The Pun Chronicles #6 - Darryl's Unfortunate Tryst with Fate

Darryl loved to think of himself as an innovator. The thrill of it came from the knowledge that innovation was the only really true form of uniqueness that still existed in this world. The only way to step out of the crowd, to experience the full glare of the spotlight before the next fashionable trend stole it away again. This was the Age of Lightning. Nothing lasted. Never had the phrase “30 seconds of fame” held more poignancy than it did today.

Darryl understood all of this perfectly well, but what was conspicuous by its absence from his train of thought was malice. He bore no ill will to this whimsical crowd, this fickle audience that he co-populated the Earth with. There was no resentment, no grumbling, no flicker of jealousy when his moment of inspiration, of sweat, blood and toil, was cast into the ocean of has-beens along with a billion others, as the masses moved on to something passing, superficial, un-sublime. He bore the fact with some grace that, to get a foothold of any kind, one must constantly innovate.

And so, innovation became life to Darryl. He could not take two steps down any road without coming up with an incredible, naïve and fantastical idea about how to radically change this or revolutionize that, and how the principles of the idea were simple, and the execution only required the power of will. When he was with company, they were usually sane enough to bring his flight of imagination back safely down to Earth. But when he was alone, his imagination ran riot like an Australian bush fire, brushing aside the obstacles that reality puts in its path with all the disdain of a Dickensian Nobleman.

It was during one of these phantasmic reveries that he hit upon what he was certain would be the mother lode. His train of thought began from a judgement that he had silently passed on a friend of his. His friend, munching on a bar of Snickers, had grimaced and then unceremoniously dumped the rest of the candy bar, less than half eaten, into the nearest bin. On espying Darryl’s outraged expression, he shrugged and said, “Too sweet.”

Too sweet. How can that be a bad thing.

But Darryl had heard this same refrain many times before, and from many different people. It always boggled his mind to hear phrases like “Too much cheese,” “too much chocolate,” or “too much meat.” He could not understand what they meant when they said it was too much of a good thing. The idea, like Quantum Physics, lay outside the boundaries of his understanding.

Well, if I can’t fix it, I sure as hell can cater to it.

And so thinking, he stumbled upon his masterpiece. He resolved to create a candy bar that lost none of its original sweetness, but was tinged and accented by a contrasting flavour, so as to avoid offending the tongues of those who could not handle too much of a single flavour. Now that it had occurred to him, he marvelled that no one had thought of it before.

Never the type of guy who procrastinates, Darryl immediately set off to his little laboratory, armed with a carton of snickers bars and a whole arsenal of different flavours to test on them.

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Many weeks passed without event. But we must not allow ourselves to be misled by this. ‘Twas but the temporary withdrawal of the ocean before the onset of the tsunami.

On that fateful day, Darryl resurfaced, triumphant, holding a box aloft in his arms a la Lion King.
His eyes strayed ne’er a moment from his path as he resolutely traipsed on toward the friend who had set this ball rolling.

His friend, having not heard from Darryl in weeks, neither in person, nor through digital media, looked on bemused as he spotted his quirky friend walking towards him, face aglow with the radiance of elation, holding a box of what appeared to be candy bars towards him.

“I’ve done it,” he exclaimed. Every syllable quivering with the weight of achievement.

“Done what?”

“Lime flavoured Snickers.”

“What?”

“Don’t question me, just give this a try first. We can talk later.”

So saying, he handed his friend the candy bar.

“You know, I have eaten Snickers bef…” his voice trailed off as Darryl impatiently held his hand up and gestured enthusiastically at the box.

“Shut up and eat up.”

And so he did. The first burst of flavour surprised him, it being nothing near what he had expected. And the shock of it caused him to choke on the morsel. An expression of doubt and dismay crept across Darryl’s face. But that quickly changed as his friend recovered and began to chew in earnest.

The obsession of parents with announcing every little achievement of their kids to the world at large, with no regard for whether that information was required or relevant in any way, is somewhat an indication of the thrill a creator feels at watching his creation flourish. Darryl partook of this thrill, albeit in a slightly less glamorous manner. He watched with glee as his friend stared at the candy bar in astonishment, as if close inspection would reveal the source of this new pleasure that had been bestowed upon him.

For the next two minutes, Darryl enjoyed the intermittent animalistic groans and sounds emanating from his friend. Finally, three candy bars later, his friend managed to gather his breath and speak.

“This is fucking good stuff, Darryl! I could eat this forever.”

“So, this isn’t… too sweet?” asked Darryl, in an almost menacing way.

“Heck naw, man. Oh, my God, this is… Oh, God,” he groaned, grabbing a fourth candy bar from the box.

Darryl gave a smile, which, to a close observer may have looked like a smile constructed more of condescension and patronizing emotion than genuine joy. It was the smile of the victor who was delighted with the fact that he won, but had not been given enough of a challenge to be able to respect his enemy.

“Hold on,” his friend cried at Darryl’s receding figure, “D’you got any more of those?”

Darryl walked on.

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The manager at Frosty Fares Supermarket sat on a plastic chair, fanning himself with insurance forms, staring out at the dusty street into which, it seemed to him, humanity itself was forbidden to wander. It was a Wednesday afternoon, and business was about as slow as it had ever been. His mind, however, was a million miles from his petty financial concerns. His thoughts flew along with the gulls, on a distant beach a long time ago. The lingering touch of that feminine hand was still to him as vivid as it had been all those years ago. It was his fondest memory. The last remaining memory of life when it had been worth living to him. He could almost feel the breeze, and taste the salty tinge of the sea. It tasted like lemons to him. Strange, he thought to himself, that in all these years, it was only today that he realized it had tasted like lemons. It had always been a vague, pleasant sensation for him, but today it was tangible and substantial.

“Good morning, sir, and a good day to you.”

Jeremy, the manager, shaken from his reminiscing, assumed his customary expression of perpetual suspicion and regarded the man standing before him.

“Well, whatchu gonna be wantin’ then?”

Darryl extended his treasure till the box lay right under Mr. Jeremy’s nose. A look of understanding crossed the elderly man’s face as he realized he had found the source of lemon scent.

“I wondered if I could promote my candy bars at your supermarket, sir. I will, of course be giving you a commission. They’re a new kind of candy bar, sir, and I’m sure they’re gonna be the next big thing.”

Jeremy, struggling to recover from the nostalgic effect of the scent, acquiesced before he had a chance to properly consider what it was that he was agreeing to. However, it did not seem a bad deal to him. After all, it would be nice to have some company around the shop.

And so, Darryl set up his stall just inside the main entrance to the supermarket, hands trembling nervously. His confidence had taken a severe blow this morning. His efforts in creating the perfect candy bar had taken a toll on his performance at his real daytime job, and today he had been asked to vacate the premises, besides which he was behind on his rent.

He was aware that if he did not make it big with the candy sales, he was in fairly deep water. And he had also learnt the hard way that he was not a particularly good swimmer in deep waters.

The passage of the next few hours did nothing to ease his anxiety. A total of two people had crossed the threshold in the past three hours. One of them, diabetic, had scurried away with a squeal of petrification when Darryl had magnanimously offered her a free sample. The other had simply ignored him as if he were a Christmas tree decoration.

With half the day gone and not even a glimmer of an opportunity, Darryl began to fidget nervously, as sweat beads began to crystallize on his forehead. Every tick of the second hand sounded like the footstep of the Grand Inquisitor, approaching him to smear him with the filthy garb of a failure.

Cutting through the damning, self-indicting daydream came the floating, singing voice of a child. Darryl snapped out of it in a millisecond, training his eyes and ears towards the entrance. In walked a mother and daughter. The mother, about 30, seemed to emanate exhaustion. She seemed to have had the life sucked out of her and went about her task like an automaton, unseeing, unfeeling, out of force of habit. The child, on the other hand, seemed lively, sprightly, full of gumption and energy. It seemed obvious to Darryl that it was she that was the cause of her mother’s threadbare state of anatomy.

Darryl watched closely as the mother wearily, but systematically, worked through the list of items that she needed to purchase. She had barely finished scouring the first isle, when her child began to show the first signs of boredom. Soon enough, she abandoned her mother to the mundane existence of practicality, and set off on her private exploratory adventure.

That was when she spotted Darryl, a handsome man with a pleasant face, beckoning to her. She also detected a faint, but pleasant, scent from about his person. Being a child, this double sensory bait was overwhelming for her, and she positively ran down to his stall.

Darryl, sensing his first sale, knelt to speak face to face with the child, but before he could say a word, she had run past him and snatched the box with his candy in it. Taking a moment to savour the scent, she exposed the chasm that was her oral orifice and consumed half the candy bar in her first bite.

Darryl watched closely as her eyes shut in delight. Her mouth worked slowly and leisurely and her entire body seemed to shake with pleasure.

“Djis Kvntvn pbnjts?” she asked Darryl, still shaking.

“Sorry?”

“Djis Kvntvn pbnjts?” she asked, louder, petulance now creeping into her voice. She looked strangely blue to Darryl, and the frothing at her mouth certainly did not make her any prettier to look at. Darryl shuddered at the predicament the weary lady must be in, being given a child as terrible as this by providence.

“I’m sorry, I can’t understand you,” Darryl pleaded, seeing his chance of making a sale slip away.

The child began to positively throw a fit. She lay on the ground, screaming, writhing, her mouth frothing, her body convulsing, thrashing about.

The din brought her mother flying out of the aisles.

“WHAT HAPPENED? WHAT’S WRONG?” she screamed.

“I… I don’t know. She seemed to be trying to say something, I cannot understand what she is saying.”

He looked up to see the mother had not been listening to him at all. She had a look of the most sickening horror plastered upon her face. Darryl followed her eyeline and his eyes hit upon his box of candy bars.

“D… D…. Does that contain p-p-p-peanuts?” the lady whispered.

The blood drained from Darryl’s face.

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Darryl walked along the bridge, morosely gazing out onto the river. Homeless, unemployed and hungry, he had lost all he had to lose in life.

But the fact that took stomaching, and that he had not yet been able to stomach, was the failure of his enterprise. The fact that the idiocy of one petulant girl had robbed him of his life’s calling, of fulfilling his role in society as that of an innovator extraordinaire. That he had been allowed his 30 seconds in the spotlight, but not for a feat of intellect, but for the corpse of a child, that was a particularly bitter pill to swallow. It was tougher for him to digest that than it had been for the girl to digest peanuts.

The news in the following weeks had been characteristically ruthless, killing off any chance Darryl had of starting his life over. The furore the child’s death had created had caused collateral damage as well, Mr. Jeremy being forced to shut down his beloved “Frosty Fares Supermarket” under severe pressure from activists.

Stepping over the railing of the bridge, Darryl gazed into the cold, grey expanse below him, and, taking a deep breath, he plunged.

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Hours later, the screams of a few children alerted the neighbourhood to the fact that something was not quite right down by the riverbank. On investigation, two bodies were found, lying side by side.

Forensics later confirmed that the first body belonged to Mr. Darryl Johnson, aged 24. Time of death was approximated at 2 PM.

The second body was identified as Mr. Jeremy Sachs, aged 49. Time of death was approximated at 11 AM.

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This was the tale of lemony snickers and a series of unfortunate events.

The Pun Chronicles #5 - The Joys of Silent Jenny

Jenny Talbut sat, morose, in her room, facing the wall. Deaf and mute since birth, gazing at the blank, white wall was her way of shutting the world out, since she presented the only fully functional sensory organ with zero stimulation.

The world around her had degraded, Jenny thought. Or else it was her perspective that had refined itself to the point where she could see it. Everywhere, she was surrounded by false charity. People everywhere would feel sorry for her, but no one would befriend her. Because that would take a real effort. An effort no one was willing to take. One can’t post efforts on social media. Effort did not get likes.

And so, she sat with the sympathy of the world bestowed upon her, but the companionship of none.

But Jenny possessed one characteristic that no amount of seclusion could hamper, that no amount of superficiality could denigrate. Jenny had smarts. Forced to take an extra effort to experience the same things that others could experience effortlessly, Jenny’s brain had trained itself to be quicker, sharper and more resolute than most. She had grit, and an abundance of it at that.

This determination had given her the drive to clear her A levels and now, University awaited her.

University!

Just the thought of it sent thrills down Jenny’s spine. University would be the Eden that would morph all her malformities into likeable peculiarities. Universities, to Jenny’s mind, were a melting pot where all manner of queer and quirky people intermingled to create an intellectual miasma wherein everyone could be themselves and yet be no stranger than the rest.

There weren’t many universities that had the facilities to educate deaf-mute students in the field that Jenny had chosen. Careful research had whittled it down to two realistic options. However, as one of them required a significant investment in terms of relocation and tuition, all of Jenny’s hopes and dreams rested on one University and one alone.

She had written to them after months of concerted research and superhuman effort allowed her the confidence to send her essay in to apply for the scholarship. Now all that she longed for was confirmation. That email was to be her affirmatory glory. Her ticket to normalcy. Her mortar for the rebuilding of her confidence. Everything that she had worked for depended on that one mail. She had searched online for copies indicating the nature of the letter that is received by applicants that are accepted. From what she could find, the mail was an unassuming receipt, stating the tuition fee that the applicant was required to submit at the time of admission. Nothing more, nothing less.

Jenny Talbut’s mind leaped from fantasy to fantasy, from one in which she spearheaded the opening up of various avenues of employment to the deaf-mute, to another where she overcame her natural obstacles to nevertheless reach the upper echelons of her field of study. She did not dream small. Her imagination tolerated no boundaries.

Even as she dreamt of glorious victories, a letter dropped in through the slot in her door. The world stood still as Jenny recognized the insignia of the much sought after university. Holding her breath, she slit open the envelope and, pulling out the letter, glanced through the contents at the speed of light.

And what emotions ran through Jenny’s mind as she read the following text printed across the surface of the letter:

“Fee- mail: Jenny Tal.”

Mute Elation.

The Pun Chronicles #4 - Onomatopoeia

The clouds gathered menacingly, warning the languid strollers in Cubbon Park of the onset of the storm that was to change their lives.

Rajugopal stood amongst the bushes, clad in dark green clothes, hoping to camouflage himself as well as possible. The failing light aided his congruity with his surroundings. Directly in his eyeline stood two men, one of them hooded, the remaining area of his face hidden away beneath a beard and sunglasses. Next to him stood a mammoth, and a woolly mammoth at that. Bald at the top, the rest of him was covered in dense foliage. His beard, far more impressive than the hooded man’s, swayed impressively in the wind. He, too, wore sunglasses, though it was not sunny.

This strange behaviour only served to deepen Rajugopal’s suspicions. From the very first day, he had regrote allowing these two boys to live as tenants in his apartment. The hooded one was well spoken and knew the local language, and so had won his wife over. But the mammoth, he worried Rajugopal no end. He came from a strange, unknown part of the world. Rumors of extreme good looks and behaviour notwithstanding, Rajugopal was wary of foreigners. They were unpredictable.

He crept closer, careful to remain out of their eyeline. Their sunglasses prevented him from being able to discern the direction of their gaze and that discomfited him.

“Dude, there’s so much roughage around here,” said Hood.

“I don’t think that’s what that word means,” said Mammoth.

“No, no, it does mean that,” said Hood.

“You’re lying,” said Mammoth, “I think you’re a fib-re.” (24)

“You think I’m a fibre?” asked Hood, confused.

“A fibber! A liar. It was a pun, goddammit,” Mammoth exclaimed in disgust.

“You can’t get mad at me. You’re my caretaker,” Hood said.

The wind began to pick up, and the first smattering of raindrops began to descend. Rajugopal had had enough. This espionage was getting him nowhere. An espionaught if there ever was one. (25) He had to get closer to them, get them talking about what they were really upto. But they knew his face, he needed a disguise. Glancing back at them, he surmised that they weren’t going anywhere anytime soon, and so he scuttled away from the bushes, back to his van in the parking lot.

First, he changed his clothes, donning an inconspicuous pair of jeans and a grey sports jacket over his green t-shirt. Next, he switched his sneakers for a pair of running shoes, in case something should go wrong. Watching himself closely in the rear view mirror, he attached a fake nose and, with a final flourish, donned a toupee to cover his bald head. He looked at himself from all angles in the rear view mirror and was satisfied that he had disguised himself exceptionally well. He had never looked so different. He was almost tempted to say that it was now a rare view mirror. (26)

By the time he got back, the wind had really picked up and was approaching gale force. Worried that the rain would wash away (27) any possibility he had of speaking to the two tykes, Rajugopal hurried towards their imposing figures.

“Ahoy there, goodfellas,” said Rajugopal.

“Did he just say ‘ahoy’”, asked Hood.

“I think he said ‘Hi’, he must be Bengali,” clarified Mammoth, helpfully.

“My name is Bhishnu Beliappa Bhaath, you can call me Bisi Bele Bath (27),” Rajugopal said, “I wonder if I could trouble you guys with a few questions?”

“Sure,” said Mammoth, “state your bisi-ness.”(28)

“You see,” began Rajugopal, “I’m new to Bangalore, and need to get a place to stay. Do you guys have any idea about good areas to live in?”

“Oh, we live in Indiranagar, it’s a nice place. Very chilled out, no sunlight,” said Hood.

“And no kids,” said Mammoth.

“And how is the owner?” asked Rajugopal, pointedly.

“Owner, ah. He is okay, but we can’t seem to come to an... agreement (29),” said Mammoth.

Rajugopal raged on the inside. Here, he had had sleepless nights, wondering what these boys were upto and the legal trouble he would have been in, had anyone found out they lived in his house without a rental agreement, and these boys were sitting there cracking jokes about it. However, in the interest of his objective, he maintained a cool exterior.

“Hoodie-baba(30), you live without rental agreement?” he asked, in feigned surprise. “Isn’t that illegal? How come you haven’t gotten one yet?”

“Ah, too much work,” said Hood, dismissively.

Suddenly, something within Rajugopal snapped. He had been brought up in a household with militarian discipline, and instilled with the values of toil and labour. Living those values, he had raised himself to the position of a landlord, and now here were two upstarts spitting in the face of all that was noble and respectful.

Slowly sliding his hand into his jacket, he wrapped his fingers around the grip of his pistol. Barring his wife, he considered his pistol to be the most beautiful entity on earth. At times, disturbingly, he was even aroused by it. It was a real Sex Pistol. (31)

The wind howled, mirroring the wrath that churned Rajugopal’s blood.

“Too much work. Too much work, it seems,” he repeated, over and over, under his breath.

Glaring at the two tenants, he pulled the gun out and, remembering that Mammoth was the caretaker, pointed the gun at him, first.

“What the fuck, man?” asked Mammoth, covering his beard with his hands, protectively.

“You boys deserve to die,” said Rajugopal, nostrils flaring. “And you will never know who it is that killed you or why. And the setting, the setting could not have been more perfect. The wind will cover the sound of the bullets, no one will hear you scream. You will die alone. And all this for a mere... disagreement. (31)”

Time stood still. Hood was stricken with fear, his hands trembling as he rolled a cigarette. Mammoth stared down the barrel at the piece of lead that was about to end his life. The wind gnashed its teeth, the rain poured down in lashes. All of the universe seemed coterminous with violence.

And then, Fate intervened. A gust of wind, slightly stronger than its predecessors, swept down towards the threesome and washed over them with particular severity. Mammoth was unaffected, due to his mammothian size. Hood was protected by his hood. But Rajugopal, who stood facing the wind, got the brunt of it and lost his balance. The rain had melted the glue that held his fake nose in place. The wind, finding a nook to exert pressure into, did so, and off came Rajugopal’s artifice. Mammoth gasped in surprise. That face looked familiar.

“Oh, no, where did my nose go?” bemoaned Rajugopal.

“God nose. (32)” replied Hood.

The next gust swept down and lifted Rajugopal’s toupee clean off his head. Hood and Mammoth stood aghast, confronted by their landowner. Rajugopal stood facing them, knowing his gig was up. Staring at them, his mind drew a blank. He collapsed to his knees, whispering to himself.

“Oh, no, my toupee... Ah.” (33)

The Pun Chronicles #3 – A Secret to Die For

“I tell yer, Huck, there ain’t no risk in it,” said Linus, voice quivering with excitement. “That ol’ shanty there’s been sittin’ like yer mama’s ducks, just there for the tak’n.”

“What’s my mama’s doctor got to do with anything?” Huck asked.

Linus and Huck had wasted away their teenage years chasing dames, mostly unsuccessfully. This was partly because an extended habit of chewing tobacco had wreaked havoc with the boys’ set of dentures, and partly because they had an annoying habit of cracking a joke every so often and clapping their audience on the back with an uncomfortably hard slap. Some lasses may go in for that sort of stuff, but there certainly wasn’t a surplus.

Now approaching the age where their parents were starting to get fidgety and were beginning to hatch plans to turn the boys out of the house to fend for themselves, Linus and Huck realized that they needed some sort of gameplan to provide for their luxurious habits, albeit temporarily. For weeks, their unimaginative minds had come up with nothing, barring a few brutish plans to mug passerby’s or to con the residents of the old age home into paying them for some ponzi scheme.

It was only now that Linus had spotted his opportunity and hatched a plot that would have put Mata Hari to shame.

“All right, let’s give it the ol’ run o’er one more time,” Linus said, “Do you got yer notebook on yer?”

“I don’t know how to write, Linus,” said Huck.

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Tom Finnigan’s star had been rising fast within the Police Department. He had everything going for him. He was married and settled with two kids, something the experienced Sheriff of that precinct always encouraged. He had a good, honest face and he could piece the puzzle together quicker than most. An all-rounder would be the colonial term for it.

At home, his wife was as satisfied as a wife could be in those parts. She had her hands full with the kids all day, and when Tom returned from duty, on the days he didn’t put in extra hours, he made sure to spend some time with her and the kids.

All, in short, was as well as could be hoped with his life. And yet, if one caught Tom in an unguarded moment, when he was unaware he was being watched, one would see a forehead wrinkling away to make way for his furrowed brow. One would see his eyes shift suspiciously, and hear a low, worried muttering. A stream of consciousness soliloquy aimed at oneself. A stream of self consciousness.

The reader would be forgiven for asking what cause Tom had to worry. The cause, as it so often is, was that Tom had dipped his pen in more than one inkpot. There was another woman, who, if the metaphor was not clear, was the second inkpot.

The “extra hours” he had been putting in were real enough, he had just lied about where he had been spending them. And he had taken to accepting bribes in order to account for the additional income that comes with working extra hours.

All these factors lay heavy on Tom’s conscience, almost as if they lay on his brow, weighing it down.

He was not worried about getting caught, he had made sure of that. He had found a neat, old shanty in the suburbs, sufficiently dilapidated from the outside to not warrant a second glance, or to not warrant a warrant; and sufficiently neat on the inside to avoid the second inkpot from spilling over with consternation.

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“Now, listen well, Huck. That shack over there has more to it than meets the eye. Why just yesterday I seen Tom Finnigan lug a dress’n table in there. And I tell yer, where there’s a dress’n table, there’s a woman, and where there’s a woman, there’s sure to be jools. And it’s the jools we’re after, Hucky boy.”

“But how are we to get inside,” Huck asked, “I sure as hell don’t know how to pick locks, and isn’t old Tom a policeman?”

“Now don’t you worry your wee noggin about tha’ ol’ chestnut, Hucky boy. Why, we have the dirt on Tom, now, don’t we?”

“We do?” asked Huck, uncertainly.

“Huck, youse is dumber than an inbred platypus that been smacked upside the head with a broadsword. What do you think Finnigan does in that shanty with a lady that ain’t his wife? I can tell yer they sure ain’t calling on the Lord, that’s for sure.”

The light of knowledge flickered on inside Huck’s head. His interest piqued, he now listened in earnest, eager to bring the plan to fruition.

“Now, as I was sayin’, there’s sure to be jools in there. But we can’t get at ‘em while Tom’s away, since none of us know a darn thing about lock-pickin’, and Tom sure as hell ain’t gonna appreciate us walkin’ out with the jools while he’s in the house. So what we gots to do is, we gotta spook ‘em outta there so quick they won’t have the time nor the wits about ‘em to lock the door behind ‘em as they make a run for it. Then we walk in, nice as you like, and get what we came for. But here’s the important part, Huck. Yer can’t let Tom get his eyes on yer. Get that fact wedged into your think-box. He can’t lay his eyes on yer. If that happens, it’s all over.”

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On that fateful day, Tom and Stacy, which was the name of his second inkpot, whom he thus affectionately called st-inkpot, met as usual at the shanty, unaware of the storm that was about to disturb the calm waters of their romance. 

The lovebirds had just sat down to dinner when they heard a large crash right outside the bedroom window.

“MAKE SURE TO GET A PICTURE!” shouted Linus, in an intentionally loud and artificially thick voice.

Inside the house, Tom and Stacy shot out of their seats in an instant, Stacy screaming incoherently while Tom strained to stop his knees from trembling as he saw his world crashing down around him. Stacy fled, pell-mell, in a state of undress, uncaring, unheeding and scampered down the street into the night.

Tom took the same approach, but in a slightly more sober vein, taking quick, measured steps towards the door. It was his calmness in the face of disaster that was to prove his undoing.

Linus watched with glee as Stacy reacted exactly as he had predicted she would, but his laugh died halfway as his eyes sought in vain for a glimpse of Tom Finnigan.

Huck, who had whipped himself into a state of frenzy, did not stop to observe these events, but ran, cackling diabolically, into the shack before Linus could utter a word of warning. Three steps into the house, he stopped short, having run straight into Tom, who was on his way out.

The silence was broken by a belated patter of footsteps that brought Linus to the door, confirming his worst fear.

With the situation as it was, Tom’s mind was swamped by a whole spectrum of emotions, thereby hampering his usually sprightly speed of thought. Huck, at the best of times, was never quite quick on the uptake. And thus it was that Linus’ mind was the first to jump into action and arrive at the solution.

“Yer gotta kill him, Huck. That’s all there is to it.”

“Huh?” Huck balked at such an extreme course of action. His mind was still recovering from the shock of seeing Tom Finnigan face to face.

“He saw yer, Hucky. You gotta kill him. He saw yer.”

Huck, still coming to his senses, asked, “Who saw me?”

“Tom. Tom Saw-yer.”

Once again, the spark of understanding flamed the haystack that resided between the ears of Huck. And, without a further moment of delay, he raised his pistol and shot Tom Finnigan.

Linus and Huck stood staring at Tom’s body. Once again, Linus’s mind reacted first.

"All right, all right,” he thought to himself, “Just a li’l snag, that’s all. We can still get what we came for. I’ll go in and start searchin’ around for the jools, and Huck’ll bury Finn.”

Refuge

With nary a warning signalling what you have in store
A sprinkled caress of a kiss, and then down you pour
I am with you now, and shall be forevermore
To laugh and cry amidst your storms, fair Bangalore!

Guide me to my strengths and hide my fatal flaws,
Be my perpetual shelter, deliver me from Misery’s claws,
Be my Muse eternal, Mother, humbly, this I implore,
Grief is a stranger to me when I am in Bangalore.

Chaos reigns around us, madness has seized mankind,
Amassed in a mighty mob to render the wisest of us blind,
Let me find my solace, Mother, turn me not from your door,
I will not find sanity elsewhere, let me live in Bangalore.

Fate lies a-waiting, Destiny has laid down her traps,
One mis-step and all I have built for myself will collapse,
Let me dock my weather-worn ship at your heavenly shore,
My thirst for life is sated, let me die in Bangalore.

The Pun Chronicles - Story #2 - The Root of All Evil

The gang lounged around the house, some playing videogames, others sleeping on the floor next to the mattresses. The halls, both of them, were thick with pungent smoke, condemning smokers and non-smokers alike to the bliss of nicotine. Rum flowed freely, depleting at rates that would alarm most geologists.

This would seem, to most, a story about a group of friends in their mid-twenties. A group that had not yet transitioned into the mundane, humdrum existence of middle age, but had grown up sufficiently to have gained some semblance of control over their life. It would seem so, and yet, it wasn’t. The characters in the story we are about to read were not in their mid twenties, but in their late teens. A fortuitous twist of Fate had brought them everything a teenage mind could possibly dream of in abundance, and much too soon for their frail, impressionable minds to have come to terms with it appropriately.

It had all begun with Miso. Miso, 17, had spent his entire early teen years wasting away his creativity without releasing so much as an EP. And despite harsh remonstrations from his friends, and even a rooftop intervention session, he had always put it off in favour of finishing the next best videogame to come out on the market. But on one fateful day, the prodigal son decided to be prodigal no more.
The inspiration came to him in a flash, and he quickly jotted down a paragraph, badly edited, onto his notepad.

Ecstatic at his sudden outburst of creativity, Miso sent the paragraph to Mimi, expecting a gracious, but honest review from his friend. Mimi, also 17, misconstrued Miso’s intentions, and thought he was being asked to collaborate on the construction of the story. Pretty soon, the entire crew of teenage would-be writers were in on it and a fantastic fondue of frivolity ensued, resulting in a tale that catapulted the gang into the annals of history.

The book, written mostly tongue-in cheek, unexpectedly rose to cult status and gained a readership worldwide that was previously only reserved for masochistic-romantic novels. The money flowed in and the gang were celebrities before they had a chance to get their bearings.

And so we find them, a year later, whiling away the days in idle leisure, surrounded by empty bottles of rum, overflowing ash trays and empty pizza boxes. The creative frenzy of the year just past had long since died, and they lived amongst the squalor of teenage luxury.

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On this particular day, the gang had, incredibly, tired of eating pizza and decided that they would cook up a meal that day. Uzi, the chef par excellence, compiled a list of ingredients and immediately dispatched his butler, Rammsey, to the grocery story.

On his return, Uzi took control of the kitchen, stirring, sprinkling, coddling the ingredients until they melded into a blissful concoction.

“Dinner is served,” he called, over his shoulder.

The gang slowly trudged into the kitchen and, heaping large portions onto their plates, made their way back into the two halls. Uzi himself joined them, his neatly combed beard quivering in anticipation.

“It’s too salty,” complained Chims, squinting her eyes at Uzi.

Uzi frowned. He was sure he had got the proportions right.

“Yeah, something’s off, bro,” Mimi concurred.

This got Uzi off his seat. That Chims griped about food was understandable, expected even. But two out of three was not just happenstance. Something was wrong.

“Guys, hold on, I think something is--” began Uzi, worry flooding into his tone.

“Calm down, man, it’s not inedible, just not up to your usual standards,” said Mimi.

“No, I really thin—“

“Dude, Uzi, like, ya, just sit and eat off,” Godse interjected.

“Leh,” concurred Ashley.

Thus outnumbered, Uzi returned to his seat, eyeing his plate suspiciously. His friends seemed unconcerned, but he could not fight the feeling of impending doom that was growing inside him.
Even as his mind painted picture after stark picture of despair, Uzi’s morbid reverie was interrupted by the sound of violent retching to his right.

Nixon had collapsed to the floor, right next to the mattress, and was vomiting his guts out.

“Nixon!! What’s wrong?” Miso asked, frantically, “Did someone give him whiskey?”

“No, dude, he hasn’t had a drink all day,” said Mimi.

The gang crowded around, trying their best to get Nixon to stop vomiting, but it only got worse. And then, when with the latest heave, Nixon threw up blood, then panic took complete hold of them.
Uzi stood between the two halls, looking first one way, then another, unable to fathom how things had come to this.

His friends were collapsing all around him, as if being stricken by the plague, but with exaggeratedly accelerated effects. Helpless, he watched as, one by one, they were struck down by bouts of vomiting, finally collapsing lifeless in puddles of puke.

Suddenly, Uzi connected the dots. He rushed into the kitchen, rummaging through the ingredients Rammsey had gotten for him. And soon enough, the blood draining from his face, Uzi held up a bottle in horror, becoming the very personification of mortification.

“R-Rammsey!!”

“Yes, sir?” asked Ramsey, calmly.

“This is beetroot jam.”

“Yes, sir”

“Did you do this on purpose? Betroot-hful."

“Yes, sir.”

“But wh...” The last question died on his lips as all strength left Uzi and he too fell to the floor, dead.

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Six months later, the double halled apartment stood empty, bereft of all evidence of the vulgar Hedonism indulged in by its previous inhabitants. And yet, it remained unsold.
Some say the reason for this was that, if one stood in any one of its two halls, one could feel a presence. They could feel the souls of the stricken teenagers still trapped within the eight walls of the two halls.

And then, one would get a faint scent. The scent of rum and cigarettes, the scent of pizzas and chicken. The scent of teenage life at its best and worst.

Some said the house was unsold because it...

Smells like teen spirits.

The Pun Chronicles - Story #1 - A humble account of affairs

So, this boy, extremely good looking and quite intelligent, made a plan with his friends, who admired him no end, to go to the Shalimar dam in the rural realms of J&K, a land which no country can claim for its own.

"Let's go," exclaimed Usman, "on a Shalimar-ch."

"Oh, Usman," gushed his friends, "how do you come up with this stuff?"

"Ah, pshh pshh," said Usman, dismissively, not used to hearing his praise sung so unabashedly, "let's change the subject. How are we to get there?"

"We can take my van, my father won't need it this weekend," said Ghulam Rasool, helpfully.

Ghulam Rasool liked helping his friends. Helping his friends made Ghulam Rasool happy.

"That's great!" exclaimed Usman, in his sultry, bluesy voice.

"Oh, Usman, what a nice voice you have," exclaimed Sameena.

But Usman was already on his way to Friday prayers.

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Saturday morning arrived with a smile, glistening dewdrops dripping onto the noses of lazy canines lounging under trees.

Usman awoke, waking all his friends up, for he was righteous and responsible, and then Ghulam Rasool cooked them all a wonderful breakfast because Ghulam Rasool enjoyed helping his friends. He made eggs and toast and bacon and milkshakes, but Usman did not eat the bacon because God would be very angry.

And so, the friends set off in Ghulam Rasool's van to Shalimar Dam. The path led through a thickly wooded area, unmolested by humankind because some benevolent benefactors had fenced off the area, claiming a property dispute. There was no doubt an altruistic motive to these property conglomerates, for massive corporations always have the best interest of laymen in mind.

As a result, the friends' trip was rendered exponentially more enjoyable by the accompaniment of the chirping of birds and the dancing rays of the sun that filtered through the leaves of the trees on both sides that arched overhead, as if in respect to the beauty of Usman.

Suddenly, Usman, with his exceptional audio fidelity skills, heard the call of an ape. His radiant smile darkened into a slightly subdued and worried look, as his encyclopaedic knowledge base also included the knowledge of the various implications of different animal calls. And he knew this particular call to be a call of alarm, signalling the close proximity of a feared predator. Usman, with his beauty, could never be mistaken for a feared predator, so it must be in the wild.

Through faultless logic, Usman concluded that the postulation that a wild predator's presence in the wild was a safe bet and had more plausibility to it than the other theories flitting through his magnificent labyrinth of neural pathways.

Just as he had decided to act according to this theory, he heard, with the aforementioned exceptional excellence in audio fidelity, a growl.

The ominous sound waves did not seem to have filtered through the trees but seemed to be perilously close. Usman whirled around and espied a spotted leopard with a hide second in beauty to only Usman's himself, straining every muscle to keep up with the van, that was trawling along at a weary pace.

"Why are we driving so slow, Ghulam Rasool?" asked Usman.

"It's the weight. Because of Diabetic Dawood," answered Ghulam Rasool.

Seeing the leopard catch up, Usman slid open the sliding door, and, using his impressive upper body strength, hung by the arms and aimed a kick at the leopard, trying to deter him from keeping up the chase. The leopard, taught by instinct and evolution to react and adjust to the most insignificant of manoeuvres by its prey, contorted its body shape and swung a paw at Usman's leg.

Usman would have been in serious trouble, but, hardened by an upbringing of severe severity and hard hardship, his instincts were as finely honed as the leopard's itself, and so he flinched away from the counter attack.

However, Usman's jeans were not sentient and so did not have the same skill set as Usman himself, and so were no match for the leopard's claws. The sound of shredding rent the air and Sameena screamed, imagining Usman's beautiful skin suffering imperfections from an animal as unevolved as the leopard.

"Oh, the humanity!" she exclaimed.

However, realizing that the loss was sartorial and not body partorial, she calmed down and fainted into Usman's arms.

"Usman, I always knew you were braver than Mel Gibson, but what if you had been injured?" Ghulam Rasool asked, as he parked the car at the Shalimar Dam.

"Frankly, my dear," Usman said, "I don't give a dam."

And that was the jean claw'd van dam experience.

Deus Ex Machina

Hercules had his twelve great tasks,
Odysseus fought his way back home,
Victory sweetened their mead flasks
And, overflowing, stained the loam.

Rejoice! For all the greatest of men
Now set off for Olympian bliss,
For reprieve from the wrath of the siren,
For the vestal virgin’s kiss.

I am the contraption they deign to use,
The Deus ex Machina, if I may;
If such exaltation I ever was to refuse,
May Hades take me that day.

Onwards advanced the heroic guild
Intermingled with demi-gods;
Majesty so manifest in their very build
That all who beheld them were awed,

Hercules, Odysseus, Oedipus, Achilles,
All assembled on my platform;
Dionysius followed, Harbinger of causalities,
Wreaking chaos with his horns.

My strength held fast, my stance stood firm
As Divinity graced, at last, my vestibule;
But hark! What crawls? There crawls a germ!
Alas! That Fate must be so cruel.

My strength, now failing, succumbed at last,
Like a dinghy in a storm-swept wharf;
My will, that for the Gods, persevered steadfast
Crumbled before a lowly dwarf.

Ever lower I fall, descending forever
Into the realms of Kerberos
Until a soul manages to sever
The bonds that tie me to this dwarf.

Ode to a Night-in-gale

Blustery, billowy, howled the cruel winds;
A shower advances, then reconsiders, rescinds;
Depth perception suddenly gone all awry,
We are trapped! The mimic, a Night and I.
We need nourishing, victuals, food,
To combat the abyss and its darkened brood;
“Fear not!” spake Demi-God, “I’ll cook some chicken fry,
Then we can eat our fill, the Mimic, a Night and I.”

And so off he went on his uber-heroic task,
Donning always his ultra-violet protective mask,
“I dare both Fate and Common Sense to defy,
Just so we can eat, the Mimic, a Night and I.”
But Fate allows not rebellion to its tyranny.
It stole through the night and drained all the honey.
“Hades curse thee, thief, may your blood curdle dry!
What now shall we eat, the Mimic, a Night and I?”

Silence reigned supreme, not a whimper came forth
From the winds, the rains, the thunder or the Earth;
“May the Gods have mercy, oblivion draws nigh;
This must be the end of the Mimic, a Night and I.”
Just then a wraith descended from the chaos of clouds,
Wailing laments as heart rending as they were loud.
“Revel, now, Demi-God, revel in this bestial gore
Hear me, and hear me well. Thou shalt starve, nevermore!

But smile not yet, beautiful friend, one more rule must thou descry.
Only you may eat these prawns. The Mimic and a Night must die.”

An Offering

"Write happy," came the command,
A petal laden reprimand
From the maiden in the hills.

"When you have so much to do,
So much to cherish, so little to rue,
Why concentrate on bygone ills?

Stick your face into the breeze,
Be whimsical, smile with ease,
Sing with mirth and jubilation.

Walk in a garden, smell a rose,
Dream of poetry, live in prose,
Revel in all of creation."

"Nay," said I, "that I cannot be
The administerer of minstrelsy
Is plain even at the summit of joy.

For I have seen only too often,
When one permits oneself to soften,
Destiny hatches a malicious ploy
.
The flower picked, reveals its thorn,
The lover's sympathies turn to scorn,
The garden, once blooming, wilts away.

Creation reveals its myriad flaws,
Art is prostituted to base applause,
The world I am left to view is grey.

So, maiden, if that be all you ask,
I regretfully am not up to the task
Of writing mirthful poetry.

I am, however, immensely glad,
That every conversation we have ever had
Has inspired some poetry in me.

Take this as my meagre offer,
To a princess from a pauper,
And in taking it, honor me.

I may not write poems of laughter,
But for this life and ever after,
I vow to always honor thee."

Denial

My brain has denied me tranquillity,

Because,
When life finally seeks to put me at ease,
The brain regurgitates,
And vividly recreates,
Memories that send me back to my knees

My community has denied me fraternity,
Because,
When I gaze upon my so called brothers,
I see only sheep, thronging,
And now I gaze with longing
Upon the eras lived in by all the others.

My country has denied me poetry,
Because,
In denying me forever autumn and spring,
Inspiration by weather
Is now on half tether,
And any mention of it bears a false ring.

My species has denied me catharsis,
Because,
Acts which would set any sane mind reeling
Tortures, murders, genocides,
Trafficking, mass suicides,
Leave me completely bereft of feeling.

Nature has denied me Divinity,
Because,
In debunking myths with ruthless incivility,
It has shown life to be pathetic,
Merely a phenomena aesthetic
And run me pell-mell into nihility.

VALIS

If Mind is all, is Libido dead?
What happens when grey conquers red?
What is common between what Buddha,
Christ, Mani, Zoroaster and Dionysius said?

Is the world irrational? And what then, if so?
How, then, do we know what we always know?
Is there another deity aloof from all our sanctity?
And if there is, which reigns above and which below?

Are we a microcosm of God, or even a reflection at all?
Are we truly existent, or flawed mimics of Parsifal?
Do we worship God, and does he repay us by possession?
Who exists outside reality to verify what we befall?

Are there amongst us Friends of God? Kyklopes?
The third eye, does it dictate when Time stops?
Has the Empire ended, or was it merely asleep?
If the seed was planted then, who harvests the crops?

If the world is irrational, then the Deity is too.
Reality is a joke, empiricism is untrue.
There is no sanity, insanity, knowledge or purpose.
There is only a fabric, shredded right through.

Are we ever to emerge from our Chrysalis?
Is there an escape from our primordial chalice?
We shall never know, we malfunctioning subcircuits.
We are mere neural flashes, all slaves to VALIS.