The flying dog

"Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth" - Albert Camus 

Part 1: The dog

No one knew the origin of his name, but everyone called the dog "Hotspot". Even his drunk master answered me that he was born "Hotspot" and that he could not recall as to how he got that name. Hotspot was a no-nonsense dog and clearly lived a great nonchalant life in the mountains. He was assured of food from the owner's cafe, so he didn't have to be servile or wag his tail to others. Hotspot had this luxurious habit of sleeping alot and barking rarely. Only time I noticed him barking was when few butterflies sat and  annoyed him hovering around his body. He didn't like butterflies as they posed a nuisance to his free sleepy life. When sleeping, they would sit on his nose and when he would try to shake them off, they would flutter near his eyes. Angrily, he would often bark to shoo them off but then it seemed that butterflies had fun teasing Hotspot.

Part 2: The Cafe Owner

The cafe owner (and also Hotspot's master) was a misogynist. Post his evening drinks, he shared his strong opinion about women and marriages. According to him, marriages were designed by women to enslave men and one should stay away from this horrible institution as much. It seemed women were like butterflies to the Hotspot in the cafe owner. I tried to listen as little from that discussion.

I have been a part of so many corporate office parties that the art of listening-from-one-ear-and-taking-out-from-other has been mastered by now. In corporate parties, people in position of power would get drunk and arrive at you sharing their stories of machoism and then you can't be rude and escape away. The better ones are even able to fuel to that machoism and later rewarded in their appraisals. 

Anways, back to cafe owner, I didn't want to dig deep into the rationale of his misogynistic approach to life. According to one my fake psychologist friend: people who have been heartbroken by a girl at an early age end up becoming misogynists. 

Instead I enquired about Hotspot and told him that for a dog, he slept alot and he clearly hated butterflies.  And then the cafe owner giggled and said that he wanted a nonchalant life like Hotspot. 

Part 3: The Girls

Next day in the evening some young girls (I guess college students) arrived at the cafe. They had brought their own alcohol, Lays chips packets and plastic glasses to relish their booze with the food around the bonfire. I chose to stay away from that party as they were too loud and played unpalatable songs from their mobile phones. But the cafe owner joined them, probably his love for alcohol overpowered his detest for feminine gender or probably he only detested losing his freedom by virtue of relationships only.

After some time from my hotel window, I noticed that everyone (the girls and the cafe owner) dancing via circling around the fire. Due to the heat he had taken off his sweater and his dance moves had turned very funny. Some of the girls had clearly left the space and cheered for him to continue his violent dance moves while some danced along to instigate him into his funny dance moves (one of them being snake dance on the floor).

Part 4: The Butterflies

Next morning I woke up to the cold mountains and from my window saw the cafe owner sleeping in the open in his fully dusty clothes near the dead fire and Hotspot was licking his drunk and fully asleep master. Later multiple butterflies arrived and sat on Hotspot to disturb him. There were so many of them clung to his body that only looking carefully one could notice Hotspot's eyes and the tongue with which he was licking his master. 

And little I could believe my eyes when I saw that all the butterflies fluttered their wings in unison and took Hotspot flying up in the air until he disappeared amidst the clouds!

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Children and Grown-ups

 "All grown-ups were once children.....but only few of them remember it."  -Antoine de Saint-Expury, The Little Prince

Dear friend, 

It has been about eight years now since we last met. I vividly and fondly remember our last meeting at my Delhi flat, us sipping wine and pointlessly discussing authors and film-makers we adored. You were a frequent visitor to my self-curated film festivals and it was a pleasure to host someone with so much thirst for life and hunger for art. 

Today I write to you, not sure whether this email will even reach you or stay unread or bounce back undelivered. It was while reading Camus' book 'Personal Writings', I was reminded of you and our conversations around this charming writer. I even made a futile attempt at searching for you on social media and I must say that your absence was quite anticipated but admirable. Hope you will respond to my email as I would want to know your side of eight years gone by.

Personally, to my discomfort and also with some sense of achievement, I feel more grown up. I speak more sense now and less of non-sense (super-sense as you called it). Don't ask me why I have reduced this non-sense (or super-sense) part, I guess this also comes with a package of growing up. You start caring more or should I say that you start thinking more as to how others would react and end up limiting or binding yourself. On the contrary, the beautiful part of this package is that you expect less from people and their good feelings, acts of friendships and noble deeds seem like miracles to cherish. 

I get to speak non-sense now only to kids of my friends or relatives. They enjoy such stuff or should I say that they are the only people capable of enjoying such stuff. When you play hide and seek with a four year old kid, the game is so much fun. She would hide behind that curtain or a door despite being completely aware that you are standing and noticing her. Then you act the struggle of seeking her in that exciting game of hide and seek and finally when you find her, she would jump with joy of being found. That's a sign of a successful game - that it must end. I was once answering to my friends' daughter with some non-fictional excuses of dwarfs, fairies and magic to a very sensible question of hers. My friend's wife objected to me telling lies to her daughter and instead asked me to give her the right and scientific logic to her questions.

Speaking of grown-ups, they are a crazy lot. My friend was once narrating about his grandmother who was diagnosed with a fatal disease and doctors had given her a month's time to get all her wishes fulfilled. Instead, she asked her son to get her the bank's passbook updated. My friend reminded her that she was going to die and asked her about where was she going to go with so much money in her bank account. She said that all the principal and interest accumulation gave her peace and who didn't want to die in peace. One fine day, his father got the passbook updated and she slept with the passbook clutched to her breast and next morning the grandmother's heart stopped beating. She died in peace with a smile on her face! Isn't it crazy?

Well, I am writing to you after so long and instead of telling you about my last eight years, I am telling you about some random comparison between children and grown-ups. Would you really be interested in knowing that I work for a multi-national company or in trivial details like greying of my hair? I am sure not. You would be more interested in knowing that this work from home has ensured that standing from my balcony I can witness sunsets everyday, you would want to know about the good books and some stories from the travels I would have experienced. But first I need to listen from you. You were quite a celebrated student at National School of Drama and quite close to the supersensical world of theater. I was a student of business studies and now am quite an ordinary ambassador of that MBA education as I preach people to take up art and instead develop their emotional intelligence. 

I would leave the letter with some lines from Camus book (Personal Writings) I just finished. This book similar to my letter is reflective and laments the loss of innocence in the author's journey from age of 20 to 40. 

" There is more love in these awkward pages than in all that have followed. Every artist thus keeps within himself a single source which nourishes during his lifetime what he is and what he says. When that spring runs dry, little by little one sees his work shrivel and crack. These are arts wastelands, no longer watered by the invisible current..... yet nothing prevents one from dreaming in the very hour of exile, since at least I know this, with sure and certain knowledge: a man’s work is nothing more but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened."

Shall wait for your response!

Till then, take care!

-vC

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A Story about Stories

Part 1: Irreverent stories

 I had once written a collection of around eight to ten stories, all of them twisted and whimsical. I shared them with a voracious reader friend of mine. She read them all while I nervously waited for her feedback. She warm-heartedly responded "dude-they-are-brillliant. Try getting them published. The world needs to read them. They are like a fine mixture of Etgar Keret, Kundera, Salinger and Kafka". I told her that she was extra kind and asked he if she found the stories to be too irreverent. She said it hardly mattered and reiterated that the world needed to read these stories.

Part 2: Book publisher

I went out in search of a book publisher. I didn't know anyone except a faintly acquainted college senior whose love for my college was quite conspicuous. I hadn't liked him much for he felt like too businessy. I had that same bad taste meeting him which you get after meeting some extrovert MBA. Too many shenanigans and too less content. But then in my work life, I learnt that I should not judge anyone and instead ask for help. 

It was in that college bonding, I mailed my stories to the school senior who with his business air and fake professionalism sent me some rules of his publishing house. I wonder if he read the stories or not but the senior responded that he was ok to publish on two conditions First,  I needed to pay him some money for his fixed charges (as COVID19 had dented his business too, I wondered how) and second the stories needed to be edited by professional editors. He also told me that he will be sharing some 11.5% royalty with me over and above sales of some fixed count. I agreed on all conditions and asked him to forward the copy to his professional editors.

Part 3: Ex-boss

The so-called professional editors fucked my stories. They not only corrected my grammar but added adjectives and adverbs, rephrased sentences from active to passive thus completely distorting the twists, the plot and the humour. The senior excitedly mailed me asking for an OK on the mail to proceed for publishing the book. I was too sad to respond for two days and then an idea came to my mind. 

I called my ex-boss. My ex-boss always wanted to be famous and he had this habit of taking credits for things he never did in the office. So I offered him a deal of making him the author of a book and pay the fixed charges to my college senior. My ex-boss was exhilarated at the idea of being a published author and he gladly agreed. I responded to my senior's mail by saying OK but that the author name and author details will have to be changed as I had decided not to be an author of the edited stories. The school senior got shocked and asked why I wanted to give on my creative possession to somebody else. 

Part 4: Literature Festival

The book got published and it made a lot of noise in my ex-company whatsapp group. People were startled at the creative inclination of my ex-boss, although nobody ever read the book. I never contacted my school senior or ex-boss to get any idea of how well was the book received. It was only today that I got a whatsapp forward video of my ex-boss reading from the same book in a literature festival and then I noticed that the literature festival was sponsored by my ex-company giving a hint as to how he got that reading slot.

Part 5: Its just a story

Lot of people ask me as to why I did that. They suggest that I should have instead asked the senior to restore the stories or else go to some other publisher. I lie to them that nothing like that happened. It is just a story!

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