Minor Scale

Sometime on the night of Thanksgiving Eve 2002, a group of trekkers suddenly questioned the sanity of their decision to begin a 10 mile descent well after noon. Not known for my inspirational speeches, I chimed in with the opinion that it was easily the stupidest thing I had ever been involved in. Tired and depleted of wisecracks, the others simply agreed, flung their walking sticks to the side, turned off flashlights and fell in a heap on the gravelly trail. And there, lying on the North Kaibab Trail at approximately 3000 feet from the bottom of the Grand Canyon, I found the hardened cynic in me take a rest, while the sap crawled out and sighed like a schoolgirl at the vision of THE perfect night sky. And in a collective moment of sappiness, we told each other that the suffering was worth it.
(more…)

(more…)

13. A teenager finally. Come, see the world with us, his friends implored. Silk, Spices and Skirts. He stayed back and designed furniture instead. And then he was ready to save the world.

“Eighteen boring years in print?” some would later ask. But the Boss just smiled and pointed to the name board. Gutenberg, Editor.

*Previously - 1, 2
**For better works of nano-fiction, go here.

1.
Central Forensic Science Laboratory (or) CFSL for you acronym hounds, recently absolved Salman Khan of a crime. Not the ‘negative IQ’ charge, but the ‘drunk on the phone with a dodo’ one. Their website proves they used actual equipment to arrive at their findings. But parsing through their publications list, I really didn’t know what to make of this one entry.
Defrauded Money Recovered From the house of a bank employee after Polygraph test, reveals Dr Bhiba Rani Ray (Lie-detector).
Almost sounds like self-incriminating testimony to me.
(more…)

The fragrance becomes the flavor of the heart and the petals represent the blossomed mind. The thorns show the strength in me.

(more…)

Ayaarettu Naathu - Shankar Mahadevan, Anuradha Sriram: Sing along with me. Vaadi-amma Jakkama. Hold. Now just when you get to the end of the pallavi, sing Chellame Chellame. There. Now you know what this song sounds like. Is it just me or does Anuradha Sriram deserve the Bharat Ratna already? I mean, that’s probably the only way she can be forced to retire. The song recovers in the saranam though. Which means it doesn’t remind you of any one song, but only of a dozen other songs. Is it loud & noisy enough to blare from the rooftops come Deepavali? Damn right…shoor hit-u saar.
(more…)

Kneel down in the hallway, his angry teacher had screamed. Pure evil, he concluded. Kneel down and pray, his father had urged. Tad fanatical, he thought. Kneel down and reach behind your back, his instructor had said. Yoga blows, he decided. On his knee now, looking up at her beaming face, he thought, damn condom!

*Previously - 1
**For better works of nano-fiction, go here.

Women think I am the Invisible Man. It’s the only irrational explanation I’ve come up with for all the glazed looks that seem to focus on a point 100 yards behind me. Yet, after all these years, I have never learnt to take a hint. I still casually brush my hair so it falls over my eyebrows, like I half-expect them to run their fingers through it as they pass me. I cease to walk. I swagger. And most importantly, I turn into a human vacuum as I suck the air from a 100 meter radius and tuck my tummy so far back in that people behind me suddenly catch a glimpse of my belly-button. But even this move does not hide my ugly girth, and needless to say, it only gets uglier when I let the air back into the atmosphere and quickly turn into a hot air balloon.
(more…)

Dear Seeker of ‘Priya Mani Cleavage’, ‘Mallu Aunty’ and ‘Tamil Sex Kadhaigal’ etc.,

First of all, thanks for keeping my sitemeter ticking, and….
Hold ON. Do NOT reach for that “X” button. I need you to spend more than 0.01 secs on my site this time. Please perv-bhai, hear me out.

So yeah, sorry about not actually providing you with snapshots of Priya Mani’s bosom. I would ask her, but common sense tells me that is like walking straight into a colossal lawsuit. Which incidentally provides the perfect segue into my actual appeal.
(more…)

By the time I turned 12, my brain had learnt to shut out the high-pitched wailing of the Hoseki alarm clock. But never did it conquer Dad’s dynamite double finger snap. Twin THX thunderbolts that reached into the recesses of my ear canal producing tsunamis of sound that effectively killed sleep. I wonder if a professional would attribute my insomnia to this distant, but loud memory.
But never in all those years, did I ever wake up looking like this dude(?!). But then, Dad never screamed at me like a little girl.