Happy Valentine's Day

Summer, 2008. Susan Vicker was making a last minute revision of the questions she had prepared last night. Two sets of files lay on her desk.

She had joined ‘La Dorris Rehabilitation Center for Juvenile Delinquents’, as a therapeutic counselor in December 2006. She was a key member of the ‘Talk to rehab’ team, and was busy trying to get into the skin of her profession. So far, she liked it . She has been making progress. She wanted to leave her past life behind. The work became her salvation.

Topping her schedule today , was an interview with Mark Rimer, a 19 year old on probation, since August 2006. Mark had committed a crime. On 14^th February, 2006, he had opened fire on inmates of the Spastic Society Residential in central Dorris, killing 15 people, and wounding several others. This was her third round with Mark.

Mark was dot punctual.

“ Hello, how are you?”

She could never be innovative in greetings and introductions.

‘Just fine, had a flu attack l-ll-ast week”

‘ Sorry to hear that. Are you sure you want to do it today? We can schedule a Friday 9.30, if you want.’

‘ Its ok. I was looking forward to it actually.’

‘Mark, I know you have gone through this, like, around, 50 times, but protocol requires me to keep a personal record. Just for verification, I will read from the files that I have with me. You are free to contradict me at any point you want.’

‘ You left your apartment 9 30 in the morning, and headed towards Magdale High school. You told Ben Sommers, your basket ball buddy, that you are going to meet Martha Neir by the school gate at noon. Since the last two weeks, you had left Martha four notes in her mailbox, concealing your identity. One of the letters was a poem written in blood.

“ Martha was about to get a transfer. . She would leave Dorris that Friday afternoon
Friday class was the only place where I could have seen her”

‘ I want you to tell me what was going through your mind that week.’

‘ I was wanting to get to her. I thought I will propose her on the Valentine’s.'

'I,.. I couldn’t make up my mind on what to say to her. I was thinking about that when I left home. Then as I was crossing the street, I was stopped’

‘ Is it all right, if I turn the tape on, at this moment?

‘Sure, miss vicker.’

In February, 2006 the city council had planned a novel program to celebrate Valentine’s day. It would organize a procession of spastics, who would tour the city , with flowers in their hands. The procession would start from Byron Road and go down Magdale high, down to the outskirts. Mark was stopped by that procession.

It is precisely at this point that his story diverged completely from all official reports and documents for that day. There was a procession , but it consisted of hardly 30 people in all. There was a minor jam in traffic, at the crossing of Byron and Ledglase, but it hardly lasted for more than five minutes.

“ There was this huge crowd, miss vicker, and they were making noise. There were dumb and deaf and crooked people. Ugly scum all around”

‘ Do you hate ugly people mark? Do you hate the sick?’

“ No miss susan. I always get along with them, I get along with them better than anyone else. I have a way with them. When we visited the old age home from school last summer, those old guys were smiling at me. It was only me that some of the old women talked to. I don’t know why. When I went to the hospital to see my cousin at the surgery ward , some of the patients there waved at me, as if they know who I am”

Susan didn’t believe it all, but he knew Mark had a knack of getting along with a certain category of people. He was not always cracking jokes, or smiling, but the inmates loved to have him around.

‘ you must have a very friendly disposition , Mark’

Mark continued.

“ mama used to celebrate my birthday on 25^th of December. Though I was born a day in advance. She had the morning for Jesus , and the evening for me. She used to say that I will grow up and look after the poor and the needy. That I looked like jesus’

Susan was running though her mind , the contents of a little notebook found on Mark’s bedroom bookshelf after his arrest. It was titled “The hate-book”. Not a single entry was a complete sentence. Words , broken phrases.

“ Rich people, cream, hypocrisy, big cars. White robes. Prayer Speeches. Tall buildings, towers, schools,…”. The list went on

‘Why were you stopped Mark?’

‘ Those spastic people wouldn’t let me go. They filled the streets and started giving flowers to me. They were smiling I couldn’t make my way through. They were saying ‘happy valentine’s s day’. On other days, believe me ,miss susan ,I could have joined the fun, but then I did not want all this. I wanted to be with Martha. You have her picture, you know how beautiful she is. And there I was, trapped in all this ugliness. I wanted to cry out. Stammering people, pimpled faces,.. and they were all embracing me. It was as if it was me and me all around. I was facing a huge crowd of myself and I so hated that.”

Susan couldn’t figure out the reason for this self loathing. He was himself not handicapped in any way, except for the occasional stammer.

She had checked Mark’s schoolwork. Bizarre would be an understatement. Spelling errors, grammatical mistakes, followed by a brilliant essay out of nowhere, then again a round of sloppy work. Mark was encouraged to write by the rehab team. It is one thing that he had continued diligently over the probation period.

“ And then, some of them lifted me up. There were people all around me as far as my eyes could see. There was no way I could get past those dirty chunk. It started thinning out, after a while, though. But it was almost evening then. I knew Martha had gone. I don’t know, who had brought in all these people, to stop me from going to Martha.”

“ We have all your medical records , but let me ask you once again Mark , did you ever have any hallucinations of any kind? Do you hear voices, that others can’t hear?'

‘No, miss susan.’

‘ Did you recognize any person you saw in the morning, among the people you killed?

‘ I didn’t look carefully… I went in and started shooting, but I knew there wasn’t enough of them.’

Susan turned the tape off.

‘ How is your writing going?”

‘I have taken a break. Because of the flu’ .A smile.

Susan had seen the evolution of Marks’ writing It started with mushy love stories, then some violent ones. A period of porn followed. Now they are mostly short pieces on nature, some fairy tales, and one or two science articles . Susan wondered about the intricacies and sophistication in the disguise madness weaves for itself

‘ Let me ask you a personal question Mark.. What made you like Neir?’

‘ I don’t know, ..she was a good speaker, I liked her when she spoke on the annual debate the last semester, before she went away. When she lost at games, she didn’t cry or blame her team. She had a good figure, and she was what you call analytical. Don’t know if it is the right word. . And she was also sad. I like girls who are mysteriously sad, in their eyes’

‘ What are your career plans?’

‘I will be a writer’

‘That’s fantastic. Heard from the warden that you fetched for some novels. Who is your favorite author?’

‘None that catches my fancy’

‘You are better?’

‘ I have an edge over them’

‘ But they are all famous authors. Don’t you think there is something in them that makes them famous? Why do you think you have an edge?’

Mark’s voice was clear now. And it was perfect English.

‘ Because I am the proprietor of a land called pain. It’s as if, one day, I paid a huge price for the land , and now I own the entire territory. The other authors just play on the field. But it is only me who knows the nerves that run underground. Just like the doc who knows which veins to press when you have a headache. I can tap on any one of them and start a convulsion. I can play on them and make them cry out any music I like. “

Ego. But the metaphor was nice. Maybe borrowed.

‘ Don’t you write any poems now?’

She also wanted to ask him about his hate book entries. They had access to all his written work, but she wondered if a mental notebook wasn’t slowly getting filled.

‘ No, I just cant write them good enough”.

Susan looked at the watch. It was almost 10. She was about to leave, when the suggestion came.

“ Miss Vicker, I was wondering if we could go for a coffee. I wanted to talk to you about the termination appeal. I have been improving, haven’t I?“

“ Sure”

As they walked through the corridor, Susan found herself deep in thought. Before she came for the interview, she had been handed a note, found in one of the common restrooms. The guards who monitor the rehab cells also submitted reports on the scribbling they find on the restroom walls and toilets. Most of them are sexual abuses aimed at the warden, and the counselors, -the usual frustrations of adolescence. This note was different.

"Woman, I see you come and go
You cut me up in two
My heart waits like a block of ice,
For a ‘hello how are you’.
The blood then flows, the tongue then rolls
I see the passion rise,
Madness cures by sadness-drops
From your mystery eyes”

Susan knew it was written with a red sketch pen. Some of the letters were intentionally blotted to create a fake impression of blood. At the end of this silly high school poem, she had encountered her own sad eyes, beautifully and passionately drawn.

The kill: a sci-fi story

He stopped to take his breath. He had no track of the distance he ran this morning.
Ran, ducked, ran again. Now he paused for breath.
He heard a shot ring out somewhere in the distance. 0.53 miles, 46 degrees NW, to be precise. He swerved to the right lane. Then he started walking, almost on tiptoe. Perspiration covered his face. But it did not cloud his vision.

He saw a man walking along the other sidewalk. He stopped. His hands reached his pockets. He is ready to make a move any minute now. The man walked away. Over to the main road. He stood and waited. Then he resumed his walk.

Year 2050. Place, Golfin Park, downtown. The man is CR. A young commando, in our recently formed, Espionage-Target AP team.
A guerilla war is on. Last year had been a tremendous breakthrough. We had infiltrated their strongest forts----the ammunition towns. But still, far from victory.

For four months, CR had been underground, and treading on the thinnest possible rope of survival. Golfin Park could hardly be called a war zone, compared to the other areas of the country, but still alertness was required to the point of a twenty four hour obsession.
CR had been without human company for year, but he preferred deserted roads. He felt a bulge in his stomach, every time his vision detected the gait and figure of a man, approaching from even two blocks away. If we could upload and update CR’s physical attributes on our C-check monitor board, ( along with his AP level, vision range, …) it would be just two words in caps – STRETCHED NERVES.

It is 10 pm now. Cr stopped. A figure ,coming closer. Not a bulky police personnel. Not the wayward steps of a rowdy drunk. On a deserted bylane, at 10 pm, in the middle of a decade long war in a foreign land , CR was relieved to find that there was no masculinity in the figure approaching him.
Cr was amused. He was amused by the fact that his primary emotion is of relief , on seeing a woman. What a climbdown. He recalled bylanes in nights like these, 3 years back, in his hometown. He and his friends taking stroll. The catcalls. The wonder-struck gaze sometimes, snapshots of inviting smiles, banter of friends . To hunt, and to be hunted. Three years ago, passion made a grand fest out of nights like these.

Now, a woman implied two things. She was not a Mav soldier , and had no arms. That was by the law of this country. She stopped. Her name was S.
‘Are you lost?’
‘Somewhat’ The scars showed.
‘Where are you headed to?’
‘ Scalpel Inn, north emerson.’
Cr could not fake the Mav accent, it always sounded ridiculous when he tried.
‘ Thats a long way to walk.’
Silence.
‘You can stay at mine , if you want to. It is just a block away. Tomorrow you can take the bus.’

10 minutes later, S was typing in the key-code to her apartment door. After they were in, she pointed the sofa out to CR.

Cr sat on the sofa, and looked around.
‘Hungry?’ An affirmative nod.
S was puzzled. Rarely had a stranger entered her living room without letting out a gasp of respectful exclamation. A moderate appreciation, was expected, at the least. How could anyone , even someone as insensitive to arts, as a soldier, ( the profession of CR, she already guessed, she had invited wounded soldiers before) not be taken in by the beautiful sculptures that adorn her room?
As Cr ate, she turned on a music and went to the shower. A handsome soldier, wounded and hungry. A femme fatale. How old-day Hollywoodish, she thought to herself. As she put the shower on, she looked straight at CR. The shower curtain, being made of a material that drew admiring stares from the living room. Stares from wounded soldiers, mostly, in the past.
Cr ate, looked at the shower room, looked down to his plate, ate again. This has not happened before to S. Sculptures were one thing. This was plain unnatural.
S came out of the shower. She had nothing on her. She waved to Cr.
Cr smiled, waved back.
‘thank god, you are not blind. , you are a vaks, aint you’
‘yeah’
‘ Had a desire of visiting your country , sometime. Now with this war and all , I don’t know if I will ever. Heard that women have a lot of freedom there. They can do any work over there. They even go about nude, in public places, that’s what I heard.’
‘that’s only in films theaters, ’ said Cr
‘yeah, but vaks men must be desensitized to this stuff , since like, long ago ‘
Cr looked up at S, watched her closely. Then he smiled..
‘No, its just I am different, because of the war . It is the AP’
S hadn’t heard of AP.
Ap is a technology discovered by VAKS scientists a decade ago, It is an acronym for abstract perception. The principle behind this is to allow certain people to get only the outlines, or the essence of his or her immediate surrounding environment. For example, Cr can only see houses as rectangular , or trapezoidal blocks. Trees as a series of straight lines, with a bunch of slanting rays at its end. A sofa is same a big flat chair. Its as if the whole word were sketches from a geometry book, with no colour no shades , no depth.
Men and women are mere cartoon sketches. Gender is identified from a combination of voice, gait , and two to three basic body dimesions . Once you have an AP lens inserted in your eyes , and you are AP trained, the world becomes a skeleton of its former self.
As it is with vision, so it is with sound. An ap-equipped person ( you need an audio plug behind your ears) will only listen to music as a mixture of some base frequencies. For him or her, no matter how different it is, all music is almost reduced to the background buzz of a non-playing radio station.

The advantage with this is that your brain doesn’t have to grapple with the unnecessary details. It eliminates a huge chunk of noise, and uses that extra space to heighten the sensitivity you get from just the outlines. It goes without saying that AP would be an ideal weapon , in a war, especially for disarmed/under-armed commandoes, whose main theme of life is , espionage and survival.
Not all vaks men could be ap-trained. It was a skill that only some possessed. It was true that training helped some of them, but you got to have an innate ability to respond to the training modules
It is for this reason that CR could detect bullet sounds from miles away, with a radar-accurate precison. It is for this reason, that even the tip of the mini laser-gun, positioned at the opposite end of the street , can make him change lanes. And it is for this same reason that he could not realize now that S is the most curvaceous woman he has ever met.

S listened as he talked. About us and them. About history. The Mavs were the superpowers with respect to ammunition. Compared to them , vaks were there ,where they had been at the end of the last century. And there was no way that within a short span they could match up to their opponents. But in some areas like AP, they were much ahead.
Cr stopped and got up. He saw S pouring a colorless liquid from a colorless bottle into a narrow conical container. He tasted it , and remembered the taste of champagne.
‘You can at least feel, can you?’
S had wrapped herself around Cr , who started feeling her, all over. Yes he can feel. He can feel to the point of explosion.
‘Don’t you feel like seeing me, at least once?’
S touched his eyes, and then kissed them. Then she put her lips right under his brows , and gently brushed her eyelids. Cr took his lens off. She , then reached at the back of his neck, and unhooked the audio plug. Everything flashed, in a single big bang moment.
The night, the room, the sculptures, the jazz. And S, the beautiful voluptuous S.


Later in the night, S was lying with her head on his chest, while R was recounting, how he had always heard the sound of bullets and tanks, in his dreams, every night since 4 months. He dreamt only of blood and war.
‘Do you have to leave on Friday?’
‘yes’
She sighed ‘I will try to make up for all the sleepless nights you had, all the bullet sounds and death wails you have heard. I will give you a day free of all these’


He woke up to a sunny morning. The first sunny morning after 4 months , a morning, when the sun was radiant yellow, and the garden a plushing green. Trees had leaves. Houses had architecture . Its as if someone had taken a sketch book, and painted it overnight. He could hear birds chirping. He could also hear Mozart playing.

He could not find S beside him. He called out her name, then walked into the garden. He could still hear the Mozart. He was amused that S had put up a audio-station somewhere in the garden.
He did not know that Mozart was playing in his head. That , while he went to alseep S had inserted a mini music chip, right where his ap-audio was. Now he was smiling. The music was slowly drowning all the other sounds , --the mowing machine, the chirping birds.
It also drowned the halting screech of two Mav army jeeps that stopped outside the garden wall. Three armed commandos got out and took position .
Commando 1 made a sign. They slowly made their way, through the bushthorns around the garden wall. Then he positioned his gun . He could not believe that it would be so easy a kill !
Cr was standing in the garden, smiling.
Three bullet shots rang out, and he was down. Actually even one would have done .
Cr did not have a inbuilt metal shield for his chest. Neither a mutant skin cover. He was not one of those commandos that would later appear in vaks history , who were physically invulnerable as a result of injected mutations. He was a normal man, like you and me. Only he had an enhanced power of abstract perception.
Let us also say this; He was , till many many years, the most powerful man, in this regard.

The news of Crs death reached our headquarters, the day after.
Some people claimed that contrary to their countries’ conventions, the Mavs had grown desperate enough to have women in their intelligence teams. Some said that it might not have been intentional on the part of a woman called S. . Maybe she tried to make up
for Cr’s past life, by gifting her a day of music. Maybe it was love.

Intentional or not, the fact remains that this woman had robbed our top man of the only power he possessed. She, in effect ,had killed him.

Some people , like me , do not agree with this harsh judgement. In many ways, Cr was lucky. It was seldom heard , in the last 10 years, that a commando had the luxury of a champagne night before his death. It was very rare to hear of a soldier who had touched a woman , the night before. I have never heard of a soldier, who, in a time as discordant and disharmonious as now, went to death in a plush green garden, smiling, with Mozart playing in his head.

Mr Sarlo and his team

Mr. Sarlo had a team. Then he lost it.

He did not know how. But he couldn’t get used to the fact that he had no team.

People told him, it is not a great deal. It is like discovering , that you can no more give the ball the directed spin, while playing with your kids. Or finding, that the actor, who defined romance for your generation,( and whose ardent worship led you to develop a stylish stutter) is not clicking with the new girls…It happens with everyone.

Mr Sarlo is married and has a daughter aged six. He works in an insurance company.

Mr Sarlo once lived in a castle. The castle had a pond right infront, and a terrace jutting out of its first floor. When it rained, you could get a wide view of it without actually getting drenched. He and a group of other boys. That was Mr Sarlo and his team, or so he thought. Looking out from the terrace, it would seem that order prevailed. That there are no rough edges in the trees, and the sky was an unbroken surface. And the castle itself was a jigsaw puzzle that you will have to set right. The team worked on it. They worked hard.
One night Mr Sarlo went back to the castle. Stood in front of the gates and sounded the bugle , that was there ,from god knows when. The team had vanished. There were no beats in reply.

Mr Sarlo went back to his childhood. A haziness., .. his parents. Relatives. Birthday parties. Reading books , impressing elders with hard-to-pronounce Bengali words.
Cricket. Other people. Other people not relatives. Books again. History books .
War . War films. Other people’s meeting at house. Sex. Red light… Red , a huge crowd, a crowd behaving like a sea, a banner above. Mr Sarlo stopped. He focused.

A field. Mr Sarlo ,as a child sorting out a puzzle, which was a miniature version of the castle in which the spent his youth. His eyes shining, his brain on fire. He has to solve this. The boy came up and stood near him.
‘what are u doing’
No reply.
‘ want to play in our team?’
‘which team is that’?
‘oh you don’t bother about names, it s not one of your small local ones’
‘how big is it’
‘its all over the world. And we always make it on the papers’
‘do you lose or win’
‘right now we are losing, but our hopes are high’
Mr sarlo was interested. He found out that the opponent team is not a team at all. They even don’t know they are playing .
‘then why don’t we win?’ mr sarlo has changed pronouns.
‘ there’s the challenge. The referees are all against us, and they are always giving us penalties’
‘why don’t we hit them then?’
A chuckle
‘sometimes we do, sometimes we don’t . we tackle them, its hard’
‘are u in?’
Pause.
‘Listen, buddy, either you are with us, or you are with a bunch of foul players.
And people who still don’t know about the big game going on, and are busy solving jigsaws ,are idiots’
Mr Sarlow loved simplicity. He liked the clear demarcation. But he replied
‘ I would be in, if I was certain that u would be winning. I am not’
Back to the puzzle.

Nowadays , Mr Sarlo is having strange experiences. He normally reads the last page of the newspaper, first, while having breakfast. Nowadays he comes to the table and sees the third page open. He skims through it. He knows very well that he has put the vcd of ‘Roman Holiday’ in But in the morning he sees it is ‘Modern Times’ . Sometimes a news channel is on, and he knew he hated news channels. Last week, when he went to pick up his sister from school, a college student, with a poster came up ,and gave him a salute that reminded him of the boy in the field. His absent minded eye randomly caught the word ‘imperialism’ on the poster.

If you meet an unfortunate man like Mr Sarlo, remind him of his team.
Tell him that he has not lost his team, but at one point in his adolescence , the team has lost him. Tell him that

It is a war-game going on.

It will be a little stretched out.

Mr Sarlo is welcome. He can play in any position he likes.
----------------------------------------------------------


Thought chain: Actually I wanted it to be about my days at isi hostel. I was reminded of it when
I saw a castle like structure as a puzzle in my friend's house.
But then I drifted to the political angle. I got to know of some politically aware people recently, and i was reminded of my teenage years. I will come back to the castle
later, maybe...some may not like the drift.. however let me tell you that it is not so much in support for a definite ideology as it is in support of a political consciousness in a self-interested middle class. The class which I so proudly reperesent.

Poetry has no purpose

Sometimes I feel it was quite amateurish, but it is the first poem that I wrote after a long time, in 2005.
Here it goes.
Poetry has no purpose
I do not see its aim
Unlike myself who after several attempts
Had found a way, through alleys and lanes
To a shop of little fame,
To buy you a cake on your birthday.
They have no aim,
Unlike myself
who in still darkness
made his way
To an unshapely mug
Promising upliftment from your remembrance.
The words uttered then, missed you.
They cling to me now and beg me to
take them to the pilgrimage
I have decided to go,
Hoping against hope
To find you there
and give you a passing wink.

To pick a sun.

He lied to her. . He told her that he was going out, to pick a handful of clouds and sew a cap for her. Actually he was not. He was going to pick a sun.
As if there are many suns. But back then, there were. The days were too dazzling then, and there were no nights. He was unsure of which one to pick. He chose the closest one.
She never suspected it. Once or twice, when he talked about it, she asked him, what the need was. There was no answer, because there was none at all. Why bring a sun so close, and where is the space to keep it? Even he knew there was no need. It is just one of your games, she said to him.
Sometimes in the night, she awoke at the sound of his footsteps pacing the hall. Thinking
and restless, that was him. She never suspected, she was drowsy in love.
Then one dawn, he set out. He had his bag of tools with him. He went up to the tower, that he had built over the years, secretly and in silent devotion. All this time, He had it hidden from her, so that he could give her a surprise, when it was fully done. That day, he thought , he would wait a little longer and make the surprise a bigger one, with a sun under his arms.
He went up to the top floor, and took the kite out. Within moments, the kite was a flag of victory, .ascending in full glory ,while its metal edges shone in the shower of daylight. He started pulling the string, which was superfine and almost invisible.
Then it happened. Making a brilliant swirl, the kite caught the edges of the sun. Then it wrapped itself around it., just as a cunning snake would do. He felt the sun coming closer to him. He was happy, elated, satisfied.
But what he didn’t know was that he would spend an eternity there. Because the moment he caught the sun, he had died. The sun was not coming to him, nor was he approaching it. It was an illusion. Instead he was destined to revolve around the sun , slowly , and for ever. One full year for one round. He didn’t know he had died..


She could not believe he had died. It was impossible. She was angry that he could lie to her so badly. But when she saw him, there ,-- a dead man making his rounds, she cried out loud. She just hoped that he will come to life. She couldn’t pray, they had no gods back then.
She hoped in vain, and she watched him changing shape. Nothing of his dark agile frame remained. He won’t be able to dart like lightning, jump over the backyard fence , and catch her unawares. Never again .Instead he had grown obese, like an orange.
She watched in silence, as she saw his surface getting rough and rocky. She saw floods
ice , and oceans carving out of his once strong torso. She saw ugly and unshapely land masses jutting out of the swelling confusion.
She had stopped loving him, and she could not continue this for a dead man. And when she saw moving jellies, running about in the oceans, dividing themselves and joining each other, in random pairings, she was filled with disgust. Yet a trace of a hope remained. Maybe she would see him alive. Then she would ask him one question that occupied her since he left. What was the need?





As time went by, she saw huge mammoth like creatures roaming the surface of his Lover. She saw insects, fish, and tigers. She was now prepared to leave him for ever. Then something caught her attention.

Out of the dust of the body, she clung to, loved and cherished, and which was now a rotten trash hole, there arose some figures resembling him. They were much shorter than him, but equally graceful. She was shocked to see her own image in the figures that followed. The long flowing hair, the pouting lips, the delicate smooth gestures. She saw them making love, unabashedly, in rain, in caves, in open wide spaces, as if it all belonged to them She looked at herself, a round silvery object, -- a cosmic waste. She felt an attraction towards them, an attraction very different, from what she felt towards her Lover. She felt that she should stay and watch over them. It was a feeling she never had before.
There were Men and Women, once again .

But then, suddenly, a fear of the worst kind gripped her. As she lay in quiet guard, she discovered that some of the Men are not sleeping. She could see them, moving restlessly along the verandah, thinking about the dawn. Some were taking a cold bath, removing the odor of the feverish love-slumber, still hanging loosely over their beds. She knew their intention, and tried to distract them. She made crisscrosses of her own shadows, and tried to instill the magic she once practiced on Him. She hid and reappeared. Sometimes she weaved her unearthly innocence into the face of their lovers, still asleep. Sometimes she succeeded in making them turn to their rooms, the smell of honey-suckle and olives, greeting them to their bed and putting them at ease. They would then go to sleep.
For some, the seduction works. For the unfortunate ones, it doesn’t. Her tricks are a nuisance for them. They have set their faces towards the unknown dark, and are tugging at the rope of future, with grim resolve. They are just waiting for Her to pass away from the horizon. Then, at the crack of dawn, they would pick up their bag, and stealthily move out of their homes. They have a mission. They have the sun to pick.
---------

[The thought chain: Watching the lunar eclipse a few days back->Thinking about a famous Hemingway line about killing the sun->Talking with Niha about how too much ambition is incompatible with a healthy relationship.... ]

The magic creatures

This blog will contain mostly some short stories, interspersed with poems .
All the short stories will be unreal. They will have at least one magical element in them. They haven't happened before, and they won't ever occur in future, anywhere.
And here is the deal with the reader. To help in interpretation, at the end, I shall provide a short and incomplete chain of my thoughts , that led me to this unreality. They might be random dreams, sceneries, or scraps of conversation. They have the magic creatures, that can hardly breathe in the world outside. They need to come in slowly, unobserved , into the recesses of our rational , turbulent minds. Then, without a signal, they make our souls heavy with the perfume they concoct. This blogspot is an attempt to lighten the burden, and at the same time, provide a larger breathing space for these creatures of neglect. I hope , here , they will survive and grow.
The first story follows.