The Thing Called : Love

What is love? Is it a feeling? An emotion? Or an act? Let me tell you a story then you only decide what is it? It’s a story of two lizards. As you all know japan is earthquake prone country. So after one such an earthquake, a family decided to renovate their house because it was damaged a bit. The walls in that house were wooden with some hollow spaced in-between. When the man broke open the wall, he saw a lizard who was stuck in one of the hollow space because a nail was drilled in one of its feet. He saw this and felt pity and at the same time he got curious, because it was nailed almost ten years ago when the house was built. How come the lizard has survived? After a while he saw another lizard that came with the food in its mouth, and fed the other lizard. The second lizard was doing this for ten long years untiringly.

What you call this act, Love? So what is love? Is it a feeling of that second lizard? Or an emotion that just surfaced in your mind while reading this story? Or it’s an act of that second lizard?     

Mediocrity

What is mediocrity? Is being mediocre a crime or to be proud of? If you think it is something you should be proud of or it’s a good thing then you are doing a crime. Being mediocre is limiting yourself from doing something huge, at the same time you are doing injustice to the world. 

Think, what if Right brothers were mediocre? Their dreams would have been mediocre.  Don’t worry aero planes still be in existence, but the evolution could not been that much sophisticated which we are enjoying today. And that would be an injustice to humankind. So if tomorrow anybody says to you that he/she is mediocre and he/she loves it being that way, please run away from such people. Because nobody in this world would like to be a mediocre. these are the people who are either miserably failed in their life, lazy or have a fear of losing. And I am talking about each and every field, be it sports, academics or wealth wise. 

Everybody deserves an extraordinary life. When we fail to do so we start giving reason to ourselves once we get agree with it, then we try to justify for us for being mediocre and wear a mask of being a mediocre. Eventually we get stuck to a place, get bored with the life. Then we start to classify things in to two category “ordinary” and “extraordinary”, those who do some extraordinary thing we start to follow them, and make them hero. But in actual everybody is hero, an extraordinary person, provided he/she need to find that extraordinary thing in them. Then I am sure world won’t be same place again from that moment onwards.             

The Mirror

She was in the Starbucks cafe, sipping her coffee and staring out of the window. The blood stained knife lay next to her handbag, covered with her blue silk scarf. As she took a sip of hot coffee, she went into Trans. “how I ended up like this? Is this what I wanted on the first place? What if I get one chance to make it right?” while she was busy with her thoughts, a five feet ten inch tall, trimmed beard, blue eyes, athletic built figure called Mourya entered the café, and he directly approached her. He found Yosha was lost in her thoughts. He gently sat on a chair, he found her this image so mesmerizing that he didn’t dare to wake her up. As he was looking at her, his hand accidently fall on the blue scarf, he felt something weird inside that scarf, so he unfold the scarf, he saw the knife stained with blood. It has become all blue because of blood, Mourya got suspicious, he cut himself, dropped two drops of his blood on the same knife. As soon as his blood falls on the knife which was already stained with the blood, the blue color disappeared for a fraction of seconds and again color became blue. This was an indicator that, the knife was stained with none other than Mourya’s mirror image’s blood.

Honey this knife is covered with my mirror’s blood. Mourya asked Yosha. Yosha who was lost in her own thought, came to reality. Looking at Mourya, she put on the artificial smile, “oh, Mourya darling you scared me” with this she stepped down from the stool and hugged him, and kissed him. Mourya in lower tone asked Yosha “honey, what is this?” Pointing at knife. “How come my mirror’s blood ended up on the knife?  Is he going to die? ” Yosha was now in dilemma, as how to tell his own fiancé that she has murdered his mirror in future. Here Mourya was bit confused with the status of his mirror image.

“27^th July, 3020” Yosha responded quietly. “You mean to say, tomorrow?” asked Mourya anxiously. Yosha nodded to confirm. But she didn’t dare to tell him that she is the one who killed his mirror tomorrow. It all started because of the technology called Hi-Five, an app. This app constantly observes your daily reactions and your behavior and creates your virtual image. It’s just like your mirror image. It does same in virtual world, what you do in your day to day life in real world. You can be with your loved once virtually at the same time you can work in the office. This mirror image has its own artificial intelligence which is in sync with person’s brain. With this technology person can do multitasking, People were so used to this technology; they were using their mirror images as their assistant to run errands, to share their workloads, to book appointments. People became so dependent on this technology; the entire social structure was built on this particular concept. This technology within short span of time got so much developed. Now people got so much attached to their mirrors, that they not only started to upgrade their capacity for work, but they started to dress them nicely, they even started to celebrate their birthdays. Mourya was also not an exception to this, he upgraded his mirror’s capacity, he even changed the skin tone, color of eyes, and with the extended version of the program he changed the color of his blood to blue.         

After the engagement of Mourya and Yosha, they both synced their mirror images with each other’s, to have a better coordination. To know each other better, and to spend some extra time with each other. It was a courtship period, they both were curious to know each other. The more they get to know each other the more they fell in love with each other. On one such fine morning of 26^th July, Yosha was casually having the conversation with Mourya’s mirror image, and she came to know that the mirror is having a meeting with Anagha on 27^th July. Since Mourya shared his mirror’s information with Yosha as a token of trust, Yosha could actually look into Mourya’s past life, his future plans. So she looked in for Anagha in his past life. The level of affinity for Anagha was above average, more than the affinity between her and Mourya. Looking at this she gets curious; to know more about this personality called Anagha. Yosha runs the virtual meeting between Mourya and Anagha which is going to take place tomorrow on 27^th July. The results were shocking for Yosha. It showed meeting ends up with Mourya kissing Anagha. So she runs virtual meeting from Mourya’s point of view, it ends up the same way. Yosha becomes restless, as what to do. She checks out the past history between them once again, it turns out they both were close friends. Her mind starts applying different possibilities as what’s the relationship between both of them. She becomes so much possessive of Mourya. So she starts thinking how to keep Mourya’s mirror away from meeting Anagha.

After a lot of thinking she comes to a conclusion. She herself books a meeting with Mourya’s mirror prior to Anagha’s meeting, to ask about Anagha. As she runs the virtual meeting, it ends up with a big argument between both of them and her killing Mourya’s mirror, with a knife.

Mourya asked her once again, “Yosha is it true?” and without much ado he took out his cell phone to check the status of his mirror. Looking at this act Yosha stops Mourya, and starts explaining.

“Yes Mourya, it is ture. I went behind your back, and checked your appointments, there I found Anagha’s name written, and as I ran the virtual randevu, the outcomes were similar from both the angle. This doesn’t happen always, and when it does, the outcome becomes 100% certain.” “Yes, you are absolutely true, but there is always a variable present. As far as my knowledge goes about Anagha, she is bit technolazy, she also did not tell anyone about her engagement, it was bit low-key. I am defiantly sure that Anagha must have forgotten to update her profile from single to engaged, as she is also engaged and going to marry soon.  She must be coming to meet me to give us the invitation for her wedding. Yes we do have shared some good memories that’s why affinity percentage is that much high, but apart from pure friendship there is nothing more between us.” Hearing this Yosha got shocked, she felt guilty to judge Mourya wrongly. But she has already killed his mirror, which means  from 27^th july 2030 onwards, Mourya won’t be having his mirror with him. He has to do all his work by himself, and in a society where its structure is built on base of your mirror image, Mourya was now virtually crippled. His speed was reduced to half. He won’t remain that much efficient. Initially Mourya thought he can manage this, but as time pass by, it get more difficult for him to balance his professional life and personal life. As a result he could not able to spend any time with Yosha, which resulted in increased argument between them, whenever they used to meet, half of the time they used to argue with each other. Mourya got so fed up with this, and he decided to give more time to Yosha. This made him ignore his work life, he started missing his deadlines, his work progress started to decrease, and this automatically affected his earning, and increased the stress. Mourya got frustrated. Yosha could see this change in his behavior she got worried for Mourya. To clean this mess Yosha started to search for the alternative, she came to know that once the mirror is dead you cannot create another, the only option is either you share the mirror or search for mirror donor. To find the mirror donor was very difficult and expensive affair. Plus synchronization between donated mirror and person would create the major problem. Yosha decides to share her mirror with Mourya. But this is going to increase the burden on Yosha’s brain.

After hearing Yosha about this Mourya refused Yosha’s proposal, because sharing the mirror between both of them, will eventually increase the load on Yosha’s brain, which will fasten her mental ageing. Yosha convinced Mourya, that this is the only option they have, besides it will help him to ease his load, he will also get time for himself and for her, which will eventually decrease the argument between them and will leads to happy life. Besides it is not how much years to live, it is how peacefully and happily you live that matters. These words convinced Mourya to share the Yosh’a mirror image between them. And they lived happily ever after.

The Thing Called: Bloody Ending

Chapter 9

The Thing Called: Bloody Ending

December 31, 2013: The day that changed my life. The memory of that night will remain etched in my mind forever. We decided to celebrate in a pub. Ganu was not very enthusiastic about being in a pub on 31^st night, but we somehow convinced him.

When we entered the pub, we saw Yosha dancing with a few friends.  JT immediately turned to me.

JT: Sammy, it’s Yosha. Let’s get out of here; I don’t want to bump into her.

Me: Why? What’s wrong?

Rider heard us and signalled that we should leave.

Ganu: Guys, we can go to Club Indy. It’s also a nice pub.

Me: Ok, let’s go.

Club Indy was one of those clubs where the latest Bollywood songs kept many busy dancing.

JT: Yeah, this is a great pub. Ganu, you are awesome for bringing us here.

Me: JT, let’s dance.

JT: Yup, but let’s get drunk first.

He waved at a waitress who was serving tequila shots. All of us took one shot each.

JT: Now, let’s dance.

After dancing for almost two hours, we were exhausted, but exhilarated. We sat on a couch to catch our breaths. Just as we were getting comfortable, JT saw a boy who he thought was trying to act smart with a girl.

JT: Look at that boy. What do you think, can he get that girl?

The boy was standing close to her, they both looked at each other and the girl smiled at him. They started dancing together.

Me: JT, they are together.

JT: Nope, I don’t think so.

The boy then started touching the girl. She didn’t seem to mind initially, but after a while she resisted his advances. She began telling him to stop. JT got angry watching this whole episode.

JT: Look at him. Now he is crossing the line.

Me: Easy JT, they both know what they are doing.

The girl warned him again.

JT: He is definitely out of line. Let’s beat up that punk.

Me: Relax JT. It’s none of our business; you have not taken an oath to protect all the girls. Besides, she is his girlfriend.

JT: How can you be so sure?

Me: Trust me.

As I was about to explain how I knew, when we watched her warning him again to back off.

JT: You moron!

JT marched towards the boy and punched him in the face.

Rider was about to leave the couch, but I pulled him back.

Me: Wait, let’s see how many guys he has.

JT landed another punch on the boy’s face.

Four guys rushed towards the boy, while three more got up from their seats to enter the fight.

Me: Now it’s time to help JT.

JT: Hey dude, if a girl says no, then a man doesn’t force her. Don’t you understand it, or did your mommy not teach you  any manners?

Girl: Who the hell are you to interfere between us? Leave before he beats the hell out of you.

Before she could finish, JT was smacked in the middle of his face. His nose and lower lip began bleeding.

Boy: Didn’t you hear what she said? Now get the hell out of here before I kill you.

Me: Sorry man, we are just leaving. JT, I told you they were together.

As we were leaving, two bouncers literally lifted JT and threw him out of club. In the melee, I couldn’t pick up my phone which was constantly buzzing. I was shocked and surprised that she was calling me. Before I could speak, she started talking.

Her: Are you following me?

Me: Me? No.

Her: What’s the matter with you? Wherever you go, you create a scene. Why have you been acting so weird lately?

Me: Trust me, it wasn’t me.

Her: Then it must be your friend. I know how you boys are. Whatever you can’t do, you get your friends to do it. Just tell your friend to stop interfering in others’ lives, otherwise I will tell Surya. Once he gets to know this, nobody will be able to save you.

Me: What did you just say? We get things done, do we? Ok then, now I will show you how we really get things done. And by the way, who the hell is Surya?

As the bouncers bundled us downstairs, I grabbed JT’s hand and called out to Rider and told him that we would return in five minutes and asked him to get the bikes ready. I threw my bike keys to him. Doors closed and the lift started moving.

Me: I have some unfinished business upstairs.

JT: Whatever you say bro. Shall we beat them up?

Me: Just follow my lead.

We rushed inside the club.

Me: Just stay with me.

JT just nodded, while nursing his bleeding lower lip, as blood oozed out from it incessantly.

We approached the DJ and asked him to give us the mike. He refused, which made JT punch him so hard that he fell down. He switched off the music and gave me the mike.

I pointed to the boy.

Me: Hey you! It takes balls to fight with a man one on one. If you are man enough, I am waiting outside. You little punk!!! This is how we do things.

I saw him coming towards us. JT and I rushed out of the club from the back door. The bouncer at the door didn’t know what had happened earlier, so we decided to take him for a ride.

Me: That boy in the red T-shirt is acting like a hooligan. Please don’t allow such guys in the club again.

As soon as we got out of the building, JT and I hopped onto our bikes. We saw the boy and his gang come towards us even as we revved up our engines.

Me: You dogs!! Tell your mommy, Samrat insulted you!

And we exited from there.

That boy I guess, was Surya. They followed us in a Jeep and three bikes.

Me: JT, let’s go faster.

In 10 minutes we were near the university. Then we saw four guys on bikes talking to a passer-by. When they saw us, one of the guys pointed at JT. When JT saw the guys I could see that he looked troubled.

JT: Shit!

Me: What happened?

JT: It’s politics, stay out of it.

Me: JT, listen. Let’s deal with one problem at a time. I will lose the boy and his gang. We will meet you at college. Can you handle these guys till then?

JT: Sammy, stay out of this. It’s my mess.

Me: JT listen to me. We can get out of this as well. Just meet me at the college in 30 minutes.

JT: Ok.

Me: Rider, stay with him.

R: Ok.

I rode down to Hotel Sadhana and rushed to the reception.

Me: Where is Chota Bhai? Tell him it’s time to return the favour. Samrat Shirke is waiting outside.

I then called Nitin.

Me: Hello, Nitin?

N: Hi, Sammy sir.

Me: Where are you?

N: At JT Sir’s flat.

Me: How fast can you reach the college?

N: Sir, I don’t have a bike with me. It will take 15 minutes. What happened? Is it anything serious?

Me: Yes, kind of. Can you bring the bottle and one pack of cigarettes from Adi’s, and meet me at college in 30 minutes?

N: Ok sir. Your jacket is here. Shall I bring that too?

Me: Yes please. It’s my lucky jacket.

By then, Chota bhai had arrived.

CB: Shirke sahib kaisenba? Aaj itne ratike kaise yaadki ha? (How are you Mr. Shirke? What made you remember me at this time of night. What happened?)

Me: Bas aisa samazlo aaj tumhari, aur tumhare logo ki jarurat he. Tumhare logo ko le kar mere college me chalo abhi turant. (I need you and your men. Meet me at college immediately.)

C B: Jaisen tohar marzi. (As you say.)

And I took off from there ... When I reached the main road, I saw the boy and his gang on the main road. They took a U-turn and followed me.

Boy: Pakado haramiko. (Catch that bastard.)

They caught up with us quickly. Somebody from the jeep hit me with an iron bar. I lost my balance and fell off the bike. I got up immediately and took a U-turn. I had almost reached Hotel Sadhana when I spotted Chota Bhai and his gang.

Me: Ruko, woh log yahan aa rahehe. (Wait. They are coming here.)

I thought Chota Bhai and his gang would scare them away, but the fight went beyond a couple of punches and kicks. I even heard gun shots. Then I realized I entered into pretty serious shit. Only after three of the boy’s gang got seriously hurt, did they take off.

Me: Chalo abhi college me bhi jana he. (Let’s go to college now.)

C B: Sahab, tohar khun behta, gadi me bethja. (You are bleeding. You will ride with us.)

Me: Nahi, main thik huhoon. Jaldi chalo der ho rahi he. (I am ok. Let’s go, it’s getting late.)

On our way to college, I picked up Nitin from Adi’s. Soon, I got a call from JT.

JT: I am about to reach college. Where are you?

Me: I am reaching too.

When we reached college, I saw JT was being followed by two bikes. I signalled Chota Bhai to ride towards them. His gang took care of the bikers.

C B: Sahab aavathai. Kuch jarurat lage toh bataye. (It’s all been taken care of. Just give me a call if you need any help.)

I smiled at him and said, “Zaroor”. (Sure, I will)

Chota Bhai and his gang took off.

Me: Are you Ok JT? Oh shit, you are bleeding. it will now swell up like anything.

JT: So are you.

We both looked at each other and laughed.

Me: Thank you Ganu and Rider for sticking together.

JT: Nitin, how come you are here?

Me: I called him here.

N: Here Sir, take your jacket and get rid of that torn shirt.

Me: You leave for Gujarat tonight. I will send your stuff there as it’s not safe here.

JT: Yes, you are right. But tell me one thing. How did you manage to bring the gang?

Me: Have you heard of the Shirke Group of Industries? It turns out that I share my name with one of their heirs. Chota Bhai's gang is indebted to their family and I knew they wouldn't refuse me any favours if they thought it was my namesake calling. Luckily they have never met him and hence do not know what he looks like. All I had to do was make a call and here they were.

---

I was left marvelling at Sammy's resourcefulness and bravado. 'Here is a man of rare ingenuity and presence of mind,' i thought. There was no situation he couldn't think his way out of. He had been through a lot after all. The daily grunge of college life, as well as his girlfriend’s heartless choice to separate from him had resulted in transforming him entirely. Gone were the times of his innocent and gullible ways. This was a man who lived by his own rules.

By now, all of you are probably wondering who I am. I am Nitin, Sammy's best friend, and your humble narrator.

Rider and Ganu eventually left for their flat and it was just me and Sammy in the parking lot. That was where Sammy proceeded to narrate the entire story to me. I was now the only person besides Sammy and his girlfriend, who knew this story. This was where I had my first thoughts of penning the whole thing down one day.

It was close to 5:30 in the morning when two black Mercedes’ drove in. Yosha stepped out from one of them.

Y: How is he?

Me: Pretty damaged.

Sammy was leaning against his bike, one hand was busy with a bottle, the other held a cigarette.

She walked towards him and kissed him.

Me: Yosha, please leave him alone. He is pretty damaged.

Y: I only like damaged boys.

As she was saying this, Sammy took off his jacket, put it on the bike and walked towards the car. It was then that I noticed a tattoo on his back: a big “A”. He was holding a red handkerchief, which he dropped. I rushed towards him,

Me: Sammy, wait. Just tell me who she is. She is Alicia, isn’t she?

He looked at me and smiled.

Me: I knew it. She is Alicia Sethi!

He didn’t look at me but went straight to the car. A girl in a red dress stood near the car, holding a blazer. He went to her, took the blazer and wore it. I asked Yosha where she was taking him.

Y: Far away from this nonsense. He doesn’t belong here. Will you do one thing, please?

Me: What is it?

Y: Please repair Sammy’s bike and return it to his brother.

She handed me a bundle of cash.

Y: His number is inside.

Me: Anything for Sammy.

Sammy and Yosha stepped into the car and drove away.

The End

Please mention your valuable opinion about my story. Or mail me on nikhil.bhoskar@gmail.com