Educo: to draw out. (the latin route of the English Educate)

A shop: any shop, your corner store, with everything you need for a regular day, sachets of shampoo, bundles of bread loaves, trays of milk packets and jars of candies. Candies, of various colours, in see through glass or plastic jars, all lined up on the front of the counter, with dull metal screw on tops, and a dingy interior with metal boxes, or drums of rice, and dal, and sugar. Shelves of soap, and a few tattered posters put up by company marketing people, and ignored by everyone else, once they’re up. You go in there, every one or two days, and pick up something, perhaps some butter, or maybe a cold drink, and some chips, a pack of cigarettes maybe?

The colony: a regular colony, the one you live in, with nothing special about it. Peaceful, quiet, small houses, big houses, cars, from Marutis to the skoda, and bikes, with young men on them, and young men looking wistfully at them. And of course, some girls, none of them attractive enough to catch your eye, or perhaps a couple that you watch as they walk down the road, and wonder about. Some old aunties and uncles, that tsk at you as you walk by, dressed in your ‘new’ clothes, chewing gum, and talking on your phone. And of course kids, small loud, bouncy kids. Kids coming home from school, going to school, cycling around, and around a park, playing cricket in a park, getting in everyone’s way when they lose their ball. Kids obsessed with Tv, kids who talk loudly, but also, kids who love candy.

A Writer, A Homecoming and some Friends

“I write,” He said, “It’s what I do.” Sounding a little pseudo intellectual to his own ears. Almost as though he were boasting, but given that he was the only one around, and he was talking to himself, he wasn’t. He was only expressing what he thought the truth was, and he thought, he wrote…

But about what, and why? These are questions I can’t answer, as I sit here pensive, in front of my computer, the cursor blinking, both patiently and irritably at the same time. Like that teacher, watching you, when you can’t tell whether she’s amused or is waiting for you to stop before she gives it you. I re read what I’ve just written, and reflect, wondering, like an actor, practicing in the mirror, ‘I think that’s a good opening, will my readers agree?’ ‘will the audience like what I’m doing, will they get it, how can I make it more affective? Should I go down on one knee?’ of course, as a writer I can’t do so myself, but should I make my character do so in this story. Which brings me to another point, what character? What story? Why? Because, I’m a writer, this is what I do. ‘Really, you can say that with a  straight face?’

The story of Warping part i

The story of Warping, well as you well would imagine, warping wasn’t always as well understood as it is today, the evolution of the sport, is complicated, and is tied intimately with the ultimate reward, which I’ve still not thought of by the way, (that is however immaterial as you’ll see.)

Warping began rather innocently, one late evening, when two, or maybe three, the records are not very well kept from the early periods, people met. Some people say these were the three legendary pokemon, prof, proof, and postM. But in truth, they became legends because of this meeting, rather than making this is meeting legen(yes wait for it…)dary by being in it. The meeting itself was rather a product of chance, and the tree of enlightenment, before it was called that, though, all it had was a number, which is itself now obscure.

Poof: Poetry on Poetry

Poof: Poetry on Poetry: "This is a set of four poems. I wrote them in quite a flurry, all in a very brief period of time. It was my disgust with the first poem that ..."

Wimple the Warper part i*

 Neville Wimple was a good man, and he was very aware of this, as he reached into his collar, and tried to loosen to give himself time to speak. He was staring at the Goddess, and naturally stuttering, ‘What had he said wrong?” to have her stair at him like that? What???

He thought, and he thought, and took a while to think, because he was Neville Wimple, and thinking is a pretty complicated process as you’ll agree. It involves quite a few cells of our body, and much of our brain as well. And it depends on minute-minute connections and chemical concoctions which no one else is able to replicate. And Wimple, noble soul that he was, had taken that gift, and turned it, in his own mind, into exercise… thereby reinventing the term mental exercise(read futility). Turning thought, into a whole new league(rgh! The pun). Of professionalism. Thought was now something you did, very emphatically, he would tell people emphasis to match, perhaps as a demonstration of what he said.

And they would listen. And no one knew why. Wimple, just said such cool stuff, or so he thought, and his little bunch of admirers thought. But in truth Neville was a Wimple, just that, and, wimples aren’t very wise. They’re just well Wimpley, which is a weird twist between watery and weird. And so was Wimple.

Anonymity

It had been two days, two long days, and now she had to go back, she couldn’t afford any more grief, already over the last evening, compensating for the last two days of staying away had cost her more sleep than her son’s death.

Two days ago, at the corner, just outside the entry to their alley way, at the dingy built over, and drippy end of which was the entrance to their small 5 storey building with its 36 rooms, each room a flat, and some flats were shared, shared by more than one family. They were the lucky ones, though, they could actually afford the rent of  half a flat all by themselves, and so her 5 sons… no 4 sons now, had enough space growing up, to stretch their legs in, and even toss when they sleeps. Luxuries that made their friends envious. And which had earned her the reputation of being a waster, after all, with that much more money, she could have afforded her husband’s alcoholism, instead of thrusting him out onto the street, poor man! What a woman!

Well, she was okay with all that, she thought, that somehow the extra 12 square feet of space, and not getting the smoke from the wood stove she cooked on, in their eyes, would contribute in getting her five sons, (at that time) out the life they had been born to. That had changed, recently, and quite drastically.

Two days ago, she had been on the same curb outside their alleyway, waiting for a bus to come, which would take her to work, when Anish, the youngest of her 5 had come charging down the alley, “ma ma,” he was shouting. She had left the house in a hurry, it was getting late, and she would miss her bus. She had also forgotten something obviously, she realized as he rocketed down the alley towards her. He was carrying her lunch in his hand, the plastic bag bouncing all over, threatening to tear.

“Slow down,” she called to him, concerned at that point more about the tiffin, and him slipping, “Slow down, It’s okay, come walking.” The curb was wet that morning, and he really might slip.

“Ma, you left your tiffin.”

“Yes, I know, now slow down before you slip and walk over here, or I’ll come over there with my slipper.”

That seemed to work, he slowed down. The she saw her bus turn around the corner at the end of the street, “Okay now come on, come fast, my bus is almost here.”