In a room full of people, I love you.

 "You know how you're supposed to feel all tingly and romantic when he says "I love you" to you the first time?

I cannot wait to spend the rest of my life with you. "

Well, I didn't. I panicked.

We were in a room full of people, people who were my close friends - it was a small party- but no one knew we had been dating for a while. The secretiveness of it made everything more exciting somehow.

We were talking about a new dress I had been designing. Suddenly, out of the blue, right in the middle of the conversation, he said with the greatest ease, "Hey, I love you".

I just kind of got caught by surprise and then I got anxious. Panic crashed onto the shore in waves and spread through my body in an instant. I looked around frantically to check if anyone had overheard. I really hadn't been expecting this!

No one was near enough to have overheard. "Whew!" went my brain.

I turned back to him and smiled. "What a smart idiot this one was! Springing it on me out of nowhere! Making sure no one was around", I thought.  He had chosen the moment wisely. It also seemed that he had expected the panic and was waiting for my reaction patiently. He grinned cheekily at me.

"I love you too", I whispered.

"You're so beautiful." he whispered back, staring straight into my eyes and tucked a strand of hair behind my ears. And with that, the goosebumps rushed in.

From those days of hushed and secretive "I love you"s in rooms full of people to today when here we are here, standing at the altar, in front of everyone, not one bit of the excitement has diminished.

Summer Romance

It was almost nine P.M. All the windows of both the trains had been foggy for a while. The condensed water drops were racing between themselves and were still not tired. Dinner would be served to the passengers in a few minutes. Everyone's whiling away their time till then. It was the summer season and the teenage girls on their trip have not stopped talking since they got aboard the train bound for the beach. On the other hand, there was a group of rather subdued children on the other train who had just wrapped up their holiday at the beach and were heading home.

Whitney was bound for the beach to spend some time away from work. She had been swamped the last few days and was thinking of quitting soon. "Maybe I could just take a break and do a short trip" she thought, "maybe I could even meet someone!" So she had taken leave and headed out armed with a few books,sunscreen and her swimwear.

On the other hand, Tom had already spent time away from work for a few days and was returning home. He hadn't met anyone interesting on his trip. He had had a break up a few months back and was at the point where he had gotten over the relationship and wanted to finally date someone else. But as fate would have it, there was no one who wanted to go out with him.

The night had darkened considerably and a thick fog shrouded the hills and forests outside. Visibility had dropped to near zero and both trains were already running behind schedule.

Tom and Whitney, alien to each other, were on their smartphones. Both of them were on the same online dating app, swiping left and right furiously. There seemed to be no perfect match for them out there in the world. But all at once, Whitney landed on Tom's profile the same time Tom landed on Whitney's and both of them stopped.  Scrolling through each other's profile details, they were both wondering the same thing, how they had been looking to meet someone and a dating app had been the solution all along!

They reached the end of each other's profiles at the same moment and within an instant both of them felt like they were lifted off the ground and spun swiftly into the air; the next thing they knew they were standing on a wide grey square in an empty city looking at each other across a fountain. After a few seconds of silence filled with surprise and shock, Whitney was the first one to finally speak,
"What just happened!!"
 Tom stared for a few more seconds before he was able to speak.
"I don't know! What just happened?"
"I don't know either. That's what I just asked you.... wait, you're Tom, aren't you?"
"Erm, yes, how do you know who I am?"

Whitney paused, unsure of what to say. She looked around at her surroundings. Where were they? There were tall buildings all around them, each of them painted grey and without windows; the entire city seemed to be devoid of life. "Like Chicago without colors", she thought to herself, "and the wind!" as an afterthought.

"Hi, you are Whitney, aren't you?"
His voice snapped her back to the present - how did he know who I was?
"Yes, I am but how did you know that?"
"That's what I just asked you, how do you know my name is Tom?"
"Well, I don't know how to explain this, I was on a train and.."
"Wait wait wait wait, you were on a train?"
"Yes, why?"
"I was on a train too, travelling back from Sandbar Beach."
"I was on my way to Sandbar Beach!"
"That's weird, but how did you know who I am? We have never met and I am pretty sure we weren't on the same train in which case there might have been a chance of having seen you somewhere, but that's not it."
Whitney shrugged and said, "Well, I was in the train and on an online dating app scrolling through profiles...."
"..and you got to my profile and the next thing you know is you are standing here?"
"Yeah, wait, how.. ? Did the same thing happen to you too?"
"Yeah, I just got to your profile and found it mighty interesting and the moment I finished reading through it I felt like I was spinning in the air and here I was at the fountain!"
"The same thing happened to me, I got to your profile and found you pretty interesting so I started reading through your profile. The instant I got to the end, I felt the spinning sensation you mentioned and here I was!"

Both of them paused and looked at each other, breaking into a smile after a few seconds.
"She has such light brown eyes", thought Tom to himself as he smiled at her. There was definitely something about her.

"Well, I don't really know what to say right now, this is all a little too strange" , said Tom.
"Yeah, that's true, but I think let's just start with 'Nice to meet you' and take it from there" Whitney said and extended her hand towards him. Tom was pretty handsome in real life too.
"Yeah,nice to meet you too!" said Tom, and shook her extended hand.

"Well, now what?" said Tom, looking around, "what do you reckon this place is?"
"I have no idea, it's just buildings everywhere, I can't see a person anywhere nor shops or cars, is this even a real city?"
"I am as clueless as you are; even the fountain has no water in it. And weirdly, if you notice the five roads leading away from this square, they are all a little too black, isn't it? "
"Yes you are right, everything about this place is strange, kind of gives me the creeps"
"Well, you wouldn't be the only one to have goosebumps, even I am a little creeped out." said Tom, rubbing his hands together,"It's also a little chilly,isn't it? I wish I had a coat or something."
"Yeah I know, but it's summer, I didn't even have any warm clothes with me" , said Whitney, patting her own cheeks,"Wasn't really expecting whatever this is to happen!"

Then, still patting her cheeks, she said, "So what do you wanna do? Should we start walking up along one of these roads and see where that goes?"
"Yeah let's do that, it might just go somewhere where there are people; plus it'd give me a chance to get to know you a little better than your online profile."
Whitney smiled. He was charming in a way, this Mr. Tom Smith.
"Sure", she said.


As they reached the start of the nearest road they noticed that there was a signboard where normally the street name sign usually is in a big city. In bold capital letters it read, "DO NOT LOOK/TURN BACK TILL THE FIRST RIGHT TURN"
"This just keeps getting weirder. Maybe we should walk down one of the other roads, what do you think? said Tom.
Whitney was still looking at the sign and nodded, "Yeah let's".

They walked over to the next street. The same sign hung stolid over the pavement on this road too. Deciding to try the next one, they went around in a circle discovering that all the roads had the same sign hanging where they started.
"Well, I am really at a loss for what to do, maybe we should just stay at the fountain and wait?" said Tom.
"Wait for what? There's no one here!"
"Well then, what do you suggest we do?"
"I say let's just start walking down one of these roads, we'll keep each other company and talk to each other, that way we might not feel the need to turn back and wonder about the sign till that first right turn."
Tom shrugged and said,"Okay, there's really not much of a choice here huh? Let's do this. Take my hand."

She clasped her partially cold fingers around his, looked at him and they stepped on to the black road. And with that first step, they realized that the black road surface was not like roads they were familiar with- it seemed squishy in some places and brittle in others. Whitney's heels sank right into the road at one point but then the road itself crumbled at that spot.
"Whoa! what is this?" she cried and started fumbling. Holding hands, both of them started treading carefully as if they were walking in a bog.
"Whatever it is, don't look back, the road surface is just weird like everything else in this place we arrived, let's just go on" said Tom.
"Alright alright, don't let go of my hand though"
"No, I'm not letting that go!" said Tom and grinned.

As they walked down the road towards that first right turn, unknown to them, the road behind them began to move. Though they did not realise it, the entire road was made of charred human bodies- bodies that were not fully alive nor dead; the whole width of the road was covered with them. Each of these bodies started sitting up to watch Tom and Whitney walk further away.The entire stretch of the road was stirring, each body laid on the stretch sitting upright and then standing up slowly. The first of the lot started shuffling forward, pushing the others in front of them until an entire part of the road had emptied and all the charred bodies were moving in unison like zombies towards human flesh.

Tom and Whitney walked on for what seemed like an eternity before Tom spotted the turn.
"Hey look!" he shouted,"There's the right turn, c'mon quickly, let's see what happens over there!"

Both of them started walking as quickly as they could over the squelchy and brittle road surface.
The moment they reached the turn, they noticed that the road changed into the normal grey they were used to. The buildings had color and windows and they could even see shops, cars and people in the distance. What was happening?
Their hands were still clasped around each other's; Tom said, "Hey, we made it. Wherever this is, we made it."
"Yeah" Whitney said and smiled. "Let's see where this goes now, yeah?"
Tom grinned back.

As they turned in the new direction, out of the corner of her eye, Whitney spotted movement to her right. She looked to her right.
"Holy shit, what is that?!" she shouted.
Tom turned to where she was looking and let out a stifled gasp. "What the .....!"

But before he could finish his sentence, both of them felt an almost familiar tug and within a fraction of a second, they were pulled apart and spun into the air into darkness.

********

Aziz walked down to the deli like he did every day for his morning coffee and a fresh bagel. As he waited for his order, he took out his cellphone to get up to speed on the day's news. The first headlines and the news article caught him off guard-this was major news! It read:

TRAIN COLLISION NEAR SANDBAR BEACH

In one of the biggest railroad mishaps of this century, a railway track switch failed to work on the Western Expressway Line; two trains bound for and away from Sandbar Beach on the same railway track collided in a fatal crash after the switch failed to divert the two trains to two separate lines. One of the engines in one train's locomotive exploded propelling fire through most of both the trains. The fire is now under control and emergency crews are at work. Regrettably, all lives were lost to the massive fire and the collision except for two people who  are now being treated at the nearest hospital after being flown away on medevac choppers. They have been identified as Tom Smith and  Whitney Perrine. We extend our condolences to the families who lost their near and dear ones. 

More details to follow on the incident. Keep watching this space.

LSD

I started climbing the stairs. They wound and wound, spiraling through mountains and the atmosphere. I had this burden on my shoulders when I started the climb. The cooler air high above seemed to dissolve it. The stairs wound and wound, passing through caves where strange men and women sat drenched in black lights, their white garments,glowing an eerie purple,flapping gently in the caves' breeze. Far off across the forests I could see the sky, striped horizontally in alternate navy and white.Across each of the white stripes, on top of the navy, sauntered purple elephants in queues, entering from the right edge and leaving from the left edge, edges that really were boundaries of my vision- like entering and leaving across a movie scene- with synchronized steps to beats that made the rhythm in the background syncopated. That's when I noticed the rhythm, a steady hum and beat rising and quivering in the air from somewhere. I stopped my climb and looked up. The stairs would and wound, spiraling through more and more caves until they disappeared into the ragged white clouds. On either side of me, a man and a woman rose from their seat in their caves and opened their yellow eyes. Everything froze. The beat and the rhythm got silenced, the purple elephants stopped walking and my hand, resting on the railing, froze in ice binding me to the stairs. I looked down and up. From every cave on either sides of me, up and below, a man and a woman had risen on either side and stepped to the edge to peer at me with their yellow eyes. And all of a sudden, in unison, they opened their black mouths and started to chant a single syllable, Om, their voices reverberating off their own caves, rising higher and higher, the black lighting shrouding their skin, so that all I could see were purple garments, yellow eyes and gaping holes on their faces from where the Om emanated. As their voices reached a voluminous peak, I shut my eyes only to open them a second later as orange light pierced through my shut eyelids. The sun had suddenly burst through the navy and the white, as if it had been captive behind them, and the elephants, frozen in their tracks, started to burn -purple melted into navy and the navy melted into white which fell from the sky as gigantic hail. As the last elephant melted and the sun won it's war, the Om reached a raging deafening climax, the caves shuddered and the stairs shook and all at once the entire world went quiet and the black lights dissipated the men and women's black skins and yellow eyes. All that was left were white rags floating in the caves' breeze and an equally deafening silence. I drew a long breath and let it out as I looked up. The stairs wound and wound into infinite consciousness.

God helps those who helps themselves

I spilled some milk today. Bending down to wipe it up, I found a tiny ant upside down struggling to get up on it's feet just where the refrigerator and the wall met. It was one of the red ones that stung,
unlike it's ticklish black cousin. How did it get there? I didn't see any other ones around; they were usually in a bunch. I held out my finger to it's legs clawing wildly at the air. It's legs found something finally and it grabbed on. I turned my hand and it scurried across my palm towards my wrist. I put my hand on the floor to guide it towards the ground. And just before moving across the pinky to the floor, it stopped where the finger started, right between the knuckles and stung me graciously.
There was no looking back, it was dead within a second from the slap that ensued.

Love, with a hint of salt

She was in the middle of eating dinner - nothing fancy, just something she had put together in a hurry.
He sat quietly by her side, looked at the traces of the bruise by her eye and took her hand in his own. She paused with the spoon halfway to her mouth and turned to look at him. He didn't let go of her fingers and stared into her brown eyes. She set down the spoon and turned around to face him, not letting go of his fingers.
With his other hand, he tucked the free strands of her hair behind her ear and caressed her cheek. She didn't flinch but stared right back at him.

"Do you think this is a good idea?" she asked.

Without a word, he cupped her face in his hands and kissed her. To his surprise, she grasped his curls and kissed him back.

The days passed in kisses and entangled sheets. She clutched him and he clutched back at her, no room for languid lovemaking. There was always a sense of urgency about the way they wanted each other; the feeling didn't even recede faintly. If they could have spent the day just with each other they would have but jobs called, life called, growing up called, responsibilities called. But as soon as they were done with their space and time, their worlds didn't just reunite, they crashed into each other, fuming and heavy each and every day. Love had more than a tinge of madness when it came to them.
Everyone knew they would be with each other no matter what.

They fought of course, but each longed to hold the other again even as they quarreled and so ever so sneakily, one would just touch the other in the middle of an argument and the fight would pause for a few seconds. In those brief seconds when time stood still, they would just stare at each other silently and the next thing you know, they were making love right where they stood - she clutching at him, he clutching at her with an urgency no one could fathom.

One day after five years in the world outside and what seemed like a five hours since they had met each other ( it didn't even seem like yesterday that she had met him! ), the fight got out of hand. Each had their unspoken limits and that day, the boundary was crossed. Engrossed in trying to be right and win the argument, she screamed and scratched at his face out of frustration. It was like his brain fizzled out in a flash, disabling rationale - he hit her back. The weight of five years suddenly came crushing down upon them in five seconds as they both plunged into black bottomless water and they stood still looking at each other in disbelief. He saw her hold back her tears as she turned around and picked up her things and blasted her way out of the house. He stood there in shock for sometime and then sat down. It was over, he knew she would never even reply to a text from him after this. She spiraled into her own space and her own time,  he zoned out into his.

After a few days, still wallowing in the ostensible futility of the efforts he was about to put in, he made his way over to her house, not even expecting the door to be opened. He rang the doorbell and stood there for a long time as she wrestled over her decision to open the door for him. After what seemed like an eternity, she opened the door, turned around and made her way back to the kitchen. He closed the door behind him, put down the pink gerberas he had gotten for her on the coffee table and walked into the kitchen.

She was in the middle of eating dinner - nothing fancy, just something she had put together in a hurry.
He sat quietly by her side, looked at the traces of the bruise by her eye and took her hand in his own. She paused with the spoon halfway to her mouth and turned to look at him. He didn't let go of her fingers and stared into her brown eyes. She set down the spoon and turned around to face him, not letting go of his fingers.
With his other hand, he tucked the free strands of her hair behind her ear and caressed her cheek. She didn't flinch but stared right back at him.

"Do you think this is a good idea?" she asked.

Without a word, he cupped her face in his hands and kissed her. To his surprise, she grasped his curls and kissed him back.

WrongChoice Man

This is a story from a parallel world. It is set in India, which in the alternate reality is still a booming economy ( oh wow). However, things are a little different there. The country in recent years, has had a huge spurt in private colleges that churn out millions of photographers, filmmakers, painters, writers, poets, musicians who somehow get a degree and end up working at call centers to start off their careers. From all these millions, among similar other dreamers, our main character is a boy named Gadadhar aka Babloo.

Babloo grew up in a house with a lot of sisters and unmarried aunties; his dad was hardly ever around and there usually was a general lack of  males around him. As a result, he was always being asked to fix something around the house and he learnt a variety of useful work like repairing fuses, fixing pipes, tinkering with the water pump to make it quieter etc. and since then, he had always wanted to grow up and be in a career that made good use of these skills of his. In school, once he got the hang of computers, he grasped it quickly and grew adept at programming and hardware technology. He decided he wanted to be an IT engineer.

As he crossed into high school to take up science in the last two years, his parents hinted that he should study literature. Babloo was annoyed AF but he understood the situation at home , what with his dad's early retirement and mom a housewife, and realized that studying literature would pave the way for a college which could get him a job early in life. He could keep up his coding and computers  as a hobby.

Fast forward 15 years later, Babloo is working as a literary genre analyst at a big movie production company abroad. Babloo is now known to his peers, colleagues and friends as Babs and he is still the hotshot guy who knows how everything works and is asked by friends to solve even the small everyday issues. The trade-off between money and happiness was huge and after 7 years in a corporate job, Babs was starting to feel the mental strain of it.

Some time after the famous wildlife photographer Stephen Hawking passed away while running a marathon for people in their 70s from a heart attack, Babs thought about how Stephen had once said in an interview that even though he enjoyed being a wildlife photographer, he could also have lived the life of a scientist; that had always been his second career choice. Babs mulled over this for many days and finally could not take it anymore and called up his parents one day.

Babs: "Hey listen, I'm quitting my job."
Babs's Parents: "What? why? Are you getting fired Babloo?"
Babs: "No"
Babs Parents: "Then? What's wrong? You have such a great job, a good salary, house and everything else."
Babs: "I am quitting to work on and change my career"
Babs Parents: "What new career? It is too late, this is not the time to make new changes in life and career, you should be settling down and getting married and living life happily with your wife abroad."
Babs: " Mom, Dad, I know how much you wanted me to study English and get this huge corporate job but I think I have paid my dues, I am unhappy in my job and need a career change.
Babs's Parents: "What is this new career then? Please don't say it's something to do with your computer things ! "
Babs: "Actually yes it is, I don't like my job here and that's all I have ever wanted to be and still want to be - an IT engineer."

*Silence*

********************************************************************************

Like Babs, there are millions of other young boys and girls that India is churning out to be in the art industry and it seems like that area is now saturated. I hope many more such Gadadhars don't hold back and leave their jobs as musicians, poets, writers, photographers, filmmakers to realize their dreams of being an IT engineer. Babs now works 3 IT jobs and is happily married with 2 kids back in India. He was hailed as a superhero for his move by his friends and they even gave him a
superhero-nickname  - RightChoice Man.

I love you like a TV Show baby

The first time you fall in love ( as in the hundreds of first times ) is like signing up for a Netflix account. When you signed up for that shit, it was a plethora of emotions - you laughed with Dave Chapelle , cried with Dev Patel in Lion ( what a gem of a movie! ), goofed around with Adam Sandler, took it to the next level with 50 Shades of Grey, had some weird days with Black Mirror, had a Fuller House moment when you introduced them to your family, got angry again and again and again ( the franchise never seems to end )with Arnold Schwarzennegger in Terminator, got frustrated and left high and dry with Birdbox.

Then after that first 50-100 movies and shows, Netflix seemed to be as bad as coffee mixed with plentiful chicory, you kept drinking it and never got buzzed. It was just always there. The world changed, time shifted, and you tried STARZ , Amazon Prime and Hulu but after a while, you did come back to Netflix at times, reminiscing the good old days and just to check if there was anything exciting about it anymore.

The only difference?
Falling in love came free. Falling out of it cost so much more than signing up for 13 bucks and closing the Netflix account for free.

Giving Up

The first time I gave up was back in school. I just couldn't understand that computer language and how I was supposed to write lines of code to carry out simple tasks. "Write a program to check if a word is a palindrome or not - 15 marks"  -15 frickin marks - to know if MALAYALAM is MALAYALAM left to right and right to left! How about 15 marks for remembering Charles frickin Babbage? No, the cruelty and unfairness of life started to blossom early.

I was fifteen. Burdened with the heavy school bag, the peer pressure, board exams and of course, puberty, I tried not to get distracted. But who are those boys running in the field below while I scratch skin off my scalp trying to make a program that generated the Fibonacci series ( someone tell me what to do with that number sequence in real life, please! )  ? Darn it, they must have a free period. I wished Mr. T was absent. I looked back at the paper and suddenly, overburdened with seeming old age and the free will of adolescence, I gave up. This was not meant to be. Don't stress it, you'll mess it. Till the minute before, I didn't even want to. But that present minute seemed like the perfect moment since the Big Bang happened to give up trying to comprehend how to check if the given number was an Armstrong Number or not. (Yeah right!)

I sniggered to myself and looked around - in real life, KK's Armstrong Number was probably 100; he'd always had the largest collection of pornographic CDs. Sharma's Armstrong Number came close to KK at a possible 90. Poor Ghosh, he was probably at a meagre 5, tch tch.

So yeah, I gave up, somehow got through my exams and voila! Fast forward 15 years later, guess who works in IT now?