Our trapezoidal graveyard ended in a dirt road, had high walls built around it to avoid wild animals into the graveyard. Our room was at least a quarter a mile from the main gate that led to the dirt road. The main gate was the only way out of our graveyard.

On a chilly moonless winter night, someone knocked at Dayal’s window. We were not expecting a visitor at this time, a time when all those wild animals made irksome noises.

Dayal covered his head with a bright blue shawl, and opened the front door only after his forehead had its usual meeting with our short door.

I saw the stranger through the broken window; a man in his thirties, with a long beard, wearing a muddy suit and a torn shoe. His suit looked out of place, I ‘d never seen such a suit in a long time, and the wet mud on his suit made him look like a stone age man wearing a trendy suit.

“Who are you?” enquired Dayal.

“I’m a murder convict, for a murder which I never did and that never occurred,” replied the stranger.

“What do you mean? How can they charge you for a murder that never occurred? How did u end up in my graveyard?” beamed Dayal.

“It’s a long story, but you must help me to get out of this graveyard. These walls are too high to escape,”

“Then, how did you get in?” asked Dayal.

“Oh! A few hours ago, the police were chasing me; I made it to the top of a parked van and leaped across those huge walls,”

“Yes, that was my master’s van! On the western side?” asked Dayal.

“No, not on the western side, the sun was just moving down, “ clarified the stranger.

“What? There is only a river on the western side,” replied Dayal.

“I was too nervous, may be I saw the moon, “joked the short stranger

Dayal led him through the shortcut possible path to the main gate, through the graves, where they were sleeping an eternal sleep.

As they started walking towards the main gate, the stranger queried
“What do you think of ghosts, I’m scared of them, I feel a prison would be a better and safer place to live than your graveyard. I feel nauseate,” commented the stranger.

“That’s a terrible opinion; I’ve lived here for fifteen years and never had any sore experience,” shot back Dayal.

The stranger did not reply. A thin wind blew on Dayal’s face, carrying the howls of wild animals.

“Nobody has proved the existence of ghosts, and why should I fear a non existent thing?” said Dayal

Dayal unlocked the gate, and moved away to show the way to the dirt road.

“Neither the existence of God” said the delighted stranger.

The stranger walked away, through the dirt road into the dark woods.
Dayal returned to our room, confused and utterly maddened by the thought of the queer stranger. We had a light dinner, Dayal told me about the conversation he had with the stranger and soon went to his bed. I wrote everything in my diary, and soon dozed off on my chair.

On the next morning, a grave on the eastern end remained open, with a fresh scent of a corpse. The cross above the grave read “George Fernandes”, a murder convict, dead a decade ago.

The only time I got out of my place was to buy drugs or to give him drugs. Our ward had three sections separated by big white movable wooden screens. Not entirely separated, there was a small path on one side of the screen leading to the window; the long window facing a large housing board colony at the end of the third room, my only way out of boredom.

We occupied the first section near the entrance; the next one was empty while the third one was occupied by a middle aged man. I never asked him about his problems, though he was very keen on chatting with me. No one can listen to something that one can’t understand, for he was talking to me in Telugu. His whole family was around him, a very quiet wife and two beautiful children; the elder one was always trying to bunk, the younger one was rather chirpy asking silly questions seriously.

The first day at the hospital was eventful as I got to meet a yesteryear gangster. Looking at him one would imagine him to be a comedian; skinny and short with a prominent goatie. He was not strong, but that’s the physical aspect .He was bold and his will-power was evident from the fact that even under tremendous amount of pain he was able to laugh at himself and make others laugh. His back was scratched with lots of dressings and plasters, according to him it was a silly train accident that landed him in that hospital.
He was drunk and was playing cards with his friends at chetpet railway station, on a platform between two railway tracks. He moved forward to give way for the first train and the same happened with the second train but third time he was not lucky as the train approaching was a goods train having a projecting ladder on one of it’s sides. That struck him hard and made him unconscious for two days. Earlier he had spent almost ten years in prison, and now a changed man all set to start a new life.

The second day was dreadful; there were two visitors to our middle aged Telugu man. Two fat middle aged women, like the people who come in weight reduction advertisements. As soon as they entered the ward they started talking, the decibel levels were slightly lesser than a heavy thunderstorm. My uncle took a towel and tied around his eyes and ears, while I tried to cover my ears with some cotton. They could see what we were doing and the fatter one started scolding the two children as if they were not responsible for our plight. It did not stop there; the fat lady slapped the fatter lady and the fatter lady retaliated by pushing the fat lady. Now the decibels were just hovering around ultrasonic range. I closed my eyes as tightly as I could and cornered myself into our room. When I opened my eyes, the room was as calm as my classroom after lunch. That is when I witnessed the silence after a storm.

I expected to meet an old fellow with grey hair, wearing a Chaplin coat, which was my view of a college lecturer especially a French lecturer who had been in France for quite a long period. To my surprise he wore no shirt at all, covered only by a checked lungi and a loose fitted shoes, he stood upside down on hard cemented floor. He was unbearably philosophical and the only thing that made him French was not his crystal clear French accent but his well groomed French beard.

Madhan sir’s house was at the top of a hill where no vehicle could travel, thank God I didn’t have one otherwise I could have faced parking problems. The path about the hill was not a pleasant one, all sorts of insects roaming around, but the greenish tint around was certainly pleasing.

I was returning to Calicut bus depot, walking along the footpath with an umbrella to shield from the scorching sun. Suddenly, it was drizzling and within minutes the drizzle turned violent and unimaginable .First rain of the season, brings out the aroma of the soil. Mango showers had set in early and it was raining quite heavily. Mango showers are generally accompanied by heavy thunderstorm and lightning, while the wind was almost catching up with Shoaib Akthar.

On crossing a bridge to the bus stand, a stranger approached me. He had a look of an AGMARK keralite wearing a white mundu and creamy shirt coupled with a trademark rubber ‘hawai’. With nobody around the place he was almost pleading to get him to the bus stand under my umbrella. The bus stand was at least a half mile from there. I couldn’t reject him, as and when he got into my umbrella he behaved like the Camel of the Arabian deserts. He came very close to me, pushing and holding me tightly with his right hand.

All of a sudden I remembered about the stories about the thieves in the town ,a week ago my cousin had clued-up about how well dressed young men would get under your umbrella’s during rainy season and steal your valuables.

We were walking over that very deserted bridge, dancing all the way with my left hand on the umbrella and the other on my back trouser, trying to guard my money. Alas, we reached the crowded end of the bridge and a red bus was fast approaching us in the opposite direction. My heart was pumping up and in a moment of madness I pushed the stranger on a muddy pavement ,running all the way to the other side of the bridge, and managed to hold on to a red bus. Looking back through the rear window of the bus I heaved a sigh of relief thinking that I’d outwitted a smart thief.

I heard somebody saying ‘rendu nathapuram’. That was exactly opposite to the place I was heading to.I got down at the next station and managed an auto back to the main bus stand.

The rain was at it’s best bashing everything around, through the glass pane of the closed auto I could see a bleeding man wearing muddy cloth “screeeech” ,the auto man braked his sedan to get an old couple into his auto. For a second, I thought someone spotted me.

Back home an hour later, I couldn’t digest the fact that my cousin had lied to me.
I should have remembered; he was good at making up stories.

He would never ask you anything, no matter what you owe him. People never knew him as a timid guy; for he would always behave as if he was the last confident guy left in the world. He could well manage such an image by withdrawing from worldly affairs and posing himself as a calm and thoughtful gentleman, which he was not. Every other time when David seemed to be thinking, he would’ve thought of some way to get out of the situation at any cost. He didn’t mind spending some money if it could maintain his image intact.

He always wondered, “How a perfect gentleman should be? How could he maintain his image without losing money? May be they lost money at times, just like me, and they would never reveal, a perfect gentleman would never reveal…just like me.” and consoled himself reciting a popular adage “Everything comes with a price tag” and reflected “That is not a proverb, but an advertisement, whatever, it’s just the same, today’s advertisement is tomorrow’s adage” feeling very important at his own philosophy.

He feared any kind of discussions with a stranger, conscious of his appearance and a doubt of his own ability over the language he spoke made him succumb to a level of a mute spectator to everything that happened around him. He would not talk to anyone, even to a shop keeper; he would just mumble what he wanted or perhaps point at the item in the rack. He would avoid eye contact at any cost, just to look haughty and gentleman like.

It was Christmas; David was asked to buy vegetables and chicken for the special meal of the day. David had to agree at one point, and set out for the tough job as if he was assigned to climb Mt.Everest in one day.

He was handled a bag full of vegetables at the market by an old gentleman, with a thorny beard and a leaking nose. The old man treated him as if David was his own grandson, David was amazed and reflected, “Customer Satisfaction, very clever businessman” tightly clutching the heavy plastic bag handed to him.

David managed to obtain everything in the list without opening his mouth; he had prepared a list of items on a crumbled piece of paper, scribbling every inch of the paper, left with no space to log a half a kilo of cabbage. He was looking around to see if anyone was squinting at him, as if everybody were jobless and in queue to snatch the job of criticizing him.

Anxious about the Sunday crowd swarming around and mindful of the silly people gaping at him, (he believed so…) he forgot all about the cabbage business.

The vegetable man, wiped his leaky nose with his left wrist with a synchronized shrieking, and returned an old brown note, a ten rupee note; the balance after paying a hundred rupees.

On his way to the butcher, he was reminded of the missing cabbage. He did not wish to get back to the vegetable man. He believed that he would look like a fool, someone with a memory of …what? He did not know the name of the creature he had earlier associated with poor memory, rather did not remember the name of the creature. Such was his memory.

The case of memory was not as important as the business of half a kilo of cabbage. Presently, the Sunday crowd gathered around the market like busy bees around a Bee-hive.

By the time David reached the butcher’s shop on the dingy corner of the market, the crowd was slowly receding out of the shop. The bulky butcher, wearing a checked lungi and a sleeveless white vest sprayed all over with blood asked him, “How much?” in a villainous voice.

David had to think now, he was scared of making any mistake, and he could not bear people laughing at him. He never moved his lips but moved his index finger like a railway gate that one can find only at remote railway crossings.( To indicate a kilo of meat.) He did not look at the butcher, pretending as if he was the inspector of the pink colored meats hanged all around the dingy shop. There were no two meats alike, just like no two fingerprints could be similar. There was a smell of feather soaked in blood and wastes, a nauseating aroma that can well put off the strictest of non vegetarians.

Looking at a whitish meat hanging near the butcher, he wondered” What was the name of that goat? Was he black or white! I remember Michael Jackson now, this butcher is no decent man…He might even sell me dog-meat, a stray dog meat. I must be careful. Whatever, I’ll eat whatever he gives me, better than looking like a fool…”

It was only when the butcher asked him something in hindi, mistaking him to be a North Indian that David forced himself out of his day dream.

David did not know how to react; whether to accept his lack of knowledge in the national language or say a few words he’d picked from his hindi speaking friends. He knew very little, in fact just two words, “han’ and ‘nahi’, often uncertain about which meant yes and which no.

David understood two words from the butcher’s repeated threatening tone:biriyani ,chops. He concluded that butcher meant to make sure what kind of meat he wanted; to cook for biriyani or something else. Yet again, David would manage without talking. Now the train gate was his right hand, moving up and down perpendicular to this left hand (He meant to chop the meat, if you did not understand whatever I implied.)

“Hundred and ten rupees,” glared the butcher, still chopping the meat with his sharp silvery knife. “This fellow would cut whatever comes in front of his knife; he might cut me and ask if someone needed human biriyani or human chops… that wouldn’t taste good. I should give him the correct change or else…” David told himself.

He reached his purse at the back pocket, two hundred rupee notes and a brown ten rupee note of the vegetable man stared at him. He smiled at his good luck, had he bought that awful half a kilo of cabbage( which would cost at least ten rupees) he would’ve been chopped for the butcher’s dinner. He murmured, “Thank you Jesus.”

As soon as he took the ten rupee note out of his leather purse, he began to fret and fuss with his purse. He felt betrayed, for the note was brown, torn, and cello taped at the sides.

David had some time to think, till the butcher finished chopping his meats.
“Should I sneak away, What if he had people standing at the door to catch people like me? A camera at the door, I can’t go hiding…Damn with that ten rupee note.” thought David.

The butcher raised his eyebrow in a light manner and asked him, “ kya bhai?” handing him a black plastic bag weighing a kilo.

The first word David uttered in an hour long Everest climbing was, “No change…” in a submissive tone, as if his tongue was at his stomach.

“How much do you have?” asked the butcher

“Two hundred rupee notes”, replied David.

“I’ll take hundred, ten rupee concession for you.”

The butcher was smiling at David, and he reciprocated that with an even broader smile, feeling a sense of guilt at judging the butcher as bad man.

“Let that be my Christmas present for gentle man like you…” said the butcher cheerily.

“Thank you, uncle.” replied David, recalling an adage “Appearances are often deceptive” and corrected it to “Appearances are always deceptive.”

As I said, it was monotonous and I had to find a hobby, something that would keep me occupied for half an hour every evening. They taught me multiplications and divisions in school. Borrowing for subtraction was one thing I never liked, and would feel a void in my brain whenever I tried to subtract a big clumsy number from a number with lots of zeroes as its tail. Addition was my favorite, it was simple, one at a time and you could merrily add numbers all through the day. I used to spend most my time counting; the number of chairs, number of steps to my class, number of traffic signals on the way, number of white cars and so on and so forth.

There were a lot of hoardings (name boards in front of the shop) around the place, especially the soft drink boards above each little petty shop, beaming the famous brands with the names of the shops at the bottom of the board; as it were the explanations to the asterisk of a “conditions apply.”

I liked Pepsi; at that time one of my ambitions in life was to drink at least one bottle of Pepsi before I die. The blue and red trademark was so appealing to me that I hated Coke for its sheer bloody red. This rivalry was just the prelude of a year long hobby, the Game of Count. I would count the number of Pepsi and Coke boards from my school to our corner Juice shop at Greams Road (that had a Pepsi board at that time and a Coke board now, may be that was also a reason for my love of Pepsi.) and then to our single-bedroom apartment near Anna flyover. To my disappointment Coke won on most of the days, and I would never accept it; calling for a re-count the very next evening.

Soon, I got bored of counting the boards; I began counting the names of the brands even on the grates stocked in front of the shops. It was a tedious job, I couldn’t count Pepsi and Coke at the same time, and therefore, I made a schedule. I would count Pepsi on Monday and Tuesday and Coke on Wednesday and Thursday. When Coke count came very close to Pepsi on Thursday, I would consciously wink my eyes at Coke boards and behave as if I never saw them, and thereby giving a chance to poor Pepsi. Friday was reserved for adjustments, I looked for shops that I had missed on the first four days and would enter the new data into my little rough note, provided Pepsi was lagging and somehow that was always the case.

After many a re-counting, I realized that Pepsi could never win alone against the mighty Coke. What Pepsi required was an ally, and I thought Thumps up was Pepsi’s natural ally (I Know it’s not, and you know it’s not but I didn’t know that then, you see I was a very little boy then and ‘believed’ myself to be very intelligent.) Similarity in the color combination, the appealing blue and red alliance was enough to convince me that they were bottled by the same company. And finally, after all my efforts Pepsi won the Game. It was all my effort; I considered it as a great achievement of my school life.

I never reckoned the orange and green drinks as soft drinks, they were drinks of children and I dealt only with drinks of older men, for my father would never allow me to drink any of those brown drinks.

Whenever I go near my old school, involuntarily I begin to count the name boards. Well aware that Thumps up is officially a coke brand, I must find a new ally to my dear Pepsi.

P.S: This is not a work of fiction

It was a Sunday afternoon and Arvind had had just returned from his computer class at NIIT. That is what he wanted everyone to believe, but he didn’t go to the computer centre for the past five days, he was busy killing aliens on his friend’s computer. A die hard game freak.

“Do you want your lunch now?” asked his mother, unmoved by his words.

“Did you eat?” asked Arvind, looking very concerned.

“Yes, it’s almost three. You are not my husband that I should wait for you.” replied his mother jokingly.

“As if you would wait for your husband” sneered Arvind.

She placed a plate of hot chicken biriyani on the table, and Arvind began devouring it hastily.

“There was a call for you, some girl, I can’t recollect her name now.” said his mother scratching and shaking her head.

“A girl.” murmured Arvind to himself, munching a boneless chicken piece.

He was a quiet fellow, someone who never bothered to talk much to anyone around him. He hardly knew any girl, and definitely not someone who would call him on a Sunday afternoon.

His mother was still in deep thought, thinking the name of the caller. “Lavanya” she shrieked out. “That is the name.”

“What did she tell you?” asked Arvind with a lot of curiosity, his heart began to beat faster and faster.

He wondered if it was the same Lavanya, that lean curly haired girl in his college. She was his classmate. He liked her a lot, but never had the nerves to go and talk to her; he considered it as a deep secret that would never be disclosed. He liked everything about her, be it her fluent English, her bright pear shaped face or her shaky affable smile.He was content looking at her from the last bench.

“Oh, she talked in English. I could understand only her name; these girls nowadays don’t even bother to learn Tamil.” she replied with a sense of irritability.

Arvind’s mother knew only Tamil, and she loathed anyone talking in English to her.

Arvind rushed to the telephone, and lifted the receiver with his left hand, with wet chicken curry spread unevenly around the fingers of his right hand, especially the index finger.

The caller ID showed him some details,

RECEIVED CALLS 12.55

044-24311083

“Who would be this? Should I call up Rahim and ask him about this number? How should I ask? Should I’ve to tell him the number? What if it is my Lavanya’s number? Wouldn’t he ask me how I got this number? Not Rahim he’s a green-eyed fellow. No, I should ask Madavan, but he’s just like me, little chance of getting any information.” reflected Arvind.

“Where did this ‘My Lavanya’ come from, you haven’t even talked to her.” He told himself, smiling wryly.

“The only way is to call this number, what should I ask? I must write it on a piece of paper. I must not stammer.” He decided firmly.

He scribbled a few lines on a piece of scrap paper.

May I speak to Lavanya?
You had called me a while ago; can I do anything for you?

“This looks so formal and weird; she would call me a nerd.” he crumbled the scrap paper into a ball and threw at away.

“I must be bold.” he told himself with a clenched fist, moving it up and down like champagne bottle.

He dialed the numbers,

“Two.”
“Four.”
“Three.”
“One.”
“One.”
“Zero.”
“Eight.”
“Three.”

With each beep of the phone, his heart beat was rising and his palm sweating, sweating profusely.

“Tring..tring..tring..”

“Yes, this is Lavanya from NIIT computer education. What can I do for you?” replied a well trained voice.

“This is arvind.” gasped Arvind.

“Yes, Mr.Arvind, you haven’t paid the second installment of the fee, your due date is over and you must pay a fine of rupees ten from today for each day. I expect your absence in the last five days is not permanent.” babbled a breathless voice.

“Yes ma’m. I’d some personal problems. I will pay the fee by tomorrow.”

“Thank you.” replied the mechanical voice.

Arvind licked his dry fingers. Bitter chicken.

When I was young, my master was a teenager in a big city. He used to apply all sorts of creams, shampoo’s and oils. Me being frontal was his favorite hair, he allowed me to grow longer and longer while all my brothers were never allowed to grow more than half of me. He oiled me discretely and curled in between his eyebrows. I had grown very long, as long to touch my master’s nose tip.

It was then I met Miss. Eyelash 2, 67385. We, the hairs never meet any eyelash. Though we often see eyelash of other humans, we were not supposed to talk with eyelashes. Very few of my older brothers, especially the ones near the ears making my master’s sideburns have met eyelash. We all hear great stories from Sideburns, although they are under constant cutting and chopping men always prefer trimmed sideburns that give them a tidy look.

While my master is working, he keeps me aside over the ears to avoid distraction. I would never stay on his nose, constantly moving toward my master’s eyes to see my Eyelash. Every night when my master is asleep, I crawl up his forehead and go near his closed eyes. Just to see her, never aware of the time spent with her rather time spent looking at her.

As I grew up old, many of my older brothers had died or Mr. Comb had plucked them with him. Mr. Comb is very harsh .Despite the fact that he makes us orderly and good looking; he kills many of us everyday. But my master took special care of me, I’m his longest and favorite hair and he never allowed the combs to touch me.

For the first time after my birth, my master went to his mother in a distant village. I never believed the myths about his mother, but now after listening to the oldest sideburn. I’m frightened. Sideburns have the longest life time among us.

As soon as we reached my master’s house, his mother started complaining abou his;appearance, shoes and hairdo. She took me with her hand, closing her fist tried to pull it to my full length. That was the end of my happiness.

Now I’m short, on par with my brothers. Now I could never meet my Eyelash, but I was content seeing her in the mirror every morning. Thank god I was a frontal, I could still stay in front of my master’s head. All in my life, I’ve never approached her, for it is not possible for me to stay with her all my life.

Presently I’m seventy days old. very weak and old. Death may call me anytime, it came in the form of a harsh comb.

Soon after leaving my master, I stayed on the comb for some days and then in his food. I was in his payasam ,on his birthday payasam.. Pulling me out of his payasam, he yelled at his mother unaware of whose hair it was. My master without even realizing my presence threw me out to the kitchen sink near a window. A cool breeze came up to me and asked me why I looked dull and weak.

I told all my tales to him.

The Breeze started laughing and said, “My dear friend, there is an end to everything, every relationship and everyone in this beautiful planet will be dead one day.”

“I’m worried about being discarded by my own master and where will I go now?”
“Do u know the way to heaven?” I asked him.

The Breeze replied, “When you move beyond your fear, you are in heaven.”

He continued, “Nobody can take you to heaven. It is only one’s own conscience that is holding us from reaching our own heaven. Our own heaven; where you are the king and your slave.”

The Breeze then took me with him, I flew through the window, over meadows, rice fields, rivers, oceans and even touched a rainbow. I saw different people and learned to be happy with what I have and seek what I want.

So many years passed by, I reached a big city where I met my old master at his new big house. I carefully looked at his eyes; my eyelash had left my master’s eyes. None of my brothers were there on his head, leaving behind a glossy appearance. No one were there at the place where I stood, not even a single hair in his frontal region. He was bald!

PS:
The character Breeze is based on the philosophies of Dr. Spencer Johnson’s “who moved my cheese.”

The Sun had a lot of work, no rest at all. But he would work tirelessly like the software engineer of twenty first century. In spite of his hard work, nobody respected him. Darkness is the absence of light, and absence of darkness made the Sun insignificant. No one recognized his hard work. No one would look into his eyes and to this day, we all avoid looking at him out of respect.

There is a story behind how the living beings came to value the sun rather worshipping him. The story goes like this.

After many hundred years, the exasperated Sun planned to engulf the earth. He was furious about the lack of respect and recognition that meted to him. He turned hostile; burned the farmlands, leaves turned brown, sucked more water from the lakes and rivers, tanned earthling’s skin. The earth looked brown, devoid of all the greenery of the past. Heavy rain resulted from intense evaporation, causing natural disasters. The earth was at the verge of its expiry date.

People prayed to the God, to save them from the violent Sun. They had no water to drink, no place to live and no food to eat .Moved by the prayers of the earthlings, the God approached the Sun. The Sun was busy moving towards an already depleted Earth.

Upon enquiry the Sun reasoned him. The God sure knew TQM ( Total Quality Management) long before Edward Deming. Recognition and reward were an essential part of the God’s pay packages to his employees. The God had invariably followed the principles, but the Sun expected recognition from his customers rather than his employer.

The God expounded him about the effects of his present intentions; he was instilling fear among the earthlings and sooner they all would vanish from the Earth.

The almighty had other plans. He presented him a big clock, which would ring every twelve hours. The God implored him to take rest every twelve hours, though very reluctant, the Sun agreed to the God’s request.

Thus there was day and night. People would work in the day and rest when the sun faded on the west. People could make note of the days and months. The age of a mother was no longer the same as her child. Yet, there were some more problems to be solved. There was complete darkness at the night, for they had no means of light in those days; people stumbled on each other and children never ceased to shed tears.

The God had been closely observing the changes on the earth. People had begun respecting the Sun; they even worshipped him. They had realized how the sun made life possible. The God decided to employ a new candidate in the night sky; not as bright and warm as the Sun but as clear as the cow’s milk.

The God conducted a rigorous interview (no aptitude test) for the post of a torch bearer in the night sky. The God was looking for a fair headed aspirant, some one with a lot of patience to stay awake throughout the night. He finally chose the Moon, a shy rounded fellow, to fit in the role. Thus the happy Moon entered the night sky to brighten the night of the earthlings.

The next train from platform one would leave this station in two minutes. The boarding side of the first platform had a fierce wall one side and the stinking train on the other side. I was sitting on a platform bench, sipping a tasteless coffee, and waiting for the train to start. I swallowed the coffee, though I knew that it would taste like a coal beforehand.

An old man, wearing a loose shirt prowled towards me with a small bag on his shoulder and an open book in his hand. He looked fraught, and scanned around anxiously with darting eyes as if he was chased by the legal guardians for carrying something that he was not supposed to carry.

He had a well oiled hair, sticking to his mantle like a drenched fur. His pants started well above his hips, and he wore no belt. The pants stopped well before his ankle, may be he grew after he was forty or was it his teenage trousers?

He read that glossy book with utmost care, oblivious of the departure time or the crowd bustling around him. As envisaged, he banged on a porter .The old man stared at the porter, like a vulture looking for a corpse .His raised eyebrows expressed a thousand words, it is true that action speaks more than
words .There were a flurry of words that had deep meanings from the other side, the local language proving too tough for the old man. Those words can cause your ear drums to run away from you, this is what is called as the freedom of speech.

What was he reading? I wondered. What was that made an old man into a vulture?

The train was about to start, and the old man ran towards the unreserved compartment. The old man had made me anxious, so much so that I felt like a headless chicken loitering in a butcher shop. I made a desperate attempt to catch him; I had to run a meter or two with all my might to get into the unreserved compartment. I found that distraught man standing near the latrine, still holding the book tightly with both the hands, and reading it like a starved beggar.

The glossy cover smiled at me, like a little child yearning for a candy.
There was a yellow smiley, with its mouth curved up.

It read,

“HOW TO CURE MENTAL TENSION.”

Beside the temple, Ravi, a young engineer, kicked his bike with all his might; the morning sun had oozed everything out of him. After a minor accident the night before, his bike was attended by an exiguous mechanic, less than half his age and as ignorant as him. Presently his bike wouldn’t start with a thumb, it cried for a whole leg.

It must’ve been Lord Ganesha’s grace, or was it Jesus’ forefinger which did the trick, nevertheless his bike began to smoke. Ravi accelerated and turned to his left, to the northern road, He couldn’t afford to stop acceleration before reaching the mechanic, for it would sweat his legs all over again. His bike was in a mess, nothing worked as it should be.

A bright dot seemed to move towards him, it was a lady on a Scooty wearing an ill fitting costume with a mismatched pair of shoes. She must‘ve deserted the tag “middle aged” when Ravi was a little kid. As she came closer to him, she held her right hand in the air and pumped an invisible horn, like the green horn one would find in a yellow three wheeler.

Ravi smiled at her, the least he could do. The lady shook her head, with a hint of superiority, though her teeth’s weren’t as bright as her head lamps. Her headlamps were ablaze.She sped past him with a feeling of having helped someone so early in the morning.

The exiguous mechanic must’ve been a thief; there was no way by which Ravi could stop another altruist from pumping yet another invisible pump in front of him, for the headlamp switch was missing.