Longing

The reddish glow of unfiltered sunbeams struck the sleeping man's eyelids. A smile crept outwards from the corners of his lips, almost involuntarily, as wakefulness only took a hold moments later. Slitting his eyes, and holding up one hand to shield them from the rapidly strengthening sunfire, he propped himself on the other elbow.

A view beyond compare greeted him. It was a view that no other man in the world possessed; yet it was a view that was commonplace to him. Wispy clouds raced against each other before dissolving into ghostly nothings; turquoise ocean glimmered and sparkled in the distance. Towards the west, inky black mountains punched a jagged outline in the sky. A handful of stars, still fighting their hopeless battle against the light, crowned their peaks like jewels.

To anybody else, a vista like this would have elicited astonishment; perhaps wonder at its implausible perfection, perhaps tears at the magnificence of natural beauty, but not to this man. The man merely smiled and sat down to sketch in the sand.

Today, it was a strange fusion of lines and curves that seemed to undulate the longer one stared at them. Satisfied, the man sat back to survey the fruit of his labour. A light breeze stirred the patterns in the sand, but strangely, only seemed to add to their beauty, not detract from it. The sun had begun its daily descent into its westward slumber, when the man broke free from his reverie and made his way towards the freshwater spring nearby. He was suddenly thirsty.

Swift strokes of his palm erased the morning's patterns; fingers scrabbled rapidly to make new ones. This time, strange animalistic faces seemed to bulge from the golden sands. Wiping his brow from his exertions, the man shuffled over to the shade of a rocky outcrop nearby, where a tasty and nourishing meal awaited him. Presently, he fell asleep.

It was well into the reign of the night when he stirred again. White-gold stars, white-red stars, white-blue stars and even the vanishingly rare white-green stars glittered in the perfect black. The man's eyes stared into nothing as a haunting melody slipped through his lips like the gentlest breeze. The wind rose and fell in perfect accompaniment to the vocal harmony. Eventually, the voice faded to a whisper, and soon all was silent.

It was sunrise again. The man woke up, sketched beautiful things entirely unlike anything he'd drawn before, ate and drank, sang beautiful songs that seemed more like Nature's hidden sound, rather than music composed for the human ear, and slept.

And so the days passed in simple tranquility for the man in the sky on his floating island of sand and rock. Alone, but not lonely, austere but not impoverished, his was an existence of serene joy. Whatever he needed, the island provided for him. Warm golden sand shielded him from chilly winter nights; the same sand, but now cool and dry and hard, formed a canopy against the sun's burning wrath in summer afternoons. Food was frugal but delicious, more so because the island tailored it to his every fancy. The man never noticed, busy as he was sketching in the sand.

Like most things, this too came to an end. Looking back, it is impossible to pinpoint the exact moment things changed. Perhaps it was the day the man woke up to the red glow of dawn with a thoughtful frown on his face. A memory or experience had come to him in a dream and it had left behind an indelible longing for change. Slowly, it possessed him like a fever of the mind. He stopped sketching first and took to lying on the ground for days at a stretch, thinking. Then he stopped singing, and then eating, and began to waste away. When the island tried to tempt him with offerings of food in greater variety and quantity, he grew angry and tossed it all away in the dirt. One day, he refused to drink from the stream at all. His face grew white, his eyes dry and stony and his lips chapped and colourless.

The next morning was different. The glow of sunrise was muted by the dark clouds that were suddenly everywhere around them! Drops of rain pattered onto to the man's cheek and he exulted in it, tracing each droplet as it wound its way through invisible channels on his face. For, this was what he had dreamed of - novelty, and it had almost killed him. Health restored quickly and he was strong and happy in no time.

It rained every day at dawn. Sometimes it was a fine spray, a barely there rain that was like a soft kiss; other times, it was a downpour that the man watched from a distance, cocooned in a cave of rock.

One day, the man tried to sketch again. The sand, hardened into brick by the incessant rain, refused to yield. Using a harder rock as a makeshift hammer, the man tried to break away the upper layers of brick, hoping to hit soft sand again. Knock, knock, knock he went for hours, but there was yet more brick. Eventually, and to his dismay, he hit empty air. Little was he to know that the rain had been slowly destroying the island - piece by piece, it broke apart and fell into the ocean below. As the man peeked through the hole in the ground to the glittering ocean far, far below, the first stirrings of something struck him. Was it recognition? Was it regret? But it again to rain again, and all was forgotten for a while.

A solitary raindrop made its way through the hole in the island's floor towards the ocean. But powerful winds buffeted the helpless raindrop this way and that, until it drifted a long, long way from the place it had set out from. As it approached the Earth's surface, it was no longer aquamarine seas that it made its way towards, but green paddy fields and coconut groves. There was a solitary figure making her way through one of the fields, and the raindrop promptly fell on her head like a not-there tap.

The woman looked up and cursed. Was it going to rain again? She had had enough breaking her back shipping water out of the fields to prevent them from overflooding. But that wasn't it. Although she complained about the hard drudgery in the farm, deep inside, she enjoyed the simple pleasure of hard labour; no, what annoyed her about the rain was how it ruined everything else! She looked at her spotless white dress and cringed at the thought of it being inevitably stained with slushy mud. She hated the rain!

But she was on her way to something special and the little irritations were soon forgotten. There was a hop in her step and a sunny smile on her face; her chin stuck out loud and brave and her hair fluttered in the breeze. She was about to meet somebody! The rain had stopped when she arrived at her destination - a two-trunked coconut tree that everybody in the village knew. Nervously twirling a finger in and out of her hair, she waited.

Nobody came.

The sun wasn't visible through the thick covering of clouds, but the falling light meant dusk was imminent, and she had to get back. Trudging slowly, downcast and hopeless, she made no attempt to dodge the rain that had returned, or the pools of slush that filled pits in the ground. Her dress took on more and more water until it became so heavy that she slouched under its weight; the bottom half of it turned more brown with each muddy splash.

With dawn came work in the fields, and with work in the fields came complaints about self-imposed slavery. But it used to all be in good spirit, and the day would pass in no time at all.  Come evening, you'd find her curled up by a log fire in the cabin, with her knitting or a good book. As the flames would crackle and spit and occasionally caress her toes and fingers into tingly warmth on cold nights, the woman would sit and reflect on a life well lived. And so the days had passed, until one day something happened.

It had begun with a visit to a friend. The friend was to get married, and they had been close once, so, crankily, grudgingly, she had roused herself up from her comfortable routine to travel. The wedding had been delightful; despite what you may have been led to believe, this woman was no grouch. She lived the solitary life by choice, but one party in a decade had never hurt any introvert. She had sung and danced and drunk and eaten into the wee hours of the night. She had fallen asleep on the soft grass of the lawns, and woken up to an ardent longing that she couldn't shake off.

Perhaps that was how it began, but she didn't known that then. The routine of her everyday began to seem heavy and cloying. She started to take days off and the crops suffered. Eventually, she grew to understand the source of her yearning. Companionship was what she sought, and putting a label on her desires only made them stronger. She began to socialize more, but as those interactions arose from an urgent need, and not simple camaraderie, they inevitably felt empty and left her feeling worse off. But the yearning did not fade, and she persisted. She did meet men - tall men, fat men, funny men, silly men - but there was something missing in each one, something intangible, yet crucial, and her yearning only grew.

She grew to curse the rain. In her mind, the rain was why she hadn't found a companion yet. The rain that made her so grouchy and old - far beyond her years, the rain that made her hair clump together in a soggy mess, the rain that soaked her best dresses and the rain that created muddy pools that ruined her best footwear, it had to be the rain that was at fault. One day, the rains didn't come when they were supposed to, and she cheered.

The crops failed, and she cheered.

For the first time in his life, the man in the sky wondered about the island. It had been there for as long as he could remember, but it was only now that he was coming to realize how alive it was. The stream he drank from every day? It had never occurred to him that it seemed to be there just when he needed it, and his needs shifted like capricious waves. He had never noticed how the sand and the mud and rock that surrounded him ebbed and flowed and changed in tune with his desires. Had he ever felt cold? Had he ever felt too warm? He smiled, but it was a bitter smile. It was only when the island was coming apart at the seams, and only to assuage a whim of his, that he could see all this.

But there was hope yet. For a time, the rain had seemed endless and unforgiving, but it hadn’t been around for a few days now. The island wore a battered look, pockmarked with holes like battle wounds, but it wasn’t broken yet. The man picked up clumps of wet clay and turned it over and over in his hand to spread it out into a thin film so that it would dry quicker. When it eventually did dry, he pounded into into fine sand and poured it into the cracked ground. But it was all too slow! For each wound he healed, another seemed to open up. Even without the rain, its effects persisted - like a slow poison, they had sunk deep into the veins, until one day, a laceration would open up with a whipcrack, gushing muddy blood. He yearned for a way to heal his beloved island, and eventually, the answer came to him. It would have to be hotter, much hotter. The island began to descend slowly towards the turquoise waters far below.

Much of her farm land had suffered in the drought, but something about her was different. She moped no more; she was defiant, and she fought against the vagaries of fate. She reshaped the canals so that whatever water remained was redirected to a smaller portion of land. Everything looked withered and dry but her practised eye saw hope. Was that a tiny patch of land where the green was a touch more verdant than anywhere else? That was where her farm would be. It would be smaller, battered to the point of near extinction, but it would endure.

Months drifted by in quiet industry, until one day, suddenly, the first new crop burst forth from the parched land. This was the life she had chosen, and it would reward her if she put the work in. She cupped a tender stalk in her hands and felt its fragile beauty; it was almost like she had birthed it, and she loved it like a mother. When the day's work was done, and the sun slunk away to refuel his fire, she sat beside the fireplace in the log cabin and knitted. For the first time in a long time, her brow was unfurrowed and a half smile played around her lips, as she hummed an old war song. Droplets of rain began to drum a hesitant rhythm on the roof, but her smile only widened.

As the man and his island healed together, they didn't notice that they had begun to drift gently in the wind. No more was there an endless expanse of ocean, but it was replaced with vivid, tropical green. Details began to resolve themselves; a grove of coconuts swayed carelessly in the breeze, and rectangular swathes of paddy fields dominated the landscape. If the man had the eyes of an eagle, he may even have spotted the the solitary female figure squinting her eyes against the sunshine.

Arranged Marriage

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The Little Girl and the Cave

This story is inspired by a good friend of mine.

The bustle of the town square was muted by the sight of the woman: shabby and dishevelled, dried blood on her elbows and knees, torn clothes, and eyes - oh the eyes - that had seen terror.

“HELP ME!” she screamed.
“IT TOOK MY CHILD. IT TOOK MY CHILD. IT TOOK MY CHILD!” Shrieks of agony fell away into muffled sobs, as her voice cracked with the strain.

But the strange thing about this scene wasn’t the woman: it was that the bustle of the town square picked up almost right away like nothing had happened. Faces that were clouded over with concern cleared, and men and women unfroze and went on their way. The space that had formed around the weeping woman closed in an instant and she disappeared from view.

A little girl watched this scene from behind her mother’s slitted fingers. Curiosity and fear contended within her as she darted in and out of her mother’s shadow. But that was not all: was it a quiet anger, an unshakeable indignation at the callousness of the world that stirred within the child?

Who knew? But what did happen was that a grey pall settled over the town that very moment. That undefinable instant when the people collectively ignored the grief of a mother was when an unspeakable evil tightened its grip on the town.

Many years passed and the little girl was now in school. She was small, and thin, even for her tender years, but there was a look about her: a gleam in her eye, a straightness of spine and upthrust of chin that struck everybody who really bothered to observe her. Few did. The twisted machinations of school life, with its cut-throat popularity games, bullying and cruelty occupied most people's attention, and her diminutive form and terse nature helped her elude scrutiny.

It was to soon change though.

She picked her way through large cars parked in wide, tree-lined streets as she walked back home from school. The town was doing really well recently. Signs of wealth were everywhere: cars hummed and purred expensively, teeth gleamed unnaturally as beautiful men and women laughed rich laughs, and ate and drank fine things. The grey shadow tinged everything, but no one seemed to notice.

She was almost home, when she saw a little boy, about her size - which probably meant he was much younger - crying. Surrounded by a group of older boys, he bounced around from knee to knee begging for them to return his pen, which of course they didn't. The older boys laughed as they passed the pen around, just out of reach.

"STOP!"
The older boys looked up and smirked.
"Looks like this runt has a sister. Maybe she has a pen we can steal too?", said the tallest and biggest of the three boys, their leader, as primitive bullying hierarchies worked.

But then they really saw her. Trembling with righteous indignation, her body seemed to emanate a hot wind that struck them like a slap. She didn't say another word and she didn't need to, as the boys chucked the pen on the ground and sauntered away.

"It was a stupid pen and I got bored," the leader said too loudly.
"I have basketball practice," said one of the minions.

Shared tribulations forge the strongest friendships and so it proved for the little boy and girl. They didn't speak much but spent every moment that they could together. They walked along the edge of the woods that surrounded the town, sat by the lake and watched clouds pass by for hours and silently chewed through their food together during breaks at school. Days, seasons and years passed in serene satisfaction.

One day the boy didn't show up at school. The girl was surprised but wasn't worried. Then another day passed, and another, and another, and another and before she knew it, it was a week. He didn't have any friends but for her, so there was no one at school to ask. She had never met his parents but knew where he lived.

A quiet and non-descript sub-urban home greeted her as she followed the street signs to her destination. A distinguished looking man and woman were just locking up and leaving when she hailed them.

"Hello, I'm a friend of your son. Is he alright? I haven't seen him for a few days."
The parents looked at each other. It wasn't exactly grief but something like consternation that possessed them. Perhaps it was consternation that somebody had actually come for their son.

"He has been taken," the mother eventually spoke up.
"He has been taken by the cave."

Like the flick of a switch, an overwhelming rage possessed the girl. But she merely asked:
"Have you looked for him? How do you know?"

The parents looked at each other again.
"We just know."

"Aren't you sad for him? Don't you love him? If you loved him, you'd turn the world upside down looking for him. Are you even his parents?"
"DO YOU EVEN LOVE HIM?"

The rage she'd been suppressing burst out like a torrent, but it had absolutely no effect on the parents.

"Yes, of course we're sad. But, we always knew there was a good chance this could happen," the father said. The girl searched for a hint of doubt, a hint of crack in the smooth facade, but the father merely sounded confident and assured. If there was grief, it was a measured and practised grief, like that of a stage actor.

"It is the natural order of things," the mother added.

"The town has never been safer, never been more prosperous. We're sad, but we're happy that we have contributed to the foundation of this town."

"I'm young and I can have another..."

They stopped because the girl was gone.

She was dreaming of the town square again. The weeping woman was on her knees, hopeless and broken, but this time the view panned to the child peeping from behind her mother's skirts. As the town forgot the woman and went about its day, the child stepped out into the grey afternoon and ran towards the crying woman. Cupping her head in her tiny fingers, she consoled her and promised her that things would get better. As her own mother shouted after her, the little girl ran into the crowd, grabbing fingers where she could, and fistfuls of trouser cloth and skirt hems where she couldn't.

"Can't you help her? YOU'RE ADULTS. HELP HER!"

Indulgent smiles were only occasionally afforded her. Most just ignored her. Eventually her mother found her and took her home. But the light in the little girl did not die. It was faint and flickering but it was spunky: it fought the grey gloom not by threatening to burn it away but simply by the proof of its own existence. It held on to its own strength and believed.

And now, years later, in the moment of her greatest grief, in the moment of her utter helplessness, the light in the girl no longer flickered and sputtered, but shone bright and powerful like a beacon in fog. She wiped her tears away and vowed to end the monster in the cave.

School continued unchanged. Nobody noticed the missing boy - the playground antics and the petty dramas occupied everyone's attention, but something was different about the girl. She was still small for her years, still confident, but she wasn't quiet anymore. She paid attention to the social dynamics at school and rapidly climbed the ladder until girls began to whisper about her in envy, and boys vied for her. She made and discarded friends and boyfriends. This, of course, did nothing to diminish her popularity. She learnt to enjoy small talk and acquaintances in judicious doses. She was never short of company: they were all drawn to her like moths to a flame.

But she pined for the little boy who was lost to her. He was untouched by the shadow and saw her as she was. These people who surrounded her, they were grey and anonymous and noisy. She pined for her lost friend, but she needed the noisy moths then. Carefully and subtly she probed them for information about the legend of the cave. For something everybody in the town, every child, man and woman knew about, there was remarkably little concrete information to go around.

There was a cave in the woods, and there was a monster in the cave in the woods. Long ago, the monster had roamed free in their lands, wreaking destruction in its wake, murdering and killing beasts and humans alike, only stopping when exhausted. The exasperated townsfolk had tried everything in their power to destroy the beast, and perhaps even hurt it once or twice, but to no avail because it always returned, angrier. Eventually they struck a deal with the monster. They would no longer attempt to hunt the beast as long as it restricted itself to hunting only on specific days of the month and if it took no more than two people a month. The monster agreed, glad to never have to hunt and be hunted again, and in its satisfaction blessed the town with great prosperity and peace.

The girl sniffed at this. What a ridiculous story it was! Yes, clearly there was a monster of some kind in the woods, but the rest of the tale was bog standard myth-creation. The problem was that nobody seemed to know where the cave was. Every day, without fail, the girl walked by the woods that surrounded the town, hoping to sense something that would lead her to the cave, but she always came away disappointed.

The voice of her teacher snapped her out of her everyday reverie.

"Does anyone want to lead a hiking trip through the woods? Don't worry, we'll stick to the area by the lake, which is safe!"

A-ha, she thought and promptly raised her hand. The teacher's eyes seemed to glaze as they passed over her.

"Nobody? Nobody?"

Finally, a hesitant, tremulous hand thrust into the air. It was another boy, who looked baffled, as if his hand was doing something of its own volition.

"Thank you! This brave young man has volunteered to lead this expedition. You should all learn from his initiative and courage!"
The girl was used to this. Her small frame and pixie-like appearance meant that adults never took her seriously. She was a fragile and beautiful flower that should be cherished, but protected and hidden away from the world. She didn't usually bother trying, but this was a trip to the woods and perhaps she would find the cave.

As the days passed, the town got more sick. The grey pall that lay over the town seemed to curdle into a near black, like a thundercloud at ground level, never dispersed by the sun. Rheumy coughs rent the air wherever she went. People joked about pollution and global warming but the wealth and finery that surrounded them reassured them.

The expedition to the woods passed without event. Some children poked and prodded at mushrooms. The braver ones harvested ladybugs and laughed and laughed when they dropped them into shorts and blouses and the other kids screamed. The girl didn't sense the cave and sighed in disappointment.

"Hello!" It was an older boy's voice. The girl looked up.

It was a boy she had seen. He was in high school and he was pretty popular. She had often idly wondered about him because he was one of those fortunate ones who didn't seem to work hard for his popularity. He was reputed to be very smart, humble and gregarious, with a smile for everyone. Usually the ones who were smart and humble were the nerdy and awkward ones and were eaten for breakfast by the jocks and the divas, but this boy was also strong and athletic. The bullies left him alone. Why was he talking to her?

"Hey."

"You know, there's something wrong with this town. People are getting sicker by the day and nobody wants to talk about the monster in the cave."

The girl was shocked. How did he know? She stared at him, but the boy only smiled gently back. She swivelled around but there was nobody within earshot. The boy must have known that and only then approached.

"Oh yeah, everybody knows the legend. The town is lucky to have the blessing of a monster the whole world fears." She looked forward determinedly, refusing to make eye contact with the strange, forthright boy.

The boy smiled again. "It's OK. I know about your friend the monster took away. I know the pain it still causes you, and I know this because I lost my sister too."

At this the girl finally properly looked at the boy. His eyes were kind and his features mellow, but there was something about him... The grey mask that cloaked everyone she met, it seemed to only veil him thinly.

"I thought I had accepted my sister's fate as inevitable, like my parents, like my brothers, like my friends, but perhaps it wasn't as clear cut. When I saw you, I saw hope. I saw your hope."

It was nothing like the friendship with the little boy who had disappeared, but a quiet bond blossomed between the girl and the older boy. They didn't spend every moment together, but an unspoken thread connected them, a pure, shining band that was unsullied by the grey mist. The school wondered at this sacrilegious friendship: cliques in school were strictly demarcated by age, and a middle schooler becoming friends with a high schooler was like a student becoming friends with a teacher. The girl and the older boy didn't notice, or care, and their indifference only added to their mystique.

They often searched the woods together. It became a routine, and in their heart of hearts they stopped believing that anything would come of it. And like all the other momentous occasions in her life, something happened when the girl least expected it.

One day, in the dead of freezing winter, on her way back from school, she heard a group of junkies smoking and chatting by their SUVs.
"He's gone man. He's gone. He apparently found a path and he was high and he didn't realize, he walked right in."

One of them laughed, a powerful belly laugh that never seemed to end.

"The fool. At least a child will be spared this month then."

She sneaked closer and was practically in their line of sight, but again, her invisibility to adults approached magic. They just didn't see her.

"I heard about the path by the rock."

The first man spoke up. Even in the throes of his addiction, he sounded fearful.

"Every junkie knows that rock man. The path by the rock...", he stopped.

The girl heard him describe the rock and suddenly she knew which one it was. Immediately, she ran and ran until she found herself in front of a rock. It had to be this one. It was oddly shaped, like an oblong, and was otherwise like any other rock. It had to be this one. She looked around for a path, but couldn't see anything that stood out. If a druggie could find the path, surely she could. Frustrated, she stepped around the rock and began to walk downhill.

Presently she stopped. It was quiet. There were no crickets chirping anymore. The birds were silent, and the wind no longer rustled through the leaves. Recklessly she had wandered deep into the woods and finding the cave was now the least of her problems. She was hungry and cold and thirsty, and she didn't know which way led back home. The rage and adrenaline that had driven her so far disappeared like they were never there and she slumped to the ground crying. She was a little girl in a big, scary world. What was she doing?

And then there was a sound. It was a sound like the scratching of a dog's claws on rock, but larger, much larger. Were those bushes rustling? Suddenly, a weight pressed down on her, like a rock, and she couldn't breathe. The scratching sound came closer. Her breathing became raspy and strained and her eyes began to glaze over. A form resolved itself in the distance. Eyes gleamed like coals but she couldn't see clearly, she couldn't!

Even in that moment, the little boy who was her friend was never far from her thoughts. She thought of the monster ripping him to shreds; she thought of the monster taking children away and making mothers grieve like in the town square all those years ago, she thought of the monster making people worship it and ignore their own sorrow, and her indignation mounted. The pressure on her chest eased, and she could see clearly again. There was no monster in sight. She didn't know how she made it back home that night but somehow she did.

The next day she didn't go to school. Her parents were busy people and left for work before she left for school and returned home after she did, so they never even noticed. A suffocating terror enveloped her and she was paralyzed. She saw those gleaming eyes everywhere - in mirrors, in reflections in bathroom taps; she heard the scrabbling of a many footed creature in hallways, under the bed, in the stairwell. A hot fever ravaged her body and she shrivelled up into nothing.

A week passed, and the older boy showed at her house. He rang the bell repeatedly and finding no answer, burst in uninvited.

He saw her, purple with fever and emaciated, and briefly recoiled, but then his face softened.

"You found the cave, didn't you?"

She didn't say anything. Perhaps she couldn't. Unwiped tears cut streaks on her face through the dirt and sweat.

"Do you know why I came to you?"
"I came to you because I saw in you a fierce light that fought against injustice. I am smart, perhaps smarter than you are. I am more athletic than you are, I am older than you are, and I am more popular than you are. But you know what I'm not?"
"Brave," the older boy hung his head as he said this.

"I saw in you a power that refused to accept your station in life. So what if you're a little girl? You'd do what the adults wouldn't."
"So what if you're a girl? You'd do what the men wouldn't, what society says you shouldn't."
"So what if you're small in stature? You'd do what giants couldn't."
"You have a power that drew me in like a magnet. You have the power to end the sickness that afflicts this town."
"I have everything in life: I'm smart and popular, and I have greater social capital to effect change, privilege that can get people to listen to me. But it's useless, because I am useless. I have accepted the everyday as the normal, the mediocre even. The fire in me is long dead, if it ever burnt at all. But the one good thing I ever did is that I saw it in you."

She looked at him and something stirred in her. She finally realized that this boy - this beautiful, popular boy everyone adored - looked up to her. He talked to her not just because she was untouched by the shadow, but because he respected her for who she was. She was still terrified, still small and still a child, but she would end the monster once and for all.

Together they plotted how best to take on the monster. The fever receded in days. The older boy had a cricket bat, the girl had a tennis racket. They could steal some petrol from their parents, and lighters from the junkies. They collected lots and lots of firewood from the fringes of the forest, and painfully, meticulously carved them into sturdy torches that would burn for a while.

Meanwhile, the town began to be consumed by the grey fog. People wandered through the perpetual dusk with flashlights, coughing and retching, but smiled their polished smiles as they went about their day. This story crawled towards its denouement, but was it going to be a tragedy?

When the day finally came, there was a strange chill in the air. Rubbing their fingers for warmth, the boy and girl set off for the forest, with their makeshift weapons and torches. The boy, who stood head and shoulders above her, walked in front with exaggerated bravado, laughing at the mouse they were going to swat for good, and joking. She was silent, because she knew he was terrified, but she appreciated his presence nonetheless.

The oblong rock seemed to gleam in the twilight. The boy was no longer speaking, and the dense quiet of the forest encouraged silence. It was an effort to speak and doing so seemed to violate something sacred. They trudged forward in lockstep. She didn't remember the route she took last time, but she knew it didn't matter. Time seemed to slow and come to a standstill, and the silence grew heavier and more oppressive. Where was the cave? Where was the monster?

Suddenly she stopped. A black, invisible weight began to choke her into submission, but she was distracted by something else. Behind her, the boy - her friend - had slumped to his knees. His eyes were vacant, and blood dripped from his nostrils. He seemed paralyzed. Was he alive? She fought against the malevolent pressure, fought against it with all she had and made her way to the boy. He was whispering something, his lips moving just enough to make articulate sounds.

"I can't do this. I can't. I can't."
"The blackness. It is everywhere. It is so evil. What were we thinking? I can't do this."
"I can't. I... am ready to die."

She didn't say anything. She reached out and hugged his head to her chest. He looked up at her, and said:
"But you can do it."

Finally she saw herself as he saw her. The unquenchable fire that permeated her being was not a genetic aberration or a gift of God; it was the crystallization of her belief, her hope, her indignation and her rage at the pointless sufferings of the world and the helpless acceptance of its inhabitants. She had fought throughout her life to do what she was not allowed to do, or was told she couldn't do, and she had prevailed by the force of sheer will. And each time she had done that, she had stoked the fire in her that little bit more until it shone brighter than the sun itself.

He smiled, and closed his eyes. His face was calm and relaxed and shone in reflected light, a strange golden glow that cast off the shadow.

She turned and walked towards the cave that lay just beyond the line of bushes that had so terrified her the last time. An intense light erupted within the cave and all was still. He saw a creature crawl out, something naked and twisted, but it was so small and helpless that he only pitied it. Had there ever been a monster? Then the girl walked out of the cave. Only a slip of a girl, small and scrawny, with a straight back and an upthrust chin, so invisible that no one even saw her unless spoken to, so fragile that everyone thought she could do nothing, this little girl now shone brighter than a star, and had saved a town from an implacable evil. She was a giant and she was a force! Because she refused to accept what others told were her limitations, and because she refused with such vigour and unshakeable strength, nature bent to her will and made her a warrior for light. Whoever had said she was a little girl who was good for nothing?

As he slipped into unconsciousness, the light that now streamed through the canopy high above caressed his eyes, and the singing of a thousand birds touched his ears, and he smiled once again.

The Worst of the Worst

On a drowsy Saturday afternoon, a group of men and women sat around a metaphorical campfire, discussing the worst moments of their lives.

Like most campfire anecdotes, metaphorical or otherwise, the tales became taller with each passing moment and each passing cup of sangria.

“There was that time when I forgot to wear pants. Everyone, every single person, congratulated me on being a fashion trend-setter, and after a day of basking in adulation, I went back home and saw myself in a mirror. I died.”

“I spent my whole life crying about my parents who’d died in a plane crash. Then on my first Europe backpacking trip as an adult, I met them relaxing on a beach in Greece. They didn’t like me as an adult either.”

From time to time, gasps and shrieks were emitted with perfunctory politeness. But the seething masses wanted more. And the more came from an unexpected direction or two.

“Oh, there was that time when I slipped on a banana peel and fell.”

The audience murmured sympathetically, but were not impressed at all. Each man and woman had bigger scars to show, and bigger scars had been shown already. This was a papercut.

The banana-peel guy, a quiet, glum, at-peace-with-mediocrity guy in his forties looked around and spoke again.

“The story isn’t done yet, folks. I slipped on the banana peel, fell and broke four bones in my foot.”

“AWWWWW”, went a few.

“A sort of body wave ensued and my spine first snapped against the rock-hard surface. And then, within moments, my neck whipped against the rock-hard surface. Finally, my head clattered into the rock-hard surface. Did I mention the surface was hard as concrete?”

“AWWWWW”, went a few more.

“I was paralyzed for two months, bed ridden for four, and suffered permanent brain damage.”

“AWWWWWWWWW!”, a paroxysm of wild chanting swept the throng.

Suitably satisfied, the man went back to his chair by the metaphorical campfire, with a glow of perverse achievement on his face. Little was he to know that within moments he would be outdone.

A bored looking man in his late twenties spoke up.

“One fine day, I woke up in a darned good mood. It was a Sunday and I had so much free time! I could meet friends, or lie in until lunch, or wake up but only watch movies, or day dream or or.. The possibilities were endless. A warm glow washed over my skin like the tingle of the morning sun after a cold night.”

“Then I snapped my phone open and it turned out it was a Monday.”

A seismic groan rived the metaphorical campfire in two and the audience… erupted. There was an instant of perfect pandemonium and then everybody - every single man, woman, child and dog - went home in utter silence.

There was nothing more to be said. This was the absolute worst thing that could happen to anybody.

Handwriting vs Time

Man charts handwriting deterioration over time!
(As always blogspot doesn't like large images much, so if you're on the desktop and can't read the text, right click -> open image in new tab and then magnify. On mobile, just tap the image and pinch zoom.)

My Revenge On Mr. W

Everyone knows that someone who’s a professional whataboutist. Members of this species tend to strut with a smugness that’s like a body part, and are identifiable by sight from a distance of up to five hundred metres. They’re usually known for interrupting conversations with self-congratulatory cynicism.

“Oh, you’ve given up on plastic bags? Congratulations. Not! If only you’d use your good intentions for something actually productive like helping the homeless people of the nation.”

“I see that you’ve decided to carpool to help the traffic and pollution situation. So pointless. What about focusing on real problems instead? Like corruption in the State government?”

“You think men catcalling women is a problem and you want to call attention to it? This is why feminism sucks. What about real problems like false rape accusations?”

I think you get the idea. It boils down to not doing anything at all to make anything even somewhat better because of course there’s something more critical that you could focus on. And pat yourself on the back for it.

Most days, Goody Two Shoes like you and me tend to ignore this invasive species, but one day I’d decided I’d had enough. I’d fight back.

I started the day early. I knew that Mr. W left home at 7 in the morning to beat the traffic, so I snuck into a moderately large bush near his apartment car park at 6.  Hugging my feet to preserve some warmth, I waited.

Out swaggered W, cloaked in a sweatshirt and arrogance, and put his car key into the slot, which promptly got thoroughly stuck. I sniggered as Mr. W turned the key this way and that, and after a few minutes of utter befuddlement, let loose a volley of curses at the vagaries of fate and the cruelty of life and how he had the most important meeting ever to attend to, and why O why was he so unlucky?

That was my cue. Speaking through a makeshift megaphone, a tinny voice (mine) filtered through like the pronouncement of a malevolent god.

“Oh you think you’re unlucky. Have you ever wondered what it’s like to be an orphan in sub-Saharan Africa? A day that goes without food is a good day, because you did not die.”

Startled, Mr. W pondered this for the briefest fraction before he finally managed to extricate his key from the slot which may or may not have been filled with chewing gum.

A few hours later, while Mr. W was smack dab in the middle of the most important meeting of his life, the fire alarm went off. Nobody paid the slightest bit of attention to Mr. W as everyone in the audience gossiped about which surreptitious stairwell smoker had set off the alarm this time. Just to let you know, I don’t smoke. But I do know how to light a cigarette.

Mr. W cleared his throat most impressively, but his audience continued to joke about the most ridiculous ways in which they had set off fire alarms in their hallowed youths. Exploding rice cooker! Magnifying glass on dry leaf! Too lazy to do laundry, so decided to put underwear in a microwave, which started to smoke most impressively! W watched this with growing consternation until he finally gave up and sat in a corner with his face having what authors like to call a stony aspect.

Eventually, the message about the fire alarm being a false one did come, robotic monotone and all. The contents were a little different though.

“Sorry for the inconvenience. Just remember that any inconvenience you may have felt is negligible compared to the daily troubles malnutritioned children in sub-Saharan African have in obtaining food. Have a nice day!”

At this point, a brief glimmer of something like recognition may have flitted across W’s face - I, watching from my vantage point beside a printer, celebrated - but it vanished. He attempted to pick up his presentation where he had left off, but his audience realized they had another meeting to be at, and walked out.

It was lunch. Usually W’s finest hour, as the everymen and everywomen of the workplace discussed their humble accomplishments, with W on his ivory throne and smirking at the pointlessness of it all. But this time, there was a twist. W’s lunch box was missing.

I assure you that I would never steal lunch boxes from children. That’s evil! Incidentally, and unrelatedly, W is not really a child.

Poor W had to actually taste some of the cafeteria food. The grumbling began even before the eating did. The plates were too plasticky, the food was too watery, the salad was too little, the taste of everything was like a bucketful of sea-salt. I watched from behind my forkful of sea-salty salad and waited for my moment.

Midway through W’s meal, the TV showing the news in the corner suddenly boomed out loud

“Breaking News! Starvation kills ten more in the nation’s worst ever famine. The food you throw away could save lives. Reach out to us now!”

To be fair to W, he shut up. He still threw away the too watery salad though. And I definitely don’t have the kind of smartphone that allows you to control a TV.

As the afternoon wound to a close, W made his way to the office printer. I, who knew his routine better than his mum, knew that this was the time he’d print out some documents to peruse at home.

“F***. F***. F***. F***!”, he bellowed like an angry buffalo.

I casually sauntered in from a nearby meeting room where I’d been waiting to pounce.

“Everything OK there, W?”

Something about my demeanour must have cut through even W’s incredible self-possession. He looked at me, he really looked at me. The mouth opened as if words were about gush out, words dripping with acid, but nothing happened.

“No, no, everything’s fine. There’s no paper in the printer, that’s all. “

I nodded gravely.

“How on Earth can you say everything’s fine? What about the recently published statistic that a child dies every minute due to malnutrition? I cannot believe someone can be so callous as to say everything’s fine. Unbelievable.” With that, I made a hasty exit.

I wasn’t done though. For those of you who still doubt the purity of my intentions, I mean I wasn’t done observing poor W’s day, and nothing more.

A distinctly gloomy looking W may have crawled into bed at eleven in the night, and I may have observed this from my perch on a nearby branch in a nearby tree.

There may have been a confused bird that pecked at his window all night. Strange, right? Don’t look at me, do I look like a bird whisperer? I also definitely did not have anything to do with the pamphlet dropped in W’s frontyard in the morning that screamed:

“UNHAPPINESS IS THE ROOT OF ALL EVIL! SLEEPLESSNESS IS NO CAUSE TO BE UNHAPPY! THINK OF THE MILLIONS OF STARVING CHILDREN!”

Online Dating

(The scene begins with two friends staring at a third man sitting off in the distance, alone.)

"What’s he trying to do? With a frown like that, either he’s pondering some deep, dark tragedy or he’s in desperate pain."

"No, I had a brief chat with him a while ago. He’s trying to come up with the perfect opening line for this online dating thing he’s got going."

"Ah, now that’s perfectly good reason for that furrow. Tell me, what category does he belong to?"

"Hmm? Category?"

"Well, in my vast experience, I’ve seen that there only a limited number of categories that Tinder opening lines, and by extension, the composers of said opening lines, belong to."

"First, there’s the poet."
"There was this time, when I was so moved by the sight of a bottle of Coke when I was thirsty that I penned this:"

An amalgam of soothing curves and startling edges you are,

Like the sharp aftertaste of a soft bottle of Coke.

Oh angel from heaven!

Have you been sent to quench the thirst in my eyes?

"Nice. Did it, er, get you somewhere?"

"I got a lolbye. Remarkable as that singularly constructed word was, it was like a tsunami dowsing the flames of my little backyard poetic fire."

"Then there’s the comedian."
"Especially the comedian who spends most of his time IRL not being funny and mostly being offended about the moral decay of the world, but thinks having an online persona that's diametrically opposite is a cinch."
"Also, by the way, this isn’t drawn from my bottomless well of knowledge, but suffice to say, I know someone who knows someone who may have said something like this."

A blind man, a rabbit and a monkey in a top hat walk into a bar. But I don’t know what happened next, because I saw you.

"Ha! That’s mildly amusing."

"Perhaps. But the response was, while completely deflating, possibly funnier."

So I’m a cop and you’re a drug peddler and you saw me and ran from that zoo bar?

"Haha, burnt toast. Now that I'm thinking about this categorization thing, wouldn't there be like millions of categories."

"Not at all. Patience, patience. Next up is Mr. Frankenstein."

"This category of people are frank and mon.. you get it."

I’m lonely tonight. Let’s make out? Oh, and hello.

"I’d think this would work. Props for honesty right?"

"Well, if your mother told you that honesty was the best policy, she was only referring to you lying about school report cards and throwing broccoli dinners down the toilet. This honest man, on the other hand, got no response, and in retrospect, that was probably the kindest thing that could have happened to him."

"The next category is what I call The Scientist."
"Men in this category carefully front load their first message to convey as much information as possible with the least verbiage. Everything from their hopes, dreams, fears, family background, great grand Uncle’s fourth profession, their previous, current and preferred religions, expired hobbies and wishful ones, expectations of their prospective partners, their thoughts on adoption, poverty in Madagascar, Love Island, everything's fair game."

"Not my style, but surely, information isn't a bad thing?"

(I must interrupt this free flowing dialogue to interject that our resident Love Guru is so gobsmacked by the previous statement that he spends a moment experimentally trying out this cool thing called flapping-the-jaw, while also trying this other cool thing called forming words. He eventually recovers and continues with his discourse.)

"Since the Gods of online dating tend to be fans of irony, walls of unparseable text such as these tend to be responded to with a single letter."

"K"

"That stings, man. I’ve actually had that happen to me IRL. Stings harder, except, since the woman I was talking wasn’t even listening, I could semi-self-hypnotize myself into believing some Zen woo that if the targeted listener in a dialogue didn’t actually listen, then the dialogue didn’t happen at all, did it?"

"I like your optimism. But anyway, that about wraps up this categorization business. There’s remains what I call a flavour because it can garnish every category: the Perseverer."

"Hey, remember that joke I told you two days ago about the blind man, the rabbit and the monkey in a top hat walking into a bar? Here’s another one, only it has a lion, a teacher and a drunk armadillo and it’s not in a bar but a broom closet, and it’s funnier."

"Hey, remember those two jokes I told you two and four days ago about an assortment of humans and animals walking into strange places?"


(Just as our protagonists are winding up their intellectual discussion, they notice something strange. Messr. Furrowed Brow in the corner is now standing up, ready to leave, freshly uncreased of the brow, and full-creased of the cheeks, and a toothy grin splitting his mug in two.)

"How well did you say you know that guy?"

"Er, well, I said sorry once when I accidentally spilt coffee on his new tennis shoes."

"That works man! Go, go, go! We need to know."

(The two of them scoot towards the departing man and cut him off unceremoniously. There's no preamble when this is said:)

"Hey-I-met-you-once-at-coffee. Did you have any luck with the online dating thing?"

"Yes! I am talking to this lovely woman."

(Looks of disbelief are promptly exchanged.)

"What did you say, man. What did you say?"

"Hello."