Upstairs 7 or ‘You…Boy'

Donny never carried change when he went shopping.

He took out a note of five-hundred and gave it to the overworked old man at the counter. He frowned and returned it, ‘Buy more’ he uttered.

Now it’s rarely that writers get paid, and even when they do it’s so little that they don’t fancy overspending on cream-rolls and burgers.

Donny hesitated for a moment, then decided to turn around and leave without the bread.

Mr Paul from the neighborhood wished him ‘happy birthday!’ from his table.

Donny nodded; then heard someone cry out, ‘You…Boy...You’

And that’s how they first met.

Eternal madness of the bespectacled mind

Imagine yourself on an empty pathway.

You are walking straight.

At the end of the pathway stands an ancient manor; made of black stones and garlanded by dirt and moss amassed from the air and earth.

The door is already open.

Two sets of stairways forming a giant arch.

You walk past the parallel walls, which soon begin to converge.

Are you going mad?

You’re expecting a phantom, or a ghost to live within those walls. But what if ghosts are a giant set-up? 

The meeting point of parallel walls at infinity where a man has nowhere left to go.

True Story

They met a little more than a year ago.

She went back home and wrote in her diary she met someone who may change her life.

His, had already changed.

A year later they decided to be together. They weren’t prepared, not by any means.

Wild kids. Scared, scattered, yet hopeful.

What Ifs were many, but they were ready to make them fly out of the window of their two-room apartment. Yes, two days into it and they were already planning a home.

They even talked about who’d do the grocery.

No, they weren’t prepared. So extempore was their love.

mothers and sons.

Ma: You’ve been home for a week.

(click-clack-click)

Ma: Did you sit and talk to me even once?

(click-clack-spacebar-enter) Working, maa.

You know the 20 sarees I designed for Pujo, my clients have loved them.

(windows8-homepage) Didn’t you keep one for yourself?

Ma: I felt guilty.

Show me your favorite 5.

3 minutes later. Here!

Now choose 3.

Ma: It’s difficult.

Try.

37 minutes later. Umm…Here.

(type-type-spacebar) Now choose 1.

Ma: IMPOSSIBLE!!!

Try, try.

About-one-power-nap-and-63-minutes-later. Yes-this-No-that-Yes-No-Phew!-Herethisone-Nowait-Okaythisone-FINAL! But why all this?

(Windows-shutting-down) Because you’re just as materialistic as I am, and I couldn’t risk saying sorry empty-handed. Shubho bijoya, maa!

(blank-screen)

Upstairs 6 or Gladly made a jelly-roll once

Now Gladly used to work at a local pâtisserie.

Her father drank too much and she needed money to buy books.

She wished to start a bakery of her own someday.

She baked birthday cakes for her friends every year.

She made a jelly-roll once for their landlord and he let go of that month’s rent which they couldn’t pay, which was often the case.

Donny never celebrated his birthday.

Nobody made him a cake and he never complained.

Two months after Gladly wrote on Donny’s door, September had arrived.

It was Donny’s birthday, and he was out of bread.

favorite fix

The new book by your favorite writer arrives in the mail.

You try and reach home early from work.

Take a quick bath, drop your guards and start reading.

The first three lines break your heart, they are breathtakingly beautiful.

And then you are in a fix.

What if the rest of the book isn’t as good?

Will it be easy to carry on living with the disappointment then?

But what if it is even better than those lines?

What if it becomes your favorite book?

One, that just like true love, will have to get over.

Sooner or later.

Getting even.

“Extra cheese makes everything better. Except love..”

The delivery boy said, “Nice to know ma’am, but you still owe me eight bucks.”

“You know good food is the closest we come to feeling true love, forgetting real pain? Food is the best anesthetic.”

 He said, “I am glad I could be of help! Eight bucks still.”

“Stop measuring happiness with money.” She said.

“But it’s my money, and your happiness. Unmatched equation.” He said.

“Get going boy, I don’t have another penny.” She said.

He picked up a piece and took a sumptuous bite.

“Now we are even.” He said.

Upstairs 5 or Hello Stranger!

Gladly had a strange mind.

You give her a chocolate and she’ll doubt you. You ask her to climb up the traffic post at night and break the lights so they don’t disturb the homeless, and she’ll be your friend.

She picked up the note, and thought for a second.

Then took out her nib pen, wrote something on it, and slipped it back.

“Weak in math?” it said.

The note didn’t come back for a while.

When Donny finally opened the door, Gladly was already gone.

Seeing no one, Donny turned.

Something was scribbled on his door.

Hello, stranger!

Upstairs 4 or Donny should have bought that hammer

Now Donny never admitted this in front of his friends, but he was not scared of thieves or murderers. 
The only thing he was ever scared of was ghosts.

That’s the first thing he thought when he heard a strange noise in the other room.

And this was no ordinary ghost.

This one was breaking his bloody door down.

He looked around. There was hardly anything to fight it with.

He should have bought that hammer when mother asked him to.

All he had was pen and paper.

So he drew a biggish + and slipped it under the door.

Upstairs 3 or the Thundering Thump!

Any other girl in her place would have let common sense get the better of her, and left. Or looked elsewhere. But in Gladly’s overactive mind, a faceless figure was already up high on a stool and hanging himself from a rusty ceiling fan. Gladly loved studying handwritings, she could tell it was not a woman.

She looked around and found a chunk of concrete that must have come off one of the walls. Then picked it up without any hesitance and brought it down on Donny’s main door with a thundering thump.

Donny heard and fell from the commode.

Upstairs 2 or Donny was in the Bathroom

Gladly walked up the stairs of an old building whose tenants had either left the place or were all dead. There were mollusk –like growths on the sides of the steps and spider webs adorned the corners of the walls.

She somehow managed her way up and made a calculated assumption that the paper ball must have come from the 2^nd floor window. She knocked.

Donny was in the bathroom, wasting time; just staring into space and lazing on the toilet seat whenever he was out of depth.

He didn’t hear her knock.

But she wasn’t one to give up.

kaleidoscope kaleidoscope

The neon-lit kaleidoscope showing pictures of yesteryear stars and playing an old Raj Kapoor song took him back several years, to a past where he was an itinerant manic force storming his way through the streets of Hazaribag.

The boy who left his open skies for the multistoried condominium he owns now. He has a M.F. Hussain in his drawing room, luxury cars in his garage, vintage alcohol in his cellar. But during purposeless lunchtime conversations, his heart still races through the emerald fields chasing frogs. 

Was he humming something?

Dil dhoondta hai phir wohi fursat ke raat din.

Gulzar.

Do you remember?

Some say reading is a dying art. But in a dying race struggling to remember simple ideas of humanity, it’s still more alive than the rest. Most of us remember important things through associations; heartbreaks become a song, first job becomes a wristwatch, someone’s death becomes the reminiscence of a conversation.

I always remembered things with books. The face of the writer became the face of the feeling then.

Stephen King became Nightmare.

Franz Kafka became Delusion.

García Márquez became Magic.

Woody Allen became Confusion.

Ruskin Bond became Leisure.

Haruki Murakami became Loneliness.

And Memory always remained a bittersweet getaway.

Showdown!

Sundays were when Dad walked in from the bazaar with the entire fish market in his hands.

TEESRI MANZIL, TUMSA NAHI DEKHA, GUIDE, TRISHUL, AMAR AKBAR ANTHONY. Forget the blockbusters, we had CHHOTI SI BAAT, CHASHME BUDDOOR, KATHA, SHAUKEEN, MOHAN JOSHI HAZIR HO!, SALIM LANGDE PE MAT RO.

Show me another Sai Paranjpye, Saeed Akhtar Mirza, Gulzar or Muzaffar Ali. Or a Khayyam, Naushad, Vanraj Bhatia, or S.D. Burman. Barkhoordar (he smirked), humare paas Shashi Kapoor, Smita Patil, Farooq Shaikh the. 

Tumhare 90s ke paas kya hain?

The answer was Ma.

MA…DHURI DIXIT.

Bollywood was all about Sunday morning showdowns.

Artful

Girl: What do you do?

Boy: I am an artist.

Girl: Don’t you work?

Boy: I am an artist.

Girl: What do you want?

Boy: Is that jazz playing?

Girl: Why?

Boy: Because I want to make love to you with jazz playing.

Girl: (laughs)

Boy: ?

Girl: You are sick.

Boy: I will buy you coffee.

Girl: And I’ll say yes for a Latte?

Boy: Artistes make terrific love.

Girl: But terrible lovers.

Boy: You don’t know me.

Girl: Why don’t you try that with someone who is not on a wheelchair?

Boy: Oh, there’s no art in that.

Right Person

How often do we find the right person?

She could be in another country, which will never give me a Visa. Or worse, born in another time. She could be Janis Joplin.

She could be Dominique Francon. For love I can cross borders, but how do I enter Ayn Rand’s imagination?

What if I see her and words fail me?

What if she is sitting across from me in the bus, reading The Fountainhead? Do I just say excuse me and tell her that she is the one? She may have already found him. And I am no Ethan Hawke.

Upstairs

Her parents named her Gladly.

His named him something but he preferred Donny.

Every Sunday morning, Gladly headed out to read poems to a blind man.

Every morning Donny tried finishing his novel. Every morning he failed.

She missed having a friend.

His deadline was near.

Donny wrote on paper, and filled his room with crumpled pages.

Gladly always carried her green umbrella with her.

That morning when Donny felt useless, he wrote “HELP” on a piece of paper and threw it outside his window.

When it fell on Gladly’s umbrella, she opened it and read.

Then she went upstairs.