To my potential offspring

Date: 28-February-2016, 10:40 PM
Location: Singapore

This is your father writing to you from the past. Somewhere in the messy, fuzziness that is a space-time continuum, I know you exist. Hopefully, you are hale and healthy, and you don’t hate me already. It would be really cool if I can start this post by saying, “If you are reading this, then I am probably dead. So here is your mission to unlock your inheritance…” That is so wonderfully cinematic; an appropriate and absurd way to start a message to a kid that has not been born yet. If I ever stop being absurd when I grow old, please knock some sense into me, will you?

Hopefully, the earth in that parallel universe is more healthy and peaceful. Hopefully, you read this from a spaceship as you become the first person to land on Mars. If not the extraordinary, hopefully, you are doing something that a twenty four year old me finds mundane but you still enjoy it and find it extraordinary. Hopefully, at least one of the thousand thoughts that are crossing through my head come true. Hopefully, I stop using the word hopefully.

You might be thinking, why this man is writing to you, while you listen to your AI assistant read this out. Maybe at this moment on February 28th 2016 at 10:12 PM, I wanted to talk to someone without hearing their opinions. Considering the cost of living these days, maybe this will be my only inheritance to you. Or I could have just been inspired by Phil from Modern Family.

To be frank, I am a strong (relatively?), independent person who has been set loose on this wild, beautiful and complex world. To tell you the truth kiddo, I have no idea what I am doing or where I am going. Am I proceeding closer to making sense of “it” all, or am I just running further and further away from the truth? One day, I hope to look at the whole picture and say, “HA! I knew that all along!” 

 Maybe, this is just me using the unborn you as an opportunity to write a blog post. If you find that offensive, then tough luck kiddo, because in life people are going to do what they want, whether you like it or not. I have been told by many, that I am really good at advising people. I am sure you’ve felt and been annoyed by the ripple effect of that statement in the continuum. I hope, by the time you read this post, you are old enough to either miss my advice or better yet, you are a major fan of it.

So, here goes… HA! Rejoice my offspring, there won’t be any wise words from me this time. However, I hope to write more as I continue to figure my life out. I will try to keep the advice to within 200–300 words per post. Maybe one day, when I am done, I can collect these set of truths as the greatest gift given by me to mankind.
PS- Yes, I know you want to say it. “You are a narcissist, dad.” Its true. I agree.

PPS- Also, I really like calling you kiddo. I am pretty sure it is going to annoy you after a while.

The Umbrella Man

Disclaimer

Hello! I felt like this one needed a disclaimer. The post below is a story that I worked on last month. It is 4634
words long and it is definitely not something that happened to me. In fact, this is one of the first one's that I am
actually posting here. Anyway, know that it is entirely fictional! If you guys like it, leave a comment below,
share it with your friends. :) If you guys don't like it completely, then sorry for wasting your time. If you guys
like it, but find there are some problems with it, you are welcome to drop a comment below or PM me. I hope to submit this to some magazine. :)

#

A semicolon rose, leaving a conditional statement unterminated. Seconds later, another set of semicolons and brackets followed it and formed into two matrices. Functions detached themselves from their locations and curved around the matrices and formed an intriguing figure.

That dream fired off a specific corner of my brain, that ran away, raising the alarm.

I had finally cracked under the pressure and started to imagine seductive code.

"No plans for the long weekend?"

I opened my eyes and blinked. A colleague stood near my desk; a brown trolley-bag protruding from behind him. He was trying -- but failing to contain the excitement that flowed out his face. 

So even the office slog has plans for the holidays and I don't. Yay?

Many replies came to my mind.

I could jump onto the desk, pull my hair out and scream, "No! No! I don't! Okay? Get out of my face!"

I could get very, very friendly and hug him. "You are a lucky fellow! Go have fun with your partner! You beautiful human being, you!"

I could just stare at him till he walked away. Yes, that sounded perfect.

"Stuck with this," I said, pointing at the mess on my screen. I scrolled through the lines to add emphasis to my point.

It only ended up depressing me further. Will I even understand this shit after the holidays?

A smile spread across his face. I had to assume that it was a kind smile. That stupid grin coming from a person wearing those shorts, screamed, "Hahaha loser, stew here when I soak in the beach sun!"

The smile stayed on his face a little longer than was appropriate.

Maybe, I should just punch him.

"Well... Good luck... man!" He said, patting me on the back. He disappeared from my side before I could tell him my name or -- better yet, ask for his.

Weeks of repressed frustration threatened to burst out from my mouth. I hated it when people referred to me with a 'man,' instead of using my name.

Hey man, what's up man! Ugh.

There used to be idiots like that in my older office. I tried to recall their names. Mala? Varnan? What was it? Had I forgotten it already? Few more faces...  Only the faces surfaced in my mind. Their features very faint, with flashes of clarity. In a few more months, even that clarity would be lost.

What will happen in a few more years?

The slog rolled his trolley out of the door. The squeals rang in my ears even after the doors closed. I returned to my screen, trying to recollect the line of thought that he had interrupted.

I stared at the code. It stared back at me, clean of any obvious errors . If an IDE was a human being, it was right about now that it would be partying with the bugs in the code.

A tap came from somewhere within the office. I looked up, expecting the window to be open. Of course it wasn't. I didn't belong in offices with open windows anymore.

My display flickered and it felt like a warning from its side before shutting down, unable to face my incompetence.

I rubbed my eyes, clearing those unnecessary thoughts. I had moved to this office for a reason, and I should not let a bad day ruin my motivation.

The taps inside the office grew in their periodicity, and my debugging quest grounded to a halt. I took one last look at the code, contemplating between formatting it, and just leaving to the confines of my single room apartment.

It was the lack of comments in the code that annoyed me the most. I had never been a messy coder. What had happened to me?

Nope, I shouldn't be looking for an answer to that question. Not today.

I saved the files - multiple times, as usual, and left the office.

# 

I stepped out of the lift and turned back, just as the elevator doors closed.

What was I thinking? I cannot go home now! It is only seven in the night -- before a long weekend that too! If I fall on my bed at eleven, it meant... it meant three hours of having nothing to do, no one to talk too.

I stood there in the lift lobby, paralysed and unable to make up my mind.

At that moment, I hoped that some secret entity would turn up and say , "Hello there! I shall be nice and stop time for you. Also, I'll warp space and time to allow you to experience a small period of both of your choices. Then, you can decide!"

In a not very impossible parallel universe. The one in which I had not moved to a new office, I would be off to some bad movie -- getting ready to make fun of it, right about now. With the team... with friends...

I cursed, pulled myself out of that spiral and and summoned the lift. It decided to go up from the fiftieth floor instead of coming down.

I forced myself to turn away. There was no point returning to that depressing environment to be unproductive.

The door to the foyer opened on my approach and greeted me with a smell of antiseptic. My feet slowed down involuntarily as it sensed the wetness of the floor. There was a plop, and a subsequent sound of a mop sliding from somewhere behind me.

 A collection of small lights - possibly LED's, were trying to illuminate the entire foyer. Their larger counterparts had been turned off for the weekend already.

My footsteps echoed off the empty hallway, as I walked towards the exit trying not to feel lonely. But even that thought of the word managed to trigger bad memories.

I stepped out of the foyer into a flash of white light that blinded me, followed by a loud boom that stopped me on my tracks.

Wonderful. Rain. Yay?

#

I raced down the stairs. Getting stuck at office due to rain would be worse than the other two options.

A  roar emanated from the shelter above me. I walked till the edge and peaked out at the street in front of the building.

The volume of rain drops, shaped like needles almost obscured the street lights. The plants that split the road from the taxi drop off point, danced along with the trees, and a gust pushed some of the cold rain on my face.

I retreated back towards the steps, feeling the need to shout at an imagined entity that controlled rain. It felt easier then shouting into a void

Why? Why do you have to pile more shit onto people who are already having a shitty day. Why?

I could  imagine the answer that thing would say, "Its the law of equilibrium youngling. I will also pile on if you have good days, you see?" Then, I might go on to smack that thing on its head.

I cursed again, rather too loud that anyone who knew me was used too, and looked around out of impulse. I retreated further, and settled myself on one the steps to wait out the rain.

I watched with annoyance as my bus rolled down the road. Very few vehicles followed the bus down, but lots of water did. It fell into drains on the sides whose positioning needed a stronger word than appropriate to describe it.

Nothing else of interest happened. Water rushed into the drains that it seemed like it did not want to stay anywhere else. There was no rubbish that floated along in the water to choke the drain, there were no potholes, and no strays seeking the only shelter on the road.

It was all very perfect, and safe. I hated it. I also hated myself for hating it.

Why? No, not the right time to look for an answer to that question either.

I sighed, and considered my options. I took my phone out, and its screen was dark and unresponsive.

I was not sure if I had an umbrella with me, and I did not want to go up all the way to my desk to check if I had one there. Could I run down to the stop?

I imagined myself running down the slope, wind adding to my speed, as the rain water drenched my clothes. Considering my amazing stability of my feet on flat roads, it seemed like a bad idea.

I knew the weather here was temperamental. So I settled myself more comfortably and decided to wait out the rain.

Memories of times spent making paper boats outside my house rose up to greet me despite my resistance to not go down that spiral.

A door opened behind me, and an expensively dressed woman stepped into my view. 

#

The woman had her head bent down over her phone as she walked down the stairs, ignoring the meteorological orchestra in front of her. She stopped just before the overhead shelters end and pivoted to her left without taking her eye of the phone, and continued walking.

The air around me immediately saturated with her perfume, overpowering any chances of me experiencing other smells. Although, there was not much competition to speak off from the road, despite the heavy rain.

She walked past me and hefted the bag hanging from her shoulders. It looked expensive because I did not recognise the brand name. Her smell followed her down the trail while still lingering in front of me.

What did she use as a perfume? Nothing I buy had ever lasted throughout the day. Maybe she refreshes it every few hours? I did not know. But there can be a lot of things said about a person whom you can smell even before they enter a room.

It felt satisfying to make that generalization. I did not push that thought away, even though it was so obviously  wrong. Did I not deserve it after the past few days? That feeling of superiority -- how much ever unearned that it might be?

A flash, and then thunder rolled through from a source somewhere close, shocking me back to reality. Something fell that sounded like a phone.

The girl was trying to squat down, while wearing those shoes that were clearly not made for that posture. She picked up her phone, and stood up, hesitantly looking at the screen. She wiped and tapped it a few times. After few seconds of rushed tapping, she banged it against her left hand.

She -- No, let me give her a name... Rian.

Rian banged her phone a few more times and put it inside her bag. She rubbed her head, and fished inside her bag for something. After a few more moments of frantic searching, she closed her eyes, looked up at the sky, and turned back towards the entrance. Her gaze barely fell on me as she walked past and settled herself next to one of the large support pillars of the shelter.

She stood there for a few seconds, shook her head and started to pace while fiddling with her phone.

Another bus rolled down the street, making sloshing noises as it pushed the water whose volume had become large enough for it to be sloshed. The rain did not look ready to abate anytime soon. Diffused and very faint light fell on the streets below.

This was my cue to leave.

I stood up, and adjusted my bag as something poked my back from it. I adjusted it one more time, and looked out into the rain.

No, there was no way I can run down a slope in my shoes. It would be easy for that running to turn into rolling! I looked down at my shoes and at Rian again, who was pacing back and forth on my right. I had two  options in front of me. Run barefoot down the slope, or go help her out, maybe offer her my phone, both of which seemed like a bad idea. It might also be a good idea. I would never know because people never get to experience parallel universes at once. I wished we did, and it annoyed me a lot that we didn't.

I sighed, adjusted my bag, and decided to go with helping the woman thing. Maybe she will be nice?

#

"Hey, I observed your moves from my position when you exited the building, and I saw you drop your phone. Do you need some help? "

"Why were you looking at me you creep? Of course I don't need your help. Why are you even here if you have your phone with you?"

I did not have an answer to any of those questions.

"You. I am here to help you. I will help you. So take my help without objections."

Yes, that sounded perfect. Confident, strong, arrogant... Ugh.

I walked towards her deciding to say the first thing that came to my mind. After all, I knew I could help her. Both of us had same phones, and my screen was not an improperly stuck jigsaw puzzle.

"Hey," I reached near her, hoping she could hear my voice over the sound of this stupid rain.

She stopped pacing, and pointed at herself, somehow managing to convey the words "Are you calling me?" without speaking.

Of course I called you, idiot. Who else is there in this place?

"Do you want to make a call to someone?" I asked.

She looked at me, her expression unreadable. I braced myself for any response from her side.

"What?" she asked.

"I... You dropped your phone there. So I thought you might want to call someone to pick you up?" I asked,hesitantly taking my phone out and handing it to her. "The phone doesn't have charge, but you could use your battery on it."

She looked at my phone and back at me, "Thank you," she said, and waved her hands. "only my screen is down. I still managed to make a call."

"Oh. Okay," I said, and waited for her reply.

She decided to continue pacing instead. That was not the way I had expected the conversation to go.

It had not turned out as bad as i had expected it to be, but it was still a negative result. Maybe the world was kicking me because of my stereotyping sometime back, but she had reacted the same way I had expected people like her to react. Rian could have done something, maybe offered me her phone?

Why didn't she do that? Annoyance crept through my brain and further pushed me towards a renewed hatred towards my job, my situation, and this place that I had moved too.

Would I have done it if I were her? The rational part of me said yes. But somewhere beyond those layers of maturity, I knew I would not have offered help to someone so obviously different from me.

I snuffed out those thoughts of rationality as annoyance and anger took complete control. Time slowed down agonisingly during the next few minutes. It felt like someone was stretching it out while being  fascinated by the strands.

Rian continued to pace next to me, without another word. Each of her footsteps felt like someone was hitting me with a  small but very heavy hammer.

I waved my hands wildly as a green taxi crossed us, its sound completely masked by the rain. It did not stop, of course.

Stupid rain... I hate you rain! 

#

Something poked at my back again. This was the third time in the last ten minutes. I opened my bag and an yellow umbrella stuck out of the back partition.

I put my hand around the umbrella, and felt an odd tinge on my fingers. Had I stood here for so long with this thing in my bag? I remembered purchasing this sometime back but I had never taken it to work.

Something was definitely wrong here. I refuse to accept that I have become so stupid.

I glanced once more at Rian. She had increased her pacing rate, while also stopping to stare at the road every few rounds.

Maybe I could offer to accompany her till the bus stop with the umbrella. Should i talk to her? She had not made any effort to do so, had she?

Two distinct paths branched out in my mind. One started with me turning back, going to help her, and creating a possibility to have a conversation -- at least an awkward conversation that might lead to a longer one on the bus. The other involved me walking off with the umbrella. I wanted to live and experience both the possibilities, because both of them were more realistic than the usual ramblings in my head.

I thought about it for a moment. Even though parts of my brain were screaming at other parts that I was being stupid, childish, and immature, I decided to let the childish part win. I didn't want anything else to bring me down today.

I started towards the bus stop and was greeted by a flash of lightning with renewed vigour, and it brought along with it, a louder downpour.

It felt as though the rain didn't want me to leave the place and it was almost right. I still ran the risk of slipping down the slope while walking; even if I had an umbrella.

I looked back at Rian one final time. She stopped pacing and threw her hands up in frustration. She picked up her shoes, and then, with one last glance at the road behind us, stepped out into the rain.

I stood there, gaping at her react in a way I had not expected -- in a way I  would have in the past. Water fell on her with joy and seconds later, she was drenched from head to toe.

"Hey! Wait!" I shouted, waving at her. She didn't look back, and continued down the slope. I cursed, and decided I would follow her and put my hands inside my bag for the umbrella.

It was not there.

I opened my bag completely and dipped my head inside. Only trash and the darkness of the insides greeted me. Was I dreaming?

I blinked, and pinched myself. Nothing happened apart from an irritating prick on my wrist. Rian was stepping down the slope, while still looking behind her. I didn't know if she had stopped at my calls because she still seemed to be at the same position she was, moments before.

Had I just imagined the whole thing? But the umbrella! I had touched it!

I put my hands inside my bag again when there was a shout that started  together with another roll of thunder. An old man holding an umbrella was walking down the road with as much pace as he could muster towards Rian, who had stopped.

They conversed for a while, with Rian involuntarily making sure that even someone looking at them from a distance would know that they were arguing. Seconds later, the man held an yellow umbrella above her head.

I moved my gaze away from them and looked up at the sky. It was very difficult to make out the type of clouds above, considering the lack of sunlight.

My bag was still open and empty. Either I had hallucinated the whole thing -- which even though it sounded exciting, I knew was not possible. Or, it had just fallen down somewhere.

I looked around me, searching for any signs of the yellow umbrella.  Had it rolled down in the wind?

The rain had not let go of its intensity and I was sure that there had been a heavy gust sometime back. So, if it had rolled down, it could be somewhere on the road.

I still had my head down as I took a step towards the road and hesitated. The idea of getting wet did not appeal to me at all. So this was it then. I was stuck here whether I wanted too or not, until the rain passed. I should have just left the office early.

"Excuse me," someone said.

The old man with the umbrella was walking towards me, towing a rather embarrassed looking Rian with him. He closed the umbrella, once they were inside the shelter.

I gestured towards myself, and hoped that my expression looked puzzled. From this distance, he looked even more older. His hair was grey and the wrinkles on his face looked more like depressions than lines. What did he want with me?

"My granddaughter has been telling me that you gave her company," he said.

Company? She called that company?

I looked at her, and she nodded after a long period of embarrassed silence. "Thank you sir. It was not a problem," I said.

A content smile appeared on his face. "Would you like to join us till the bus stop?" he asked, opening up his umbrella.

I blinked, having no idea what to respond. At that moment, I understood what must have gone through Rian's head

As an old man, he looked harmless enough, but if someone else obviously foreign, offered me help, would I have accepted it? Was it because I was not used to being offered help here?

"No, sir," I said, "I... I doubt if that umbrella would fit the three of us."

"No, I insist," he said, "please?"

I stared at the sky, trying to make out if the rain was showing any signs of stopping. It did not. So it came to a matter of choosing between two options again. Should I refuse him and be stuck here, or should I leave with him?

This time, I did not have to imagine both the parallel universes.

"Are you sure it will be fine, sir?" I said, stepping towards him without waiting for his answer.

"Yes, it will be more than fine," he said, and lifted the umbrella.

I huddled towards his right, and Rian to his left, and we stepped out into the rain.

#

I took stiff, measured steps as we walked down the slope, and before long even the old man started to bump into me.

Every step felt like the one which would cause me to slip, and every step felt like someone dosed me with anxiousness and then purged it from my body. Rain pounded on the road, the shelter, and the umbrella, making me feel like I had gone deaf.

My hair was the only thing that was saved by the umbrella. My every step was a chore, my clothes were drenched, and weirdly, my left side felt wetter than the right. Water split into four, as it flowed past the heels of my shoes, and a shiver ran through my body.

I am going to slip! I am definitely going to slip!

"Do you mind?" I asked, and held onto the old man's shoulders. It was cold, wet, and rather tight when I touched him. He seemed busy conversing with Rian on his left and I could not hear a single word.

"Sir?" I called.

He did not reply.

"Sir?" I shouted.

I tapped his shoulders and they loosened as he turned. "Are you feeling comfortable?" he asked, genuine content still visible in his face.

"Are you okay sir? Maybe I can move further away so that you can come in," I said, hoping he would say no. One wrong step felt like a sure way to slip and roll.

"Nonsense. Not necessary at all," he said. He pulled me closer, and moved behind us.

"But..."

"No, just come in," he said, "its not very often I see people like you."

As he moved further away, I caught sight of Rian, who was looking at both of us, with an amused expression on her face.

"Could you ask him to not stay so far away?" I asked her.

She said something that I could not hear. She made an action that looked like clearing her throat and spoke again, "He likes to help people," she said, and smiled. "He would like you."

The road's gradient reduced considerably as we neared the bus stop. I looked at her and back at the grandfather, who was now almost out of the umbrella.

But why? I wanted to ask, even though that sounded like a stupid question at the moment.

We reached the crowded bus stop and ran into the shelter, water squelching under our shoes. Rian stepped away, and the grandfather came in last. He took few steps past me, down the slope, and ran hands through his hair, spraying water.

"Why?" I asked.

"Why?" he said, sounding incredulous.

"I mean... Why did you help me?"

"It is not a matter of why, it is the question of why not," he said, unfolding his umbrella again, "in my time, we did this voluntarily. In fact, not many of us even had an umbrella back then. Now, if someone with an umbrella approaches you in the city, you guys are trained to be suspicious."

He waved at Rian, who was probably standing somewhere behind, and pointed at me, "your bus is here," he said.

I turned back and found the bus lumbering towards us with clear indication of free seats. I relaxed at the thought of the comfort of the bus and the bed back home. I turned back to thank the grand father.

He was not there.

I looked back at the bus which was still lumbering towards us, strangely from the same position. My hand was holding a folded up umbrella. My umbrella.

"Thanks," Rian said. She stood next to me with her hair now loose falling till her shoulders. "I would have wasted a lot of time if I had waited for the rain to stop."

I looked at the umbrella in my hand, and felt the difference between the amount of water on my left and right hand side. Several things - rather unbelievable, clicked themselves into place.

"Is your grandfather coming?"

"Him?" she asked, "I thought I told you when we were walking from there, remember?"

I shook my head, my heart and stomach doing funny things at the realisation that I had just experienced.

"He is stuck at work," she said, and looked back at the bus, "anyway, thanks again for offering me the umbrella for the walk. I appreciate it. Is this your bus too?"

I nodded, as the bus rolled down on the decreasing gradient, and finally reached our spot splashing water onto the platform. The driver had not stopped close enough and water poured through the gap, splashing on the few passengers who climbed in.

Rian looked back at me, waved, and moved towards the door. My mouth felt like someone had sown it shut after the events that had just occurred. I just could not bring myself to believe it.

Had I just experienced two options, two universes at the same time? Or had I just hallucinated the whole thing due to sleep deprivation?

I did not know the answer to either of those questions. But, I knew what to do now.

I cut across the line on my side to get closer to Rian. As we reached that open area in between the bus-stop and the bus, I unfurled the umbrella.

"After you," I said, in an exaggerated manner, that made both of us giggle.

The doors to the bus closed, reducing the noise from outside. Rian... No, the girl whose name I was about to find out, was not there on the ground level. I smiled to myself, and started climbing up the stairs, with a single thought in my head.

Dear universe. I got your message. 

# 

The Grocery Shop Lady

It was almost like an artist was teaching my brain on the nuances of drawing. At least my brain seemed to think so, as it spread a white canvas and started drawing lines. The lines joined together to form shapes, and with each drawn shapes, my stomach sank a little lower. (In retrospect, I figure it might have just been hunger. But, oh well.)

The image, as it resolved itself in my heard turned out to be just two shapes. One, a huge mountain with the name of a popular bank in Singapore written on top of it like the Hollywood symbol. It had its own set of flashing lights and what not. (Yes, I know. My mind is a colourful place. Okay, let me stop interrupting my own blog post.)

So the first shape was a mountain with the name of the banks of Singapore and the second was a hunched, rather too muscular version of me. I guess my brain just decided to mix together some amazing drawing I saw online and couple it with the sudden recall of my rather close relationship with the banks of Singapore. Either ways, it was with such  trepidations, confusion, and fear, that I stood in the grocery queue. I was slowly moving towards the counter after a duration that felt like hours to my preoccupied brain when a guy cut in front of me.

I am not ashamed to admit that my brain immediately came up with thousand ways to berate him. 9Okay maybe I am ashamed of admitting the thoughts that crossed my mind :p. Well, I guess it's time for the audience of the blog to get used to the fact that I am going to interrupt my blog posts. Maybe it's a misguided attempt to try and make this post seem less depressing. I promise you, it isn't. :D)

So getting back to the story, I obviously did not voice out any of those thoughts, but I did hope my face was making an expression of stern consternation and barely concealed disgust. He placed a single plastic wrapped package of something that looked like the balli mittai on the table, and smiled at the counter lady. Teeth pointing at almost all the degrees available stared through the dark curtain of his beard and moustache. At this point, I assumed it was just the pent up fatigue of spending the entire day soaking in the sun, and the previously mentioned images in head, that was leading me to such a bad impression of him. (Or I could be making this up to make my post look better :p oh well.)

avalavu dhana ne? "Is that all brother?" the lady in the counter asked, with her usual cheerfulness. She had smile so disarming that it was impossible to not smile back at her, or be courteous and polite to her. I had often made it a habit to identify fake smile's among the general populace that was in a customer facing role (again, in retrospect, this seems like a useless skill), and I was rather very proud of it. The lady in the counter was one of those people who could make you believe that she was happy to take the  bill the endless array of stuff, that passes through her hands.

irunga ne, naan vandhu eduthu tharen!  "Please wait brother!" she said, managing to still maintain her nature when another impatient customer kept pestering her about the location of something that he couldn’t find. She pulled the crumpled up plastic cover and added the balli mittai inside it and said, "20 dollars, brother."

The man's smile faded a tiny bit. He withdrew his wallet, and started counting out coins. Maybe he was broke, I thought, not at all surprised by my brain's first answer to the act of desperately counting the last set of coins available in your wallet, while remembering the single digit balance in your account. Of course, it was just my brain connecting that observation to my state of mind, while the more obvious answer was that he did not have the cash.  

Usually, people immediately reach for their NETS card in that shop when they run out of cash because, you know? its NETS~ I think NETS is one of the best things practiced by the banks of Singapore, that was so valuable during the periods I managed to have little to no cash available in my wallet out of fear of spending it all. This guy however, did not reach for his NETS, and just withdrew some coins from his wallet. By that time, I had decided with certainty that the guy was broke, and felt an odd sort of kinship towards him. (And no, I am not broke now. But I have been so broke, so many times that, I still receive quarterly editions of the broke bank magazine :p. I am probably trying too much there, but it was fun. =D)

He tucked the wallet inside his pockets and placed the coins on the table. The lady, who was halfway towards the location of the thing that impatient customer wanted noticed him and came back.

Idhuku mattum ippo tharen, michatha kanakula potukonga,  "I will give you this much now, put the rest on my tab," he said, and bobbed his head in the quintessential way of nodding that only Indians understood, as though she had already agreed to open a tab for him.

She dragged the coins across the table, placed it inside her register, and handed him the bag. Seri ne, naan potukaren "Okay brother, I will do it," she said, and turned to me and said, mele veingane, "keep the basket on the table brother."

She continued to bill my stuff as though nothing had happened. For me, that moment blew away the haze of fatigue that had clouded my thoughts, and made my brain find innovative ways to make me worry. This was because, at that moment she had trusted the man whom she had probably never met (or she probably knew, but never met works better for the post :p) and assumed that he would pay her back. This was not a question of few cents either, it was more than 10 dollars, and that lady had just smiled and let him pass, as though his assurance alone was worth as much as the money he owed the shop.

There is a certain beauty to trusting someone (yes. I know, beauty of something, cliché. Pfft.) without any doubts or fear of them keeping up with that promise. I would not call that innocence, because, I am quite sure the guy must have passed every visual checkpoint that the lady used to evaluate the potential of trusting a person in terms of money. It is something much more, pure? Okay, I am losing it here, let me get back to my point.

The following two paragraphs have no relationship to the previous paragraphs and the subsequent paragraphs. It is long, and it is a rant. So, you can skip ahead, if you want.

Right from an young age, we are trained by our parents to not trust strangers. As we grow up, we are trained by our experiences that its better if we reserve that trust to a small group of people. Ultimately, we come to the decision that only person we can trust is ourselves. I am such a kind of person.

I find it very sad that our culture and our world has trained us to not believe anyone or anything. It might be the torrent of gibberish that our media throws at us as news, it might be that the world is designed in a way to make sure its tough to survive if you don’t put yourself before anyone else. The world forces us to live in a way where if we see something we like, we rush for it, pushing away so many of our present and future friends, all for what? More money? More happiness?

It also does not help that our culture, and history seems to romanticize the topic of betrayal. It’s the story about two friends who end up betraying each other that gets all the viewership and fans. No one cares about two friends who stayed friends forever, those all seem like fairy tales that you read when you are a kid. Even in history, historians only talk about kings who were betrayed, prime ministers who were assassinated by their own employees, the king who cheated on his wife and had an affair with someone else, the queen who betrayed her king and ran away with the court jester... Okay I made the last one up :p, but it would be interesting to read such a story :"D. Of course, there are always two sides to these stories. The betrayed king and the prime minister might have been tyrants, the guy's marriage might have been a loveless one that was sucking his energy out, the queen's husband might have had no sense of humour :P.

I thought of all this and much more while I hefted the heavy grocery bags and walked through the calm streets of my locality, towards my house. Thankfully, I also came up with similar memories of people trusting me: The owner of the foodcourt near AMD, who used to give me free food towards the end of the month and say, kaasu mukkiyam illa thambi, nalla saapdunga "Money is not important brother, eat well. That's more important."

The owner of a grocery shop in Chennai who used to send us groceries even after we moved to a place far from him and collect the money for it two to three months later. The guy who delivers water cans to our house in India and never seems to collect any money, I swear! The vegetable vendor near my house who used to refuse to collect money from me if he sees me carrying the same bag my mom used for vegetable shopping. Sometimes, he would even pick vegetables out for me and say, indha pai dhaan thambi, adayalam "It is the bag you carry, brother. That is all the guarantee I need."

When I used to ask my mother as to the reason for them trusting us, she would shrug and say, namba moonjiya patha nambaramaari irukum "Maybe our faces are very believable."

Maybe my face is believable too, I don’t know. I have had countless other examples of shopkeepers, and of course, of friends who have trusted me enough to spill all their secrets within few months of our acquaintance :P. (Hundred dollars per secret. Anyone interested? :D)

As I reached the lift that would take me to my apartment, I came back to the starting point of this whole rant. Where would the banks feature? They do trust me with their money to fund my education, and we trust them with our money and savings. Of course, we do that because we have an incentive to place that trust. So does that mean all relationships of trust needs to have  incentives if its maintained and have consequences if its broken? I didn’t know.

At least I wanted to record those fleeting moments when I thought I had seen a pure expression of trust, and I did.

PS - Tamil because, I felt like it.

PPS - I hope it wasn’t too depressing :|. But of course, ignore any grammatical errors, please.  

The Super Hero

The comfortable leg space and the inbuilt screen on the seat in front of him almost made him reminisce flight journeys of the past. He had never really found out if he had liked those journeys or just pushed through it under the influence of the underwhelming excitement that overtook him, every time he had left for his country of origin.

He had always considered flights home as a way to refuel, restart, and come back as a newer, and improved person. That had almost never worked, and he still refused to accept that those cathartic moments in people's lives were more fiction than fact. Despite the fact that life had found newer and comical ways to disprove him, he still held onto the hope of experiencing catharsis in his current trip home and a subsequent vacation to one of his potential retirement getaways.

Pressure built up in his ears and a child next to him wailed as the plane descended from its heights towards the runway. The plane vibrated under turbulence, more kids around him started to struggle under their seatbelts and a few enthusiastic passengers started to turn on their phones. Idiots, he thought, in his usual attitude towards the things people did that he found stupid, and corrected himself the next instant. He could almost hear his close friend's voice from inside the flight, chastising him.

It took few more screams, vibrations, and a mini nap for the plane's wheels to fall prey to friction and come to a screeching, draggy halt. Just like how he expected a trip to India to bring forth a change in his mindset, he often dreamed, hoped that his home country also underwent a change since his last visit. A breeze through immigration, a walk through the afternoon heat that made his face feel like it was being pulled through a tub of hot water, and a minor scuffle in the taxi stand later, he was tucked in with his bag and luggage, inching towards his home while his hopes of a huge improvement in the cities conditions deflated.

Yes, there was the metro, something that everyone in the city had looked forward too for the past few years.  That had in no way reduced the traffic in the roads. Along with the metro tracks, there were the expensive cars looking out of place as they moved ahead of his taxi on the dusty, smoke filled roads. There were still people using their motorcycles, whipping in between vehicles, finding rather innovative paths to skip past the cars ahead of them to reach their desired destinations a few minutes earlier, for some important reason.

Amidst these vehicles on roads, there was the cities population, trying to keep to the footpaths, even though there was only a broken, jagged, and brownish mess. This mass had the average worker, rushing back to his or her office after lunch and the occasional school kid with a bag which was starting to look bigger every year. Then there were the others, those people with unknown jobs and unfathomable purposes, proceeding towards their destinations all over the city. They made up the background noise of his journey.

The sheer variety of the population and the amount of people that slipped past him outside the car amazed him. It was only few years back, that he had also been a part of the same crowd, living in the same conditions. Now, he wanted to fix it, he wanted to fix the whole city. He looked out of his window as the traffic ground to a stand-still at a congested intersection at the people walking past his taxi.

He could not help but feel the need to delve into each of their lives, understand their objectives, learn from their achievements, listen to their fears, ask about their opinions, and enlist their help in fixing the city. The potential for a heroic journey in the thought excited him for a sweet, sweet moment before the eventuality of the failure weighed him down, making him want to sink down into the cushion, and hide in between the folds.

His mind threw countless arguments asking him not to have these thoughts on the first day of his vacation and depress himself. There was no way he was going to have the chance to save anything in the city, and those who could save it were busy slinging blame at each other instead of passing policies in the parliament. One argument led to a question, and that question led to another problem, which was the start of the unstoppable spiral towards pensive contemplation, that went very close to abject depression.

The taxi turned into a road free of clutter or traffic and sped past a popular industrial park, where people young and old were going to earn their daily wages, contributing fuel to the economic engine. Outside the park, a collection of cleaners were sweeping the roads, with a bright smile plastered on their faces. The change of environment, provided him a small thread to hang on, and climb out of the depression well. It reminded him of an old lesson, in a new way.

He realised, that his problem was wanting to fix all of the problems in the world. There were already people, who in their own way, were fixing the world. All he had to do was choose one problem, work hard on that problem, and try his hardest to fix it. If he could not fix it, there were always people behind him, who will give their best efforts to solve it. If he failed, there were always people ready to clean up his failure and tackle the problem from a different angle. If only that was an easy task...

PS- Wow that was intense :"D or... was it? I had this post messing my brain up for a looong time.

PPS - Of course, the usual disclaimer to ignore any errors in the prose. 

The life of shims

It is 2pm in the afternoon, you have just had your lunch and are faced with the monumental task of pulling the scattered parts of your mind from different locations in the world. There are some disoriented pieces still at home, racing through and mostly regretting the answers for the 'what ifs' that plague our (at least mine) everyday morning's. "What if I had woken up early and exercised? What if I had woken up early and worked on something more useful to me? What if..." There is a sneaky piece that has gained a speed greater than light based on the answer to one of those questions and escaped to another country, another forest and some other mountain.

You bring all those pieces together after a mental tug of war between what you are doing right now and what you want to do right now, to face your work, which, if you are lucky, is stimulating enough to make you pass the rest of the day without your head hitting the desk very often. But, lets face it, if all of us were lucky, then the word luck would not exist. So, more often than not you end up working on something so monotonous that you concurrently think of super-superlatives for the word monotonous to describe your situation.

I found myself in team 'unlucky' today and the culprit for it was a thin metallic pole that stood on a  cement base and had a sensor for a hat. I had to make it horizontal using shims. I know some mechanical engineers (or the one who will probably read this post) will claim shimming is an art that require complete concentration. I was concentrating, initially, but by the end of it, I could say that I had attained a metaphorical black belt in the secret martial art of horizontalite, shimmingte? (Too much?)

I was nearing the end of the shimming process when I realised the perfect metaphor that my situation was, to life. *clears throat and goes into saint mode* If the sensor and the thin metallic pole on the concrete base represent you, your aim in life is to attain equilibrium, or in the case of the sensor, become horizontal. Your quest to attain the equilibrium is spoilt by rooftop winds and the slanted surface, which are the problems that you face in your life. The shims that support the sensor's journey are similar to the supports in your life. Your friends, your family or even the sly cat in the MRT that checks you out everyday when you cross it to reach the platform. 

So to sum up, your objective in life is to not to look for equilibrium by yourself, you just need to look for the right shim's that can support your goals. Why don't we all take a moment and ponder on the perfect shims for our life? :D

PS- If I was graded based on the ability of getting to the point, I would probably fail.

Black and White

A very very long time ago and in a seemingly far off land - at least in terms of my memory - that was my university, I made a deal with a good friend of mine. The deal was to make one post everyday, and if I remember correctly, we continued for at least, ten to fifteen posts that year. At that time, it was she, who (re)kindled the dormant interest for writing in me and made me want to record the random rants from my mind everyday.

Knowing her, she probably had no idea. As time progressed, I fell prey to stresses of my final year and the apprehensions about my uncertain future. The constantly distracted recesses of my mind stopped thinking about the things that I find interesting around me and decided to worry about making myself look interesting to others. Once I got a job, those recesses decided to rename themselves into 'worry about money' and 'be a grown up'. Finally, I managed to drag the remaining cells in my brain to day dream about short stories and publishing a novel, which meant I stopped having things to rant about.

Funnily, yesterday, I did the opposite to the same friend to make her start writing again after a brief - no, too long - a period of hiatus. Compared to her, I always know when I am having a positive effect on someone. In fact, I radiate positivity to everyone around me more often than not and also boast about it later. (Too much?)

I have always been amazed by the bipolarity of many things in nature. Two types of charges, action-reaction, head-tail... Four years back, she made me really think about my feelings for writing and I made her perfect her writing skill. Yesterday, I made her start writing again and she made me start ranting again.

PS (PSMS?) - I have decided to make my blog as more of a free writing exercise medium, where I can type and not bother about grammar or punctuation. So, forgive any errors.

Forgetting the world

Sometimes in life you apply yourself to a specific endeavour for a really long time, forget about everything else during that process and more often than not your efforts will pay rich dividends. I have often claimed or try to tell myself that I am a efficient multi-tasker. I have often wondered if it was actually true or if I was just trying to be a multi-tasker, why? Because it seemed the right way to go about life. There are so many things to learn about, to understand, to even just know in this world and I thought I had to do as much as possible, know as much as possible, quickly.

There have been experiences that have told me otherwise and my experience today reinforced that fact. I attempted a German test today for which I prepared whole-heartedly for the past four days and I could see the results of that preparation from the ease with which I was able to attempt the questions. Of course, a lucky bout of viral cold (is that even a thing?) that forced me to take a day off that I could use to concentrate only on German. But, that is not important, most of my other example follow the same storyline. Of course, everyone knows that effort should be proportional to results and of course, I have gained experiences that have proved me otherwise. As I write this, I realise I talking in tangents which is usually not the way I make my blog posts. So, getting back to the point.

After today, I simply have to accept the fact that multi-tasking never works. If there was some way to nail concepts to your brain, I wish I can do that now. At the same time, I cannot simply avoid other work and concentrate only on a particular project. I have always known that I am someone who likes switching between projects and manage both at once. Maybe that switching should not be a hourly thing and it should be more of a daily thing. Okay, so this ends the completely pointless blogpost.