Old Mariamma from Next Door had been out in her beloved garden savouring the lushness of her newly-blossomed jasmine flowers, when suddenly and without warning, “Bam!” a large brown coconut landed right on top of her head. There wasn’t any blood, only a few helpless screams that couldn’t be heard anywhere outside the gates. This was bad, for she lived all alone in her huge mildewed bungalow – she and her pet spiders. Seconds later, a bigger coconut, traveling 35 feet in the air, fell “Splat!” on her face. This time there was blood, but no more helpless screaming.

“How difficult is it to wait till morning when the reaper comes and plucks them all away?” scolded Ma as we made our way to the sink to wash our hands. Coconut reapers had become difficult to catch hold of; it was a dying trade.

Schnitzel lay quietly in his corner of the family’s spacious dining room, curled up in his mass of silky fur. The other members of the family, namely me, Ma and Papa, and Papa’s two sisters and three brothers with their respective husbands and wives and children, had gathered around the giant dinner table. We sat there peering at each other, much in the same way Schnitzel would sometimes look at strange insects or worms or mushrooms that had popped up out of nowhere after the first spell of thunderous rain. “Achhoo!” cried Schnitzel, and thus heralded the daily evening dinner-table bedlam of the Nair family. My Uncle Satish made an old joke or two about Grandpa’s quirky eating habits, to which my Aunt Lata responded by recounting an anecdote which involved Satish’s mother mistaking a bottle of phenyl for milk. The entire family broke into peels of laughter, and this was all we needed to carry us through an otherwise monochromatic dinner of rice with coconut-and-fish curry, not to mention the stale poppadams. Amidst all the merry chatter, I was perhaps the only one who noticed Schnitzel getting up and walking out into the veranda.

“And where do you think you’re going?” asked Ma, as I jumped off my tall chair to follow Schnitzel. “I’m done.” I said, “I want to sit outside, in the veranda. On Grandpa’s old armchair.”

“Alright.” said she, “but make sure you don’t go anywhere near those coconut palms. Or jackfruit trees, for that matter.”

“Okay.” I said. On my way to the veranda, I stole a quick glance at Grandpa’s picture that hung on the living-room wall with its ceremonial garland. The flowers had long wilted, but Grandpa’s reaffirming smile persisted. In the bedroom to my right, Grandma slept away peacefully. Outside in the veranda, as I began to sit down on the old armchair, I saw that Schnitzel had gone all the way up to that little patch of land where Grandpa lay buried. This was not strange. He often did that — once or twice every week, ever since Grandpa left us.

It was only a few seconds later that I noticed how Schnitzel’s tail wasn’t wagging anymore. He was sniffing the mud around one of the coconut palms. Maybe this wasn’t about Grandpa, maybe Schnitzel had seen something in the distance. Maybe it was my pair of football shoes that had gone missing the other night, or maybe it was another mushroom. I followed his paw prints and as I got closer to the spot where he stood, saw something jutting out from behind the bushes near the palm. Another step in that direction and I realized with horror that it really was one of my football shoes, but on an actual human foot! A scream! I ran for my life — corpses were number one on my list of the world’s spookiest things. Finding my way back through the darkness, I tripped on what I think were dry coconut leaves, which obviously meant that I had panicked and hurried off in a different direction altogether. I lay there moaning in pain – In my fall, I had knocked both my knees against a giant black rock that our maid Valsamma used to wash our clothes every morning.

Soon Ma and Papa would be here, I thought – surely they had heard my screams. But what about the corpse? And what about the snakes? What about our dog? And the very next instant, almost out of nowhere, Schnitzel came running and landed right on my neck, then lay motionless. In the midst of all the chaos and pain, I had missed the fact that I’d been sitting right below one of the tallest coconut palms in the garden. I stood up straight with great effort and found the murderous brown coconut lying a few inches from Schnitzel’s head. Without wasting any more time, I distanced myself from the palm, and then stood looking at the dog’s body. Limp, lifeless, with his eyes closed and his tongue hanging out. He almost looked delirious, he had taken a blow right to his head.

Soon everyone had gathered around his corpse. I told them about the other one, which created an uproar. Ma, Papa, brothers, sisters, husbands, wives and children ran to Grandpa’s little tomb while Schnitzel lay Deserted in Death. As it turned out, the body belonged to Young Appu from Next Door, who apparently was the menace who stole Jackfruit from our garden at nights, not to mention kids’ football shoes. The coconut that killed him rested in silence near his bloodied ear.

Whom would the coconuts get next? It was only a matter of time.

The Ping Program was an international demographic experiment. The first of its kind and scale. It was the global scientific community’s pet project, designed “to push knowledge forward, to challenge those who seeked confirmation of established knowledge, and those who dared to dream beyond the paradigm.” Despite the eerily sinister nature of this manifesto, the Program soon began to pick up steam, with thousands of our hungry and needful brothers around the world signing up in exchange for food and welfare. It was seen as the ultra-modern, ultimate solution to poverty and joblessness – Back home in India, the NREGA was soon to be a thing of the past. The Ping Program used to be known by a very different name in those days. The rationale behind the “The Dream Project” was so simple, that an intellectual and humanitarian onslaught against it was unavoidable. Every man had his say about the future of the Project – over business lunches or at weddings and anniversaries, and even at family dinners. Thousands became millions as the now “internationally funded” Project, having established its incubator cells in more than a hundred different nations, regularly pulled up a few thousand people on to the Cloud everyday.

“The Cloud” was best described in the words of one of its master-developers Dr. Henri Kazinski as a kind of “shared dream-space”. “Up in the cloud, you are the same brains, and therefore effectively the same person. However, you shall have great control over how you look to other cloud-civilians. You may have all the wealth you want, and be as prosperous as you wish. Everything’s a dream up in the cloud, and there are no nightmares.” Up in the cloud, no. But down here on earth, people everywhere were gearing up for their worst ever, albeit inadvertently. Soon, the Theory of Eternal Damnation would be seen in action.

On the misty monsoon morning of 5th July 2004, Old Padmini Amma guided the last of her African amulet collection into her fifty-year-old jute bag with an easy motion of her wrinkled hand over the mahogany of the family’s antique dining table. Her aged fingers took a  moment to savour the tiny satin roses that had been embroidered onto the jute by her daughter Sulekha, when she was a restless and creative eleven-year old. At about the same moment, outside in the veranda her nine-year-old grandson Vijeesh Nair got a well-measured slap on the cheek from his ten-year old neighbour and playmate Annie Mol while Annie Mol’s own grandmother Molly Amma turned in her bed with a savage, intimidating yawn. The family dog Appu brought his presence to the fore with a sneeze that could be heard all the way down the first of the family’s three wells, where their pet fish Mary rose to the surface, startled by the noise. All of this happened against the backdrop of a cool morning breeze that rustled the leaves of some two dozen coconut palms. Six-and-a-half feet from the children, swaying in the wind lay 7 white eggshells with little faces painted on them – Valsamma, Damodaran, Sulekha, Suresh, Sujata, Sunanda and the one with the moustache, Manoj. Grandmama, Grandpapa and their five children, smiling all; nodding in approval. The real Damodaran Nair lay disconsolate in his grave, at the opposite end of the compound from the house’s traditional loo, where Manoj was now relieving himself. Inside the house, Suresh read his newspaper from end to end and back again with unflinching eyes, while a snake slithered past unnoticed, through a hole in the door and right past the children. Sujata and her husband Satish snored musically in their well-ventilated bedroom with the spider-free walls, while Sulekha and her husband Shashi slept in the company of spiders, constantly tossing and turning from the tickle of the morning breeze. Simultaneously, somewhere on the way from her bungalow to the family house, Sunanda’s car jerked as it sped over an inconspicuous bump (or two).The family house, named ‘Surakshit’, was a festival of activity that Monday morning. As afternoon settled in and lunch was served, a more serious shade draped itself atop the Surakshit household and it was time to discuss the issue that had managed to bring together this rare confluence of Grandmama’s children – the partition of Grandpapa’s holdings.

(Rest will be out in a week)

(A small piece written in my high school days at Rachana, when archaic English was a new-found obsession. For almost five years this poem lay scribbled at the back of an old school notebook, packed away with some other random memoirs.)

The credit roll is flashed against the picturesque backdrop of floating clouds. It is a vision of pleasant calm, though the speed at which the clouds move does indicate some sort of imminent danger. The opening scene of the movie is that of the protagonist Dr Miles Bennell involved in an animated exchange with a psychiatrist, trying to convince everyone around him of his sanity. The narration and flashback that ensues, constitutes the rest of the movie. The hero, attempting to warn people of some serious threat, and who is believed to be delirious by unsuspecting future victims of this threat, is arguably one of the most common threads of science fiction yarn.

Invasion beautifully captures a snapshot of the life and times of 50’s suburban America. It is a time when everyone knows everyone; a time when people drive around in neat cars and gas is cheap; a time when people can afford good clothes and big, beautiful houses. It is a time of great prosperity for middle class America, where everybody is going about their jobs without an inkling of regret or remorse. It’s a time of happiness; a time when people “want to love and be loved”, in the words of the heroine. Soon however, this land of joy and prosperity is faced with a threat; a threat that arrives in the form of alien seeds from the sky. And thus, the movie is set up in the classic rhetoric of an alien species posing a serious hazard to human life on earth.

Apart from being a strong way-of-life movie, it also explores a number of different themes, science-fictitious and otherwise. There is the concept of an invasion; the small suburb of Santa Mira being invaded by extra-terrestrial seeds being the case-in-point. These seeds thrive in their new environment, and slowly sprout into foaming, lettuce-shaped pods, which later develop human form by absorbing the traits and characteristics of an unsuspecting victim while s/he is sleeping. This leads one to the next major theme of the movie, that of emotions. The duplicated human form is somehow shown to replace the original almost entirely, except for the fact that it lacks emotions of any kind. This is portrayed as a major ethical problem, with Miles and his love interest Becky being shown debating with the aliens on the issue, in one of the scenes. Arguably the strongest of all emotions, love (the most popular emotion in Hollywood culture anyway) is juxtaposed, time and again, against the total absence of sentiment in the duplicated human species. In a situation such as the one shown in the motion picture, one of the worst developments is that you cannot trust anyone anymore. The gradual injection of paranoia into the lead characters is visible in a few scenes, when everyone from the telephone operator to the police officer to the local gas-man – people whom Miles used to wave hello to while walking past – could no longer be trusted.

Conformism and the consequences of non-conformism are immediately evident from the last few scenes of the movie. The state-of-affairs of the time at which the movie was made led to the general perception that it was intended as a cry against the tyranny of the McCarthy situation. The analogy between the spread of the alien species and that of the idea of communism is perhaps the most strikingly controversial aspect of the picture. Individualism, as opposed to totalitarianism is another obvious theme that the movie professes, not just in the way the lead characters refuse to be taken over by the alien species, but also in the manner that they handle (end) their respective married lives.

As a matter of personal opinion, I do believe the extra-terrestrial species should have been a little more sinister and novel in appearance. The movie could’ve used added imagination in this area — seedpods are something that one sees everywhere, every day. There was a very evident and nagging lack of detail, especially when it came to the question of how exactly the pods took over the human form. The acting and screenplay gives one the feeling of reading the story straight out of a book at times. However, the fact that the makers of the film emerged with this sort of a classic with a small budget and without much use of technology, is quite commendable in itself. The background score is perfectly in accordance with the genre of the film, and a constant air of suspense and mystery occupies most of the scenes. After reading a reasonable bit about the American political situation in the 50’s, the satirical face of the movie begins to emerge and it’s not too difficult to believe that had the movie been edited in Technicolor, the title (especially the Body Snatchers bit) would have flashed on-screen in Communist Red, which is indeed the case with one of its posters.

Above him, in a sky-blue sky, clouds appeared to fly past in a great hurry; down on the streets, hundreds of commuters. From the window of Paresh’s eyes, Khalidpur seemed like a giant plate that always kept tipping off the waiter’s hand, while the people on the plate kept running in all directions to keep from falling off. That day looked particularly bad for business. The sun was hidden for the most part, and a cool breeze kept blowing now and again. It’s funny how these things that bring joy to one man can be the reason for another to lose his bread. Rahimbhai, the café’s owner sat in his cushioned seat, looking out into the distance, with beads of sweat appearing on his forehead even in this weather. Paresh could hardly imagine the torment that he was going through. Only the other day, a group of creditors had come up to his door asking him to give them a date. He had begged for another week, which was pretty safe considering the average statistics of the café’s earnings. But now this sudden change in the climate had ruined things. His wife had just given birth to their third child, and he couldn’t even manage enough for new clothes or toys.

Paresh knew better than to discuss these matters with Rahimbhai, for he was a pretty reticent fellow. He always kept a calm and reassuring face for his customers, most of whom were college students lost in their own melodramatic, troubled worlds. He would patiently hear out their apprehensions about exams, their fears about grades or their feelings for lovers. To keep his own problems to himself was, like Paresh had read in a book of poems somewhere, “woven into the fabric of his being”. Paresh, for his part would crack all kinds of jokes to keep everyone in high spirits. He had no jokes to crack today, for when he had tried, Rahimbhai had looked blankly into his eyes, emotionless. It was signal enough for him to understand that he wasn’t in the mood. Rahimbhai had never shouted at him, or even been mad at him for that matter. That too, Paresh thought was “woven into the fabric of his being”. He had sent Paresh to night-school during the more profitable days of his business, and Paresh was grateful to him for that. The only thing that irked him about Rahimbhai was that it was he who had given him his famous moniker “Paresh Pepsi”.

“Pepsi, ek Pepsi!” the voice felt like it had emanated from a throat lined with flower petals. And Paresh knew only one person in the world who possessed that kind of a voice. He looked away from the streets to face Neha, whose delicate appearance and firm eyes made her look both immensely vulnerable and immensely strong at the same time. “Right away!” he said in Hindi, and Neha forced a smile. Even that superficial smile had such a powerful effect on him that he was immediately thrown off the philosophical yarn he’d been weaving all this while. She had the uncanny ability to lift a person’s mood with something as simple as that smile. It was almost involuntary on her part — making the people around her happy. “Woven into the fabric of her being” Paresh thought to himself with a smile as he bottle-opened a chilled Pepsi with his bottle-opener, that he wore on his index finger. The escaping gas made that familiar sound that he loved. However, when he brought her the bottle, he noticed that the kohl that lined her eyes was slightly smudged – evidence of a few minutes spent weeping over something. Or, as he would find out later, weeping over someone. She looked up at him, and catching his wide-mouthed smile just moments before it left his face, asked “Why are you so happy today, Pepsi?” But Paresh, unsettled by her eyes, dismissed the question with another one “And why have you been crying today, Neha?”

“That’s none of your business.” Her reply was prompt and crisp. Paresh was immediately regretful for having ventured the question at all. He didn’t know what to say. There was an embarrassed silence that stuck in the small room of the café, like an uninvited guest. Even Rahimbhai looked slightly surprised by her unusual response. After a few more seconds, Paresh said softly “OK, your choice.” and retreated to an empty table with a newspaper on it.

All of them remained silent for as long as Neha had finished her Pepsi, and then she began “All right, I’m sorry Pepsi. I shouldn’t have been so rude.” “Sorry Rahimbhai!” she said to the pensive face that had resumed its empty gaze into the distance. He replied with a smile. But Paresh was in no mood to relent. “Keep your sorry to yourself.” he said “Never again am I going to make the mistake of asking you anything. I always knew you thought of me as just another rotten street urchin you were supposed to stay away from.” Everyone in that room knew that this accusation wasn’t true. Neha had offered Paresh the kind of friendship that only her closer friends were entitled to. But Paresh at that moment had blindly wanted to make her feel truly remorseful.

Neha’s beautifully arched lips remained parted for a while. She hadn’t expected this. Rahimbhai was bewildered; this kind of behaviour toward customers was unacceptable. He opened his little mouth to say something to Paresh when he noticed that Neha had broken down. It was an empty café, and she felt it safe to vent all her emotions there. Paresh’s heart broke in an instant and a cold sweat came out all over his body. Now it was his turn to beg for forgiveness.

“I’m so sorry Neha, you know I’m just saying all these things to make you mad. You know I had never meant them.” As a matter of fact, Paresh felt sinfully happy that a few words of hate spoken by him had elicited such a strong reaction from her. But then he was reminded of the fact that she had been crying even before she came to the café. Rahimbhai rose from his chair, shot Paresh an annoyed look, and said “You know how he’s stupid at times Neha, no reason to cry.” Neha lifted her face from her hands and reached into her satchel for a handkerchief. The kohl was smudged even more now. She rubbed it off softly. “It’s not just him Rahimbhai. I’ve had too much happening in my life over the past week.” “Are you sure it’s nothing that you want to talk about?” asked Rahimbhai. Neha looked at Rahimbhai, then at Paresh and considered it for a while. These were people she had shared as much of her life with as her friends from college. So she began: “Well, Nanaji expired last Sunday, then there was news that Papa’s company was letting off employees and that he was in danger of losing his job. And now…” Neha thought twice whether she should put the latest cause of her sorrow out in the open. After all, no one was asking her to continue. But she did: “Well, Yesterday I saw Aamir with another girl.”

“But that doesn’t have to mean anything at all. It could be his sister.” said Rahimbhai. “Yes, I saw this same situation in a movie the other day. It’s her sister for sure!” added Paresh. Neha smiled a little at Paresh’s desperate attempt to lift her spirits. But she continued woefully: “He has no sisters, and on top of it, they were hugging each other. It’s over.”

“Achha!” exclaimed Paresh. “He didn’t deserve you anyway.” Seeing Neha smile feebly, he continued: “No I’m serious. Have you any idea how many visitors to this café fall for you every day?” He paused for a moment. Her smile was in full flow now. In fact, she almost laughed at that last comment. For a while, Paresh looked like he was considering something. And then he lost control of his wits and went for her delicate hands. “Neha, I love you too much to see you like this. Yes, I’ve loved you ever since I first saw you at this café. It’s in my blood, Neha. It’s woven into the fabric of my being.” She withdrew her hands immediately, shocked by the impact of the last few dramatic lines. For the second time in the day, Paresh had left Rahimbhai bewildered; his wide eyes stayed wide and his dropped jaw stayed dropped. The uninvited guest was back, only this time he had a wicked smirk on his face; it had started raining outside, and so the guest was in no mood to leave.

A kilometre from this café, a couple of masked men with knives stopped a man on a scooter, and slashed his throat. The beads of the rudraksh chain that he was wearing went flying to the ground. They lay floating in a clear red river of blood and rainwater. No one knew it then, but Khalidpur was on the verge of riots.

Tender curls of her hair lay swaying softly over her ears; my heart swayed with them. Her sense of dressing though, was arcane. But she probably liked it that way; I could see it in her dark, smoky eyes. I could also see how our first meeting was turning into the perfect union for our young, insatiable spirits. This was everything that I had imagined; it was exactly what I had planned for. Well, this was exactly what Shiva had planned for. In fact, I could almost see him in the distance; his tall, wiry frame; his crew-cut hair; his oversized black tee. He was smiling at me. It was a knowing smile.

“Wait a second! What in the world…?”

I looked at Mira, and then I did a re-check. Shiva was still there. Worse, now he was waving at me. He moved slowly, as if he were on dope. It was unbelievable; it was ridiculous; it was against the protocol; the protocol that he himself had created. Dudes don’t show up at other dudes’ dates; they just don’t.

I looked at Mira again, trying hard to avoid him. The next instant, there was a flash; a brilliant explosion of light. I felt as if I’d be blinded by all the luminance. My eyes, burning from the few hours of sleep that I had managed, opened up to see Ma standing in front of me, rolling-pin in hand. The aroma of chapatis and aloo-bhindi charged up my nostrils, as the memories of this dream started becoming increasingly distant. A burning sensation on my left buttock, the angry look on Ma’s face and the way she held that rolling-pin made me realize what had woken me up.

“Just because it’s Sunday, it doesn’t mean you can sleep till noon.” said Ma, as she left me to recollections of my outing the previous night. This was just like exam-time. I always have these weird nightmares where I’m writing a test, totally unprepared. What’s weird about these nightmares is that I have them a few days after the exams, instead of the other way round, as you would expect.

Yes, I went out with Mira last night. A lot of things happened; things that no one knows about except for the two of us. Correction: the three of us.

It began with Mira showing up at our house at roughly 5 in the evening. I had just returned from my tuitions. Dressing up, I tried really hard to maintain a casual look for the evening; trying to look as if this was just another evening with friends.

“Karthik!” cried Ma.
“Coming!” came my reply.

I hurried down the stairs, almost injuring myself as I missed a step. She looked like a dream. Gothic, is what I think they call the way she looked that night. Her cloud-like mass of soft hair and her smoky, kohl-lined eyes had my heart thumping in an instant. For an instant, I looked at Ma to check if she was noticing me. Showered with all this tuned-up sex-appeal, I found it hard to maintain the calmness of my emotions.

“Let’s run” I said.

“OK” she said, as I opened the door for her.

“Have you got enough money?” asked Ma. She looked concerned rather than suspicious, which gave me some relief.

“Yes Ma!” I shouted back, as I rushed to catch up with her; she was waiting for me at the gate.

“So, how long are you here for?” I asked, after foraging a little for something to make conversation. Right now, the scent of the perfume she was wearing was filling up my nose. I sniffed it lightly enough for her to not notice.

“You mean here in Baroda? Three months.”

“Nice.” I said, with a sheepish smile. I went through Shiva’s rules of making smalltalk with women over and over again for something to hold on to. I had just broken the first rule – I had asked a question that didn’t invite her to continue the conversation. And so I was back at square one.

“So, how do you like it here?” the perfect question.

“Umm, I like the place. It’s all suburb-ic and all; just that I miss my friends a lot. I mean, the ones in Ahmedabad. It gets a little lonely and boring in the afternoons.”

“You can come over to my house then,” I wanted to say, before I realized how entangled I was in my own busy schedule.

“Mm-Hmm, tell me more.” I was becoming an expert at this.

“I want to go visit them one day. My old friends, my old school, everyone.”
All throughout our walk to the bus-stop, guys in the neighbourhood occasionally eye-balled her. I felt on top of the world. For once, I was not one of the bird-watchers, but had the privilege of being with the bird-watchee!

“Oh, by the way, I have a friend coming to meet me all the way from Ahmedabad.”

“Cool.”

“He said he’ll be waiting at Central Mall. How long will it take to get there?”

“He?” I thought, “Not cool.”

“Umm, hoping we get a bus in the next five minutes, we should be there in about twenty.” I told her.
I had started getting that weird feeling in my tummy. Something wasn’t right about this. Why couldn’t ‘he’ come meet her at her home? Apprehension filled my mind as I saw the bus approaching.

“Is this the right one?” she asked.

“Yes I am.” I said.

The confused look on her face brought me back to my senses.
“I mean, yes it is.”

As we boarded the bus, I started having second thoughts about how this night was going to turn out. Had she made plans to meet up with an old flame? Or worse, her current flame? In any case, why did she want me to join her? All this speculation was driving me mad. The mental image I had prepared of a beautiful evening out in town was being conflicted by the image of the mysterious Mr. X. The evident innocence on her sweet little face confused me further. That was when I first knew cognitive dissonance.

“Umm, that’s what I think I said.” me, my usual sarcastic self. “She obviously doesn’t want me to take her out. It’s just that she trusts me enough to know that she’ll be safe with me.”

“That’s awesome!”

Having been friends with him for over a decade now, I had become used to the fact that Mitesh’s world was, to put it lightly, sad. Born with the gift of overprotective parents, almost every mundane detail of my uninteresting life transgressed into ‘the awesome‘, in his. And so its awesome that I get to keep my own cellphone (a second-hand Nokia with a seven segment display), its awesome that I get to pick my own clothes. Hell, its awesome that I commute to school on a bicycle.

“She trusts you too much!” sneered Kamal, and broke into a giggle. Rarely ever does Kamal make jokes. This was one of those times, trust me. Another little detail: he’s the class topper.

“So”, began Shiva, “What have you got planned?”

“I guess I’ll take her to Gulmohar Park first; then we’ll make a small trip to Shyamali Lake. And we’ll spend the rest of the evening in Central Mall, in and out of stores, chilling!”

There. It was the itinerary of the century. A plan that elicited a standing ovation. I should’ve been given a medal for it.

“That’s awesome!” This was Mitesh again.

Not exactly what I expected, but quite close.

“Shut up! Its all zilch!” Now this was Shiva. It hurt to see 5-minutes-worth of my imagination being downgraded like that; then again, it was never easy to please Shiva. ”A mall? You’ll take her to a mall? You think that’s what she’ll want to see after flying down all the way from the States? Another mall?”

“OK. So maybe my plan’s not perfect, but its good enough.”

“Far from it. Now, enter the supremely perfect plan…” Everyone tuned up their receivers; this was going to be something special. I’m sure Kamal was about to take notes until sadly, the inimitable Karmnath walked in through the door. People broke their clusters and changed from four-a-bench to two-a-bench arrangement; routine rituals that marked the beginning of his hour-long physics class. Mitesh moved in with Shiva, Kamal fled to the front row, which best suited his note-taking abilities. All this commotion left me without a partner.

“Damn it!” I exclaimed, as Sudha walked in. Sitting next to her was the ultimate ordeal; I already had Karmnath’s class to deal with. The girl was loaded with attitude; she made you feel worthless. When she saw who her partner for the class was going to be, she brought a disgusted expression to her face; a kind of precursor of the torture I was going to experience. For the first few minutes, I remained silent. Karmnath had started out on his daily circuit.

The circuit was his daily pick of lucky students who got an opportunity to answer an extremely difficult question that summed up the concepts of the previous lesson. The unfortunate majority, who couldn’t answer had to subject themselves to his humiliating punishment. For girls, his treatment bordered on the perverse. Right now, he was twisting Yukta’s earlobe so hard, it made her cringe. Then he proceeded to do something that I can only explain as sniffing a person’s ear-wax.

“Yukta doesn’t look that charming anymore.” I whispered to Shiva. “Looks the same to me” he said. “You’ve probably been OD-ing on charm with that Mira girl!”

“Shut the fuck up, girls are not your commodities.” That was Sudha. We chose to ignore her, which was the only known defense mechanism against the creature. By the way, that new nose-ring looked added to her sex-appeal. But I dare not tell her that.

“Shivshankar Yadav!” thundered Karmnath. Shiva turned around as if it were the Devil who’d called upon him. Everyone straightened up as Karmnath neared us. “What do you think is the answer?”

Shiva had a knowing look on his face, not because he knew the answer, but because he knew he was doomed and he just wanted to get it over with as soon as possible. “I1 + I3″, he spoke. Karmnath smiled, exposing all 30 of his distorted yellow teeth. He then started with his trademarked punishment for boys: He took one each of Shiva’s cheeks in his hands, and pulled them hard back-and-forth around ten times, leaving him look like a caricature and half the class laughing at him.

And then he looked at me. “Karthik Yesudas” he announced, as everyone turned their attention from Shiva to me. I stood up straight, and waited for his question. “What do you think is the answer?”

“Could you please repeat the question?” I thought of asking, but since my previous experience hadn’t been pretty, I decided against it. I looked down and saw Sudha making a gesture with her hands. She was trying to tell me the answer, but the real question was whether I trust her. After all, she had always been good in Physics. Zero, she was trying to say zero. Sounded credible enough. The most widespread whole number, zero. If I took too long, Karmnath would know it was a guess. So I spoke up: “Zero”

Karmnath looked at me in a way which said nothing about my answer. After about 10 seconds of excruciating silence, the dentally-retarded maniac smiled. From the corner of my eye, I could see Sudha trying hard to contain her giggle. My cheeks went for a ride as I learned that zero was not so ubiquitous when it came to Karmnathian Physics.

Mira. Her name was Mira. The perfect name. Uncommon — you like that in a girl’s name — but not flamboyant, like a Mianka, or worse, a Miankana (no offense).

“You don’t need to be so formal around Mira, Karthik. She won’t bite you!” started Mrs Gupta, as everyone broke into giggles. Whatever meagre amount of confidence I had built up to that point was shattered in an instant. “I seriously think otherwise“, I wanted to say, but didn’t.

“Hi. I’m… I’m Karthik.” I began, as I extended my hand over to her. She shook it, and then I realized the stupidity of what I’d just said. Of course she knew I was Karthik. Poor opening line. Plus, I saw her wipe her hand on her dupatta after shaking mine — a reminder of how terribly my palms were sweating. Mr & Mrs Gupta, as well as my own Ma and Papa were subjecting us to intense scrutiny, and I was giving off all the wrong signals. I had to take evasive action, fast.

“Hi! It’s good to finally meet you! I’m Mira.”

A sheepish smile was all I could manage. “A ‘likewise’ would’ve been nice” I thought to myself.

“Sheesh, you’re all sweaty. What’s the deal?”

“I’ve really gotto run, got a test tomorrow.” I said, as I rose to leave.

“Sure, no problem. See you around.”

“What test?” asked Papa.

“It’s mathematics — probability. Don’t worry, I’ll nail it.”

“Sure, I can see that from how you’re running away.” said Ma. This comment, for some reason, made Mira laugh. Trust me, I could have given up anything to watch her giggle for the next five minutes. But recalling how I’d crossed the threshold on previous occasions, I got my senses together and left for the kitchen to get a drink of water. I could still hear them from the kitchen; though their voices were slightly muffled, I could make out what they were saying.

“How’s Mira in studies?” began Papa.

“She does well. They say she’s easily the best student of her class. Mira has achieved a lot for her academic performance in the two years that she’s been there.” Listening to all of this made me sweat a little more, for I knew what was coming next.

“Karthik is doing well too. He remains somewhere around the top of his class. He also gets a good score consistently on his mock IIT-JEEs. But he can do much better if he wastes less time roaming around with his friends or watching cartoons.”said Ma.

We were being pitted in that war parents love to wage with each other: “Who’s child is going to make more money when they grow up?” These little comparisons always left me feeling like a trading card. Except fortunately, I couldn’t be traded, or so I hoped.

“Seriously? Karthik watches cartoons?”. The voice, I loved her voice. But what did she mean? Did she find it adorable or was she poking fun at me? In any case, I liked the way she uttered my name. I re-played it in my head a few more times before I took my glass of water and left for my room upstairs. What was strange, though, about this entire incident was that Mira didn’t seem the girl who I’d just offended in the mall, and again back in the living room.

School the next day. Shiva: “Dude I’m never forgiving you for this. How could you, my best friend, act that way in front of a girl? Plus, you crossed the threshold, not once but twice! This is outrageous!”

I had expected this tantrum from him. He goes ballistic every time I fail in following his well-defined, well-outlined, and well-tested protocol, which according to him should be my life’s ultimate goal. “Ok, Ok, I admit I was a fool last night, lord Shiva. But that’s history. Though she cringed in the mall and back home when we met, she seemed to have forgotten the whole thing. What do I do next? How do I get talking with her? Where do I start?”

“Relax. Everything’ll fall into place. You said she used to live in Ahmedabad when she left for the States, right?”

“Yup.”

“Then you don’t have a thing to worry about. You’ll have your chance with her in a week’s time, at most.”

I didn’t understand back then what weird reasoning had led him to that conjecture, but I found out that evening.

“Mira’s new to Baroda.” began Ma.

“Mm-hmm” I mumbled, pretending not to be paying much attention. But I could already see where this was heading; Shiva was a genius!

“She doesn’t know too many people or places around here, and I promised her you would show her around town this Saturday. You’ve not planned anything else, have you?”

“Aww Ma! I was thinking about going to the movies with Shiva and the guys.” Of course I couldn’t accept the offer right away! I couldn’t let Ma see the real me, drooling all over this opportunity.

“Ohh, in that case…”

“But I think I can cancel. I know how it feels to be stuck at home in a new town, just ’cause you don’t know all the right places to hang out.”

“That’s very considerate of you.” said Ma with a smile, as I started to leave for my room. “By the way, how was your test today? Wrote well?”

“Of course. Of course I wrote well. It was mathematics Ma, what did you expect?”

“Whatever you say. Just, don’t lose focus on the other subjects.”

“Hmm.” I said. “In all probability, I’m going to score well.”

I went to bed that night with dreams of the weekend. It was four days in the future, but I had everything planned. Images of Mira, and the sound of her voice, kept flashing in my head. “In all probability, I’m going to score well” I thought to myself, as I dissolved into peaceful sleep.

-Chitharanjan]

Women tend to believe there is something lewd and lascivious about the entire activity of bird-watching. That’s precisely what I used to think a few years ago; before my Enlightenment.

I was in a mall, with friends. Quite content with the sights and sounds of the place, my eyes kept roving around, over the novelties. “Dekh, dekh, dekh!” hissed my friend Shiva, tugging at my sleeve. I looked in the prescribed direction and saw the most beautiful thing I had seen all day at the mall. She wore a yellow kurta and jeans and had the most flawless face with the most perfect complexion, with the most compelling eyes. Girls with so many superlatives are definitely worth looking at for longer than an instant. So I kept staring, staring, staring… till she looked straight back at me. The next instant, I was looking at my shoes, head lowered in shame. This, as I would discover a few months later, is not the best thing to do when you feel like the bird has taken offense. Out of sheer temptation, I looked again and found that her eyes were still upon me. This was disastrous, so I went back to my shoes; anxiously fiddling with my fingers as I started rueing the entire incident. After almost five seconds had passed, I looked at Shiva. To my disbelief, he was still staring at her.

“Stop it man! I think she’s seen us!”

“Hmm”, came his curt reply.

“Aren’t you worried she’ll come over here and slap you or something?”

“Nah”. Another monosyllable. Women have that effect on him; his sense of language turns rudimentary.

“Well, then you should be.”

“What’s the big deal? Damn! there she goes.”

I looked up to double-check. Then he began,

“Why are you so lame about bird-watching? I think you’ve got major issues with bird-watching!”

Alright, that was it. This, time he had made a direct attack on my pride.

“I think you’re the one with issues. It’s rude to stare at them for so long.”

“Too long? I’d just barely crossed the threshold.”

“Threshold?” I thought to myself, “Now there’s a threshold for this?”

“Yes, threshold.” He said, reading my thoughts. “It comes with experience.”

“Yeah right!” His formal treatment of the whole thing irritated me.

“What’s wrong with her having seen you anyway? You’re probably not going to see her again for the rest of your life. So who gives a damn whether she takes it rudely or not?”

Funnily enough, this was beginning to make sense to me now. And trust me; rarely ever does Shiva even come close to making sense. I must’ve thought it over a million times there-after, and each time, Shiva’s argument seemed to become a little more credible.

In a month, I was back at the mall. This time, there was no Shiva. I was with two other inexperienced members of the bird-watching club instead. We spent three-quarters of the evening in the restaurant, the bookstore and the arcade. No luck. Just when I was beginning to label it a failed outing, I saw her entering the mall. Beautiful, intelligent, and chic, is what I gleaned form my first look. Strangely enough, I felt like I had seen her before. Her dark, smoky eyes were the centre of my attention, followed by her silky mass of black hair, and her luscious red lips. For the remainder of that evening, I never missed an opportunity to catch a look at her wherever I went in the mall. She must’ve seen me staring at her over a dozen times. But Shiva’s words, resounding in my head like a bird-watching hymn, offered me some much-needed reassurance. Everything seemed to be going well, till the time I saw her leaving the mall. This once, I looked at her so long, she contorted her face in an effort to produce the worst of all expressions; she clearly appeared disgusted with me. For a few seconds, I wished I had the ability to vanish. Guilt and regret paralyzed me. I was ready to take a slap if I was to receive one the next instant which, thankfully, I didn’t. The girl had probably gotten into her car and driven away, still frustrated by my very existence.

This incident filled my thoughts on the ride back home. I chided myself for having crossed the threshold so carelessly. But then again, I wasn’t going to see her again for the rest of my life, was I?

Home. “Karthik beta, could you come to the living room?” cried Ma. “Sure, I’ll be right there!” I cried back.

As I made my way to the living room, I could hear the familiar voices of Mr & Mrs Gupta. I remembered how Ma had invited them over for dinner the other day. They sounded pretty chirpy. Just this once, their chirpiness was justified; after all, their daughter had just returned from the States. I wondered how she looked; I’d only seen pictures of her as a child, that the Guptas kept framed on their walls; we’d known them only for a few years. As it turned out, I didn’t have to wait long — as soon as I entered the room, my eyes fell upon her — beautiful, intelligent, and chic. The same eyes, the same hair, the same lips; and now I knew why her face had seemed familiar. Once again, I crossed the threshold, and once again she gave me that disgusted look. Thankfully, no one else noticed. Having exchanged pleasantries with Mr & Mrs Gupta, as I sat down for tea on the chair right in front of her, I realized it was going to be a long, long night.