The Cipher

“I love you,” she said. Her face was damp with tears and the misery made her look ugly and old. She was young and pretty; at least she had been an hour back. When she had believed that I loved her back.

I looked across the café at the barista. She was decorating a cream topped beverage with bright pink sprinkles. The moment warped and grew sparkly as everything became razor sharp but tinged blue, like a great TV screen going bad. I could see the sprinkles reflected in the barista’s eyes.

I turned back to her to see if it changed the way she looked. Her face grimaced with misery as she saw my dead eyes. She could see the effects of the warp, but she couldn’t understand it. No one could.

I looked down at my hands. They were bathed in blue, streaky fire. Little sparks jumped from one finger to another and bounced between my hands. I raised my hands and looked at her. She looked miserable and confused. She was just reacting to my vague gesture. It wasn’t oh-my-god-your-hands-are-on-fire confusion. She couldn’t see it.

“I have to go,” I told her. She let out a sob that quickly plummeted into a wail. My hands flared, covering my arms and then my entire field of vision in a flickering blue hellish haze. It was out of control.

“You can’t leave,” she screamed. “I love you! I cannot live without you! You have to tell me you love me! Say something, damn it!”

With each scream, the blue haze flickered more intensely. I was vaguely aware of everyone in the café looking at us. I didn’t have to look around to know that a portly man in an overly embroidered beige jacket was demolishing the pink-sprinkled, heavily creamed beverage… behind me. I could see the barista frowning at me and I could see her thoughts spilling out of her mind in strange purple words… Jerk! Cheat! Liar!

None of it was true, but it didn’t matter. It was too late for all that.

“Say something,” she shrieked. I felt all the glass in the café tremble a bit. So it really happened, given enough pitch. I raised my hands again and saw that they were now an intense, tightly packed band of blue energy. All it would take is one word. But this time I had waited for too long, let it build too much. I had no idea what would happen. It was time to find out.

“Boo,” I said.

 

 

“We should have got here earlier,” the strangely tall woman said.

The man shook his head, stopping to tap his pipe out over a smoldering trashcan. “He was too old for a cipher, too dangerous. We couldn’t have saved him.”  

“But we could have saved a city block full of norms,” she said, looking at the still smoking pile of rubble and the desperate activity around it.

“It’s alright,” he said, refilling his pipe. “They’re just norms.”

 

The Dream

The mind is cruel
It toys with you
It makes you think
You think you want
It makes you believe
You believe you need
It makes you dream
But it's all in the mind
It sets you off, chasing mirages
It convinces you that they're yours
Personal, irreplaceable dreams
It leads you on a merry chase
It makes you doubt
It makes you wonder
It makes you bitter
And a bit of a cynic
It might even make you crazy
Till that incredible point in your life
When you actually catch a dream
And hold it, fluttering in your hands
When you look upon it
Willing yourself to believe it's real
When you taste it
And breathe it in
That moment when you realise that
The mind wasn't lying
It was just waiting
For you to grow up
For you to be ready
For you to be wise
For you to get over yourself
And the rest of the world
For you to be willing
And desperate enough
For you to take chances
And get lucky enough
Enough for the dream
Because the dream is real
And it starts now

The 5 Stages of Brotherhood... and Life!

My best friend and brother-from-another-mother just got married, exactly two months and one day after I did. The entire experience was strangely cathartic and took me down memory lane. It also brought on this slew of long dormant philosophical outpouring. This one though is dedicated to all the bros!

Boys will be boys and girls will grow up into wonderful, complicated women. Boys do grow wise too, but we also manage to stay stupid. We celebrate our victories and failures with delirious mirth and suicidal inebriation. We act grown up, thoughtful, detached, brave, irresponsible, and vulnerable based on the situation's demands. And it is these very patterns of thought and behaviour that brings us bros together, forging friendships that stay strong through the years, enduring far better than obligatory familial ties.

Here, I pick my favourite 5 bro-ments. They might seem stupid and juvenile to the uninitiated, but hey, most bro-haviour does seem stupid and juvenile to the uninitiated!

First Strike - Last Man Standing 

It's one of those sessions where they're falling like flies. Cries of bottoms-up drown out the sounds of another poor soul throwing up as the drinking becomes a serious rite that all comes down to finding out who will be left standing... or sipping. Soon, the spew settles down and just two are left. The contest is over. Last man standing is a lonely and stupid game anyway. The two newly bonded brothers lean back to enjoy their next drink... Cheers!

Second Strike - Bro Against the World 

There are decisions and there are decisions. Every once in a while, you come across one that will alienate everyone else. Parents will disown you, friends will shake their heads disapprovingly, and even the chai wallah will wonder what's wrong with you. Your bro though will stand by you. There will be only one question asked--Are you happy? That is all that matters. We'll figure this out.

Third Strike (this isn't baseball, nobody is out!) - Relationships 

The bro has a girlfriend, or a wife. What does this mean to the brotherhood? How do things change? Do things get weird? Does the wife approve or at least understand? What happens when the other bro gets a girl too? What are the odds of two women who didn't pick each other getting along? These are tough questions, and they need to be answered and figured out. Too many brotherhoods have been disbanded to this deadly third strike. (Ha! Gotcha! Third strike after all!) This round though goes to the lovely women who accompany us bros; for understanding us, for respecting our bros, and for getting along with each other. We couldn't stay bros without you.

Fourth Strike - Success and Failure

The true test of brotherhood lies in this ultimate strike. One bro struggles to find his feet while the other soars. The closely bonded relationship has two conflicting aspects murkying the waters. There is frustration and men being men have egos. But this is the beauty of brotherhood. All it takes is another cricket match with some six packs in the fridge and the joy of an undisturbed evening to scream and shout with an entire country cheering and bursting firecrackers in the background. Actually, the six packs alone will do too!

Fifth and Final Strike - Distance 

Bros will grow up and move away. Family, work, and life will take them to distant shores. Keeping in touch on a regular basis is not a bro thing. Time goes by and responsibilities weigh the ever-youthful shoulders of the bros as they lose their carefree joie-de-vivre sans each other. Grey hair or no hair strike too and the slouch and the paunch weigh the posture down. Capacity for alcohol and late nights goes down and laughter becomes hesitant and confined to socially acceptable volumes. Till one fine day when the bros reunite. Time is confused and doesn't know whether to rewind or fly past as they get right down to the business of being bros. Nothing has changed and the boys will indeed always be boys.

Let's drink to that one... Cheers!

Back and Forth

Is it beginning or has it ended

You’re hurt and aren’t yet mended

You might have let go

You don’t want to know

Looks like your life’s been upended

With flipping tummies and vertigo

Gravity does push, pull, and throw

You plunge and rise

With misery and delight

Life’s scary if your phobia’s an acro

Your winter’s full of your cries

Still not over summer’s surprise

Gets better from here

Nothing more left to fear

Truth’s worse than the worst of lies

Lots more to come, my dear

Laugh insanely or shed a tear

It doesn’t matter

Former or latter

It’s scarier when the end isn’t near

Is it beginning or has it ended

The Tale of Everend

Her eyes grew large as he said the words she was waiting to hear; once upon a time…

She knew what was to come. She had heard this one a million times. Each time, the story was the same, and yet so different. She had so many memories, and she didn’t know how Papa did it; her favourite parts never changed; and still, there was so much new detail in every retelling. Papa had a way with words, and his stories had so much more life that her little crayon men had ever had. Each time the story started, she held her breath, letting it out in little gasps that punctuated the many wondrous events in Everend.

It was a beautiful place, was Everend! She liked it better than all the other places he made up or borrowed, including Peter Pan’s Neverland. She got Peter; he didn’t grow up, neither had she. But then, she couldn’t imagine running away from home to play Injuns and Pirates for eternity. And it wasn’t that she wasn’t bloodthirsty enough! With a wooden sword in her hands, she had made the boys scream like little girls! But running away from Papa had never crossed her mind! 

And yes, Everend was the best!

Oh, but Sir Dunnohoo was in trouble! His horse had the runs, and a runny horse doth not gallop!

She burst out into peals of laughter! That line always got her, especially the way Papa said it. A runny horse doth not gallop! Sir Dunnohoo was a scream, and she loved the way he blustered through the advantage. The real hero was of course the heroine! Everend was her kind of place, where the heroine was always the hero, and the knights were in distress because of their runny horses!

For a while, she rested into that soft glow that came so often with these precious moments. She could see the animated expressions on Papa’s face, his eyes widening in horror as he described the troubled knight’s climb up 542 stairs. Papa didn’t like stairs, and while she gladly skipped over them, she made a moue of dismay at Sir Dunnohoo’s plight. Papa then flailed his arms around, describing the knight’s exhausted triumph at the top of the stairs, and his confusion on seeing the princess he had come to rescue skip past him! Ah, the princess! She sat up, riveted, waiting for the delightful narrative of her favourite character!

Princess Li’lness, the only heroine to ever have an apostrophe in her name (she remembered the day she found out what an apostrophe was in grammar class; how much she had laughed, much to her teacher’s disapproval); Li’lness was the perfect princess. She wore pink, and kicked bad men on their shins with her dainty, pointy shoes. Her best friend was an ogre… oh, Papa was coming to the place were Sir Dunnohoo would hang his helmet on the ogre’s nose!

Sir Dunnohoo saw the pretty princess looking at him, and decided to turn on all his charm.

Papa stopped here, as he usually did, to smooth his hair down and lick his thumbs before shaping up his eyebrows. She went eww, which of course sent him into another round of spit and polish! She playfully punched his arm, which finally got him to continue with his narrative.

He yanked off his helmet, taking care not to let the chin strap mess up the moment, and in a carefree manner, tossed it onto the nearest hooked object… Ohgoaaargh’s nose! (Ohgoaaargh’s dad saw him and started with ‘oh god’, which halfway turned to aaargh; yes, that’s him in that photo with the bitten-off nose!)

Her eyes widened, her hand stifling her giggles as Papa hammed his way through the utter chaos that followed, his hands becoming ogre claws and his voice becoming that of a strangled squeaky knight. Oh, this was the best part ever!

But soon, things got more serious. It was not all laughter and games in Everend, and this is where Papa got inventive. Depending on what he had been reading and what was on his mind, Everend faced a slew of inventive hazards. Today, the evil witch was going to choke on a poisoned orangeberry (a little orange with freckles and lots of personality!) To make matters worse, the worker gnomes were going on strike because someone gifted them a mirror—now, why would someone do that—and they didn’t like their own faces! Everend’s economy was collapsing, and soon would come a time when Everend would be sold to Walt Disney who would just turn it into another theme park! There were so many to save (the evil witch had to be saved too; after all, she was essential for fairy tales and shouldn’t be bumped off!) and it was up to the brave princess to do it all!

She gasped, sighed, and laughed her way through the princess’s brave antics (her favourite part was the orangeberry ending up in Walt Disney’s potpourri and causing a sneeze-a-thon, especially amongst all the grown men in cartoon character suits who worked for Walt Disney!) At last, the story came to a satisfying ending, with Princess Li’lness putting Sir Dunnohoo to sleep and going into the hall to join her Papa for a post-dinner drink.

She clapped heartily, and got up to hug her Papa. She hadn’t heard the story in years, and today, she had begged Papa to do it, with bell and whistles, for her son. Barely a year old, her son listened with rapt attention for all of two minutes, before nodding off. But Papa had gone on, for his little daughter. As she hugged his frail frame, she wondered if she would ever get to hear about Everend again. After Papa was gone, what would happen to Princess Li’lness and Sir Dunnohoo. She held on, squeezing him tighter as she teared up. She could see Everend’s biggest enemy coming closer with every year, and there was nothing she could do. As her Papa held her, she could sense him smile, comforting her as only her Papa could. He patted her head gently as his mellow voice sang out the little rhyme he had always hummed to her as she fell asleep… 

Everend, oh Everend

Sleep tight, you’re safe tonight

All’s well, and everything’s right

I can’t help but wonder

Everend, will you ever end…

Staring into Space

I've been staring into space
It's dark out there
I see things
Swimming in the murky depths
Thoughts melting into fears
The future clawing its way up
Out of the past's long-dead grave
The same old stories
With the same old endings
And it's all still as scary
I've been staring into space
Seeing if I can spot myself
A happy me in a happy morrow
It's dark out there
Maybe it's night there
But then the shadows I see in the depths
Do not comfort, do not ease my worry
I've been staring into space
The moon's bright as ever
Its dark side is still the darkest
It's still scarred all over
Beyond its numbing light
Things do swim in the dark
They might be quiet, but I see them
Beyond the moonlight, in my morrow
I've been staring into space
I've been thinking too much
It's all coming together
It's all falling apart
It's dark out there
What remains does swim by
Dismembered, tentacled
It does not comfort
It does not ease my worry
And still, I stare into space
I can't help but stare into space

30... 31...

One year, and so much has changed. I hit 30 with a sense of panic and desperation. With most important life's goals unattained, (I just typed gaol instead of goal... wow, talk about Freudian slips!) I was at that juncture where the mortality of life hits you and you realize that you might never get to live the life you always wanted. My book was still unpublished--a much-edited manuscript collecting digital dust and self-doubt. I was still in a full-time job and was still working late nights and weekends, spending what free time I could get catching up on my sleep backlog. My relationships with various significant others were all beginning to suffer the neglect I was inflicting on them.

The imaginary nervous imp representing my life expectancy gulps as it examines the statistics: I smoke, I drink, I'm overweight (thanks to my love of food in general and red meat in particular), my work, life and relationships are wrought with stress, and I have a genetic legacy that's pure murder (two granddads lost to heart attacks before they hit the big five-oh, and one grandmom lost to cancer before I grew up enough to remember her face; the other grandmom died a slow, agonizing death and just passed away at 90-something... I'm not sure what I prefer any more) I might have a few years left, but that's more luck than anything else. Not much time left to do much in, and given how much is left (EVERYTHING), not much hope for getting much done either!

Perspective is the great purifier. One thing can change, and everything can look so very different!

I hit 31. My book is still unpublished, but I have an incredible literary agent who was kind of enough to sign me on, and is cheerfully optimistic that we'll soon taste success. Based on that one event, I took my life and turned it around. I quit my full-time job for a consulting role, just so I would have more time to write. I took some risks and created opportunities that would get me closer to my agent, the publishers, and a writing career. The divorce came to a (relatively) painless end (unrelated, but fortuitous). The relationships are better, overall; ambient de-stressing, I guess. The imp is no less nervous as the statistics still seem ominous, though I've started toning down the excesses in some, if not most, departments. The genetic legacy I can't change. When grandparents gang up on you, there's little you can do. The rest of my unattained wishlist still deals with status quo, but the items on it glow with hope, beaming up at #1 who's slowly coming to life.

I might still kick the bucket in a few years, but now I can joke about the projected Mayan end of the world (that's one joke with an expiry date). I'm going to die a published author (or at least an author with recognized potential), and that's better than dying with a neglected manuscript no one knew about. Alternately, I might live the whole big life (marriage, bestsellers, world travel, kids, cynicism v2.0, arthritis etc.) and might die a slow, agonizing death at 90-something. I don't know that I want to lose my senses, motor skills and bowel control before I go. But then, such is life. You never know what the end's like and you can't really flip the pages to find out (point is, if you could, would you?)

Am I happy? On some days, yes. Does 31 feel better? With the new perspective glasses, yes. Is 32 going to be even better? I hope so; better is always good (is that an oxymoron?) Is this what's called growing up or can I just not deal with failure? I don't know. Am I overthinking this? Probably. Should I stop? Yes.