[Note:- This is my entry for this week's 3WordWednesday and the story is a follow up to my last week's entry]
---
You heard her door open at 9:30?
No.
Mrs S_____,
Its Miss S_____. A petulant bell that house has. Makes quite a racket.
So you saw him enter?
You see, it drones on in your head...like an old car on ignition for too long. Not good for an old woman.
---
Who's at the door?
It's the pizza, ma'm.
An outage.
Seems the world is conspiring against you.
I know who you are.
Indeed you do. So don't bother with the phone.
I don't deserve to die.
Well, you don't deserve to live either.
The police are outside.
They won't be bothered. They will be happier were you to die.
Uh..Why?
Your death will be the speck of sense that they seek. Like at a terminal, "I announce the departure of ..." and they will clamber up...
On your trail. So I am the signpost at the fork on the road.
Not you. Your death.
---
What's on the table?
Its the pizza.
And the note?
"I paid for the pizza and tipped him too. You can have it. :-) "
What a sense of humour...
Rotten, I would say.
---
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Endplay
3 Word Wednesday entry.
---
A corpse is an ebbed out wave.
Chuckle. Good.
Squats beside and inspects.
The exit wound.
Where?
Pointing to it. There.
Let there be light.
Nod.
---
Phone rings. Thanks.
What time?
10 : 30
That is too late. He was seen entering the house at 9:30. What did he wait for?
Not him. Her. Stave it off for us may be.
Negotiating with a serial killer. Click tongue.
We are always late aren't we?
Well at least we know who it is the next time.
Yeah. Not random anymore.
---
---
A corpse is an ebbed out wave.
Chuckle. Good.
Squats beside and inspects.
The exit wound.
Where?
Pointing to it. There.
Let there be light.
Nod.
---
Phone rings. Thanks.
What time?
10 : 30
That is too late. He was seen entering the house at 9:30. What did he wait for?
Not him. Her. Stave it off for us may be.
Negotiating with a serial killer. Click tongue.
We are always late aren't we?
Well at least we know who it is the next time.
Yeah. Not random anymore.
---
Thalaivaaa!!!
Jose Mourinho, ex-presiding deity of Stamford Bridge and currently lording over the blue half of San Siro, a man with the propensity to charm people with his soundbites and lock opponents up on the pitch with a defence as impenetrable as a the plot of a David Lynch movie (and inadvertently turn matches into snorefest - the reason cited for his ouster from Chelsea), came up with the answer to the question that has puzzled managers all over the world since the year past: how to stop Barcelona?The Inter-Barcelona match (result 3-1), played out just a while ago, not only lit a fire under the myth that Barcelona can be stopped from scoring goals only by parking a Volvo truck in front of the goal, but also shattered whatever feeble belief mankind had in its ability to predict future. Who foresaw this result? No one. So if any astrologer has predicted something ominous for you, just show him/her a tape of this match and I am sure they will be left thanking their Gods for ensuring that at least a few of their predictions had come right in the past. For that is what Inter will do. And it was such a match.
Barcelona, a team often cited as the next big thing in art (and not just football), the team with the ability to control and pass the ball with a precision that counter terrorists can only dream of, were left knackered at the end. It might just be a blip, an aberration en route to them retaining the titles they won as much with hard work as with dazzle on the field. And who should cause this blip but their old nemesis, Jose Mourinho.
Jose Mourinho. The last roll of the dice by Massimo Moratti to sort out Inter's serial failure to cause opponents any concern in Champions League. The manager who took over a squad consisting of pensioners and a few mavericks, a team with a midfield as inspiring as a career in bureaucracy and calibrated them in his own style, selling old-timers and those with an alarming love for self harm and buying players to ensure a solid defence and a modicum of inspiration in attack. The man who, like a writer justifying the bad sales of his novel, cited the lack of a muse in his squad as the reason for the failure to cause any ripple in the previous year's Champions League and was promptly given one in the form of his current number 10, Wesley Sneijder, the midfielder whom Real Madrid had no hesitation in offloading (surely Real Madrid is the club most well versed in the art of enriching other clubs by letting go of their players at exactly the wrong time?) The manager, who claims Italy hates him as much as he hates it, who never hesitates to pick up a fight with anyone, from the driver of a rival team's bus to journaists to match officials and who calls himself as "The Special One", a proclamation that seems prescient with every passing day.
Although, Barcelona are not out of it as the 2nd leg of this match is yet to be played, implications of this match extend beyond the outcome of a Champions League semifinal. If Inter are to knock Barca out of this tournament, anyone with a fair idea of European club football can envisage Jose Mourinho taking over as the manager of Real Madrid next season. And what a mouthwatering clash the next season's el clasico will be!
Monday, April 19, 2010
The Wire - Re-creating a Crime Scene
The following video is from the TV series "The Wire". In the video, two detectives visit a crime scene. They reconstruct and re-enact the crime, one evidence at a time. All the while, in what can be construed a homage to Tarantino and Scorsese ( or something as simple as writer's block) , they just use the word "F**k" to communicate with each other.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
The String Theory
Where is the sign that
Happiness will find us out,
In time, in this life and not in outer space? But
Never here, never after, never again
Is what is written all around.
No point hanging around here,
Goodbye! is what we hear;
So we leave; leave for the emptiness we have in store.
Happiness will find us out,
In time, in this life and not in outer space? But
Never here, never after, never again
Is what is written all around.
No point hanging around here,
Goodbye! is what we hear;
So we leave; leave for the emptiness we have in store.
Friday, March 26, 2010
Prey 3:33
I waited outside the wrought iron gate of the mansion. The gate was closed. The gate, once coloured black, looked foreboding. I could see beyond it and was tempted to climb up it. It was winter and I saw that the snow had been cleared off from the driveway to the front door. Someone must be inside, I said to myself although I could spot no security in the booth outside nor any vehicle tracks on the sideroad to the gate. I pushed the gate open.
I walked across the driveway to the front porch. The ferns siding the driveway looked pale and bereft of colour. As I entered the porch, with its long, thick white columns, the stench hit me. I could only think of the stench that hits you when you open a refrigerator stocked with rotten eggs. Of course, the air around the fridge reeks even after you close it. The front door was closed.
It was late morning and the lone yellow bulb that at the end of the black wire that hung from the ceiling was still on. The stench was unbearable. I knocked on the door but nothing was replied. To the left of the door, there was a nameplate, the name "TINNY" etched in gold across a mahogany name board. I called the name out three or four times but again none bothered to respond to the echo that sounded across the hall through the bay windows open on either side of the door. Should I jump in? I asked myself. Someone has been here in the immediate past. Like last night or early morning today. May be someone like me, knocking on the door of the mansion. I could not stand there any more and trudged back to the front gate. As I walked out of the driveway, the gate, its tines rising and falling in sinuous curves, closed by itself. I chuckled.
---
Outside, a black dog greeted me. It looked emaciated and its skin was dappled with cakes of mud, as if it had rolled and fallen asleep in the ditch across the road. The dog looked at me with what I felt back then as empathy, as if, a while before it too had sensed something and walked to the front porch and despite wanting to jump in through the windows, just turned back and ran out.
I walked out and along the pavement, the tall trees sheltering me from the snow that fell slowly from the sky above. I wrapped the black duffel coat tighter around me, the coat shiny once like a highway reflector but now shorn of gloss and looking hardboiled after years of abuse, and kept walking. The dog did not follow me. It walked across the road to the ditch.
I walked across the driveway to the front porch. The ferns siding the driveway looked pale and bereft of colour. As I entered the porch, with its long, thick white columns, the stench hit me. I could only think of the stench that hits you when you open a refrigerator stocked with rotten eggs. Of course, the air around the fridge reeks even after you close it. The front door was closed.
It was late morning and the lone yellow bulb that at the end of the black wire that hung from the ceiling was still on. The stench was unbearable. I knocked on the door but nothing was replied. To the left of the door, there was a nameplate, the name "TINNY" etched in gold across a mahogany name board. I called the name out three or four times but again none bothered to respond to the echo that sounded across the hall through the bay windows open on either side of the door. Should I jump in? I asked myself. Someone has been here in the immediate past. Like last night or early morning today. May be someone like me, knocking on the door of the mansion. I could not stand there any more and trudged back to the front gate. As I walked out of the driveway, the gate, its tines rising and falling in sinuous curves, closed by itself. I chuckled.
---
Outside, a black dog greeted me. It looked emaciated and its skin was dappled with cakes of mud, as if it had rolled and fallen asleep in the ditch across the road. The dog looked at me with what I felt back then as empathy, as if, a while before it too had sensed something and walked to the front porch and despite wanting to jump in through the windows, just turned back and ran out.
I walked out and along the pavement, the tall trees sheltering me from the snow that fell slowly from the sky above. I wrapped the black duffel coat tighter around me, the coat shiny once like a highway reflector but now shorn of gloss and looking hardboiled after years of abuse, and kept walking. The dog did not follow me. It walked across the road to the ditch.
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Vida Perra
Its a little wobbly.
---
Us, we love dogs. They are what we ever want to be but scarcely are: loyal. Their barks, can they ever be anything but inane gibberish that all of us hear but neither understand nor care to interpret? Of course, we love them. We don't treat them as dogs do we?. Never. We care for them. Some even feed them more than what themselves would consume.
Them, do they ever even listen to what we go on about? Do they understand what we tell them when we hold them, raise them so that their eyes could meet ours, pat their heads and show our affection in other ways we are wont to? Do they ever realise that some of us are paid to walk them over cobbled pavements and manicured greens?
---
Life is a bitch.
---
O thy ruler,
when you jumped off your steed after the war,
to try and make sense of what you saw,
and were benumbed by the pile of mortal remnants that battles spew,
the dismembered limbs, the rusted guts, the impaled hearts,
the invisible sweat and tears of those who were just as human as you,
for a fleeting moment or two,
were you tempted to lie there,
to become what lies ever want to be,
but never are:
to be true?
---
---
Us, we love dogs. They are what we ever want to be but scarcely are: loyal. Their barks, can they ever be anything but inane gibberish that all of us hear but neither understand nor care to interpret? Of course, we love them. We don't treat them as dogs do we?. Never. We care for them. Some even feed them more than what themselves would consume.
Them, do they ever even listen to what we go on about? Do they understand what we tell them when we hold them, raise them so that their eyes could meet ours, pat their heads and show our affection in other ways we are wont to? Do they ever realise that some of us are paid to walk them over cobbled pavements and manicured greens?
---
Life is a bitch.
---
O thy ruler,
when you jumped off your steed after the war,
to try and make sense of what you saw,
and were benumbed by the pile of mortal remnants that battles spew,
the dismembered limbs, the rusted guts, the impaled hearts,
the invisible sweat and tears of those who were just as human as you,
for a fleeting moment or two,
were you tempted to lie there,
to become what lies ever want to be,
but never are:
to be true?
---
