Message in a Picture

Dec 1992, INT. NIGHT

I found myself sitting next to this FPN in a poker game. I found her to be gorgeous and charming though no sparks flew in any directions. I was completing my Masters at Georgia Tech and by design I was geeky type, unsure of the complexities of life if they don’t result in a solve able equation on my calculator.

But the Nature has its own games to play. So halfway thru the game I started hearing some voices in my head. I ignored them, but the Nature was persistent. It started sending me the same message in the form of images instead.

I saw her in a white dress, a small town Baptist Church, happy faces, Rev Evans as Betsy, I saw Vintage Ford with those words and balloons, and I saw some Romantics Etc. Etc.

Just right then, someone knocked on the door. We all turned around to see a cop in uniform entering the house.  He was introduced as the brother of that FPN. He was friendly and fun guy, but I was from India. In India cops are suppose to be Judge, Jury and the executioners, and they carry the load of Indian Patriarchy on their shoulders.

Well, to cut the story short, the freshly downloaded images started disappearing one after the other in a hurry. The white dress was the first one to be erased.  The romance and Etc. Etc. hung on for a while, but in the end they too gave up and left. By the time the game was over I had no images left to review again.

Then life distracted me and I forgot about her.

After Maa, I went looking for my lost life in the form of pictures from the past, and found her again.  Life has written lots of stories on her face as it did on mine. We all get that. No exceptions.

This time I revived those images without fear or retribution. This is what I like about getting old and single.  No fear. It should not have been in those moments too, but we all are prisoners of our own devices.

Ps: My frnd who is a Bulldog fan says it’s my GA Tech influence that made me so cautious in pursuing her further. If I were a UGA grad I would have asked her out regardless of the outcome.

May be he is right!

Oh well!

Yes, You can...

Those days my office used to be bang opposite the State Capitol. Walking past the building I would often wonder how would it be to see it from inside. The place where Tom Murphy was the longest running Speaker and Jimmy Carter took his baby steps in politics.

So,  on of  my lunch breaks, I decided to visit the house.  I went up the stairs and saw a door leading into the house. The house was not in session and not many people were around. I saw a cop guarding the entrance to the house. I was not sure if he would allow me to go in, so I hesitated. Noticing my hesitation, he signalled to me ‘ Yeah, you can go in to Look around. But please don’t sit on the chair’.

I went in. Walked halfway thru the house and stood there in the aisle for a few minutes. However, In my mind I saw the house in session. I saw Tom Murphy, Jimmy Carter, Sam Nunn, Newt Gingrich and Sunny Purdue taking care of business. Them,  writing and debating legislations that would help the common man for generations to come.

After taking it all in I walked back. As I was about to exit the Chamber I made a comment to the cop. The response that he gave me still rings in my ear.  Always will.

‘I can never sit on those chairs!’

‘Yes, Sure you can! All you have to do is go out and work for the people!’

He smiled and look straight into my eyes. I smiled back and shook his hand and thanked him.

Some random cop, planting a seed in the mind of a random jebroni about chasing political dreams. In the process making it all look so easy. ‘Yes, You can sit there if you go out and work for people’ -was the only condition.

Some unplanned random moments can be so powerful, so inspiring and so memorable. These moments don’t go away. They linger on for decades with the same freshness and beauty.

Life is all about collecting these moments and passing them on to others…

The bastard on the bike..

It was in late October when I saw them sleeping piled up on their mother. It brought smiles to my face, so I took some pictures.

In the meantime I kept hearing the stories of how the mother takes care of her kittens. How she demands more food for them and wud not move unless she got enough for everyone.

How she plays with her children and keeps them in good humor.

How she protects them with all her might against insensitive Indians.

Her favorite son was the white one sleeping on top of her.

He was the leader of the gang. They started calling him ‘ the dog’ instead of the cat. He wud bark like a dog and go running to my nephew when he smelled him coming home.

This ‘dog’ used to play with his brothers all day. He wud not let them sleep in peace. He was always up to something. They way he walked, the way he expressed his love made him endearing to the host family.

He was killed last week. A bastard on a bike crushed him.

The mother sat all day near the spot where her son was killed. Lost in her thoughts.

Since then she is not been the same.

She does not come up to the house to seek food. She does not breast feed the other kittens. They too are shaken up and dont go near her. The host family is trying their best to bring her to be normal again. Nothing is working. Someone said she has gone mad now.

She had lost one of her sons to the natural causes last month. She took it very well then. Now she is not.

How does a cat knows the difference between a ‘natural death’ and the one due to ‘human aggression and insensitivity?”

The bastard on the bike got away with murder. In India, one always gets away with murder or betrayal or uncivilized behavior.

Question is do we ever know who else dies when someone dies?

#bastardontheboke, #starycat, #kittens, #death