The large stone and a pair of teeth

The jogger

He kept trying for the whole of last week. And at last he succeeded. He woke up at 7 and started the good habit of jogging. He would have hardly ran ten meters when he crossed a bag containing a large stone and a pair of teeth lying side by side.

The fall guy

Every birthday comes with a new hope. A hope: the world will be good to you at least for a day. Sadly, our scapegoat won’t subscribe to that. Not after flying around, getting his butt kicked by every non-Grata well wisher and getting his face plastered with cream. He slowly heads back home, cursing and swearing at all those so called well wishers.

The villain

No story is complete without a villain. This guy happens to celebrate his birthday the very next day and is in need of money so that he can revel. He waits in a dark alley waiting for a prey to jump right in front of him.

The good guys

You find them helping old ladies cross the road even if all they never wanted to. They always prevent children from pelting stones at dogs, and end up getting 14 injections themselves. And the office has a few of them. They keep track of every event and waste no chance to gift magnanimously. It was on one such day that they give a fall guy some gift on his birthday, which was received well.

The reflexes

Reflex never fails. A walk down a dark alley and someone jumps in front of you. All one can do is to throw whatever you have in your hand at the offender.

The schemer

What is life without a conspiracy? Every damn event is a conspiracy. And it doesn’t need much of a time for the conspirator to replace the gifts with a piece of stone which resembles in every respect but for one. All these done in split seconds. Especially when someone’s flying all over. The gunpowder conspiracy has been excelled.

A walk to remember

Days rush past as if they are competing with one another. It rushes past faster in case of weekends. A normal day would be like walk to office , get to office , get frustrated over work , brag to colleagues about stuff that never happened, get frustrated again and finally walk back home. With weekend u can probably leave the office stuff out, but still at times you get to go to office and spend your life. And believe me, the frustration was reaching a crescendo and cribbing was becoming one of those traits.

It was one such day.

I was walking to office, thinking on the numerous issues that might prop up for that day. The manager will ask the reason for the lag in schedule. What will I say then ? Must I say lack of clarity in requirements ? Or should I say I was feeling upset over the losses that Mumbai suffered. Or must I say that I didn’t want to do it? The last option is the truest and the simplest of reasons which I could say. But then I decide to try my luck with the lack of clarity crap. That’s when she asked me something.

To begin with, I wasn’t able to hear anything, thanks to the earplugs. I like earplugs. I started using it to ward of traffic noises. But later came to know the alternate utility it provides. I use it in every meeting. It serves me in two ways. I don’t have to listen to many things which doesnt concern me even a bit. Secondly, I sort of learned the art of lip reading. I could make out the please from her as I was removing them from my ears.

She asked me “Can you please take a pic of me and the watchman uncle ?”

Before I could give an answer she entrusted me with her digicam. And I took some three pics of her with the watchman and handed the camera back to her. She gave the best smile I have seen for ages and said a thanks and just walked away.

I felt like asking her a lot of questions. And these questions keep disturbing me for the rest of my walk to office. Questions like Whats your name? and many on similar lines. But she just walked away.

By then I had got office and I hurried to attend the daily meeting. I walked into the meeting hall. It did take me a few mins to realise that I had given my earplugs to the sweet girl whom I met on the way to office. And the meeting went for an hour.

queue sera sera

Queue, Whats that ? A question one wouldn’t expect even a kid to ask. One who preaches that the world is eventually headed towards chaos will perceive the Queue with awe. For it opposes all that he has he has learned, read and preached . People standing one behind the other often unperturbed and all of them very hopeful of they getting a chance pretty soon. This is something which might lead the chaos guy to question the credibility of all that he had believed in.

Group of people patiently waiting for something to happen to them; something pleasant like a bus which might never come, or perhaps something bad like some cyclone to blow them away or even more catastrophic their fate to be decreed to them by God on Doomsday.

Amazing, does it not feel like? (Might be highly subjective.)

Queue is an amazing indeed. For it had managed to subdue the mob instincts of people and install in them some ethics into the adamant minds of humans. It tends to tell him/ her that the fun in waiting for something for a long time and attaining it cannot be achieved any other way. If one pulls in utility and all the economics one knows

Utility gained by waiting in a queue for something > Utility gained by fighting for something > Utility gained by getting something delivered to u

And people don’t bother thinking a lot over the above in-equation. For the guy who said it was later proved to be a lunatic as per the verdict of a jury of lunatics.(yeah , foreman included)

There is nothing as funny as being in a queue. Having said that there is nothing that tests ones patience as a queue would.

The guy standing in front of you will at least have some 3 bags to manage. He will have be always trying to find the optimum way of handling the bags. He will bend down at times and try to relieve the pressure his hands and legs are subjected to, and that I think will be periodic. And in the process he will manage to push u behind a bit much to your discomfort. Else he will give one the bags a full swing as the amateur golfer would. And the bag will come hit straight at your face which u will avoid thanks to some good reflexes. A apology will be thrown at you even faster in both instances.

The guy standing behind you will be suffering from all the ailments that one can possibly think of. He will sneeze ,cough , breathe heavily and at times end up placing his chin right over your shoulder. If he happens to have a mobile in his hand , then consider urself dead. He will speak so loud that at times it sounds worse than the alarm in your room. Or worse he will always get a week old news paper and try to make out what went wrong with his stars last week. You might, at times, even contemplate leaving the queue. But you stay on.

In walks a man who is all skepticism can be.Or even more! He will go on asking everyone in the queue whether the queue is for a specific purpose. After one round of interrogation , he will stand right in front of you and contemplate if he must join the queue or not. That will be stopping u from getting a glimpse of the evening news being displayed on the plasma screen. Expect no apologies, for they are hard to come by.

Rarely you will have some kids in the queue who will manage to amuse you throught the tedious waiting. You will manage to give the kid a big smile and grab the attention of the kid. But the kid will select that moment to give out his best cry , as if it had been waiting for that moment all its life. And u are rendered helpless. Suddenly you become this person who has no respect for children and you are forced into giving an apology.

Apologies received <= Apologies given

I am no sadist, but i must say that the displeasure that gets generated out of the counter closing down for a lunch break or the tickets getting over when u are the next person to avail the opportunity. You are better of if u take that and just move on with your life.

The advent and use of softwares to manage almost all manual jobs has lead to change in most of the customary practices apart from rendering a few men and women jobless. But the queue has managed to find its way into that domain as well. And the name is still queue.

Doubters, refer Data Structures and be satiated.

The art of pillion riding

At first there was no bike; then there was a bike and a rider and then somehow came the pillion rider. That was the start of chaos. -A random bike rider

Most of us would have been pillion rider at some point of our life. Haven't we? To never have been a pillion rider would mean to never have sat on a two wheeler. Or something more apt will be you never have wanted to sit on a two wheeler which you are not riding.

The need for someone to be a pillion rider arises from the simple fact that there has not been a bike which allows both the riders to ride. Prerequisites are a motorbike and two riders. My knowledge on motor cycles is very bleak. But I am very confident about the above mentioned fact. Only solution which I can think of is to have a bike which can be driven from both ends. Which would mean that we have to fit every bit of accesory twice.That sort of engineering defeats the purpose. Hence proved that there has to some one who has to be the pillion driver if the vehicle in question is a bike.

A pillion rider assumes a lot of responsibilities he neednt assume. He is like the cricketer who is wanting to be the next vice-captain of a team; hoping that something goes wrong with the skipper and he will be get control over decision making. He will end up overdoing a lot of things and will end up as a joke.

The pillion rider at times thinks that he owes the driver something in return. And he will use his amazing cognition of traffic rules and signals and prove that he will he is no mug with the traffic signals and will show a stop signal when the driver has the indicator signalling right and such minor slip ups which might lead to serious messup.

The pillion rider gets pissed of with every other vehicle that over takes the vehicle he is on. He gets irritated at every horn that get horned. At times he manages to give a glare or a stare at the driver who tries to overtake the bike, depending on the gender.

He is never short on words though. He will give lectures on the everything from the emerging market for futures trading in India to the degrading moral values among people who are younger to him. He will unleash his complaints on the roads, on the food he had, about the girl who didn’t smile at him as she does always and almost everything. He will manage to let in a few lewd comments here and there. All the driver has to do is to pretent that he is approving of all that he is hearing. Even if he is hearing nothing.

At times the pillion rider tries to behave as if he is at home. He will stretch his hands wide open. He will manage to do search for his mobile in his jeans pocket. He will afford to let out one or two yawns. At times he will try to get a nap with his head on the shoulder of the driver. He will try hard to make sure that the driver feels that he is uncomfortable.

Some random pillion driver, highly influenced by astrological revealings, was very particular about how he mounts the bike. He wanted to mount on the bike from the left side with his a free swing of the left leg. And he was very particular about that! We can see such people peeping right into the face of the vehicle thats behind them.

A certain pillion guy tried to cross all limits and tried to help the driver wear the helmet when the vehicle was moving at 70 kmph. He decided to slip the helmet over the face of the driver without letting the driver take the pain of putting it on. He almost succeeded in blinding the driver for a good ten seconds. The pair managed to survive with minor bruises.

Happy pillion riding, mates!