Daisy- Radio Artist1

Mickey -Radio Artist2

Mrs. McDonald -An old lady

Louis -Mrs. McDonald’s nephew

Dewey -Mrs. McDonald’s butler

Huey -Mrs. McDonald’s son

Mickey: This play is never going to get complete.

Daisy: Not if you keep whining like a 3 year old who hasn’t got his Christmas present.

Mickey: But just look at what we have written till now. Its so run of the mill…lovely Mrs. McDonald, a kind, old lady [Mrs. McDonald enters and sits on a chair], very nice and sociable…

[Louis enters]

Louis: Hello auntie, how is your arthritis?

Mrs. McDonald: Hello my son…nice to see you around. What can you expect from an old lady, they are painful as ever. Its just the old age, I guess. Let me have Dewey fetch you some tea.

[Dewey enters]

Dewey: Did you call me, madam?

[Mrs. McDonald raises her hand]

Mrs. McDonald: Yes, could you please….

Mickey: This is supposed to be a radio play and just look at these silly dialogues, “Did you call me, madam”, its so 1950ish!

Daisy: Its not the dialogue which worry me. It’s the lame plot you thought of.

[In the mean time, the butler and the nephew vanish, Mrs. McDonald lowers her head]

What a silly way to be murdered. And by the way, who can imagine that a sweet, old lady can…..

[Mrs. McDonald screams and puts her head down. Her son and the butler rush into the room]

Dewey: Murder most foul!

Huey: Mother who could’ve done this?

Daisy: Rubbish! It sounds like he is asking his mother who killed her. Just listen to your plot, a scream is heard, Mrs. McDonald found slouching on her chair, very puzzled and confused. Son, nephew and the butler, each have a motive – the butler doesn’t like the old lady for having paid him so poorly, the nephew has an old family score to settle and the son of course, has a lot to inherit. So who do you think poisons old Mrs. McDonald’s tea?

[Mrs. McDonald rises and screams]

Mrs. McDonald: What do you playwrights think of yourself? She is right. Your play is pathetic but see what you’ve written about us. Just because we are characters in your imagination doesn’t mean we don’t have feelings. You have made my nephew real smart, my son stupid and what do you think of me, I’d fall for the old ‘poisoned tea trick’. For your information, I have my husband sip my tea before I drink it. And call me an old lady once again and you had it, mister.

Mickey: I rather had a strange thought. Its as if the characters are talking in my head.

Daisy: [all tired] Yes Mickey, I always expected that you heard voices.

[Dewey enters]

Dewey: Madam, this is highly inappropriate.

Mrs. McDonald: Shut your stiff upper lip. I knew from the day you came that I was paying you too much.

Dewey: Right-ho, madam. [and leaves making a face]

[Son enters]

Huey: Mother, aren’t you supposed to be dead. For once, can you stick to the script?

Mrs. McDonald: You miserable creature, wag that tongue once more and I’ll cut it off like I have, your heritage. My little gets it all. So much for your motive, eh?

Huey: You deserve what’s coming to you, you old bat! [he leaves]

Louis: Auntie! Thank God you are alive! I thought…[begins to stammer]

Mrs. McDonald: Oh shut up. Just like your father, can’t say a sentence straight.

Luis: Auntie, don’t talk about my father that way.

Mrs. McDonald: Run away, you little brat. I’ve given you motive enough now.

[She turns to writers] And I haven’t finished with you, you sorry bunch. What a miserable plot! What a clichéd play! If I had written a play then I would have…[holds her head, wobbles and sinks into the chair]

Mickey: Daisy, I just had strangest thoughts about the play, in my head. Its like all the characters were talking to me. And the plot seemed so good. But I still didn’t understand who actually poisoned her tea.

Daisy: [throws back her head and laughs] I did, you silly! I felt she was talking too much.

The best stories and the worst crimes are those that involve passion. I feel that was what he was trying to tell me, before he started narrating his story. It was not much of a story as it was a recollection. Or so I found that out later.

It was early Sunday morning that I woke up, and toed him in the ribs to get up. We had gone to the party together and got totally drunk. He even had brought his girlfriend over to the party. She was a petite, little thing, and I really wish the both of them had never met. I felt that she’d look better around my arms, but I’d rather not explain that to him. There was no one really awake that early, and I heard the faint solo of Hotel California wafting from the adjoining room. His room smelt like a bachelor pad. The bed was propped up against the wall, and mattresses were laid on the floor. He said that it was cooler down there. Whatever made him happy. I grabbed my brush and started from the door when I felt his clammy hand grab my ankle. “S-Sit down.”, he mumbled. “Let me go and brush my teeth.” I snapped back, and my head started to ache. “N-no, if you go I’ll forget what it was.” I decided to humour him, and sat down. My legs were aching anyways, and I was in no mood to walk the distance to the toilet. “This better be good” I told him. I reached for the pack of cigarettes on the top of the table, but they were way out of my reach, so I fell back on to the mattress.

“Stan”, he mumbled, “I want to tell you about this dream I just had. This was you and Maggie on the train, and it was pulling out of the station. I was standing all alone on the platform, waving to the both of you. ”

“Yeah Carl, we were doping, with your blessings.”

“No Stan, it was real, you were going away with her. You really like her, don’t you.”

Hotel California was replaced by ‘Turn the page’. Whoever would listen to that stuff so early in the morning.

“Carl, you’re off your head. You know I’m happy for the both of you.”

“I love her, and I don’t want to dream about her with someone else.”

“Don’t worry, Carl, she will never go out with anyone else, you should trust her more.”

I pulled the both of Tropicana off the table.

“Here, have a swig of this, you’ll feel all better.”

He propped himself up, and tool a long swig. He flung the bottle to the other side of the room.

“Hey, this stuff is bitter.”

“Must’ve gone bad, been a week since its been bought. ”

I started to get up, when I heard him snarl, ”You like her, don’t you” I swung around, to narrowly miss the chair he swung at me. “Carl, you’ve gone mad.” I said as I scrambled for the door.

He collapsed on his face roughly between the table and the mattress. The fan creaked incessantly. The first rays of the sun started poring in through the window, and fell on the back of his neck. His legs were twisted in a strange position under the table. The next door occupant finally refined his taste and played the acoustic version of ‘When September ends’.

There was a sharp tap on the door. I walked over to it and cautiously opened it.

“Is it over”, she asked.

“Yes”

She handed me the note which I cautiously slipped next to the body.

“He’ll never hit you again”, I said, as we headed out the building.

Stories about crimes of passion are quite good as well.

“..you win a few, you lose a few.” Thats what my dad tells me every time. I think he forgot to add the part which says regardless of the outcome, you get screwed everytime. Thats life, mate. Short and sweet, and lasts as long as you live. I wish I had the kind of life I overheard at the cafeteria. The tall bloke with the smart pressed suit, pressed for time always. Managed to get the hottest chicks in the little time he has to spare in the cafeteria. Or that couple of married people who always end up wandering all over the campus. So much for the vows of fidelity.



No, its more than this, it has to be, I thought, as I woke up the next morning and got ready to go to office. I suppose you’d want to know the story till now. Its been pretty much the same thing, as the first statement. There you go, ladies and gentlemen, the story of my life. Work. Repeat. Highly simplified.No, but its not going to be the same for long, this is where the entire story changes. And you know why? Because this is going to change my life. Check out for the update next week, and see how my life becomes really interesting.

Why do you always make me think.

I never know what you try to say,

Do we even speak the same language,

Is it that I get lost into your eyes when I cannot understand you lips,

And I see the depth of feelings there

Or is it just the reflection of my smile?

After all, do you mean what you are trying to say?

Or do I just listen to what I want to hear?

Wrote it for some school kids’ contest as an exhibit. I know, it sucks.





I was born way back in the 1960’s, when the air around was easier to breathe,



In koramangala many a brother and sister of mine, who by me were green,, content and free.



The ground below me clung around, and the sky was blue as you could see,



But now the only blue sky you have is on your computer or our color TV.







All my life I gave, and asked for such little in return,



And around me my brothers die, as you progress, slash and burn.



But I stand strong, I do not intrude, even through lifes unsightly turns,



Till on fine day the road I shaded,







My fate now rests on the contractor’s blade, and the Bangalore development authority,



I now seem to block ebb of traffic, for the increase in traffic they couldn’t forsee,



So uprooted I am from this barren soil, not even so much as allowed a plea.



This is the time I leave, my brothers, this is the last goodbye from me.







But as I leave and go to the tree grave in the world beyond,



My leaves will wither my branches broken, an I be leaving this earthly bond,



I’ll probably be made into matchsticks or plywood, or A4 Executive Bond,



But I’ll laugh at my brothers closed and confined,



for the only place you’ll ever see, a green and brown and shady tree,



But while you slash and burn, please bear in mind,



That someday that’s the place where you too will be,



Someday, the world will end without a tree.

The old wall sodden with moss. That funny smell. The wall, crumbling under its own weight. Wondered what kept it together for all these years. Why would it stand through this relentless, all drenching rain. And those large deep brown bricks, don’t see them around anymore. Inside the house was even more depressing. The old tiled roof- i could actually see the chinks in the tiles, and patterns of moss underneath them. Yes, this roof leaked. I felt like i was in the last century. And how could i forget that old black and white television. The kind with the shutter in front you could pull and close. But that wasn’t what i set out to tell you, no.. Describing that house was the last thing on my mind. But the feeling of the place had seemed to have seeped into my skin, almost like that constant moisture you could feel inside the plaster, and the sand which seemed to be like an invisible grit carpet under your feet.

What did interest me was that old clock on the wall. Not a grandfathers clock, but those nondescript kind with a pendulum inside the glass case. Chimed at the half hours and the hours. Sounding out the time to an empty house. Empty. That’s the feeling you got when you went inside it. You could feel the hollowness in your own existence. Like that God damn moisture I kept feeling under my skin. God, it was as if the place was inside my veins. The house was far from empty ,it was full as it could be, with rotting furniture and random items strewn about the house which time had failed to rot like the rest of the unidentifiable things stuck to the walls or floor. Like the entire place had been soaked in a giant layer of spit, and everything had congealed into a uniform mass.

And that dampness.

I draw a deep breath as I feel the oxygen in my bloodstream run shallow. Its more like short gasps being all i can afford. I look across the dimly lit rooms. The humidity was so thick, you could feel the air making its way into your lungs like a liquid. A broken window pane looked out into an overgrown backyard. There was the crumbling remnants of a well there , and its paved surroundings. Moss there too. Even the old pulley with the frayed rope was there. Thick undergrowth. You could lose your soul in that vegetation. I push open the window. A shard of glass falls to the cement. It shatters the silence. I look at the millipedes crawling there get smashed by the glass. One of them curls itself up making it look like a wound up spring. The damp earth near pavement, with nothing but saplings pushing their way out, trying to crumble the cement as they continue their pitiful existence. I get the feeling someone is with me in this room. How many lives and deaths did this old hovel see. And how many different feelings did it harbour. My great grandfather whispering sweet nothings to my great grandmother. My uncle and aunt as teenagers courting by the door. My pitiful existence in solitude by the window. The cloudy sky offered no sighs of blue, just the dull white light that preserved this place a few centuries behind the world. An old clothes line sagged between two sticks. A dull red rag was tied to one of them.



The nurse walked into the dimly lit hospital room. She took the warm towel off the patients head and wiped it dry. She turned on the lights and went to check on the other patients. The bedside table had a bunch of faded flowers on them. They would never be seen anyway, by the patient. They would be taken away and replaced by fresh ones the next month. And the next one. Till he would die someday.



The sun finally managed to cut through the clouds and started drying the place up. That feeling of warm moisture under my skin stared departing.



Tomorrow I think I’ll go to the beach and bring back some old memories. I wish I could imagine people there as well. I feel so lonely sometimes.

It looked too old to hold money in it. I guess that it’d take a brand new bank note and turn it into a crumpled mess by the end of the day. But the old man didn’t look like he’d have currency to ruin. He’d taken it out to show the artifact he’d got back from Greece, a marble chip off one of ‘them old statues without arms’ as he’d put it. I wondered to my self how that tattered old relic could contain that chip for so many years.

It was around the time the old man yawned and wished aloud that it would rain, when a strange tatter of paper dislodged itself from one of the obscure corners of his wallet. It was chewed up on all four sides, with the age I guess. “Don’t open it”, came the stern warning from the old timer. “I wasn’t even going to”, I replied, offended. Sorry son, but some things are there in life that you’d just be better off without knowing. Seeing that I was interested, he continued.”It was a long time ago, son, when I was just a young lad like yourself. I had gone out to the big city to find myself a job. Times were hard back then, and finding oneself an honest job was as difficult as finding a pink pony”. He chewed on some tobacco, and offered me some. I declined, but my eyes stared eagerly on to know about the obscure paper. “It was around time I finally managed to find myself some work, that I laid eyes upon her for the first time”, he continued. “She was the prettiest thing in that part of the country I’d ever seen. She smiled at me on the walkway, while passing by, and at that time I knew that she was the girl for me. My eyes followed her all the way till she disappeared into the chemists. And that’s the time I knew I couldn’t get her. That’s the first place I tried to look for a job, and he turned me down the first time he laid eyes on me. The man seemed to have hated me even before he knew me. And I knew that was his daughter. That’s the girl everyone was talking about, and I knew she was to be mine.”

” I got up the nerves to start talking to her, and she liked me instantly. She loved the way I talked and said that she’d never met anyone like me before. God hadn’t given me much, I wasn’t much to look at and not too skilled with my hands. But the only thing He passed on to me before He chucked me into this world kicking and screaming was the ability to talk. I could talk to her for hours about every topic under the sun and she’d smile and listen to me like it was the most interesting thing in the world. And then I realized something more important than my gift to talk. It was the magic when you said nothing. Yes, we fell in love. I was already there, but then she fell in the same pit as I did. But her father wasn’t to know about it, because then we’d be doomed. Ours was a love that was very hard to imagine, impossible , in the society we were. And she was too in love with me to leave me. So we clung on to each other like we’d never leave each other.”

The train stopped at an obscure stop. He leaned out of the window to spit his tobacco. “Then what happened?”, I eagerly asked. “Then the inevitable happened, the father got wind of our little affair. She said a thousand times that week that she’d leave me, but each time, I’d assure her that we could go on. But not this time. He father had found out everything and threatened to lock her up in the house for good till he could find a boy suited to his tastes for her. Even then she didn’t want to leave me.”

“It was my last day on the job, and I knew I couldn’t stay. But I knew I couldn’t leave her. I had to get her answer, I couldn’t leave if I knew that she still loved me, and I knew she did. So I went to her window and asked her for her final answer, if she’d run away and get married. So she wrote it on a piece of paper and threw it out to me. At that moment her father stepped out and saw what happened. I clutched the paper and ran away. I knew now , even if I wanted it, I could never get her. But it would break my heart to know if she’d actually want to go with me that fateful day. So to this day, I have never opened that paper. “



The old man suddenly got up and headed towards the door. The story had seemed to have deeply disturbed him and he stood by the door and watched the scenery pass by. I couldn’t resist. The old man could’ve waited his whole life without knowing what was in that paper, but I had to know then and there. I carefully unfolded it, and saw. Before the old man could return, I folded the paper.

He told me this ” Son, if you are ever sure of anything in your life, don’t wait for luck to turn up. If you ever love someone, don’t hesitate and let thing turn sour. Act on your love, or you’ll end up with an unopened answer and wait all your life.”

I smiled to myself, returned the blank paper to the obscure corner of the wallet.

Maiden effort, after such a long time…





Thinking after so long.. Thinking about life, its progress and unidirectional nature. You will only grow older, you will only learn more. You can never grow any younger. Never be able to heal fully. If anything happens, It can never un-happen. Can make amends but never heal someone.



Can you ever take it back? Life seems to be a history text book read out to you real slow. When you are growing up, you get so much of knowledge, all at once. Overwhelming you, to know so much happened even when you weren’t around, behind you r back. And then things begin to become real slow. You can watch careers flourish, even your own. And then you watch all those things happened in slow motion. Like a movie star making it real big after many failures. Its not like you wake up one day and read the papers that someone made it big out of the blue. You have to watch them through their darkest moments. You have to watch yourself through those darkest moments. And then you grow old. You know you are fairly old when the latest hits of your youth are played back on VH1 as golden oldies. And then you realize that the things you learnt through out your life are more than any history text book can hold.

And then you know that you can advice someone without having to wonder how it will turn out.



Is there really this plan we are supposed to be living towards. Does everything happen to make the world progress towards a deterministic future. But if entropy is to constantly increase, how can we predict the future or expect it to make more sense than the present does. Is there a future, or is time an active amalgalmation of a collective imagination?

Did you ever think about all those little creepy crawlies that seem to scuttle around the place with all those legs and nowhere to go? Well, most of the time, we don’t, because we have better things to do, places to go, things to do… But i still recount my close encounter with the creepy kind.

Twas a warm night, and i couldn’t get myself to shut the windows, so i slept in the warm moonlight, having nothing much better to do than sleep. And when my dream reached to the part where I had my arm around two girls, one seemed to fancy tickling my arm, and so ticklish did the tickling get, that I woke up and looked blurry-eyed at the world at 3 am. And it was then when I saw somehting hop off my back, and scuttle under my bed. Hmmmmm, I think to myself, it seemed to be rather large. So I bent all the way down, and through my still blurry eyes, I peered under the bed.

I landed on the far side of the room. If there had been judges watching, I’m sure that an olympic long jump record would have been broken that day. For I had seen the image of a nasty looking spider peering back at my from under the bed. And I could swear, that spider looked nasty. What made it all the more creeepy was the fact that a few minutes agom it had taken up boarding on my body, and , no doubt, was looking for lunch. Now that spider was huge, and don’t believe all that they say on the discovery channel, all spiders are bloodsucking monsters.

Fun fact: Spiders can eat upto twice their body weight, so

if you see a really big spider, don’t worry, its only a

third of what it looks.

So that was that, it was me against the spider. I gathered all my guts together, and searched for something to squash my adversary. I picked up the biggest book I could find(it happened to be one on Electrical Power. Now thats showin them!!). And out I set on mission squash-em.

I look under the bed, and theres nohting there except dust, books which i lost, and a half eaten apple(yuck). Well, no spider in sight. I guess the little critter was afraid of me after all, the coward. Its all the same with cowards, whatever species, whatever race, animal, human….Ha, one more triumph of mankind. Thats the way it is, the way its always been, man over animal, the top of the foodchain…

Returing to my original place again, in the same manner of flight, I settled to realise the mistake that I made was the same mistake made over and over again by the commandos in the jungle. They always have someone to look out behind the company, and in front of the company, and sometimes, even at the sides. But no one, ever bothers to look above, in the trees where some happy sniper sits to pick out hte stragglers one by one. No one ever does that. And that day, even I failed to notice the spider dangling above my head, examining the dandruff on it.

And good ole spidey was probably smiling with his vicious jaws and his eight beady little eyes.

The whole world seemed to go much slower. I started reflecting on my past life and realised that this wasn’t the way the world was supposed to be. Is the world supposed to be man against animal? Are we here to establish our presence and neglect all other on this planet. Is this the way the world was supposed to end out or what. With these noble thoughts I lay back down on my pillow, a changed man.

And now i have a totally new, non-violent perspective towards life.





And oh, spidey crawled again on my non-violent arm again, and I was not very amused. So there is a fading eight legged patch above my bed, and yes, a similar one on my library copy of Tolstoy’s War and Peace.

Amen.

There should be a different meaning to life,

something to do with the fact that i belong to myself alone,

the fact that i breathe for one soul,

but i share this planet with zillions of others,

and not a thought in my head has passed through mine alone.



There has to be more meaning to life,

i to my God alone,

and i am his only son,

but salvation is there for all,

even the prodigal son

who left and returned.



Is my life like all the others,

another product in this overfilled world,

am i not doing something new,

do i tread where others already have.



Do i find meaning on this bleak ball,

spinning around a fire,

like eight others?

Or am i the one who discovers,

that i am no more different than the next?



But i never will,

because that will make me special..