The Bottle

The man knew this place like the back of his hand. He probably could sketch each rock, every tree, the anthills present here from memory. He trod the pathway unfeelingly today. Mechanically. Noticing nothing. His legs carried him without any conscious effort on his part.

He swayed a little as he walked. He gripped the bottle in his hand tighter. It had been a long time since he had been to this place. He stopped a moment and took a deep swig of liquor from the bottle.

Random scenes started floating in his memory. He started to walk without realizing again. He had always been lonely in his life. But he had never felt alone. It was only after he got married and had his first child, he had realized that his life had really been empty till then. He was happy for the first time in his life.

The scenes in his head ware clear and the images lifelike. He was holding and feeding his son while the toddler was gazing at the moon. He was holding his kid’s hand as he walked his first steps. He was blowing air into the wheels of the tricycle, as the child impatiently danced around him. He was teaching him the alphabet from a ridiculously huge chart. He was trying to explain division as repeated subtractions. He was correcting the loops in the ‘g’s and the ‘y’s in the boy’s cursive writing book. He was waving his son a bon voyage, as he left with his mother on a ship - a trip on the sea - which had always been the boy’s dream; using all the strength he could muster to keep his tears hidden. He could, as clear as day, hear his son’s choked voice assuring him that he would explain in detail every little thing that occurred on the trip. He could see his wife smiling, as she put an arm across their son’s shoulders. He was watching as the ship drifting away beyond the horizon.

The images became muddled and blurry then. It was like in a tragic movie fast forwarded. Headlines from various papers about the shipwreck. Delays in the search and rescue teams. Body counts. Missing people. His son and his wife among the feared dead list. Mourning and cries. His first drink. His tenth. His hundredth…

The cold sea breeze hit him then. That broke the images and brought him to the present like magic. He stared into the calm sea for a while. His mind was surprisingly clear for the first time from a long time now. He had always loved this beach. He had fallen in love with this place about the same age that his son had. The family used to come here as often as they could. This was a secluded and an unheard of place. It always felt peaceful here. He felt that he belonged again. The raising and falling of the waves calmed him. He stood there for a long time. He slowly began to feel that he could heal. That, at last, he could accept that his family was gone.

By force of habit, he raised the bottle to his mouth. The moment the liquid touched his lips, he felt disgusted with himself. His child would not want to see his father like this. No one would. He had let his sadness ruin his life long enough. He ran a few steps on the sand and threw the bottle as far as he could into the sea.

He felt strangely light. He took a huge breath and exhaled slowly. He could feel the pain of his loss start to ebb away slowly. He sat down on the beach and looked at the reflection of the moon on the waves in the distance transfixed. The waves lapped at his feet every now and then. He felt that he was a part of nature.

After a long time he decided to leave. He would change everything. The beach had done him a world of good. But there were just too many memories here. He decided that he would go to a far off place and start a new and sober life all over again.

He stood up and turned around. The bottle lay in his way again. The sight of it somehow made him angry. He picked it up, all set to throw it into the sea again.

But this bottle felt different. It felt slightly old. He looked at it. It was opaque, dark and corked. It was not the same bottle that he had thrown away. He pulled the cork off, and realized that it had a letter within.

The moonlight was not really bright. But the man didn’t really need anything more. He did not even need to read till the end of the letter.

It started – ‘To Daddy…’.

He could recognize the loop of the letter y in his sleep.

The Party

PS: 'Cos even small ideas are publishable too'

PS1: TINAMITE: The internal online quarterly magazine of the company
PS2: Before I knew it I had a mail saying -

Aniruddha: Welcome to Tinamite team and we look forward to working with you.

As a part of the 'working with you' I was to write an article to - 'enthuse many more TIers to become a part of/ contribute articles in many ways to TINAMITE'.
PS3: The article is pasted exactly as it appears in the magazine.
PS4: The article below took the least amount of time to post to the blog ever. I just 'selected all' in the original article and middle-clicked in the create-new-post window. :)
PS5: Editing the article in blogger - even adding this PS - is screwing up the entire arrangement of words and images. That is the reason for the existence of this post.
PS6: The background in the original article in the magazine is white.
PS7: TINAMITE May 2009 Issue

Update: The pictures in the post below had to be modified as the original pictures were linked to the company's internal site. :)

Cos even small ideas are publishable too

[This article is a stub. You can help TINAMITE by sending in new articles of your own.]

Wise men say to open with a joke. Especially in posts like this one. Studies have shown that most of the times, this makes people to actually read till the second paragraph at least. I thought of using the spherical chicken joke*, but deemed that too clichéd, thus, a bar joke follows - “Infinite number of mathematicians walk into a bar. The first one orders a beer. The second orders half a beer. The third, a quarter of a beer. And so on. The bartender says "You're all idiots", and pours two beers.”

Subject of the article:
‘Put Something In’ TINAMITE, where ‘Put Something In’ is partly defined by:

Put Something In Draw a crazy picture Write a nutty poem. Sing a mumble-gumble song Whistle through your comb Put something silly in the world That ain't been there before.

- Shel Silverstien

On a more serious note:
A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.[1]

It is certain that in this esteemed organization that several people amongst us have unique talents that transcend just exemplary skills in everyday work. So, put your creative hats on, grab a piece of paper, a pencil and get started. Consider this article a personal invitation to submit your creative outpourings.

Frequently Asked Questions:

How to write?
No thinking - that comes later. You must write your first draft with your heart. You rewrite with your head. The first key to writing is... to write, not to think! [2]

What to write about?
• Travelogues: The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page [3]. So, Travel. Fill pages. Submit the pages filled. Thus, more people can travel. Fill pages…

• Music: Supposed to be language of the soul. The poetry of the air. Love in search of a word. The shorthand of emotion. What feelings sound like. So, if you stumble upon some music that comes close to the above description, spread the joy. Let others know. Choose TINAMITE.

• Gaming: The Quakers, the Counter Strikers, DOTA warriors, PS2/ PS3/ Xbox/ Nintendo /Dreamcast/Game boy users, the MMORPGers - the rouges, the priests, the night crawlers, even people who stick to Minesweeper - As a Draenai Elf Vendor might say - "Your gold is welcome here!" (as long as it takes the form of an article) - feel free to discuss latest games, latest consoles, 25 men raids, God Like and Triple kills... even less than 100 seconds in expert level Minesweeper.

• Short Stories: The short story is like an old friend who calls whenever he is in town. We are happy to hear from it; we casually fan the embers of past intimacies, and buy it lunch[4]. Send in your stories. We would be really happy to hear from you. We might buy you lunch too.

• Poetry: The only problem with Haiku is that you just get started and then[5] Any poem with more than 17 syllables, thus, is most welcome.

• Art: A picture is worth a thousand words. A sketching or a painting is worth even more. Enough said.

• Hobbies: When your hobbies get in the way of your work - that's OK; but when your hobbies get in the way of themselves... well…[6] Put them in the magazine.

• General stuff: Individuals can expect miracles to happen to them, at the rate of about one per month [7]. Document any such revelation informally in TINAMITE for the greater good.

If you are reading this, it means that you have almost reached the end of this article:
• Firstly, thanks a lot from taking the time out and perusing the article. Arigato Gozaimasu.
• To define is to limit[8]. The ideas presented here constitute just the tip of the iceberg. As the tagline of the magazine says: Let your thoughts explode.
• Always remember -
o “Nothing is original” [9]
o “It’s not where you take things from—it’s where you take them to” [10]
o “90 percent of everything is crud.” [11]

We sincerely hope that you take up an action item to contribute for the future issues of the magazine.

* A farmer notices that his chickens were sick, and calls in a friend, who happens to be a physicist to help diagnose the problem. The physicist calls him back a few days later and says: “I think I have solved your problem, but it works only for spherical chickens in a vacuum”.

Credits:

[1] Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. [2] Forrester, Finding Forrester [2000]. [3] St. Augustine. [4] R Z Sheppard. [5] Roger McGough. [6] Steve Martin.

[7] Littlewood's law [8] Wiltshire's Law of Explanation [9] Jim Jarmusch [10] Jean Luc Godard [11] Sturgeon's revelation

Spice

the only variety in life...

PS:

• Long since forgot what I set out to draw. Finished the second part of the strip. Didn't want to discard that amount of effort [:)]
• Just to clarify. The dude in the strip is eating.
  

Edit: White Noise (Header)

The full screen F11 screen shot on my computer looks something like this. Scrolling down is absolutely essential for every small thing. This is in no way user friendly. And me being the most frequent user, it doesn't help in any way. And as the blog is creepy as it is, I can get rid of the huge picture.

Anyway, since there was some effort in choosing that particular picture and caption, and since the net keeps stabbing every five minutes or so, I thought I would write a couple of lines to justify why they were put up in the first place, before discarding them.

The header picture is the theatrical poster for the movie - White Noise, released in 2005.The caption is a play on the original quote by Don DeLillo on his own book called White Noise."It's about fear, death, and technology. A comedy, of course." -- DeLillo quoted in 1984. And I duly changed it to - "It's about randomness, life, and philosophy. A comedy, of course."

What the book - White Noise by DeLillo is really about -
From the DeCurtis interview, DeLillo:

"In White Noise in particular, I tried to find a kind of radiance in dailiness. Sometimes this radiance can be almost frightening. Other times it can be almost holy or sacred.... Our sense of fear--we avoid it because we feel it so deeply, so there is an intense conflict at work.... I think it is something we all feel, something we almost never talk about, something that is almost there. I tried to relate it in White Noise to this other sense of transcendence that lies just beyond our touch. This extraordinary wonder of things is somehow related to the extraordinary dread, to the death fear we try to keep beneath the surface of our perceptions."

I try to do exaclty the same, as evident from any random post of mine. :P

The idea was to continue ranting till the net stabilies. And it has now. /Rant thus
Btw, this blog made the status message of some 8 people in my gchat list simultaneoulsy. It is worth a read. :)
PS: The full screen F11 screen shot of the blog looks now like this:Only the font remains. Way better now. LQTM at Leo Tolstoy Quote though.
PPS: For those who follow anime - Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood has started. YAY!

Voted!

'cos an indelible ink line on the fingernail is l33t.
:D

Life. In a nutshell.

And so i happened to see this dude online after the longest time.

[Started: 9:23 am on Tuesday]

me: oye
longest time, man
he: oh, hi
ya
me: still in blore?
he: ya
me: still in [insert the company name here]?
he: ya
me: wrote GATE?
he: no
me: wrote CAT or any of the other similar ones?
he: no
me: continuing in the company for now?
he: yes
u?
me: yes
the job good?
he: ok. job is fine until they pay
me: the food good?
he: food from home
me: oh. ok
me: no plans for higher studies, etc this year then?
he: not yet
me: internet not accessible from your company?
he: gmail, yahoo and all blocked
me: thoo! only
me: any increments in pay?
he: no
urs?
me: no.
me: any new girls that are friends?
he: OMG, do u really know me?
me: is that a yes?
he: it was Oh My God
me: i know, man
he: so..no.
me: ok
me: can i blog this?
he is offline. Messages you send will be delivered when he comes online.

[Sent at 9:34 PM on Tuesday]

Scylla and Charybdis

The Assassination

The stick spun and twirled. It fell far for such a simple flick of the hand. The dog was after it in a flash. It picked the stick up and brought it back to its master. The general took the stick from its mouth and looked at it fondly. The dog never failed him. It was the only living thing that he trusted. He kept his distance from everyone else. That was what made him so efficient. So ruthless. So dangerous.

The man, spying at the general from outside, took out a cigarette from his pocket, threw it up and caught it in mouth. He lit the tip with his lighter. He was an assassin hired to kill the general. He felt this assignment was going to be particularly easy. He watched the general get into his car with the dog. A posse of four guards led the car in the front. He looked at his watch needlessly. He could have sworn it was 10: 30 am in the morning. The general was a machine. Everything around him worked like clockwork. That was going to be his downfall. The man took one last drag at the cigarette and flicked the stub away.

The man walked away slowly. Head bent in thought. Replaying the events in his mind. Tomorrow was the day. He was prepared. This certainly was going to be very easy.

He was in his position a little early. He had planned an all out attack. There was no need for him to find a secluded place from where he could choose to snipe unnoticed. Secrecy or delicacy weren’t the issue here at all. The people who’d hired him only wanted his assignment done. He promised results. The methods that were used immaterial.

There were only four guards and he would take them all out. The amount of time it would take for any other back up to arrive for help, was more than enough to make his getaway. With practiced dexterity he replaced the existing magazine in the gun with a new one, patted his overcoat to see if the explosives were still there, patted the other side to check for his knife and extra magazines, and mentally checked that the other gun was still in his right sock. He would not need to use any of the others except the gun in his hand. This was just force of habit.

He still had some time to kill. He lit a cigarette and waited.

And exactly at 10:30 am, as predictable as day, the general got into the car. His dog followed him in. The posse of guards got on their bikes. The man took a deep breath and stepped forward, his weapon already in firing position. The moment all four bikes and the front of the car came into his shooting range, he started to shoot. He reeled off six shots in a matter of three seconds. Every one of them hit home. The four guards fell before knowing what hit them. The chauffeur was slumped over the steering wheel, with a hole in his forehead. The man covered the distance between him and the open rear window of the car within the next two seconds, so that the general could see who his assassin was. That was his trademark. He made sure that the last thing that his victims saw before they died was his face.

He pointed the gun at the general and expressionlessly pulled the trigger. The gun clicked hollowly. Taken aback, he clicked thrice in succession. The gun was completely jammed. Nothing like this had ever happened before. Time slowed to the point of being completely still. The general recovered form the shock remarkably fast. A gun materialized in his hand suddenly, as if by magic. He fired once. The man felt the bullet thud just below his chest. He stepped backward half instinctively, half by the force of the bullet. The general fired again. The man felt the bullet enter his thigh this time. He was now falling backward in slow motion. After what seemed like an infinite time he hit the ground. The man was completely on auto-pilot now. In a daze he tried to reach for the gun in his socks. Bending over that much with a bullet in his stomach felt impossible. Automatically he removed a stick of explosive from his waist, lit the tip with his cigarette lighter, and threw it into the car through the open window – all in one movement.

All this had probably taken less than a few seconds. It felt like hours to the man.

The explosive fell on the seat next to the general. It still hadn’t gone off. Blindly the general picked it up and threw it back out of the window. The man followed the parabolic trajectory of the explosive from the car to where it fell just out of reach of his hands. He vaguely remembered that he should be having sights of his whole life flash before his eyes, at times like these. It seemed slightly ridiculous that the only thing he could think about was how he was watching his own end in slow motion.

The dog jumped out from the open window in a flash. It picked up the explosive stick, jumped back into the car and brought it back to the general.

The dog never failed him.

Saturday, April 11, 2009.

6 posts.

15 odd comments.

17 conversations.

4 great ones at that.

Gobi Manchuri & Mountain Dew.

Recollections & Reminiscences.

Today has been nice.

Nice is good.

:-)

The Blue Folder

And so I found this thick blue folder this morning. I hadn't come across that for a very long time now. It used to be the source of all knowledge and wisdom. It also used to be the storage space for all creative outpourings before the advent of Web 2.0.
The contents of the folder included old question papers, random NTSE exam problem solving tips, humorous quotations and random quotations printed on the huge computer sheets with holes punched on both sides, the message of Gandhi and other leaders, random quiz questions, articles about the environment, culture, teaching in the mother tongue as opposed to English etc.. And more importantly it contained most of whatever I had written (with a lot of help from my dad) for the various essay competitions, speeches, debates etc. It also contained arbitrary pieces of poetry, random sketchings etc.
A good part of today was spent in posting the stuff that was in English here. That explains the four posts that follow this one.
:)PS: Both pics were ripped off the internet. Neither of them accurately describe the blue folder. The second one comes close though.