Sunday, June 28, 2015

3


In a Parent Teacher Association meeting a teacher complained about her 5th grade student.

Teacher: I asked a question about the weight of the globe to the class and a boy answered me “the weight as on date is thirty kg more than what it was a year back”. I was puzzled and further questioned him. He said the weight of the earth got increased because my weight was increased by thirty in the past one year.
The whole crowd burst to laughter.

Teacher: There is nothing to laugh at it. I reprimanded him at once for his in disciplinary remark for which he started abusing at me. I wonder the way children are brought up these days.

Suddenly a mother in the meeting rose up from the chair in reflex and commented “Excuse me! We know our child and we are giving them the best we could. If still mistake happens then it is definitely at your end. Maybe students learn from their peers. But definitely not from their parents”.

The crowd nodded in unison.

Teacher: “Well in that case madam it was your son who was that in disciplined in my class littering the fellow students”.

She left the place that instant in anger leaving behind a huge silence. She went back home and thrashed her child for letting her down in front of other parents. The child was hurt and sobbed profusely.
Her mother was hurt badly after seeing her son crying. It took some time for the whole scene to settle down. After dinner the mother, father and son laid in their bed for sleeping.

Son: Did I let you down today? Is that why you were mad at me?
Mother: Didn’t I brought you up well right from your birth.
Son: Yes ma.
Mother: I had taken good care of you even before you were born.
Son: How would I know about those happened before my birth ma?

She exhaled and started narrating a story.
Mother: It was June 1988 when your father and I went for baby-moon.
Son: What is baby-moon?
Mother: It is a sequel to honeymoon except for couples go during their 5th month of pregnancy.
Son: why do they during that time?
Mother: Well the fetus inside the womb would be matured enough to perceive the real world vicariously through the host.
Son: What?
Mother: Well the baby can feel, hear and even see, as they say, at that time. In Mahabharata Arjuna trained Abhimanyu for getting into chakra vyuha when Abhimanyu was growing inside his mother’s womb.
Son: Oh! So what happened during our baby-moon?
Mother surprisingly smiled at her child mentioning ‘our’. She replied back “We went for ooty. I still remember how freshly chill the climate was. On the very first day we went for garden. I was unable to walk further as you started adjusting yourself inside. It was very painful and I had to sit down near the security guard”.

The son frowned out of guilt and his mother brushed his hair with a smiling face saying, “It was not your fault dear”.
She continued “During those periods woman will be hyper sensitive to all feelings be it happiness, sadness, anger, pain etc. I requested the guard to share his seat and he granted. Your father asked me to join him but I refused a couple of times. Then he left me assuring my safety with the guard”.
Son: Why did dad do that?  He could have cancelled that day’s plan and stayed with you?
Dad groaned in half sleep “is this the kind of bedtime story you narrate to our son making his own father a villain?”

Mother laughing at the expected questions from both the ends she continued narrating. “It was not his fault. Your father has sacrificed a lot for me. He is an industrious man and hates secluding to being motionless other than eating and sleeping. So I willingly let him continue his visit”.
Father exhales and turns to other side of the bed to his comfortable position.

Mother: But the moment when your father left, I was inundated with mixed feelings. I was afraid and scared of being alone carrying you in an alien place. I was perplexed with several contingent questions asking myself what I would do if something happens to me at that moment. I wish someone was nearby to say “you will be safe”. I cursed myself for letting your father go alone. He actually got lost in the garden maze and took him sometime to return back to me along with security escorts. His anger and my cry changed the entire mood of the day and we returned back to home the same night. I wish I had seen the place myself.

Father rolling from the other end of the bed “and that’s the end of the story. Tomorrow I will tell you another story about a wife beating her husband with chapatti roller”.
Everyone chucked and left for sleep.

25 years later…
The boy was married and his wife was five months pregnant. His parents insisted him to go for a babymoon to some place as a change of mood was essential for both the mother and the child. The boy realized that it was time for him to be good father as well as a good son. He wanted to fulfill all the unfinished desires of his parents only when they are hale and healthy to perceive it. He took the whole family to ooty.

The boy was so adamant that the first itinerary in the trip was ooty garden. He took the whole family to the garden. The moment they entered, the girl got cramps in her stomach. She couldn’t move a step and hence resorted herself to a chair nearby. The guy understood her pain and decided to stay back. He could. Some activities are hereditary and Geo tagged.  

This incident reminded mother of her situation a couple of decades before and hence decided to stay back. The unfulfilled wishes of three people was put to task like the three vertices's of a triangle trying to touch each other without deforming its shape. The father wants to see the garden at least this time but unwilling to go alone. Mother wants to accompany her husband but unwilling to leave her daughter-in-law to face the same suffer she underwent. The son did not want to leave his wife alone but he wants to fulfill the wishes of his parents.

Son: “Ma, you and father go to the park. We both will be waiting for you here while you return”.
Mother: “No I don’t want to leave her alone in this situation”.
Father: “Me too. Let us take her to the hotel and give her some rest”.
Son was confused at the situation. But he was sure of one thing. Not to call off this trip.
Son: “Ma, You stay with her. I will go along with dad”.
Father and Mother: “But?”
Son: “You know how to take good care of her. I trust you”.
Everyone smiled at each other and father and son went inside. Son, after a few steps, came back to his wife. He brushed her hair and said “you three better be safe”. He smiled and went back into the garden.

She looked at his mother in confusion. Mother smiled at her in return.




Sunday, June 21, 2015

“Alright, Good night”

She was standing in a long queue and she felt so lost that every second cost her an hour. Time frame from the reality seemed to dwell unreasonably slow as she had her mind lost somewhere. She couldn't see the clear picture of what her eyes actually saw. It was all hazy and bleak. Nor that her eye sensors wear off but she seemed really confused about taking her decision. She was not indecisive about taking decisions but this particular decision costs her an entire life. She was so hard to accept it as well as so soft to deny it. She couldn't hear anything properly, standing in the queue, but indistinct chatters at low decibels and at unusual tempos. Her eyes were moist that her eyeliners where completely washed up and her pupils were merely floating in the sacred pool of tears.

Next!

She heard something in a requesting tone that later turned into an imperative accent.

NEXT!

It was her turn at the immigration counter. The personal at the counter interrogated several questions and her reply was so slow that she answered the second question with the first question’s answer. The office personal was partially satisfied in approving her immigration. She was looking at an Indian couple hugging and caressing each other at the gallery terminal to send off someone. She couldn't control her nostalgic vibe about her boyfriend. Especially at times when she was taking such vital decisions of him in her life.

The past beautiful moments of their happy-days projected in front of her eyes without a celluloid. The memories of the first day they met at a car accident when he was the guy who crushed his car onto hers. The day how they took care of each other in the hospital when the homesickness and agony took precedence. The day when he proposed her in the hospital with the vital medicines required for her.

All her day dreams were vanished by a loud sound. The immigration officer cleared, signed and sealed her application. The officer sealed it so loud to wake her off her in the middle of her dreams. Her trolley was full of surprise presents, her boyfriend used to gift on every day from the day of proposal. She could hardly roll her trolley not for its heaviness by weight. But it was loaded with so many emotions imbibed.
She entered the gangway with plenty of her fellow country mates rushing the plane. She knew that she couldn't stay in a foreign country where she couldn't find solace. Lucrative jobs couldn't be a lifetime opportunity to replace the blessed people. Not that she missed her family so much. Either she was too coward to decide upon whom she miss so.
Every step she stepped on the gangway kept reminding her that she was lacking time to make a Decision. Her world was going dark without her notice that she was fainting.

She remembered that how she faltered while using her crutches for the first time in the hospital during her days of recuperation. It was he who stood beside her, training like a cradling baby, and helping her out in the training.
A nun caught her from behind.

Oh my god. You are so heavy. May lord be with you all the time or until you reach your home my child!

She smiled coyly and adjusted her belongings from the free fall. She started approaching into the flight entrance. A well-built athletic woman full of plastic make up dressed in red skirt with floral fragrance spreading around her black stalking, welcomed her with a plastic smile.

Welcome aboard madam. Your seat is two rows from the front on your left and second seat from the window. Have a happy journey.

She couldn't proceed further into the plane as every single instance that was happening around her reminded her of him. Those days when they both used to linger around the Hospital’s canteen as the best coffee with noodle soup was served there. Every time the women at the canteen entrance welcomes, he used to mock her of her accent and her subservient gesture.

She placed her luggage in the dock and got seated.

Ma’am would you like to have a glass of wine or beer?

Martini is my favorite bitch, why do you ask me every single time. He used to yell at the Hospital canteen’s waitress. Those were the days they spend their life with nothing but breathing air and laughing around. They both were so addicted of being together and inseparable. Except for one day and she could remember every single details of that day. How his nose bleed over the noodle soup and how he fainted and rushed to the Intensive Care Unit. Her life was back after two days when he told that he was fine and it was the medicine’s unusual side effect that oozed his blood out of his nostrils.

Ma’am?

She was back to reality and ordered water.

It was her last day to get discharged from the hospital and she was bidding adieu to the receptionist and nurses. She was telling them about how she likes him, the way he proposed her and about the future plans with him. She was the only person talking while the rest were frozen in shock. One of the nurses from the behind interrogated the senior nurse that if she was referring the guy who got admitted in the ICU for blood cancer. The non-stopping chatter of her came to an end when she heard those. Those words were so sharp that it pierced her heart effortlessly in no time that she took so much time to realize about what she actually heard. She got nothing to do with the situation but to faint and extend her stay for a day.

This is captain welcoming you all board. It is time to fasten your seat belts. The flight will take off in 2 minutes as scheduled.

Sense of guilt and love with one preceding the other obsessed her and took control of her. It was her mistake that she left him accepting the reality that he will be not alive more than a month and her inclination towards the lucrative job offer abroad as a Chinese translator to a leading multinational company. She shouldn't have left him. She couldn't face her dying boyfriend any more. She knew she made a mistake leaving him. She couldn't spend a single day at the office accepting the fact that she has left him. She resigned that job at the same day and she boarded a flight to china, her country, on the same evening. She badly wanted to marry him so that he could spend the remaining days of his life with the girl whom he loved. But she knew how much it would pain to live a widow for the rest of her life.
The flight attendant came to her to fasten her seat belt.

Ma’am your life is more important to us

And she left the place with her plastic smile. Something sparked and she knew that she has decided.
“Tomorrow is the day I will marry you at the hospital and celebrate our honeymoon with the scheduled medicines. I promise to take good care of you for the rest of your life. I will not let you die before me. Good night” she said to herself. And she was relieved that she finally decided before the flight took off.
The flight took its front wheel off from the ground with a happy passenger.

This is captain Fariq of Boeing 777 Flight number MH370. We are flying at an altitude of 35000 feet. The weather condition is normal.
“MH370, please contact Ho Chi Minh City 120.9, Good Night” echoed the radio version from KL Control tower.
“Alright, Good night”