Excuses Galore

The past few days, Ive been visiting Murphy on and off.

First my laptop crashed. Then my personal laptop got such a viral attack that it was virtually sneezing and leaving goo all over my home. Then my colleagues laptop, which he kindly loaned to me, crashed. I guess I turned to Magneto for a day...

Upside: 1.5 days of unintended holiday.

Downside: Work being piled up. I hate not ticking off things on my TO-DO list, and the thought of all the work not done kind of took the sheen away from the dont do anything and stay home period.

Been to Rome. Been to rock climbing and I love the feeling of falling. The feeling of my limbs aching over the next two days, not so much. But still, will, go again.

May travel again next week, related to work. So it remains to be seen how much of blogging will be done. However my passport is with the US Embassy - I finally got the visa! - so need to pick it up for the travel. No biggie.

Ive not told you about the Manticore and his girlfriend, have I? Seems like her best friend is finally ready to tell us about them. This looks promising.

A boring story

When she was a baby, they told her about love.When she was a child, she knew all about it.

At eleven, she gave up waiting for a prince to come on a white horse.

At fifteen, for the first time a boy’s eyes met hers in love. She was in love for three weeks. Then he changed his hairstyle.


At twenty, she gave up on the bended knee. She was in love with a man who read Ayn Rand and was destined for great things.

At twenty two, her true love denounced world peace and decided that the greatest thing in the world was a US green card.She denounced him and world peace.

At twenty four, she forgot Valentine’s Day. She was studying for her exams and had a perfect score. She also had a perfect boyfriend, who actually read enough of and about Ayn Rand to realize that she was not perfect. One year later they broke up, as the intellectually mature man in her life could not accept that fact that she landed a better job than him.

At twenty six, she had a good job and a better affair with one of the senior partners of her firm. He bought her flowers, he bought her chocolates. And when one day he buried his head in her hair and asked her if she would like to be his wife, she coolly said no. She did not like to be cheated, and knew enough of people to try and change them.Shortly afterwards, she swore off roses and chocolates too.

At twenty nine, she seduced the nineteen year old son of the partner. It was fun the first few times, but the boy wanted her ‘to be mine, all mine.’ It got trite after a while. She gave up on the semantics of ownership.


At thirty three, she went out for a beer with a friend of hers in a London Public house. They have been vaguely friends and good acquaintances for a long time, and given that they worked in related fields, they kept running into each other. They had swapped stories of sexual conquests and sexual frustrations over the years, and in the pub over some English ale, they were talking about life.

‘Lets make babies.’ She told him.

‘Lets get married.’ He told her.

‘But not now. Lets wait for a few more years.’

‘Yes – in may be five years? ‘

'May be.'

They agreed, and smiled at each other in embarrassment. Further discussions could not be carried forth as a pub fight had broken out and they were more keen to see it then to talk about their wedding.

That night, when walking back to his home discussing the finer points of the English Pub Brawl, she felt oddly thankful, and rested; with the satisfaction she had only experienced with a good score in an exam or a project well completed.

This is a bit boring.

We know.

So why did You chose to tell this?

Because this is one of the few moments in the game where We both were there, and in perfect harmony.

But it is boring!

Well, she liked Us.

So did he.

.....................................................

It is still boring…

You have become impatient. You spend too much time with them, carrying them around in Your stupid box.

Yes, and you take them away in the middle of the game! Not fair!

I have the Karma to look at, you know – cant let them have too much wear and tear…

Whatever. Lets go back to our game.

They rose as One, and went back to the game, leaving Carer alone. He sat staring after them, and then picked up his box and went after them.

Stories: Preface

First there was Love and first there was Freedom.

They came into being, chanced upon each Other, and decided to be together. Love knew that he will be complete and powerful with Freedom, and Freedom knew that Love would provide her with the intensity to be free. So, like most relationships, Theirs too was one of convenience. And like in most relationships, They got bored after spending sometime with each Other. Love failed to recognize that Freedom wants to be free, and Freedom failed to recognize that being with Love means not soaring away, but falling in.

They did not bicker or give each Other the silent treatment. Instead, They went and asked the Maker to help them out. For Love without Freedom is crippled, and Freedom without Love is never satisfied and they were enough to realize that.

The Maker had just made a game, and he gave it to Love & Freedom.

'Go and play.' he said to Them. ' Through this game try to understand each other and yourself. Be the driving forces behind the game, try to shape it and mold it.'

'What are the rules?' They asked, for They knew that the Maker loved to define complicated rules.

'For this one, there is none.' He replied, running his hands over the small round game platform. ' It and the players are pretty resiliant.' He gave it to Them, and it hovered exactly between Them. 'Go on; test it, play it beyond its limits.' Not waiting for Their gratitude, he walked away to his next creation.

It did not matter to Love and Freedom that the players appeared to have a life of all their own. The Beings who rule Gods do not care for such smaller details.

And They have been playing ever since. Sometimes Love wins, sometimes Freedom. But as time went on, they realized that the pieces of them game were also playing the game, mostly with each other. Once in a while a piece would come along and try to bring Love and Freedom together, or do something so illogical that They learnt about each Other and Themselves. They recorded some of the instances away. There are hundreds of them, and the stories which are coming forth are a very very tiny selection from them.

Oh, and the game? The Maker had called it Life.

1001 stories - the first 10 is here.

If life was a little more colorful and a little less sane, I would have become a wandering story teller.

It is the perfect job for me. I listen and observe, and then ask the important question of 'what if?'. And I am adept in disguising the protagonists or making them a concoction of the many whom I have known. I would wander from small bar to small bar, regaling people with stories from far and wide, and then listening to them. Payment in bartenders indigenous mixes, food and hospitality along with money; for when given freely, even the best things are not valued or worse, remembered.

However, as I work in HR, the most I can do now is to blog now, and occasionally tell stories to friends whom I talk to. Most of the times, laziness stops the stories being posted to the blog. However, I have quite a few to tell, and they have been asking to be let out.

So here's the deal. I will post some words i happened to hear, each from real life, that had stuck with me in the past few weeks. You tell me about which ones you want to know more. And I will write a story on demand, inspired from the life behind those words.

'You dont answer a question, you provide a message.'

'That's so easy, so Im choosing the difficult option.'

'Why does there have to be something involved?'

'We change. But its upto us on how we change.'

'Boredom leads to suboptimal choices.'

'You did not know I was unhappy?'

'Life teaches in its own way.'

'This is not nice to me.'

'There is no pressure.'

'Let's make babies'


So tell me, which of these do you want to feel more about?