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By Kiran, July 11, 2009 9:06 pm

Her best friend had one, her roommate had one, most of her colleagues had one. She would normally turn a nonchalant eye towards such things, but of late she had seen her roommate cuddle with him one too many times. In the past, she had tried not to stare, for such thoughts might corrupt her and tip the balance of her perfect life. As she reached the entrance to her apartment building, her neighbor, a middle aged single lady who normally never made eye contact, waved to her. This was the same lady who once always seemed to stare at the pavement with her droopy eyes, the one whose faded flowery skirts had stopped being fashionable a decade ago. But today, her smile covered almost her entire face, and there was a warm glow in her eyes, and she even seemed a tad taller in her cheap but shiny heels.

It didn’t take a stock broker to figure that she was clearly in love; her hello was almost melodious and could be heard a block away. Her arms quickly wrapped around him once more as she lovingly shifted her stare back into his brown eyes. As she walked past her, for a second, she couldn’t help but feel somewhat envious. She thought back to her own now seemingly barren situation. She was definitely desirable, and many had told her how ravishing she looked in an evening gown as well as a traditional dress. Her big dreamy eyes and her thick flowing hair would seamlessly facade her smarts and wits. She had had several opportunities in the last two years, but she never felt a connection to any of them. Sometimes they seemed lifeless, sometimes they seemed boring and uncaring, sometimes they were obnoxiously loud and demanding. As time went by she had lost her motivation, and decided it was easier to let fate put him in her path. It had been two years since then and the fall’s blossoms and winter’s flakes had come and gone. But today was different, that gaping hole had found its way back, and that desire to have a companion was slowly eating into her. That moment she decided; it was time to stop procrastinating and putting her feelings off; she was going to get herself a dog too.

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By Kiran, May 5, 2009 12:24 am

She was one of his favorite teachers. But today she looked a little morose; he could feel that there was some lingering thought eating her up. She was trying to focus on the task at hand, teaching civics to a bunch of young hooligans, but somehow her voice didn’t seem to carry the same enthusiasm today. Suddenly, she closed her book, put the chalk down, and looked down at her notes even though you could tell she was not reading them. She lifted her head up to face the class, “we’re going to do an important exercise today that is not in your textbooks”. “How many of you believe in fate?”, she asked in a slow but serious voice. There was a silence for a few seconds. Nobody knew how to answer; what would she think if they said no, or worse what would she think if they said they didn’t know.

He was young, but he was wise for his age. He had always been the button man for the jock group, all the way until they had exhausted their mediocrity. He was always there to debate the smart kids, all the way until they had used up all their citations. He desperately looked around, hoping that someone from the first row would answer before she would start cold calling on them. Even the smart girl on the front row was silent, a refreshing change he thought to himself. She annoyed him, she was an overachiever, every parent wanted their kids to be like her, he secretly wished that one day she would rot in misery as a bored housewife. The teacher’s gaze moved around the classroom, she was looking into each kid’s eyes before moving to the next one. She was seeking out the ones with a glimmer in their eyes, she could easy glean out the smart-asses from the thinkers.

She finally rested her eyes on him. As if on cue, he stood up before she could finish calling his name. For a second, he was not sure what he would say. His grandmother used to tell him that he was destined for great things, and when his mother would ask him to pray for all the good things in life, he would question her why he had to pray when his fate was already chalked out. She would insist and reprimand him not to question her or god’s hand. He wanted to argue but he knew there his mother’s conditioning was years in the making and not to be undone by someone who wasn’t even shaving yet. His stern physics teacher had just a few months ago beaten down the three laws into his head; if there was no force applied on an object, would it move out of its inertia state because fate intended it to? It was a good question, but he would never dare to ask that for the fear of being mocked for the rest of the year. As with all things, while he was waiting to be called on, he had already started categorizing fate into an appropriate bucket – was it an idea, a religious artifact, a man-created myth, the hand of god, a cosmic force, a psychological concept made to force people into a certain path, or even a thought process embossed in our genetic memory. He felt uneasy, the entire class was looking at him now; he didn’t want to make a fool of himself and at the same time didn’t want to give a ironic answer to his favorite teacher. He finally collected his thoughts, cleared his throat and blurted out his answer.

It had been seventeen years since then. He was now “settled” in life, a good job, a decent car, a nice apartment, good friends, everything was set in place. He had just finished his alternate-day workout at the gym, and was sitting in his balcony cooling down with a bottle of cold water. After all this time, he would still  occasionally think back to that one episode, it was like one of those remnants of  a war that survives every bomb dropped by the enemy. There were a hundred other answers he could have given to that question, but every answer had consequences, consequences that he was not willing to live with. He knew his answer would set in motion a chain of events that would permeate his little fish-bowl and yet he was certain that no force real or cosmic would unsettle him.  Why in the world had he not just said “I don’t know”.

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By Kiran, April 13, 2009 11:14 pm

The guy behind the register was hardly skirting nineteen, nonetheless he looked proud and in control. There used to be simpler times when she could just ask for a small or large mocha at the corner bakery, but now she could carry out a whole conversation in grandes and ventis. He had chosen the starbucks; he was definitely a coffee drinker, the kind that would be in a coma each morning was it not for that strong cup of pike. She had reached there a good fifteen minutes before the deadline, she was never the tardy type whether it was work or pleasure. Somehow this was more important than all those projects that her boss demanded she show up for at the eighth stroke. Her mind was racing in a million directions, her thoughts, fears and hopes were suddenly in that large end-of-the-world collider she had read about last month. She had lost count of the “what if” questions at some point, and programmed herself to accept reality as it is. As one memory blurred into another, she thought back to the times when she had replayed this scene scores of times hoping to see a form to the silhouette.

It was a cruel game and fate tended to choose its victims with extreme prejudice. She had once wanted to be a rebel wading her way against the current, her charm and her smile were her weapons, and her steadfast dedication to her cause was her brown sugar. It was a beautiful day, and today she had even heard the birds chirp near her concrete adobe. She tried not to look happy, she wanted to be normal and her stoic self, and for the sixteenth time she had just told herself she was an impenetrable fortress. Melodrama was not her thing, she was the realist or that’s what she liked to think. But there had been a lingering void; she had looked far and hard and she tried to fill it with presumably fun things and memorable exploits. She had many reasons to smile that morning, but she was tired of repeating those reasons; her heart was right, but her joy was hard-found. Every night she forced herself to feel somewhat fulfilled but every morning she would wake up and talk herself into not dreading another day of loneliness. In a parallel universe, she might have worshiped the achiever, but she would imagine herself at Mr.Big’s side at that academic dinner and decided it was not her tea party. It felt like a lifetime ago and a heartbeat ago; here she was again – piqued by her curiosity, pestered by her family, teased by her friends, and buoyed by her optimism.

There were two people waiting for a free brew; she knew he was not the type that would be standing in line for a freebie. She had tried her best not to judge him, more than anything she did not want to preempt any potential shot at happiness. She felt confused, she was not sure how she could succumb to the pressure, but her mother had talked her into it. She had even heard good things about him, even sensed a certain depth in his character, and wanted to believe that he was more than the sum of his words. She was a smart girl, a detective of sorts, she would develop the full profile in the first three minutes; if he wore jeans, he wanted to feel more relaxed, but a shirt would trump a polo; if he wore a vest underneath it would mean he cares about his hygiene, if she could smell a strong cologne, he was trying too hard. She took another sip of that mocha and tried to tell herself not to jump to conclusions, but she couldn’t help wondering if he was he an answer or would he simply be another question, was he a solution or just another problem, was he genuine or just another wannabe. It was four minutes past the said time, and there was finally a new customer at starbucks. He stood in the doorway for a good five seconds before he spotted her and made his way to her table. She smiled for the first time on a Thursday. He wasn’t just another shadow.

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By Kiran, April 6, 2009 1:10 pm

There were two streetlights every block and the faint blur of activity at the few stores that were still open that late. He opened his window and let the night breeze hit his face savoring a few moments of tranquil in the otherwise chaotic world. As he looked at the road ahead he tried not to think about where he was going; he turned into another vaguely familiar street, and wondered why all the roads looked the same. There was a tune playing on the car’s stereo, one that sunk in with ease into his thoughts…

I see trees of green…….. red roses too
I see em bloom….. for me and for you
And I think to myself…. what a wonderful world.

I see skies of blue….. clouds of white
Bright blessed days….dark sacred nights
And I think to myself …..what a wonderful world.

He thought to himself if that wonderful world Louie Armstrong was crooning about was out there somewhere, if the same road he was travelling would take him there. As the song continued to play, his thoughts shifted briefly to reality, what he needs to do in the next hour, the next morning, the next evening. He lived in a place where time only existed one day at a time, and it was almost criminal to be wondering beyond his allotted scale. His attention span over the years had dwindled to a mere fifteen minutes, after which his mind would seek another chore, another challenge, or another interaction. He was not always like that, there were times when he could sit and read a book for eight hours without thinking about anything else. The world had got to him, his decisionmaking was becoming more machinistic, in the last two years he was depending more on quantifiable trade-offs and compromises than his gut.

He floored the pedal for a few seconds hoping to get another big whiff of that cool air. From the corner of his eye, he caught a late night taco stand, one of those deliciously unhygenic places where the blue collars would stop before heading home. He quickly made a list of pros and cons, evaluated three different decision trees, and moved on – all in the blink of an eye. He told himself that instant gratification is only but instant. As he drove on, he realized the unfamiliarty of the area, he tried to take in the prominent establishments hoping to create a mental map if he were to travel back on the same road. As the houses along the street got nicer, and the lawns looked greener and the parked cars appeared more expensive, he wondered how life would be in one of them. A nice house, a pretty wife, smart kids, modestly expensive cars, few debts; would he still be doing midnight excursions wondering where the road would lead, wondering if the asphalt is the same color after every turn. Maybe he would feel more content, a little more satisfied, a little more melancholic, maybe his thoughts would be more constrained, more attuned to the baser aspects of life. As he wound down his little role-play, he peered into the rear view mirror; he stared into it for a good ten seconds almost irreverent of the road ahead. As he turned his gaze back to the road ahead, his heart sank and he felt like he had died a little more on that day. The road ahead looked exactly the same as the road behind.