He caught me by my hand just as I was running past. I was a typical 8 year old, and was literally jumping up and down while he held on to me. "What's for dinner?" he asked. With him, it was always the same question. He came and sat on our patio almost everyday, and the only thing he seemed to be interested in was what was the menu at our house. That was a bit strange because he never ate at my house, and he didn't even have much of his teeth left! Anyways, I quickly recited what I knew of what mom was cooking and told him, "Let me go, grandpa, Anand will be coming to find me soon!" "Ok, off you go, be careful," he said as he let me go - he'd heard me okay for a change. He was usually pretty hard of hearing, and shouting so that he could hear would have meant that Anand would know precisely where I was!

"Why does he keep asking about food?" I asked my mother that night at dinner. "He is just looking for somebody to talk to," she said as she added some more vegetables to my plate, "did you talk to him properly? you should be respectful when you talk to him." "Yes, yes, I always answer his questions," I said, trying to figure if I'd be able to convince her to add some more ghee to my rice.

He was the grandfather of my neighbours, and to my eyes then, he was ancient. He need a walking stick, and I'd see him leaning on somebody or the other even with the walking stick to be able to walk. He always wore a slightly dirty veshti and an old banian. There was often this stale smell around him, I guess it was because he needed help to be bathed, and in the Madras heat, it didn't take long before you started to smell pretty ripe. All the children avoided him, some of the neighbourhood kids even made fun of him, they imitated his walk, his slightly slurred speech and his "eh, what did you say". To me, he'd become as much of a fixture around the house as any of my extended family that lived there. I wouldn't go out of the way to sit and talk with him, but whenever he was talking to me, I would stand and talk.

I think that was when I came face-to-face with death first, or at least the first time that I understood what it meant. It was the silent crowd outside their house that made me curious. "Amma, why are there so many people outside?" only then I noticed, she was changing into an old sari to go out. "Next-door thatha died last night. He just went to sleep and didn't wake up," she said, "He is with God now." "Oh," I was a little awed, "are you going there now?" "Yes, I'm waiting for your father, we have to go." "Can I come too," I really don't know why I asked that question. "No, be here and keep quiet." In a way, I was glad that I didn't have to go. I did watch as more people gathered, and it was an eerily silent crowd. I saw them take a new veshti, and watched as they dressed thatha in it. I don't remember when I last saw him in a clean veshti. There were a lot of flower garlands on him  as they put him in a black van, and the crowd slowly dispersed. "What is for dinner?" I asked my mom as she came back in through the back gate. Still the same question..

Challenge Update - 122 days, 147 to go

Ladies and Gentlemen, please join me in welcoming Ranju a.k.a "Cheta dude" as an author here. My interest in writing shorts seems to be infectious, and Cheta dude, who was happily critiquing decided to write! Welcome, dude!

The conman was seated at his usual vantage point, a place that afforded a clear view of the populace exiting the railway station. As he stubbed out his morning cigarette, he was sure he'd spotted his first quarry.

"Aren't you from Sivan Master's household?" the conman accosted him as he was crossing the subway under M--- Road across the Central railway station.

"Sivan who?"

"Err... Aren't you from Kerala?"

"Yes, Palakkad."

"Where in Palakkad?"

"It's a village, about 12 kms from the town."

"Ah! I am not mistaken then! Do you know postmaster Balan?"

"No"

"Well, I am his son. I knew I had seen you somewhere before! You're on your way back from home I gather?"

"Yes". The conman appeared to ponder this awhile.

"What is your ancestral name?"

"I am from the Mele Paadam house."

That seemed to clear the matter at once. With the widest grin he'd ever seen, the conman remarked, "Indeed! I know your family very well. You should ask your parents about Balan postmaster's son Vasu. You perhaps don't remember, but I have been to your house many times."

He just smiled pleasantly and continued making his way through the morning rush of work and school bound humanity.

"You won't believe the trip I had yesterday night!" Vasu persisted, "The train we were in was stopped by dacoits!" This halted the quarry in his tracks.

"Dacoits?!"

"Oh yes! Rumor has it that it was Veerappan! Haven't you read the papers?" he paused for a moment and then continued, "It perhaps hasn't made it to the press yet. But I am sure you'll read all about it in the evening edition! Suffice it to say that I am extremely lucky to be alive!"

He looked at Vasu with concern and remarked, "That's quite awful!"

"Yes! Yes! My wife wasn't quite so lucky though. She has been admitted to the general hospital which is where I am headed right now. Oh! I don't know what I'll do!" Vasu was visibly distraught.

They were out of the subway by now.

"They took everything you see." Vasu continued, "We escaped only with the clothes on our back!"

"Tragic! Quite tragic!"

"Yes! Yes! Quite! And I am so new to this city. I am so glad I saw you - you're a God send!"

He faced Vasu and said abruptly, "Well, Vasu it was nice meeting you. Hope your wife recovers soon. Goodbye!"

"Yes, thank you! Goodbye then!" Vasu replied and turned away walking towards the hospital.

The quarry had waved an auto rickshaw and got into it before he heard the familiar voice call out to him again.

"I feel so embarrassed saying this to somebody I've just met, but it is a desperate situation you see. Like I said, they took everything; even the money in my wallet! May they be struck by lightning!" Vasu cursed, "I am completely broke right now. Would you be able to spare some money? I will personally return it to the Mele Paadam house once I get back. It will be a big help."

Seeing him hesitate, Vasu was quick to remark, "No, that's quite alright. I completely understand. Please forget that I ever asked. I apologize. Please give my regards to your parents." And made as if he would leave.

He stopped Vasu and said with genuine feeling, "No Vasu, that's not it. It's just that… I don't have change you see. All I have is a Rs. 1000/- note. If you can spare Rs.100/- for this auto I'd happily hand it over to you. I am sure you need it more right now than I do."

There was an expression of genuine surprise on Vasu's face. He quickly recovered and said, "Thank you so much Sir! I was right, you truly are a God send! I do in fact happen to have this one Rs.100/- note. They forgot my secret pant pocket you see!"

They quickly exchanged the money and Vasu said as he handed his hundred rupee note, "I promise to return this money as soon as I get back home. I shall never forget this favor! Again, thank you Sir, may God shower His blessings upon you."

"Oh! That's quite alright. Please go attend to your wife now. Goodbye!"

As the rickshaw sped away from the station, he thought, "Now, if only the rest of the fake notes were as easily spent!"

He realized he was walking too fast when he finally looked up at the faces and saw a lot of people giving him weird looks, and some dirty looks. Feeling self-conscious now for literally storming through such a busy shopping area, he tried slowing down to a more "normal" walking speed. Looking at him, you'd know that something wasn't right - he wasn't there to shop. He had his hands stuffed in the pockets of his jeans, his shoulders were hunched with tension and his head was down, barely noticing the endless lights and masses crowind the pavement shops.

He could feel himself relax, the walk had done him good. He felt anonymous, hemmed in the throngs of people that had come to shop. Nobody cared about him, nobody was going to give him more than a passing glance, if that. The bustle around him, the hawkers calling, the sounds of the traffic, all served to distract him, help him get over his anger.

The restaurant was a typical high-traffic, low-cost, no-frills affair. He seated himself at an empty table near the door and waited. "He didn't even hear me out before denying me even this," he was muttering to himself as he unconsciously toyed with the paper towel holder in front of him, "how am I supposed to be anything in life if I can't grab opportunities! Why should I even listen to him." The sound of the tumbler of water hitting the table startled him enough to break his chain of thoughts. The waiter was standing there, without saying anything. Dressed in a typical "uniform" of a once-clean, somewhat matching pant and shirt with a dirty hand towel thrown over his shoulder and a battered tray under his arm. "I wonder why these waiter uniforms always have epaulletes," he thought and then realized he was staring at the waiter. "Get me a coffee, strong," he said. The waiter just turned and walked away without so much as nodding.

"Will nothing that I do ever please him," he was almost grinding his teeth with frustration, "JUst because he is my father, do I have to do his bidding for as long as I live! I am not going to dance to his tune any more." The waiter was back with the coffee. "Anything else?" he asked curtly. "No." He cupped the tumbler in his hands as he let the strong coffee trickle down his throat. "I'll show him, I'm going to go ask Shankar if I can live with him until the director pays me. The movie is going to be a big hit for sure. I dont need any college, just because He paid money for me to get in, I shouldn't have to go! I am going to follow my dreams." Decision made, he took the hand-written chit to pay at the counter near the exit and walked out into the crowded market, lost in the anonymity, lost...

Challenge Update : 124 days, 148 to go. Need to pick up the pace..

"Are you sure this is the right place?"
"Yes, lord. I am certain this is where we are going to find our life rings," the battleship commander focused hard to get his thought through. He was glad that the researchers back on the home system finally gotten the thought communication system working. There would have been no way to communicate with the warlord back home on the Government system.
"Have you actually seen enough life-rings to make this attack worthwhile?" the thoughts of the warlord came across strong and menacing. Meiron, the battleship commander an accomplished warrior in his own right having led dozens of successful campaigns still couldn't help but feel a frisson of fear crawl up his spine.
"Yes, lord. Our sensors clearly show enough life-rings on this sector to keep our entire system supplied for at least 3 seasons," Meiron thought and immediately also sensed that he was trying too hard to please. Too late, he realized the Warlord was going to know that as well.
"What is your plan now?" There seemed to be a long pause before the Warlord thought anything, and Meiron was wondering how the Warlord seemed to be able to control his thoughtwaves so precisely.
"I am going to lead the first assualt, lord," Meiron thought with a wave of excitement, "with the best from my fleet in the standard extended attack formation."
"What opposition are you expecting?" the warlord seemed to taunt him.
"Nothing, my lord! They are not expecting us, I am certain of that. They have not secured the life-rings, the sensors still show them to be out in the open," Meiron felt much happier about his thought. It had been a good response, he decided. It still took a while for the Warlord to respond, and Meiron was starting to wonder if he was going to be allowed to attack, tot seek glory as the first to find life-rings outside of the system.
"Proceed. Leave orders that the rest of your fleet is to return to the system if your attack fails," the Warlord's ultimatum shook him a bit, and Meiron realized that the entire fleet had received that thought! Horrors!
"Yes, my lord."

As he lead the cream of his fleet in the standard extended attack formation, Meiron felt the glory, the truimph wash over him. "Onward," he thought, "attack that white ship." Suddenly it was dark, Meiron felt locked in, he couldn't move. "What duplicity is this, they weren't expecting us!" Meiron thought indignantly, as he felt a soft but strong cage closing in on him. "I wonder why these creatures, these humans as they called themselves didn't realize the importance of the life-rings, calling them tyres." The Arctic Tern did not hear these last frantic thoughts from Meiron before it flew on to what was a rich, but hitherto new dinner that night. A dinner of alien invaders.

Challenge Update : 126 days, 149 to go.
P.S - Yes, the name is *very* cliched. And yes, this is my attempt at sci-fi, in my defense, I am still enough of a geek to think that sci-fi is "cool".

P.P.S - Thanks Cheta dude for the edits. Really really really neat stuff machaan!

I am a dreamer. Along the road with the many twists and turns that's life, some of my dreams have been fulfilled, many have been forgotten and some have been destroyed beyond repair. Some dreams though, refuse to die. They may be neglected for a few days, a few weeks or even a few years, but they always seem to recur and find some way to jump out and make themselves noticed. One such is the dream that I will one day write a novel, the novel about the Indian everyman. Something about your life and mine, something as real as a book can be. I have always gone about it the wrong way, trying to learn "the method", "the secret behind writing a novel" and so on. Obviously, there is no secret, there is no method to the madness. I have realized this. I have also realized that I need to figure out if I can actually do this.

I've been mulling about this during the last few days and I think I should really do this - à la Julie Powell, I am setting myself a challenge - there are 127 days left in 2009. I am setting myself the challenge of writing 150 "shorts" before 2009 is over. No restrictions on the length of the short, no restriction on genre, type, etc. I just have to be happy enough with what I write to put it up on this blog. If I do manage to start writing stories long enough to be broken up into chapters, each chapter will be considered a short for the purpose of this challenge. Thanks AB, D and all you others that have been pestering me for so long to at least give it a shot. Here goes nothing!

I just hope I have the energy, the creativity and the motivation to go thro' with this. If I complete the challenge, I'll start worrying about the novel. So wish me luck gentle reader, and do feel free with your comments and criticism. I'll leave you with this quote from Ratatouille that I really liked - "In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face, is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so. But there are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defense of the new. The world is often unkind to new talent, new creations, the new needs friends."

Challenge Update : 127 Days, 150 to go

She barely noticed the drone from the radio as the announcer switched to the weather forecast. She was quite sure she'd kept the hall ticket on the shelf right next to the telephone directory. Ten more minutes of frantic rummaging all around the shelf did not locate the truant piece of paper without which she was not going to be able to write the exam.

"Aasha, don't forget the umbrella, the radio says its going to rain," her mother chose just that moment to add to the tension. "Have you seen my hall ticket? I kept it right here," she hollered back. "It should be where you kept it," was the helpful response that she got. After some more feverish searching, she yelled again, "Did you take anything out of this shelf?". Her mother came in wiping her hands on the towel she kept hung on the back of the kitchen door. "What are you searching for? I didn't remove anything from the shelf," she said. "I am sure I kept the hall ticket here in the shelf," said Aasha as she desperately started removing everything from the shelf. "If you kept it there, it should still be there," her mother said, "you should really be more careful about these things."

This was not the first thing to go wrong for Aasha; her alarm clock had not gone off that morning and she'd woken up only at 7 AM instead of at 4 as planned which meant that she didn't get to go over those last 3 chapters. She had knocked over the coffee right onto the freshly laundered dupatta she'd kept on the table. She wasn't sure if it was just nervousness that was the reason behind the stomach cramps she was feeling that morning.

"I am careful, I know exactly where I put it. You must have moved it," she literally had to push her mother out of the way to get to the shelf again. "I am going to be late," she was almost in tears at that point. "Is this it?" her mother was holding something that looked very familiar! "Yes, where was it," she checked twice just to make sure she really had it and could run to get an auto. "Right here where you'd said it would be," said her mother with a weary sigh. "Are you late?" Aasha barely heard the question as she was running down the stairs while still putting on her shoes.

"Please hurry, I have an exam," the auto driver didn't bother to respond for a while. "You should have left earlier then," he grumbled just loud enough for her to hear, "look at this traffic, what can I do, fly?" She was leaning halfway out of the auto, the money ready in her hand when she saw the crowd outside. "Here you are," she said as she stumbled out barely noticing that the auto driver didn't have his hand out as far as she'd thought and had to reach to catch the money before it fell down. His irritated glare was wasted on her retreating back.

"What's going on? Why are you all still standing outside?"
"No exam today, don't you know? They are saying that the paper was leaked.. Hey where are you going? Come on inside, it's starting to pour!"

She barely noticed the rain as she walked home. She'd forgotten the umbrella and the storm had just hit. Her storm though, was over and she walked home with a tired smile on her face.

Former VP about the interrogation techniques -CIA tactics saved lives, led to captures
Col. Jessep in A Few Good Men - "... Santiago's death, while tragic, probably saved lives. And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives".

hmm....

After so many abortive attempts at trying to get back to writing, its funny what finally prompted me to actually sit down and type up a post. Ahh well, anything that works, right?

The movie is "Julie & Julia". While the movie itself is   one of the better movies I've watched this year, what stayed with me after the movie was the character Julie. No, not Julia, and No, not Meryl Streep's much-vaunted portrayal of Julia Childs. I thought Amy Adam's portrayal of an edgy, restless 30-something desperately trying to find meaning to life, trying to motivate herself to do something outside of the mindless grind at a  dead-end job was spectacular. The movie was pretty lighthearted and moves fairly quickly, and still manages to show the ups and downs that's life, shows that normal people (and even great people) actually struggle to fulfill their goals, and that life is not all a bed of roses. Well worth a watch if you haven't seen it already.

The book was "A Free Life" by Ha Jin. This is not a genre of book that I usually read, and I bought it pretty much out of idle curiosity to see how foreign authors write. It is the story of a Chinese family that immigrates to the US and how they build their life here. The pace of the story is not that of the usual breakneck-speed thriller we see everyday, there are places where the pace slows down pretty drastically. Strangely though, it suits the story somehow. The language is not the best I've read and I sometimes found myself editing the book as I read it. Despite all of this, I found myself captivated by the story. The story was disturbing, makes you think, and was pretty moving in it's own way. I found myself looking for more books by this author the next time I went to B&N.

Memories.. When everything else is gone, isn't that what you keep? Found myself transported back about 15 years. Why, you may ask, how did the Time Machine kick in? It was something as simple as the taste of a plate of Pani puri at some random desi restaurant. Reminded me of those carefree schooldays and the occassional plate of the forbidden roadside pani-puri. I think the taste of it was enhanced by the fact that it was forbidden and by all the horror stories you heard about how the water used to create the chutney was dirty, how the men (boys, actually!) selling those would cheat you and so on. I dont recall falling sick from that ever. I do recall the long waits at the bus stand that was a decently long walk from school, especially with the heavy bag, the tiresome bus journey, the heat and humidity, and teh fatigue from a long day at school. You know what's strange though? I am almost positive that I feel all of these now more than I used to when way back then. I remember endless energy, I remember dumping the school bag once I got home and running out to play, I remember the pleasure from a forbidden pani puri. I smile.