MS Word

The computer I am told

Cannot feel.

Yet it allows me to erase

All my mistakes

And start afresh

Without leaving an ugly stain.

Sometimes I worry

That machines will become like men.

Shock Value

'Sometimes only one ball can prove you a man' announces zee sports.

Collective sigh of relief from those who have lost the other.

Not so long ago even looking out of a window was a distant dream for me.Standing on tiptoe I'd strain to get my nose beyond the window sill ,but even then I didn't see very much.A little bit of the sky ,the dusty tops of trees and crows sitting sedately on the clothesline.Curiously beyond my grasp and beautiful.Now that I can get a comfortable view out of the window I only look down at the dirty grey water in the drains and the peeling paint of the neighbouring house and I am unable to capture the magic again.I suppose its all about one of those long words I didn't know back then-perspective.

Coffee At Nine

A faded red tablecloth
With an unsightly mustard stain
Right down the middle
The heat is stifling
And even the plastic flowers are dying

I steel myself against
Glancing at my watch
Yet the seconds tick sonorously
In my head.
Two chairs, two coffee cups
He has not come.
Not yet.

Chin cupped in my palm
I pour milk
And coffee
And sugar
And stir
At the pace of the fan
Rotating laboriously
Beside the wilted potted palm.

The chair screeches
As I move it away
From the window
And sip the coffee
Bitter.

To care

The windows were open
And the rain rushed joyfully
Into my room.
And with the wind it ravaged
My favourite bedside book ,
While I watched .
Ripping the pages,drenching them
While I sat,
Motionless.
Till it toppled over
An unrecognisable soggy mass.

Truth

There was once a little girl .With nothing of the pleasantness and sweetness you associate with them. There was something quite revolting about her appearance, that too long nose and the thin cruel lips , so unsuitable in a girl of her age. Nobody liked her and there was good reason for that, I admit. For just when you thought you had begun to be comfortable with her, on the verge of a reasonable conversation, she reached out with her jagged nails , which never failed to hurt ,and viciously dug them into your skin.

It isn’t right to be too harsh on her, and I suppose she was alright from a distance, it was just the personal encounters which were never pleasant. They left you with a bitter taste in the mouth and a general soreness of being, a feeling of your heart having been wrung. Yet when poets wrote copiously about her unearthly beauty everyone agreed. Of course ,of course ,they said, righteously nodding in unison ,we never thought of her as anything else. She had a name this girl, but I shan’t tell you for then along with hating her you might begin to hate yourself and I cant risk that.

In spite of her wild ways she wasn’t immune to the general resentment surrounding her and she considered curbing her manners, making the changes everyone wanted her to. It had to start with trimming those nails and uprooting her teeth. Training that sneer out of her lips and taming her hair to a natural shape. Once it was done everybody was pleased, they smiled and patted her on the back, congratulated her on a job well done.

But they couldn’t help thinking you know, of how things were still not alright.Of how much more monstrous she was now, how hideous and repulsive .They could come to no decision about which way they preferred her. I don’t think they ever will.

A short story

They swum about in the water ,tightly packed,skirting the seaweeds by a gentle movement of their fins,those ambiguously coloured fish ,which might have been orange or silver.One out of them one was a friend of Johnathan Livingstone, or so she liked to say.They weren't really on such intimate terms but she had once watched him during one of his great flights and worshipped him ever since.

Wanting desperately to be like him she relentlessly practised till she was weary to the bone and then practised some more.That sort of devotion is bound to pay off and soon she could swim backward ,with her tail pointed skywards, spinning around in circles all the while.All very complicated and useless of course but she enjoyed it and by then Johnathan had become something of a legend and she being his follower had to be given some amount of grudging respect.Besides, she was undoubtedly quite talented for a fish of her age.

All was going well but that itself is an ominous sentence and we didn't need to be told that SOMETHING was soon going to happen.It did ,but maybe we shouldn't call it a tragedy for after all some good did come of it.Hidden qualities were ,no matter what you say, discovered.

Old story,a fisherman caught the school in its net and they all died.but the tale of our fish doesn't end there.They were loaded into refrigerators till they looked glassy eyed and coldly dead and were then sent off to markets from where they were bought by families for lunch or dinner ,or whatever.At one dinner table the family took their first bite of our special fish and then spat it out.All hard and tasteless, they said.And so it was thrown away.The other one which turned out to be delicious had once been a silly little fish ,who simpered and giggled ,was nice but not very bright ,her companions had always felt.But this family of course did not know that (though I wonder if they would have cared if they had)and they waxed eloquent about the qualities of that fresh fish.While Johnathan's probable successor lay half eaten in the dustbin.

For those who missed it,this story has a moral.It teaches us that apparently useless people might have hidden virtues .....
or maybe,
it teaches us something else altogether.

PS.one question,i need to know if the message came through..do tell.