This was the story I wrote for my college contest. I didn’t win.

The objective was to write any poem/ short-story or an essay. The first line of the story is the topic, BTW.

I switched on the tape and watched the screen. The gray dots etched on the black screen slowly disappeared to give an indifferent sound which was neither sound nor music. A blinking red dot at the bottom had letters REC blinking and counting seconds. As I was cutting the film to edit for ‘Headlines India’ for the following day, my pager keeps continuously buzzing. I work as a video barber for a private television network which telecasts news sponsored by political parties between detergent commercials. It is almost evening time and the news I’m editing will probably be the breakfast news. The two messages are from my brother. 7:28 p.m < Wer r u? > 7:33 p.m < w8n.. cm fast> Dropping the tape at the editor’s cabin, I rushed to pick him up. There was heavy traffic and my bike’s rear-view mirror was broken by a woman who was running on the road.

(20.2.09)

He spent his last ten rupee note on tea and bun for the constable. Fortunately, or he can consider it rather unfortunate that his daughter wasn’t one of the bodies the police had found in the outskirts of the city. The colony watchman, neighbours and even kids don’t mind him. Not a single wish, greeting or not even a polite smile. His wife had a heart attack recently and subsequently all the usurers of the town are sneezing on his doorstep. The clowns of the neighbourhood seem to have picked the rice bowl from his kitchen to feed stray dogs. Cobwebs are populating in his Khakis and his razor is brown with rust. The grocer refuses to give him oil on debt. The last drop of oil at home had just dripped down. The clock’s pendulum has stopped oscillating without oil. Never mind, who needs to know the time if his union is on a strike.

(27.2.09)

“Love is like cigarettes”

“Burns the ecstasy and kills after the excitement?”

“Pervert! No…”

“Then, why so?”

“The pleasure gets you addicted and when you try hard to quit, you run crazy and the desperation doubles itself. The addiction is twice as mighty now.”

“Then let us try it. I won’t meet, see or even talk to you for a month. Let us test your postulate. What say?”

“I’m sure you’d lose.”

“It is Jan 20. I’d call you up on Feb 20. Take care, cya.”

“You serious on this boy?”

“I do smoke. I do love. I’m addicted.”

“Drop me at home. Let us enjoy some eleventh hour romance.”

“I came by bus. I’m going to wait for it again.”

(20.1.09)

The day was running ahead of him. He knew that the brake valves had to be tightened, but already he punched his card late. He just cruised into the sea of the city’s traffic hoping for a makeover later. My brother was checking his offline messages when I started to work. I took his bike after giving him some pocket money.

“You win. Love is like cigarettes.”

“You too, you win. You smoke.”

“I love you!”

“Love you too.”

“Meet you at the cafe after class.”

“Done”

“You do smoke. You do love. You’re addicted.”

“I’m leaving now. The romance quota is over”, she was smiling.

“Drop me at home. Let us enjoy some romance after ages!”

“I came by bus. I’m going to wait for that again”, waved his hands and walked back.

(20.2.09)

It was a roadside Ganesh Temple. None knew about her. She was in rags with some thick hair which was oiled a century ago. She surely is starving but her teeth told that she had been eating stale food. Dogs barked at her, kids played games around her. Moms in the colony used her to frighten babies which refused to eat lunch. She was dormant normally, except when a bus passed by. She curses the bus in a loud, undecipherable language and then comes back and settles down in her dock. The locals rarely noticed her or her actions. Newcomers to the place even ask addresses to her. Residents consider her one among them. Few of them even feed her. None came in search of her. She never spoke a word or even looked us. Her only excitement was the buses that pass by. But when infants play with bus toys, she keeps staring at them.

(20.3.09)

“I came by bus. I’m going to wait for that again”, waved his hands and walked back.”

“Hey! Watch out- A kiss on your way!” He turned.

Smiles exchanged, the romantic addiction was pulsating in them when they had that orgasmic smile on their faces split by a sidewalk. The brakes were just as fine when he paused for the pedestrians and took a turn. As the signal was about to ripen from green, he squeezed in a bit too fast just when the ‘L’ board car interrupted. A steep turn and some lad in the road was thrust to the other side of the road. The guy wouldn’t have meant to cross the road this way. She yelled and fell there. A part of the crowd tried to wake her up with soda. She hit and broke a bike’s mirror as she stood up and ran away screaming on the road. The college crowd around realised that it was their junior who was killed and started beating up the bus driver. An accident grew into a prestige issue and took the shape of a bus strike demanding apology from the college students. I just arrived at the scene and found my brother’s white shirt turned red. I took him to the hospital and signed the Police reports. I switched on the televison and watched the screen the next day morning, it showed the video I stitched. The headlines were the accident and the violence after that. The newspaper lying over there had headlines about the Bus driver who the Police had told me about. In the second page was my brother’s condolence message. In the third page, there was an advertisement reading Girl missing. I had recently seen her somewhere.

(21.2.09)

Silence screams!

P.S- 1: Note Prabhudeva’s stunned looks. Probably a holocaust aftermath ( I mean anticipating Villu B.O results)

P.S- 2: Vijay fans (Isn’t this species supposed to be extinct?) have reported abuse on those youtube videos which had record clicks and were on the day’s top videos and the site managed to removed them. It is a personal loss to people who had common sense and humour sense (Some sort of sense basically). Never mind. We have vodpod!

P.S: Sorry for the delay. The story is coming up. Maybe, I was over-excited about IMDb top 250!

There was this creative writing competition I attended instead of chewing gum and spitting it on my faculty’s new car. I completely had no idea about it, yet gave it a try giving some rest to a little friend of mine manufactured by Apple who is better known to mimic songs personally for us in our own tympanum. Another friend of mine, who dragged me into this contest indeed went to the extent of bribing me with a pizza (okay, it was more like cheese-less bun) for accompanying him. Finally, I went into the hall without even a pen with me. None of the loggerheads (right- these people who scratch their heads with ball-point pens for the word in the dictionary they definitely didn’t know the meaning) in the room had the basic courtesy to lend me one as well. And, yes she entered. I don’t know why I had my head inclined towards here even when I was closing the automatic-doors which hit hard on my spectacles. Her plump little hairclip was visible through the glass, which I had to part compulsorily for getting this stupid pen. The stationery shop guy pulled down and locked the shutter and I had tough time pleading him to open it up, while the memory lobes of my cerebrum could still rejuvenate my senses by reminding her eyes which grew bigger on some funny SMS of her not-so-good-looking friend of hers. Piling up all the jingling coins from my jean, I could count up 18 INR which was spent in buying two black pens. By this time, I could recognize that the shopkeeper was abusing me in some very bad Kannada words, which I thankfully couldn’t decipher. There was a brief conversation (okay, a one-sided wrestling match) with a dangerous psycho who is twice my dimensions. I just spotted my co-creative writer who rescued me back to the competition hall. During th staircase journey, I was thinking about making birdwatching/ star gazing a serious hobby and howsoever dropped it.

Just when we went back, there were some goons standing there inside the room who politely asked us to participate in another contest fancily titled ‘What is the good word?’ before giving this. I couldn’t even have minutes of my instant angel, who was busy eating some groundnuts with her friends. Again, this bald friend of mine had persuaded me (pulled my collar) to the other competition as well. Knowing my vocabulary is poor, I had no option but gaze at the classrooms, which once I was a part of. Growing up at college is a very rapid process, and a quirky one at that. We don’t realise that we really are growing, and as a result end up in some kind of a malnutritious bonsai plant. Things apart, the competition was already underway and my partner was filling up the coupons- sorry question sheets hastily. I had no clue about the question itself, let alone the answer. All that I could help him was some jumbled words. Oh, and by the way he is no Ernest Hemmingway either. Still, he was much better. For instance, I innocently gave an answer- “Messy p*ssy” for a question which went- ‘Substitute a pair of rhyming words meaning A woman with a burden’. That was my English proficiency, precisely. I was laughing to myself when he seriously told me that there were quite a crowd there and winning was a little tough. I knew that we weren’t even in the top 20 or so among the nerds who queued up there. He was studiously working out those English puzzles which supposedly were looted from some website where soups are delivered via adsense. And I was drooling over the hallucinations of her which was saying “Cho chweet..!” in response to that same SMS referenced couple of passages ago. I wanted this to end fast so that I could do better things like looking at her, looking at her and looking at her. And yes it got over, and my pal was happy about our (his) above average performance as well. And soon, I could take an excuse of going out of the room in guise of feeding the urine basins for getting a glimpse of my dreamgirl. Yes, I saw her. It is like a recursive urge to see here over and over. Once you see her the urge curtails for some minutes and after that duration the red devil begins to pinch again. Finally, the conductors of the event spat out the answers and I could get out of it.

I got the papers from her and was just plain looking at her. She was explaining the regulations of the contest, and I was glad to hear that twice over because some deaf but do-good cretins were accompanying me. Her face seemed to have all the similes and metaphors that I could ever write down. No piece of fiction could say “I love pink!” like her. She was relishing a beautiful sandwich, and pieces of the bread were coated by her lipstick. Her nail polish colour and her lipstick were the same. I could notice her wearing a blue colour bangle which went well with her Levis’. Describing her is not the part of the contest, but well I was staring at her for almost twenty minutes, when I started thinking about the topics. Somehow she was very beautiful than the girl I had seen the day before, which qualifies her for my latest crush. But well, I remember her stare when she could see my paper blank with only half an hour left for the submission.

Coming to the point, I dedicate this story which will come in the next post to this lovely lady whose name I forgot to ask and not even spoke a word. Who wants to know her name or send a forward SMS? I’m already going out with her and its time we celebrated her birthday also. Hail her!

Follow this link.

Incredibly funny. Mundane, Profane, Divine and amusingly ‘Madras’. It contains a lot of ‘chee’ words (18+ content). So kids stay away. And I’m in no way to be blamed for just enjoying this taste of enga area.

News: A.R.Rahman has won the oscar. Not just one, but two. Very well deserved. Congratulations Sir. You make us proud. Saluting you! As mentioned earlier, one of my other favorites to win the coveted honour, Heath Ledger has taken it away as well. Great performance. I don’t wanna remark on the other winners. Totally – sigh.

Idhayathai thirudathey:

Minsara Kanavu:

Alaipayuthey:

Dil Se aka Uyire:

Naansans.. enna kodumai ithu? GM thinks three much of himself, I say. His own Khaaka Khaaka.

BTW, what is wrong with the banner? Escape Motion artists? ennavO pOnga.

http://movievictims.blogpot.com

This time I chose blogger and three more friends to write. And FYI, the junk about movies in this weblog wold considerably reduce. Please do visit regularly.

Here is the original photo:

Here are three edited versions of the same, enough said.

Options used: (Blur, B&W, Glow, Highlights/Shadow,  Saturation, Sharpen, Warmify and a few)

“Thalaivaa!”

Though the Academy deserves severe canning in their asses for doing this for several years over and over, lets leave that aside and come to the point. As already pointed out in the ultimate and penultimate posts, Ledger and Rahman- two geniuses will be acknowledged, I am sure of it. Wishes and hopes pile up. On a happy note, the academy has include 2 out of 3 nominations in the ‘Best song’ category just for SdM’s OST. With only Wall-E to defeat, I don’t see much of a probability of losing it over. And what on Earth was Australia doing in the list? Plus, both TCCOBB and SdM got more than they really deserve. What really annoys me is this ignorance towards Darren Aronofsky and Christopher Nolan. There can never be a more disturbing movie than ‘Requiem for a dream’ and a well-told story like ‘Memento’. And their latter works: Nolan- ‘Prestige’, ‘Batman Begins’ and ‘The Dark Knight’; Aronofsky- ‘Pi’, ‘Fountain’ and ‘The Wrestler’ are not recieving the response they ought to from the academy. Justice denied. Seriously if Ledger was alive, I don’t think these fatheads would have thrown in a nomination for him. Another disappointment coming from ‘In Bruges’ not being nominated for ‘Best supporting Oscar’ category and ‘Tropic thunder’ being nominated for one. With all due disrespect to the Oscars, “WTF?”