This is a blog about writing. Mostly short fiction. And occasional personal rant once in a while, if I may. Feel free to make your comments and feel sane again.

Sunday, May 24, 2009

A Call After Midnight

These little flash jobs are great exercise in plotting. Nine out of ten times you know beforehand if the extended version will be able to hold reader's interest, or it will fall apart like a cardboard cutout. While writing the compressed piece, you also test your passion, commitment and stamina to write the full version that can take months, if not years to develop. If you, as a writer, don't find it worth sticking to, the reader definitely won't.
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A Call After Midnight


Madonna in black velvet costume disappeared. Bulls charging at her stopped dead and fell into yellow dust. Wild roar from the stadium turned into a shrill, incessant ring of a telephone.


I opened my eyes and absorbed the blurry details. Reflection of a blinking neon behind the drawn curtain confused my senses for a full minute. The outline of a dresser and ornate stool with cat's paws. Dull shine of the pewter water jug sitting on the night stand. I was in a hotel room, Grand Central, Simla. Despite the woolen blanket I felt the shiver run down my spine. I found the remote from under the pillow and switched off the AC.


It was the hotel phone, not my mobile that was tearing the smooth, surreal quiet of the hour. I switched on the night lamp and looked at my watch. Who could that be at 2.30 in the morning. My mind felt numb but an important fact registered - only eight people in my world knew that I was in Simla tonight. Three out of them knew about my hotel. My wife would never call me except in case of emergency. Can a woman make up her mind about a divorce at three in the morning? I doubted it. Could it be Derreck Brown ? I was negotiating a contract with him since last four months. Do I get an outsourcing business worth thirty million or my company goes down under? His day in Germany begins when I have my evening coffee. It must be 10.30 in Frankfurt now. The last, the wildest and the most mind-numbing possibility - a versatile fixer who can put Michael Clayton to shame. He was the third person who knew my whereabouts because I happened to meet him in the lobby last night and we had drinks together. I had hired him 11 years back for a job that is unmentionable here. Can he call at this time to tell me something he couldn't tell in 11 years or after five pegs of whisky?


The throbbing in my head reached a crescendo as I pushed the blanket away and reached for the phone. It had stopped ringing.



Monday, May 11, 2009

Late

I recently read an article about serious horror writing. It argued that one can write about evil only to an extent. Beyond a point the writer's reality and his/her fictional illusion begin to merge and this tango is dangerous to say the least! Talk about writers flirting with borders of sanity.

This flash story originally won in competition rounds and got published at http://www.apollos-lyre.com/ a couple of years back. I have posted it solely for my convenience and records. Dark, deep, and with a touch of nihilism.

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Late

Kundanlal is a bitter old man of 67, who looks 57.

He has retired after slogging as a senior accountant in the statistical department of India, Bombay office, for four decades. His secret of perfect health: “I have taken orders all my life and suffered my wife’s temper tantrums.”

Now he is forced to take care of the same woman because of her never-ending illness of chronic asthma. Every few weeks, she gets an attack; it is much worse during winters. Her endless coughing gives him sleepless nights.

He pays for the doctor’s visits and medicines. He knows that it is a waste of his precious savings. He can barely pay the recently increased rent from his pension money, but there seems no way out of this. His two sons are settled abroad, very well off, but he hates seeking any help from them; they have all but forgotten the old parents.

“This winter might be her last.” The doctor has assured him several times.

Kundanlal wakes up trembling from a ghastly nightmare - he was flying as a gracefull, dark angel of death swooping down on a delicious carcass.

It is well past midnight, his throat feels dry. On his way to the kitchen for a glass of water, Kundanlal decides to kill his wife. He picks up a hefty pillow from his bed and enters his wife’s room.

Taking care not to bump into any furniture, he circles her bed. By now his eyes get familiar with shapes and shadows in the darkness. The smells of medicines make him nauseous for a minute; a tired dog barks in distance. He bends carefully over the wife’s head, gently pulls away the tattered blanket and slams the pillow flat on her face.

“Goodbye,” he whispers and leans with all 80 pounds of him.

He keeps the pressure on for a full minute or more. There is no struggle; no flailing limbs, or desperate twists of the torso for that last lungful of oxygen. Her frail, saree- clad body lies like an old lump on the mattress.

Out of surprise and disgust, Kundanlal slowly removes the pillow from her face and switches on the table lamp. He feels for her pulse but the body is icy cold.

She is already dead, with a slight smile frozen on her face.

Thursday, May 7, 2009

Dear, You Should Be Near

I am missing someone. So here is my poetic license

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Oh, what a sickly strange morning it was,
Milkman delivered a bottle of cold beer.
I saw a blue bird flying through the window,
It sang a sweet stanza I could barely hear.

The sun rose, tall trees shuffled in the wind,
Afternoon was no better, I could only fear.
I searched shapes of hopes, felt much worse,
How do I explain my plight—I am not a seer.

As the clock galloped, I waited and waited,
But I could feel only the spicy touch of a tear.
Then I saw through the blanket of loneliness,
The terrible truth is—Dear, you should be near.

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