The Day after Today

Today has been a different day for me for various reasons. There have been many "firsts" for today, starting with the fact that this is my first article in on blogspot in the wake of the blanket ban. Another first is that today is the first time I cleaned my hostel room. (In this month and not in the year!) Also, I killed a spider for the first time in this month. That is another first, considering that I am a peace loving person and I hardly kill any creatures, no matter how disgusting or irritating they are, save for the occasional flies, mosquitoes, ants, termites, all sorts of buzzing insects, insects which hover near the ear and beg for alms to feed themselves and send their children to school, rodents, all slithering creatures, including but not limited to alligators, crocodiles, lizards and the like and people who say "home" when you ask them where they live. As I said, I am a peace loving person.

So, coming back to the cleaning of my room. I don't know why I am saying "coming back" because I wasn't talking about the cleaning of my room in the first place. But I have habit of straying from the topic at hand and as usual I assumed that I had done the same on this occasion and therefore, I thought I'd write a statement about coming back to the topic at hand. So, there I was cleaning my room and feeling good about it, when I saw this spider. Now I am not in the habit of swatting at spiders the moment I see them. It's more of an instinctive reaction to ignore the spider and let it go along its business. I like spiders : they rid the room of the aforementioned insects. But this spider was different, it kept staring at me. As I went around my work of cleaning the room, I noticed two things : One, the room was looking dirtier than when I had started cleaning it and two, I had forgotten that there was a lecture I was supposed to attend at 1100hrs. Since it was already 1300hrs, I decided to give the lecture a miss. Another thing that I noticed was that no matter wherever I was in the room, at least one eye of the spider was always focused on me. Not that I hate attention, but attention of this kind can be unnerving. The next thing I know, the spider could be asking me to marry his daughter.

Spider : "Please marry my daughter. She's a darling and she has eyes only for you!"
Me : "Great! That's all I need. A spider with squinted eyes to be my wife! Thanks, but no thanks!"

Ergo, I was feeling a bit nervous and I was just dreading the moment the spider would make a move and talk about the prospective arachno-human tie up. I knew I could always make up a cock-and-bull story about having to attend the lecture (in case you are wondering why this should be a cock-and-bull story, please go through my attendance records for any theory course that I have signed up for) and make a "clean" getaway from the filthy room. But this spider never made the move. I think he was trying to feel me out; he wanted to see if his prospective son-in-law had enough guts. Apparently, this was some sort of a test of the panache I would display when faced with a difficult situation. I had to do something to be worthy of eight-eyes full of attention! So, I did what any normal, god-fearing, animal loving person would do : I killed the spider. This caused two things : all the eight eyes of the doting daughter rolled in their respective sockets and the mate of the spider I killed came along and dutifully ate the dead one. I am serious : it seems that this particular species of spider was the black widow spider. And the female just stopped short of remonstrating me for doing her job for her. It's a good thing I didn't marry her daughter. Or one fine day, you would have seen all the spiders in Mumbai making a bee-lind for Powai, a la Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. The reason would obviously be the feast sponsored by the squint eyed black widow spider!

Enough said about the spider though. My room is clean now and the spiders whose webs I ahd managed to clean have indignantly gone about their work and built themselves new webs, arguably in an effort to spite me. Little do they realise that they are just helping me keep out the insects I hate!

On Personal Hygiene

You come across them all the time, don't you? People (who I suppose themselves bathe at least thirty three times a day, give or take a few based on whether there is a water shortage in their area), experts in their own rights, advising you on how to maintain personal hygiene. You find them in huge bunches at social gatherings. They are the ones emitting deo fragrance rays visible to the nake eye (Thanks to Mr. Dave Barry for this line) And the moment they are within earshot distance of you, they talk in whispers. At least they think they talk in whispers.

"THAT GUY SMELLS SO BAD. I WISH HE WOULD MOVE AWAY! WHO INVITED HIM?"
"YES. YOU ARE RIGHT. HE SMELLS REALLY BAD. HE REMINDS ME OF THE GARBAGE DUMP IN FRONT OF MY HOUSE"
"SPEAKING OF GARBAGE DUMPS, I WONDER WHAT THE BMC IS GOING TO DO ABOUT THE GARBAGE THIS YEAR. I HOPE THE MITHI DOESN'T GET CLOGGED AGAIN"
"YEAH. LAST YEAR, DURING THE FLOODS, ALL THE GUTTER WATER ROSE UP AND CAME INTO MY HOUSE. THE SHIT HIT THE FAN, LITERALLY! IT WAS STINKING REALLY BAD"
"YEAH. THE BMC MUST BE BLAMED FOR ALL OF THIS. HE LOOKS LIKE THE BMC GUY. HE SMELLS SO BAD. I WISH HE WOULD MOVE AWAY! WHO INVITED HIM?"
"YES. YOU ARE RIGHT. HE SMELLS REALLY BAD. HE REMINDS ME OF THE GARBAGE DUMP IN FRONT OF MY OFFICE"

And so it goes, the conversation of these thirty three timers which is nothing more than random neural firings converted to speech by the vocal chords in their throats. I wish I could dump some garbage from the dumps in front of their homes (/offices) into their mouths. Although their bodies are clean, their mouths are filthy. These are the gossip mongers and how I would like to shut them up for good. They are the people that film magazines source their material from. Clean bodies, dirty minds. I'd rather have it the other way round. This doesn't mean that I don't indulge in personal hygiene (Is indulge the word I am looking for? Doesn't indulging happen occasionally?) I do invest in my body and I do take a bath or two regularly. In fact, sometimes I take as many as two or sometimes even three baths in a day. It depends on the compensation factor. This is a very complex factor I have come up with. Based on whether I am stinking bad or really bad (decided based on the reactions of the neighbouring building residents. If people from Building No. 20 call me (I am in 12) then the situation is a national emergency) I decide whether or not to take the one extra bath that I previously mentioned. I don't see what the big deal is anyway. I am an Environmental Engineer and I am doing my bit to save water for the nation. So, three baths a day, once in a month is good enough, no?

A little bit of fiction

Before I began my career (huh?) as a booger writer, I used to dibble and dabble in fiction writing. Since I haven't posted for quite a while now (and will not be posting for quite some time in the near future also) I thought I'd let you readers admire my fiction writing skills (if any!) :-)

My apologies for depriving you of a fantastic source of humour (I am so self centred, aren't I?) Egotist? Nope, the word you are looking for, you silly person, is egocetric. There is a subtle difference in the two words, about which you would have known, if you weren't wondering in your literature class in the year of 1923 at Dhobi Talao Municipal High School, what sort of thrashing you were in for if the cleaner realized that the girls bathroom had been choked by none other than yours truly when you were fiddling around with the cock (not that cock, you moron!) that handled the waste flow to outside the building!

Anyway, here's a story I wrote around two years ago. (Whew! Finally. I thought he was never going to end! How the hell did he know about the cock incident?) Read through and let me know what you make of it. The title of the story is "In the future"

“I’ve got extreme bad news”

“What is it?”

“Your friend, Abhay, has expired. He met with an accident while he was travelling on his astrocycle.”

“Oh dear! What an unfortunate event. May his soul rest in peace! His parents must be devastated.”
So saying, Vinay went and met Abhay’s parents. The next day, all the people, who were friends, relatives, distant & close acquaintances of Abhay, gathered at a common place to pay their last respects to the deceased. Then all of them went to the Memeraser.

The Memeraser was the place in the future where one could wipe out selective parts of one’s memory. In the fast life, no one had time to grieve over the loss of someone near and dear. The Memeraser was quick and efficient. All instances of a person/being in your memory were wiped out in a flash. All that remained was déjà vu. All official records on computers were also removed. The person became a non-entity. Like he/she had never existed.

The same was the case with Abhay’s acquaintances. It wasn’t as if they didn’t care. It was just that life had become too fast. People had forgotten that emotions were the basic fabric of being humans.

Elsewhere in the world

“I say, all this is rubbish. How can you allow the Memeraser to function? It goes against the fundamental concept of being humans.”, said Mark.

“Now, now Mark! You know how fast life is now a days. People simply don’t have time to rue over the loss. Its easier to forget than to wait for the so-called ‘time – the eternal healer’ “, said Anthony.

“How can you say this, Anthony? Do you remember how shocked you were at the demise of Neville? And the very next day, you return to work as if nothing has happened!”

“Stop reminding me of Neville. You always do that, although I have not the faintest idea who he was!”

“See! That’s the whole point! You don’t even remember your own dear cousin! What a time we are living in!”

“Please don’t make life difficult for me. You know I have to operate the Memeraser come what may. Go and whine somewhere else. All I care about is to make people happy”

“Happy? You don’t know what happiness is. You and everyone else on this planet is selfish”

Mark was seething as he left the Memeraser building. Within months of the technology being introduced, Memerasers had sprung up all over the world, ‘helping’ people lead their lives without the memories of someone who “had been”. Mark could not stand it. It was the memories that made man. Memories of childhood, of good friends, places, things and what not that differentiated man from animals. And now, human beings were transforming themselves to animals. In the jungle, the death of an organism did not matter much to anyone else.

People had tried to explain to Mark how the Memeraser was right. They used the famous “Don’t Care Ratio” talk with him. The Don’t Care ratio was ZERO. It was the ratio of the number of people who are affected when someone passes on to the number of people unaffected. In a population of trillions, this was bound to be zero. But Mark was adamant. He could not believe that people had become so insensitive. He wanted to change the world to the way it once was. To a time when people mourned the loss of a near and dear one & time, and time alone removed the sad memories and replaced them with happy memories of that person.

Mark started a discussion forum on the internet. He began lobbying against the Memeraser. Very soon, he had a sizeable amount of people supporting him. He realised that all was not lost & that few people, like him, still believed in the old time ‘rituals’. He decided to wield his prowess, to swing public opinion against the Memeraser. And then he was killed in a freak accident involving his car.

Do you remember Mark?

Mark? Who?

People who are short on internet time can mail me at gsumarji[at]hotmail.com for this story in a pdf format. Mail me at the same address in case you liked this story and would like to read other stories I have written. Substitute @ fot [at] in the email id provided!

P. S. I read about the cock incident in the newspapers. I still have a cutting at home. If ever I need some money from you, something to the tune of a few crores of rupees, I will threaten to mail photocopies of the cutting to all the females in your school. And the cleaner too for good measure. Looking forward to getting in touch with you!