The Ladder

'Milan, go down and open the door. Baa has returned.'
'Milan!'
A hundred things wander in my mind. I will not go, it takes an effort. No, I will not go because I cannot.
I have to, though. I'll get a scold serving otherwise.
But I simply cannot. How can I? I have to get downstairs first...
(the ladder)
...I do not want to go downstairs. I hate it. I hate the ladder. Let mother think I did not hear her.
I scratch the wooden railing on my window aimlessly.
But mother knows I heard her. She's just in the other room. How can I not hear her?
I will make some noise. That way, she might think she was not heard. I will scratch this railing harder. No, I'll open this steel cupboard, its doors yawn loudly everytime I try to open it. Ok. Mom, I hope you're listening to this. You see, this noise is too loud, you might have been saying something, but it easily would have been drowned by this groaning door.
'Milan....E-Milannn!'
No, this is a stupid idea. What is there that can be done? Baa is outside, yes. He has to come in, and he does not want to be left there for a long time. But no, the ladder. The ladder, I can't. I simply can't. But Mom. She wants me to. And she knows. I am obligated now.
It's so complicated. Why don't they understand? It's because of the ladder. I can't go downstairs. But Baa will wring my ears later. There will always be later. It's inevitable. I have to go.
It's always like this. There are so many things I have to consider while doing anything. My face is getting hot and sweaty. I simply cannot tell anybody, because I will not be able to explain.
I'll just simply not go. I'll deal with the consequences later. Now is the problem, I wish I was in the past, or that this present has already happened.
Why can't she go herself? Why do I have to go every time? Why don't they realize my problem in going downstairs. Opening the door is not a problem. Getting downstairs is...
Footsteps approaching the room. The sound of the hasp being turned and squeaked. The crack as the doorflaps are unlocked. The creak of the opening flaps and an angry foot stepping across the threshold.
Ok, panic now. Panic Now! Run.
I shelf all my problems and leap through the narrow space between my mom and the right side of the doorway...
(a whiff of coriander. Tomato chutney for dinner)
Mumbling 'I am going, I am going ni...'
I bound down the narrow ladder to the groundfloor below, three rungs at a time. Rushing mind. The thing. The thing under the darkness of the ladder. I can nearly feel its cold grasp through the gaps between the rungs where the wooden boardings have come apart. Yes, it has been busy prying and tearing the boardings open. On my next step, it'll grab my left ankle. I don't know, it'll probably pull my whole body into its dark realm, and that is simply terrorizing. It does not make any sound- after all, it's just a shadow. I hate it, I hate it from my core. Why doesn't Mua realize this? Why can't she tend to a matter as simple as this?
My left ankle nearly missing the last rung and the leg bowing violently. The knee buckling crazily, but somewhat holding me in place, my left turning out like a bent ruler.
I then jump on my right foot onto the ground so fast my body didnt get a chance to put all its weight on my left leg.
(weepy relief)
(thundering heart)
Control slowly coming back to my mind, I reach the door handle...Baa. He's been there all the time, what will he think? Why I took so long a time to reach here, he won't understand...
I hurriedly open the door, straining my eyes beyond the towering figure of Baa towards the sunny sky and welcoming its rays to come inside and devour the thing under the ladder. I hardly register Baa ruffling my hair (his clothes as old as him and belonging to him like a second skin, and his unrelenting love showing through his creased face). My mind is soaked with the problem lurking in the depths of the dark. I hate uncle. I hate him for not listening to my plaintive cries for fixing the boardings, because it's getting stronger everyday and is feeding on my fear because why else do I feel its presence grow exponentially when I am uncertain and fearing, like a dog growling deeper once it senses the other entity beginning to cringe in fear and cower. Why won't uncle fix it, when it is eating on my heart. Pretty soon it'll be fearful enough to take his notice and then it might be too late and it might start to feed on his fear too who will save us then?
(alone)
I whirl around, and just in time see the last leg of Baa vanish into the first floor's landing...
Alone again, and now even worse- the thing is now awake and alert and it waits for me.
'Baaaa!!!'
Heart quailing and turning into butter, I cry and run up the rungs again, tears flying from my face like drops out of a squeezed lemon, my face and legs numb and heavy with fear. My little nape hairs rising and the skin on my arms and back crawling...
No. No. Gasp, no... the thing... the ladder thing...

Train of Thoughts

I love traveling in the Second Class- there’s so much air in the compartments…

So once I was on a train (The Tangential Express) to Rajasthan, and I was being exhilarated by the fact that I was standing on a doorway that had no door to contain me, a block of air traversing through my body. I thought- what an opportunity to aerate my cranial hollow, and stuck out so much so that only my palms and feet-fingers were actually inside the massive, hurling lumber of steel; Imagine a horizontally aligned miniature human parachute holding the train in its course.

Air blasted through my left ear, and swept off all of my grievances and misgivings out of my right. My top floor felt aerated. If I stuck both of my pinkies to partially block the left earhole, I could even manage a whistle loud enough to contest with the train’s.

Suddenly, from the corner of my eye, up on a gentle bend, I espied a huge shaft of metal gate on the tracks, which allowed only a few inches of space for the train to shoot through. Wait a minute, I thought- Rajasthan is a hot place- look at all the sand; metals tend to expand, right? The train must be swollen with all the heat; can it really fit through the gate? So I rubbernecked (wincingly) to get a better look…

The train snaked lazily towards the gate, and amazingly shot through the gate. Hurray, I mentally shouted, causing an echo, which was quickly drained out with the air tunnel phenomenon going on inside my head. A classic Doppler effect.

If I hadn’t surfed along this tangent, my amazing experience would have ended right here. For I would have had time to withdraw my chute to the compartment. From where I was, I could see the solid gate hurl towards me in a frightening momentum, and although I managed to get inside up to my neck, I felt more than saw a big thump on my left temple…

My left eye jumped out, but the optic nerve yo-yo’ed it back into my optic hollow- but the pupil was facing inside, noting the amorphous brain sitting sagely inside- I noted a sense of Deja-vu. A loop of optic nerve was now hanging out from my left eye-hole, sort of like a telephone cord holding the receiver in its rightful place…

Staggering with the experience, I propped my body against the wall of the compartment, and hung my left arm limply over the optic loop, and tried to regain the composure. I had shifted my whole weight onto my right leg, which was shaking crazily, threatening to buck. Everybody in the train had a gaped look in their faces. A few passengers started to vomit on each other, and triggered a chain of induced throw-ups all over the compartment. After a while, walls were dripping off dull-colored viscous fluids- I could make out that this lady had chicken sandwich for lunch, while that man had tequila shots the night before. It’s hard not to get the picture…

I looked back at the innocent doorless doorway that had started all this. The air that was now coming in now felt chilly. I felt naked in the audience of annoyed passengers. I pretended that there were some sand grains in my right eye, and rubbed it vigorously with the sides of my forefinger; and during the charade, as surreptitiously as I could (given the situation), I grabbed my left optic nerve and pulled out the eye. I carelessly stuffed the nerve back into my skull and plopped the eye back into its place.

Accident Prone / Off the Tone

I remember running between computers…

Sometimes you’re doing a task in your computer. Then suddenly you have to use another comp u.r.g.e.n.t.l.y. You find an empty cubicle, turn on the comp, and realize that you had left your fingers at the keyboard of your own comp. You hurry back, collect the digits, go to the other comp, realize your eyes are dribbling on the floor, and that somebody just tripped on your optic cord (talk about somebody being on your nerve).

All the while, your brain’s dizzy with the frantic, bouncy pictures registered by the retina. You hurriedly pick off the staple pins from your cornea, re-wet your contact lens, and pop the orbs back in… before realizing that you put them in wrong holes. You then ask somebody to pat the back of your head to pop them out, and although you deftly catch them in your palms and put them in their respective holes, your left eye is put the wrong way round so that you momentarily glimpse the puffy brain sitting amorphously inside your head. You rearrange the left eye, and, as an extra measure, you staple your eyelids to your forehead (thereby recycling the collected pins) and paste a generous length of cello tape over your eyes to keep them in place, but taking care not to run the tape over your eyebrows (coz it hurts when you take it off).

You finally sit in front of the other computer. Then you realize you need to go to your computer i.n.s.t.a.n.t.l.y. You rush to your desk... and you realize that you had left your digits at the keyboard of the other computer. Plus, the tape has already started peeling off coz your eyes are now watery. And when you get to the other computer, the person is already back in his seat, and you see your fingers deposited in his pen stand… But you see the person also has a cello tape put across his eyes, but his left eye is put the wrong way, so that the iris is facing the inside of his head… you begin to smile, solaced by the confused look on his face… it’s not only you after all.

You start to laugh uncontrollably…

Tie Me

I noticed at the sun-up,
The unraveling silk strands
In my embroidered tie.

Fingers stuck to the thought.
Mind speculated in panic.
Eyes gaped.

Me lighted a match,
‘N hovered it gently,
Near the problem.

Tie whooped into flames.
‘N ash only remained.
Shitfully shit. My tie!

I blink off my reverie, ‘n glance
At the affectionable cloth, lounging
On its back, on my visitor couch.

Uhh! Still reassuringly there. Still sexy.

I’ll probably use a mosquito coil instead.

I do Tagore!

Put lime in your rhyme to make sour your power. Pick your dime in time, and not cower in last hour.

When things start to bore,
and days begin to sore,
I make myself adore,
Mr. R N Tagore!

When I tend to abhor,
detest from my inner core,
To stop from hating more,
I try Tagore!

Lives damsels tore,
Envious beings of poor,
Fresh are his lore,
Salving Tagore!

It's now nearly o'er,
This work of lore,
So I read on slo'er,
The book of Tagore.

Conditioned Airspace

I gingerly enter the white box. It is heavily carpeted in the manner that voices didnt bounce off surfaces, and footsteps weren't heard. There is an ambient light and shadows do not become.

Everybody is chained to a caffeinated drink and is either talking animatedly or searching for an animated topic. Each possesses a placard ("let me serve you") among a few displayables in their unpapered desks.

An odd chain of varied rings from different telephones throughout the workspace create a sustaining urgent melody. Intermittently, unattended cell phones jukebox cliched tunes. Now and then, I can hear paper rustles, squeaks and groans from wheeled chairs, unintelligible telephonic conversations, and the sighing air conditioners.

I feel I do not belong in this box. No matter how hard I try, my tie is too bright to match the surroundings. I try to stifle oncoming grins and end up looking smirking at best. I try to take in affected smiles and indifferent gestures as professional etiquette. I feel a rush of blood in my face as I try to maintain my composure.

In one corner, diagonally opposite to where I entered, is an unassuming desk manned by an unassuming person. Behind his shoulders through the thick glass of a fixed window, I see a warm-yellow sunbathed outside. Ignoring the need to blurt a courtesy, I clamber over the desk, (the man unsurprised and smiling knowingly), paste my face to the window and drink the scenery.

It is a traffic joint. The fumes seem unchoking and weary faces do not show from this point.

Pretty soon, a kid notices me looking outside. He waves to get my attention, and makes an obscene gesture with his crotch... And I laugh.

Drunken Gazal

Listening drunkenly to the lazed gazal tune, he turns a blind eye to the direct sun in his eyes. Even the fly perched majestically on the silk of his nodding tie could not get on his nerves. Sighing contentedly, he feels vibrated at harmony with the hum of the sensual female voice, and lets his hands float on the wafting wind.

When I am like this, he exclaims to himself, I feel as impulsive as a dog.

As if to prove himself, he suddenly breaks his momentum and sits down cross-legged in the middle of the road, his earphone still filled with sultry croonings. Not even to the whooshing truckload of policemen (that leaves his shirt and tie flapping crazily) does he decide to bother.

Gently, he realizes that he does not feel any necessity to reach his office today.