who used it to shoot dead every police official in London and terrorize M and Bond to flee to an isolated picturesque Scottish locale!

            The effeminate villain had already transformed into an Amrish Puri of Hindi cinema! Thus Bond, M and one old man like Ramu Kaka prepared earnestly for a final show-down with that solo face of evil. We had been made to believe that he was all the while in the quest of emancipating revenge!

            If not anything else, we liked the way he made a booming entry with that high-decibel sound box tied to his chopper!

            Pistols, assault rifles, machine guns, bombs and finally two much costlier LPG cylinders ultimately managed to bring down the ramshackle building in which Bond and M were hiding! So, that was Skyfall! A dilapidated house in the middle of nowhere!

            The time that was left in the fag-end of the movie was spent in explaining to my lady why Bond was not doing the amazing stuff he used to do in all his previous movies! I almost did a good job when she exclaimed, “Stupid villain! Why can’t he shoot that moron in the head while he has all the time to draw a circle in the ice?”

Because it is not the end!

We have to hold our thoughts and count to ten!

Feel the Earth move and then,

Hear the laughter burst again!

Let the sky fall,

When it crumbles,

We will stand tall,

And face it all together,

With a LOL!

           

           

Diary Entry 10.11.12

If I were a shuttlecock travelling to and fro between two towns then I would rather be smashed hard than lobbed because I cannot afford to meander even a little; two hours is the maximum I can expend every time! The court is too big and I love both the racquets whereas the playtime is only ten days! But I am not a shuttlecock and so I have to drive a car hundred kilometres every time between the two towns and what costs me minutes are the brakes working out of fear that lies in front of every dog, in the back of every cow and every side of strange men in lungis!

THE QUICKEST MATHEMATICIAN!

THE QUICKEST MATHEMATICIAN

He was an old and wizened man with such great curvature of the backbone that only his staff, which looked like a diagonal of a circle of human form, kept him from falling forwards! His sallow face with hollowed cheeks was less noticeable than the luxuriant growth of all-white beard from his chin down to his caved in abdomen like the nest of Sociable Weavers! His presence was thus death-like and there was a sick feeling and odour when he laboured for his breaths while a cold sweat broke from the creased forehead of his haggard countenance. He held a dead chicken in his arms close to his chest!

            The driver of the car that had only moments ago killed that fowl trembled at the sight of that deadly man behind whom a crowd gathered instantaneously and which multiplied in strength every passing second. The fear in his heart increased proportionally. The old man was no longer an infirm adversary! The driver had hallucination of a cannibalistic monster!

            Md. Ali only spoke softly like a very old man would do and he asked the driver to hold the dear dead bird because it seemed too heavy for his arms and heart to carry it any longer! He spent the next three seconds in calculations and nobody could even understand the problem when his answer came!

            One and half kilogram of meat and a dozen eggs per year till ten years and he named a final price: 1100 bucks!

            The quickest mathematician thus triumphed and the smile which was hidden behind his beard was as big as the bundle of notes he hid within his lungi!

            

10 WAYS TO WOO A GIRL!

10 WAYS TO WOO A GIRL!

            He used an Axe Bar soap and fantasized about all the hot women he saw in the television ad. The lather grew in volume as he rubbed on and on that piece of cleanser against his body parts while the steady stream of water sprinkling from the shower head flowed out with many cubic centimetres of dead skin for more than one dreamy hour! By that time, he was too neat and endowed with an aroma that if he dared walk out into the open, he ought to have ladies drawing in and caressing him while engaging their noses to smell him with uncontrollable erotic sniffs!

However, he was sane enough to have not ventured out half naked! Instead he chose carefully an Amul Macho vest and a Macro Man underwear and though he did not look that awesome in the mirror, maybe partly due to his particularly thin build and much too hairy un-shapely legs, he was still characteristically hopeful about wonders later in the day!

He drew out his Gillette shaving kit to deal with the still inconspicuous but potentially damaging weedy beard because it constituted a daily ritual which was sine qua non in case he was presented with the much expected feeling of velvety feminine cheeks rubbing against his own!

He sniffed his armpits and though the Axe fragrance lingered on those ten minutes, he had to plan for better things which required him to opt one among his armoury ranging from Wild Stone and Cobra to Axe deodorants, all of which held promises to deliver mesmerizing results! He fancied his opportunities for the day were more akin to the Wild Stone ad!

The Fair and Handsome cream was applied much as a routine than with any expectation of that magical moment when ladies would be swooning at his definitely fairer skin tone which never happened in the past one year!

His fingers stroked his hair in random directions to adjust it in the perfect manner as he felt he must do when he applied Set Wet gel because he could not afford to do it in the less correct way lest he gets any less return for the product value much like the zero count of ladies who ever praised his hair-do!

            November meant that by the time he was halfway into his experiments, he felt a chill and thus he pulled out his Scott Thermal Wear which could only bolster his prospects!

            He clicked a picture of his own with his Xperia Tipo smart phone and rather than inspecting the photo, he weighed the phone and the many promises it would deliver in the future before he put it into his pocket!

            His Hero Igniter motorbike awaited him so that he could vroom away in style because he deserved all the attention in the streets, supposedly abound only with pretty eyes taking note of his fleeting presence!

            He wore Relaxo sandals to keep him on a firm footing!

            One year was too less time to have expected any semblance of positive results and he was willing to persevere! 

           

Holiday Diary: Two Facts

            There are two standout observations in the hundred kilometres journey from Guwahati to Barpeta via Hajo. The first is simple arithmetic comprising of a counting job unshakeably imposed by the vexation of having to stumble upon so many speed-breakers! I would almost have emulated any neurotic in getting the correct sum total today but for the occasional inattention caused by the scare of death due to near-collision events with Wingers driven by idiotically reckless weirdos racing amongst themselves just in the hope of winning another customer to sit on the rooftop of their vehicles because all room inside happens to be jam-packed! Surely there are close to seventy speed-breakers that rankles a stiff backbone!

            The second thing is the uniformity of the dress code of the exponentially proliferating population all throughout! A striped blue lungi and a white cap is appreciable universality! The demography, unlike previously, is thus undeniably becoming indistinguishable from that of the neighbouring country with whom we share a highly porous border! Whosoever disagrees is surely an ostrich!

OH SO TRENDY! THRASH A DOCTOR OR A NURSE!

OH SO TRENDY! THRASH A DOCTOR OR A NURSE!

She was a young and petite woman with a soft voice and a benevolent face unlike the more common elderly shrill and tyrannical kind. The general opinion was that she was a good nurse who did her duties well. A few hours past midnight, she was called upon to look at one of the patients of her ward.

The patient was a frail and elderly woman whose lungs were consumed by tuberculosis and it must have been a few months of familial neglect that culminated in making it so difficult for the unfortunate old lady to breathe in air to stay alive. A few wonder drugs and nursing care had prolonged her survival for some hours but her health was too damaged to let her fight her battle against death with any degree of miraculous success.

The men who flanked the nurse as she approached the sick and decrepit patient had been well informed at the outset about the lost cause and it so appeared that they accepted that eventuality. However, when the nurse began to administer cardiopulmonary resuscitation to the unmoving body of the patient, a totally untoward reaction occurred. The burly men, who were the sons and nephews of the old lady, immediately zeroed in on the solitary nurse as their enemy and began to curse her with expletives and then manhandled her. The equation in their minds was that since their patient died at her hands, thus making her services ‘zero value’, she should as well not be allowed to live! The malevolent temerity of their act was unopposed in a ward where attendants of other patients were still undecided about which side to take as if there remained a moral dilemma to them! The fact that a few of them sported a grin each at the sight of several men beating a poor nurse was a display of their equally ungrateful and prejudiced minds. They seemed to empathize with the transformation of despairing relatives into uncontrollable assaulters and savoured every blow!

When a handicapped nursing orderly valiantly came to rescue the badly bruised and almost fainting lady, the emboldened assailants saw the opportunity to turn their ego-driven wrath on a male and their aggression knew no bounds! The poor fellow faced the brunt of the furious onslaught for several minutes and was left bleeding from many sites. They created a scene such that the doctor on duty could not reach his patient!

Herein, the sufferers were a nurse and a nursing orderly. Several such incidents take place in hospitals all over India where the life of healthcare providers is similarly threatened. ‘A doctor or a nurse was thrashed today’ is news that is increasing in frequency and every time such news unfortunately degenerates into a generalized discussion of all the shortcomings of the medical fraternity and its ungodly malpractices. Therefore a crime is justified again and again till it has become a trend and nobody cares any lesser.

It seems as if everyone in India, except the medical man, has the right to act in self-defense because the accepted thinking is that the attendants with a patient have an emotional license to do whatever they wish once things don’t work out according to their preference! Many times, it is a sordid spectacle of ego-driven power play and histrionics.

It is noteworthy that all hell breaks loose when the doctor evens the score of the blows on those who are intent on causing him mortal physical harm!

Delhi Diary 11

            An impatient by-stander in those painful extra O.T. hours that allowed the army of mosquitoes seize my rooms by the dusky time when I reached there; lonely hours with a large TV and a laptop and a substantial Domino's home-delivered meal with no one to share because Mr. Bharat has his in-laws and Mr.Mohsinur has a home-bound plane, making it a tedious eating job over an hour; uninteresting Champions League games and the guilt-ridden sight of dust settling over the books in the desk and the tiresome disinterest of picking anyone out of that stack; the hated inactivity and yet an abject surrender to the same demons to lie motionless in the bed pondering, planning, theorizing, reasoning, dreaming and feeling and reeling under many emotions and still shaking them off to watch the game on screen...it has been that kind of a day!

ASTROLOGY SUCKS!

ASTROLOGY SUCKS!

The red neon lights of the billboard was one of the attractions of the ‘Astrology Research Centre’ located in the basement of a building in the heart of Lajpat Nagar. Sunny Boy had thus reached his destination and I, as his companion, was lost between alternating states of wonderment and bewilderment.

We had travelled across twenty Metro Stations to get to that place. Reminiscences from the past hour included the six counts of tussles to get in and out of the train, the careless bumps, the rude pushes, the urgent nudges and the undisciplined jostling within the bogey besides the accelerated Brownian motion of the horde of super-busy people in the platforms. Such an industrious rush hour surely increased our blood pressures.

Sunny Boy pulled out the scroll in his pocket and verified the name on display. Below it was inscribed ‘Italian Red Coral – 9 Carats’. That was the prize he so dedicatedly sought and which accounted for the adventures of the day.

We pushed in a ginormous door made of designer glass and wood and found that a group of people awaited our entry to welcome us. There were two heavyweight Bouncers in charcoal colored uniform that also matched their skin tones. They flanked an elderly frail guardsman whose rifle weighed too heavy for him. There was also one female receptionist standing within her counter to the right of us. She had to her credit playfully big eyes and a pretty face but in all probability her austere dietary habits may have caused her to possess a body that looked more painfully malnourished than attractive. Yet she captured our attention for some time because it took us a while to notice two other diminutive boys or rather, urchins, who must have worked there with menial jobs. The lady apparently had an important position within the counter in one corner of the large room, the other three corners of which were adorned by exotic flowering plants of foreign origin within illuminated tubs. The room as a whole was an example of excellent interior designing with premium woodwork, extravagant furniture and elegant lighting and the price of the room was beyond our calculations. However, that was just the ante-room. We knew that, unseen to us, in his grand room inside, the famed astrologer could be consulted for a fee of 25 thousand!

My dear friend Sunny Boy however spared me such suffering. He possessed the prescription of an equally rich astrologer from another state of India. Sunny handed over the scroll to Kareena, who was the receptionist, and whose name we knew by that time because Sunny was a smooth-talker. She thus did a good job in engaging her customer for a profitable deal. She declared, ‘There are differently priced gems by that name and for every carat, you can pay any of 1000, 2000, 5000 or 10,000 bucks according to the quality’

I just observed in disbelief that Sunny Boy bought a nine carat stone doling out 45 thousand to appease his superstitious elder brother who morbidly believed that a ring in his finger could fight the demons of heavenly bodies to bring happiness in life more than a bank balance of the money expended!

Sunny Boy no longer had a sunny face when we exited that black hole of wealth!

GOTHAM HORNS AND HIS BABY

GOTHAM HORNS AND HIS BABY

Gotham Horns keeps saying, “I am not always right but I am never wrong”. The fact that these very words have been also heard from Garfield should be taken as an example that he possesses a great mind that thinks much like the one of the cartoon cat!

The other day he did a Sherlockian tour-de-force! As the three of us were strolling in Patel Nagar, and were discussing about our career prospects Gotham halted all of a sudden and declared, ‘the baby is now 6 months old!’

In the next couple of minutes, I and Md. Sheen were busy locating the baby in question. We looked from the bosom of one female to another but could not zero in any infant! Thus we could only take Gotham’s words at face value and turned our gazes back to him, mine with enacted awe and Md. Sheen’s with overwhelming wonderment like the ever-willing pupil that he is, and we sought enlightenment together.

Gotham enjoys such unhindered opportunities of being didactic! He began, ‘of course the baby was 70cms long and looking at her mother, who was wearing decent make-up and a dress of Vero Moda, I presume they belong to the upper middle class and thus the baby gets proper nutrition from those substantial breasts, to ensure that it has had decent growth according to the charts! Then again, the baby smiled back at her mother revealing only two central incisors and no more teeth and was utterly restless looking here and there in response to the sounds of all the vehicles around! If only you could have seen the confusion in the eyes of the mother while buying supplementary cereal, you would have known that it was her first time! Lastly, the baby smiled back at me too and called pa-pa!’

All of Gotham’s explanations were right and Md. Sheen had surrendered to the tirade of resounding arguments with widely open eyes! 

ABOUT GOTHAM HORNS AND THE WORD HE SPELLED RIGHT!

ABOUT GOTHAM HORNS AND THE WORD HE SPELLED RIGHT!

Though he caught her arms,

He was worried of germs!

Her sneezes were the alarms,

And thus he regretted his charms!

            Gotham Horns would not otherwise have been so lackadaisical on a date. Three hours went by but he never kissed the perfect lips he so much praised the other day. Her noisy sniffles distracted him. The fact that she had a severely deviated nasal septum did not help matters because with the other nostril blocked, she did breathe in through her mouth. The odour of that air was poisoned by infected tonsils.

He is a much superior artist when it comes to romance and ‘amazing’ is the adjective he has earned over a span of time like the web-spinning super-hero!

Sir, it is you who came before?

You are part of our folklore!

The girl won’t be seen once more,

We noticed that since days of yore!

            The waiter of his favourite restaurant had however ceased being amazed with him, benumbed with too much regularity. The song he sang was meant less for any glory than it was in celebration of the generous tip that happened to be always his due.

You cannot be truer than a hundred bucks!

It is the day more than your song that sucks!

Is it only I who can see those sitting ducks?

I commiserate with the ones I called schmucks!

            A cool breeze came across the lake on the waters of which the ducks sat almost motionless. It made Eleanor shiver more than the dry leaves of the trees in view.

Won’t you come closer because I feel the cold?

I haven’t told you but you are very bold!

Within your rippling muscles I want to fold!

Isn’t it me you so dearly want to hold?

            Thus Gotham put down his coffee cup and gingerly advanced his hand to meet the smallish, tender and so much pretty hand that immediately clasped his one with growing affection. That very moment he felt the gentle febrile warmth, wet and sticky with a little bit of greasy sweat and the mucus rubbed off her nose and thus he fought with the irresistible desire to withdraw his hand to prevent the incessant transfer of flu-causing viruses.

            Three weeks later, Gotham Horns spelled ‘lackadaisical’ rightly and won a bet!

MY FIRST SKETCH

MY FIRST SKETCH :)

THE ONE-HANDED RICKSHAW-PULLER

THE ONE-HANDED RICKSHAW-PULLER

Shani Ram lost his left hand in an accident a few years ago but instead of taking up another occupation he still continues as a rickshaw-puller. He wears a piece of linen in a manner that customers don’t notice his handicap in the first look.

            The previous night, I saw him in his usual corner smoking a bidi with some style. When I asked him to take me to the hospital where I work, he accosted me with a greeting and queried, “Son, do you go there every day? Perhaps you don’t recognize me but I have taken you to that place three times!”

I wondered how I could forget that skinny and bald old man whose spine was greatly curved and the malar bones so very prominent above the hollowed out cheeks besides the sunken eyes and the strikingly protruding nose, with his characteristic raspy voice, the strength of which matched his bodily tenacity that delivered the painfully slow pace to his vehicle on which I had the experience of a ride not once but thrice, like he mentioned, without ever being able to shake off the feeling of an eerily pleasurable deathly ambience all throughout! Above all, he was a case of below-elbow amputation and thus an inspiring example of overcoming a handicap. So it would be insulting to my memory if I did not remember him when he could keep in mind a commonplace man with a black bag like so many others among his customers!

Enriching his ghostly appearance is his unexpected mild manners. Though he always asks for only forty bucks, I am used to giving him ten extra, which is however only his due because it is equal to what others demand for that distance!

THE MOUSE STORY

STORIES OF MR. BHARAT DURGIA, ORTHOPAEDICIAN

THE MOUSE STORY

            Mr. Bharat Durgia is a dear friend. He is an orthopaedician with a tagline that reads, “I will bend my bones to mend your bones!” He is thus very good.

            In his undergraduate days, he was still learning Assamese when he went with his ward mates to Panitola for doing a survey, which was a part of Social Medicine. He is a heavy man with a pair of heavy lens and so was a much important team member who assumed a central role. His undying smart enthusiasm generated spirited keenness in the rest of the group members and admiration-driven giggles in the few lady medicos who accompanied him. He was mindful of the reactions and every moment tried to be better and do something bigger and worthier.

On the day of which this incident is about, he started exceedingly well reading out questions from the proforma in the native language and getting the right answers from a peasant. It was smooth sailing till he was stymied by one little limitation. He had to ask whether there were rodents in the house and he did not know what a mouse was called in Assamese. The rustic interviewee did not recognize any of the english ‘mouse’, the hindi ‘chuha’, the cleverly described ‘little animal that cats eat’, the elaborately explained ‘animal that runs about here and there in every nook and corner eating grains’, the vaguely characterized, ‘four-legged little one which may be white or black’, any addition of confusing adjectives like ‘smelly’, ‘restless’ or ‘naughty’ or the overly hopeful example of  the television hero ‘Jerry’ and he was thus sweating from trying too much!

He was simply failing and he would have relinquished the job to the Assamese team mates who were there with him. But the latter had loved it from the beginning in enjoyable silence! At last, rather quite despairingly, he could only pray for God’s help and just then, he saw Lord Ganesha’s picture in the calendar hanging from one of the walls. Lord Ganesha was mounted on a mouse just as always! At that point, Mr. Bharat’s index finger could not be restrained from the repetitive jerky gestures at that little animal underneath Lord Ganesha till the illiterate villager exclaimed, ‘Oh, nigoni! Well they are plenty!’ Much excited happiness followed that triumph which he savours even to this day!

           

            

DELHI DIARY 10: THE KISS OF A TOOTHLESS FAIRY

DELHI DIARY 10: THE KISS OF A TOOTHLESS FAIRY

            She did not have any of her front teeth and all her hair was gray. The sallow and wizened lady in her 60s threw an agonizing look at me clasping the right side of the upper part of her abdomen with both hands. I already guessed my diagnosis from where I stood. Laying my hand on her abdomen gave me reasons to think that I was only right. With carefully chosen words and after knitting my eyebrows as is wont for me to enact a credible performance, I declared my suspected diagnosis to her attendant who was however much more certain of the same because of an ultrasound report that he possessed. He produced it like a trump card! He was not very amiable and was rather the ‘too-much-knowing-for-little-good’ kind of person who had too many whys and that many ways to irk other people. I sported a confident smile to baffle his desire to get pugnaciously vociferous. Two hours later the same man had a happily grateful face and sounded a subdued chuckle when he saw his smiling mother rub her palm on my face and plant a kiss on my cheek! She indeed appeared like a small human form with magical powers we call a fairy because her son seemed so much more bearable to talk to after that!

             

MOHD. SHEEN AND HIS DURBAR

MOHD. SHEEN AND HIS DURBAR

Mohd. Sheen is the emperor of the Chat Durbar.  This is an exclusive virtual court wherein his subjects discuss with him various matters in great detail. The entry portal is facebook. The access is unlimited and he is available at any hour.

He is a kind ruler of hearts! His humour is never-ending. That is his chief attraction and the strength of attendance of his Durbar has thus increased over time. The baseline count is five and the peak is yet unknown but may be more than fifty, which proves that he has a very patient and orderly mind.

The highlight is that out of all the connectivity numbers, females have a ninety nine per cent share. And his keenness is thus explicable. Methi and Namkeen are two regulars.

Methi is all sweet talk. She finds everything fabulous. She types in various smileys at a certain significant rate per second. Mohd. Sheen has likened her to ‘Misty Doi’! It is his favorite dessert. The content of chat is very sugary bordering on frivolity. The emperor is often lost in day-dreams soon after but with a smile fixed on his face.

Namkeen, on the other hand, delivers brilliant sarcasm every other sentence with the design that Mohd. Sheen will be none the wiser and thus she enjoys herself and stays connected. Little does she realize that the emperor is much smarter to let that happen at all times to engage her as often as she does!

While he is fond of the honeyed tete-a-tete with Methi, he likes the ribbing chitchat with Namkeen even better! His current indecision regarding his preference is only eyewash!

THE LOVE AND HATE STORY

THE LOVE AND HATE STORY

It did hurt not calling her but his pride could not take a fall,

It had been hours of falling apart since she cried on that call!

Hard to argue with someone who only sulks on being hurt,

The quarrel was fought in silence after a brief noisy start.

It may seem trivial for the rest of us, who do not know,

That a day spent without a call could lead to such a row!

The sun went down without an answer to a hundred rings,

Till with a frown and anger he yanked at his guitar’s strings.

His hours became lonelier evermore yearning for her voice,

Lost in darkness he sang even more but much of that was noise.

He did not hear when she called back till one hundredth time,

At midnight he was tired with grief and stopped at that chime;

Soon after he saw his phone and stared with much indecision,

It was hard to hate so much the one he loved without reason!

While his fingers dallied over that call he wanted not to make,

The call came through; his phone lit up and it began to shake.

With a heart so sore he could not hear another hurtful word,

She caused the gloom in his cheerless face, yet she struck a chord!

And for minutes he spoke not a word and that made her cry,

He hung up the phone and he never responded to any of her ‘why’!

Sleepless hours slowly went by teamed up with smoke and spirits,

His red eyes reflected fond memories but he lamented the demerits.

He did not think about the consequence of his brooding disposition,

For far away Juliet thought of ways to cope with the silent admonition!

The resentful despair in the ungodly hours made her cut her wrist,

That ceaseless stream of blood drained her life and loosened up her fist!

Thus juvenile love claimed a teenage breath with so much more to live,

Coz love and hate was an intense game too much irrational and addictive!

THE SHORT STORY OF AN UNPLEASANT PAUPER

THE SHORT STORY OF AN UNPLEASANT PAUPER

It was a heavyweight cow that whipped its tail across the face of Hari Om that resulted in the variegated patterned bruise that disfigured his slovenly spooky countenance. The admixed imprint of red, blue and black colours remained while the specks of holy cow shit had been washed off. He was hurt skin deep and a neck injury was also very much likely. Earlier that day he had stepped in horse shit while stealing mangoes from a roadside cart and he could opine that the stink was not as bad as dog poop! It proved that despite being an alcoholic and an all-time dreamy cannabis-smoker, he knew his senses well because meat contains more sulfur and hence the carnivore produces more smelly crap! The stench of the sewage water in the roadside drains was what he had suffered for many long nights till the following bright mornings when his blood alcohol level was cleared by his less-than-a-kilogram liver. In his other mornings dawning underneath a banyan tree, after he had survived hours of toxic carbon dioxide levels, the whitish paste-like bird excreta was the unrelenting shower that never failed to wake him up!

He disappeared before his newest bruise could heal thus ending an unpleasant story after readers make guesses whether he died due to any of cervical injury, liver failure, cannabis or carbon dioxide poisoning, tetanus or ill-effects of possible coprophagia! 

HOW TO DO A CHOLECYSTECTOMY?

HOW TO DO A CHOLECYSTECTOMY?

I have written more operation notes of cholecystectomies than stories about other stuff thus breeding displeasure within myself at not being able to be more illustrative in an intriguing manner instead of the repetitive express jottings in the patient files. I think it is the bane of not being the premier rather than a subordinate. The following is an attempt to win a point!

The patient had a calculus in her gallbladder even though the sexagenarian declared emphatically that she “had never consumed a stone in her life!” The pathological presence of the villainous stone inside her body continued to befuddle her even in the face of the most lucid explanations delivered repeatedly at the top of my voice to defeat the demon of presbycusis! It was an example of condescending to one’s grandson’s nonsensical babbling with the flashing of an endearing smile because she did exactly that after calling me one! The same grin in her plump face while she lay supine on the operating table, however, surrendered to the propofol infusion that swiftly whisked her into unconsciousness. The endotracheal tube totally killed it!

The brown colour of the drying betadine paint on her skin was a display of antisepsis. The drapes hid every part of the old lady other than her oversize belly. There was never a quiver when the scalpel ran parallel and below her right rib cage incising six centimeters of skin because an injection named Atracurium had paralyzed her. The insensate wound bled but only a little like the gradually collecting droplets outside a chilled glass. A diathermy probe searchingly burned the more prominently oozing vessels. Two inches depth of yellow fat was separated to reveal a glistening aponeurosis like the skin of a fish. That was incised and a piece of red meat otherwise called Rectus Abdominis showed up to be divided by using the diathermy probe again. A little amount of smoke vitiated the OT air but was soon sucked in by the vacuum suction in my hands. Another layer of muscles which happened to be the anatomist’s posterior rectus sheath was then similarly disunited. A thin flaccid sheet of tissue called peritoneum was lifted with a pair of forceps and one rent made and extended to finally open the Pandora’s box! It was as yellow within as outside! There lay spread out across the whole cavity a carpet of sunshine gold which was so thick as to weigh several kilograms of spongy fat and that’s what's otherwise called the omentum underneath which the bowels seek shelter.

Three mops were placed to push the stomach and intestines away from the swollen pear-shaped organ called gallbladder. Two metallic instruments each shaped like a large question mark bearing the name of Deaver’s retractor were used to widely hold apart the wound so that the premier surgeon could fight the crucial battle at the Triangle of Calot.

The gallbladder, henceforth to be called GB, is like a fruit that hangs from its stem called the common bile duct and it should be removed taking care to never injure the latter because if one does that, the whole person turns yellower every passing day to thus wither away!

The short-statured and elderly skilled surgeon, who stood the most erect with a stool to add to his height while his two assistants stooped, tied the duct of the GB and the artery, that supplied blood to it, with silk sutures and snipped gingerly at the ends of those structures. The GB was thus released from its stem but it could not be so easily plucked off. It needed more pluck to gently tease it away from under the liver to which it remained adherent. Many times during this maneuvre it may bleed more than desired and thus be uncomfortable for the surgeon and breath-catching for the on-lookers. But on the concerned occasion, the old lady was spared any blood loss. It was a virtuoso performance and the surgeon whistled a tune!

He held up the GB high in the air and eyed it with a sneer before dropping it into a tray shaped liked a bean. It was one of the thousands he had removed in his lifetime. He was a sexagenarian!

I took his scalpel and cut open the GB and there lay within it the large, oval shaped whitish stone stained with bits of green.

The abdomen was then sutured air-tight so that when the old lady woke up next morning with an ache in the wound she saw a large white bandage plastered onto it rather than nauseatingly undulating intestines!

ONE UNPOPULAR SONG OF INDIA

ONE UNPOPULAR SONG OF INDIA

Everybody knows but the knowledge languishes in the brain’s attic,

Even as news grows about anguishes of the Nation being undemocratic!

The most brazen is that Kasab still avoids the Hangman’s noose,

Though it is four years now since the day he was let loose!

And killed 166 people in a matter of hours, thus waging a war,

But the country spends 20 crores to keep him safe behind the bar!

It appears like the delay in his death will be more prolonged,

His antecedent Afzal Guru has made it 8 years since he wronged!

As public outcries rise and die down there is little concern,

It’s been ages since promises were made to the Martyrs’ urn.

Rather time has been well used to fill the coffers in Swiss banks,

Thanks to tax-payers’ money and scams of Coal, Games and Tanks!

It is a never-ending list where breaking news is about world records,

Mind-boggling numbers which at times spill out of political discords!

But to eat away the major chunk it requires being on the throne,

For which votes of infiltrators are bought whereas nationals bemoan;

Because it is easy to divide them based on religion, caste and region,

When goons, thugs, convicts and criminals are part of the political legion!

And thus there are many interesting stories for movies and television,

Likewise, people have paid bucks for the stories immortalizing the Don;

Who bombed Mumbai more than a decade before Kasab invaded the Nation,

And still lives like a free bird never been caught and taught a lesson!

Coz everybody knows but the knowledge languishes in the brain’s attic,

Even as news grows about anguishes of the Nation being undemocratic!

THE FAKE

THE FAKE

He too did not wear a mask but he was the fake,

He was false in every task while he was awake!

Of his archetype if you ask there lay the mistake,

In whose glory he did bask and a living make!

He did replace one Maximus, quite an exemplar,

While the latter dubiously vanished when still popular;

And in his place there had to rise this common burglar,

It little mattered he was Dantalion, he looked very similar!

Sneak thief became the head honcho of the Underworld,

Nobody knew among the henchmen, whether young or old!

Though he never fired a bullet or a bomb he hurled,

Fear never blocked his gullet, only his moustache he twirled!

He was clever with words like Maximus was not;

Unlike the reign of terror, under him not a man was shot!

Still in the name of the dead it was quite a lot he got,

He only had to learn to live with the women so hot!

The role was too good and he was the superior artist,

He understood what not to be and was not an egotist;

Still better he knew till what time he could persist,

Money and power notwithstanding, which he had to resist!

Thus it was again an evening when the dead died once more,

After nine days in gangland, when no more he had to explore;

A whole fortune at his disposal nevermore to outscore,

With the limits he could spend, he vanished with a paramour!