Ginger drafts...

Chapter 1 When I initially began this writing project, I had to witness objections from many different sources. But today, I am sixty years old and the incident no longer worries the participants. Today, I am free to write about it. I was twenty five when I joined Daniel school of business. The year was 2199; B-school education was undergoing a period of tumultuous competition. Schools competed for an image; there were a couple of big firms that recruited only from schools with good repute. Shadows of glistening brand image cast by these firms’ affiliation with the schools put them on the top of the students’ choice list. Our HAL 9000 CRM had indicated a spur of reactions from the most loyal clientele in the coming days. We had no time to loose. Our team set out to find the potential trigger points. We had molecular biologists working on our HAL 9000 to locate fractious elements within the DNA of our loyal network. The results pointed to a man from Ken’s school. We had no choice but...

Chapter 1 Replacing the glass bulb from an overhanging plastic socket, Zafir realised that the spider web had caught onto the suspended wire. His wife Anjali handing over the torn piece of the chequered table cloth implored that he make no fuss about the old cloth which had to be replaced with a new one. Turning the newly purchased bulb slowly in its hold, slapping a mosquito up his shins with the other leg, Zafir accidentally dropped the tester that was lodged between his jaws. With a shrill cry, squeaking like a prey that has befallen the wrath of a hungry forest king, Anjali flopped her pink nightie to the ground. Before Zafir could apologise for the accident, she was nervously tucked in the corner of the room with all but her lingerie on. Zafir, with words of consoling and strict rapping of the nightie, reached her with a loving embrace and Anjali with a quick leap of fear, hugged him with her eyes closed. It was not a lizard, there was nothing at all to worry about, but she wrappe...

No spoilers. You can read thru. Freud would have patted Cristopher Nolan’s back. Freud, through his patient analysis of the mind and dreams, has postulated the levels of dreams and the volitional advantage that the dreamer accrues at each level. The subconscious mind in Freud’s words is like the water in a fountain that drops back into the vast pool before achieving a brief hiatus of consciousness while up in the air. Freud in his guile cheerlessness commented “civilisation began when an angry man cast a word instead of a rock”. Nolan embellishes Freud’s word with an emphasis on ‘idea’ that is resilient, overwhelming, incredibly powerful and all encompassing. History points out that the fascination with dreams has inspired men since the dawn of civilisation. Many directors have explored and dabbled with the idea of dreams. Most significantly in the year 1999; the year has seen the release of three movies that takes three decades to forget. ‘Matrix’ explored the possibility of a tricky ...

Through the maze of wooden pillars that hollowed inside, bugs proceeded with great calm. It was raining outside, the thickened walls contained in them damp and strong scent of winter. The roof drooped under the weight of giant spiders that busied themselves with weaving webs; the large square shaped tiles broke haphazardly to reveal gravel that rattled and the adjoining tiles creaked when someone stepped on them. There I was, with my leonine head stooped to the floor, sniffing at every object that came my way. This sinister place, my home, offered shelter to many a dogs like me. In winters we all slept in the room upstairs that had no windows and stayed relatively warm. The closed walls had an effect on our personality; we developed something of animosity and hatred at each other’s habits. The other day my belly ached at night, so involuntary it was that I failed to step out of our warm closeted room. My regurgitating left an unpleasant smell inside the room and the rambunctious twin...

I don’t know what time it is, it does not matter. Matter is something my parents, their friends and families, neighbours, in short, all the like minded people settle down to make happen. I, photon, was born roughly 14 million years prior to now under great duress. For about a time from the beginning, it was chaotic, I could barely go from one corner of the street where my mother, electron, would transit from upstairs balcony to downstairs and leave me outdoors and I was born. The neighbours were so close and the neighbourhood so violent that before I could go to the vast playground on the other end of the street, another mother, electron, from the ground floor of adjoining house would whisk me with force and get upstairs, and I was dead. It was only after the pressure and temperature dropped, and all the mothers, electrons, began living a little away from each other, it was only then that I found friends. Now mothers were tolerant, they would not whisk away children, for the surrou...

The fair had a series of shops lined up attached to each other like pearls on a necklace. Cylindrical wooden sticks guarded the square shaped casements that had resin cloth wrapped about the top and sides. Some of the dwellers stood by their stock outside, some performers blew wafts of fire skywards; some navigated a thin rope suspended between two wooden pillars with just a horizontal stick in their hand. I was standing before a turbaned old man’s shop; he was selling swords that were made of thin sheet of wood wrapped in metallic gold paper. With a pouch made of coconut yarn and a handle that had a bar pinned to it, the sword set appealed to my senses. My brother and his friends took a call; we all bought a sword each. It cost us three rupees. My maternal grandmother, a fine woman, possessed the rarest of qualities. Pale yellow complexion, her wrinkled skin puckered into folds at the elbows and ankles. I and my sister would sit by her and dig deep burrows into the blood rid folds o...

I forgot what time it was. Woke up to find heavy arms wrapped up over me; he was breathing heavily, warm air encircled the back of my neck and flew past to find my pierced nose before me. The audible snore, like a rhythmic machine pulsated; with the gurgling gulp on every third stroke of the snore machine, I bethought, perhaps the machine needs oiling. I carefully lifted his left arm with its pointed finger twined in the silk string under my breasts, perched it neatly atop his bent knees that were prodded into my white negligee from the back. I tugged at the sleeve end of my dress on which presently his face lay; fresh saliva was dripping out of his ellipsoid mouth on to my dress which had stiffened out of the night long salty secretion. I whisked my sleeve out of pure revulsion of the carnivorous mammal beside me. He shifted to his side of the bed; his wide nostrils throbbed and the breathing grew louder, wafted as if a goods train had come to a halt before gaining speed again. Ther...