IT Folktales | Pattu maami

The life in the ** is like a joke on Readers Digest – your family is not sharp (or) witty (or) conversant enough to understand the brunt of it. They believe their daughter or son has done a huge favor to the family by going to Onsite; so that they can jeer to pattu maami next-door about how intelligent their progeny is. Poor Moms. (I have always read and interpreted Moms as Minutes of Meeting, so poor moms indeed.)

Amidst the magic the money creates, the esteem and the rush, you can’t help but notice colleagues who can dance like Prabhu Devis, photograph better than the National Geographic Year-winners, those that can write magically and transport you to a different world Then you think, why X has not written a book, Y has not submitted his photos for magazines and Z has not danced even at your friend’s wedding….

*pyooooooooooooooooooooooom*

God appears and gives you a vision that all 3 have been slogging for 10 to 12 hours a day, freaking their selves out

Adhering to a stringent 10 to 7 mode of working makes one realize that the man who created imaginary numbers was wrong – 7 is an imaginary number too. After a lot of analysis, mental documentation and interpretation to support my realization I confirm it. Nobody notices a 7 o clock on their watches. Did Fast-track release their chrono models wiping off numbers from 7 to 9? I wonder.

They don’t leave as work demands them to stick to their Monitor like an Monitor Lizard. The miserable stringent sleuth who kept In-Time has not bothered to stay back and track the Out-Time, when Ram, Dick and Hari wipe beads of sweat from their forehead formed due to lack of Air-conditioning at non-working hours

They then leave late, only to run home at lightning speed and crawl into their beds. 

Before they realize, it is morning already 

And this is the 'pink' life of that neighbor girl in IT, if pattu maami should really know about it...

[55 Fiction] Black girl in the Ring

Her ancestors were Black too; her squarish-face and color resembled them almost entirely.

Men swarmed her - loners that needed company, details, why even porn. Sometimes even women, and they paid her comfortably.

She wound up by the night and slept by herself. Her owner called it “Shutdown”.

"Journal of a machine at an Internet Cafe".

Love in the air, anyone? - II

13th FEB, 2011

The next evening, she subconsciously reached out for her best blue floral chudidhar and wore a little make up and reached the station even before him and waited. Preeti was thinking about him, the lengths to which he would go for her, his humor and the satire which made her roll eyes. The care that emulated from the surprising 6 footer when they were together. She liked his attention, well entirely. But as she told her best friend Ritu, “She didn’t want a boyfriend yet. She was single and contented”. But should a reason as silly as this stop between her and the her love of the life?

“Hey hiii”, Vinay produced a loud arrival, much to her relief he showed up. She looked like an angel in blue. “been waiting for long eh.. the binding is done, but the glue is yet to dry it seems. The shopkeeper asked me to come back in two hours or so…”.

“Two hours???”, she rolled her eyes, silently thanking her change of fortune.

“Hey.. hey…”, he threw his hands in submission “what am I supposed to do re? I run the shop here? Okay, listen. The beach is hardly a stone throw away, why don’t we just go there take a walk and kill time”.

It dint seem like a bad idea, the Aquarian in her always jumped at the prospect of a beach visit. And a beach visit with Vinay, not much she can ask for. “Okay..” she replied.

The hour flew at Godspeed. He spoke about mess food, his friends' girlfriends to movies and suddenly slipped on to discussing his family, when she got a little jealous and possessive all the same. The more he spoke, the more she laughed and more she enjoyed him. The waves lapping at their feet just added to the rhythm of her palpitating heart.

There was a something in him, that was gonna make her say YES and that was what was scary. They retreated to the mouth of the beach where hawkers and stalls were numerous; enjoyed bajji, chaat and a round of balloon-shooting. They wrapped up, walked back collected their bounded thesis documents and parted.  


The beautiful sunset along the horizon that they watched together remained etched on Preetis' mind, hours after they parted...Looking absent mindedly out of the steely train window, she recollected the pseudo-date blow by blow, it was easily one of the BEST days in her life. She wore a smile, an immortal one.

*beep* A shout from her mobile jolted her out of her dream world, “It was easily one of the Best dates.. oops.. “days” of my life!” it read.

She didn’t reply to the SMS. Instead she texted Ritu, her best friend, a quick message, three letters – “Yes”.

Late into the night Preeti punched some numbers and spoke into the receiver. The peppery-thick voice responded to her sexily. They spoke for an hour and a half, without halting for breath.. and thus Her highness spake –“Vinay.. I love you…” unmasking the obvious secret.

That night, they continued speaking into the Valentines day; into the small hours…

Only the stars knew if they slept that night…

* * *

Part I

This post is a part of Write Over the Weekend, an initiative for Indian Bloggers by BlogAdda

Love in the air, anyone?

12th Feb, 2011

She buried her eyes in the book and slipped into it entirely.

Preeti was a pleasantly complexioned girl, who was turned mildly Olive by the train journeys to and from her college, her waist-length hair was pinned carefully and neatly but for her front fringes, which blew all over her face, erm in a sweet way. Today, seated in one of the benches in her college garden, she was reading “Eye of the Needle, by Ken Follet” and seemed oblivious to the jaywalkers, love-birds and the bespectacled professors who walked along the college road. But in truth she was least interested in the book at hand, in fact she was reading the book to avoid his eyes – those piercing eyes that she “liked” and its unrelenting attention.

Time and ago Preeti had joined Engineering with reluctance, under peer pressure, like many others. To add to her pleasure, her institution – “Vaista Engineering college” was a lousy one that had the girls-NO-talk-boys stupid theory. She frowned at the added displeasure, clenched her teeth and sailed through three years of ludicrous Engineering Design, she had just one more year to wade through and that gave her a deep sense of relief. Just a mini and major project, she can throw away her books in the air and take up some measly hand-to-mouth job.

She looked at the book, yet again with an increased interest. She did not want to distract “him”.

Vinay was a TDH six footer with a dimple and a don’t care attitude (that her college detested). He was on the notice boards for various reasons like ragging, attendance lag and sometimes even as the winning Captain of their college Cricket team. He bunked classes, chided professors, flirted with senior-girls like nobody’s business, but he excelled at academics. He was one of the prospective Gold medalists his college expected, thus they could not put a finger on him. He used this advantage to endure them all.

The last thing Preeti wanted to do today was to make eye contact with that idiot, Vinay. 

He has uttered the impossible, yes – a blatant “I love you” within eight months of knowing her. Like he had owned her all the time or something *roll*. She reacted to the unexpected by doing the expected, she gave him left, right, center; called him a fool and a man who was nuts and totally out of mind. He simply ignored the piece of mind she gave him; popped a gum and walked away; and that irked her even more. She had been sulking at him and hurling abuses since that unfortunate day. Wait a minute, he proposed on the 1st of February, on her birthday and she was sulking since then AND also thinking about him continuously i.e for the past 12 days.

But he would never leave her. She knew that, only too well.

Much as she expected, he approached her. She amused herself with a few stands of her flowing front-fringes and appeared to be very busy.

“Hey Preeti, what about the thesis photocopy?”, he inquired.

“What about it?”, she snapped even before he could finish the sentence.

“Didn’t we have to submit it for 0th review this week?”

She had completely forgotten that. Shit. She forgot almost everything since this idiot.. “well forget it”, she thought to herself. “No, I have not done anything about it yet”

"uh so, meet you tomorrow 4PM at Thirumailai station, I will get the Thesis binding done and pass it on to you.. hey gotta run for practice.. B.F.N. he spelt out”, and walked away.

Where the heck was Thirumailai station, she wanted to ask him, but her ego got the better of her. She’d go home and Google it out. He didn't even bother to ask if she was "free"! Was there a word called courtesy in that idiots' dictionary?... "Cute idiot", she said aloud, rephrasing her thought.

* * * * *

13th FEB, 2011

The next evening, she subconsciously reached out for her best blue floral chudidhar and wore a little make up and reached the station even before him and waited. There were times when he has not shown up at college get-togethers, will this one be any different? She wondered, and chewed her nails...

* * *

This post is a part of Write Over the Weekend, an initiative for Indian Bloggers by BlogAdda

[55 Fiction] Savvy

He was tech savvy. His friends envied his gadget, as he virtually burnt time connecting with the important and unimportant.


“Ahhh, will you ever learn to save contacts on this basic mobile?” snapped she, standing tall at 10 years - his granddaughter.

He was tech savvy; or so he felt at seventy, amidst his septuagenarian pals.