Baboon Logic

Note:
(1) This was written as a part of a deal, about three and half years back. I planned to revisit it sometime and make it into an actual story (the original deal was to write about a single day on a particular theme, though I have cheated anyway :)), but it is not happening any time soon, I am afraid.

(2) This is not autobiographical at all. I imagined a guy very different from myself writing this; so those of you who know me, don’t think of me when reading this, because the intended mood of the story is quite different. But had this piece been any good, I guess I would have claimed autobiographical influences. :)

(3) God knows that I have had enough trouble people reading themselves into my stories! Did I mention three unjustifiably broken friendships?! All girls! And it is not even me, always. Twice, the girls read my story and broke up their friendship(!) with other people!!! I guess they didn’t broke their friendship with me because we were not friends to start with (which, I’m ashamed to say, I have been thankful for). :)

Stump
———-
It is a stump now,
Its art gone,
Its ornaments all gone.

It does not stir with spring
Nor bend like a bow when green
Nor from its flowers fly KamaDeva’s arrows
Nor in its shades are sighs of travellers heard
Or tears of lovers seen.

Only one old bird
Sits remembering something.

‭(‬Translated from the Hindi of Suryakant Tripathy’s‭ “‬Nirala‭” ‬by Vikram Seth.‭)

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Note 1: This is the official sequel to The Mail that Launched a Thousand Spams.

Note 2: To those who received the drafts - The reference to Robert Kolker was incorrect, which I discovered after going painstalkingly through his mammoth book again in an effort to quote him exactly (it contains the whole of GRE word list many times over). That would explain the delay. He said some nice insightful things though.

Note 3: This story, and its prequel, are officially declared to be ficticious accounts incorporating no characters inspired by anyone living or dead.

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Was this the mail that launched a thousand spams

And gave birth to that greatest of all date rape drugs?

Sweet Rolypoly, make my inbox immortal with thy presence.

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Hi.

I am an awkward man. I have struggled with myself for some time trying to decide whether to write you this mail or tell you in person. I have not been much of a conversationalist, however, so I decided to write this mail.

Forgive the folly of a man who doesn’t talk much about himself when he finally talks about himself, for this mail is going to be long.

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This is a short story I wrote together with my brother some three years back. He was in grade three, and wanted to know how stories are written. So we wrote one together. The names have all been changed, of course.

I also wrote some poems for him when he wanted to know how poems are written, but I subsequently used them to flirt with a girl and have to deal with my ambivalence towards them before I can put them here. Read the rest »

That I had no clue to what waited for me behind those closed doors would have been a lie. Yet, I couldn’t bring myself to believe what was about to happen. I was feeling misunderstood and misinterpreted. Everything about CSS that I had taken for granted was falling apart.

I held my breath and knocked on the doors.

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Time and again I have been at the receiving end of A(rna)b’s vernacular idiosyncrasies and eccentricities. For a long time, longer than it should have been, I had believed that A(rna)b faked it, that he must realise the usual puns behind his expressions at some level. The incident yesterday, however, has put an end to whatever hope that I might have had in this regard.

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You two have been talking for a long time. She loves telling you all about her life, all the unnecessary details, and those silly things she made up to fill the narrative oversights that life commits while unfolding.

The windows are open and the lights have been switched off. The few rays that manage to come in get lost behind her hair and you have difficulty in figuring out the details of her face. You are lost. Everybody around has forgotten you and you are lost.

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