And so it came to pass

And the world had changed

imperceptibly

until one day it was time

A time of peace

and of pandemonium

when the soul was rent by happiness

and splintered by pain

and uncertainty

And slowly it faded

like a waking dream

though the haze

still remained

Ilyich and the Clouds

The clouds flitted by over Ilyich’s head and he watched them drift lazily, travelling where the wind took them. The gnawing feeling in his belly had come back this morning after a long period of absence and he tried ignoring it, concentrating on the shapes the clouds above him made. It had rained in the morning and there were still some angry ones that showered droplets down him. Tired after a hard day’s work at digging the furrows, he decided to take a short break before heading home. Now a strapping young lad of fifteen, Ilyich had been working on his father’s farm since he was ten. This was far earlier than usual in the village and had raised many an eyebrow, but Ilyich proved his father right. An intelligent and observant boy he would do his chores completely and well. Having been brought up amongst them, Ilyich’s friends were the animals, the wind and the clouds. In his free time he would spend long hours walking in the woods and picking berries and mushrooms, or sitting in the barnyard watching the chickens feed. All in all, he was a boy who made his parents proud. If there was one failing Ilyich had, it was that he was in a sense, self-absorbed. He would never mingle with the other boys and girls in the village and despite their numerous attempts at getting him to join them he would turn a deaf ear to their pleas. He refused to rejoice in their happiness or console them in their sorrow. Ilyich was content with himself, his pastimes and his toys. Although for a long while, a few of them would still look expectantly as he walked up the road past their houses, or came into town to collect the weekly mail, soon most of the boys and girls in the village gave up on him considering him a strange lad best left alone. All this suited Ilyich just fine while he was still a child. As he turned thirteen however, he became aware of a gnawing feeling in his belly, a sense that something was missing. However, by this time, Ilyich had started getting quite busy on the farm helping out his old man and the feeling did not trouble him much, until today.

Now, as he lay on the grass still damp from the morning’s shower, his hands forming a pillow beneath his head, and the sunlight teasing his face between sporadic drizzle, Ilyich once again became aware of that feeling. At first he tried thinking of what was troubling him but his mind soon tired of the chase and wandered off into the past. He started thinking of his childhood and how quickly it had been spent. Of the partridge nest he had come across during one of his walks in the woods and the fury of the mother who sensed a threat to her little ones. Of the times he had spent, watching his mother feed the chicken and the way they fought over the grains falling from her hand. By and by, Ilyich became aware of something quite strange. He realized that every time he dwelled on a happy thought, a burdened cloud above him would shower down some droplets. And every time his mind was weighed down with a sad thought, like the time his pet parrot died, there would be a thin cloud that let the sun through, so it warmed his face. He noticed that this happened for most of his thoughts, and also that the happier his thoughts were, the heavier it rained! Though he enjoyed the feel of raindrops on his cheeks, at one point – when thinking of the time his parents got him a puppy for Christmas – there was such a heavy downpour that Ilyich decided enough was enough and got up to go home. As that heavy shower now showed no signs of abating, he decided to take a short cut through the woods. Walking along, he came across a clearing occupied by an old man, who on closer investigation, turned out to be the ‘Wise Old Man’ as he was popularly - and sometimes jocularly - known in the village. And he looked wise indeed, as he sat there in meditation, his eyes closed and his long white beard reaching down to his knees. Ilyich had heard rumours that he was more than a 100 years old, but looking at him one would have thought he was no older than 50. Though he had no reason to, something made Ilyich approach him, cautiously and on tip-toe, not wanting to wake him and half-fearing the consequences of doing so.

As he came closer however, the old man opened his eyes, looked at him fully and said “Come on young man, don’t be afraid. Tell me – what is troubling you?” Whether it was the reassuring melody of the man’s voice or the deep, deep look in his eyes, we will not know, but Ilyich responded “O Wise Father, for I know you are wise indeed – I observed a strange thing today that’s been troubling me no end. I was lying in the farm – after finishing my work, of course – and noticed that the clouds above me behaved according to my thoughts – that they rained on me when my thoughts were happy, but were light and thin when my thoughts were sad and heavy. Could you please tell me what this means?” The wise man smiled gently and replied “Son, it is quite simple. You have made friends of the wind and the clouds. They are but souls and hearts like us and were following the basic principle that all things follow. When a burdened cloud sensed that your heart was light, it shed some of its load on you, secure in the knowledge that you would not be troubled by it. On the other hand, when your heart was heavy and clouded, a light cloud would spread even thinner, that you received the sunlight and felt more at peace. It is the same, with the other boys and girls in the village whom you have until now shunned. Go, mingle with them, share your joys and sorrows, and you will feel complete. And so saying, the old wise man closed his eyes and was lost once again in deep thoughts about heaven knows what. Ilyich went on his way, a curious lightness in his heart as he determined to follow the wise old man's advice.

Sure enough, on doing so the gnawing in his belly vanished and Ilyich was no longer considered a stranger in his own town. Many years later however, as he flitted from friend to friend in his pursuit of happiness, he realised that occasionally, he missed the clouds and the wind. He felt, though vaguely, another kind of longing creeping into him, this time in his heart. A longing to be free...free of the relentless cycle of give and take. And mixed in with this feeling was a small twinge of regret that he had come across that wise old man...

Deja Vu - Another (very) Short Story

Well...here's one more that I penned a month or so ago, to keep the blog alive while we wait for my esteemed blog-mate to come back from his sabbatical! ;) Hope you like it :)

Statutory warning: This story I must admit, is a bit weird and is, thankfully, not autobiographical!

Click. Ker-pluk. Matt awoke with a start as his door gently swung open and shut. He stared at it for a second, trying to ignore the frisson of fear running down his spine. The laptop’s screen was blank. Which of course meant he’d been dozing for more than 10 minutes, which in turn meant he needed another coffee. He jiggled the mouse and was faintly surprised and irritated to find the screen come alive with his Facebook page. “Guess I’m not the first guy to fall asleep while ‘Facebooking’,” he thought while refreshing the page to see if any of his 200 odd friends had decided to drop him a line. The clock showed 7.15pm and Southampton had seen its sunset two hours ago. A feeble halogen lamp half-heartedly threw some light on the lone car parked outside. It was a quiet night, like most other nights were in this busy month of January. The only sound he could make out was the distant but unceasing rumble of cars on the M-27, punctuated by an occasional thump as a neighbour moved about. The page had refreshed and, to his gratification indicated a couple of messages in his inbox. He opened it and caught up on the three-way conversation between him, his flat-mate Justine and their friend Lisa.

Justine- today at 5.46pm- “Hey Lisa, wie gehts?! I am planning to make some Soufflé this evening…want to come home, say 7pm?
Reply x Delete

Lisa- today at 5.57pm- “Ich bin gut, und du? Ah, Soufflé the original French way sounds very nice! I was planning to make some Zwiebelkuchen…maybe I bring it over and we can eat together?
Matt do you want to join us, it will be great fun?”
Reply x Delete


Matt sat back and stared out the window. On the one hand, he felt inclined to take up the invitation, confident that he wouldn’t be able to do much studying anyway this evening. On the other, it was a cold night and an entire day spent at home had made him extremely lethargic and a bit anti-social. Nothing seemed more tempting to him at the moment than a cup of hot chocolate, a blanket and a novel...

He was jerked back to wakefulness by the chatter of voices and the clang of a vessel being dropped. He got up from his desk and peered through a crack in his door into the kitchen. Through the closed glass door of the kitchen he could just make out Justine breaking some eggs. He kept watching from where he was, for some reason not wanting to intrude upon the scene. A few seconds later Lisa came into view, holding a knife in her left hand and a peeled onion in her right. She put the onion down on the counter and said something to Justine. Matt strained his ears but couldn’t catch the words. It must have been quite funny though, for the next instant both of them broke into laughter while gesturing at the knife. Justine reached into a shelf and pulled out another knife. They then started sparring playfully, grinning all the time as Matt continued watching, inexplicably entranced. The knives met with a ringing sound as both of them tried imitating moves they’d seen on countless late-night action movies. Lisa feinted to her right and then brought her knife in sharply across to Justin’s right cheek. Matt shivered slightly, not just because he was scared of knives, especially when they came anywhere within 5 inches of his face, but mainly because of Justine’s reaction- she was laughing, enjoying every minute of it, every thrust and parry! With a kind of nervousness inexorably creeping upon him he watched as she tried maneouvering herself so she could get a go at Lisa’s neck. And this was when things started to get bizarre. The change was in fact so subtle and smooth that for a few seconds Matt did not realize that something had gone horribly awry. As he continued standing there, a mute but deeply affected spectator to the charade that was being played out in the kitchen, it dawned on him. Right before his eyes the two girls had morphed- from two normal people having a good time to two angry, menacing beasts intent upon one thing only- first blood. Ten feet in front of him they stood, their grins frozen, turned into angry grimaces, the laughter gone from their eyes, replaced by the cold glazed look of killers. Petrified and rooted to the spot, Matt watched wordlessly as the knives came ever closer to their marks, wielded no longer by two normal, college-going girls but by some bizarre caricatures that seemed to have leapt out of the pages of a cheap comic strip. He opened his mouth to scream as they started grappling with each other but all that came out was a squeak. In a flash, the two girls turned towards the door. They spied him through the glass and as he watched horrified, they walked or rather marched towards him in unison, the grins still plastered on their faces. Lisa opened the kitchen door and said. “Matt do you want to join us, it will be great fun?” Stunned, Matt backed up as he heard Justine’s rejoinder- “We can force Matt to join us though it looks like he doesn’t really want to…” Suddenly, out of nowhere, he found his voice and screamed and screamed again as they advanced towards him, their knives raised….

Click. Ker-pluk. Matt awoke with a start as his door gently swung open and shut. He stared at it for a second trying to ignore the frisson of fear running down his spine. The laptop screen was blank. Which meant he had been dozing for more than 10 minutes… No…no…this couldn’t be right! Matt usually revelled in the sense of deja-vu, in the sense of re-living something that felt so real yet had never happened. It was one of those quirks of the human body, one of its occasional faults that only served to highlight the wonder that it actually was. But not this way…

He jiggled his mouse and found himself staring at his Facebook page. The clock showed 7.15pm. A thin line of sweat formed on his brow. He looked outside the window, onto the parking lot, its single halogen lamp half-heartedly throwing light on the car parked under it. The chill ran down his spine again as he reloaded the page. “Inbox (3)” said the top bar. Thank goodness…there was a new message! The déjà vu was over! He permitted himself a cynical smile. He must have dozed off after reading that message and then had that horrible dream. Staring outside vacantly at the shadows cast by a lone sycamore he decided he had probably watched one too many of those Tarantino productions. He was jerked back to wakefulness by the chatter of voices and the clang of a vessel being dropped. It was only then that it dawned on Matt that something was indeed very, very wrong. Suddenly uncertain that he had rid himself of his ’experience,’ he opened his Inbox and read the conversation that was going on between him, Lisa and Justine.

Justine- today at 5.46pm- “Hey Lisa, wie gehts?! I am planning to make some Soufflé this evening…want to come home, say 7pm?
Reply x Delete

Lisa- today at 5.57pm- “Ich bin gut, und du? Ah, Soufflé the original French way sounds very nice! I was planning to make some Zwiebelkuchen…maybe I bring it over and we can eat together?
Matt do you want to join us, it will be great fun?”
Reply x Delete

Justine- today at 6.03pm- “Hey cool, that’s fine! 7pm at my place…and we can force Matt to join us though it looks like he doesn’t really want to :P
Reply x Delete


The room suddenly became stuffy and suffocating. He sat there, staring at the words in front of him, feeling a leaden weight press down on him…Getting up, he peered into the kitchen through the crack in his door, knowing what he was going to see and yet irresistibly drawn forward like a moth is drawn to a flame. From where he was he could just make out Justine breaking some eggs. A few seconds later, Lisa came into view, holding a knife in her left hand, a peeled onion in her right. She set the onion down on the counter and said something to Justine. This time Matt should have been prepared, but he still couldn’t hear what was said. It must have been quite funny though, for the next instant both of them broke into laughter while gesturing at the knife. Justine reached into a shelf and pulled out another knife…

This time Matt didn’t wait. He screamed out loud sending his fear echoing down the narrow corridor.

Click. Ker-pluk. Matt awoke with a start as his door gently swung open and shut…

Terminal- A (very) Short Story

This is what happens when one waits the night out at Heathrow Airport, with sleep being denied to him by that mysterious inner energy that refuses to oblige when one really needs it.

Statutory Warning: Sorry to disappoint but this story is NOT autobiographical. Hope you like it anyway ;)

“Ladies and Gentlemen, we are at Terminal 5. This is Terminal 5- Heathrow.” Matt awoke with a start and swore under his breath. The ride from Southampton had been too short. That blissful state of sleep hadn’t got a chance to develop fully yet. Nor had that foggy but promising dream about a silver Lotus, or for that matter, the crick in his neck. He got out, dragged his bags out of the luggage hold and stood there as the coach drove off, taking in the sight of one of the world’s busiest airports, usually teeming with activity, now asleep. Sleep-deprived as he was, Matt felt faintly jealous of this giant mother-ship that usually spewed forth people out one end and aircraft out the other, but was currently dreaming its own dreams. He walked across bleary-eyed to the lifts and found his way ultimately to Departures on Level 5.

It was lovely. Rows upon rows of empty check-in counters stood on the far side, their signs lit up, casting reflections on the tiled floor. “British Airways is proud to welcome the world to our home in 2012” read a bright bill-board. Metal beams arched upward gracefully, curved above the counters and disappeared out of sight behind them, giving the place a deliciously mysterious feel. A handful of people, most of them asleep, sat or lay on seats along the concourse. A solitary employee walked back and forth at the far end mopping the tiled floor till it shined. It was 3.30 in the morning on the 29th of December 2008. Leaning over the parapet, Matt could just make out people stretched out on rows of seats, using their luggage as head and foot-rests, looking for all the world like toys discarded by a distracted kid. He smiled to himself. It was a quaint sight, but at the same time, strange- like looking at a famous movie-star without her make-up. He walked over to an empty row of seats and made himself comfortable- spread his bags out, stretched out his legs and waited for sleep to come, while staring at a blue flickering dot on a giant and otherwise black display board opposite. This time however, he was refused his sleep. He kept staring at the dot as if mesmerized, but soon his thoughts began to stray and within a couple of minutes, Matt had left Heathrow, had left London and had traveled quite far away.

He was, to be precise, in the dimly lit restaurant of the Bath YMCA. It was late evening on the last Friday of September. Most of the hostel’s octogenarian guests had retired for the night. This was where it had all started, the inexorable unraveling of his life- of their life together. In his defence, he was distracted while getting the coffee, trying to pin down a theory on why a horde of seventy- year- old’s would descend on a hostel in Bath in autumn, approach the only youngsters they could find and then proceed to declaim that they had lived in Bath for their entire lives and were taking a break from ‘Home!’ Whether the theory was finally formulated or not is debatable, but what did happen was that he forgot about Kate’s sensitivity to sugar. It was a small incident on the face of it, but now, in that silent empty terminal, with the luxury of three month’s hindsight and considerable time for reflection, Matt knew that that was what had started the ‘Break-Up.’ He should have remembered- that much was certain. But whether that would have changed anything or whether it was simply the proverbial last straw, something just waiting to happen was anyone’s guess. They hadn’t fought at the hostel, though the signs were there of a crack in the foundation. Back home in Southampton, Kate lost her temper when they found on arrival that he’d forgotten to clear the garbage before they left. Kate believed God was in the details. Matt believed neither in God nor in details. One thing led to another and they had had a row that only worsened when Matt’s flatmate Lisa stuck her head in to find out what was wrong. Kate accused Matt of being absent-minded, lazy and selfish. He on the other hand, while insisting that he clearly remembered clearing the bins, suddenly felt tired of the whole thing- this fight, their relationship, his studies, his life…He had shouted back, saying he found her not only selfish, but nit-picky, extremely demanding, irritable and- this came out without his realizing it- tiring. That clinched it and before Matt could say ‘I Didn’t Mean That’, the slamming of the doors was ringing in his ears, along with Kate’s last words to him- “I can’t talk to you anymore, and luckily, I don’t want to!”

It had been three months since and not a word from Kate. He had got caught up in life and drowned himself in his work hoping to push the entire mess into the smallest possible corner of his mind. Now it was all coming back in the belly of this silent monster that yearned for the hustle and bustle of human activity. Anything that is created for a purpose looks and feels desolate when that purpose is not served. An airport is meant to serve people. The only thing that made it look lovely in Matt’s eyes, at 3.30 in the morning was the confidence that in a few hours, that display board would be alive with colours- flight information, inane advertisements, statutory announcements. Those counters would have queues in front of them and the sound of heels and rolling strolleys and conversation would fill the now silent building. But again, wasn’t a human being himself a creation? And wasn’t the one sensible, ostensible purpose of his life to love? To share the gift that Life was with someone? How else would one prevent that feeling of desolation from creeping in? No…this was not right. He missed her, despite all her faults…or was it because of them? “I have to talk to her” he told himself and suddenly he felt a chill down his spine. Last week, his flatmate Lisa, who was still in touch with her had told him that Kate was planning to leave around New Year for Sweden on an exchange program for a year. For days he had been trying to get himself to talk to her but the moment he picked up the phone, his hands would quiver. Something told him that they were meant for each other, that that last fight was definitely not their final. And yet he couldn’t bring himself to talk to her, couldn’t trust himself over the phone or screw up the courage to meet her face to face. And now, it might already be too late…

All of a sudden, Matt felt cold. The sound of a coach pulling out reached him from afar, across the ghostly silence. The terminal seemed cold, empty….soulless. Matt longed desperately for some company, for a comforting hand, a comforting voice. As if mocking him, the display board sprang to life with a sign that said “Nokia- Connecting People.” I could do with some of that, he thought wryly. He glanced around, noticing the girl standing under the billboard, her hair lit up by the blue and white advertisement. He looked at her once again, idly wondering if she didn’t wear heels, else he’d have heard her come up and his eyes nearly popped out of his head. “It can’t be…I don’t believe it!”

He walked up to her in a daze, not trusting himself, feeling that the whole thing was highly surreal. She looked up, hearing him approach and dropped her bag, startled.

“Matt! Oh my God! What….what are you doing here?!”

“Kate! I… I never thought I’ll see you again and now" ...

The tack-tack of a pair of high-heeled shoes echoed across the terminal. A woman in a business suit walked up to a counter, half-smiling to herself as she noticed a young couple talking to each other suddenly drop their luggage and embrace like there was no tomorrow. The chatter of conversation floated to her ears as a group of foreign tourists entered the building, laughing at a private joke, enjoying a few precious moments of genuine happiness. The terminal was coming back to life. Dazed but happy, Matt moved toward the BA check-in counter after having seen off Kate smiling to himself as a thought struck him. This is a place where people embark on a journey or come back to resume one. Why in the world is it called a terminal?!