Without Strings

What a funny kid.

Lost in deep slumber, he is not even bothered to play with me now.

I met him just a week back on a flea market near a carnival. He just snatched me from the rest of my people and kept me for himself.

Gosh.

What an obnoxious annoying brat.

Why me?

Of all the people, why me?

Am I so special?

He took me everywhere and introduced to everyone he knew. He did not leave my hands even for a second. As days passed, I went to his school, playground and sometimes even to swimming pool.

Well, to think about him, he is not bad. I started a liking towards him. Maybe he is the purpose of my life.

But now I am nothing. Look how he is ignoring me. Probably he will find a new guy to play with tomorrow because Sundays are carnival days.

Should I leave him and go or will he leave me. When I was deeply thinking about him, the door opened. His dad brought a new handsome lad to wake him with a surprise and dump me with a shock.

As the door closed, the windows opened. The boy cut the last thread connected to him.

Now, I have nowhere to go. I can neither go back to the flea market nor to the kid.

I started going upwards, guided by the wind. I don’t need oxygen to survive. I wanted helium. It’s lighter than oxygen.

If I stay here, I will find more people and they will pull my strings and make dance like dolls. I don’t want that to happen again. Now I have no strings attached.

I am above all.

I don’t need a thread to be pulled. Look at the stars. Look at the moon.

I deserve a place above these pity people. I deserve the sky. May be I can be the GOD someday.

HA…. HA… HA….  “POP”

Laughing at his thoughts, he got poked by a sharp building corner and burst into pieces.

The remaining rubble's muttered – “BIG WORDS FOR A BALLOON”.

“BACK TO HOME”

It found itself back on the flea market.

A Frozen Fairytale

Dad gave a sense of security. Mom gave me a sense of responsibility. But my sense of story came from my grandmother.

Once there was a time when I believed a cricket bat as a machine gun and orange juice as a toxic chemical for super power. I literally drew heartens instead of a biological heart.  

When I look back, my childhood was a peppy jazz track, completely composed by my grandmother.  Every syllable and word had a tone for itself. Her modulations and tempo of storytelling designed the dreams I envisioned every night.

Higher the pitch, higher the anticipation! Flatter the dialogues, shorter the stories!

Overall every tale connected me like a series of strings which made me dance like a puppet thrilled and excited with mysterious stories.

Though there were many off tones in-between, those were the minute imperfections which added variations and detailing to her stories. Her imaginations added grammar to my dream world. All of my holiday seasons were seasoned by her unique genres of stories.

But, the concert ended one winter night. That was the night I found an excuse to move away from her.The fictitious fairy tales sounded alien. There were no more interesting.

The same night I found my macho moment. (Just grew a beard)

I drifted far away from her. She never stopped me. She gave me a send off smile.

Later, on the next phase, what I had with me were just questions.

To find the right answer, I ran, I flew and even crawled to many places and met many people to know who I really was.  Why was I here?

 No one had an answer. They just made statements. Few were style statements. Few were ego statements. But, most of them were show off statements.

They were just trying to define who they were even before knowing who they really were. Everyone followed a conventional cycle, going round and round and round.

I got lost. I stooped. I went back to the beginning again. I wanted to redefine myself. When I went back I got my answer. The answer was within me. Instead of searching inside, I was searching outside all along. It took me 45 years to realize this simple thing.

I am a story teller like my grandmother.

As the mood is set, now I am fine tuning my chords to compose a beautiful story to my son. But he is in his pursuit to define himself. 

I can wait. 

Ashwin Muralidharan:- Hey people. If you like my story give your valuable comments. 

A synonymous shoe

Comfortably Numb 

It was a monotonous monday morning. Well, melancholy and mundane can be added. Confined to the corner table, my ear drums went numb with the sounds of fluttering papers, jarring fax machine, alarming phone calls and the typewriters off tone.

Every time I typed harder, the keys got cluttered as my thoughts. Everything around me needed a hammer touch to kick start. I pulled out the ink smudged paper, crumpled it and threw away.

It fell on a heap of crumpled junk.

Huh, this is what I have collected all over these years.

What lies there is a heap of hope, expecting myself to be the smartest and perfect of all.

Oxygen, I craved for O2.

I moved the teak table and went near the window. As I rolled the curtain screens, the first quarter revealed shoes and footsteps of different people.

For some reason I stopped rolling up the screen. The scene was interesting. I dragged the chair and sat across the window to notice what those shoes say. I strained my ears and eyes to find a meaning out of it. I heard whispers.

Yes, I heard them whispering to each other. The elegant shoe had a husky tone; the rugged boots had a rough tone, the cute heel buzzed like a melody. The shoes actually defined who they were. They were happy the way they were.

I opened the shoe rack and found my colleague’s sports shoes. Nice.

I stepped into it and went for a long walk down the lane. No difference at all. My walking style, thoughts and actions, everything was the same. I came back, removed it and threw it back inside the shoe rack.

One more whisper. It was my shoes. It was my real size, style, thought and persona. I stepped into it and felt comfortable. Though it was numb, it was comfortably numb.

A slight satisfaction sprawled up inside me. I went back to my desk, pulled a new set of paper, and inserted it inside my typewriter and started typing.

A king or a pawn, both are unique. No one can do their role better than them. If you try to exchange their shoes, you won’t fit in. If desire is the cause of all problems, comparison is the cause of all desires.

Be proud of your shoes. Start walking and smile at every mile.

Ashwin Muralidharan:- Hey people. If you like my story give your valuable comments.