Visitors

Shankaran Kurup was sitting on the East verandah of his palatial mansion, reading the editorial page of the Financial Express. This had been his afternoon routine since many years now. He enjoyed his tea, along with keeping up to date with what was happening in the world of business. The breeze coming across the small pond made it all the more worthwhile.

The three people walked up from the southern end of the verandah. They came near his chair, and waited. A few moments later, Kurup looked up.

The one with the long grey hair looked at Kurup and nodded.
“Shall we go, Shankaran ?”
“Is it time already ? I still have a few things that I need to take care of”
“You have taken care of almost everything. You can relax now. Let others do their bit”

With a slight reluctance, Kurup got up. All four of them walked along the verandah, going into the house through the entrance near the prayer room. Just before going inside, Kurup looked back at the chair and smiled.

[Five hours later ...]

Good Evening, and welcome to News at 8. I am Nazneen. The king of the Indian publishing industry, Shankaran Kurup passed away today afternoon.
He was found dead in a chair on the verandah, at his house in Delhi. The cause of death has been declared as natural. He was 86. He is survived by his wife, three children, five grandchildren, two great-grandchildren, and his extended family of around 2,500 employees almost all over the world. … …

 

The Bench

Sitting on the bench, Dinesh thought to himself about how, after all these years, somethings were still the same here - the wooden benches, the swings & the slides for children to play, the open playground, the cement stage at the end of the ground - which was used by the town’s amateur theatre group. Dinesh went back to his school days - the cricket matches played on this ground, the annual Fair that used to be held here every Diwali, the plays staged by the local youths on clear December nights. He still clearly remembered the many summer afternoons that he spent lazing on the wooden benches under the big old shed, with his favourite comic-books for company. Those days, he could see his house from his vantage point on the bench. And his mother would always call out from the kitchen window, when it was time for him to go home.

Then, there were not many houses or buildings around. Now, the open plot of land was surrounded by new constructions on all sides. On one side was a group of  mansions. The other sides had multi-storey apartment complexes, with their high balconies looking down on the ground.

The only reason this plot had not been grabbed by any of the builders was because it was still at the centre of a legal dispute between the Desai family and the State Government. Both claimed ownership of the land, and their battle had been moving around from court to court - without any end in sight. The case had originally been filed by the Government against Maneklal Desai, when he had tried to sell the piece of land to a builder. Now, after his death, his son Vinesh was fighting to get back what he believed belonged to his father.

“Dad, who threw the ball higher ? Didn’t my throw go higher than Sumod’s ? You have to decide now“
Dinesh was brought back to the present by Pramod’s question. His seven year old twins were playing catch in the grass. He and his family had come down from Bangalore for two weeks, as the children had their summer vacations.

Since his mother was not keeping well, Dinesh did not want her to live alone any more. He had convinced her to come & live with them in Bangalore. Once his mother moved in with them, he was not sure when he would come back again, to visit his old home.

In the last 38 years, this playground had not changed at all. Dinesh hoped that the next time he came here, it would still be the same. He had so many wonderful childhood memories here.

He did not want to see a multi-storey apartment complex built on top of his memories.

 

The Jukebox

THE   JUKEBOX   –  a  short  story

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He parked his car, checked his mailbox and opened the door to his house. He had been away from home for two days, catching up with an old friend and ‘colleague’ after a long time.

In all these years, Nick had never come home to a sloshy & wet carpet. And, he was certain that it had not rained in town for the last two months. After the door had closed behind him, he could now hear the water running. He hurriedly plopped over to the kitchen, where he saw the waterfall cascading over the edge of the sink. After he turned off the water, he got ready to appraise himself with the scale of the disaster.

He vaguely remembered some local rumor about a gang of robbers recently operating in the neighbourhood, who called themselves the ‘Wet Bandits’ - named after a similar gang from a hit 90s comedy movie

The 40″ LCD TV, the BOSE audio system, the three paintings that he had recently procured at an art auction - it was all gone. He opened the closet to check if the 3-CD changer mini-jukebox that he had been working on for a VIP client was still there. It had been taken too !!

Nick Gray was never a person to lose his temper. He always knew to remain calm in the worst of situations. It was a requirement in his line of work.

Even now, he knew that all his week’s worth of hard work had been wiped out by these petty crooks who had taken the jukebox. But it was all right. His client was paying him more than enough, and he could afford to work another week to make a similar box.

He sat down and opened his laptop. On his GPS tracking application, Nick saw a blue dot moving west along the I-40 highway. He took out a radio-like gadget from a box, extended up its antenna and after a brief pause, pressed the big button at the center. A second later, the blue dot disappeared from the screen.

The next day, Nick did not get a chance to watch the local TV news channel. On the morning news, they had mentioned a strange accident. An allegedly stolen sports car had suddenly blown up in a huge explosion, as it was travelling along an interstate highway.

 

The Descent

 THE  DESCENT  -  a  short  story

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I stood right next to her, taking in the splendid view of the city nightlights. It was an amazing sight, and I was going to follow it now with an amazing moment. We both were standing in one corner of the open-air restaurant, at the top of the 40-storey high Crescendo Towers. It was one of the few tall buildings the city had. From there, Nicole & I could see almost the entire city.

I had been waiting for this day for almost three months now. Today was the day I was going to ask her the question. I was almost certain her answer would be ‘Yes’. I had known Nicole for more than three years now.

Without letting her know, I tried to get the small jeweller’s box out of my trouser pocket. The waiter with the sizzlers tray rushed past me, brushing my hand. My arm jerked from the impact. The box went flying over the  railing. The next second I had caught the box with my outstretched hand.

In hindsight, I don’t know if it was pure reflex action that caused me to jump and reach out for the box. Or was it the subconscious knowledge that I had spent a huge chunk of my savings on that exquisite diamond ring. Whatever be the reason, the result of that action was that I descended those 40 floors much faster than anyone would ever want to.

After that incident, I would give anything just to let her know that I love her immensely, that I want to marry her, that I want the two of us to live in our own big lake-side house, along with the four kids that we planned to have.

Here I am now, sitting right next to her, in her father’s car. He is taking her home.

If only Nicole could see me or hear me.

 

Man in the Mirror

                                                                               

He suddenly woke up, shaking like a leaf. In the little light coming in through the window, he looked around the room. The room seemed very unfamiliar. This was not the room that he usually slept in. It added to the craziness of the dream that had jolted him out of a sleepful state.

Mohit had dreamt about a car crashing over the edge, going off one of the twisting-turning roads in the Western Ghats, somewhere in Maharashtra. He had seen it very clearly. In the dwindling evening light, a maroon car was toppling down a ravine. He could not see who was inside the vehicle, but he could hear a man’s screams, as the car took the man down to what seemed would be a fatal fall. At the top of the hill, another car, that was until now parked by the side of the road, drove away towards the junction where it could get on to the expressway.
And then, in a flash, Mohit saw inside the car, which was now lying on its side, on the floor of the valley. The shock of seeing his own face on a corpse had woken him.

He was now in a decently sized bedroom. He could not remember how or when he got there. There was some other furniture in the room. There were two closed doors. He walked in the dark, towards the smaller door, at the opposite end from where the bed was. When he opened it, he could make out, in the faint light, that it was a bathroom. He fumbled on the wall for a light switch.

When the light came on, he glanced at the mirror, more out of an habit formed over the last 30 years. What he saw in the mirror almost had him fall back against the wall. 
The face staring back at him was not his !!!

 

The Package

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~~~  THE PACKAGE  ~~~    … a short story

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She opened the door to pick the package. It was not there. This was surprising. In the past so many years, Warren had never missed a delivery, or even been late.

Nicole rarely met Warren or talked to him. He came without a sound, dropped the package and left. Nicole always found it at the proper place, when she checked. Today things were different. As she went inside and closed the door, Nicole wondered if something was wrong.

She knew that Uncle Greg would want his dose of ’camellia assamica’ very soon - he was an addict. If Greg did not get it on time, he would start getting agitated.

Every two minutes, Nicole peeked through the curtains to see if Warren had come. After aproximately ten more minutes, she heaved a sigh of relief as she saw Warren’s vehicle turn round the far end of the street. As soon as Warren had done the delivery & left, she collected the package.

She was glad that her Uncle had not yet woken up and not noticed the delay.
Nicole hurried to the kitchen with the two bottles, and put the kettle on the stove.

 

Breaking News

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 ~~~~~    BREAKING NEWS     ~~~~~

                                    — a short story

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Rajendra Sharma loved Saturdays. It was the day when he had to work only till 2:30 in the afternoon, at the finance company where he was employed. He usually reached home before the clock struck four. And the best part was - he got to use the PC and access the net without anybody else to fight over who gets to use the PC and for how long. He would not be bothered by his children for now, as they would be still at their respective colleges.

On this 2nd Saturday in February too, Sharma was surfing his favourite news websites, including one site particularly for all the local Mumbai news. One of the pages that he visited was a feature called “Snapshots of City Life“. Sharma was looking at the dozen photos showing yesterday’s life in & around Mumbai. On the 4th picture, he smiled and turned around to tell his wife, “Malati, take a look at this photo. This girl looks very much like Priya“
Mrs. Sharma, not happy to miss even a single dialogue of the afternoon movie, walked over from the sofa to the PC.  ”What do you mean ‘looks like Priya’ ? She is Priya. You can’t even recognise your own daughter now ?” she frowned.

And then, with the kind of unity that is shown only by Chinese sychronised swimmers, the question mark of suspicion came on both their faces at exactly the same moment.

The photo on the monitor showed an almost deserted B.E.S.T bus-stop shelter. The only inhabitants of the bus-stop were a young boy & girl, presumably taking shelter from the sudden off-season rains that had drenched the city on Friday. The two were sitting close to each other, without space for even a malarial mosquito to pass between them. They were holding each others hands, blissfully unaware of the fact that they were posing for a photograph. The caption below the photo said “A couple try to stay dry, as unseasonal rains hit the city yesterday afternoon“

This was not something that the highly orthodox Sharma clan could easily digest. The worried parents were now thinking about how many of their relatives and friends might have already seen that photo.

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Her father opened the door when she rang the bell. On Saturdays, Priyanka looked forward to sitting and chatting with her Dad after college. That was the only day when he arrived home earlier than her. Priya asked her father about his day at work. He mumbled something about it being all right.
That was a little strange. Normally he had a lot of things to tell his elder child, his only daughter. But today his smile also seemed to lack the usual ‘Colgate Total’ shine.
A little later, along with the customary tea & biscuits, came the police-style questions.
Priya knew there was something boiling the moment her father took the role of the interrogator.

“Did you leave college early yesterday ?”
“No. In fact, since it was raining outside, for a change I attended all my lectures”
“Was it still raining, when you left college ?”
“Er … mm,  No.   Huh, I mean, Yes,  a little drizzle was there”

It did not even last the whole 20 questions, before the poor girl broke down and confessed.

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Priyanka and Adarsh had been together since three years, and both their households had not been aware - until now. The fact that both of them had their roots at the opposite ends of India did not help at all, in convincing the two families.

But finally, filial feelings overcame everything else. The Sharma & Menon families warmed up to each other. It was decided that once the children got their MBAs and started their jobs, only then they would be allowed to enter into wedlock.

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Its been more than a year since their grand wedding celebrations. In Adu & Priya’s bedroom, on the wall hangs a framed photograph - a picture of ‘an almost deserted B.E.S.T bus-stop’ - the same photo which had appeared on a website exactly two years ago, on this very day. 

 

Cellular Driving

  
It is a warm February night in Hyderabad. All the lights in the town are switched on - except the lights in this flat. Naresh sits in the dark, thinking about the light in his life that was suddenly extinguished eight months ago. He no longer has the desire to live. He does not eat at proper times and skips meals quite often. Today he has given dinner a miss again. Since his sister knows that he doesn’t cook, she always calls him over. Her house is just a five minute walk, but today he lied that he is going to a colleague’s place.
He does not feel like going to his office. He still does go though, just to try and keep his mind busy. But then at the end of the day, he loathes the idea of returning to a flat which is empty & lonely now.

He does not answer his cell-phone most of the time. He hates cell-phones now, although there was a time when he thought that it was the next best invention of mankind, after electricity. This is the same person whom you could always find with either the cell-phone stuck to his ear or else talking non-stop into his Blue-tooth ear-piece. He used to attend conference calls with his colleagues in the US, while he drove home in the evenings. Naresh liked to make good use of the hours he spent in driving - by calling and catching up with long-lost college friends, or by calling the architect, to discuss details about the large house that he was having built on the outskirts of town.

That house was Sunita’s dream home. Sunita had so many plans … about decorating, about the colours for each room, about the setup in the huge living-room, about the mini garden on the terrace. At that time, the house was going to be ready in another five months - which would have been exactly a month before their first child was due to enter this world.

All those dreams were shattered in a matter of seconds. That week, eight months in the past, Naresh was out of town on work. Since he could not make it this time, Sunita had gone by herself for the Doctor’s monthly check-up. After all the clinic was just a few streets away. On her way home, Sunita stopped near the road-side vegetable market. It would be nice to surprise him with some Gajar-ka-Halwa, when he got back the next day. She was standing on the narrow footpath, next to the street-light, and bargaining with the vegetable-lady.

Mr. Govardhan, the owner of the big electronic-goods store down the road, was driving home. And he was speaking on his mobile phone, instructing the distributor about the delivery of more 29″ TV sets. In a flash, the flower-selling boy’s bicycle came right in front of his car.

With one hand still holding the phone, Govardhan tried to swerve a little to the left to avoid hitting the cycle. His single-handed pull on the steering turned the vehicle far too much than he would have liked.

The car went crashing toward a street-light pole on the footpath. The vegetable-vendor, who had setup shop right next to the light, had a very lucky escape.

It all happened so fast that the lady in the cream coloured salwar-kameez, buying carrots, did not even see the car coming !!!

 

Gloomy without ‘Gumsar’

I used to look forward to visiting Gumsar’s blog everyday. Every day lunch-time meant, getting something edible from the cafeteria and sitting in front of the PC, reading his latest story-post. Gumsar was the name he had given himself on this blog, and I chose to believe that it was inspired by the poet-lyricist Gulzar.

He did not write things about himself, his job, or any general “my-day-today” like posts. All his posts were fiction - short stories. He spun such beautiful tales. His stories never stuck to the same type. They transcended across various genres. Some of his stories were wonderfully spooky - they could scare the living daylights out of the reader. So much that the reader would keep all the Laxman Sylvania bulbs in his house burning from dusk to dawn, so that one does not wake up in the middle of the night & get scared. But the reader would always want more.

Then some of his other stories, were his funny trips down memory lane. These posts would have his readers laughing away to glory and until tears came down. There would be instances of some reader breaking out into loud peals of laughter, very much like the ones we see in those Close-up Toothpaste ads.
Some of Gumsar’s stories would transport you to a different world altogether. If one story of his had you travelling in a Mumbai B.E.S.T. bus, along with the two protagonists of the story, then another story would make you feel like you were actually present on the day when Manori-Bai went around searching for her lost cow Phulgo in the dusty lanes of Sotkargaon.

All this until one day in July, he put out a post, much to the sorrow of his 50 odd regular readers, saying that he was going on vacation to Kerala for 3-4 weeks and that the next post would be in a month or so.

Soon, it was August, and everyone was expecting Gumsar to start posting soon. I used to check his blog daily even though he had said that the next post would only be in August. And everyone of his readers was sure that with a lot of fresh material from his visit to his hometown, he will come up with many more magic filled posts.
August gave way to September, which was then pushed to make space for October. Then November, December & January marched past to the tunes of the Republic Day parade - but still no further post from Gumsar. My daily checking on his blog had long ago diminished to visiting the blog ‘once in a full moon’

And then came the pleasant shock. His post on February 19th read like this …

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Good News … & Thanks 

Friends, there will be no more Fiction posts on this blog. While I was posting on this blog, I was in parallel, trying to get in touch with various publishers. And finally all my efforts have paid off. A small setup, Triad House Publishers, have bought my book of short stories.
The book, name still undecided, will be out in August this year. And since I am now saving my material for this book & future possible books, I will have to prevent myself from putting these stories out on my blog here.
So, dear friends, thanks a lot for all your encouragement & feedback. If it were not for readers like you, this may not even have developed into something concrete.

All my regular readers, please send your postal address to my e-mail id and I will make sure to courier you a copy of the book when it comes out. After all, you are what has made it possible. Lets keep in touch through mails. I will keep posting updates about the book and other stuff on this blog.

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After reading that, I was happy for Gumsar - happy that he was fulfilling what seemed to have been his long-cherished dream.

And I was also sad - sad that I will now have to go & find some other ‘Gumsar’ for brightening up my day … & my lunch-time reading.

 

Joy of Victory ?

Manoj pushed his way out of the train. Ah … fresh air again … he was happy to get out of the crowded, sweaty compartment of the Thane Local. He walked as fast as he could, down the buzzing-with-people street that took him home.

The moment his mother opened the door, he raced in and plonked himself in front of the Television. He didn’t bother to remove his shoes, or to take his dusty college bag off his shoulders.
India v/s New Zealand - day/night match - and India was batting, chasing a mammoth total. But then, Sachin Tendulkar was at the crease, and today seemed to be his day.
Manoj was happy to have reached home in time to see most of the Indian batting. He had bunked the last two lectures only for this.

His mother soon brought him a cup of hot tea and a plate of Batata-Poha. She also asked him to change, or atleast wash his hands before he ate. Manoj was least bothered - his bag & shoes & stinking socks, all lay in a bundle near the couch. He could not risk taking his eyes off the TV. He always believed that his team needed his ‘moral support’ - even if he was sitting in a room hundreds of miles away from the city where the day’s match was being played.

Two hours later, India had won, there was an empty plate & cup on the coffee-table and the stink from the bag-shoes-socks combination on the floor had now invaded every corner of the room. Manoj had not budged from his throne from the moment he had sat down.

Now, with the joy of India’s victory, Manoj finally stood up. He started emptying all his personal effects on the side-table, near the telephone. His watch, his old & faded baseball-style cap, his MP3 playing cell-phone and … !!!

After checking his pockets a few more times, and checking his bag, he knew it. Once again, he had unknowingly allowed the “Thane-local Pickpockets Association” to claim his wallet !!