One Of A Million

Every now and again, a gust of wind blows over me, enters and swirls around, fighting to find a way out, like a zebra that wanders into a lion’s den and realizes it too late. The sudden bursts of activity within me are not silent, echoing the frustrated travails of the beast trapped within, its fears, its desperation, its panic, its struggle… and the noise rattles around inside me, and escapes from any crevice it chances upon, emanating as wheezes and moans and groans from my parched lips.
Slowly, the noise dies away; the animal within has given up, embracing captivity with a shudder and a sigh. Maybe it’s trying to summon up that last vestige of energy and zest to try just one more time. But the initial pause is all that’s needed to make its prison walls close in on it, constrict it, suffocate it, and master it.
Its breathing becomes shallower by the passing moment, becoming more erratic.
It dies.
It festers.
It withers away into nothingness, leaving no trace. Its momentary existence, its valiant struggle, its fears, its hopes, its dreams, its past known to none.
I remain unrepentant, resolute, immobile and unfeeling. The wait is now on. The next gust is on its way. Soon… very soon…
I am a shell: hard on the outside, empty inside.

An Exercise In Futility

The irony in comtemplating the futility of your actions is not that the actions were futile, but that your contemplation is...

Starry Starry Night

She walked up to me at this party as I stood chatting with a friend about the horrors of waking up before 10:30 in the morning and interrupted our conversation with: “What’s your sign?”
I gave her a quick once over and inferring correctly that she was asking after my zodiac sign, said, “cancer.”
She sniffed, turned, and walked away, mumbling. I would have liked to say her words were “Oh crap!”, though I’m pretty sure she said: “Ewww. A Crab!”
My friend explained, with a roll of his eyes. Hers was the fire sign Aries, and quite incompatible with my water sign. Bewildering, I know.
Weird?
Definitely!
I still found her behaviour unreasonable and uncalled for. I was miffed.
I turned and yelled after her, so the whole gathering could hear: “Who let the Mutton Chop in?”
I feel much better now.

Wired Up

A few days ago I got to fulfill a long-standing desire: sticking my tongue out at a doctor, in his office. The desire, when it started, didn’t feature a doctor specifically. It merely entailed being rude to someone on their own turf; someone senior. It is something I have harbored since childhood; ever since my parents, in the course of their parenting duties, told me it was rude, wrong and not the done thing. It so happened that a doctor happened to be handy, and I seized the opportunity with both hands.
Now it so happened – and it can happen to the best of us – that I was in need of a doctor’s services. Nothing major, just an electrical accident, and I don’t really mean the shocking kind.
Before we go any further, I must give you some background on this. It all began many years ago, when I chose electrical studies as an elective in school. Don’t ask. The point was to learn how circuits and gadgets work, and be capable of fixing small electrical glitches in and around the house without having to reach for the phone book, and looking under “E” for electrician. Like changing a light bulb, attaching severed wires, that sort of thing. I learnt quite a bit in that course, finishing in the top 3 in a class of 4.
So when many years later (I’m now talking about a few minutes just prior to the escapade I’m now chronicling) I came up against a reading lamp that needed a new plug, I felt equipped and empowered. I moseyed down to the hardware store, and picked up one after a lengthy discussion with the storekeeper on “amps” and “Earthing” and “Phillips screwdrivers” and “line testers”. I would like to believe he found me quite knowledgeable on the aforementioned subjects, though his deadpan face would have shamed a seasoned poker player. Anyway, no accident so far.
I got down to the ‘fixing’ bit of the exercise: unscrewed the defective plug and separated it from the wire, then opened up the new plug. That’s when I realized that the sleeve cutter I had would not cut it. So after a quick mental debate on the pros and cons of expending energy in getting up for a knife or a blade to separate the insulation from the wire, I decided my teeth would do.
The plastic sleeve of the green wire came off without too mush of a fuss. The sleeve of the yellow wire protested momentarily, but soon bowed to the pressure. The red wire was adamant. And as we wrestled, the wire and I, I realized I’d underestimated its obstinacy and its determination to fight off any advances my jaw might make. After a few seconds of intense negotiations -- through gritted teeth on my end -- it found itself losing the argument, and took one parting shot. As the portion of the sleeve between my teeth came away, it brought with it a few strands of the fibrous metal that it houses. These strands, annoyed at being so rudely exposed to an alien atmosphere, and seeking to rectify said exposure, drove deep into my tongue, which was watching the proceedings with rapt attention.
It hurt. There was no blood, and I could distinctly feel the end of the wire embedded into my tongue if I ran my tongue against the teeth on my upper jaw. I tried looking in the mirror, and using my fingers to pull the intruder out. No Cigar!
And that’s how I found myself visiting the white-coated gent with a string of alphabets after his name. He listened with rapt attention to my tale, and barely managed to hide the smirk on his face, as he no doubt thought: “What a moron!”
That smirk I was so certain he was hiding did the trick. I was no peeved. He had no right to judge. It could have happened to anyone.
So as he proceeded to examine my punctured oral muscle with a magnifying glass under a bright light, and ran a rubber-gloved finger to determine the exact position of the offending wire, the long-suppressed member of my mental “To Do” list get a check against it.
I stuck my tongue out at him, and kept it there for a good 3 minutes, as he wielded forceps and tongs to return my tongue to its original, unadulterated state. For three minutes, I cocked a snook at a doctor, in his office.
And if you ask me, the pain and the momentary discomfort were absolutely worth it.

Past Perfect

Nothing haunts us with more ferocity and elicits more horror that the ghost of our past. Those memories bind us more securely than the chains that adorn the August members of the shadow-realm. There is no escape; no exorcism that will free us, no fire that will ease the cold chill that billow towards us in a constant draft, no salve that will erase the scars left on the soul.

Stay The Course, Mr. Obama!

Barrack Obama has problems. Big Problems. The “Great American Dream” is in danger of being shattered. Indeed, for many, it’s already in smithereens. A few have also found, much to their utter despair, that picking up the pieces will only push slivers into their flesh, drawing more blood.
People are finding they can’t keep up with their mortgage payments. Foreclosures have left many homeless. The loan defaults have screwed with the banking system. So much so, that the banks which possessed the houses from defaulting owners no longer exist. Salaried people are finding that their pay packets are suddenly lighter. Some are finding – well, in February alone, 165,000 people found – that they no longer have a job to go to. Unemployment is at its highest in 25 years. Firms that think they can keep their employees, aren’t hiring any more. Investments that at one time promised solid returns, are now not worth the paper they’re printed on. But prices aren’t falling as fast as they should… or could. The average American is finding that loans aren’t easy to come by any longer. In short, the juggernaut of an American economy seems on the verge of disintegration. All the President’s workhorses and all the President’s men are scratching their heads over how to put it together again.
These are not the kind of problems that can be fixed with a call to a customer service number. So the advocate of change decided on a simple course of action: get rid of those irksome call centres. He chose to bring these jobs back home, and offer them to his people. No more foreign nurses, he said. Lo and behold! More jobs for the Americans.
He came up with a plan to pour over One Trillion Dollars in tax-payers’ money into rebuilding the economy. One Trillion Dollars is not chump change; that’s another Indian economy right there!
His decisions have pushed many people across the world -- especially India, Phillipines, and Malaysia -- into a cantankerous state. This was not a change they wanted, when they watched America get its first African-American President. “It’s not fair,” they say.
But why not?
Why should he worry about some family in a dark corner of Asia, when millions of families are fighting to survive the night right at his doorstep? The man is fighting to save his country from an economic holocaust. The most powerful man in the free world only seems to be following what Spidey said not too long ago: “With great power comes great responsibility.” His first responsibility is to his People. It’s perfectly natural that he chooses his country’s welfare over someone else’s.

Bravo, Mr President!

Voices We Hear

“Sorry! All our customer care executives are busy attending other calls… your call is important to us… please hold the line… your call will be attended in approximately… Seven… minutes… Fifty-three… seconds…”

So that’s nearly 8 minutes added on to the 4-odd minutes I’ve spent entering banal numbers, and information as instructed by a different voice.
Cutting-edge technology, they call it!
As the metallic voice squawks in my ear, I resign myself to a long, tiring and fruitless wait. My problem is simple: over two weeks ago, I followed the instructions given me by a voice at the other end of a phone line, and tendered in a request for a change of communication address.
Two weeks… and nothing.
I just want to find out what happened… and so I wait.
An inane, tuneless, drone fills the eardrum positioned next to my phone’s speaker. After a while, my brain recognizes it as a lame -- and failed -- attempt to recreate Beethoven’s 5th Symphony.
For my listening pleasure, no doubt. But if it’s meant to be soothing, it’s failing… miserably!
The metallic voice comes back, rudely cutting into the third movement. Beethoven would turn in his grave, I think, as the voice assures me monotonously that I’m a valued customer… and with a twang of triumph, relays that I have now just 6 minutes and 45 seconds to wait.
Am I supposed to be ecstatic? I wonder.
And as Beethoven’s genius filters through again, a thought strikes me:
This company has a misplaced sense of pride. It sounds happy that it has the technology to calculate how long it will take for my call to be answered.
But shouldn’t it be ashamed that it’s making me wait?
Shouldn’t pride come from an immediate response?
Won’t that be a declaration that there are fewer irate customers calling with problems?
Won’t that also indicate that whatever the problem, it’s not severe, and is being solved in the flash of an eye?
It’s all about Customer Care… the customer’s the only one that cares.