Art, Naturally!

Somewhere in the countryside of Incredible India he roamed like a spirit in those woods, collecting pieces of wood and branches that appeared like a divine form of art to him. There are a hundred ways in which the human mind can express itself, and sometimes the abstract is beautiful.
It was a few years back in my days of youth that I visited him, forgive my absolute lack of memory because I don’t recall the exact place or date, and in that house saw his perception of what he thought to be magnificent art. I laughed out loud (LOLed in its actual sense) at the sight; such figures were a very amusing sight to my innocent and foolish mind. See what that man had done was collect such branches from the forest floor and polish…them that’s all. And he saw beauty in them, figures of men and women and birds and animals and all sorts of other things. He had called it ‘au naturel art’ I remember distinctly. 
 It had achieved a decent level of fame now in the stagnant lands of cultural richness, Bengal. It was a small galleria in the town of the Nobel poet, the town of Shanti-Niketan. This was years later, when I was an adolescent. The memory of the man who saw figurines in wood a distant memory tucked away in some corner. This was slightly different, it was rocks. This particular gallery contained rocks and stones found naturally in the countryside that looked peculiarly like some figure. One like Ganesha, one like a swan and another like a bull…there were all sorts of rocks that met the eye.
  I was never really a great fan on art and was still very bemused at this entire display, quite like the younger version of me. Evidently I hadn’t matured much.  As we walked through the gallery, most of the art was met by cynical remarks and over-smart wise cracks.
 After we left the small gallery my parents tried to explain how very often there is beauty in the abstract. I didn’t quite understand what they were talking up. A couple of years passed and I moved out and went to the city of bright lights, Mumbai, to do my college. This one time when I was flying back to Bangalore and my i-pod didn’t quite seem to work right I found myself looking outside the window. I didn’t have much of a choice as my rather faithful companion had finally stopped functioning like its fine prior self.
Lo! As I looked outside the window I saw so many picturesque images in the clouds. I won’t even go into the details and description of all the things I did see, but I could tell you that I could swear by Jove that one cloud even looked like a tele tubby.
The flight landed and I went back home after the tiring journey from the Bangalore airport to the city. My parents were never told, I really didn’t want to admit to my folks that they were right all along, right through my childhood. The joke was on me. But yes! I had myself discovered now, what they all call ‘beauty in the abstract’  

In New Shoes.

It was the purple of afternoon and most of the others in the kingdom were high up in their abodes engaged in their afternoon siesta. The innocent babe twitched his snout again as the bee flew by, it had been pestering him for quite some time now.  The child’s eyes were fixed on something else though, not quite bothered about the bee buzzing near his face.  He was fascinated by those round robust and rather scrumptious looking oranges that hung high in the branches of the tree under which he had seated himself.  The elders had always said that he was special and he had very thick fur and a peculiarly long tail for his age but this did not mean that he could jump unusually high and get that perfect orange for himself.  The odds really were against him but he never was the kind who would leave believing that the grapes, or in this case oranges, were sour.
   He crouched on his hind legs like he had often seen the elders do whole jumping trees and jumped as high as he could. He may have been the apple of his mother’s eye and the most popular child in the tribe but that did not imply that he could fly up to the realms of the juicy oranges and pluck one out. After all he was only a child. This was followed by a series of recurring attempts, obviously all fails. He had almost given up and had arrived at the conclusion that his love for oranges was futile when he looked up and noticed the most spectacular thing. It was above the tree, far above it in fact. It was this huge orange sphere, the largest he had ever seen. It was beautiful and grand and full of splendour. He wanted it.  
 With all the energy he had in him he leaped up into the air. He was bewildered at what seemed to happen. He kept rising and rising. Past the tree of oranges that seemed so far away earlier. In a while he could look down and see the earth below him. What was happening, he was utterly perplexed. ‘Aah! who cared how this was happening’ he thought to himself, the important thing was that he was getting closer and closer to that gigantic orange in the sky.  He was almost there when suddenly he felt a strong gust of wind against him. He tried to fight it but the wind was too strong for him and he had no control so to speak over his flight. The wind blew him hither and thither like a thistle and slowly and gently deposited him back on the green grass of the gardens that he was previously playing on.
 He lay there in a dilemma of emotions. He didn’t know what had happened today and how he was to ever tell the story to anyone without being laughed at. He decided that it was best to forget all about it, the important thing right now was that he was orange-less. Orange-less. He began to wail thunderously until his mother came rushing and took him back home, cajoling him all the way back.

                                                                           ***

That was the closest he would ever get to the child, his own son. He would have refrained from this too but letting the child touch the sun was too great a risk.  He could afford a smile now having come in such proximity to the child. After many such days of angst and torment this was definitely one of the more pleasant days.  
 He would watch him every alternate day but his love for the child forced him to stay away from him. He was the god of the trade winds; he could bring about storms and have what he pleased from this mortal realm. Never in the history of his immortal life had he felt so helpless, it was all very new to him.
 
That one fateful night where he had given in to a moment of lust had cost him such a great deal. He had never foreseen such a situation at all that night atop the hill. The silken apsara had glided to his side guilt free.  She wouldn’t even hold the scar of that into her vanar form; it had seemed a very good bargain for him. Alas the unforeseen, now this innocent babe played in front of his orbs every single day. The child had almost looked like one of his cherubins on one such day infact, and that had in fact moved him to tears. A god, with a flowing tribulet down his cheeks. 
 He couldn’t tell the child about his existence for the sake of the child’s own sanctity, he had loved the child too much to do that. The worst part was that this love sort of manifested itself as a jealous rage, one targeted at the vanar father.
 The father was unaware of the entire situation, but still he was the one that got to enjoy the childhood of this babe. Why! the child would be called Maruti and Anjaneya, but where was the father’s name. Why should he be fortunate enough? It burned the god, it really did but again he was just as helpless.
 Some day that blue boy who was destined to slay the demon of Lanka would unleash this childs power, the one that he inherited from his father. Someday the wise old bear would tell the child of his real father.  It was up to the stars, but he would have missed the babes childhood by then. It was rather uncomfortable, these new shoes were. He took a deep breath awaiting that fateful day in the distant future when the child will know himself as Maruti. Until then his only companions were love and jealousy. 

The Protagonist

So I was just helping out one of my rather overworked friends write an essay for her course and the she told me that I had to come up with a humorous story that involved a very talkative person as the protagonist, well this is what I came up with, which to my surprise managed to fetch her some decent marks. :)

Whenever someone mentions a talkative person, the image that very easily comes to our mind is that of a very peevish person who tends to go on and on with his ramblings. A person who wouldn’t shut his ravings until you are forced to be outright rude and point it out that a little silence would be appreciated. Somehow when a person is described to be talkative, this is always what comes to mind.
Ralph on the other hand, was quite the exception to this stereo type. He was as talkative as it could get but au contraire to being pesky he was rather a delight. Standing at all but six feet high from the ground with that clean shaved face that had a jutting roman nose to it, Ralph was a charm that even other guys couldn’t resist chatting up with.

He would jabber away till the end of the world, and if you added to that a pint of beer on the table, well God save you. But unlike any other talkative fellows Ralph always made conversation that made the other person smile, you sort of could never say no to him. And that smile, oh that smile, thrown in-between the long conversations with the precision of a surgeon ensured that Ralph became a ‘lex orandi’ in his own right.
Ralph was a lawyer by profession and I was a businessman but thanks to some fortunate coincidence I had the pleasure of being acquainted to him through a bunch of mutual friends. We both were pretty well established in our respective fields, even accomplished one might say. When we met however, we never discussed anything to do with our respective work fields. It was always something tangential, completely out of the blue.
 It was early that Sunday morning when Ralph had asked me to meet him in Mays Diner for brunch. It wasn’t like him to go such downmarket diners, he was generally a person with rather cultivated tastes. The fact that he had called me to Mays meant that he didn’t want others to recognize him around the block and that the matter to be discussed was one that would be discreet and to be kept under the racks.
I went rather half-heartedly hoping that this entire affair would get over before the evening. It was uncanny of Ralph really but then again I had never been invited to a place like Mays by him ever before, it was usually more of a Leopold’s or La ’Gourmet.
Ralph waked in ten minutes after I had come and seated himself next to me. There was a very noticeable furtive manner about him. I just waited with a very blank expression, hoping he would be quick in his manner to spill the beans.
He asked for a steak which I found to be very surprising. It was an abomination for a man of such cultivated tastes like Ralph to not only come to Mays but have something like a steak from their menu. I stuck to having a golden buttered toast and a regular cup of tea. The food arrived within the next five minutes. A lot of harrowed looks were being passed by Ralph. After a long time I finally leaned over my plate and asked him what the matter was.
He didn’t seem to be quite himself, talking his way to glory. In a much unexpected jittery voice our dear Ralph whispered, “My old boy Johnny, I think I’m in love”.
 I was rather amused to tell you the truth, at how our very outspoken Ralph had turned into this submissive mouse. He told me that her name was Jane, of their growing love and finally reached a point where he said that Jane and he had now decided to marry.  I stood up jubilant and congratulated him, but he still seemed to have this morose expression across his face. He explained how Jane’s father was a certain Mr Ambrose and he needed my help. That was enough for me to change my jubilant smile to a look of pure shock and despair within seconds. See I was rather respected in my company and this Mr Ambrose he spoke of happened to be my boss. Ralph, the ingenious mind that he was, actually wanted me to talk to my boss for his daughters’ hand. The part that made this worse was that Mr Ambrose had developed this hatred towards lawyers, being cheated by one such advocate early in his life.  
I was stuck to choose between the lesser of the two devils. Here there was my good chum with his puppy eyes expecting me to help him out with the love of his life and on the other hand I could hear the death knell of my professional career.
The following morning I finally administered to courage to go and talk to Mr Ambrose. As I opened the door of my cabin, just in the nick of time, the phone rang. Jane Ambrose had got to hear from Ralph of this ridiculous idea and had spoken to her father this morning itself before I got the chance to put my career at stake. Mr Ambrose had not agreed at first but don’t rich daughters know exactly how to use an arm-twist with their dear daddies.
All in all I was saved, by a narrow shave that too. I did attend Ralphs wedding, as the best man in fact. My smile hid the story behind why I was picked over Ralphs other buddies, for just the will was enough to get me picked as best man. The will to put my all on the line and take part in Ralphs Ludacris idea. Aah! Jane was an angel that Monday morning, indeed she was.

And as far as Ralph was concerned he was back to being his talkative self, eating from a plate of some of the finest caviar that was being served at his wedding. The shy and smitten little boy hiding somewhere behind that charming and outgoing man. 

Gangsta Grandma.

This country is one that is full of MCPs (male chauvinistic pigs). These male egos who consider themselves not only superior but paramount to their female counterparts.Whereas the woman, (Oh the poor woman!) is always stuck hapless and spiritless in her sad state of affairs but at the mercy of this superior MAN.
 One may think that even though the educated and better off classes of India have slightly moved on, to a better situation as far as the women's position is concerned. The poorer sections of urban society are still assumed to remain under the more chauvinistic scheme of things. I too casually dismissed the various short stories that I read about such indomitable woman protagonists. (stories like 'The Punishment' by Tagore or 'Javni' by Raja Rao) This was probably because I had never really been fortunate enough to see any such woman prima donna in my life before, but that particular evening....
 It was another gloomy august evening in the city of Mumbai. The glum and morose rain clouds that characterize the Bombay rains were giving us furtive looks from the grey sky above. And us, a bunch of four friends out with our umbrellas and windcheaters wading through the ankle deep puddles. It was typical of us, your everyday bunch of  procrastinating college kids, to find just this delightful weather to go house hunting in.
 So there we were walking up this lonely street headed to the next location where we were to meet the broker who would show us a potential home, and all of a sudden, out of the blue a yellow Maruti Omni hauled up right next to us. There was a scraggy man who was riding his bicycle just a few steps away. Rugged beard and a head full of hair that was dipped in coconut oil. (we could tell it wasn't rain water coz it has this unmistakable glimmer to it that only Vatika coconut oil could do) From this one box on wheels emerged 10 hefty men like an exodus on insects. Within the wink of an eye all these men mounted on that one poor fellow and stared to beat him up. They brought down blows like there was no tomorrow. The punches would be best describes as "Thundering Typhoons" in the words of Captain Haddock. The man on the cycle had no idea what had hit him, quite literally.
 It was evident that this man had done something to offend these gangsters in the near past. The four of us found ourselves standing in near proximity and staring with our mouths wide open. Every Indian likes to watch a good fight, its in our blood. A minute passed by in this manner. Then from the horizon we noticed a shadow approaching the scene. As this figure came closer we noticed that it was a diminutive grandma clad in a saree that was wound  up in that peculiar lavani fashion in between the legs, quite a common way of doing it here in Mumbai. It was almost dusk now and as grandma barged into the mob of gangsters we could hear the tunes of *eye of the tiger* somewhere in the background. There was just something about this woman. She began to use words of profanity about the sister and mother ( an every day part and parcel of the Indian tongue) and waving her fists at the 10 macho men.
 In a span of the next 5 minutes all these men wound up their tails in between their legs and got into the van. Making a quick escape from the lane the car was not to be seen again.The scraggy old man stood battered down in awe of this woman. She didn't wait for a thanks, just walked on..back to her celestial horizon.
Lo! the indomitable spirit of an old grandma who saved the day, who was she?

Vanguard

Ok so let me be very blunt with you, I write verse and I've been doing it for seven years now. I wont comment on how good I am as I really think that is for my readers to decide. Now this blog that you see in front of you isn't for this purpose at all. Seems rather uncanny yeah? Why I would introduce myself as a verse person if I intend on putting none of it on my blog. Im hoping the title of this blog will help you understand that.
Now as one would understand the word Avant Garde is one borrowed from french, as simply put it means experimental and beauty in unconventional methods. I really have no idea what I am going to blog about yet, I really don't but i intend on trying out this whole blogging idea, try my hand at prose...and for your everyday eldritch verse person blogging can be his Avant Garde.
So readers Vanguard.