Warfare. How we rape the Earth and send into her bowels the remains of the heroes who fight for their country. Characterized by hunger for blood, the metallic agents of death christened bullets fly from guns, pierce into flesh and bone and nullify the human and what he has ever stood for. Years of growing up, making memories, developing character, all nullified by that simple metallic bullet.
Yes, I am a war hero. I became that by making my enemies die for their country. I became a hero by creating martyrs. Colonel Anantha Krishnan – War veteran of Kargil.
Now, years after Kargil is over, fear engulfs me and torments me. Fear which was not there on the battlefield comes to me after the battle. A soldier’s fear is never unjustified and even for me, the reason is clear. Pakistan is sending out hit men to terminate me even as I speak.
Evening descends upon the serenity of Mylapore and I see the various mamas and mamis sporting expensive sports shoes and walking briskly towards the park for their evening rounds of exercise (a little) and oodles of area gossip (Did you know about my daughter-in-law’s first cousin’s father-in-law’s only brother? He is going to Americaaaa.. States!)
How my heart yearns to join them… But then Pakistani spies will unearth facts pertaining to me and my routine and kill me without sympathy.. Yes, I showed no mercy while shooting them down in the war, why would they show any while killing me?
Oh, ohhh… Dear Lord! There my observant eyes spot a man with a white hat asking someone for directions.. Shit that person is pointing towards my apartment! That is the Pakistani spy.. I need to get the hell out of here as soon as possible!
---
My name is Farid ul Hamid. I am a devout Muslim and I want to go to Mecca. My childhood memories are bleak and I do not recall if my parents ever took me to Mecca. All I remember is the sand, the camels. I have this fear of sinning. We should never sin, because God will punish us.
Powerful and Merciful he is, and in his name I terminate all the unholy filthy beings that populate this planet. Some people tried to brainwash me that killing was a sin, but killing in the Lord’s name and doing his work is not, which is why I do it.
I never know who orders it, or how it works. But it just happens – When I wake up, I find the name of the person I am supposed to kill, along with the reason why they should be wiped off from the face of the Earth.
Most of these people fought in the Kargil war, where they killed many of my brothers. Even now, I have been sent to terminate one man, Colonel Anantha Krishnan.
I have been unable to locate this person so far; and now the entity called fear is tightening its noose around my neck; if I do not find him I will fail as God’s harbinger, which means I have sinned. If I sin then the almighty shall smite me and make me wither with just his will.
---
Woeful winds wash over the foe’s withering lands.
Willful subjugation of the enemy is in our hands.
Wandering greedily across the Earth, we wonder how we can grab more.
Wasting lives without remorse, the soldiers of death march across the borders,
Wistfully I wait for an end, but will it ever end?
Yes, I am scared of soldiers. They torture us, loot us, kill us, rape our wives, enslave our children and erase our footprints from the annals of history. Somehow I needed to eat the fear. I will do it by killing a soldier.
Oh yes, killing a soldier will help me understand that they are not demons who can be killed. It will help the world of civilians understand that they can kill a soldier too. And very soon, no country will have soldiers left to fight with! Ha! Erase the pawns of battle and what are you left with?! Dust!
In this area there lives a man who is a soldier. Anantha Krishnan is his name…
---
Dr. Manamaruthuvar
Army Psychiatrist
Inside a room above which this board was hung, Dr. Manamaruthuvar was speaking to a timid looking man.
“Mr. Skanda, you did right by bringing us this case. Your neighbor whom you had told us about is indeed suffering from a strange phenomenon. He is afflicted by post war stress and he hated his war experience so much, his brain split itself into two parts – both expressing hate for his profession.
After following him for the past one week, we unearthed the facts – He becomes a Pakistani Muslim who kills soldiers. He also morphs into a rather charming and poetic writer who is afraid of soldiers.
What makes this case most peculiar is the fact that both his alter egos are out to kill his original personality. From this we can deduce that a part of the poor man hates and reprimands himself for every moment that he was in the war. We could not determine whether he has any more of these personalities…”
Mr. Skanda wiped the sweat trickling off his brow and spoke.
“Doctor, such a man is dangerous to have around. I fear the safety of my kids – especially because one of them keeps saying he wants to become a soldier one day.”
“Fear is like a spider, Mr. Skanda. It crawls into your head silently, weaves a web and traps all your thoughts within the web – and then every thought is stuck in the web of fear. Look at this man – even his alter egos are afraid of something!
But you have no cause for worry, Mr. Skanda. We will send out personnel and take him to the rehabilitation wing as soon as possible. Thanks again for your concern.”
As Mr. Skanda walked out, he couldn’t help noticing that the doctor sitting in front of him, if he removed the mustache and snow white hair would look the same as the balding and clean shaven Colonel Anantha Krishnan who lived next door…
Wednesday, August 04, 2010
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Red Shirt Blues
He rubbed his eyes again and again. He found it very hard to digest the fact. Already his stomach had been misbehaving with him in its function of digestion for the past few days due to the hotel food, but this fact – well it was harder to digest.
The fact was that he needed to grab a contract from a client for painting a building, and he had asked his wife to pick up a new shirt for this purpose. He failed to understand what nefarious intentions she had in mind – but she had picked out a RED SHIRT for his meeting with the client. RED.
Though he carried out a thorough analysis of the shirt from various angles, rubbed the sleepiness from his eyes and even put on his glasses – he put the glasses on and stared at it, he took off his glasses and attempted in vain to flap out the color, but no. A red shirt is what he had. Bright, stubborn red.
He sighed and put it on. In front of the mirror, he looked like some out-of-work clown who wanted to scare the pants off the elite fashion designers in town.
“Wow, you look phenomenal!” Cried his wife cheerily.
“Phenomenal enough to be arrested for blinding a few unsuspecting humans on the road!” he grumbled.
“Oh, come on! It’s not that bad. Red is the color of bricks. And you’re the one who’s going to paint the bricks right?”
Wow, if there ever was an award for crappy logic, there would be no second guesses to whom that would go to, thought he.
With a worried disposition he mounted his bicycle and wobbled unsteadily. But as the breeze conditioned his face, he soon forgot about the monstrosity that was personified by the red shirt.
The leaves that passed him by as he looked skyward while cycling; the fresh breeze; he could see the leaves disappearing, then as he pedaled on the sky appearing from the greenery of the leaves.
Suddenly, he saw a blob of white descending towards him at high velocity. Before his nature-enjoying mind could comprehend what this might be, the black, feathered creator of the white blob (commonly addressed ‘crow’) had delivered a small lump of white substance (commonly addressed as bird shit) on to his red shirt.
The angle at which the crow had delivered its stuff was deadly in its accuracy and now, the red shirt sported a tinge of white on it.
Now this really perturbed our hero; he was not too happy with the red shirt to begin with, and now his shirt also sported a rather freaky white stain, adding to his out-of-work clown façade. As he stopped at a local tea kadai to get a water packet to try and clean off the stain.
In the meantime, a mama whose house happened to be right opposite the tea kadai was eagerly anticipating someone to drop by… He was talking on his mobile phone –
“Aan, Shenbagam mami, where is your son? I have been waiting for him for the past 20 minutes. I want to introduce him to my daughter.. As I have been saying, they will make a very good couple.”
“I know mama, he is on his way. He is so eco friendly so he will be coming there by cycle. You can identify him by his Red Shirt. He might initially be scared about the whole concept of marriage. Please talk to him slowly and make him understand the importance of all this!”
“Yes sure… Oh I think I see him now! He is wearing the red shirt and coming on a cycle! I will go and bring him in!”
Saying so the mama rushed forward and grabbed our hero, who was just buying a water packet to cleanse the crow shit.
“Come come maaplai! Oh dear, this is not good.. These crows are always a menace! Come in, come in! We’ll get it off in a jiffy!”
Now our hero was dumbstruck and in the beginning, his reaction was limited to – “Err?!?!?!?!” but then he realized that some nutty guy was actually offering to get the stain off his shirt; so he followed the mama.
“Here, here, have some fresh filter coffee. My daughter only made it!”
The coffee turned out to be extremely sugary, horrendous tasting, nearly tongue eliminating. God save the guy who marries that girl, thought our hero. And then the mama spoke and threw in a bombshell which was far worse than the coffee –
“Your mother and I have decided it’s time for you to marry my daughter.”
Our hero choked and writhed uncontrollably; the coffee cup fell from his hand; he was almost shivering. The prospect of two wives was making him dizzy.
“Maaplai, maaplai! What happened!”
“Err.. I am not a maaplai. In fact, I’m already married. Not happily married or anything, but married nonetheless!”
“Oh, you can’t wriggle out so easily maaplai. Your mom told me you might be fickle minded about this…”
At this point of time, our hero was fuming over the ancient practices of our ancestors and swearing. The women had the yellow thread and toe ring (thaali and metti) to prove that they were married. How the hell do men prove it?!
“Mama, whatever it is, I need to take your daughter out for a drink together and have a one night stand with her before deciding if she can be my life partner.”
Mama suddenly entered palpitation mode. It was his turn to give the drama like reactions.
“What? Drink ah? Night ah! Abacharam, abacharam!” (A classic tamil expression ruthlessly condemning all things sweet and pure such as drinking, smoking, and other enjoyable activities)
“Yea, think about it and let me know. Now if you’ll excuse me…” Saying so, our hero made a hasty exit.
Just when he was still worried about the white stain on his red shirt, he was accosted by a couple of villagers who were pretty excited to see him.
“Ayya!! Vanakkam Ayya! You are the champ right?”
Oh dear, here we go again. What is it this time?
“No, I am not a champ. I am probably the champ of Loserism, but hell, I’m dead sure that’s not who you are looking for.”
The two village get up guys were talking in strange dialects excitedly.
“Saar, you are the champ! Red shirt, white mark… They are the colors of our organization!”
“What freaking mark you doofus! This is a crow shit stain!”
“No no, you are coming with us now! We are going for the Jallikattu! You are the Jallikattu champ right… Yes, yes we were told that you didn’t like publicity. Saar come on, come with us!”
Amidst cries and protests of “You bunch of thick headed freaks! Let me go or I’m gonna ensure a bull’s butt is thrust in your face!”, our hero was carried into a cleverly concealed ground, where about six to seven others were waiting with eager faces. Villager number one mumbled with reverence, “Wow, did you hear our champ abuse us? Even his abuse is related to bulls!”
In the midst of the illegal jallikattu ground stood our hero, dust gathering at his sweaty forehead. He had to admit that this gave him a very tamil hero like feel, though how he ever got himself into this mess was beyond comprehension.
The bull looked like he was going to do some serious damage. Our hero wondered what sin he had committed in his past life. A small lump was forming in his throat. With an unmatched suddenness, the accursed bull charged towards our hero in the red shirt; this was when our hero realized that he was wearing the color RED!
Hero quickly took off his shirt and threw it far away. Bull followed the flying shirt for a while. In the meantime, our hero was rapidly trying to make an exit from the other side. The villagers were grumbling amongst themselves…
“Isn’t it shameful that our champ has a potbelly? It doesn’t look like he is a champion at all! And to think we came all the way to the city for this! Look how he is running from the bull!”
It was then that some background music seemed to be emanating from the ground.
“Eh like a lion, like a lion my darling grandson is walking….” Some old hag seemed to be singing…
A heavily muscled individual with attitude entered the ring. The TRUE CHAMP had arrived, much to the cheering and applause of the crowd. Now this was a champion!
Just 15 minutes later, our hero was given back his crow crap stained shirt, and the champ who had just tamed a bull was laughing in his face…
“Hahaha! How could they think someone like you was the champ? You don’t even have the qualities to be the guy who cleans out the bull’s dung!”
“Err.. Thank you? I’ve really got to go, Mr. Champ. Thank you for the timely entry, failing which I would’ve made an exit from the world itself!”
“What, where are you going? You need to have lunch! Come here man; try some of this fish kozhambu. It’s unbelievable!”
“No, no, I’ve got to be leaving…”
“I insist!”
“No no, I’m leaaaaaaavvvv” At this point of time, the degree of ‘horribility’ of our hero’s situation deepened. The fish kozhambu had spilt on his red shirt. Our hero’s life suddenly started moving in slow motion; “Nooooooooooo!” He cried.
Rrrrrrrrrrr…. (Reel is winding at normal speed now and Fast forwarding)
Location – Client’s building site.
One of our hero’s competitors was wearing an expensive business suit.
Another was wearing a well pressed formal shirt.
And our hero, well, nothing can be said about his impeccable red shirt with a white crow crap stain; it was exquisite in its design. And while the other competitors smelt of expensive perfume, our hero’s scent was unmistakable and unmaskable – the scent of the fish kozhambu on his shirt!
The client came outside adorned with a white dhoti, white shirt, heavy gold chain, ridiculously huge gold ring and an uninterested attitude. The competitors lined up… They would be questioned in depth about their quotes separately. But wait! What’s this? The client suddenly sniffed something so divine…
Something so familiar… Something out of this world… His grandmom’s Fish Kuzhambu?!?!?! But how was it possible here? Oh my God, that man in the red shirt… He was the man!
The client’s eyes were watering.
“Thambi, come here. Thambi, let me get a whiff of you. You smell brilliant!” Saying so, the client hugged our hero.
“My granny…” He said and sobbed!!
Rrrrrrrrrrr…. (Reel is fast forwarding)
“Wife, you are not going to believe what happened.”
“Who cares? Did you get the contract or not?”
“Yes I did, and through the most unbelievable series of events!”
“Thank God you clinched it! See I told you the RED SHIRT would work! What color did the client want you to paint the building?”
“RED.”
The fact was that he needed to grab a contract from a client for painting a building, and he had asked his wife to pick up a new shirt for this purpose. He failed to understand what nefarious intentions she had in mind – but she had picked out a RED SHIRT for his meeting with the client. RED.
Though he carried out a thorough analysis of the shirt from various angles, rubbed the sleepiness from his eyes and even put on his glasses – he put the glasses on and stared at it, he took off his glasses and attempted in vain to flap out the color, but no. A red shirt is what he had. Bright, stubborn red.
He sighed and put it on. In front of the mirror, he looked like some out-of-work clown who wanted to scare the pants off the elite fashion designers in town.
“Wow, you look phenomenal!” Cried his wife cheerily.
“Phenomenal enough to be arrested for blinding a few unsuspecting humans on the road!” he grumbled.
“Oh, come on! It’s not that bad. Red is the color of bricks. And you’re the one who’s going to paint the bricks right?”
Wow, if there ever was an award for crappy logic, there would be no second guesses to whom that would go to, thought he.
With a worried disposition he mounted his bicycle and wobbled unsteadily. But as the breeze conditioned his face, he soon forgot about the monstrosity that was personified by the red shirt.
The leaves that passed him by as he looked skyward while cycling; the fresh breeze; he could see the leaves disappearing, then as he pedaled on the sky appearing from the greenery of the leaves.
Suddenly, he saw a blob of white descending towards him at high velocity. Before his nature-enjoying mind could comprehend what this might be, the black, feathered creator of the white blob (commonly addressed ‘crow’) had delivered a small lump of white substance (commonly addressed as bird shit) on to his red shirt.
The angle at which the crow had delivered its stuff was deadly in its accuracy and now, the red shirt sported a tinge of white on it.
Now this really perturbed our hero; he was not too happy with the red shirt to begin with, and now his shirt also sported a rather freaky white stain, adding to his out-of-work clown façade. As he stopped at a local tea kadai to get a water packet to try and clean off the stain.
In the meantime, a mama whose house happened to be right opposite the tea kadai was eagerly anticipating someone to drop by… He was talking on his mobile phone –
“Aan, Shenbagam mami, where is your son? I have been waiting for him for the past 20 minutes. I want to introduce him to my daughter.. As I have been saying, they will make a very good couple.”
“I know mama, he is on his way. He is so eco friendly so he will be coming there by cycle. You can identify him by his Red Shirt. He might initially be scared about the whole concept of marriage. Please talk to him slowly and make him understand the importance of all this!”
“Yes sure… Oh I think I see him now! He is wearing the red shirt and coming on a cycle! I will go and bring him in!”
Saying so the mama rushed forward and grabbed our hero, who was just buying a water packet to cleanse the crow shit.
“Come come maaplai! Oh dear, this is not good.. These crows are always a menace! Come in, come in! We’ll get it off in a jiffy!”
Now our hero was dumbstruck and in the beginning, his reaction was limited to – “Err?!?!?!?!” but then he realized that some nutty guy was actually offering to get the stain off his shirt; so he followed the mama.
“Here, here, have some fresh filter coffee. My daughter only made it!”
The coffee turned out to be extremely sugary, horrendous tasting, nearly tongue eliminating. God save the guy who marries that girl, thought our hero. And then the mama spoke and threw in a bombshell which was far worse than the coffee –
“Your mother and I have decided it’s time for you to marry my daughter.”
Our hero choked and writhed uncontrollably; the coffee cup fell from his hand; he was almost shivering. The prospect of two wives was making him dizzy.
“Maaplai, maaplai! What happened!”
“Err.. I am not a maaplai. In fact, I’m already married. Not happily married or anything, but married nonetheless!”
“Oh, you can’t wriggle out so easily maaplai. Your mom told me you might be fickle minded about this…”
At this point of time, our hero was fuming over the ancient practices of our ancestors and swearing. The women had the yellow thread and toe ring (thaali and metti) to prove that they were married. How the hell do men prove it?!
“Mama, whatever it is, I need to take your daughter out for a drink together and have a one night stand with her before deciding if she can be my life partner.”
Mama suddenly entered palpitation mode. It was his turn to give the drama like reactions.
“What? Drink ah? Night ah! Abacharam, abacharam!” (A classic tamil expression ruthlessly condemning all things sweet and pure such as drinking, smoking, and other enjoyable activities)
“Yea, think about it and let me know. Now if you’ll excuse me…” Saying so, our hero made a hasty exit.
Just when he was still worried about the white stain on his red shirt, he was accosted by a couple of villagers who were pretty excited to see him.
“Ayya!! Vanakkam Ayya! You are the champ right?”
Oh dear, here we go again. What is it this time?
“No, I am not a champ. I am probably the champ of Loserism, but hell, I’m dead sure that’s not who you are looking for.”
The two village get up guys were talking in strange dialects excitedly.
“Saar, you are the champ! Red shirt, white mark… They are the colors of our organization!”
“What freaking mark you doofus! This is a crow shit stain!”
“No no, you are coming with us now! We are going for the Jallikattu! You are the Jallikattu champ right… Yes, yes we were told that you didn’t like publicity. Saar come on, come with us!”
Amidst cries and protests of “You bunch of thick headed freaks! Let me go or I’m gonna ensure a bull’s butt is thrust in your face!”, our hero was carried into a cleverly concealed ground, where about six to seven others were waiting with eager faces. Villager number one mumbled with reverence, “Wow, did you hear our champ abuse us? Even his abuse is related to bulls!”
In the midst of the illegal jallikattu ground stood our hero, dust gathering at his sweaty forehead. He had to admit that this gave him a very tamil hero like feel, though how he ever got himself into this mess was beyond comprehension.
The bull looked like he was going to do some serious damage. Our hero wondered what sin he had committed in his past life. A small lump was forming in his throat. With an unmatched suddenness, the accursed bull charged towards our hero in the red shirt; this was when our hero realized that he was wearing the color RED!
Hero quickly took off his shirt and threw it far away. Bull followed the flying shirt for a while. In the meantime, our hero was rapidly trying to make an exit from the other side. The villagers were grumbling amongst themselves…
“Isn’t it shameful that our champ has a potbelly? It doesn’t look like he is a champion at all! And to think we came all the way to the city for this! Look how he is running from the bull!”
It was then that some background music seemed to be emanating from the ground.
“Eh like a lion, like a lion my darling grandson is walking….” Some old hag seemed to be singing…
A heavily muscled individual with attitude entered the ring. The TRUE CHAMP had arrived, much to the cheering and applause of the crowd. Now this was a champion!
Just 15 minutes later, our hero was given back his crow crap stained shirt, and the champ who had just tamed a bull was laughing in his face…
“Hahaha! How could they think someone like you was the champ? You don’t even have the qualities to be the guy who cleans out the bull’s dung!”
“Err.. Thank you? I’ve really got to go, Mr. Champ. Thank you for the timely entry, failing which I would’ve made an exit from the world itself!”
“What, where are you going? You need to have lunch! Come here man; try some of this fish kozhambu. It’s unbelievable!”
“No, no, I’ve got to be leaving…”
“I insist!”
“No no, I’m leaaaaaaavvvv” At this point of time, the degree of ‘horribility’ of our hero’s situation deepened. The fish kozhambu had spilt on his red shirt. Our hero’s life suddenly started moving in slow motion; “Nooooooooooo!” He cried.
Rrrrrrrrrrr…. (Reel is winding at normal speed now and Fast forwarding)
Location – Client’s building site.
One of our hero’s competitors was wearing an expensive business suit.
Another was wearing a well pressed formal shirt.
And our hero, well, nothing can be said about his impeccable red shirt with a white crow crap stain; it was exquisite in its design. And while the other competitors smelt of expensive perfume, our hero’s scent was unmistakable and unmaskable – the scent of the fish kozhambu on his shirt!
The client came outside adorned with a white dhoti, white shirt, heavy gold chain, ridiculously huge gold ring and an uninterested attitude. The competitors lined up… They would be questioned in depth about their quotes separately. But wait! What’s this? The client suddenly sniffed something so divine…
Something so familiar… Something out of this world… His grandmom’s Fish Kuzhambu?!?!?! But how was it possible here? Oh my God, that man in the red shirt… He was the man!
The client’s eyes were watering.
“Thambi, come here. Thambi, let me get a whiff of you. You smell brilliant!” Saying so, the client hugged our hero.
“My granny…” He said and sobbed!!
Rrrrrrrrrrr…. (Reel is fast forwarding)
“Wife, you are not going to believe what happened.”
“Who cares? Did you get the contract or not?”
“Yes I did, and through the most unbelievable series of events!”
“Thank God you clinched it! See I told you the RED SHIRT would work! What color did the client want you to paint the building?”
“RED.”
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