Aye'm back

Contd from way down below, in case you are not one of the approximately three people who read this blog regularly :-)

A fierce wind( by ant standards) shook Aye out of his unconsciousness. He was lying on his back, his legs curled up in the air; not an ideal position for an ant(unless he’s intent on suicide) and very much a bother, Aye thought to himself. His head was spinning. Microscopic flying creatures seemed to him to be circling his head. He tried to lift up his head but fell back instantly and passed out, again.

After what seemed an eternity and after passing out and then back in, again and again a couple of times more, Aye woke up and felt a little stronger. He still lay on his back, conserving energy and trying to figure out a way to get back to ideal ant posture. Above him, light filtered in through the black tangled hairy canopy. He could see some green through the gaps and above that a little blue.

Aye thought of his life. Until yesterday, he was leading such a blissfully normal life ; waking up when his shift started, obeying orders, talking non sense with the blokes in his battalion, making fun of the queen...Now look at him, flat on his back, staring at his own pointy butt and lost in some weirdo’s head! Things sure can change in a split second loss of balance. Sigh.

His colony, his sweet, organized colony with its airy chambers and regular food supply lay God knows how far away. Food, oh food! He was famished and this place was sterile as only it could be. Not that he had any use for human head fauna now. The situation he was in, he’d better pray that no other insect discovers him and gobbles him up whole, legs and all. An ant with his legs up is the dream of many a creature of the insect kingdom and generally, considered an musing sight by all, especially humans, Aye thought to himself. There was this one time when one of his friends was over turned by a human and left in that state. He was discovered hours later, (ant hours of course) being taunted and about to be devoured by a baby lizard(who by the way, would not dare to even look at an upright ant!). There were many such stories... All of which reminded Aye that he should probably make an attempt to stand on his legs again ( that is if they still worked)

“Now how do I do that?”

“Help!”

“No one?...”

Aye was sure his head wasn’t quite normal. Who was he calling out to anyway? He was on a desert; the Kalahari equivalent of any place an ant could be. Oh well. Now what?

It was all the hair. One strand was pressing him down; making it impossible for him to get up. His legs were asleep from all the upside down action, which didn’t help the situation either. Aye sighed. This day was going just great! He closed his eyes and tried to think… Various types of food marched by in a procession inside his head. Caterpillars, cake crumbs, drippy little drops of honey. “ No aye, focus. Foo-cus!” He shouted into his own head. It was no use. They all came marching in, background music playing, as soon as he closed his eyes. Maybe he should think with his eyes open. Hmmm.

“AHHHHHH!!!!” …. It was Aye, his eyes were open now, and staring into another pair of eyes, (actually a lot of eyes, he didn’t know how many, but on one head for sure) staring right back at him.

"Weeeeehhhhhh!!!!".. It was the creature staring into Aye’s face from above. Plop! He/she/it jumped to the side in fright and looked at Aye from a distance, eyes, all of them bulging.

Aye closed his eyes back with lightning speed. He was taken by terror. Breathe. Breathe. Its probably just a hallucination. These things happen. His head had been hit... Its perfectly natural. Just a hallucination.. nothing else. “is it gone?? ..Oh please be gone!”

Aye opened his eyes a slit. There was nothing above him. Phew! He now opened wide and looked around (okay, not exactly a-round, but he looked left, then he turned his head and looked to the right). There was nobody. “Good lord, thankyou!.. It was just a weird…

“hu aaare yuuhh???..” A timid voice squeaked behind Aye’s head.

Horror.

Aye froze. Then screamed out and in his utter complete fright, propelled his body upward in a super human, ahem, ant motion and scrambled up the hair strands pressing above him. He was on his feet again. He himself couldn’t believe how he had managed to turn upright in such a split second. He was slightly proud of himself. No wait, this is not the time. Snap back now..!

The sun fell lightly on Aye. He looked down from where he was perched to see what it was that had stealthily stood behind him and frightened all the formic acid out him. He saw a creature a little smaller than him. Its eyes were enormous on its transparent, puny looking body. What the hell is this thing? Aye tried to remember all the creatures he knew. This one looked so weird, it was almost invisible except for the giant eyes…

“Its a spider!! Ofcourse! How could he miss the legs, all eight of them?.. A spider!...

“Uh oh. "

"A spider.”

Spiders generally tend to eat ants. Hmm. Aye looked at the thing a little more closely. Thankfully this one looked like a baby and kind of stupid too. There it was, staring up at him with its mouth open, like he was from Outer space, wherever that is. What should he do now? He kept his eyes on the little spider baby and pondered. Maybe a little friendly conversation would be nice. But not too friendly,he told himself; he should establish that he was boss .

Aye looked at himself. Hmm. Perching up here like a tailless monkey wasn’t exactly saying I am the boss. “I should get down.”

He took a deep breath, smoothened his antennae and got down slowly, eyeing the spider all the while. It stood there still, gaping as stupidly as ever.

“Hello there” Aye said in a croak, (he was trying to sound gruff ofcourse) “who are you?”

The spider looked at Aye closely with all of his thirty thousand or so eyes.

“elooh.. I am , ... I am Yoohoo... Can I eat you?”

Aye’s eyes banged against their sockets. Brain hemorrhage. His mouth froze into a twisted, shell shocked expression. Panic. Panic. Okay. Calm down now, he told himself. Look cool. He’s half your size, get a grip!

“Ummm…,” Aye looked down at ‘yoohoo’ and considered him for a minute,

“ No. No you can’t.”

“Ohh.”

‘Yoohoo’ stared down at the scalp for a while. Aye prepared to bolt.

Then the little spider looked up; he was back to smiling again.

“okay.”, he said,

“Huu can I eat??”

Aye stared at the spider suspiciously. Is he that stupid or is he acting? Yoohoo looked on. He was smiling wide now, expectation writ large on his stupid baby face.

Aye was in a fix.

“Now I have to baby sit this eight legged dope?"

What, in the name of the big fat queen, was happening to him today??..First getting stuck on the dumb giant’s head with nothing to eat but stinky air and now another freak who’ll probably figure out a way to eat him if he doesn’t stuff something into his mouth!

Aye had never really believed in Ant Gods, (or evolution and even gravity for that matter, not that it mattered here) but he now prayed desperately for a way to get rid of the creature that stood in front of him, scratching itself with all four of its front legs. Good lord, please throw me something here...a little life jacket...

“ I’m, hunggrrreee….” A whiny little voice said.

It was YooHoo ofcourse. Aye tried to think of someway to pacify him. He realized that his brain may have gotten permanently damaged from the day’s trauma. He could come up with nothing. Absolutely nothing. Boy was he in trouble now. In a desperate attempt, he decided to strike up a conversation to distract the little devil’s attention from food.

“So YooHoo, my name is Aye. I am an ant…well an ant King really. My fellows and I are on an expedition here. They’re, they’re around here somewhere…haha, I wonder what they’re up to, you know soldiers, loot and plunder, loot and plunder. H aha…Ha.Ha. They,… They’ll be back any…”

A weird noise interrupted Aye’s imaginative discourse. It was coming from YooHoo. Aye stopped and looked at the spider closely. Is it going to turn into some mutant spider suddenly and attack? Aye perked up his antennae. The noise grew in pitch. Yoo Hoo had covered his eyes with his front legs. The little spider was crying! Bawling really. Aye was at a loss.

“YooHoo, don’t cry. Why are you crying?”

The spider wiped its thirty thousand eyes and babbled something incoherently. Aye deciphered the obvious. Food. The little thing is hungry. "Hungggreeee."

“What a pest”, he thought. Here I am hungry and depressed and in all probability about to crushed to death by useless hand movements of the dumb girl underneath and this Parasite won’t even allow me a minute of peace in my misery. He looked at YooHoo. He was crying his lungs out and evidently very, very sad. The screeching noise was getting on Aye's nerves. He cursed himself and the entire world and approached the bawling little spider.

“Now don’t cry YooHoo... lets go and see if we can find you something to eat. Won't that be nicee? hmm?Come on now...”

The spider looked up and wiped his eyes again and decided to stop crying. He looked hesitantly at Aye. Aye smiled back at him with a fake thousand watt smile. YooHoo suddenly brightened up and resumed his stupid smile from before; reassured by the affection coming forth from the ant. Well, that was easy, Aye thought to himself. At least the stupid smile is noiseless.

“Come on now, lets go look around” Aye said sweetly to the spider and started walking towards the girl’s forehead.

YooHoo followed his protector obediently, hobbling along on all eight legs.

Aye walked on ahead, trying to think. He turned around. The spider was following his footsteps closely. That very moment, a bright idea entered Aye’s mind.

“Muahaha... that should get him off my back!”

“Come along YooHoo” He called out to the spider and kept on walking.

Apologies in advance :D

So what would happen if I suddenly stop existing? In other words, if I die, fall of a cliff or get abducted by aliens at night. Apart from the emotional reactions of those who knew me; the tears, shaking heads, tch tchs, evil laughs etc, what would be the real consequence? Anything affected? Any consequences to the material world, anybody harmed?

Let’s see. A regular day at home. 7 30 AM. My mom goes to wake me up; the bed is empty, she imagines I’m already up and about, goes back to the kitchen.. My morning cup of black tea gets cold, colder and then evaporates in the heat. So far the only inconvenience caused and the only physical change my absence has caused. Everything else is working like clockwork. That’s one of the good things bout never helping one’s mom in the kitchen- no one inconvenienced in the event of death (!). Around eight, couple of sweet, evidently jobless, very evidently early risers type people start sending me(along with everyone else in their phone books), good morning messages on the phone. These go unanswered. But no problem there, I do that all the time. Not that I do not care, I do, very much. But the level of emotional reaction caused is not enough to wake me up from my post wake up call disorientation. It’s a difficult time.I'm sure they understand.

So where were we? By now, the morning’s newspapers would be crammed inside the metal post box perched on our gate with no one to rescue them. The second casualty of my non-existence, I may call them. Since I am the only person in the house deranged enough to devour the contents of two newspapers (its true), one face flat on the left side of things and the other decidedly right wing, yuppie and urban, every morning, there’s a hundred percent chance that the said newspapers will end up spending quality time with each other inside the shiny box the whole of this day, the first since my mysterious disappearance. We move on. There are a lot of beneficiaries to my disappearance whom I should not forget to mention-my toothbrush and paraphernalia remain pristine to day and water and power conservation get a major fillip for sure. If it were a working day and I still had a college to go to, many more benefits could’ve been listed and many more people would have had a an easier time; one less person to crowd the bus, more space on the first bench, a teacher with a quieter class etc. But since it’s the grand ‘holidays’ they will not be able to avail the benefits of my non-existence.

By nine thirty, the parents depart, pleasanter and light hearted than usual; their constant irritant for the last twenty years removed in addition to having less clutter and books disfiguring the living room. The only slight inconvenience here is that there’s no one to lock the door and to stage her own version of Home alone. I must remind you that we’re totally ignoring emotions, paranoia etc that human beings may have, and considering a situation where normal life goes on, just without me in it. I realize that this is not practically happen-able, but bear with me here, I am obviously cracked in the head.

So, mom and dad have left. My breakfast is the next casualty on our list. It is left untouched and uneaten in the kitchen; its life’s purpose never to be fulfilled. A myriad of refrigerator flora also suffer the same fate. Bournville bars cry, the tetra packed milk sniffs, hide and seek biscuits sigh and the banana chips jump off the counter in a bid to commit suicide. Well, you get the idea. Since all of these things are more or less the same specie, we name them casualty number three- all the things that I eat. Now you can choose look at this scenario from a positive perspective; less consumption, less energy use, less global warming, the world is saved! Me, I'd say that it would be too much of a stretch to think this way. But it all depends on how much of a sun shine cookie head you are.

The next casualty ladies and gentle men, is the most affected on our list- The Television and all its channels. The TV sits perplexed. The parents’ leaving is its usual sign to spring into life. It awaits that moment everyday of the vacation; much the same way flowers await the sun or useless people await their wedding day. (there is a chance I was murdered). The TV waits and waits for its mistress ; Friends, Bones, Desperate house wives, all go on unwatched. The music player suffers the same fate, so does the computer. On the bright side, the neighbourhood din is reduced, however insignificantly; my TV not adding to the energetic tum tum from the work shop or the chainsaw noise from the carpenter’s nearby. Anyway, we have here casualty five- the entertainment, information (ahem) Industry. (Everything gets to be called an ‘industry these days; the education industry, the beauty industry, the ear drops industry etc. So I don’t see why my attempts at wasting time cannot be given the same honour). Meanwhile, another casualty, the phone, goes on suffering. Aitel, which calls me with the regularity and frequency of a scorned boyfriend, rings up around two and then again at around six. Friends might call but will be unsurprised as usual at my not answering. The phone vibrates itself off the bedside table and hits the floor. After much twitching, it dies. Casualty number five.

Fast forwarding to the next casualty on our list, there is no one to read the books stacked up on the bed or to return the ones I took from the library in like 1925. If I compress time and fast-forward effects, I can declare that the librarian awaiting the books and the fee is a casualty. Books can also be considered a minor casualty, assuming of course that they like to read and tossed around on the bed. Titles doomed to die unread: The Dubliners, The Scarlet letter, a collection of stories by S,K Pottekkadu, Kipling’s Kim(well, its doomed either way, I have drawn up no five year plan yet that includes reading it), copies of national geographic already come and yet to etc. So we have casualty number six-library and some books with no one to read them.

Moving on again, its evening, dad and mom are back; no one to welcome them as usual. I clearly haven’t chosen today to reach home earlier than them. Another cup of Kannan Devan Gold evaporates and joins the clouds above. We’ll club it with casualty number one, the morning cup of tea. The night arrives with no one to switch on the lights and light the brass lamp. I think I can safely say that my parents have some inconveniences to face but I can’t call them casualties since, from a strictly pragmatic point of view, they have more benefits than things to complain about. Couples of more hours go by and it’s bed time. Nobody affected by my absence since the evening cup of tea.

The day ends; lights go off. As far as I can see, my going ‘poof!’ has irreparably affected six entities. To recap, they are- Two cups of black tea, two newspapers, the home entertainment-information industry aka TV-Computer-music player, the phone, books-library and All the things I eat. True, friends and relatives may have noticed, but their reactions don’t count as these are neither quantifiable nor irreparable. In conclusion, I can happily say that I would, in the event of my not existing anymore, have done more service than harm. My sympathies to the six casualties of course but since I am not extinct at present, I could do something to make things easier on them. Draw up a will maybe…

The huge benefit of this exercise, apart from the immense satisfaction of boring people to cold hard death, is that I am not anymore, under the illusion that I am of much consequence. All my suspicions and gut feelings, usually brushed off by friends and relatives, are confirmed. I no longer feel like an inflated amoeba( assuming something as tiny has thick enough skin to be inflated)- small, yet filled with air and with airs! I am currently deflated; happily pseudopodifying through the sea, and respectful (very) of higher life forms.

Tata.

Blabbering. Again.

Owing to exams and study holidays. I’ve been watching a lot of Television lately; a habit I had not pursued actively for while. But I see nothing’s changed, most of the old impressions remain and since this blog is dying a slow death due to boredom, I thought I’d note down in five minutes what I’ve noticed the last few days. I apologise in advance for the blabber that follows. Nothing serious. Just.

Couple of things:

TV news- can only be described as kind of a Scooby Doo on steroids, judging by the way it reacts to events existing and non. It panics and goes berserk at the slightest non event and the next second goes on the over drive with sun shine and yahoo! over something else. So we’re pretty much left with “how dare Tharoor say that” and “holi hey” most of the time. And this I noticed from a daily 30 second dose of ‘news channels’. I stopped at 30 seconds fearing permanent damage to my sanity from watching this non sense. Interestingly, Rajdeep Sardesai once said people who don’t make it anywhere else become journalists. Who can blame him? Most of the said people work for him! At the backdrop of all this, life in the real world goes on, shrugging indifferently at all the ‘information’ and ‘awareness’ and ‘activism’ and ‘debate’.

Ads- Getting dumber by the day. There’s no limit to stupidity. There’s one which I saw, where a rider/user of some bike/fuel picks up a pizza delivery guy stuck on the road in the middle of ‘nowhere-you-can’t-even-get-fake-Bisleri-let-alone-pizza’ (:P) and then drives this person for half an hour on a bike through treacherous landscape, knowing, all the while, that the fellow’s delivering the pizza to his own work shop, then drops him and surprises him with this extraordinary piece of coincidence. If I were the pizza guy I’d deliver it on the hero’s face! But of course in the ad, the boy looks all “I’ve learned so much from you super man….” Gee.

I hear a lot about portrayal of women in ads; stereotyping, objectifying etc. Let’s talk about men. Why don’t they protest? You may have seen, if you're as jobless as me, a recent Scorpio ad (the beastly car?). There’s guy on the vehicle golfing around on some desert with an entourage of attractive men and women. And this one’s just a sample of general advertising targeted at men. Why don’t men protest being portrayed as perfectly jobless morons who go about golfing in the Sahara with an uncomfortably dressed woman painstakingly following him around to clap and encourage him as he gets the tiny ball into the hole? (And lady’s look clearly says “what a retard… and I have to wear a maroon dress and smile at this ass”!) All of this with 3 or 4 other men, in dark glasses (again, stereotyped security look!) looking on. And there’s so many more(most in the car, perfume, shaving cream segment); most show men as perfect Neanderthals who get pleasure out of beating each other in silly car races at traffic signals or making a woman driver hit her head on the dash board with their ‘cool’ maneuvers(gallant!).

Any commercial aimed at men-perfumes say, they’re portrayed as testosterone bottles/idiots who’ll do anything just get to some deviant, non-existent breed of female who’s attracted to men wearing Axe or screw driver or whatever. Its assumed that you can sell even a Mars rover to a middle class Indian male (who never leaves his home town unless its to go to Bangalore), provided, you put a hot girl next to it. (“maybe if I buy this, she’ll deliver it…umhmmm”)

How dare we women complain of being stereotyped as loving caring mothers and indulging, attractive spouses when these guys clearly have it worse. And they don’t even care. Enough feminism, we need a ‘mennist’ movement. My hopes are pinned on gay men in the activist area; heteros are clearly busy, what with all the golfing!

Rosebowl-is a good channel, if you ignore a certain broad, drag queen met upperclass Indian house wife woman who insists on telling us about food no one cares to make(green yucky stuff and weird coffee which we like to drink at cafes thank you very much) while one unsuccessfully tries to make sense of her clothing style.

Bones-Good show. Of course nothing beats Seinfeld but this is a totally different genre.

MTV-Should get a life! Can anything be so boring? Even their ‘kickass mornings’ can give one a fatal depression.

Now that I have wasted a sufficient amount of time, I’ll stop. Tata.

Ramblings :)

‘Aye the ant’ fell. He fell from the ceiling. He had been marching wearily with the rest of the troopers, egged on by the big headed supervising ants, on their way to drag a moth carcass from the over head attic to their nest just outside the room. He had walked that line on the ceiling many times. Today, he had looked down briefly to see if the girl was still asleep, had lost his balance for a second, and fell. He was now midair, free falling. He looked up; sighing at his stupidity. He fell in a straight line onto the girl’s head, getting lodged deep inside her hair. It was dark inside even for an ant and he coughed as some strong smells hit him. Her head must be unpopulated as the Baygon bottle, he groaned. He was sure that no big lice, no small lice, not even a cockroach could stand the morbid chemical smell. He plodded through the black, tangled forest; extricating himself from the numerous knots and traps with great difficulty, finally emerging on the surface, breathing with relief. He found a strand of hair that fell over her face and walking thorough it, landed on the hollow below her neck. ‘Aye the ant’ then took some time to look around and thought; now what? He then looked up; “I did fall a long way down”.

He had never seen the girl so close as this. She is huge. He thought about her four measly legs (only two of which she used. How stupid of her.) He had often seen her; going in and out of the room as he and the troopers went on daily raids through the gaps on the wood ceiling. She didn’t do much, except sleep and then disappear as the sun grew hot. Once, she had thrown a sticky red candy out the window and the colony had feasted on it for two days. A red stickiness melted Aye the ant’s heart. He had an urge to plunge his mouth into her neck. “wonder what she tastes like..hmmm. But no, no. Must remember what the trainer taught him and the others about control. Besides, it made ants age faster if they went around biting larger animals. Of course, sometimes it just made them stop ageing and just die. He chuckled at his own joke. Now what was he trying to do? Yes, he remembered now. Let’s see if I can go down this leg near her face which is small and is dangling down from the edge of the bed. I could reach the floor with a jump and walk up to join the rest of the troopers as they returned with that moth( may it rest in peace).

He started walking as fast as he could, looking up at the ceiling now and then. The supervisors must be shouting now; “Go to the kitchen table!”, “Go pick up that dead lizard!”. Such block heads. The queen was much nicer but she was now so big, one could hardly see her fat face. Aye the ant now walked through the forested surface of the girl, marveling at how big she was. He also wondered how she survived with such a vulnerable outer covering. Anyone could punch a hole in it; he even with his bony shiny skin, found it hard to live with all the sharp objects around. They’re probably yet to evolve such sophisticated surfaces as me, he thought, and sympathetically shook his head, without really meaning it.

Aye now stood on the girl’s thumb nail; the tip of the dangling hand. He looked down. Hmmm. The floor looked hard. He considered the risks and hesitated. Maybe he could walk back and reach the floor through the cot’s legs after all. What was the hurry anyway? Maybe today was the day to do some exploring by himself. He had heard much about big ants who always went on raids alone. Such brave, interesting, great ants. Maybe this was his big chance. He could… Uh oh. The girl’s awake.

Aye couldn’t understand how the giant who was stone asleep until a second ago could’ve jumped up so suddenly. She raised her hand (the one he was reflecting on of course, if anything bad can happen to an ant, it will) and tied her hair up. Great, he was now deposited on her head, again.

He stood up wearily after landing face down on the dumb giant’s forehead. He sighed for a while and then, straightening his antennae, looked ahead, alarmed. He was being carried out of the room by the girl. She shook the floor with her ‘thump thump’ steps as panic ceased him.

He should have jumped when he had the chance. Breathe. Breathe. Breathe. Damn.

The giant now sat her giant bottom down on a chair. Aye’s head wobbled from all the rumble tumble motion. He wanted a second to make sure the giant was still before slowly raising his head. He anxiously moved close to the edge of the girl’s forehead and looked down expectantly. And there it was, an ant century’s worth of food for the colony sprawled out on the table in front. Haa. Sweet lord of all ants, help me fall into that bowl of milk!.. Aye was drunk with delight and went into a reverie. He was shaken out of his dream world full of melted sugar and cookies and milk before long.The girl raised her hand again to her smelly head. Help! Aaah..! What is wrong with you? You and your stupid hair! screamed Aye in his tiny ant's voice as the hair was brushed back and his little ant body was pushed into the tangled mass of hair again. His head had been hit. Pressure. Pressure. Passing out now. Aw.

Nothing to say.

The news spread through the tiny village. Marykutty’s daughter had returned from the city suddenly; showing up at her home after quitting the job at the shrimp factory. Now this was no scandalous news in itself, but the rumour was that she had shut herself inside the house and refused to talk to anyone, not even her mother. Neighbours were stirred; concerned voices whispered that the girl’s eyes were as vacant as that of a dead fish. She looked a little ‘gone’ too. “Something must have happened” they whispered to each other as they stood in queues at the water taps. And they all agreed on what that ‘something’ must be; nodding with eager sadness, the tinge of pleasure they felt inside on hearing the news surprising them and filling them with shame. “Poor girl”, a middle aged woman said loudly.

Marykutty, an old widow, was bewildered. Rosy had gone to the shrimp factory three months ago. It was two hours away by boat and bus so she had decided to stay at the rooms provided by the factory owners for the women they employed. It was back breaking work; bending over crates of cold, stunned shrimp, peeling it carefully from morning till night. Her skin peeled away in the ice cold water, the numbness spread to her neck, her legs and kept her awake shivering, even at night sometimes. Her clothes and hair acquired the lingering fish sea smell that floated all over the factory premise. The work was hard. But Marykutty knew and Rosy knew even better that they needed the money. So she had stayed on; coming home once a month to hand some money to her mother. If Rosy’s departure had saddened Marykutty, her sudden arrival and the change in her crushed the old woman. Rosy refused to utter a word to anyone. Sometimes she came out her dingy room, the only bedroom in the house, to get food and then sat on the verandah with her plate of rice, picking absently through it. Many people came and went; all shaking their heads in sympathy. But Rosy acknowledged no one. Her eyes were fixed on something invisible; demons no one else could see.

At night, Marykutty hugged her daughter close and with tears asked her what had happened to her. But Rosy remained frozen. Rumours smoked around the little village; Rosy had had an affair with an ice plant worker, No, it was a supervisor. “ something must have happened”, they repeated among themselves.

Rosy’s silence did not break with time. She ahowed no willingness to speak even after a year had passed since her return. Marykutty went to work as a maid again; dragging her ailing knees to the house of a wealthy man in the neighbourhood in return for food and spare change. She had made her peace with her daughter’s silence; “let her be”, she told neighbours and relations who tormented Rosy. The mystery suppounding Rosy’s silence waned as more months passed. Elopements and a burglary captured the villagers’ attention.

Then oneday, a man from the city reached the little village in search of Rosy. The old men who sat around at the boat jetty directed the stranger to Marykutty’s house; a little upset at him for not giving in to their questions. He talked at length to Marykutty outside her house, standing near the tattered fence. Neighbours watched as Marykutty shook her frail head and went inside. The man had come to take Rosy away. He had made a mistake he said, but he wanted to make amends. “ I will marry Rosy”.

The villagers were dumbfounded. They waited outside Marykutty’s house;the men, the women, wailing children and curious boys. The mad had gone to the teashop nearby and was sitting there smoking a beedi, letting his tea go cold while the Marykutty talked to her daughter.

Marykutty got out from the house and went in search of the stranger. She led him out of the teashop. Rosy had refused. She wouldn’t say why, but refused; her head shaking, her face set firmly. The stranger pressed some money into the old woman’s hands and left to catch a boat back home. Much talk went on in the village that night. Old women lamented as they sat outside their kitchens; scrubbing fiercely at dishes as their voices rose; agitated.

The man who operated the little ferry walked silently as usual to the boat jetty at dawn next day. Rosy was already up at her house, packing her meager belongings to go back to work. She had talked all night to her old mother and said goodbye before setting off for the factory again. Those at the jetty saw her getting on to the wobbling wooden boat. The engine whirled as diesel smell rose and merged with the cold breeze. Rosy sat still on the little boat as it carried her away to the city; her eyes fixed on the palm fringed coast at a distance, calm, reassured.

Diary of a woman. On a bad day.

Generally on good days, most women including me are proud of their womanhood; proud of its complexities and many thrills. Then comes those atrocious days every month when we would give anything to trade places with any hairy smelly man on earth- the grand period variously known as ‘chums’, hell on earth etc.

I woke up today into one of those days. (waking up to it’s the worst thing; an entire day ruined in the very first blink) Time; 5:58. I curse all men and the entire universe, “Damn you all!” and stumble into the bathroom to change my clothes. I stand still there for a while, staring at the floor, reminding myself to breath, not to panic. All my senses are battle ready; picking up traces of pain germinating all over my body. I walk slowly back to my room. I could cry with sadness. I pop a pill into my mouth and swallow it with difficulty. The water repulses me; my insides are in a whirl. Oh why couldn’t there be a time machine to take me to the next day right now? What am I going to do? Nearly ten hours of intense perfect agony to be followed by more hours of minor agony lie in front of me. Aw.

Back in bed, its useless trying to sleep. The pain and anticipation of more pain is driving me into a rage. My legs are frozen and they hurt. My back hurts, I have Goosebumps all over and it feels like there’s construction going on in my womb. I twist and turn and think as always on these days of how lucky men are. I could slap any man who dares to appear in front of me today (especially well intentioned stupid ones who ask me if I have a headache and what’s wrong. Headache? Is that all they know of?!)

Maybe a change of scene will help I think and I lift myself up( going “ah, ah, ah, ow” with every step) and go sit on the back porch near the kitchen. Even the trees look gloomy to me. It’s as though Mother Nature is trying to remind me that I am a woman, aka baby machine. I can just hear her, “I get all the feminist stuff you say and the tomboyish things you do, but where are my babies??” Is all the pain a deterrent against wasting of precious baby making eggs churned out by my female specimen every month? Naah. Couldn’t be. Because pregnancy is an even bigger terror from what I hear. Well at least it will be over al at once. Now I am rambling. The pain killer seems better at the ‘side effects’ than the effect it’s supposed to have. What did I ever do to the world?

My grandma with whom I am staying comes over and asks me how I’m doing. I smile sadly and hug myself. Grammy goes inside and comes back holding her hand out. She puts it on my plam, and asks me to chew it; some ayurvedic medicine which looks like small misshapen peppers( I have to put it my mouth other wise I would have described it in other terms). I sit there on the steps chewing and drinking hot water my granny handed to me. There are ants lugging food into a tiny hole on the sand in front. I wonder if the ants are male. I have hot water in my hands. Muahahaha. Eh, probably not. My my. The travails of my life.

CHERTHALA DIARIES

Two weddings, a death and arson. (Not in that order)

Day one

For a sleepy little place, Cherthala, where my grandmother lives and where I live presently has ben the scene of much drama the last few days. The first big piece of news was that the Allappuzha medical college hospital building, an ancient complex which was once a king’s palace, was burned down. Thankfully the hospital, except for the gynaecology ward, had been shifted the day before to a new building. Grandma, along with her pet newspaper theorises that the fire was deliberately set by opponents of the shifting initiative. I have to say that the arsonists are not helping their cause at all. It’s highly unlikely that the hospital authorities will move the hospital back to a burned out shell of an old building and besides, I’m sure that all the pregnant ladies of the district have already carried the gyno department to the new building with urgency after the new development.

As I’m telling you all this, there is heavy domestic drama happening on TV with my grandma as audience. There’s wedding and twenty different people trying simultaneously to thwart it. there’s also a mad guy thrown in the midst of this madness for extra spice. Back in the real world, there’s been some hilarious incidents relating to a wedding in the family. Now, the situation according to elders is that it is a friggin pain finding girls for the unmarried spinster men in our family. Reasons are many: one, the men are high school dropouts while all the girls in kerala seem to be post graduates with a B Ed. Two, the men are financially sturdy while the girls who’d agree in their desperation to marry these block heads are not so very well off or otherwise attractive. Any girl who would match the criteria set by the wannabe groom’s family scoffs at the suggestion of marrying below a B Tech/ MBA. Thus there is an impossible demand supply problem leading to desperate attempts by the men’s family to find girls.

Two of my uncles are in the race to get married for a while now. Recently it was announced (woohoo) that one of them, a 37 year old, had finally found a suitable bride. She’s from a not so well off family but is “not too bad looking and has long, thick hair”, according to the said uncle. But now we've been told that the wedding’s called off. The reason is a long, sad, and possibly hilarious story which I will summarise. Now, the wedding had been fixed un officially; the bride was the younger of two girls, the eldest still unmarried. Hearing this cheerful news, one of the groom’s friends, who lives near to the prospective bride house went to visit her himself. The girl’s parents invited him in and introduced him to the bride to be. The story goes that the friend almost fell off his chair when he saw the girl; an obese Amazon of a woman with countable strands of hair on her head. The friend went back, smacked my uncle on his head and asked him what the hell he was thinking tying such an unattractive whale to his neck. A good deal of confusion ensued when the anatomical descriptions of the bride, made by the two friends failed to match. Embarrassed, the groom went again to the girl’s house to ascertain facts. After a lot of tricky maneuvers, the truth was brought out; the girl’s family was trying to get the poor man to mary the older girl un expectedly on the wedding day (the guy can’t pull back because of the money and effort which had already been spent on the wedding ceremony) after enticing him with the younger damsel! And they almost pulled it off too. My uncle is not the only desperate one around. After this embarrassment the search for a bride was widened and they’ve finally found someone. She’s post graduate with a B Ed but has a squint eye which balances things between her and my uncle. Block head for squint eye and we have a wedding on our hands!

There’s another high school dropout uncle who’s also on the prowl for a wife. To ease things, he’s filthy rich and owns an estate. The problem: the estate’s in a remote place and no girl wants to move to this Godforsaken (in my opinion, heavenly) place. But the rumour’s that they’ve found someone. A math post graduate who’s probably very tired of learning math. Matrimonial bliss.

contd

Day two

The morning held little cheer. It all began last evening when news arrived the husband of grandma’s part time domestic help, Bhanu, had died. He was an old man; a drunkard and a pain from what I’d heard earlier (of course now he’s a saint and his death a terrible loss to entire human civilization).Grandma and uncle went to express their grief and came back shaking their heads and saying that it was for the best that the old man passed without burdening anyone an painlessly for himself. We left it at that. But I woke up this morning and went out through the kitchen door to find a bunch of neighbourhood men gathered at one corner of the large backyard, staring up at a tree.they looked comical; like a group of tribal elders, some squatting and others standing, contemplating something. “Your uncle’s promised them that tree for the funeral pyre”, granny said sadly by way of explanation.

Tragedy had struck.

The young cashew tree had been chosen to accompany the dead man to the next world. The loafers in the surrounding area had assembled to oversee the felling of the unfortunate tree. My heart sank. There’s really no need to cut the tree; there’s other equipment available to burn the dead even here and besides, a smaller tree or a branch from a big tree will suffice for any man. Its not an elephant we’re burning here. Grandma was as disappointed as I was but there was no way out.

The tree felling committee was in high spirits; glad to get their hands on my grandma’s well wooded plot (she’s not exactly popular, what with her fiery temper). “Most of the wood won’t even reach the pyre” grannie remarked and narrated her previous experiences with funeral wood cutters. So this isn’t an isolated incident. All the dead and dying people in the neighbourhood werepotential threats to our dear trees and no one could stop them from expecting us to provide tree after tree to burn. I gaze sadly as the branches come down one by one with a thud. There’s enough wood already to burn the man but they’re determined to cut the whole tree. And all for what? Call me insensitive but let’s assess the facts. The tree is young, and it bears my grandma lots of fair sized cashews in addition to just being a tree and helping the earth around it in numerous ways. The man was a drunkard who did no great service to anyone and like all human beings, did a lot of damage to the earth. So it follows that the tree, young as it is, is infinitely more beneficial to the world than the guy who’s dead. Also, the guy’s dead after a long life and he tree’s just reached its prime. The unfairness of the situation is obvious.

The tree’s crown is coming down now. The blade is set on its trunk. Noone does anything to stop this murder. Only the ants seem to care; big red ants called ‘musharu’. The men jump up and down in their mundu. Some are hopping around the tree, fighting the ants who are valiantly defending their home. I pray for the ants to grow into giants with poisoned claws. Nothing happens. The men dance around wincing, but press on with the work anyway

(it would have been funy had it not been been in this tragic context. If only they’d show this resolve for something good)

.

The tree’s down and the trunk is carried off, leaving a stump in its place. The ants walk around disoriented; their leafy nests smashed.

contd

Day three

There’s considerable racket going on here today. The squirrels had appeared on the cashew trees this morning and the uppan birds were leisurely going about picking insects near the pond. But soon voices emerged from far away and chased away these delightful idlers and woke me out of my own morning laziness. The annual festival at the local temple was to begin today; grandma enlightened me. As part of their efforts to awaken dormant devotees of the neighbourhood, the temple 'authorities' had decided to fill our ears all day with the Gita and an assortment of devotional songs; a sort of warm up before the full scale blare of the festivities. I soon blocked out this minor irritation; hopping about the yard talking to red ants and irritating spiders building their nests on the grape fruit tree with my discourteous staring. But after about three hours of force-fed bhakthi, grannie had had enough. “what is this fool singing about?”, she asked aloud (quite unbecoming of a grandmother. You’d expect old, ‘wisened’ hindu women to be favourably inclined to all forms of religion!) .“For all we know, he could be reciting a grocery list with cries to the lord in between. What a fool!” she says as she goes out with a stern looking broom. Then up comes her head through the window.

“I will stuff these coconuts down his throat…that’s what I should do…!”