The Serpent's Last Sigh

One year later.

2012-01-02T10:13:00.000-08:00

Another year - and a chilling reminder that I last posted on this blog in January 2011. I could've sworn it was just yesterday. Time's a cruel master, isn't it? I feel faded. Not withered, though. Thankfully, a regular diet of calorie-rich food has ensured that I look spherical. This makes me even less prepossessing than usual.

I wonder if a story posted on this blog would even elicit a response now. Is there anybody out there?

Hiring at The Bank

2011-01-07T09:33:00.001-08:00

The floor on The Bank's corporate office, on which I spend a few hours daily contemplating the futility of modern life - in other words, the floor which hosts my workstation - is also popular with the Human Resource Department for holding it's interviews.

So it wasn't really a surprise when, making my daily break for freedom, I happened to pass a prospective candidate speaking to the HR recruitment manager (who had, I presume, been present for the interview).

The candidate must have expressed some concern about her background (educational/professional) was not suited for banking and whether that diminished her chances.

"Here at The Bank we think out of the box," the HR girl simpered, "We have engineers who have done very well in CBG - Corporate Banking, and so on. We don't recruit people only with a Banking background, we believe in hiring all sorts of people so that they too, in turn, are able to, um, think out of the box and bring something different to their teams."

"Typical HR spiel," said my fellow-escapee as the doors of the lift closed before us.

"Topical, rather than typical," I replied.

"How so?"

"Why do you think we hire people without a clue about Banking?"

"Because we can't afford to pay a Banker's salary?"

"No, silly. It's because a Banker would realise within a week that The Bank doesn't have the first idea how to do what it's supposed to do - Banking!"

"We don't?"

"We're like an army made of potters, poets and cooks that is afraid to hire an actual soldier because we're afraid he'll laugh at us."

"Hmm, that does make a lot of sense."

"I always make sense."

"So do you consider yourself a banker, then? Are you the soldier that's laughing at the rest of us civilians?"

"Me? Hell no, I'm worse than all of you. I'm the court jester that doesn't even want to be in the bloody army!"

"I suppose I'll see you on Monday," she said, as her chariot pulled up.

"As surely as pigs have wings," I nodded back, starting the long walk home.

The dust from the construction site opposite The Bank swelled up before me. I coughed as I strode past, wondering if the poor, uneducated schmucks working their daily-wage jobs to make enough money to buy their next meal, were as clueless about the poison they were breathing as those in the building opposite.

The only difference, sometimes, is in the colour of the collar.

Poke

2010-10-23T07:25:00.000-07:00

It moves!

Yes, and I'm still alive and - this is the bad news I guess - working on another Elver story. You have been fairly warned.

Solitude

2010-04-04T10:31:00.001-07:00

I sometimes wonder whether I ever really asked for much from life but to be left alone. Unfortunately - and I do not doubt that a large part of it is my own doing - that is one thing that has not happened. Life barges into my world, demanding stuff (like waking up in the morning) that I really would rather not do.

There used to be a pleasure in going out and meeting people, in knowing more, in working, even. It seems to have gone to that place where my will to fight and my desire to express an opinon went some years ago.

"Solitude" was once a poem in my school textbook by W. Cowper. Now it seems to have become the one thing I cannot have.

Learning something new.

2010-03-18T11:05:00.001-07:00

I recollect that one of the things they told me – back when I was still undecided about whether I should join the stinking hell-hole (quite literally – try going near the coffee-machine) was that it would be a ‘wonderful learning experience’. Over the last few days, I’ve come to realise that this was no idle boast.

I have learned, to be more specific, a quite brilliant way to pay yourself out of company funds without reporting it to the relevant regulators or paying tax on it or anything else. Here’s how:

Let’s say you’re the MD & CEO of a (purely hypothetical, of course) company called i3 Infotech Pvt. Ltd. For the purpose of this illustration, we shall assume your name is V. Srinivasan. You are rather chummy with some of the people who work for you in this company – some jolly chaps who we shall call Feroze, Shivanand, Sripat and Meherzaad.

Well, you set up a subsidiary company of i3 in Mauritius – a shell company that does nothing and is fully capitalised by the parent company in India. Then you set up another shell company in Cyprus that does, if possible, even less.

That done, you invest in the shares of the second company at 1 Euro per share and buy – oh, let’s say about twenty shares in the names of these chums of yours – the ones who work for your company and all that.

Then, about a year later, you sell these shares (of the company that does nothing and as such cannot really appreciate in value) to the subsidiary in Mauritius. Those twenty Euros now become worth about 526,000 US Dollars. Yessirs, that’s an appreciation of 1,314,900 percentage points in one year.

After that, you pay the money to those chums of yours as purchase consideration for those shares. I suppose later you have those chums send the money to you – I haven’t learned that much yet.

What I have learned, though, is that the money invested by shareholders in i3 Infotech has been paid to its top management tax-free, without any reporting and without any declarations being made.

Somehow it’s something I wish I’d never known.

Another year goes by

2009-12-13T11:53:00.001-08:00

And I feel wearier than ever.

Win number 100

2009-11-27T19:49:00.001-08:00

A copybook win for the Indian team. The pattern was perfect – bat first, make a big score, enforce a follow-on and pick up the innings victory. This is the sort of thing that never gets old, I guess.

Through the wringer

2009-10-09T21:59:00.001-07:00

It’s been one of those horrible weeks (why do there seem to be so many of those nowadays?). Working till late in office everyday and bad news on a couple of other fronts as well. I’m beginning to seriously question the sanity of continuing to do what I’m doing presently. I know the road goes ever, on and on, as Bilbo Baggins so elegantly put it (or was it Gandalf? I’m feeling too beat to even open my favourite book and find out) but doesn’t a poor hobbit like yours truly ever get to sit and rest and ponder for a bit sometimes? This stupid corporate rat race is making me feel more and more like vermin with each passing day.

The Passion of the Serpent

2009-09-08T08:58:00.001-07:00

The powers-that-be in this Kafka-esque organisation where I earn my daily casserole have decided that I needed some passion infused into my completely disinterested soul. So the next two days will see me trudging to a place called Chandivali, a spot so remote from civilisation that it takes over an hour to get there from the nearest railway station.

Even for a headless chicken I sometimes think this company is remarkably clueless.

Oh well, eastward ho!

Inevitable

2009-09-03T07:12:00.001-07:00

Well I guess once the media cottoned on to the fact that Fisichella would make a better driver for Ferrari than the perennially incompetent Badoer, it was only a matter of time before the powers-that-be cottoned on as well.

Where did that one come from?

2009-09-01T08:36:00.001-07:00

Giancarlo Fisichella’s 2nd place in this Sunday’s F1 Grand Prix definitely falls into the category of things that have no reasonable explanation. I know it’s been one of the very random seasons in F1 where anybody stands a chance to pull out a win, but still this was way more than even their greatest fan could’ve expected. Let’s just hope they stay on track and pull out a win sooner rather than later.

Checking for life

2009-08-16T10:15:00.001-07:00

Took a pulse today. Is there any future for this blog? I’m becoming increasingly sceptical.

An unwanted weekend out

2009-05-07T09:02:00.000-07:00

Our new boss - about whom the best thing I can think of saying right now is that he probably isn't a serial killer - has started his innings in charge of the team with an act of Nero-esque wanton-ness. He has scheduled a "Strategy Meet" that will occupy the entire weekend. For those of you not in the know, a "Strategy Meet" is a self-defeating exercise in gaseousness wherein various stakeholders try their hardest to prove that the meet itself is not a colossal waste of time.

Bah! I'm a most unhappy Elver.

Photos from our Ranthambhor Trip (9-14 April 2009)

2009-04-28T10:33:00.001-07:00

Tea with a Tiger

2009-04-15T08:12:00.000-07:00

Wild...desolate...stark...lonely...beautiful.

Have just returned to civilisation after a 5 day trip into the heart of the forests of Ranthambhor. A truly awesome experience, I must say - even my rather jaded senses were awakened and somehow brightened by witnessing nature at its finest up close and personal. In fact, I'm quite tempted to write a little travel story about the whole thing, but I doubt it's something I'd do at all well.

I'm back!

2009-01-17T21:04:00.000-08:00

Yup, feeling pretty well and armed with a new laptop too. Hopefully I'll have an idea or two soon as well. Apologies to those who have missed me or my writing, I shall try to be less lazy and more sensible. The two tend to be mutually exclusive, after all. Well, toodle-oo, then. I'm off to waste a lovely Sunday morning.

Things are looking up!

2008-10-06T08:29:00.000-07:00

And I'm trying to do the same. This works pretty well when conscious.

Bony hands hover

2008-07-05T11:11:00.000-07:00

A year ago - approximately speaking that is, if I was a more dedicated blogger I suppose I would go back and check on it - I'd written that I would be on a bit of a hiatus on account of a troublesome spinal infection that made it very difficult to sit at a computer. A few months ago I seemed to have gotten the better of that disease and found the time to write that piece of priceless crap titled "The Election".

Well, as it so often happens, I was wrong. The infection has re-surfaced, proving that diseases seem to be a lot more drug-resistant than your average Colaba junkie. Don't know how long I'll be laid up this time, or whether I'll be getting up much. Since I don't have too many good ideas anyway, this won't make much difference but at least I can pretend that its the disease and its consequences and not my lack of creativity/ambition/skill/inclination/[insert your favourite noun here] that is the reason for the absence of any updates on this site.

If I get out of it this time, I promise to invite all the readers of my blog over to my house for dinner. Yes, all three of you! Imagine that!

The Election : Concluding Part

2008-04-03T08:25:00.001-07:00

[All bad things, like all good things, must come to an end]

“Pastille? Hold on a second! You fellows were behind the Pastille campaign?”

“That’s what I was getting at, yes.”

“But this makes no sense whatsoever! If you were supporting Pastille, how the hell did you get appointments with Korchell’s office?”

“I don’t know. I assume the Party over-ruled Prawnson” I said.

Elsin flung down her pad onto the carved marble table.

“Are you idiots telling me, at the end of all this, you don’t know how Korchell chose you as his closest aides? Do you take me for a fool?” she yelled, shaking her finger at me.

“I honestly swear I do not!” I said, throwing my hands up, “We sincerely worked for Pastille. The speeches I wrote for him were some of the finest writing I’ve ever done. Fenderis used all his floor-management skills to get people to our rallies. Fatty poured money like water into buying alcohol for the masses. Hedyikk personally threatened at least a dozen families in every locality that he would chop off their heads if they voted for Korchell. Winter and Ariel launched a massive charm offensive on the Trade Union leaders. Ariel even took up employment teaching Junichiro’s niece piano so that she could spy on him. I’m not proud of all we did – we bribed people, we intimidated them, we had the girls seduce them, anything it took to prevent Korchell from winning. I don’t know how many trips Ariel made to the confession room at Church, or how many tears she cried into her pillow at the compromises she had to make with her dignity and self-respect” – here Elsin snorted as if to indicate she didn’t think much of those two qualities to begin with – “but we felt the cause needed it. That the end – preventing the Capitalists from taking over Midgard and destroying the party – justified the means. When the election results were announced, it was the darkest day of our lives. Everything, all the efforts we had put in, all the acts we had told ourselves were acceptable…the curtain of respectability we had built to cover them had been torn off, and we felt exposed for what we were – spin doctors, bribers and pimps.”

“Five days after he was sworn in as a legislator, Korchell was to announce his list of top functionaries for the posts administered by him,” said Fenderis, his eyes firmly fixed on the ceiling, “he was to have a press conference for it at the Club – in this very room, in fact. Jormund and I turned up, more out of curiosity than anything. Ariel was missing that day, I recall. I suppose she had to visit her beautician. Imagine our shock when he read out our names, along with those of Hedyikk, Winter Coral, Artemius and Mortenson.”

Elsin cast a furious look in our directon. “You still maintain that you have no idea how you got appointed? Then what’s the point of this whole story? You’ve given me nothing!”

“What are you talking about, Elsin?” I asked, “We’ve just confessed to Electoral malpractice, bribery, distributing alcohol on an election day and using sex to get trade union endorsements! What more do you need?”

“It’s nothing their side doesn’t do,” said Fatty, with a dry laugh, “I’m sure she’ll print it, but it won’t have the impact she expects. Am I right, Elsin?”

Elsin didn’t reply, merely getting up from her perch and walking towards the door. Bradohov, in a rare show of chivalry, sprang to open the door for her. We stared at each other for a few minutes. Her departure, abrupt as it was, had left us a little confused.

Finally, Fenderis got to his feet and said, “If that’s that, I guess I’m off home. I’m booked to play a friendly round with Colonel Piddlewiddy tomorrow.”

“I’m signing a deal to buy farm implements from China and sell them back as wrought iron via Malaysia with a 6 ringgit profit,” Fatty said, joining Fenderis. The duo left through the exit near the bar which opens out onto the 18th green.

Having nothing else to do, I figured I’d head home myself. It was closing in on that hour when a few reddish spots appear over the horizon to dispel the darkness of night. I staggered to the door through which Elsin had just left and would have slingshot myself out safely too, had Bradohov not decided that his chivalry only extended to decidedly attractive blondes and shut the door two inches before it made contact with my nose. An adroit stumble, however, saved my nose from disfigurement, and with a glance that would have made Bradohov quail had I been sober enough to direct it at him, I opened the door myself and strode out.

I was greeted in the parking lot by a rather alluring sight. Ariel appeared to be clasping Elsin in a warm embrace, and few things are more edifying than seeing two women who had just been fighting like hungry cats show signs of making it up to each other. But it turned out that I had been rather mistaken, the dodgy light and my blurred vision having made rather a stew of my perception. In fact, it now appeared, Elsin was trying to assault Ariel, and the latter was holding her off by pinning her arms around her back. I stood watching the struggle for a while, before a crisp command from Ariel to “stop pussyfooting and help me put away this nasty snake if you want to get home in one piece” prompted me into action. I intervened by picking Elsin up off the ground and depositing her on top of Bradohov’s battered old pick-up truck. “It was you,” I caught her say, “YOU, you horrid blonde tart! You made all this happen. You’re at the bottom of it! I know it, I just know! Ooh you won’t get away with it, I swear you won’t”

“She’s so feisty,” said Ariel as she started the car.

“And deluded,” I added as we moved out of the Club’s parking lot and towards the National Park, “I mean, imagine blaming you for every little thing. You two JUST don’t get along, do you?”

There was a brief silence as we drove on through the night. It’s a secluded road, and ours was the only car on it that we could see. Surrounded by trees on both sides, the route makes for quite scenic viewing during the daytime, but with only a few stray beams of light now creeping up over the horizon, it looked more menacing than anything else at that moment.

“I don’t know about deluded,” Ariel said suddenly, just as I was about to doze off.

“What?” I asked groggily. “I said she wasn’t really deluded. In fact she pretty much had it spot on,”

“What are you talking about?” I asked her, shaking myself awake.

“Haven’t you ever wondered how Korchell got elected?”

“Pastille lost the election. What else was there to it?”

“Didn’t you analyse the exit polls?”

“No, not really.”

“You probably should have. The Trade Unions endorsed Pastille, but the members voted Korchell anyway.”

“They did! I thought it would be something like that! Am surprised though, don’t the members normally follow the union Leader’s line?”

“The Leaders had privately told the members to vote Korchell, that’s why. The endorsement was to lull you into a false sense of security and try less hard for the general vote.”

“How do you know this?”

“Because that’s what I told them to do, of course. Why are you gaping like a dying fish?”

“I feel like a dying fish,” I informed her, “You were double-crossing us all along?”

“I suppose you could put it that way. But honestly, Jormund, I could see the rebel candidate strategy was flawed from the beginning, and I’d said as much when Winter suggested it. It might have prevented Joshound from taking control of the Socialist Party and bringing it down from the inside, but having a rebel candidate elected didn’t do wonders for the party anyway. It only weakened the hold of the party on the electorate. Moreover even if Pastille had gotten elected, he couldn’t have given you prominent posts without you having to leave the party. All too complicated.”

“So you sold us down the river to Junichiro and his buddies?”

“Jormund, don’t be an ass!” she said, her eyebrows arching into a frown, “You know I haven’t done that. Look around you, does it look like we’re being controlled by anyone? I’ve managed to put the best people in charge of the most important positions. You should be groveling before me in gratitude!”

“And how do you think you did all this?”

She sighed, as the long-suffering parents of a kleptomaniac might in trying to explain to their ward the difference between ‘mèien’ and ‘vous’.

“It wasn’t all that difficult. You have to understand that I was cheating on you with Korchell back then, so he was all too pleased to parade me before Prawnson and Junichiro at their secret meetings to discuss campaign strategy. What he didn’t realize, of course, was that I also used to sleep with Junichiro, which meant the latter was totally incensed to see me with Korchell. It wasn’t long before I had the two of them at such loggerheads with each other that they absolutely refused to talk to each other. All communication was in writing, and since it was important to have a secure way of transmitting the written communication, Junichiro hired me to give piano lessons to his niece. So I was their messenger-girl, carrying all the letters around from Junichiro’s house to Korchell’s. Eventually, as you know, the elections happened and Korchell won. Jubilant as they were at things going their way, they still weren’t on speaking terms. The time had now come to choose the important officials, and as you know it’s the party that makes that choice. Prawnson had been appointed to do the needful for Korchell and he had the official party notice with the blanks in place of people’s names with him. Naturally he wanted this document to be filled in by Junichiro, so he slipped the notice to me the morning that Korchell was to announce the names of his officials.”

“Great Marx! And you never took it there, of course.”

“Don’t be silly, of course I took it there! Only it wasn’t the original, it was a copy. Well Junichiro filled it in gleefully and then he filled up my…”

“Spare me the details!”

“I meant he paid me my weekly wages! I was going to say he filled up my purse! Honestly, Jormund, your mind is a trash-can! So I took the false notice and drove over to Prawnson’s place to have it signed. Thankfully, my ploy to get him in trouble had worked. It was vitally important that he didn’t sign the notice at home. His wife was engaged in battering him with a saucepan, which meant he had no time to cross-question me about what had happened chez Junichiro’s.”

“Why was his wife battering him with a saucepan?”

“She didn’t stop to explain, but I’m sure it had something to do with her finding Winter Coral’s panties in Prawnson’s car, her dancing costume and girdle in his study and her lipstick under the sofa-cushions.”

“What? Winter was having an affair with Prawnson?” I nearly fell out of the car in shock.

“No, you silly creature, I planted those things there. When will you EVER learn? Prawnson finally made it out of his house, Mrs. Prawnson chasing him close behind, but he managed to clamber into his car and took off with me in the backseat. Naturally, he had no time to see the appointment notice, which made him a little panic-y but I told him it would be all right, the priority right then was getting to the Club where Korchell was waiting for the notice so he could announce his office-bearers. We got there barely half-an-hour before the press was to arrive. That’s where the most adroit maneuvering had to take place. The original notice had to be filled in, and Korchell distracted. I gave the notice to my accomplice, who wrote your names – and Winter’s and Artemius’ and the rest – onto the original notice. Then he slipped a double dose of laudanum into Prawnson’s Scotch, knocking him out for the rest of the day, but not before his signature was taken on the notice in that woozy state. Meanwhile I convinced Korchell that nothing would prepare him better to face his first big press conference than an extended session making out with me, thus keeping him away from Prawnson and suspecting any foul play was afoot.”

“So that’s where you were the day of the announcement?”

“Exactly!”

“And who was your accomplice?”

“Isn’t it obvious? I just told you he served Prawnson drinks.”

“Bradohov!”

“The same. So that, darling, is how you came to be appointed Korchell’s Secretary and all our friends to important posts. See, aren’t I the clevrest?”

“You’re way beyond clever,” I said reverentially, “But won’t Elsin publish all this? She seems to have put the pieces together. Our appointments are essentially by forgery”

“Oh Jormund, you worry too much. Elsin writes for Human Events – a paper no self-respecting socialist believes a single word of. And since she doesn’t have a single substantiating proof that your appointment was done through forgery, even moderates won’t pay it any attention. In fact, this is the best way for it to come out. Imagine if one of our own party rivals had found out – then it would have been published in a credible paper like The Socialist Today and we wouldn’t have had a leg to stand on. This way no one is going to pay any attention to her allegations.”

“You do seem to have a point. But what about the information she has regarding that Mauritian Bank account? Once she realizes this revelation doesn’t have to desired effect, she will surely publish that, in order to at least take down Korchell and Fatty.”

The car had now passed through the woods and emerged near the township where the workers of the Greater Midgard Spinning and Weaving Company have their tenements. Dawn had broken, and the suns rays were coming in on us straight in from the east. A few rays played on Ariel’s red-blonde locks and lit them up to a pale crimson. Her lips, shaded in a dull red lipstick, looked almost bloody as she threw back her head and laughed.

“Of course she will! I am waiting for her to do that.”

“But…you mean you don’t mind sacrificing Fatty and…?”

“Who said anything about sacrificing Fatty? He’s got at least 2 weeks before Elsin breaks that story; if he can’t cover his tracks and ensure he can’t be implicated in the scandal, he’s not the Fatty we know and love.”

“What about Korchell?”

“Well, darling, to be honest, I’m getting tired of him. He’s fun to play with when you aren’t around, but he gets irritating after a while. I’m tired of him and his constant whining and complaining. A spell in jail won’t do him any harm. I’ve already had Bradohov write to the politburo telling them about his tendency to hold orgies in the Club’s back rooms and some incriminating photos of him with a lissome brunette. He will be fired tomorrow; which means another bye-election. I recommend you let Winter stand this time.”

“What? Hang on a minute,” I shouted. My head had begun to spin. The car seemed to be dancing the tango with the kerbs, and for a moment I could not have sworn whether the clips in Ariel’s hair weren’t really horns.

“What’s the matter?”

“You’re still sleeping with him? What orgies are these? Who’s the lissome brunette? How can Winter win an election? She’s an ex-stripper!”

“How many questions you ask! If only you would wait to hear me out. Yes, I am still sleeping with him. You can’t neglect me the way you do, not meet me for days and weeks on end and expect me to just bear it. The orgies didn’t really happen, but Bradohov will product receipts and invoices to prove they did. The lissome brunette is me in a wig. And Winter will win because the Capitalist Party will be in such shambles by the election that they won’t have a leg to stand on, let alone a candidate to promote.”

“And how do you figure that, O modern-day Machiavelli?”

“I figure that, O modern-day Yorick, because the Economic Offences Wing, when they investigate that Mauritian account, will be less interested in whom the payments were made to and more interested in where that account got funded from. Fatty did some investigation into that, and guess who’s been putting slush money into the account? Korchell Jorkell SENIOR and Yachirobi! Yachi has been paying bribes to Jorkell Sr. for years to keep his own dealings in Nigeria and Kenya secret. Oh just you wait, Elsin Fasttrack, just you wait – the Capitalist Party in Midgard will be finished! Their reputation will be mud! You should see the debits to Nigeria! Jorkell Sr. and Yachi will be looking at nothing less than forty years! Nothing can prevent Winter from being elected. Now tell me – aren’t I the wonderfull-est? And don’t you love me more than anything else in the whole world?”

I didn’t answer for a while. The scenes unfolding outside the window were the daily rites of the urban poor – washing their clothes, waking the babies, washing the grime from their faces, boiling the morning cup of tea. Every few years, they went to the polling booths to vote for the candidate they thought would give them a better life.

I looked sideways out of the corner of my eye. Ariel was speeding along, doing eighty miles an hour, humming “Fur Elise” softly, the ends of her lips just slightly curled. She looked sublime, like a divine Goddess, her arched eyebrows, green eyes and high cheekbones combining to give an impression of haughty superiority. “Yes, darling, of course I do,” I said, answering her question. The puppet does well to agree with his mistress.

[And thus it finally comes to an end. I don't know when or if I will ever write again. This one has been just too difficult to do. I just hope this last effort doesn't make people wish it remains, indeed, the 'last' sigh of the Serpent]

The Election - Part 4: The Vast Right-wing Conspiracy

2008-03-29T04:00:00.000-07:00

[As always, it follows Prts I, 2 and 3]

“I’m…errr….I’m sorry,” said Elsin, not a little fearfully. She might have been an evil, manipulative little Capitalist, but even Elsin couldn’t help being intimidated by the sheer menace of Bradohov’s personality. Old-timers at the club still recount the story of how Bradohov, in his Union-leader hey-day had once confronted a whole batch of B-schoolers on a factory visit to the Midgard Glass Factory and got them to make a contribution to the Worker’s Welfare Fund.

“I said, GET OUT!” said Bradohov, gesturing impatiently towards the door.

“But…but…my story, I…please!” whined Elsin.

Bradohov wasn’t listening, however. With a grunt, he advanced on our little group and laid a powerful hand….on Ariel.

“You! I’ve ‘ad my heye on you, I have. You’ve been provoking everybody in ‘ere all evening. All the time I’ve known you, you ain’t done nothing but provoke people. Half the fights in here start because of you! I’ve had about as much of you as I can take. This is a respeckible establishment, and people like you just don’t belong!”

The look of joy on Elsin’s face is beyond my descriptive powers. Ariel, on the other hand, seemed to be taking it pretty well.

“Don’t be ridiculous, Bradohov, I’m paid to play the piano here. You can’t pitch me out like that.”

“Yes I can. Consider your contract terminated. Now get out!”

“Jormund!” exclaimed Ariel.

“I say, Bradohov, old chap,” I said, getting to my feet, “This really isn’t on, you know! Not cricket, old chap.”

“Let’s not ‘ave a scene ‘ere, Mr. Elver,” said Bradohov, “You can complain to the Party later if you like.”

“It’s all your fault,” Ariel screamed, pointing at Elsin.

“Listen to the nice man, Miss. Pachyderma,” gloated Elsin.

“If I leave now, you won’t be able to hear my part of the story,” pointed out Ariel, “So you’d better tell Bradohov here that you weren’t provoked into throwing that cup.”

“Anything you contribute won’t be worth knowing,” said Elsin, “so don’t let that keep you.”

“Are you quite sure?” repeated Ariel, “Don’t come groveling to me later.”

“When I need tips on how to be a tart, I’ll consult you. Until then, you can keep your own counsels with my compliments.”

With a toss of her head that would have crushed the spirit of a more sensitive soul than Elsin’s, Ariel, began to walk towards the door. I moved to follow.

“Where do you think you’re going, Jormund?” asked Elsin.

“Where do you think I’m going?” I shot back, “Wherever she is.”

“You have a story to finish, and you’re finishing it,” Elsin laughed, “Or else that little bit about the Mauritian Bank account makes it to tomorrow’s afternoon edition. Think about it.”

I hesitated.

“I’ll wait for you in the car,” said Ariel in a steady voice, “you’d better feed this demon her diet of deceit.”

“Keep the heater on,” I muttered, turning back to return to the sofa, “We won’t be long.”

“So Korchell had scored the party nomination,” said Elsin, consulting her notes, “what happened then?”

“We weren’t happy. None of us were, and we let him know it. I think it was Fenderis who started the name-calling. ‘Spineless photograph of a child artiste’ is what you called him, isn’t it?”

“Yes, that’s about when he socked me on the nose.”

“Then Hedyikk joined in, of course, and things were going rather badly for Korchell, until Winter Coral stepped in and separated them. Thankfully no one was seriously hurt, though Korchell did limp with his right leg for a few days after. Anyway, the gist of the argument was that we felt Korchell was not fit to represent the party – and I’m sure few people in our party – or yours – would disagree.”

“Winter Coral separated them? She’s a slip of a thing!” said Elsin.

“She also once killed forty-five Sith in under an hour during the siege of Marshanband. If I was you, Elsin Fasttrack, I’d be very careful what I wrote about General Winter Coral in that dishrag you call a newspaper,” said Fatty in the low respectful voice we usually used when referring to Winter.

“We parted in high dudgeon. Korchell accused us of being ‘insiders’ and we told him he would surely be the end of the Socialist movement in Midgard if he ever got elected,” I said, “though at the time I must say I didn’t see much real chance of an ass like him getting elected. After all a novice Socialist like Korchell would stand no chance against Junichiro, who we expected would stand from the Capitalist Party.”

“The blow fell two days later,” said Fenderis, dreamily, “We were playing golf, on these very links. Bradohov was caddying for Jormund who was partnering me against Coral and Artemius. We were losing badly. Of course, it wasn’t entirely our fault. Bradohov’s caddying isn’t unlike his waiting on tables. He invariably gives a putter when you want a 9-iron and a driver when you ask for a mashie niblick. Playing against Coral is never easy when she’s playing to win. On this occasion she was dressed in a corset-like red top and black jeans tighter than an Irishman on Friday night. She usually found some way to assume a particularly seductive pose whenever Jormund or I were readying for a putt, which made things even more difficult. We were on the green of the twelfth when Hedyikk turned up, breathless as usual and clutching a pink paper. He thrust the paper at Coral just as she was bringing the club down on a 4-foot putt, causing her to miss by a matter of yards. To this day, Hedyikk considers himself fortunate that she didn’t have her light-saber on her at that moment. Anyway, once we had finished putting the crazy old Einherjaar together again, we took the time to look at the article he was referring to. It was a shocker, all right. The Capitalist party was announcing that it did not intend to put up a candidate against Korchell to ‘respect the mandate of the people in the last election’.”

“Now as we all know,” I rejoined, “the Capitalist party doesn’t respect the Mandate of the people any more than Fenderis here respects a vegetarian.” – here Elsin looked like she might protest, but didn’t – “which set us thinking that there might be some underhanded skullduggery at play, like you are doing right now.”

“Having said that, we only found out through the merest chance. I had gone to the nondescript serving-house behind the Astrologick BBQ where they make the most divine mutton soup, when who should enter put Prawnson, Junichiro and Yachirobi. Thankfully, I was sitting in a dark corner, and us wolves are pretty good at fading into the background when we want to. I won’t go into the specifics of the conversation they had, but you can rest assured I got the gist all right. Prawnson was, obviously, hand-in-glove with Yachorobi. Their plan was to ensure the destruction of the mandate that the Socialists had received. Korchell was just the sort of sawdust-headed moron they needed to accomplish this task. The withdrawal of the Capitalist Party from the election was to buttress their reputation as a party of principle. Once Korchell was elected, Prawnson was to ensure that he was surrounded by advisors handpicked by Junichiro and Prawnson. These advisors would ensure that Korchell would fail so spectacularly and take such terrible decisions that the people of Midgard would be put off voting for a Socialist Candidate for at least the next two election cycles. Meanwhile, Prawnson would ensure the party machinery would be so weakened that we would not be able to recover for a long time to come. Accordingly when Korchell’s term ran its course, Prawnson would defect from the party with his supporters and endorse Junichiro’s candidacy for the seat. In return, Yachorobi would ensure Prawnson’s elevation to a Central position in the Capitalist National Committee.”

“A dastardly plot, if there ever was one!” I pointed out, “those manipulative bastards of the Capitalist Party! But of course, you know what I’m talking about. Junichiro has told you all about this plan.”

Elsin flicked her hair, apparently in an effort to convey that she didn’t think much of what I’d said.

“Anyway, I sped off to Ariel’s flat directly – oh all right, I sped off after I’d finished my third helping of fried mutton – and told them all that I’d heard. We weren’t exactly shocked or anything of that sort, we’d suspected it to be part of a Vast Right-wing Conspiracy ever since the news of them not contesting the election had broken out. But it was disturbing nonetheless. It felt as if things were getting out of our hands, as if the party and cause we loved so much was being sacrificed to the whims of a few all-too-clever people who were playing with the people’s mandate.”

“We were stumped, frankly,” I resumed, “Prawnson and Junichiro seemed to have played the perfect game. There was no way Korchell could lose running unopposed, and he was too weak a character to resist Joshound’s influence once elected.”

“It was Winter’s idea to run a rebel candidate. It seemed so obvious when she suggested it, we all wondered why we hadn’t thought of it first. Korchell might have the party machinery behind him, but he had no ideological moorings within the movement. All we had to do was convince a long-time party member to stand as a rebel and we were sure our superior intelligence and knowledge of the people of Midgard would serve to wean away the party base from Korchell,” put in Fatty.

“We all agreed with Winter, except Ariel, who disagreed with her as a matter principle. In fact Ariel’s disagreement had less to do with the idea itself than it did with the fact that Winter was wearing a skimpy yellow t-shirt, and Ariel considers it her exclusive right to wear skimpy yellow t-shirts,” I said, “so that was all right, really. We had some discussion on who could be a good rebel candidate and finally zeroed in on Fernando Pastille. You know how that turned out. We ran a brave campaign. I wrote his speeches, Fenderis managed his appearances, Fatty paid to bribe the voters with liquor and Winter and Ariel worked the Union leaders to persuade them to shift their supporters to our side. In the end, it wasn’t enough. Korchell won the election by twenty-eight thousand votes, a landslide.”

The Election - Part 3: Into the Night

2008-02-10T10:46:00.000-08:00

[Part 3 has taken more time in the writing than I would have liked. But for what it's worth, here it is. As always, I recommend reading Parts 1 and 2 first. Unless, of course, you do not want to make any sense of the story, in which case it hardly matters]

It was that time of night that some have called the wee hours of the morning. We stood – Ariel and I – on the porch of the clubhouse, the one that overlooked the golf course. The revelry inside was finally showing some signs of abating; after all, even happy Socialists must rest eventually. Elsin had been flirting outrageously with everyone who paid her any attention. Ariel had been cheering herself up by trying to outdo her in grabbing male eyeballs, with some measure of success. They had met a couple of times at the counter and exchanged haughty glances and murmured the count of men who had taken their numbers. Of course, since Ariel generally gave the number of the local Pottery Class on such occasions and Elsin gave that of the Marine Psychology Association, these social occasions always led to considerable grief for potters and marine psychologists in subsequent weeks. I had tried to do the same, though with rather disappointing results, since nearly all the women present were more interested in denouncing “those two tarts” than paying any attention to me. A sensible choice on their part, no doubt, but it left me rather bored with the whole thing. In any case, after the fourteenth time I had been told “Oh shut up, Jormund, look at what that green-eyed trollop of yours is doing with my boyfriend!” I moved out to the porch with a glass of Old Monk and contemplated the rolling greens in whose bunkers, sand-traps and roughs I had spent so many happy, if frustrated hours.

Ariel joined me a little later, a fact I realized when her light touch rested on my arm and her cheek on my shoulder.

“Penny for your thoughts?” she said.
“Was just wondering about what’s been going on, you know. I mean, what’s Elsin playing at? Why does she want to know about Korchell’s election? Why now? And even more puzzling, why does she affect you the way she does? I’ve never seen you cry like you did a little while ago, for such a small thing. You know we don’t have to tell her anything, really. I’ll fob her off with some white lies when she comes around to ask – there’s nothing that can be proved against us.”

“It’s not that simple,” she said, shaking her head and moving away to perch herself on a wicker chair, “Fatty told me a few things while we were dancing that…well let’s just say that she holds all the aces.”

“What sort of aces?”

“One big one, really. Do you remember last year when Korchell swung that publishing deal for Fatty?”

“The one by which Fatty gets to publish and sell the Complete Works of Josef Stalin in every village in Valhalla?”

“Yes, that one. Well, some payments were made in the course of the deal into an account held jointly by Korchell and Fatty from a shady Mauritian Bank account. I didn’t get the exact details, though Fatty tried to explain, but it seems there’s a large scale tax-evasion and money-laundering racket involved with that Mauritian account. Apparently if it comes out, Korchell and Fatty could be looking at jail time, at least six months. Elsin has found out about that account – Fatty doesn’t know how – and yesterday she paid him a ‘little visit’ in his office with Junichiro. You know Junichiro Morigabayumi – he’s the nephew of Yachirobi, who heads the Capitalist Party. Juni owns Elsin’s paper, and he did most of the talking.”

“Smooth talker, Junichiro. He and I cut our teeth in North Midgard together. We never saw eye to eye.”

“I know, that’s what he used to tell me.”

“You know the chap?” I said, frowning.

“Oh yes, we had a brief fling back around the time you tried to run away from me and go to Tasmania.”

“Ah yes, that time. Well anyway, what did the terrible twosome have to say?”

“Essentially, its blackmail. The story of Korchell’s election in return for keeping quiet about the Mauritian account. Fatty told her as much as he knew, but obviously had to admit he didn’t know the whole story”

“Which is why she’s here today?”

“Yes, she’s told Fatty she wanted to get to us – you and me and Fenderis. It’s obviously your call, Jormund, but I…well we can’t let Fatty and Korchell go to jail.”

“But what does she want, really? What’s Elsin’s agenda?”

“To get you out of politics,” said Ariel plaintively, “it’s hardly a secret that the Capitalist establishment sees you as a threat.”

“She already has the story of the Mauritian Bank account. That should be enough to finish Korchell off politically. He would never be elected again after jailtime. Fatty’s business interests too would be seriously compromised.”

“It’s not about Korchell, darling. It’s never been about that little idiot. Even if he gets put in chokey, Artemius will still head the Academic Committee. Hedyikk will still be in charge of security. Coral will still be the leader of the Conclave. Mortenson will still be in charge of the Unions. Nothing will really change. Korchell going to jail will only mean you and Fenderis will have to find someone else to be a front for the Socialist Party in Midgard. Fatty going to jail will break his financial clout but you will always be able to find some other plutocrat to bankroll your faction of the party. She needs to discredit you and Fenderis.”

“And you think we should let her?”

“You know what we did, Jormund. What I did.”

“We won’t need to go into details. I’ll resign tomorrow, and tell Fenderis to do the same. We can’t have Fatty and Korchell go to jail for us!”

“Oh, I’m afraid that won’t do!” came Elsin’s voice, sounding rather distressed, “I don’t just want to see you out of office, you know! I want to see your political career over. After all, if you resign honourably now, you’ll just come back some time later.”

She had emerged from behind the curtain. There was no telling how long she had been there. Obviously, being small had its advantages in a profession like hers.

“Hello, Elsin,” I said, in hollow tones, “I suppose you realize you’re effectively blackmailing us?”

“I prefer to call it a loaded negotiation,” she replied, smiling sweetly.

“Are Fatty and Fenderis still out there? I don’t hear the music,” I asked, moving back towards the door.

“They were when I left them, Fenderis had started on the chicken legs and Fatty was attacking the cottage cheese. But almost everyone else has left, including Jorkell,” replied Elsin.

“Then let us go in. I suppose its time we got this over with.”

I let her lead us in. As she had said, the crowd had dispersed almost entirely. Apart from a few stragglers supporting each other across the floor towards the parking lot, the only people left were Fenderis, Fatty and the redoubtable union leader-turned-waiter, Bradohov, who never took orders from the Club patrons but seemed to follow pretty much his own inclinations in matters of serving.

We settled ourselves around a yellowed old marble table just to the left of the piano. Fenderis stretched his rangy figure across several chairs, while Fatty settled on the floor with a bowl of walnuts. Ariel, looking pale and drawn, cuddled on a sofa next to me. Elsin had a smug expression on her face as she set a portable recording device on the table and settled on a wooden chair.

“Well,” she said with an almost jaunty air, “Here we are – the maven, the manipulator, the financier and the moll. The future of the Socialist party? Of politics itself? Let’s hear the worst of them.”

I could’ve sworn she rubbed her hands in glee, but it was difficult to tell, what with Bradohov having switched off most of the lights.

“I suppose you’d have to have a sense of the ironic to appreciate the situation,” drawled Fenderis from his perch on the chairs, “Because the story of Korchell’s election begins in this very place, two years ago. An identical situation, too. Porkovich, the previous MP from Midgard had kicked the bucket and the Club had held a little funeral party – though of course we believe life and death of an individual are unimportant in the larger scheme of things – where we all came and spoke a few nice words about old Porkovich, who had done so much to consolidate the Socialist position in Midgard. The unasked question was who would succeed him. Naturally, there was to be a bye-election, and it was a matter of some debate who would get the party ticket. Finally the party broke up; people started going home – much more somber than you saw them today, admittedly – and Ariel stopped playing songs about passing to another world. We were sitting at this selfsame table – Jormund, Ariel and Korchell were on the sofa over there, I was sleeping on the floor and Fatty was eating salted pistachio. Winter Coral and Hedyikk the Einherjar were with us as well, sipping Rum from a bullhorn. You know Winter and Hedyikk?”

“That impossibly idiotic Viking warrior and the Jedi with a sordid past? I’ve come across them, yes.”

“Yes, well, that’s them. And her past isn’t sordid, she just has a different opinion about erotic dancing than most people,” I said, picking up the thread, “Anyway, Bradohov was serving us the cherry liqueurs – strong stuff too, don’t you remember, Ari?”

“Strong enough to put Jormund into an even deeper sleep than usual that night,” Ariel collaborated, “But that was later. Coral was looking quite gorgeous in that blue Incendio gown of hers with a pearl necklace. Ooh I liked those pearls! It was this really nice arrangement with two rows….”

Elsin made a sound that sounded like a mix between a steam liner grating on one of the locks at the Suez Canal and a railway-crossing guard singing a hymn.

“Are all your contributions going to be on these lines, Ariel?” she asked.

“I don’t know. I’m just telling you my impressions. After all you want the whole story. I was there, so I’m giving you my perspective on it. You speak as though I didn’t even count. Calling me a moll and what not!”

“Jormund, please!”

“We speculated for a while about who would most likely get the party ticket. Coral herself would’ve been an excellent candidate, what with having led the resistance against Ludo Kressh and the Sith, but the electorate was never going to look too kindly upon someone who had been a pole dancer, even if she was a Jedi. Hedyikk himself was seen as too violent, and the rest of us were either too young, like Fenderis, or too lazy to campaign. It was Fatty who…”

“I had got it from Artemius – Joshhound had just been elevated to being Chairman of the Midgard chapter of the Party,” said Fatty, “and he was the one who would have the final say on who got the ticket to contest the election. Korchell knew Joshhound slightly and said this was a good call taken by the party. That was about when Jormund here jumped on him.”

“Figuratively, of course,” put in Ariel, “Jormund never jumps. Never.”

Elsin favoured Ariel with another withering look
“What do Jormund’s jumping habits have to do with what we’re discussing?”

“I mean as he doesn’t jump. With other people. He’s not that sort,” went on Ariel stoutly.

“Does this woman ever make any sense? Fatty, for God’s sake, continue.”

“Jormund and Korchell had a lengthy argument over the issue, including some amount of name-calling, but it seemed as if a truce might have been reached, when Bradohov turned up. You know Bradohov? Good. Well, he turned up with a soiled envelope which he delivered to Korchell.”

“I assume it was an invitation to Korchell to stand for the elections?”

“Yes it was. It was a pretty invitation too, all lilac paper with a gold border and the works. Signed in Joshhounds hand with a rubber seal saying “Chairman of the Midgard Chapter of the Socialist Party”. I remember being quite impressed. It also seemed so important, you know! Korchell was so pleased; he almost began to look like a normal-sized man.”

Elsin glared at Ariel with a look of wonder.

“Jormund, WHAT on earth did you ever see in this creature? You can’t possibly love a person just for pretty eyes and an ability to play the piano! She has no brains!”

“I resent that statement, Elsin,” I said, resentfully of course, “Ariel also has a very pretty tongue. Stick your tongue out at Elsin, old thing,”

Ariel complied gleefully, and then ducked her head just in time to avoid the glass that Elsin had flung at her head. It sailed harmlessly over the sofa and struck Bradohov on the chin.

The fearsome, gaunt figure of the former Union Leader, matted hair, wild eyes and clenched fists emerged from the shadows and glowered at Elsin.

""ere, you, young lady! This 'ere won't do, you know! Get out!"

The Election - Part 2: Home to Roost

2007-11-13T10:48:00.000-08:00

[Part II follows Part I. It should, therefore, be read after Part I. I don't care what your VA tutor told you about how to read RC's]

“Jormund, Ariel, meet Miss Elsin Fasttrack, a rising star in the world of journalism today. She edits the political page of Human Events. Elsin, these are Jormund Elver, Private Secretary to our sitting member for Midgard City and Ariel Triton Poseidona, his girlfriend and pianist at the Club”

“I’ve met Miss Fasttrack, Fatty,” I said, extending my hand with a smile, “she had come to interview our esteemed member of the legislature last month.”

“Human Events? Isn’t that the most Capitalist rag this side of the Arabian Sea?” asked Ariel, her disapproval reaching stratospheric levels, “what’s she doing here?”

“Ah, Miss Pachyderma, that’s the life of a political journalist, we have to be at the most distasteful places and meet all the most odious people.”

Only generations of good breeding, I think, kept Ariel from socking Elsin over the head with a bottle.

“What did Miss Fastsnot say, Jormund? I don’t think I quite caught the last word,” she said haughtily.

“Please inform Miss Pachyderma that she would surely hear better if she wasn’t so busy holding her breath in to push her breasts out.”

I don’t think all the good breeding in the world would have saved Elsin this time, but just about then, Fenderis struck up a jaunty waltz, and Fatty adroitly whisked Ariel off to the dancefloor before any crockery could be seriously damaged.

“What was HER problem,” asked Elsin, looking rather charmingly hurt, it must be said.

“She’s really quite adorable most of the time,” I said reassuringly, “she just doesn’t like short blondes who are quite as pretty as you. It’s an unusual failing, but what can one do?”

Elsin gave a wistful smile, as if to say, “I am so wronged, but I manage to pull along anyway” and turned away.

“No one will dance with me here, I suppose,” she said, “working with Human Events makes me rather a Social Pariah in this part of the world.”

“Oh nonsense, Miss Fasttrack,” I said gallantly, “I’m sure there are many who would jump at the opportunity. Maybe I could interest you in a dance?”

She took my hand with just the right amount of colour firing up her cheek, and we proceeded to join the couples on the floor. I caught a glimpse of Ariel out of the corner of my eye, giving me a critical glare, even as Fatty appeared to be groaning with discomfort. Elsin, however, proved to be a very good dancer, and pretty soon all that was forgotten as we glided across the floor, as happy as a right-wing journalist and a left-wing party functionary have a right to be while dancing together.

“I was wondering if we could do another interview with your boss,” she said, when we were about halfway through the third dance. She had spent the first two-and-a-half dances softening me up by pressing herself against me in the subtle, yet firm way that women with an agenda often have in dealing with men with whom they have an agenda.

“Interview with the boss, eh?” I said, smiling rather stupidly at her, “sure, will get Fenderis to set it up. You remember him, no doubt, he’s arranged the last interview you did.”

“Yes I do remember,”” she said, “isn’t he playing the violin over there by the piano?”

“That’s the lad, talented player too.”

“I was hoping this time I might get to interview your boss without you and Fenderis in the same room? That way, the honourable member for Midgard might actually answer a question himself.”

“Why, Miss Fasttrack, what are you talking about?”

“About the fact that you and Fenderis answer every question your boss is ever asked, Jormund,” she said, her voice still sweet, but there was an unmistakable edge to it now.

“I…I don’t know what you mean, Miss Fasttrack,” I said nervously. The whiskey had definitely begun to take effect. I was feeling light-headed, and her assault, coming as it did, at a time and place when I had been lulled into a false sense of security was troubling, to say the least.

“Is your lord and master so intellectually negligible, Mr. Elver, that you don’t trust him to sit for an interview? Why has he never been on a TV show?”

“I..err…TV is an essentially bourgeoisie medium, we don’t approve of…” I began trotting out the canned response.

“Oh for God’s sake, Elver! Respect my intelligence! Your own party’s ideologues are more than happy to appear on any channel that pays their taxi-fare!”

“I…look, this is kinda unfair,” I whined, “we are only looking out for our respected member of parliament!”

Fenderis changed the tune to a slower, mellower waltz. Elsin smoothly adjusted her steps and gently guided me around the dancefloor. Fatty had given up dancing with Ariel and sat in a corner, massaging his toes silently. She had been asked by a couple of young journalists, but had turned them down and was tapping her feet on the floor as she sipped a glass of what looked like orange juice.

“I guess I’ll come right to the point, Jormund,” she said, in a very gentle voice – I barely heard her above the music.

“That’s probably a good idea,” I muttered. This game of hers was beginning to get on my nerves.

“I want to know the real story behind how you got this man into the legislature. I’ve looked up his past. I’ve checked with people who’ve known him. He’s not the “Great Socialist Thinker” as Mr Fenderis Vulpine so assiduously tries to portray him. It’s debatable whether he’s a thinker at all, let alone a Socialist. More importantly, I want to know how he appointed two complete unknowns like you and Mr. Vulpine into positions of such importance, and now lets you two pretty much call the shots in everything he does. I know all his policies, his positions, his statements are drafted by you. I know he doesn’t dare move a pencil on his desk without Mr Vulpine’s permission. I know he won’t spend a penny unless you give him the go-ahead. This inspite of his father being a powerful bureaucrat in his own right – and a known sympathizer with the Capitalist group!”

“He isn’t the first…,” I began, but she cut me off.

“Oh yes, I know he isn’t the first fool to sit in the Legislature, nor the first to have powerful aides. He won’t be the last either. But I don’t care about the others, Elver. I want to know about this one! He is a threat to all right-thinking men. His – your – policies could shape national thought one day. I need to nip this career in the bud, and I know the best way to do that is to tell the real story of how he came to power. I need to show the people that it is not the innocent, sincere-looking man they elected who is in charge, but the diabolical Viking cousins with no democratic standing, no responsibility to the people and with no allegiance to anyone but themselves!”

I don’t know exactly when I gave up the feeble pretence of dancing. It was sometime during the preceding dialogue. I dropped her arm and walked slowly over to where Ariel and Fatty sat, Elsin following me.

I sat down next to Ariel, who cast a questioning look in my direction.

“Look, Miss Fasttrack,” I began.

“Oh please, call me Elsin,” she said, with a wave of her hand.

“Elsin, then,” I went on, “I don’t know where you’ve gotten your information from and what you are alleging, but there’s no substance to it. Even if there WAS a story to tell regarding the election last year, I would certainly never tell it to you.”

“Come, now, Jormund, you can’t hold me off forever.”

“And one more thing, El-SIN," I said, angry now, "I know your type. I know the kind of journalist you are. You’d stop at nothing to get the down and dirty on anyone you wanted to bring down. Where would you draw the line, eh? If I don’t tell you, you’ll try your dirty games on Fenderis, and if that doesn’t work, you’ll try to seduce our boss himself. You disgust me!”

“No, Mr. Elver, you disgust me. You subvert the system, you undermine the democratic process, all to further your own agenda. You pretend to work ‘for’ the people but you don’t bother to know what they want – because you think you know better. Is it all “for the Greater Good”?”

“I know what you’re trying to say, Elsin, and I WILL take your bait. Yes, I do think it is all for the greater…”

“I think you should tell her the truth.”

Ariel’s clear voice cut through mine like the screech of a locomotive through the stillness of night.

“What?” I gurgled, stupefied.

“It’s no use keeping it from her. You should tell her everything. The whole story.”

“Not the whole story!”

“Yes, you should,” went on Ariel, in a resigned sort of tone, “She’s a shameless tramp. She’ll find out. She’ll sleep with everyone you’ve ever known if she has to, but she’ll find out. It’s better we just tell her rather than she pieces together circumstantial evidence and fabricates the rest. Nasty rotten hussies like this should be humoured. Just…tell her everything!”

“But, old thing, if I tell her everything…what about your reputati-“

“Oh just do it, Jormund! It’s no use! She’ll find out, I just know!” and here Ariel actually burst into tears. I gathered her up in my arms and patted her head gently.

“I hope you’re happy now, Elsin!” I said, reproachfully.

“I honestly don’t give a damn whether Miss Easy-two-shoes here cries a river. Are you going to give me the inside track on the election of the incumbent member for Midgard, or are you not?”

“Yes I am,” I said angrily, “if it makes you shut up and leave us alone.”

“Suits me fine,” she said, with what looked rather like a simper, “now, or shall I take an appointment?”

“You can wait back after the party is over,” said Fatty, who had been listening to us quietly all this time, “For now, I think Fenderis is announcing an important arrival.”

Fatty wasn’t mistaken. A murmur of anticipation ran around the room as Fenderis stopped playing and put his violin to the side. A short, stocky man emerged from the wings behind the string quartet. He waved tentatively, and the assembled crowds broke into wild cheering.

Fenderis took hold of the microphone and said, in his most dignified voice,

“Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the sitting member of Parliament for Midgard, the Right Honourable Mr. Korchell Jorkell!”

The Election - Part I: Distant Rumblings

2007-11-12T11:07:00.000-08:00

[This story comes, I realise, more than a year after the last, a pleasant little effort called "L'Affaire Rizaveta". Well, at least I thought it was pleasant. "The Election" is different from anything I've written before, in that it is completely fictional. The characters are real enough, and I daresay I may tell a few truths along the way, but the premise remains to tell a story, not craft an allegory. If there is evidence of rust - a year is a long time to stay away from fiction - I humbly request your indulgence.]

“The best place to begin,” an old geezer who knew a thing or two about horses once told me, “is at the beginning. Then, one should go on to the middle, and if the end is in sight, make a dash for it.” He was referring, I believe, to the Grand National in the year that Kais Kous won it by a nose from Muslintang, but I’ve generally found the approach to work just as well in telling stories. But…I don’t know, one gets restless – it seems to make sense to try something different, even if for no particular reason, and of this urge, I suppose, the following story is born.

It all begins at the Socialist Club of Upper Midgard, that hoary bastion of the anti-Capitalist movement, ensconced comfortably between the woods of the National Park and the club’s own golf course. A picturesque post-colonial structure houses the club, which is the meeting ground of the leading members of the Socialist Party and functions, for all intents and purposes, as the Party HQ. It was the last day of the monsoon session of the State Legislature and we had won a significant victory over the ruling capitalist coalition, blocking a new Bill that proposed preventing employees of private flour mills from forming Unions.

The sounds of revelry ringing through the halls of the Socialist Club of Upper Midgard were unmistakable. Glasses clinked, uproarious laughter broke out in places, and every five minutes or so came the sound of someone slapping someone else’s back. Wine flowed like water, and I had the distinct feeling that getting the stains of red wine off the carpet might turn out to be rather an ordeal the next day. But that was for the next day; for now we were celebrating a significant political victory, and it was a time to clink glasses, laugh uproariously and slap each other’s backs.

I was standing near the piano, where Ariel was tinkling out a complicated concerto for the benefit of the attendant public. Fenderis the Wolf stood beside me, poring over some sheet music. He and his wolfish friends played in a string quartet and had been engaged to play a few perky tunes to round off the evening’s entertainment. Of course, he was also the Press Officer of the sitting member of the State Legislature for Midgard city, making him a rather important personage in the whole setup, but like all good Socialists, he was a man of the people, and definitely not above displaying his musical talents at a jolly gathering.

“Are you going to be playing much longer, Ariel,” he asked in a whisper.

She shook her head and mouthed “five minutes”, eyes never wavering from the keys.
I led Fenderis over to the bar to replenish our glasses, where we ran into the fabulously rich self-made millionaire Fatty Lombard, who was casting a benevolent eye over the proceedings.

“What are you playing today, Fenderis,” asked Fatty, taking a fistful of almonds from a plate.

“A minuet, some waltzes…then we will shift to some jolly folk tunes for some lively dancing.”

“Ah, so you’re handling the dance music in its entirety?”

“Yes, Ariel didn’t want to do it, said she preferred to dance than play today.”

“I suppose that means our boy Jormund will have to shake a serpentine leg?” asked Fatty, looking at me.

“Oh geez, I hope not,” I said, pouring myself out a small peg.

“Come now, Jormund,” said Fatty reprovingly, “you’re surely not too lazy to even dance a little with as lovely a woman as Ariel. There are men in this room who’d give their right arm for that privilege!”

“It’s not their arms I’m worried about, it’s my legs,” I replied, shaking my head, “she’s a terrible dancer, and she’s wearing heels today. Last time we danced, I spent the rest of the night dipping my toes in ice.”

“She can’t dance?” asked Fatty, looking amused, “No kidding? Such a graceful figure, too!”

“Yeah well, she does everything else brilliantly well. There had to be some flaw,” I grinned, “I’m glad it’s in something I don’t particularly enjoy much.”

“What about that little flaw where she can’t say ‘no’ to anyone who wants to sleep with her?” asked Fenderis, absent-mindedly poring over his sheet-music again.

“That’s not true!” I said heatedly, “she turned down two indecent proposals in front of me just last week!”

“Weren’t they from Maurie Piddlewiddy and Polly Polkiss, Colonel Piddlewiddy’s daughters?” Fatty chipped in.

“Yes.”

“She was always very straight. Got to give her that – religious girl,” said Fenderis, “anyway, time for me to take over, I believe those are the closing bars of that Concerto.”

He strode away from us purposefully, and we soon heard the unmistakably wheezy sound of violins being tuned. I turned back to Fatty, who had emptied the contents of the plate of almonds into his pocket and had now commenced work on the bowl of cashewnuts.

“Our honourable member of the legislature will get some good publicity out of this, won’t he?” I asked.

“Oh yes, he will. I expect he might get a portfolio of some sort the next time the party re-shuffles the shadow cabinet. Prawnson’s post probably, I hear the politburo isn’t happy with him, he’s on the threshold, one might say.”

“Wouldn’t do any harm to just give him a little push over it,” I muttered.

“Ah, you never did think much of Prawnson, did you? Strange, considering you two went to school together.”

“Trust me, I didn’t think much of him then either,” I replied, and old readers of this blog would know why (new readers are directed to the story known as “A Valentine Day Story - Parts I, II, III, IV” for further clarifications).

We were now joined by Ariel, red-faced from her exertions at the piano, a look that always seemed to, at least in my opinion, add to her already formidable charms. She ordered a small vodka, and I, quite carried away, grabbed hold of her as one would a television set one wanted to move into another room and engaged her in a quite hungry kiss. Allow me to clarify that dinner had not yet been served.

“I was just pointing out to Jormund that he might soon become the Private Secretary to the Shadow minister for Demand-side inflation – isn’t that what Prawnson handles?” said Fatty, when we had finished – which took a little while, Ariel being remarkably responsive.

“Oh will you, Jormund? Won’t that be nice?” she said proudly, clenching her fists and causing her glass to shatter in her hands. Like most pianists, she has strong fingers.

“Well it might happen. They are thinking of giving our honourable member a kick-up. Of course, shadow cabinet hardly means anything, he’ll have to step up to the politburo or maybe the government after next year’s election for us – I mean, for him – to have any real power.”

“Oh shush, Jormund,” said Ariel, resting her charming head on my shoulder, “everyone knows you and Fenderis handle everything for him. Why, that little pest is only good for using as a toy. Pretty good at that though, you wouldn’t expect a short man to pack as much as he does.”

“A toy? What sort of…,” began Fatty and then allowed the words to trail off, before walking into the crowd and returning with a very pretty young blonde of petite but sinewy figure. She was dressed in a figure-hugging black dress that did very little to hide the contours of her body. Ariel, whose dress was, if anything, even tighter, nonetheless turned her nose up disapprovingly and whispered “Tramp” in my ear.

For fans of the Wolf

2007-10-02T22:58:00.000-07:00

I don't know why I missed mentioning this before, but now's as good a time as any. The cousin (formerly only known as Fenderis and who still maintains a suitably wolfish beard and figure) has managed to get himself published in the Education Times (supplement of the Times of India) in a stirring article on the education level (or lack thereof) of lecturers in Engineering Colleges. While the article itself is presently only available in that newspaper in print, other articles by the same author can be found at his blog here. Since I have heard several people appreciate the Wolf in my hearing (the exact words being "Screw you, we want to read more of Fenderis' amazing restaurant reviews"), I hope this post will lead them to a place where they can read his works and also encourage the man himself to do some more writing.

About nothing, really

2007-09-17T11:24:00.000-07:00

I must make a minor confession. Despite my reputation for unbridled pessimism, I had entered into my new job with feelings as positive as I could make them. Though the company itself figures somewhere near the bottom of my list of "Acceptable Capitalist Organisations", I hoped the job itself would be interesting, satisfying, the co-workers friendly and the superiors understanding and co-operative. These hopes have since been belied. In charge of an unviable sales channel, managing a dead-end product, taking the blame for numbers well beyond my control...even all this would have been acceptable had the other two points - about the co-workers and superiors not been so far off the mark as to be almost pathetic crutches to hang on. The problem is that I can't seem to find a way out. There's very little that keeps me going there.

Crackle...hiss...

2007-09-12T09:04:00.000-07:00

2 months! Dammit, I feel ashamed when I consider I've been away that long. Didn't realise it was a whole month and more in bed fighting pain and a rather frightening nausea to any kind of food. This followed by a month in the confinement cell...err I mean...cubicle fighting pain, nausea and co-workers. The struggles have left me a rather hollow shell of my former self, or to be more accurate, looking rather skeletal. But the fight continues, as it must.

"The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with weary feet,
Until it joins some larger way,
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say."

A wise old man once wrote.

Reviews at work, Social minefields at home and technology issues everywhere. One of these days a fork will come in that road. A fork leading to a lighted inn, a warm hearth and a comfortable bed. Then let those who will carry on. I'll go get my sleep.

Just Desserts

2007-07-10T07:21:00.000-07:00

This was really meant to be a reply to the comment to the last post, but I thought it best to put it up as an update for the few who might be interested. At the end of some intense diagnosis, which involved a lot of poking, prodding, asking me to walk on my heels and shutting me into a large contraption the size of a room in which I had a half-hour's sleep, doctors have concluded that I suffer from a fairly serious wasting disease of the bones. Medication and a bed rest is in progress.

There used to be a gentleman who used to leave justifiably unflattering comments under the name 'anonymous'. To him, I'd like to say - "Yes, it's true. I have the MRI scans to prove it" and "Yes, it does serve me right." As Ariel says, its a visitation for the many wrongs I have committed over the years.

I don't think anyone reads this blog apart from 'fan' and the 3 people I push and prod offline into reading it, so all I can say to you chaps is, 'Don't worry. I'll come out fine."

Broken

2007-06-20T08:52:00.000-07:00

I suppose some of you have been wondering at my characteristically long absence (and some have been thanking their stars for the same reasons). Well, the answer is not my usual laziness this time - I have unfortunately developed a very painful backpain that ranges from being mildly irritating to excruciatingly painful - the sort of thing that makes me wish I'd never been born.

Anyway, the only relevant point I am trying to make is that the amount of time I can now spend sitting at a computer is seriously curtailed, which means that even if I had the idea for a story I couldn't put it down. Hopefully that situation will change soon. I'm keeping my digits crossed.

Ain't it strange?

2007-04-05T09:50:00.000-07:00

I mean, co-incidences do happen. Like last week I thought I needed some peace and quiet, so I went for a walk in the North Midgard library. Its a narrow, cramped place, but it's the only place you can be sure there won't be the jabbering and chattering of juvenile delinquents around the NM campus. There, wandering through a particularly dusty section, I found a book called The Art of the Dancer nestled between two biographies of the founder of Reliance Industries.

I was...bewildered. For one thing, books like this were exactly the sort of thing calculated to give the trustees of NM violent coughing fits. Rooted as the Institute is in a culture of...well, having no culture..seeing a book that profiled exponents of as sublime and esoteric an art as the Ballet was quite a shock. It looked hurt and suffocated, the jacket, depicting Olga Spessivtzeva and Tamara Karasevina was torn and hurt. I grabbed the book from the shelf, (whence it jumped with an alarcity that suggested that Anna Pavlova had not found the company of Mr Ambani particularly pleasant) and flipped through the pages. It appeared well-written and well-researched. This book didn't just deserve to be read, it deserved to be rescued. But that, I well knew, was beyond my powers. Short of perpetrating Library Fraud, there seemed no way to really rescue the book. So I did the next best thing - issued it out, read it, and wrote a review up over at the other site. You can read it here

The book shall have to be returned tomorrow to its unfortunate place on the shelf. But maybe, just maybe, it will breathe again.

Project Blues

2007-03-22T06:21:00.000-07:00

Not been a very happy time for your beloved Elver. Inspite of it being the fag end of post-graduate education, the North Midgard Institute of Management Education insists on submissions and assignments. Particularly devilish among these is the horrid 'Final Project'. For (almost) every other student, this means copying work done by someone else onto a piece of paper and submitting it. For an idiotic Sea-Serpent it means actually referring to books and typing out a report.

Sigh! I could use a talented typist. Anyone? To take dictation? Payment by the word.

L'Affaire Rizaveta - Part III

2007-01-10T06:56:00.000-08:00

(Finally - the much-awaited [dreaded?] Part Three. I'll admit it's been written to...finish, rather than to tell a good story, but such as it is....here it is - the concluding part!)

Down in South Midgard, near the headquarters of the Midgard Electricity Department, inside one of the narrow lanes that are so typical of the old City (in the suburbs they are so narrow as to deserve to be called ‘tunnels’ rather than ‘lanes’, lies the abode of that divine creature known as Ariel. The building, like so many other of its ilk, is rather stodgy and ancient, having stood from colonial times as a testament to the olden days when hansom cabs strode down the streets of Midgard and one could go to an opera at the opera. It’s a quiet neighbourhood, very respectable, very staid, home to old families with loads of money stashed away in five-per-cent government bonds. The small two-roomer on the first floor where Ariel lived was, therefore, an exception in more ways than one. For one thing, it was occupied by someone who did not have any money stashed away in five-percent government bonds. In fact, Ariel had no money whatsoever, whether in government bonds or in other securities of any sort or description. The other thing that made her house an exception was that it was, every so often, the venue for a delightful evening’s entertainment. It was amazing what she could do in the little space she had available to do it with. But she did, somehow – the lights shone brightly, the little chandelier – imitation crystal – filled the living room with its soft light, the lanterns in the windows lit up the street outside with their cheery luminescence. The little refrigerator in the bedroom always seemed to be full of succulent desserts and fine wine. The Grand Piano in the living room always seemed to sing out the most beautiful tunes, and above all, there was the beautiful hostess – always smiling, flitting from group to group (when she wasn’t playing on the piano, that is), and making sure everything was ‘just-so’.

And thus it was on that fateful day when we – Artemius, Fatty and I – threw a party to celebrate Korchell’s return to his homeland. That we had to do something for him was obvious – it was one of those things you feel obliged to do even if you really don’t want to. Deciding to host it at Ariel’s was the next logical step – she just did it so well, and ever since she heard Korchell’s father was a high-ranking Tax Official who had made a pretty bundle in the scam of ’99, she was quite determined to get to know him.

We had invited everyone we thought he knew from our old North Midgard days, and that came to a fair number of people. Rizaveta had been invited too, and the operative news from our point of view was that she and Sid were having relationship issues. Sid, being the colossal ass that he was, had gotten himself embroiled with Maurie Piddlewiddy (old Colonel Piddlewiddy’s eldest, who had an inheritance of two flats in Midgard) and Rizaveta, tearful and heart-broken, had told him she couldn’t carry on a mute spectator to his lovemaking to the young Maurie. This had been a remarkably stupid move on Sid’s part, since Maurie had promptly turned her favours on to Artemius (Sid, like so many other men are to so many other women, was only charming to her as long as he was Someone Else’s Boyfriend) leaving Sid rather in the lurch.

Korchell had learned of this from the first time we met him after his return at a coffee-shop near the eastern docks, and his reaction had been one of unrestrained joy. In fact, he had upset a table, two chairs, and a pot of coffee in one graceful swoop of his hand.

“I don’t see what earthly good it does YOU,” pointed out Artemius, “It’s not like you could ever muster up the courage to speak to her anyway.”

“But I will!” Korchell had exclaimed with a whoop of joy, “I will now! I finally can tell her how I feel about her! How Sid is like a worthless piece of roadkill compared to me! Finally! But where will I meet her? Jormund, you must set it up! You must find some way for me to meet her so I can lay my feelings before her.”

Which explains why Rizaveta had been invited too. What exactly Ariel had told her when she called her, I did not know at the time, since Riz certainly can’t have known Korchell well enough to expect an invitation, but she had agreed to come nonetheless. Artemius, Fatty, his fiancée Glowrina, and I arrived at Ariel’s at about six in the evening to find the room adjoining her bedroom (which served as Ariel’s boudoir, a living-room, ante-chamber, parlour and study), spic and span as it always was before a party. Glasses had been cleaned and polished and placed at strategic locations around the room. Elegant little candles, bowls and other such bric-bracs had been placed on delightful little wooden tables. The vases in the windows were bedecked with blooming flowers, but even they weren’t as bright as the eyes of the gracious hostess, who opened the door to us.

To say that she looked pretty would be understating the case. She was positively resplendent. Diamond earrings sparkled on her ears. Her hair flowed down her shoulders in clinging ringlets. A pair of crystal hairpins adorned her hair near the temples. A silver necklace with a gold pendant (the one thing she wore that I had bought for her) graced her neck. A very expensive-looking gown slipped over her shoulders into a dangerously low neckline and sheer, shimmerring folds of white silk. Her bare arms were adorned with gold armlets. Rings set with stones (I'm sure Fatty could have named each one, but these things are well beyond your ordinary sea-sepent's knowledge), glittered on her fingers. Her shoes were the most gorgeous black stilettos imaginable. She gave her unfathomable smile at the rest of us, who had all been rendered – I should more rightly say ‘knocked’ – speechless by her appearance.

“There you all are!” she said, “I was beginning to wonder if you were ever going to get here. Come in, come in! Everyone will be here soon!”

Sure enough, it wasn’t long before people started streaming in. There were the three guys named Jiggs, all of whom worked in stockbrokers’ firms, there was Annish, who had a lingerie showroom in the suburbs, Bantu, who claimed his real name was M'urtagh (but it was really Bantu all along) and all the rest of the gang. Rizaveta stepped in a little later. She was not accompanied by Sid, but we were not spared the latter’s whining presence for long, as he turned up shortly after, dressed in a bright yellow shirt under a sequined coat. By the time Korchell showed up, (the last to arrive, as becomes a Guest of Honour), the party was well underway. Drinks (strictly non-alcoholic, given the composition of the guest list) were in everyone’s hand, the lights were dimmed, and Ariel was playing the Moonlight Sonata on the Piano. She’s a good singer too, and invariably does sing at these occasions, but there’s no dispute on what she’s really good at. She’s a pianist of rare talent, and could probably make a living doing it if she chose to. As her fingers flew over the ivories, CJ Riddler, the buxom lass from the flat above, assumed the duties of replenishing glasses and serving the starters.

Korchell Jorkell hadn’t really changed much since our college days. He had been, then, a muscular runt, and he remained a muscular runt. He had discovered a ‘mean streak’ in California (or so he said) and accordingly he dressed in a style that he deemed was very ‘street’. A tiny but noticeable gold earring dangled from his right ear. His far-too-loose shirt had a hood. A large gold chain hung around his neck, which had a pendant that comprised the words 'Bad Ass’ written in a font inspired by that of the AC/DC logo. His pants were slung on so tight that he must have been in agonies every time he took a stride. And yet, though this was a far cry from the smartly-turned out Korchell who used to be the first person in and out of Accounts class in college, there was no escaping his essential Jorkellism.

He was greeted at the door by Artemius and Fatty, who deftly led him around the room, avoiding Rixaveta and Sid, introducing him to one and all, until he came to the piano, where Ariel and I were warbling Johnny and June’s “Jackson”. We trailed off as he approached, and I shook his hand with a smile. Then Ariel turned to face him and held out a hand. The poor fellow looked as if he’d seen an apparition. She was looking, as I’ve said before, extraordinarily beautiful. Playing the piano had left her looking a little flushed from the exertion. Korchell was making gurgling noises, as if he had swallowed a fish the wrong way. Artemius gave him a gentle kick on his calves and Fatty poked him in the ribs, startling him into taking her hand and mumbling something that sounded like the dying breath of a salamander.

“Such a pleasure to meet you, Mr Jorkell,” said Ariel, turning a winsome smile upon his moonlike face, “I’ve heard ever so much about you from the boys. You are even more striking than they had told me you were!”

This wasn’t exactly untrue – the word ‘striking’ can have several meanings.

“I..err…I…whaddiidoo,” he said, reaching a new level of coherence for the evening.

“I’m Ariel,” she continued, getting up. In her heels, she stood about a head taller than him. Let’s just say he was taking in a vantage view of her cleavage without having to alter the direction of his gaze by a single degree. I noted, to my considerable disgust, that he seemed to enjoy the said view considerably. His pants seemed to get rather more uncomfortable, if the grimaces he now began to give while awkwardly moving his feet was any indication.

About five minutes later, I decided I had seen enough. Korchell leaned over the piano while she sang "When you say nothing at all” at him.

“Why the hell is she flirting with him?” I turned to Fatty savagely.

“Oh fiddlesticks, Jormund, she flirts with everyone, but we both know she’s crazy about you. It’s just that she has urges she can’t deny,” replied Fenderis.

I leaped backward two feet and crashed into CJ Riddler, who spilled a platter of French fries onto the floor.

“Fenderis! What are YOU doing here?”

The tall, lean wolf put on an expression of wounded pride.“Why, Jormund! You hurt me! You sound as though I weren’t welcome.”

“You’re not! Who invited you? This is a party for friends and acquaintances of” – I gesticulated in the direction of Korchell, who was now drooling as Ariel sang “I drove all night” – “that viper over there!”

“But I’m your own flesh and blood!”

“And I’ll horsewhip your flesh if you don’t get out! What ARE you doing here?”

“I heard there would be food!” he said, with a forlorn expression.

I sighed. It was hard to be angry with the crazy wolf for long. And in this case, at least, he was more to be sympathised with that otherwise. After all, he had made the long journey from his home to Ariel’s flat, and he was going to be disappointed.

“Yes, there’s food, Fenderis, but there’s no meat. It’s all vegetarian.”

He gave a loud yelp.

“Jormund! Do not toy with my feelings here! Are you saying there is no mutton here?”

“No, nor chicken either. Nor veal, ham, pork, duck or grouse.”

He gave another yelp, a bit more muted this time.

“Oh! The injustice of it all! I even got my violin.” He turned and showed me his violin-case. Fenderis was, in fact, a rather good fiddler. The musical gene is surprisingly strong in the Fenris Brood. He and Ariel could, and did, entire classical pieces together.

“Hmmm,” I said, patting his shoulder comfortingly, “why don’t you go over by the piano and strike up a nice country tune to cheer yourself up and – make her stop singing mushy songs to that little runt.”

“I’ve got a better idea,” said Fatty, who had been silently observing the proceedings, “Why don’t you let Sid loose on Korchell?”

“I shall do just that – if only I knew where to FIND the bastard!” I said, with an evil glint in my eye, and strode over to where Rizaveta was standing, a frown shading her normally bright face.

“Where’s Sid, Riz?” I asked her.

“In Ariel’s bedroom, using the phone. No doubt he’s calling that Piddlewiddy trollop!”

“Who on earth told him he could use Ariel’s phone? Silly ass doesn’t know what’s his and whats not!”

“You’re one to talk!” said Rizaveta archly, “you can’t even keep your girlfriend to yourself. Oh by the way, who’s that little fellow she’s fluttering her lashes at?”

“Why, that’s Korchell Jorkell! Don’t you know him, Riz? He’s the reason we’re having this party. He was in North Midgard with us.”

Riz looked rather puzzled.

“Can’t say I remember, though he does look vaguely familiar. He’s a friend of Sid’s isn’t he? Oh yes, now I remember! He was there the day I first met Sid –sigh – what a happy day that was. Sid was so different from anyone I’d known before. But I guess things change, don’t they?” and she put on such a wistful expression that I almost felt sorry for her.

“That’s Korchell all right,” I replied, taking her arm and leading her to where CJ Riddler had placed the drinks, “do you remember much about him at all? Or Firi and Wild-eye and the rest of the gang?”

She shook her head, taking a glass of fruit punch from the table.

“Only too well. Those were pleasant days, weren’t they, Jormund? D’you remember when you had a little crush on me yourself?”

“It was a very little crush,” I said hastily, “so little as to be negligible. Now why don’t you go chat with old Korchell over there? Cheer you up a bit.”

“I don’t see how, but I’ll go say hello to Ariel at least,” said Rizaveta and started walking towards them.

I made a beeline for the bedroom, catching hold of Artemius along the way. Sure enough, Sid was comfortably leaning back in the bed, phone in hand, talking in his high-pitched breathless whisper.

“Sid, you ass! Get out of that bed and come mingle with the guests!” I yelled.

Artemius was more direct; he leaned forward and yanked the man out of the bed.

“You f#$&*er!!” screamed Sid into the mouthpiece of the phone.

“Maurie won't like being called that,” said Artemius.

Sid’s expression changed into one of pain. It was as if a tractor had run over his foot.

“No, not you, darling!” he mewled into the phone, “I was talking to Artemius! No, I don’t mean to imply you’re my darling. No, I don’t mean to imply you are anything of mine. What? Of course, you’re my friend. Well I meant you’re nothing of mine but my friend. No, you are not my darling. I didn’t mean it in a possessive way. No, you’re not a f#$&*er! I mean, yes of course I know you CAN, I just mean you’re NOT. What was that? Yes, Artemius is here. You want to speak with Artemius? Ok. I’ll wait till you’re done. I’ll be right here.”

Five minutes later, Artemius was carrying on a quite flirtatious conversation with Maurie Piddlewiddy, while Sid waited impatiently, one foot on the other, not quite like Patience on a monument.

I sat on the table, looking over Ariel’s photos – there was a perfectly darling one of her with her mother at Niagara falls when she was six that never failed to bring a tear to the eye. Artemius took the handset out to the mini-balcony at the other end of the room, leaving Sid in perfect agonies of misery.

“I say, Sid, you can call Maurie later. Korchell is here!”

His face cleared up like a tankard of beer when placed before Old Feudal.

“Korchell! Is he here?”

“In the flesh. Should be outside”

Sid shot out of the room at a speed reminiscent of his efforts to catch buses back in our college days. I raced after him, and made it into the living-room just in time to see Sid make an open-armed approach at Korchell. The latter did not see Sid, having his back turned to him as he looked at Rizaveta, who was being introduced to him by Ariel. I saw Korchell stretch out his hand to take Rizaveta’s as she smiled her full smile at him. CJ Riddler stood watching them with a pleased smile on her face, completely ignoring Fatty’s request for more Root beer. Fenderis played a romantic Mozart melody. And then Sid, with a war-whoop, leaped on Korchell from behind, attaching himself firmly to the short man’s cheeks with his right hand, even as his left encircled him by the waist.

Now Korchell wasn’t unused to the ambushes of Sid. In his college days he had been quite adept at pre-empting them and getting out of the way. But time had dulled his senses. Years of an easy life in California had blunted those sharp reflexes of his. He crashed to the floor, knocking Rizaveta over. Sid, little deterred, continued to pull his cheek. Ariel screamed from the shock; I stood dazed, Fatty took the opportunity to empty a bowl of cashews into his shirt pockets, Rizaveta appeared to have fainted, and CJ Riddler dropped the tray with a clatter. And still Sid continued to make fawning noises and pull Korchell’s cheeks.

“Oh you’re so CUTE!” he exclaimed.

Fenderis was the first to come to his senses. He put his violin away and strode over to the two fallen men. Taking Sid’s neck in his powerful grasp, he pulled him off Korchell and kicked him heavily on the side of his hip. Another kick to the groin had Sid slumping to the floor. Then he raised the stunned Korchell, who appeared to have difficulty standing. With a resigned look on her face, Ariel put his arms around her neck and led him to the sofa, where she lay him down and asked CJ to get a glass of water.

I went over to Rizaveta’s side and patted her cheek gently. She didn’t look hurt, just a little winded and I raised her head on my knee. Artemius handed over some punch, which I used to sprinkle on her face. Fenderis landed a few more kicks to various parts of Sid's anatomy before quietly grabbing his violin and making an exit from the door.

“I always wanted to kick that snivelly b@#(*&^” the Black Wolf was heard to mutter in German as he left.

Meanwhile I managed to get Rizaveta back to her senses. The first thing she saw was Sid, lying prone on the floor, in as bad a shape as only a sound kicking from one of the most powerful wolves on the planet can put one in. With an alarmed scream she ran to his side and took his head in her arms, kissing him fervently, with many protestations of concern and regret.

The natural consequence of a fracas of this nature is the thinning of numbers. The rest of the guests weren’t long in taking a cue from Fenderis and making hasty exits, until only a groggy Sid and Korchell, a loving Rizaveta, a ministering Ariel, a complacent Fatty and Artemius, completely oblivious of everything, were left in the house. Apart from yours truly, of course.

“You brute!” Rizaveta screamed at Korchell, “You nasty, violent brute!”

Korchell looked nonplussed from her to me.

“You did this to my darling! You beautiful, delicate darling! How could you?” she went on.

“I assure you,” he murmured, “I had nothing to….”

But it was no use. Rizaveta had got it fixed in her head that Korchell had retaliated for Sid’s actions by clobbering him while she was insensible. From cursing Korchell, she moved on to cursing me for letting it happen, and finally to accusing Ariel of setting him up to it. Ariel, never one to take an insult lying down, responded by calling Rizaveta an ‘insignificant bimbo’ which set off another round of name-calling. It finally culminated in Sid and Rizaveta leaving together, on no good terms with the rest of us. Fatty followed them, eagerly taking notes to be used for telling the story of their reconciliation at subsequent evenings at the Capitalist Club or the Socialist Club. A devastated Korchell lay moaning on the sofa. I sighed and sat around for a while, as Ariel tried her best to comfort the lad. Eventually it got late and I dropped off on the table, my face missing the punch bowl by a matter of inches.

I was woken up the next morning when Artemius, havng finally finished his phone conversation, came into the room and shook me awake.

“Jormund, you ass!! Look!” he said.

On the sofa, Korchell Jorkell and the Princess Ariel were comfortably ensconced in what I can only term as a loving embrace.

I shook my head, turned over and went back to sleep. I’d dealt with enough problems for that day. Or that month.

L'Affaire Rizaveta - Part II

2006-08-02T05:06:00.000-07:00

One of Ariel’s finer points – and she had many – was her ability to know the right moment to say or do the right thing. Accordingly, when I arrived home an evening the following week after an entertaining dinner with Fatty Lombard and Artemius Bondornaike, with a few pegs of Old Monk’s finest sloshing about inside me, she was all smiles and clingy caresses, until I had sufficiently recovered to bear the brunt of a lengthy lecture on the evil of drinking in her absence (Drinking in itself, let it be emphasized, she had no objection to. It was consumption of alcohol in her absence that she had considered a lecturable offense.). Eventually the tiff was resolved by the production of a couple of glasses and a bottle of cheap red wine and more might have happened had the Queen Tigress not swooped down on us and packed me off to my room, while taking Ariel under her wing and dragging her off to the kitchen for what I assumed would be a quite terrific lecture on the cardinal sins like mixing wine with rum..

Nonetheless, breakfast conversation veered around to what had happened at the re-union with Artemius and Fatty. The three of us hadn’t met in a while, and the main topic of conversation had been the fact that Korchell Jorkell had, in fact, called not just me but also the two personages named above. While Artemius had been subjected to a volley of abuse only a little milder than the one I had received, Korchell had actually achieved coherence long enough in his conversation with Fatty to tell him he was coming to Midgard in August for a few days. From there Artemius had gone on to talk about the inadvisability of investing in multi-state wheat futures till at least the next two harvesting seasons were over and the conversation had veered to more neutral topics.

“This is the same Korchell Jorkell who called you last week from Irvine County?” asked Ariel, “the one who’s gone on Rizaveta?”
“That’s the bloke,” I admitted, “will be nice to run into him. Wonder if he’s changed much. He was something of a laugh riot. Barely stood four foot eleven in his pumps, but had developed bulging muscles like iron bands. He looked like a photograph of a professional boxer.”
“Sounds like an interesting fellow,” said Ariel, “was he?”
“Not really, had a tendency to repeat himself that got on the nerves eventually.”
“So how did he meet Rizaveta,” she asked, buttering a slice of bread with a steady hand. I didn’t answer for a while, being quite taken by observing the calm assurance with which her long fingers worked the bread-knife to spread butter over the slice of bread in a simple motion, spreading it out perfectly evenly. As the reader may have guessed, I can’t butter bread very well. A peremptory “Stop staring at my breasts and answer the question!” jolted me out of the reverie, quite harshly, I must say, since I had been doing no such thing.
“Well it all starts with the band,” I began, adding slices of salami to the sandwiches that she passed around to me, “You see, m’dear, Contrary to popular perception, NM did have a English-language band known as “The Porcine Dorganions”, in which I was the bass guitarist and male vocalist. We weren’t very good, it’s true, and our music was vaguely reminiscent of the professional mourners at Rajasthani funerals, but we shouldered the burden of being the last bastion of western culture in North Midgard manfully. On occasion, as on a memorable night in my third year, we even clicked beautifully and made music that people might have paid to listen to. Not paid a whole lot, perhaps, but the fact remained.”

“You aren’t going to wax lyrical about that awful band of yours are you? I thought this was going to be about Rizaveta!”

“The band is central to Rizaveta’s story!” I said assertively, “So let me tell the story at my own pace! First of all there was Firi, the band’s de facto leader, a mild-mannered, scholarly-looking keyboard player, who was leader by virtue of the fact that no one actually disliked him. Then there was Nick Canada, probably the only one of us with any real talent, a somewhat effeminate fellow with long hair and a thin frame. Nick played lead guitar, and his solos were generally the only thing that made our shows tolerable. Wild-eye played the drums, with a manic energy that made more noise than you would have thought possible from the rather run-down drum set that we used. He was even thinner than Nick – a remarkable feat if you consider how thin the latter was – and had a near-savage look about his eyes, which is what had earned him his moniker. Firi’s girlfriend sang lead, not so much because she had a very good singing voice, but because she was Firi’s girlfriend. I don’t even recall her name very clearly, after all we knew her primarily as Firi’s significant other. I was the bassist, and a rather poor figure I cut too, being all fingers and dropped chords.”

“I don’t doubt it for a moment,” she said, chiming in rather too readily with my self-deprecation for my tastes.

“Well at least I didn’t interchange chords like Firi! Anyway, unlike the other, more famous, more popular (and possibly slightly more talented) college band, which played its music in the vernacular and had the best instruments and got to practice in the gym, we had to bring our own instruments and practice in the room adjoining the gym which housed the table-tennis tables. Naturally, this did not render us very popular with the people who actually played table-tennis. They frequently protested against our presence. They offered us money to cease practicing. They resorted to lobbing balls in our direction to distract us from our playing, but since we played rather badly anyway this didn’t make much difference. It was the intentionally misdirected smashes that sometimes caused us some hurt.”

“Did any hit you in the head? That would explain a lot of things,” Ariel interrupted brightly, grabbing an onion ring out of my hand.

“That’s completely irrelevant!” I replied, picking up another one, “In any case, we were playing, or making a bad parody of The Doors’ “Break on Through” - much to the horror of the ping-pongers who were using their paddles to cover their ears between points – when Korchell shot in through the door like a roadrunner fleeing from Wile E. Coyote. He glanced about helplessly initially and then he noticed me trying to be as unobtrusive as possible while playing the wrong key (though the note, I assure you, was perfect).”

“ ‘Jormund! You gotta save me, man!” he said breathlessly.
“ ‘What seems to be the matter, Korchell?” I asked him, still playing.
“ ‘Its Sid. He’s on my track man, he’s chasing after me!”
“ ‘Why the f#$& is Sid f@(#*$& chasing you, you @#$%&?” asked Wild-eye.

“Why are you using such terrible language?” asked Ariel, covering her ears with a seat-cushion.
“Because that’s how Wild-eye spoke,” I replied, pulling the cushion away, “Do you want authenticity or not? Anyway, Korchell continued screaming

“ ‘He’s making homosexual advances, man! He keeps…touching me!”
“ ‘What the !(@# you saying, #$&*@ ? Who’s this @#$& homo? I must see his @((*& ass!” said Wild-eye, and then, probably realizing what he had just said, sputtered hastily, “ ‘I mean just to know who this #$^&$ is. Just because I’m interested, y’know, in the @#*((#. Not interested….interested that way, I mean, just to…”
Seeing that this was likely to go on for a while, I left Wild-eye to sputter without an audience.
“ ‘Sid, eh...nice guy. You’ll like him.”
“ ‘I….DO...NOT…WANT…TO…LIKE…HIM”
“ ‘I mean, sheesh, it’s not like a @#*$ think there’s anything wrong with &^^%$ another @#$%^&* but it’s not for me, I mean, it just wanted to know who this @#*($& Sid was,” went on Wild-eye, now getting up to get a glass of water from the filter in the corner.
“ ‘Would you fellows bloody well keep quiet there?” asked a harassed-looking ping-pong player, lobbing a ball at Wild-eye, who deflected it onto Korchell’s nose with his drumsticks.
“Korchell flailed his hands about wildly, a sight made especially amusing by the fact that he stood, as I might have sad earlier, about four feet ten in his pumps and looked like a bonsai version of a professional wrestler.
“ ‘What do I do about this prick? He’s really making my life here unlivable!”
“ ‘Endure with fortitude,” I said in my best Obi-wan Kenobi voice.
“ ‘What kind of half-assed advice is that?” began Korchell furiously, when the sound of the door opening behind him spurred him into instant action. With a look of sheer terror on his face, Korchell Jorkell raced around the dais and dived behind Wild-eye’s drum set, obscuring himself quite effectively from view.

“As it turned out, the person to enter was not Sid at all – it was Rizaveta, who had come in to talk to Firi’s girlfriend about shopping for shoes. You know Riz – she looked much the same then as she does now, perhaps a little plumper. The petite little frame, brown hair, bright smile. Not an obvious beauty like Desdemona or Dipsomania…”

“Ahem!” Ariel broke in.
“What?”
“Desdemona or Dipsomania?”
“Yes, she wasn’t quite in their class.”
“What about me, you ass?” she pouted.
“Oh you’re in the Ava Gardner – Ingrid Bergman class, my dear. It’s totally different. Anyway, to carry on where I left off…
‘ “Hullo, Riz, looking for something?” I asked, fending off another stray ping-pong ball that had shot from the paddle of Skeeter, the college champ.
“ ‘No, just wandering,” she said cheerfully, “I’m playing hooky from class, and I just saw one of the pigs [JE – the college minions who hunted out bunking students and tried to pack them off to class] outside. I suppose I’m safe here?”
“Safe enough,” Firi assured her, “No one comes in here when there is a danger of hearing the Porcine Dorganions in rehearsal.”
“Our overbearing mediocrity is an effective shield against administrative interference,” I chimed in.
Rizaveta gave me a puzzled look and turned quite pointedly to look at Wild-eye, who was casting a wild eye on her.
“What’s his trip?” she whispered.
“Don’t mind him,” I replied, “he does that to anyone who is technically female.”
“Technically female? That’s rather harsh,” she laughed.
Wild-eye resumed his seat behind the drums, only to find that the space between his mouldy old stool and the drums occupied by a short, stocky young Korchell Jorkell. “Wild-eye doesn’t normally like his drumming technique, such as it is, being interrupted by anything other than the stray ping-pong ball. With a wolf-like snarl, he picked up one of his drumsticks and plunged it into Korchell’s flank.
“Korchell snapped to his feet and punched Wild-eye in the cheek, causing Rizaveta to emit a gasp of horror. The rest of us, quite well accustomed to seeing Wild-eye get punched by bar bouncers, college minions, middle-aged women, sound engineers and even, on one famous occasion, by an impoverished lawyer, barely batted an eyelid. Wild-eye duly keeled over and fell off the stool, off the dais and into a box of ping-pong balls. I won’t go into the details of what he said – you can best imagine what someone with Wild-eye’s extensive power over the English and Vernacular dictionary would say in such a situation.”

“But meanwhile Korchell must’ve spotted Rizaveta!” exclaimed Ariel excitedly.
“Spotted is not quite the right word, I’m afraid. He cast one look at her and started his best impression of a stricken cocker spaniel. He may even have yelped. She looked at him a little quizzically while Wild-eye got to his feet and beaned Korchell over the head with a ping-pong paddle. Unfortunately it had no effect on Korchell, who had always had a thick head. It did shake him out of his trance however and he advanced a few steps on Rizaveta, presumably to introduce himself to her.”

“And how did he do it?” asked a breathless Ariel, who had by now abandoned all attempts to make breakfast.

“He didn’t,” I said with a sigh, “poor chap. Who knows what would have happened if he had? But the fates were not on his side. At that exact moment, Sid sailed in through the door and let out a whoop of joy on seeing Korchell.”

“Oh! Poor Korchell!”
“It all happened in a flash. One moment Korchell was trying to gather up his courage the next he was swamped in Sidd’s ample arms, with an expression as though he had consumed a rotten fish. In his typical gushing style, Sid showered Korchell with compliments on his looks and closed by pulling his cheeks.

“ ‘Jormund, if you have any sense of compassion, drive that Fender Stratocaster through my heart right now,” said Korchell to me in a depressed tone as Rizaveta stared on in open-mouthed amazement.

“I would have, you know. I really would have, and put the poor lad out of his misery right then and there. But something stayed my hand. It was Rizaveta, who shook my shoulder and whispered to me, ‘Who IS the fascinating person with curly hair and a pig-like nose?’”
“ ‘Eh? It’s Sid. The bane of every sane person’s existence,’ I responded. She slowly walked over to Sid who was by now engaged in playfully ruffling Korchell’s hair, while Wild-Eye stared on in awe. Pausing for a moment to smoothen her hair, she proceeded to turn her beautiful smile on Sid and introduce herself.
“ ‘Sid? Hullo. I’m Rizaveta. Jormund has told me soo much about you. Would you like to come out for a cup of coffee?’”

“Ooh!” squealed Ariel delightfully, “Rather bold of her wasn’t it?”
Coming from someone who had a reputation for being something of a predator herself, I thought this was a bit much, but I let it pass.

“Well anyway, there you have it…Sid dropped Korchell with a final pinch of his ass and went off with Rizaveta. A speechless Korchell never got to introduce himself to Rizaveta, and instead tried to take out his frustration on Wild-eye. A terrific fight ensued at the end of which we realized we would not be able to practice for at least a week while our drummer was out of action. I need not tell you how much of a relief this was to the ping-pong fraternity of North Midgard. You know the rest of the story – Sid and Riz are still seeing each other. Korchell fled for greener pastures a year after we graduated, embittered by the fact that the man who was dating the only woman he was interested in was also the one who regularly embarrassed him – making it to Irvine Country, CA as we now know. Whether the story will ever achieve closure I do not know. I hope Korchell’s gotten over Riz. He hadn’t when I last saw him, but California would make a man out of him, don’t you think?”

“It should,” agreed Ariel, “California would make a man out of anybody. I suppose you’ll find out when he gets here. And now you better get to making those sandwiches before the QT comes and accuses us of misusing the kitchen or something!”
I laughed nervously as I resumed putting slices of salami in the sandwiches. There was a feeling of trepidation at Korchell’s anticipated arrival. A denouement was in the offing, and I had a sinking feeling I’d have more of a role to play in it than I’d have wanted.

L'Affaire Rizaveta - Part I

2006-06-21T03:34:00.000-07:00

This story begins on a tranquil Midgard evening some two summers ago. It was one of many that I had entirely to myself, on account of being gloriously unemployed, and had spent in a day of wholesome entertainment beginning with sleeping on the couch in the morning, followed up by sleeping on the floor in the afternoon, and would have topped it off by sleeping in an armchair in the evening, had that fiery red-head Ariel not gotten wind of the fact that I was free for the evening and invited herself to a dinner date. So, the stroke of ten at night found the two of us seated facing each other at an upscale eatery in the suburbs, bringing the collective force of our combined intellects to bear on the all-important question of who should have the last piece of crispy golden-brown prawn.

“I haven’t eaten anything since lunch!” I pointed out, putting the merits of my case, as I thought, beyond any rational rebuttal.

“Yes you have, I saw you eating a slice of cake while you were waiting for me in the car and then you ate at the beach and then you had an ice-cream at the coffee-shop! I am a very pretty girl, and I should get the last piece because pretty girls are always supposed to win.”

“It was only the slightest piece of cake!” I protested, “And I only had the ice cream because the food at the beach tasted so terrible I had to eat something else to get the taste out of my mouth! The two practically negate each other!”

“If you’d only stop eating so much, we might actually make a nice-looking couple. Then we could avoid those sniggering ‘beauty-and-the-beast’ remarks that people keep passing. I’m really doing you a favour, you know.”

“Well I wasn’t fat before I met you! You’ve made me feel all good about myself and changed my life for the better and so on and so forth. It tells, you know. No one asked you to, I mean. Besides, you take such good care of your diet normally. Why this sudden urge to violate it? You always preen and gloat about having the most fabulous figure this side of Kylie Minogue. Why risk losing it? I tell you, one crispy golden-brown prawn leads to another, and before you know it, you’ll look like young Harry Potter’s Aunt Marge. Trust me, old thing; I’d be doing you a favour.”

We would, no doubt, have continued in this strain for some time, but at this point we were rudely interrupted by the ringing of that bane of modern society, the cellular phone. After cursing for a whole minute on the horrible natures of people who did not switch off their ringers in polite company, Ariel kicked my shin under the table to indicate that it was my own that was making the horrible racket.

I fumbled around with the buttons for a while before locating the right one and then put it to my ear, mouthing a cheery “Hallo” into the thing.

What greeted me was a blast of vocabulary that one does not usually hear outside of the locker rooms of the football teams of C-grade colleges in Midgard. Beginning with vague, unfounded allegations regarding my sexuality, the voice at the other end proceeded to dissect my relations with various members of my extended serpentine family, and then hung up.

Nonplussed, not to mention puzzled and shocked, I put the phone back into my pocket.

“Who was that?” asked Ariel, delicately wiping the remnants of what had been the last crispy golden-brown prawn from her divine lips.

“Someone giving me the most awful curses, my dear,” I replied, “absolutely unprovoked and unfathomable.”

“Any idea who? Surely the number showed up on the phone.”

“Nobody I know,” I assured her, as the waiter turned up with the dessert menu, which I deftly returned to him before Ariel had a chance to demand the most expensive item on that as well, “in fact it was a rather strange number. Definitely not a Midgard network.”

“Hmm, let me see,” Ariel said, holding out her hand. I gave her my phone obediently.

“Why are your last six calls to Desdemona?” she asked icily.

“We are…err…working on a project together,” I clarified.

“She, and working? You’ve got to be joking. Come now, tell me the truth.”

“It IS the truth,” I said sullenly, “we’re doing a certain part of the thing together.”

“And keeping your hands to yourself on those late group meetings I hope. I see most of these calls are after dark. Why is this one…1am! Hey, you were with ME that night. What the hell are you doing calling Desdemona when you should only be thinking about…”

“SHE called ME!” I protested, “that’s an incoming call!”

“Oh yes! I remember now! You told me it was from the Queen Tigress! Liar!”

“That’s so NOT the point,” I protested, “you keep raking up dead horses!”

“I don’t see where horses come into it,” she said, “whoever mentioned horses?”

“I wasn’t talking about horses.”

“You were! You mentioned dead horses. You said I kept raking them up. I don’t see why I would rake up dead horses. I don’t even like horses.”

“I was using the horses metaphorically!”

“Are you implying I look like a horse? You are one horrible boyfriend!”

“I never said…oh for God’s sake, I give up. And I can’t help being a horrible boyfriend! I warned you I would be!”

She burst into peals of laughter, obviously enjoying my discomfort. Her warm smile broke through eventually and she patted my hand affectionately.

“Well, now, don’t get all depressive on me. Let’s see….this number is from…California.”

“California?”

“That’s what I said.”

“You must be mistaken, old thing, why would anyone call me from California?”

“Oh I know I’m right – Papa used to go to California pretty often. That’s Irvine County, or I’m much mistaken.”

“Irvine County? I don’t think I know anyone in Irvine county,” I said, nonplussed.

“Someone from your murky past?” she suggested, frowning rather cutely at a noisy baby who had just found voice at an adjoining table.

I gave the matter some thought. For some reason, the name “Irvine County” was not as unfamiliar as it ought to have been. I had heard it somewhere. Then it hit me where I had heard it – old Korchell Jorkell had gone there some three years earlier to get himself educated, or laid, or both. We hadn’t kept in touch much after he’d left, barely communicating more than a few times.

“Korchell Jorkell!” I exclaimed accordingly.

“Bless you!” said Ariel, “when did you pick up that cold?”

“I wasn’t sneezing, it’s a name. Chap I knew in college, I believe he was doing some sort of business degree in California. Can’t be anyone else. Though why he would expend his “vocabulary of obscene words in vernacular languages” on me is a mystery to me.”

“You haven’t mentioned him before. Were you two good friends?”

“Probably not bosom pals,” I said, getting up and moving towards the door, “but we did hang out with the same set of people. He had a thing for Rizaveta, you know.”

“That’s interesting. Nice girl, Rizaveta. I don’t think she’s ever mentioned him either.”

“For a very good reason, old thing, he never mustered up the nerve to speak to her.”

Ariel laughed, opening the car door and ushering me in, “Oh one of those affairs. And I was going to ask whether all this was before she met Sid or after. I assume your friend’s hopeless love for Rizaveta happened while she was seeing her man?”

“Yes, something like that. He was rather scared of her, if anything.”

“Scared of little Riz?” laughed Ariel, “now that’s rich.”

We moved on to other topics as the night went on, driving around Midgard for a few hours, stopping for ice-cream and finally ended the night with her dropping me off at Elver Castle and moving on to do whatever it was she did when I wasn’t with her.

The episode set me thinking though. The call from Korchell had come like a blast from the past and brought back memories of college and my rather feeble attempts to learn something about commerce as a subject. There were very few people from that set I was still in touch with. There was Rizaveta, of course – she and her bloke Sid had double-dated with Ariel and I on a few occasions. There was Fatty Lombard, the rich day trader. But the other people involved in L’Affaire Rizaveta had long since been shrouded in the mists of time.

Tags for a better world

2006-05-06T06:53:00.000-07:00

I'd like to claim this post took so long to write because I spent hours writing it, days polishing it, and weeks perfecting it. Actually it's more because my dreaded cable guy decided it would be in my own best interests if the internet service was shut down for a while. He's a philantrophic chappie that way, always looks out for me.

Anyway...let's see now....
10 things that make the world a better place to live in in no particular order.

1. Rain
Most people wish for bright sunny days, but I rather like the feel of rain. The greenery, the sudden cool, the blowing wind, the QT's delicious fried fish, the feeling of everything around being so much more alive...maybe it's a Midgard thing, or maybe I just take Garbage's "Only Happy when it rains" too literally.

2. Good food
I don't really eat much. In fact the Elveren appetite has traditionally been far short of that of a normal serpent. That doesn't lessen the centrality of food to Elveren life, though. The perfectly-made Vindaloo; the kebab with the just-delicate-enough touch of spice, the taste of three different cheeses in Lasagna, the perfect texture in the fish fry...a well-fed Elver is a happy Elver.

3. Anti-depressants
Well, I don't have to spell out everything do I? If it wasn't for generous helpings of coffee and chocolate there may not have been an Elver to do this tag.

4. Sleep
Sometimes I honestly think the simple pleasure of curling up to sleep at night is the only reason I wake up in the morning. (More sober reflection reminds me that, not being Helena Christiansen - or whoever it was who made that crack about not waking up for less than $10,000 - I really don't have that option) Sleep is a wonderful, much-misunderstood thing. We should all sleep more. The world would be a much more peaceful place if everyone slept 12 hours a day. That much less time for Bush, Bin Laden, Rove, Zarkawi, Rumsfeld, Al-Jwahiri, Arjun Singh ~insert your favourite malevolent idiot here~ to screw up everyone else's happiness. That much less time for me to have to endure the hardship of being a well-intentioned dimwit.

5. Friends
Now if only I could remember whether I have any left...

6. Memories of a different time

7. Cats
Wouldn't have been me if I hadn't featured the furriest, cutest, cleverest, meanest, most adorable creatures, would it?

8. Audrey Hepburn movies
I have NO idea why. But it works. Try it.

9. Air-conditioning
I don't think this one needs any explaining.

10. Writing a good story/post on this 'ere blog
Which I am afraid this one isn't. But happiness isn't my forte, is it, Kari?

And since the whole point behind a tag is to pass it on to some other unsuspecting blogger, I shall take the opportunity to push it on to:
Kari herself
Appy
Both of whom will, I am sure, do a much better job than me, being the kind of people who actually make others lives happier.
Janus, If I may be so daring.

Argh! Another tag.

2006-04-15T22:13:00.000-07:00

I think the process really began with Siddhu Warrier, that unfortunate victim of the vagaries of German fraus, who posted a plaintive comment to my last post that said "Fucking Post Something". That sort of a command is hard to disobey, and then the wily Waterbearer tagged me, which kind of put the thing beyond the possibility of a clever sidestep.

So I find I must post again. Not the most pleasant thing to have to do, especially when one has just returned from an evening trying to work on a project for something called "Consumer Behaviour" (Oh btw, if anyone ever figured out what this term means, do let me know. It would help so!).

Speaking of working on projects, this is how it seems to tend to work.

12noon : Text message received informing the Elver of his presence being required at North Midgard at 3pm
3pm : Weary Elver, bleary-eyed from lack of sleep (I'd only had about eight hours) crashes into the gates of North Midgard
3:15 pm : Weary Elver wearily establishes communications with one Dipsomania, who professes to have "overslept" and claims to be "on the way".
3:45 pm : Elver, now progressed from 'weary' to 'teary' begins to pack his bags and count his change to see if he has enough money to take a cab home or whether he will have to rely on the public transport service.
3:46 pm : Enter Dipsomania, unapologetic, unsmiling, unavailable and as cold as ever.

I will blithely gloss over the rest of the evening. Let's just say the memories are still raw.

But that, obviously, is not the objective of this post. The mandate is to identify 8 (is it eight?) points that I would like to have in my ideal soulmate.

This raises an essential point - is it possible for a recalcitrant, saturnine, not to mention serpentine Elver like yours truly to have a soulmate? The answer, unfortunately, is no. Regardless of brave attempts made in the past by some (clearly misguided) young ladies to discover depths to the Sea-serpent's soul that did not exist, this fact must be accepted as true.

So this dicussion becomes quite redundant. Leaving me to add only one thing:
Deeply flawed as I am, I would not wish my company on any person who wasn't herself bereft entirely of all finer feelings, generosity and sensitivity. Suffering, they say, is good for the soul. It might help me develop one.

Questions I fear I shall never get answered

2006-03-31T07:32:00.000-08:00

Why do fools fall in love?
Why do fools who are in love decide to go seperate ways?
Why is the first cut always the deepest?
Why do people play blackjack?
Why do we hurt those we love best?
Why did George Lucas make "Attack of the Clones"?
Why didn't Shakespeare give Macbeth's wife a name?
Where did I go wrong?
Where did Paris really stick that arrow into Achilles?
Why does sycophancy actually work?
Why do the French keep revolting?
Why are some people so revolting?
Why did I say what I said when I said it?
If there was no chicken, would the egg have crossed the road?
Why weren't there more seasons of 'Yes Minister'?
Why were there ten seasons of "F.R.I.E.N.D.S"?
Why does it hurt so much?

After the silence

2006-02-11T00:42:00.000-08:00

Life has an uncanny knack of bringing one crashing down to earth at the slightest hint of flying too high (or in my case, more than two feet above sea-level). Knowledge of this fact does not make the occurence any easier to handle though.

Slow-moving Serpent tagged by crafty crying sister

2005-11-16T01:31:00.000-08:00

I think I've said earlier that I was generally a frequent victim of tagging in childhood games. After a brief respite in my youth, I find old age has brought with it a return of that old nemesis. While I managed to conveniently side-step the Archster's Tag (I hope she won't be reminded too soon), a fellow b-schooler managed to hit me with one that had all the subtlety of a sledgehammer.

So here goes then....20 random things about the most boring Sea-Serpent alive:

1. I like the Swedish Pop group ABBA. It's an aberration in a world where hoary rockers and dead composers generally dominate, but there you have it. The strains of 'I have a dream' still get this old reptile to prick up his ears.

2. I sleep too much. This observation was made by several classmates who found that even after a full 8-hour siesta, I could still drop off during lectures. I blame it on the comfortable chairs. The jury's still out.

3. I have an infinite capacity to be rude towards people I like. It goes with an infinite capacity to be tender. My rudeness is to be taken as a compliment.

4. I'd rather do nothing than do something. Really.

5. I like girls who are confident in themselves. Nothing's a bigger turn-off than an immature shrinking violet.

6. I'm inclined to believe people are good unless proven otherwise.

7. I'm inclined to believe people are unintelligent unless proven otherwise.

8. I love Chinese Food. I don't mean authentic cuisine, I mean the cheap Bombay Chinese food. I don't know why. Maybe it's because chinese stalls usually have pictures of my distant ancestors painted on them.

9. I love cats. I really adore 'em. Little furry fluffy cute thingies.

10. I detest myself. If I knew a person who was like me I'd hate him to pieces.

11. I honestly believe what little beauty is left in this degenerate world is worth preserving, worth fighting for.

12. I have not yet been placed for Summers. I doubt I ever shall.

13. I have consumed more alcohol in the past 4 months than in the preceding 24 years.

14. I speak and comprehend Hindi perfectly well. My essays in Hindi received high praise from teachers in my school days. I pretend I do not to avoid having to go to Bollywood movies.

15. It was SEBI who introduced Circuit Filters in the Stock markets to prevent unusual fluctuations in share prices. I have a Circuit filter to maintain my frustration levels from moving beyond + or - 1sigma from the mean levels.

16. I honestly think anything more than a mouthful is a waste. If you thought I was referring to anything other than seafood, you have a dirty mind.

17. There are days when I feel old. Really old.

18. I once turned down an invitation to make out with a girl because she was on the rebound. I shall never regret this fact.

19. Bad pronounciation grates my ears as much as loud car horns.

20. I wish I had the guts to drop out of college and take up an alternate career.

There you go then....

Whom do I tag....
1. Siddhu (because he's such a quirky chap and he lives in Scotland)
2. Bugs (because he's the messiah of the masses and the masses deserve to know more about the messiah)

Songs Sung Blue

2005-10-31T02:02:00.000-08:00

A little-known peculiarity of your friendly neighbourhood Elver is his proclivity to listen to Elvis Presly. It was while giving in to this weakness that I happened to hear the song that rather seemed to sum up a certain someone I fear I know too well and too little at the same time. It goes on these lines...

Well, it’s hard to be a gambler
Bettin’ on the number
That changes ev’ry time
Well, you think you’re gonna win
Think she’s givin’ in
A stranger’s all you find
Yeah, it’s hard to figure out
What she’s all about
That she’s a woman through and through
She’s a complicated lady, so color my baby moody blue,

Oh, moody blue
Tell me am I gettin’ through
I keep hangin’ on
Try to learn the song
But I never do
Oh, moody blue,
Tell me who I’m talkin’ to
You’re like the night and day
And it’s hard to say
Which one is you.

Well, when monday comes she’s tuesday,
When tuesday comes she’s wednesday,
Into another day again
Her personality unwinds
Just like a ball of twine
On a spool that never ends
Just when I think I know her well
Her emotions reveal,
She’s not the person that
I thought I knew
She’s a complicated lady, so color my baby moody blue,

Oh, moody blue
Tell me am I gettin’ through
I keep hangin’ on
Try to learn the song
But I never do
Oh, moody blue,
Tell me who I’m talkin’ to
You’re like the night and day
And it’s hard to say
Which one is you.

So much for rationality.

Live from the Elver's Lair

2005-10-17T23:51:00.000-07:00

'Tis been an eventful weekend - part of my excuse for not blogging for as long as it's been. On the upside, it does give some good material for a new post.

The Lost Girl - Part IV

2005-10-02T10:44:00.000-07:00

[Someone told me Part 3 had a nice sort of finality to it – that even without a Part 4, the story could stand on its own. But I went ahead and wrote Part 4 anyway…whether I should have, I still do not know. Be that as it may, in the immortal words of countless losers like me in the past ‘Here goes nothing’.]

[As always, we go in serial order. Part 4 follows Parts 1,2 & 3.

It never went beyond this point. Each time the hags appeared more vividly, each time I felt my screams get more and more real, more visceral. It was late on the evening of the third day that I woke up to find Fenderis gazing at me with considerable alarm.
“You all right, mate? I heard you scream.”
“Just a nightmare,” I murmured, “nothing to worry about. What’s the time?”
“Nearly seven in the evening. How long can she last? Is she all right? She’s got to come out.”
“I don’t know. I heard her crying not too long ago. She’s got water in there, if not food so at least she isn’t dying.”
“If only you hadn’t built that mini-bar in your room. Thirst would’ve brought her out within a day!”
“Or not, we’ll never know.”
“Want a bite to eat?”
“Get me some bread.”

He came back with some bread and a slab of butter. I chewed on the bread but the butter made me retch. Fenderis sat himself down at my side.
“I’ll never forgive myself,” he said, hanging his head, “never. Of all the dumb, idiotic things I’ve ever…” he choked himself off and gazed broodingly at the closed door.

I sighed and patted his head gently. He said the stupidest things and pulled the craziest stunts but he was still the Fenderis Wolf I’d grown up with. My partner-in-crime, my brother-in-arms, my comrade. There was a good reason she had taken his words as seriously as she had. If anyone could claim to know Jormund Elver, his inner workings and his thought processes, it was Fenderis Wolf – though that wasn’t really saying much, perhaps.

“It wasn’t you, Fenderis,” I told him.
“Of course it was! If only I’d kept my stupid, dumb mouth shut. I fly off the handle too easily, you know. It was her damn father I was angry at, and…”
“It wasn’t you. Maybe what you said was the last straw, but it was all that went before that brought her to this. She’s an angel, Fenderis, but even she could only take so much systematic neglect. I did this. I lost my girl, old chap. I lost what was most precious to me.”
“She’s right here, Jormund, behind that door.”
“She couldn’t be further away if she was in Bolivia. She won’t stay. Her father will come for her. I heard her call him to take her home.”

Fenderis looked at the floor in silence.
“If it means anything, old chap,” he began hesitantly.
“Yes?”
“Look, I know she and I don’t always get along and all that. I’m mean to her sometimes and she pays me back if she feels like it. But she’s quite something, you know. I don’t mean just what she looks like, but what she is and what she does for you. Don’t lose her, Jormund. Don’t give up so easily. Try to work it out. Talk.”
I shrugged with what little strength I had left and rested my head against the now familiar pillow of the balustrade.
“When will her father come?” he asked.
“It takes him two days to reach here. Tomorrow morning, I guess.”
“I’ll wait here with you.”

The vigil that night was a sapping one. I pulled myself to my feet and tried to pace the landing but found myself tiring quickly. Fenderis dozed off at about midnight while I fought against sleep, looking out over the railing into the living room. I couldn’t have borne the dreams again but the memories haunted me just the same. Exactly when I fell asleep, still standing, I can’t say, but the clock was striking five in the morning when the ‘click’ of the latch of the door being opened behind me startled me into consciousness. I turned around quickly, stepping on Fenderis, who was stretched out by my feet. He started to his feet and leapt to the side.

I’d never seen her look quite as she did just then – and I’d sat by her side when she’d had her little bouts with sunstroke and malaria. She was always a slim creature, was my girl, but at that moment it was almost frightening how the shirt she was wearing – mine, by the way, blue with white duckies embossed on it (yes, I have a rotten taste in nightwear) – hung loose over her shoulders. Her hair was dishevelled, the lustre that never failed to dazzle my eyes was missing, and the sparkle in her eyes was replaced by a dull red, the cause of which was clear in the salty lines running down her cheeks. For a while she stood still, one hand on the latch and the other holding the door frame, holding the door half-open.

“Ariel?” I said, not knowing what else to say.
She moved her lips wordlessly, I think she was trying to say my name, but nothing came out. Then she suddenly collapsed, falling into my arms as I stepped forward and caught her.

She was an even lighter weight than usual as I carried her downstairs and laid her out on the sofa. I told Fenderis to light the fire, which he did with a solemn air. Sylvestra, who has a decided affinity for settling on inanimate human objects, placed herself on Ariel’s shoulder.
“You’d better make her something to eat,” I told Fenderis, “she’ll want something when she comes around.”
“The stove’s broken. This cog came off,” he reminded me, showing me a tiny gear-like cog lying on the coffee-table.
“Use the microwave…make something,” I told him, “she’s dying of hunger and you talk about cogs?”
He grumbled vaguely under his breath about stew and went into the kitchen. Fenderis hates the microwave from the bottom of his canine heart. He says it kills the “meat in the meat” whatever that means. But he can use it if he has to.

She woke a few minutes later, stirring slightly as she felt Sylvestra’s fur rub against her cheek. I picked up the incorrigible cat and deposited her on the ground.
“You feeling all right?” I asked, kneeling by her side.
She nodded her assent.
“I’ve told Fenderis to make some stew for you. Do have some.”
“Have you eaten since…that day?” she whispered.
“I’ve…yes, a bit.”
“You look like you haven’t,” she said, touching my cheek lightly with the back of her tiny hand.
“I wasn’t all that hungry,” I explained sincerely,
“I’m sorry I was like…that, and put you to so much trouble. I should’ve gone home myself. I didn’t feel strong enough, or I would have. ”
“I don’t want you to go, Ariel.”
“I don’t see any reason to stay, Jormund.”

I got to my feet and walked slowly to the window. I could hear Fenderis inside chopping the vegetables. I pushed the blinds open. It was still dark outside, though dawn could be seen breaking over the horizon. Sylvestra jumped up onto the window sill and settled herself back to sleep.
“When’s your father coming?” I asked.
“He reached Midgard last night. I guess he should be here shortly.”
“Coming by ship?”
“Yes, and then he’ll charter a limo.”
The Sea-king always travels in style.
“I hope he has a pleasant trip.”
“Papa can rough it out, I guess.”

“Will you two stop dilly-dallying and talk about what happened?” shot Fenderis’ voice from the kitchen door, “Talking about ruddy transportation systems, for Thor’s sake!”
“Will you stop eavesdropping?” I yelled back at him.
“It’s not my fault your kitchen doesn’t have a door. Anyway, stew’s ready. Come and get it.”

Ariel struggled to her feet. I rushed forward and offered her my arm. She thanked me as she took it, and I led her into the kitchen. Fenderis picked up the faulty cog and followed us. The Elver kitchen has a medium-sized wooden table and Fenderis had laid out two bowls of stew on it. I helped her into a chair and seated myself on another one. Fenderis found a bottle of soda and put it down on the table, using the cog to open the seal.

“None for you, Fenderis?” she asked him.
“No, I don’t eat oven-cooked food,” he said disdainfully, “ah…that must be milkman. I think I’ll maul him just for kicks.”
He trotted off, leaving us alone in the kitchen. Shortly afterwards, the sound of an alarmed milkman being chased by a bad-tempered wolf came in through the window.

For a while Ariel and I stared very intently at our bowls. Then we began to eat, with just as much concentration. A silent five minutes passed until I put my spoon down and said,
“He’s right, you know. We need to talk.”
“Really, Jormund, is there anything to talk about? It’s always just you avoiding the subject, fobbing me off by talking about something irrelevant. Silly little Ariel, isn’t it? Let’s just distract her and she’ll forget what she was going on about,” she said in a half-teasing, half-resentful voice.
“That’s not it, old thing,” I said, “really.”
“Old thing. Have you ever even called me anything else? A term of endearment, maybe? Or is that beneath your dignity?” still in the same voice.
“What would you have me say?” I said, “you know I can’t say those mushy things like ‘sweetiekins’ and ‘hunnybuns’ and what-have-you.”
“I’m not asking for mush. I’m asking for feelings. But then you don’t have any.”
“Of course I have feelings!”
“For me? I never noticed.”
“How do you mean you never noticed,” I said, raising my voice.
“Well, say it then. Say you love me.”
“You know I do.”
“No, I need to hear it.”
“That’s ridiculous. It’s just words. Saying them or not saying them doesn’t make a difference.”
“No it’s not ridiculous. I’ll tell you what it is. It’s you avoiding taking responsibility, for me. You don’t want to acknowledge that you love me.”
I stabbed a piece of chicken with an angry spoon.
“You’re drivelling!”
“No I’m not, Jormund. It’s…look, it’s over now. We aren’t on the same page; I guess we never have been. I’m going home with Papa. I won’t trouble you again, and I’m sorry that I pushed myself on you for so long….”

It hurt. It hurt to hear her speak like that, though I couldn’t really tell why. Yes, I felt sad that she was going, that our relationship was over but more than that I suddenly realised that what she’d just said was true. Had we never understood each other? Had our expectations from one another and from our relationship been so far different? Why did she even talk about pushing herself on me when it was painfully obvious that she was a far better woman that I would ever be a man?

“….but I do need to know,” she went on, “I do need to know what you felt all this time. Was I just building up a fairytale when I dreamt of us happy together, happy in love? Did you never dream that dream with me? Did you never love me?”

I put the spoon down again and buried my hands into my hair.
“How can you even doubt it?” I asked, my eyes fixed very firmly on my toes.
“Then why this…shame? You won’t even tell me you love me. Have you told anyone else? Have you told Fenderis – ‘Fenderis, that’s the woman I love’? Oh, and don’t tell me you’ve told your parents, you’ve done no such thing. I showed up at their house on your arm and they assumed the rest. Are you ashamed of me?”
I flinched.
“Ariel, do you have any idea what you’re saying?” I said, turning a tortured gaze upon her and getting to my feet. I walked to the broken stove and leaned against the stand. Day was just about breaking, and the first few rays of the sun found their way through the haze, through the glass window onto Ariel’s face. Her eyes were fixed on me.

“Do you want to hear me say it, then?” I said, clenching my fist, “I love you. I love the way you look at me. I love your voice as you sing to yourself when you prune the plants in my lawn. I love the way you tell me you want me when we’re sitting by the fire in the evenings. And I love it when you scold me, kiss me, pinch me and embrace me. There isn’t a thing about you I don’t love. There isn’t a thing you do that doesn’t make me feel I’m the luckiest man in the world. I could go on, you know. I could go on for hours, but what would it mean? Empty words?”

She turned her eyes away. Outside I heard Fenderis trot back to the house, having laid the milkman low. He opened the door and came into the kitchen, Sylvestra in tow. The cat located the pot of stew within seconds and was about to carry it off in triumph when Fenderis forestalled her and served another helping to Ariel.

“You two all right?” he asked.
I shrugged.
“Ask her.”

“NO, Jormund. Those aren’t empty words, not to me, not when they come from you. It means the world to me,” she said with a sudden vehemence, getting up and walking to my side, “but it isn’t enough. It’s not what I want.”
“You still want to go, then?”
“Yes.”
“I won’t stop you. I’ve laid my heart out for you, Ariel. I couldn’t do more.”
“I’m not asking for more. All I want to know is….look, Jormund, what makes you happy when we’re together?”
“The fact that we are; that you’re there with me, holding my hand, touching my skin; just there by my side. Isn’t that enough?”
“No, not to me.”
“What can I do, then? What do you want?”
“To be a part of your world,” she murmured, stepping closer and putting a hand on my shoulder.
“A part of my…? What?”

Fenderis suddenly remembered he had a score to settle with the Newspaper boy and took off, muttering a hasty apology. Sylvestra hopped onto the table and helped herself with considerable relish to Ariel’s bowl of stew.

“The world you keep me out of, Jormund. No, don’t interrupt, let me speak. When I come here to spend time with you, you won’t let me in the kitchen. You won’t take me out to any of your usual haunts. You won’t take me to meet your friends at the Socialist Club. I haven’t even seen those hole-in-the-wall restaurants you and Fenderis keep talking about. It’s like you have this curtain, this barrier that you won’t let me cross. As if these aspects of your life are none of my business. As if my place is to sit in that armchair or in the lawn and be an ornament. That’s my radius, my sphere of influence. I don’t have a right to want to know more about my Jormund, to enjoy the things he does, to make something for him because I love him, to take part in those endless debates at the club or to eat the food that he likes so much. So why call you my Jormund, then? You won’t let me in there, into the life that you lead, into the world that you’re a part of. I know I’m different from you, that we come from different places, but if you want us to….if you feel we are…Jormund, it has to be OUR life. Not yours and mine, ours. You don’t even think like that. If you believed we had a future together, Jormund, you would let me into your world, let me spend more time with you, let me see the real you more often. Oh stop it, don’t contradict me - that funny story-teller Jormund Elver is just an act. Keep that jester’s mask for the world, not for me. Not for your Ariel.”

The talking exhausted her. I could see it towards the end of her speech; her eyes glazed over and I just had the time to catch her by the waist before her legs gave way. I carried her to her chair and set her down. Sylvestra appeared to be readying for a spring onto Ariel’s lap, so I picked the cat up and put her into the laundry basket. Then I sat down in my chair.

“It’s not what you think it is,” I said in a low voice, “it’s not. If I won’t let you cook it’s because I believe you’re too good for it.”
“I’m not, I want to.”
“I know now. And the hole-in-the-wall restaurants, well I’m not taking you there. Fenderis and I have cast-iron stomach linings. We can digest anything; you can’t.”
She smiled her little involuntary smile, the demure little curve of her lips bending into a cupid’s bow.
“As for the rest, I’ll admit I don’t fully understand what you mean, but I shall try. I want you to know that you only need to tell me. Don’t hint, or suggest obliquely. Tell me. I know I’m a stupid sort of fellow, I haven’t even really begun to understand my Sea-Princess yet. But you have to help me through it, Ariel. You have to tell me what you want, what you expect from me. I can’t change overnight – “
“I don’t want you to change”
“ – but I can hear you and try to understand you.”
“I want to understand you.”
“Well, each other, then. And this is a start.”
“Yes it is a start.”
“So you’re not going, then?”

She took up her spoon and stirred her stew absent-mindedly. Then the sight of Sylvestra’s black hair floating about in it made her push it away with a grimace.
I laughed, and she joined in. It was the first time we’d felt good about ourselves in almost a week.

“When will you talk to Freyja about…us?” she broke in suddenly.
I pondered the issue.
“Try to understand where I’m coming from here, Ariel. I don’t have a future. When you talk about ‘us’ and ‘our future’ it really predicates on my being able to provide one for you,” I said slowly, trying to weigh my words, “Until I feel confident I can do that, I don’t think it’s fair to you that I should talk in terms of definite dates.”
She sighed and curled her lip but muttered, “Fair enough.”
“No, really…look, Ariel, when I go to Freyja and ask her to bless our union, I want to feel that I deserve to be standing there next to you asking for that blessing, that I’m worthy of it.”
“I don’t think you’re unworthy at all…” she began, but I cut her off.
“But I do. A little more time, old th…errr, I mean, my dear, and I’ll know whether I’m going to make anything of myself. But do wait a little longer. Don’t go getting lost or old or joining an old witches club, will you?”

She gave me a nonplussed look and shrugged. I heard a knock on the door and Fenderis shouting “I’ll get it.” I fixed my gaze on her as she rested her elbows on the table and her cheek in her hands. There was a thoughtful look in her green eyes as she looked at Sylvestra toppling the laundry basket and sharpening her claws against the legs of my chair. Then she got up.

“Well?” she said.
“What?”
“Idiot,” she said, putting as affectionate a spin on it as it is possible to put on a word like ‘idiot’.
“Why?”
“I’m sitting on your lap.” Which she proceeded to do, without waiting for an invitation. Sylvestra gave a suitably disgusted look as if to say,” These kids nowadays…”
Ariel held up her hand.
“So you are going to put a ring on that finger?”
“A big diamond one, as soon as I can.”
“And you’re going to kiss me now?”
“Well, we’ll put some sort of ring on there first,” I said, picking up the faulty cog that Fenderis had thrown on the table and putting it on her finger. It fitted perfectly.
“I like it. Thank you very much,” she said, holding it up against the light.

When King Triton reached the kitchen about half-an-hour later – though not before Fenderis had scratched the paint on his limo, punctured the tyres, tried to barricade the door and subjected him to numerous murderous stares – he found his youngest daughter contentedly entangled on a kitchen chair with a certain Jormund Elver.

[It’s funny how things work out. How suddenly life can change and how, in little imperceptible steps, we go from happiness to a state of misery. Where I stood when I wrote the lines above – empty words, as I prophetically said at the time – was perhaps only a few months in time and a few degrees of separation away from where I stand now. And yet it seems centuries apart, oceans away.

Maybe when it comes to being lucky, I’m cursed. Life will go on, we’ll move on. And we’ll try to love again. All I can hope is that she will be more fortunate with somebody who could love her more, be there for her, give her more than perhaps I ever could. If there is a kindly providence, a higher power who watches over us, I know she will. I won’t. But if there is something I can say with any degree of certainty, it is that I am fortunate to have known her, to have had her in my life for as long as I did.

Cold grey dawns will follow bright sunny days. It’s a part of life.]

The Lost Girl - Part III

2005-09-29T11:17:00.000-07:00

[Part III actually gets even sadder, so those who were expecting a light-hearted romantic comedy may be disappointed.]

I don’t know exactly when I fell into a doze, but it was pitch dark when I woke up. My dreams hadn’t been pleasant. A glance over the stairs at the grandfather clock showed that it was nearing five in the morning. With a groan I pulled myself up to rest my back against the banister. There was no sound from inside either. I figured she must have been asleep. About an hour later there was a furtive knock on the door and the milkman left the customary two bottles of milk on the step. I stared at the ceiling, an empty feeling at the base of my stomach and a very full feeling near my heart.

Fenderis came in about a half-hour after the milkman, looking like he’d been in a fight or two. He brought in the milk and I heard him put the kettle on the boil. Then he came up the stairs.

“She hasn’t come out of there?” he asked.
“No she hasn’t,” I replied, giving him a dark look.
“I’m sorry. Will she talk?”
“No.”
He slunk off, only to return a few minutes later with two cups of tea on a tray.
“She’s not eaten anything since yesterday morning,” I said.
“Nor have you. Have some tea.”
I reached for a cup and took a sip. It didn’t go down well. I asked him to take it away and buried my face in my hands. By the time the newspaper came in, I could hear the sound of sobbing from inside again.
“Ariel,” I said, getting up and leaning towards the door.
The sound stopped.
“Won’t you talk?” I asked in as pitiful a voice as I could muster. Given that my throat was as dry as prohibition-period Utah, I daresay it only came out as a croak.
“No.”
“You must. Come down to eat something. You can’t go without food.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“You’re being childish,” I said, “just come on out and let me talk to you.”
“Just leave me alone, Jormund. Go back to your Television and your cellar and your socialist club – all those things you won’t let me be a part of. Get on with your life. You don’t want my childish behaviour anyway.”
“I don’t have a life to get on with. Won’t you let me at least try to explain?”
The sobbing renewed itself. I got no answer to my question.
Fenderis came and asked me if I wanted breakfast but I told him I didn’t feel like it. He added something vague about the stove being broken but it didn’t really register.

The hours passed, like they always do. Helios’ chariot continued its daily journey across the sky, unaware or uncaring. Selene cast her shadow over the sky and still the door remained closed, and the girl inside, silent. A pall of gloom settled over the house and established itself firmly. The paint seemed to be peeling before my eyes. I didn’t move from my perch outside the door. Fenderis didn’t bother to light the fire. The chimes of the massive Grandfather clock struck a low, mournful tone every hour on the hour. Loki had given me that clock when I’d moved into the house, and I remembered Ariel finding it intensely interesting the first time she’d visited. She’d stepped into the lower section that housed the pendulum and shut herself in. A smile broke across my face as I remembered searching for her that warm September night two years ago. I’d torn through the house and the lawn in near-despair before running back into the living-room and yelling “Where’s my Lost Girl?” in near-despair.
She’d popped out of the big clock just as I was about to go down to the cellar and laughed out “Right here, silly!” as she threw her arms around my neck.
“Don’t pull another one like that on me,” I’d said, kissing her nose, “I don’t know what I’d do if I ever lost you!”
“You aren’t going to. You’re stuck with me forever and ever,” she’d said, trilling her musical laugh – did I ever mention she sings like a nightingale? – and pressed closer to me as if to prove the point.
The smile faded as I realised that I’d done just that – lost her again, in a way much worse and much more real than that time. This time I knew where she was, on the other side of that stout oak door, but she felt further away than she’d ever been.

At night Fenderis finally prevailed on me to have some bread and water. I pleaded with her through the closed door to take something. I offered to leave it outside her door and go away so she could take it without having to see my hated visage. Nothing worked. The Sea-Princess stood firm. That night the dreams came back, haunting me again. I struggled to stay awake and tried to think back on what had changed over the time that I’d known her. Nothing had, in a sense. She was still the Ariel who had glanced up boldly at me from behind her sister at the Valkyrie Tavern. Her enthusiasm, her love, her bewitching smile, her beautiful rosy cheeks, her smooth skin, her cascading hair, her ability to go from being very demure to very saucy in seconds, her way of kissing my brow when I was worried to ‘smoothen out those furrows’, of crinkling her nose and laughing when I was cursing my fate hadn’t changed over the years.

And yet, I had brought her to this. A crying, sulking, stubborn girl, lying on the bed we should have shared, hungry and cold.

On the third day the strain began to tell. Fenderis attacked the newspaper boy for no particular reason. The dreams I had stayed awake to avoid now came to me as daytime hallucinations. It must’ve been the lack of food. Waking or awake, the theme remained the same.

I was following my cat, Sylvestra, up a secluded mountain path. Our journey began in the valley, where the path was green and the surroundings lush with berry-bushes rising out of the heather. As we ascended, it got narrower and darker. The path became hard and dry, the bushes were replaced by shrubs and later brambles, whose thorns pricked my legs as I made our way up, following the far more sure-footed Sylvestra. She eventually stopped at the mouth of a large cave near the summit and jumped up onto a perch above the entrance. I took my bloodied feet inside. It was a large cave, but dark and dank. Some fitful light entered through the entrance. The floor was damp, and there were rats all around, nibbling on something I could not quite see. In the far corner four old hags sat huddled around a cauldron filled with water which was simmering over a makeshift log stove. They were hooded black cloaks. Three of them had the hoods down, revealing straggly white hair atop their ugly faces, their skins pockmarked with age, warts and disease. The fourth had her head covered by the hood and didn’t speak throughout.

“Why have you come?” one of them asked.
“I don’t know,” I replied.
“Why have you come?” another asked
“I followed my cat,” I said.
“Why have you come?” the third asked.
“I’m looking for a lost girl,” I said.
“Where did you lose her?” all three said in chorus.
“I asked her to wait for me. I asked her to wait at the town square till my ship came in. I asked her to wait for me so I could ask for her hand.”
“And she wasn’t there?”
“She wasn’t there. I asked her to wait, but she wasn’t there. She must have gotten lost. Can you help me find her?”
“Yes we can. What will you give for her?”
“Anything,” I’d say fervently.
“Your flesh, your blood, your soul?”
“Anything.”
They then cackled, their gory little witch-laugh and pointed at their silent companion.
“You already have. There’s nothing left! Here is your Lost Girl.”

And two of them took down her hood. I stepped forward eagerly to the cauldron, reaching out to touch my Ariel, and then recoiled. The face the hood revealed was not that of my beautiful Princess. It was an old hag just like themselves, white hair, pockmarks, warts and all.
“That isn’t her,” I explained, “You must’ve made a mistake.”
“We don’t make mistakes, Elver, look into the water.”

So I did. I looked into the water simmering quietly in the cauldron, and saw my own face staring back at me. And then, next to me, emerged another face, beautiful, fresh, young, rosy-cheeked and green-eyed looking up at me from the water. It was her, my idée fixe, my Ariel. I looked up eagerly, only to scream in horror. It was the fourth hag, peering into the water, standing by my side,
“She got tired of waiting,” the three chanted in unison, “she grew tired of waiting for your ship to come in. She grew tired of waiting for you to ask for her hand.”
I moaned.
“She grew tired of waiting and grew old. You didn’t come to her so she came to us. You wouldn’t love her so she gave up on love. She wasted her best years waiting for you and now? Now she’s one of us.”
Their cackle reached a crescendo even as my head reeled and I faltered out of the cave only to trip over Sylvestra and…
wake up.

The Lost Girl - Part II

2005-09-27T13:17:00.000-07:00

[Part II. Which follows Part I. Astonishing co-incidence, don't you think?]

“Sure, if you say so, now where was I?
…him go. I suppose you had your reasons.
Last week I’d been to Boston on some business, and guess whom I ran into at the Cheers bar? Your old flame, that sailor man Perriot Parker! He now owns his own shipping line and just bought two spanking new cruise ships! They say he’s the richest sailor this side of the Atlantic. I wish you’d made something more out of that week you spent on his yacht.”
“Perriot Parker!!” I yelled, leaping to my feet in consternation, “that bald, uncouth, mumbling, ugly, gutter mouth sailor? You were with HIM?”
She put on an offended look.
“He was nice and big and strong.”
“I’m sure he was,” I said, making a disgusted face, “what with those overgrown forearms and that ridiculous pipe!”
“And a nice pipe it was too,” she said with a mischievous smile.
It was too much to take. I stomped out of the room into the kitchen and found myself a can of beer.

“So why did you break up with him?” I heard Fenderis ask her.
“Isn’t it obvious?” she replied, “he wasn’t what I was looking for. Jormund was – and I happened to meet Jormund at the right time. YOU should know – you were there that night at the Valkyrie Tavern.”
“I do remember. You kicked me rather hard in the flank. Anyhow, I’d better finish this letter. Hey Jormund, get back here.”
I tramped back and settled back into my chair with a black look on my face.
“Well go on, Fenderis. What other wonderful men has…umm… my girlfriend…been with that her father wants to remind her of?” I put as much irony into that word as I could muster, and I meant it too.

“Actually, he doesn’t. It goes on like this:
Anyway, enough of that. The main reason I wrote to you is to ask you about your future plans. As you might be aware, I’d put away a little money in the bank as a “marriage fund” when each of your sisters were born so that by the time they were ready to get married, it would put enough money in my hands to arrange for a suitably lavish marriage. Naturally, I did the same for you when you were a year old. There were quite a few occasions when I thought I might have to make a premature withdrawal on that deposit but the time never came. About a year ago that deposit matured and I’ve kept the money ready ever since. However, since you’ve been with that lazy, incompetent, unworthy nitwit Jormund Elver…”

“I am NOT a nitwit,” I said indignantly, “I might be all the other things, but I’m NOT a nitwit!”
“You’re none of the other things, Jormund, but if you think you are, you might be a nitwit,” said Ariel.
“Call me a nitwit indeed!” I growled.
“Don’t take it so seriously, Jormund, Papa has his way with words, you know. Fenderis, read on.”

I was still grumbling as Fenderis picked up the strands
“…Elver, I haven’t heard anything from you about any forthcoming nuptials. My financial advisor tells me it’s imprudent to leave that much money lying around. Besides, it could have adverse tax implications. So please write back at the earliest date telling me which of the following you intend to do:
1. Dump that fool and find someone better. In that case I shall invest the money in a short-term deposit.”
2. Leave him and then spend some time crying over him and then find someone better. In that case I shall put the money in a one-year T-bill.
3. Stay with that poor excuse for a human being. In that case I shall put the money in a 20-year Bond.
Love,
Your father,
King Triton.
That’s it I think, oh wait, there’s a post-script. WHAT!! I refuse to read this!”

“What’s the matter?”
He handed the letter to me.
“The post-script’s in Latin. Read it for yourself.”

I did. It read: Does that pathetic Elver still spend most of his time with his disreputable young cousin, the mangy, gluttonous mutt of a Fenderis?

Fenderis sat gnashing his teeth, speechless with indignation and anger. I stared at the letter stupidly.
Ariel now got back on the attack.
“There you have it, Jormund. How much clearer should I be?”
I shifted my weight into a more comfortable position.
“Really, you know, you shouldn’t let your father bully you into rushing into things.”

The result was a tad unexpected. She shot up to her feet and stood directly facing me, hand pointing indignantly at my face. I looked up timidly at her face. It was nearly as red as her hair, a feat I wouldn’t have thought possible.

“Rushing into things? You miserable fellow, I’ve waited two years! There’s a limit to how much longer I can do it. You won’t talk about us and our future. I’ve had enough of you changing the subject every time I bring it up. I’ve had enough of you finding some exam to give or some work to do every time your mother brings it up. I’ve had enough of you avoiding your responsibilities. I need to know when, Jormund, I need to know when you’re going to put me out of this misery of waiting for you to tell me where you see this going! Are you serious about our relationship?”
I cringed under the onslaught. The Queen Tigress herself had never had this effect on me. Ariel’s quite a slim little thing for the most part, ‘dainty’ about describes her perfectly, and ‘little’ is a prefix that her family often uses when referring to her (most guys I know use ‘little’ in conjunction with ‘hottie’) but at this moment she looked about 7 feet tall as her flashing green eyes bore down on me. Behind her, Fenderis was still frothing at the insult her father had delivered to him.

It was some time before I could form a sentence. When I did, it came out as,
“Ariel, don’t you think you’re being a touch impatient? We’re both still quite young as Greco-Norse demi-gods go.”

“Impatient?” the words came out through clenched teeth, as though she was trying to hold back a torrent of much stronger words, “I’m being impatient, am I? I have to wait for you whenever we go on a date, because you’re always late, and you say I’m impatient.…”
“The traffic, Ariel, it’s terrible,” I said in a small voice, but she ignored me.
“I have to wait ages before you ever pick up the phone.”
“It rings so softly, I can barely hear it.”
“I have to wait for eternity for you to call me, because you never do.”
“Your Aunt Persephone cross-questions me so much!”
“Damn it, I had to wait till our fourth date for you to so much as kiss me!”
“I…uh…ummm…..throat infection.”

She took a step forward and grabbed me by the collar pulling me forward, placing her knee on my thigh and her head level with mine. Ordinarily this would have been an intensely pleasurable experience. This time it scared whatever wits I had left out of me.

“Jormund Elver! No more evasions, no more of this procrastination, no more of this dawdling. Give me something definite, something concrete, or tell me you were only fooling around all this time."
“How can you even think I was fooling around, Ariel, I’ve loved you since I first saw you that night at the Valkyrie Tavern! It’s just that…”

I didn’t get any further. In fact I only got as far as ‘think…’ because Fenderis finally found his voice, and it came out loud, clear and authoritative, drowning out my half-choked gurgle.

“He isn’t going to marry you, Ariel. Who could ever put up with you and your pathetic emotional blackmailing tactics? You think that just because you’re this amazing looker he’ll want to snap you up? He can’t put up with you and your childish behaviour and that’s why he’s not going to marry you. Could I be more plain?”

A full minute must have passed before any of us moved. My ears burned as the horror of his words sank in. Even Fenderis seemed too stunned by what he’d just said. Ariel looked on as one frozen in a nightmare. Gradually her grip on my collar loosened and she let me go. I sank back into my chair, dazed. She didn’t exactly stagger – she’s far too naturally graceful for that – but as she moved to catch hold of the tall lampshade for support her gait was distinctly unsteady.
For a moment I thought she was going to faint. The colour had certainly drained out from her face. I got to my feet, albeit slowly – my mind was still struggling to digest the import of what Fenderis had just said – and made a move towards her as she tottered where she stood. But her genes, inherited from Poseidon and Amphitrite, wouldn’t let her faint. She put up her hand to keep me away and then rushed up the stairs. A few seconds later I heard my bedroom door slam and the bolt being shot.

I found myself overcome with an overwhelming desire to run after her and bang on her door, begging for forgiveness, to assure her that I loved her more than I could ever put in words, that I wanted nothing more than to marry her and call her my wife, that Fenderis had been talking through his hat, but before that I had something else to take care of.

I turned on Fenderis and grabbed him by the neck. He didn’t resist.
“You pathetic, pathetic mutt? What were you thinking?”
“I…I’m sorry, old chap, I didn’t meant to hurt her…no, I did. That’s exactly why I said it. I’m sorry, old chap, I really am,” he said in a doleful yowl.

I choked back my tears as I picked him off the ground and carried him to the door.
“Do you have any idea what you were saying? You fool! You miserable fool!”
“Look, I’ll talk to her, I’ll explain it, right? It’ll be fine.”
“I don’t know if she’ll ever talk to ME again, you…you…” I didn’t have the words for it. I just threw him out onto the lawn and shut the door. He yelped piteously. It wasn’t pleasant outside.

I staggered to the stairs and climbed them, trembling with trepidation.The door to my bedroom was shut. I banged my hand against it.

“Open the door!”
“Go away!” came her voice from inside.
“You got to hear me out, Ariel.”
“Leave me alone!”
“But…I can explain, Fenderis was just angry, listen to me, won’t you.”
“I said, leave me alone,” came a distinctly teary voice, “if I hear another word from you I’ll jump out of the balcony.”
I shut up. The threat wasn’t particularly frightening in itself – it’s only a 15 foot fall at the most – but the intention had to be respected.
After a while I heard the sound of someone flopping down on the bed followed by sobbing. I let myself slump to the floor and closed my eyes trying to keep the tears down.

Not very successfully.

The Lost Girl - Part I

2005-09-24T13:14:00.000-07:00

[Original new posts shall not be forthcoming for a while, so I shall put up this little story. Personally, it's a favourite, and as much as it hurts to re-read it, writing it was a pleasure. If there is such a thing as a Muse, she was it. But it was long ago and it was far away]

Autumn evenings in the Elver House tend to be quiet affairs. The fire in the fireplace burns low; the plants in the lawn, bereft of their foliage, wear a droopy sort of look and the iridescence of Helios as he rides his chariot into the West only gleams in through the closed blinds in a fitful way. This particular autumn evening was no different. Ariel sat silent on the upholstered armchair perusing her favourite book – Herodotus in the original Greek. I sat to her left, reading as well, but since my intellectual capacity rarely rose beyond the challenge of a James Hadley Chase, that is where my head was then buried. Fenderis had located a pack of playing cards earlier that day and was playing a game of solitaire. Sylvestra, the family cat, a black Persian, was engaged in silently but methodically raiding the larder for fish. The only sounds were of the fire giving a little crackle as it burnt down the last of the logs and of the occasional passing Bus.

“When are we picking a date?” asked Ariel suddenly.
“Huh?” I said.
“A date, Jormund…when are you picking one?”
I pondered for a while. Obviously this was either a sea-princess who’d had one too many crustacean cocktails or she was speaking in code.
“When you say the word ‘date’,” I said, weighing my words carefully, “What exactly do you mean?”
“A date’s a date,” she said, looking a little puzzled.
“Well, you know,” I said softly, “dates only grow in West Asia in those Gulf countries and we can’t go there to pick one because you’re banned from entering them.”
“Why is she banned from entering them?” asked Fenderis, looking up from his game.
“To quote the official fatwa, “Her stunning figure and simmering sex appeal contravene the laws of our religion and endanger the moral fabric of our youth”, so I’m barred from entering” clarified Ariel, glancing at Fenderis, and then turned her attention back to me, “but I don’t mean that kind of date, silly. A date as in from a calendar.”
“How could I possibly ‘pick’ a date from a...oh,” the flow of words ground to a halt as I realised what she was talking about.
“Don’t you think it’s about time, Jormund,” she said, turning her face towards me with a poignant expression.
“I, oh…ah, I mean, hmm…time is such a relative concept.”

She stamped her foot on the carpet impatiently.

“Your mother keeps telling me she isn’t happy with the present arrangement. My Aunt Persephone says she’s having difficulty explaining to all her subjects why her best-looking niece isn’t even engaged yet. People want to know if I’m crazy or something. And yesterday even Grandpa Poseidon asked me when you were going to make an honest woman out of me.”
“I, umm…well you know, it’s like….Persephone exaggerates so much, you know.”
“All my sisters are married,” she went on, with the determination of a Washington crossing the Delaware, ignoring my very pertinent objection; “Penthelisia and Arista have children.”
“And such nasty little brats they are too! You father had black hair when I first met you, now they’ve all turned white from running after those spoiled brats!”

“Speaking of Papa,” she continued, with the perseverance of a Napoleon, “He says your conduct is making a mess of his investment plans.”
“What? His investment plans? Ariel, old thing, have you been investigating my cellar? That 1932 Piper Heidseick is rather strong, you know.”
“No, you idiot, I haven’t been drinking your precious Champagne. Here, I got this letter from Papa yesterday. I think you’ll find it interesting,” saying which she took out a letter from her Herodotus and handed it to me.

I gave it a glance-over. It was in her father’s own hand, flowing but firm, the hand of a man used to wielding authority. Since he normally delegated letter-writing to his man Dudlee, I knew that this was a personal letter. It was also in Greek.

“You know I can’t read Greek,” I said, holding it out to her.
Fenderis took a swipe with his paw and grabbed it out of my outstretched hand.
“I can,” he said, putting it down on the floor and poring over it, “do you want me to read it out?”
I glanced at Ariel. She made a sour face but didn’t say anything, so I nodded at Fenderis.
He cleared his throat and began reading.

“It goes like this….
Dear Ariel,
I hope this letter finds you in good health. I haven’t set my eyes on my favourite daughter for almost six months now and I do so miss your merry prattle and those songs you used to sing in that beautiful voice of yours. Please visit your poor old father soon.

Awfully sappy crap, don’t you think? Everyone knows that old sap is godawfully rich. Not to mention a hackneyed writing style.”

A quick sideways glance revealed that Ariel was giving Fenderis the sort of look that would have curdled the blood of a lesser wolf.

“Just read the letter, you mutt, leave the commentary for a rainy day.”
“Oh right ho, if you say so…anyway.
You’ll be pleased to know Arista’s husband got promoted again. They are considering moving into a bigger house. Penthilisia’s husband just bought another hotel. He seems to be doing great business in the catering line.
All this is boring. Why am I reading it?”

“Because you volunteered to,” I told him, “just go on.”

“Oh all right.
Do you remember young Prince Eric Del Mar, your childhood sweetheart, with whom I had fixed your marriage? His father died of pneumonia last month and Eric is now the King of Marrakesh. He just had their palace renovated and it looks even more resplendent than before. You would have enjoyed living there.”

“Who’s this childhood sweetheart?” I asked, giving her a searching look.
“Terribly handsome guy I had a huge crush on when I was fifteen or so. His father and Papa were the best of friends. Papa wanted me to marry him, he and Eric’s dad had it all fixed up.”
“So why didn’t it happen?” I asked with an irritated frown.
“He was gay.”
“Ah,” I said. It was the sort of information to which you can’t really add anything apart from “Ah,” so I kept quiet after that.
“How did you find out?” Fenderis just had to ask.
“How do you think,” she said, rolling her eyes at him, “I mean if I couldn’t get him aroused, who could?”
“So you tried?” Fenderis likes to be clear on these matters.
“Yes.”
“Will you just read the damn letter?” I cut in with a growl.

“Oh right ho, of course.
…living there. But I suppose it wasn’t to be.
I heard from Ron Hardacre yesterday as well. His son Harry just graduated from Insead and will join Rothschild Investment Banking Services at a huge starting salary. I remember you used to go out with him for a while some years ago. He’d have been an excellent match for you. Such a bright young kid! I remember once running into you two making out in the gardens when I was out on my morning walk. Quite funny the whole thing, I recall I’d lost my temper a bit at the time but you shouldn’t have let him go.”

“Who the hell is this Hardacre?” I asked, and if there was a touch of indignation in my voice, I’m sure it was only natural.
“A very clever young fellow I used to date some time before I met you. His father owns a lot of land somewhere to the West. I broke up with him because he was something of a pervert.”
“You might say he was a Hardacre with lots of hard acres, “put in Fenderis, ever the punster.
“That wasn’t the only thing hard about him,” she added.

“Just read the bloody letter,” I said, squirming liberally in my chair.

Weary Wariness

2005-09-19T21:04:00.000-07:00

An edifying conversation between our good friends the PYP and the NYL.

NYL: Old thing!
PYP: You ass! It's 1:30 in the morning!
NYL: You're awake aren't you?
PYP: I was busy.
NYL: No doubt you were. But get your mind focussed on me for a minute.
PYP: Oh it was already.
NYL: How flattering. I'm having some problems with this girl...
PYP: What now?
NYL: Mixed signals
PYP: How mixed?
NYL: Rudeness, sweetness and a tendency to provoke me to be nasty.
PYP: Is attracted, but thinks you're not her type.
NYL: I wasn't asking what you felt about me, old thing.
PYP: Don't flatter yourself!
NYL: You're no help!
PYP: What do you have my number entered in your phonebook as? The Aching Hearts Helpline?
NYL: No, as Nastiness on Demand
PYP: I'm really not in the mood...
NYL: Now thats not something one hears you say very often.
PYP: Are you saying I'm a tramp?
NYL: No, I'm saying you're the best thing that ever happened to me.
PYP: What about this girl you're having problems with?
NYL: -stoic silence-
PYP: Oh!
NYL: Well?
PYP: No.
NYL: Should I start the pathetic plea now?
PYP: Save it for the daytime. And put this conversation on that stupid blog of yours. Let everyone know how despicable you are.
NYL: I shall. Good night.
PYP: You know I'll be feeling guilty all night!
NYL: And whose fault is that?
PYP: I'm not going over this again.
NYL: Suit yourself!
PYP: I did!
NYL: Blah.
-click-

A Valentine's Day Story - IV

2005-09-03T09:56:00.000-07:00

There are always some people who look strangely inappropriate in the mundane, urban, environment of Midgard City. Apollonia Gogol was one of them. Reclining on a luxurious couch in an Ancient Roman Palace, standing on an altar at an Ancient Roman Temple of Juno, or staring down haughtily from an exhibit in the “Ancient Mediterranean Art” section of the Louvre Museum, she would have looked right at home. Standing against the wooden staircase leading up to the Biology Lab, on the fading evening of February the fourteenth, about an hour and fifteen minutes after the Valentine’s Party was scheduled to start, a mildly irritated expression on her chiselled features, her perfect classical beauty made her look rather like a snowflake in Chennai, the land of my good friend Siddhu W – hopelessly out of place.

“Apollonia,” I said, nodding at her, “what are you doing down here?”

We weren’t what one might call bosom buddies, but I’d run into her often enough at Prefect Meetings to be more than a casual acquaintance.

“Taking a breather, Jormund. I hate it in there. All that bad dancing. Whatever happened to the classical forms? The harp music? The long, white robes? Maybe I should go home. But why are you so late?”

“Don’t even ask. I meant to drop the house keys off with the neighbours, but the blighters weren’t home, and I had to wait until the Queen Tigress arrived before I could get away. Anyway, is Arabella very upset?”

Something like a sly smile clouded her perfect face.

“No, just in a state of shock.”

“Shock? Whatever for? It’s hardly something to be in shock about. I told her I’d run a little late.”

“Nothing to do with you, Jormund. It’s Joshhound.”

“Eh? What did he do? Try to kill himself?”

Her next words were uttered with the sort of relish with which Juno must have informed Jupiter that his son Hercules had killed himself in the funeral pyre on wearing the poisoned tunic given to him by Deonaira.

“No, he proposed to her.”

If Juno herself had popped down from Mount Olympus and slapped me with a raw fish, I could not have been more surprised. The school buildings seemed to have popped out of their foundations and commenced a vigorous tango around me. I think it was the tango, at least, though I wouldn’t swear to it. About three minutes later they stopped the tango and began a gentler waltz.

“What did she say?” I asked in a low voice.

“I don’t think she’s said anything yet. When I left she was still near-comatose. Do you want to go and see?”

“Yes! You damn well bet I want to go and see,” I said. With the initial shock having passed, and the school buildings having resumed their proper places, I had only one thought: to separate Joshhound’s limbs from his torso. Given that he outweighed me by about twenty pounds, this wasn’t likely to be a very practical course of action, but I wasn’t feeling very practical at that moment. I had just about put my foot on the first step when Apollonia tapped my shoulder and held out her arm. Not knowing what else to do, I took it in mine and we walked up the stairs together at a slower pace than I’d have liked.

The stairs open out near the end of a long corridor. Towards our left were the Biology Lab and the Prefect’s Hall. On the right were the Chemistry and Physics Labs. The Party, as I think I’ve mentioned before, was in progress in the Biology Lab. Apollonia and I made our way towards it; the last door on the left. Even standing outside, it was easy to tell that something was wrong. Instead of the sounds of revelry and bad party music that characterise such bashes there was an eerie silence, broken at intervals by the sound of a girl crying.

Taking a deep breath and gathering my courage for what I knew might be a violent fight to defend Arabella from the despicable advances of Joshhound Prawnson, I placed my hand on the door and pushed it open.

The tableaux that met my eyes was…well…interesting.

The Biology Lab is one of the largest rooms in Midgard-Hebrides High School. The door opens at the bottom left corner, into the section where the rows of desks are lined up for the regular lectures. Towards the right are the laboratory tables for the actual experiments, and behind is the balcony that opens out over the basketball court–cum–cricket pitch. The party was concentrated in the lecture area; the desks had been moved to form a closed area leaving the centre, a space of about fifteen feet by twenty to serve as the dance floor. At the top left corner two desks had been laid facing each other where a DJ sat with his equipment and collection of disks.

The DJ was silent, as he pretended to fiddle with the knobs on his mixer. The revellers were standing at the other end of the dance floor talking to each other in hushed tones. On the seat next to the DJ, a girl sat crying copious tears.

It was Rita Stringthing.

At the other end of the dance floor from her, a muscular bloke with a face like a chimpanzee was clasping to his ample chest a petite girl bearing a striking resemblance to Kylie Minogue, who clearly wasn’t resisting.

For the second time that evening, the surrounding objects engaged in a well-choreographed dance. Only this time it was the wooden desks, not the school building and they did the quadrille, not the tango. With a muffled cry on my lips I disengaged my arm from Apollonia and staggered to where Pete-Pete was standing,

“Did she?” I asked in strangled tones.

“Yes,” he said in a tone that mixed disbelief and disgust, “it took a while but she did. I can’t believe it. Joshhound!”

By this time the clasping couple seemed to have become aware of my presence. Arabella stepped backwards out of the ape’s embrace and gaped at me in open-mouthed horror, presumably not entirely caused by the fact of my overbearing ugliness. Joshhound cast a wary eye upon me and stepped back a little, adopting a defensive posture. A few of the guys, including Raul the rugby-player and Pete-Pete moved closer to us, ready to separate us if the fight got too violent.

“Jormund…I…it’s not what it looks like,” I heard Arabella say, “I didn’t plan for this to…don’t do anything silly, you two!”

It was my turn to ignore her this time. I advanced on Joshhound with as menacing a look as I could muster. Pete-Pete tried to pull me away, but I brushed him off. Raul told me to reconsider the matter, but I ignored the gentle giant’s advice. The distance between us must’ve been about ten feet, when, to the astonishment, I’m sure, of everyone present, the music started at an eardrum-blasting loud volume.

“What the…!” I said, turning towards the DJ, to find myself looking into the jet-black eyes of Apollonia. It was evident that she’d told the man to start the music. As the strains of “Mr Vain” crashed into the collective conscious of the sixty-odd people gathered there, a few stray couples stepped onto the makeshift dance floor. Others started swaying gently. The trickle of dancers quickly became a strong current and I found myself being brushed on all sides and pushed backwards. A soft hand slipped into mine and led me to the side of the room. I watched in stupefaction as Apollonia dragged me towards the secluded corner where Rita and the DJ were seated. Ironically, though this was where the unholy cacophony originated from, the speakers themselves were placed some distance away, making it the quietest place in the room.

Keeping her hand in mine, Apollonia patted Rita gently with her free hand, and said in a low but clear voice,

“I know you feel terrible right now, Rita, but do go home and think about it. Three hours ago he was crying like a baby about his card to Pashiella having been rejected. And now he’s making out with the girl he knows was dating his friend. You’re a sensible girl, Rita. There’ll be someone better. Hell, it can’t even be that difficult to be better than him.”

The amount of contempt that she concentrated in that word ‘him’ would be impossible for me to condense into mere words. You needed to have been there.

The crying girl looked up and wiped the tears from her eyes.
“She was my best friend in the whole world,” she said between sobs, “it’s that which hurts, Apollonia.”

The haughty face of the Juno-esque beauty softened for a moment.

“That I cannot do anything about, sweets. Leave it to time.” And with an affectionate caress of the weeping girl’s cheeks, she turned to look at me.

“Well, Jormund?” she said.

I’d been through a lot in the last few minutes since I’d seen her stately figure standing by the railing of the wooden staircase when I’d turned the corner from the Rounders Court. But I had regained a measure of equanimity, or at least enough to answer her with a relatively even voice,

“Well, Apollonia?”

“Want to walk me home?”

I shrugged, and nodded. We slipped out of the Lab almost unnoticed and went down the stairs, at a measured place, while she placed her arm gravely in mine, rather in the fashion of those people you see walking down the steps to County Balls in movies based on Jane Austen novels. We continued on our way out through the school gate, me staring at the setting sun trying hard to quell the pain in my heart. Apollonia stared at the ground as we walked; what she had on her mind I don’t claim to know.

When we reached the main road, she let go of my arm and pointed westwards, in the direction of the beach.

“That way,” she said softly.

“Isn’t your house over that way?” I asked, pointing north.

“Well,” she said, pausing for a while as we crossed the road, before adding, “It is St .Valentine’s day – no, that’s blasphemy, it’s Februata Juno’s Day – and all that, so I thought we could, you know, take a long walk along the beach, exit at the Mosque, take a right and walk through the Food Lane and take a left and stop at the Juice Bar and take a right to go to my house.”

I’d never heard of anything as stupid – it was the equivalent of going from New York to Boston via Seattle.

“Don’t be ridiculous, Apollonia, that’s the longest possible way…oh.”

Yes, sometimes the piercing light of realisation penetrates even the thick skull of Jormund Elver. For a moment I thought the surrounding traffic lights would commence the foxtrot, but they mercifully desisted.

“You don’t have to, I mean it’s up to you,” she said, lowering her gaze, “It’s just a beginning, that’s all.”

There come times in a man’s life when he feels overtaken by events around him; when he realises things have gotten out of his control and that the best course of action is to stop thinking about it and go with the flow.

I pursed my lips, took the perfectly-formed hand that she had offered in mine and walked determinedly towards the Beach.

****

A Valentine's Day Story - III

2005-09-02T04:05:00.000-07:00

I told Arabella the results of our conversation the next day when she cornered me in the basketball court to sell me the tickets to the Valentine’s Day Party. It didn’t take long for it to be obvious that she didn’t like the plan of action proposed by Joshhound.

“Pashiella? What in the world does he see in Pashiella?”

“I have no idea.”

“That stuck-up little **** [here she uttered an expletive that might be suitable on pornographic forums, but not elsewhere]. What could he possibly see in her? Rita is so much prettier and suitable and perfect for him. Don’t you think so, Jormund?”

I was taught that if you can’t say something good about someone, it’s best not to say anything at all. Following that most excellent tenet, I maintained a stoic silence.

“Well, anyway, so he will be trying to give her a card tomorrow, will he? I’ll see about that, I will. You’re my date for tomorrow’s party, by the way. Don’t let me find out you’ve been asking anyone else.” And here she gave me a sinister smile and walked away.

* * * *

February in Midgard is a wonderfully mild time of the year. Valentine’s Day is invariably a cool, breezy day of the kind that puts a song on your lips and a spring in your stride. This year was no different - when morning broke, I had no idea of the momentous events that were to follow.

It started with Joshhound accosting me excitedly during the morning recess, his face a glowing picture of pride and happiness...

“Jormund! I did it, man! I dropped it into her bag!”

“Err…ok…congrats, I guess.”

“I’m da man!”

“For dropping a card into a girl’s bag while she wasn’t in the classroom?”

“Yes.”

“Ah.”

During the lunch recess, however, it was a quite different Joshhound that one got to see. To say he was upset would’ve been understating the case, but he wasn’t quite in tears either.

“Something the matter?”
“Well she’s still ignoring me. Doesn’t even acknowledge receiving the card. I tried to catch her eye during Computers Class, but she gave me the same stare of sweet innocence that she does every time.”

What he meant, was that she had looked at him with the same sort of disdainful expression with which she looked at everyone else while her own mind as poring over devious methods for squeezing an extra mark out of the Civics section of the Social Studies Paper. I caught Arabella’s eye as she passed from behind Joshhound, and she gave me a sly wink, whose import I had no idea of – at the time.

The dam broke about ten minutes after classes were over. I was returning from a tiring PE class when I noticed Joshhound sitting on the first bench of his row sobbing hot tears, while a couple of his friends tried to comfort him.

“What’s the matter?” I asked, strolling into the class.

“She….she….,”he began, and then stopped.

“Come to the shop,” I said, dismissing his friends with a ‘I’ll talk to him’ and leading him out by the arm.

Once there, he burst into even more copious tears and unintelligible conversation. It struck me that he was rather Gollum-like in his own way. Finally I borrowed a glass of water from Shree, the chap who ran the shop, and threw it on his face. He seemed to have come to his senses, because he punched me rather hard on the face. Rubbing my sore cheek, I asked him to explain why the hell he was blubbering.

“She chucked my card in the dustbin,” he said through teary eyes, “in two pieces, man. There was one card. And she chucked it into the dustbin. In two pieces. She didn’t tear along the fold either. She tore across the cute purple heart with the pink teddy bear in it. Can you imagine that, Jormund? She did, she did!”

“Oh you poor chickadee!”

No, it wasn’t me. I do not express myself with words like chickadee addressed to guys with faces like chimps (or any other species of fauna). Arabella had crept up on us from behind and was patting Joshhound’s head sympathetically as she said the above sentence.

“Arabella?” he said, turning around with an expression of surprise, “how did you…?”

“Oh you poor parakeet! I saw her throw your card in the dustbin! I felt so indignant! Is that the way to treat a missive of true love? Oh it was terrible. You deserve better, you do!”

He sobbed a little and buried his face in his hand. Arabella motioned to me to follow her and said, bending down to speak in a soft voice in Joshhound’s ears “We’ll be right back, okay? You stay right here. I’ve to go see someone in the school office about today’s party. You’re coming, aren’t you? It starts in a half-hour.”

“Do I look in any shape to come to a Valentine Party?” he asked – and I thought he had a point there.

“Oh Jormund and I shall have you all cheered up in no time,” she said blithely, and stepped out. When we’d reached inside the school gates, she dragged me to the side and burst into laughter.

“Did you see his face? Such a sap!” she said when the attack of the funnies had subsided.

“Er...yes – what are you getting at?” I asked.

“I did it!”

“What did you do?”

“The card, silly! I tore it and put it in the dustbin!”

“How?”

“Oh I came in before her and took it out of her bag. The idiot had just dropped it on top of the open flap.”

I stared at her, aghast. The Code of the Elvers frowns on women who stoop to purloining Valentine Cards from other women’s bags. But then my eyes chanced on her figure and I thought the Code of the Elvers could take a hike.

“Why?” I asked instead.

“You ass! I can’t let him deliver sappy love-cards to Pashiella when he should be delivering them to Rita! So I intercepted it and destroyed it in such a way that he couldn’t miss seeing it! God I’m brilliant!”

I shuddered.

“And the best part is,” she continued, “Now we shall both console him and get him to fall in love with Rita. Simple ain’t it?”

“Good God! You’re a menace to society! Arabella, you can’t manipulate things like that!”

“I just did,” she said, pouting, “and if you don’t like it, you jolly well can forget about my going to the Bryan Adams concert with you!”

I sighed and apologized resignedly. There didn’t seem to be much else to do.

We walked back towards the shop slowly. We were standing outside it when I fingered my pocked and realised that I was carrying the house keys with me. The problem with that was that if I didn’t go home and leave the keys with the neighbours, the Queen Tigress would be left locked out until Papa Jormund arrived home from the hunt. This would, naturally make the Queen Tigress very angry. Only an Elver with a serious death wish would risk making the Queen Tigress angry. Remedial action would clearly be required.

“I say, Arabella, old thing, I need to go home and drop off the keys!”

“What? But what about the Party?”

“I’ll be back by then. Ok, a bit late, but I’ll be back don’t worry.”

“Must you go?”

“Seriously, I must. You go work on Joshhound,” I said, turning and setting off at a brisk pace. When I turned the corner, I saw her sitting next to him, uttering words of sympathy.

A Valentine's Day Story - II

2005-08-31T00:15:00.000-07:00

“You look troubled,” said Pete-Pete, as we munched our vada-pavs at the school shop, located about 20 meters down the road from the School Gates.

“I am,” I said, “I’ve agreed to talk to that Joshhound Prawnson. In fact I’m waiting for him to come out right now, fellow’s probably putting up Party Decorations in the Biology Lab.”

“Talk to him? What about?”

“Oh stuff,” I muttered, “something Arabella told me to do”

“Arabella Radeyevna?” he asked in awed tones.

“There’s only one Arabella in the school, you nut.”

“I’d do anything for her. Anything, man….and you freak out about something minor like talking to Joshhound! What a girl! Wow!”

“You’ll be doing something for her soon enough, no doubt,” I said, casting a disgusted look at his drooling tongue.

“What do you mean? What do you take me for…” he began indignantly, and would have continued for some time, I don’t doubt, but just then I spied Joshhound step out of the school and trudge slowly towards the crossing. With a muffled apology to Pete-Pete I stuffed the rest of the vada-pav into my mouth and raced after him.

“Joshhound, wait up!” I said, as I caught up with him.

He stopped and waited for me. Joshhound Prawnson was about my height, but had none of the slender elegance that characterized yours truly. In fact he was built like a certain senior of ours by the name of John Abraham from the neck down. His face, however, was – no matter how hard Arabella or her friend Rita denied it – like that of a chimpanzee.

“Thought some company would do no harm,” I said, putting on a bright smile.

“Oh yeah. Whatever,” he said, contorting his already contorted face to make it clear that he wasn’t exactly euphoric about the idea.

For the first half-kilometre we walked in silence. It’s hard to know how to approach a subject like that. Arabella had made it clear that she didn’t want Joshhound to know that I was acting on her behalf. On the other hand, for me to ask anything personal ex-parte to a chap I hardly knew would have been dashed presumptuous. Much to my relief, I didn’t have to open the proceedings.

“You used to like Talmyra Kringle didn’t you?” he asked, out of the blue.

“Me? Ah…well, no. I mean yes. But that was a long time ago,” I added hastily.

“Did she even look at you?” this in a mournful tone.

“Well, we’ve been in the same class for years, so we did talk. But no, she didn’t have any feelings for me, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Ah,” he said and subsided back into silence. But this short exchange had given me just the lead I needed.

“So, Joshhound,” I said.

“Yes, Jormund?” he asked.

“I hear you’ve been kinda down lately? Anything you might care to share?”

He seemed to give the matter some thought. Finally he said,
“Yes, Jormund. The thing is, I’m in love.”

I thought about it for a while. People in love generally were bouncy, blithe fellows declaring their love to one and all, behaving generally like songbirds on weed. This kind of morbid reaction on the part of Joshhound could only mean one thing – his was a posthumous love.

“With Marilyn Monroe?” I asked sympathetically.

“What??” he almost shouted. If we hadn’t been crossing the road at a busy junction he might have reeled. He gave me a look of apprehension.

“What have you been drinking?” he asked, “What’s that in your bottle? What is it, huh?”

“Water, you ass!” I said, “I mean, I figured you were in love with someone dead from your depressed state, you know. It’s all right; lots of guys were in love with Marilyn Monroe. Good chaps too – Joe DiMaggio for one. Arthur Miller, for another. Even Frank Sinatra. Strong lads all of them. You have nothing to be ashamed of. But she’s dead, you know. She isn’t coming back. You’d best move on to someone more…alive. Pamela Anderson, for instance.”

“Would you STOP drivelling?” he yelped in anguish, “My head will explode! I like Pashiella Murky!”
“Oh,” I said, “I’m sure she’s a…nice girl.”

Actually I remembered Pashiella as an awfully stuck-up creature with huge spectacles and a leering smile. Her sole purpose in life, it was rumoured, was to score more marks in the next revision test for the practice test for the Unit Test to be held the following week than anyone else in the class.

“She’s perfect. She’s so demure and so shy and so modest.”

“Ahhh yes.”

“She appeals to all that’s fine about a chap.”

“Uhhhh of course.”

“Unlike some who appeal to the carnal instincts.”

“Hmmm no doubt”

“But she won’t look at me.”

I could hardly blame her for that. Seemed quite natural if anything. So I didn’t say anything and hemmed and hawed noncommittally.

“Valentine’s Day is coming up, you know!”

“I know. We’re having a party aren’t we?”

“Oh yes….it will be great. The decorations are just purrfect.”

“So why the Hardy-esque expression?”

“I want to give her a card, man. A valentine card. I’ve even bought it. I just don’t know how to give it to her! She won’t even look my way. You gotta help me, man. You must.”

We were now approaching the point from where the straight road led to my house and the right lane to Joshhound’s. I was wondering how to worm out of this new predicament... Helping a chap I hardly knew deliver a Valentine’s card to a girl I didn’t know at all was something I had no intention of doing. I mentally cursed Freyja for endowing Arabella with more oomph than any five Item Girls put together. Without that, I’d never have gotten in this situation.

“I really don’t see how I can help, old hound,” I said shiftily, “and anyway I should be getting home.”

My clever attempt to sidle away was arrested by his grasping a hold of my arm.

“Do you want to see the card?” he said, in a voice filled with near-religious fervour.

“Don’t you think something like that should be…erm…private between you and her?”

“It’s a beautiful card! Don’t you want to see it?”

“Well...ummm…”

“Do you think you’re too good to see the card? Do you? Are you a snuffle-headed elitist snob? Are you? Would you rather I punched your nose off-axis? Would you?”

I followed him obediently to his home.

He sat me down on a chair and fished around a longish while for in his study cabinet before locating a Chemistry Lab Book. Out of this journal came a red envelope, and out of that came a card heavily infested with pink balloons and purple hearts. With trembling hands he put this in my hand.

I won’t go into the detailed contents of the card. It was as sappy and as trite as such cards are wont to be. Besides, I don’t remember the words. What I do remember is that Joshhound had scrawled an inscription in his large, ill-formed hand, informing whoever read it that he was her (Pashiella’s) ‘most devoted, passionate, desperate, unfortunate, servant.’

“How do I get it to her?” he half-sobbed.

“She’s in your class, not mine,” I pointed out, “surely you can slip it to her sometime.”

He stood fingering the card for a while, turning it around in his hand.
“Is it a decent card? Will she like it?”

Why on earth he thought I should know what a snooty female like Pashiella would like, I have no idea. I said I was sure she would, partly to be polite and partly to facilitate my getting out of this madman’s house as soon as possible.

“Maybe I’ll drop it in her bag,” he said doubtfully.

“Yes, it’s a good idea. Can I go now?”

I believe if he’d suggested stuffing it down her throat I’d have said the same thing.
* * * *

A Valentine's Day Story - I

2005-08-28T10:36:00.000-07:00

[The Action of this story took place about three years after that of “The Ladies Man”. Life at Midgard-Hebrides was drawing to a close; proposals and acceptances were far more common than on that eventful day when Sahil had thrown down the gauntlet to Taryn K., and there was scarce a chap in that old Scottish Castle who hadn’t, at some time or another, admitted to having gone sentimental about a girl. Roxanne, the first Elveren Flame, had left to pursue her education in more balmy climes. This, then, is the story of the last great romance of Midgard Hebrides]

The Saint Valentine, after whom the day in February is named, was a Priest in Rome, possibly a bishop. He was imprisoned for giving aid to martyrs in prison, and while there, converted the jailer by restoring sight to the jailer's daughter.

There are several theories about the origin of Valentine's Day celebrations. Some believe the Romans had a mid-February custom where boys drew girls' names in honour of the sex and fertility goddess, Februata Juno; pastors "baptised" this holiday, like some others, by substituting the names of saints such as Valentine to suppress the practice. Others maintain that the custom of sending Valentines on 14 February stems from the belief that birds begin to pair on that date. By 1477 the English associated lovers with the feast of Valentine because on that day "every bird chooses him a mate." The custom started of men and women writing love letters to their Valentine on this day. Other "romance" traditions have become attached to this feast, including pinning bay leaves to your pillow on Valentine's Eve so that you will see your future mate that night in your dreams.

But this isn’t a treatise on the origin of the Festival that has made billions of dollars for Greeting-Card companies. It’s just a Valentine Day story from the Midgard-Hebrides Chronicles.

Arabella Radeyevna was one of those girls it was impossible not to like – especially if you were a red-blooded male. She was friendly, intelligent, had no ‘airs’ whatsoever (though she well might have, given the adulation she excited), sensible – which is quite a different thing – and a delightful, if sometimes dangerous, disrespect for authority. Though I doubt most of her ardent devotees were much bothered about any of these sterling qualities – they rarely looked beyond that fact that she bore a striking resemblance, from head to toe, to Kylie Minogue. Add to this her uncanny ability to make anything she wore, including the drab, grey, school skirt, look like something out of a Valentino Catalogue, and you can see why it wasn’t unusual to find lovesick swains trying to scribble verses dedicated to her in the quiet nooks and crannies of Midgard-Hebrides High School. Besides, ever since she had, at the previous year’s Christmas Bash, kissed Apollonia Gogol, another acknowledged beauty, on two separate occasions, in full view of the school, her stock had risen to stratospheric heights among all right-thinking men.

Given all this it’s hardly surprising that a certain Elver named Jormund found himself quite ecstatic when ensconced on the picturesque hedge of the picturesque garden that bordered the picturesque heritage building where we had our classrooms.

What we spoke about for the first half-hour is…ahem…immaterial, and has no bearing on this story. Suffice to say that I had been on the verge of saying something devastatingly clever when she cut me off by saying,
“I’m worried about Joshhound. He seems to be terribly depressed these days.”

I thought this was a most unwelcome change of subject.

“This is a most unwelcome change of subject, Arabella,” I said accordingly.

Like legions of women were to do after her, Arabella ignored my objection and continued,

“I wish you’d talk to him.”
“Me?”
“You!”
“I hardly know the feller!” I protested.
“Yes you do. I saw you waking home with him after school last week.”
“Well he lives in the next lane. But I don’t really know him!”
“Nonsense. You must go and find out why he’s so down. He won’t talk to me so it must be a guy thing.”
“I don’t see why you’re SO concerned about a silly chimp like Joshhound anyway,” I muttered resentfully.
“He’s not a chimp. My best friend in the whole world, Rita Stringthing likes him very much. She can’t bear to see him like this. But the poor thing is so shy she won’t talk to him. And so she wants me to talk to him. But he won’t talk to me. I tried to talk to him when we were putting up the decorations for the Valentine’s Day Party in the Biology Lab. He insists nothing’s wrong. But I know something’s wrong. He has such a moony look about him,” she spouted out in a breathless soprano.
“But I don’t see where I come into this!”
This objection met the same fate as the earlier one.
“You’ll do it won’t you?”

Of course I said yes. It was against my finer judgment, no doubt. A little voice in my head told me that nothing good would come out of it. Another one – I must’ve been borderline schizophrenic – told me I would be best served by keeping my fingers out of this particular pie. But when someone like Arabella looks up at you out of her earnest grey eyes, with her hands clasped in appeal and her cheeks aglow with excitement, you tend to say yes. It’s a law of nature.

“Right now, I mean,” she added.
“What? Now?” I protested, “I don’t even know where he is right now!”
“I mean after school, Jormund. You two can walk home together and share confidences!”
“Yes yes all right, I’ll do it,” I said, as the bell rang to announce the end of the lunch break and the commencement of Geography Class (for me) and English Literature (for her), and we walked our separate ways.

“The things a chap will do for a woman with a figure like that!” I muttered to myself as I entered the classroom.
“Did you say something?” asked Mrs. B., our Geography teacher, a fearsome woman with the face and build of a rhinoceros and ears sharper than a CIA bug.
“Nnnno, ma’m, nothing ma’m, I was just memorizing the figures for rainfall requirements for the kharif season, ma’m.”
“Good,” she said with a cruel smile, “then you can share with the class your observations thereon. Please take the floor, Mr. Elver…I think this will be very interesting.”

I threw up my hands and took my place at the centre of the platform. This was going to be a long 40 minutes.

* * * * *

The Ladies Man

2005-08-17T22:01:00.000-07:00

[Pulled this one from the archives...I remember this one had offended some sensibilities on first publication. Sat down and excised some of the more potentially objectionable parts last night - they weren't really integral anyway. Derivative, maybe]

Attention-arresting first lines. They aren’t essential – some of the greatest works of literature have begun with the most ordinary opening sentences - but others have been set apart and marked for greatness by the sheer brilliance of their lung-openers. Whether it was Melville’s grand Biblical parable, Dickens’ tribute to a man’s sacrifice set against the French Revolution, or Collins’ tale of the forlorn Woman in White, their first lines have made it amply clear to their readers that they were about to embark on a literary journey of rare quality. And it is, therefore, rather unfortunate that I don’t have quite the talents of the two British and one American gentleman mentioned above, because the history of Nishant Sahil certainly deserves to have been treated by a writer of comparable quality.

A poor Elver shall, then, have to suffice.

So let me begin, therefore, by saying that this is a story of what one man’s fortitude can prosecute and how womankind has no option but to endure it.

Throw your mind back, then, to a balmy winter afternoon some twelve years ago. A contemplative pre-teen Elver stood leaning over the railing of the old stone steps the led up to the music room. It was, indeed, time for the school’s weekly music class and other people from my batch were also lounging around, awaiting the high-pitched call of the Music Teacher. I silently contemplated the pressing question of whether I should, during the ensuing lesson, sing “Rivers of Babylon” in the earthy, Jamaican tones of Boney M, or the higher, mellifluous tones in which the Psalm was sung by the Bandra Church Choir. While the latter was more musically consistent, the former suited the protestant, multicultural nature of the school better.

“You read, don’t you?”

This query, uttered in a conspiratorial whisper, clearly addressed to me, startled me out of my reverie. I took a step backwards and took a long look at the speaker. The short, very dark, skinny, ferret-like individual who was looking up at me wasn’t someone I’d ever spoken to before. In fact, he wasn’t even in my class. But the music lessons were given to all the divisions in the school together, which was why he and I were at the same place at the same time. Moreover, given the smallish batch size and the camaraderie that was common in the school, I had no difficulty placing him as Nishant Sahil of Division A.

“Why yes,” I said in response, “I also ‘rite and do ‘rithmetic, in case that was what you were going to ask next.”
For a moment he stood bemused. But minor setbacks like this, I was to soon discover, did not faze the likes of Nishant.
“No I wasn’t. What I mean is, I need your help. I want to propose.”

I leapt a clear three feet backwards and crashed into Raul, the massive but gentle rugby-player.

“What??”
“To a girl, I mean,” he said hastily, “she’s in your class, and I figured that you might’ve read something about folks who proposed. Need some tips on how to go about it. You’ll help, right?”

This was unprecedented. A bloke actually proposing to propose! There was to be a time when Aphrodite would entrance all but a few of the batch of ’96 into her wily webs, not sparing Jormund Elver himself, but that was still a few years away at the time. And while we, the students of Midgard-Hebrides had been taught in an inclusive atmosphere and did not regard girls as monsters or demons (a practice quite common in less liberal schools), the thought of seeing them as anything other than irritating little squirts was quite alien to our sensibilities.

However, the abiding ambition of my pre-teen self was to make myself agreeable to my peers. I could as soon have told him ‘no’ back then as I could tell Ariel now that yellow does not become her.

“Of course,” I said accordingly, “I’ll see what I can do.”
“Oh thank you. I mean to pop the question in a few days. We’ll talk later.”
“Right, but who is the girl in question?”

He was about to reply when the music-teacher’s piercing voice trilled into our ears that if we did not carry our miserable carcasses upstairs within the next thirty seconds, we’d have to suffer the ignominy of being caned. Students of Midgard-Hebrides knew better than to disregard that threat.

# # # # # #

A few minutes after the lesson was over, we found ourselves trudging up another flight of stairs to get to our classrooms to collect our satchels. A familiar voice called to me as I ascended, and I stood still to let him catch up. It was Pete-Pete, the transfer student from Delhi.
“Hullo, Pete-Pete,” I said, “what’s new?”
“Oh nothing – wasn’t that Nishant I saw you speaking to just before the music lesson started? I didn’t know you knew the chap.”
“Yes it was, and no I don’t,” I replied, turning the corner of the corridor that leads to our classroom, “he approached me ¬ex-parte, you might say.”
“Hmmm,” said Pete-Pete, “anything to do with that rumour that he’s got the hots for a girl in our class?”
I was a touch surprised. Rumours, as I was to find out, spread fast.
“Well so it appears,” I admitted, “he said as much himself. Wants to propose to her, too.”
Pete-Pete gave a low whistle.
“Now that’s something. Did he say who it was?”
I shrugged, as I stepped into the classroom and located my bag, “Nope, not a word. Do the rumours say anything on that?”
“No,” he replied, “but we can guess, can’t we? The rest of the class is still to come in anyway. Who do you think it might be?”

Our classmates were trickling into the room in ones and twos, and I found myself gazing upon the female members with a touch more interest than ever before. While my motive for knowing who was the poor unfortunate target of Nishant’s affections was not, like Pete-Pete, that of idle curiosity, I felt it was an important fact to know if I was to offer any constructive help in formulating a proposal. After all, it would be incongruous to suggest he use an expression like “your unfathomable, dark, Hera-like eyes” if the girl in question was to have clear, grey, Athena-like eyes.

As it turned out, none of the girls in the class looked particularly like being candidates for the stormy emotions. Few 12-year-old girls ever do – with rare exceptions, it’s an awkward age for a girl just as it is for a boy.

“It must be her,” said Pete-Pete, giving me a nudge and indicating a tall, slim creature who was sharpening a pencil over by the window.
“Talmyra Kringle?” I said, thoughtfully, “by Jove! You must be right!”

Those were gentler, more innocent times. The world-wide-web was but a distant dream and even Cable TV was the preserve of the privileged few. Which is why, though I don’t claim to have been a great judge of feminine beauty, I can safely say that Talmyra Kringle was definitely pretty. She had a button-like nose, a clear complexion, twinkling brown eyes and a trusting smile that revealed a dimple. Far less has captivated the hearts of 12-year old boys. If anyone was a viable candidate for being the lady of Nishant Saahil’s heart, it was her. Besides, I knew her slightly from having sat next to her for most of the previous two years and could vouch for her definitely being one of the nicer girls around.

# # # # #

Early the next morning I sought out Nishant just before morning prayers.
“Wait up there, pal,” I said, waylaying him in the quadrangle.
“Jormund! Just the lad I was looking for! Did you look up anything yet?”
“N..no,” I said, “I do need to know who the girl is, though.”
“Oh..ok,” and here, to my considerable surprise, he blushed. It shouldn’t have been possible for anyone that dark to blush, but he did, and continued, “Her initials are.. T.K.”
I smiled in triumph. Our hunch had been correct. It was Talmyra Kringle.
“Talmyra’s a nice girl,” I said, “she always covered for me when I forgot to bring a book or something.”
“Talmyra? Who said anything about Talmyra?”
“Didn’t you just say…T.K.?”
“Yes – Taryn Kooglbottom!”
“Taryn Kooglebottom!” I exclaimed in distress. I only had a vague memory of who the Kooglebottom was, but such as it was, it wasn’t pleasant. Besides, I knew I remembered something about her that was dashed inappropriate, though it escaped my mind just at that moment.
“Yes. Isn’t she sexy? She’s a Delhi girl. Delhi Girls. Wow!”
“I…uh…wouldn’t know,” I muttered and began to sidle away. I needed to consult Pete-Pete about that disturbing premonition.
“You’ll help me right?”
“Yes yes,” I said, and raced towards the school buildings muttering something about having homework to do.

Pete-Pete was nowhere to be seen when I reached the classroom. The Kooglebottom, however, was. She stood in conversation with her coterie at the far end of the classroom, near the window that opened out onto the basketball courts.

I am told that the statue of Venus De Milo, in the Louvre, is so breath-taking in its depiction of the Hellenistic Ideal that visitors are left speechless in awe. Taryn Kooglebottom was…well…not quite like that. It might have helped if she didn’t use as much oil in her hair. The pimples across her countenance did it no favours either. Her aspect, overall, was distinctly bovine – an expression of perpetual content, combined with a rather unintelligent expression and a penchant for chewing gum on all occasions.

Out of the corner of my eye I noticed Pete-Pete saunter into the classroom and chuck his bag onto the bench next to me. In a few brief words I put him abreast with the new information.
“No, seriously?” was his response.
“I ain’t kidding,” I replied.
“Crap,” he said, “that female is…”
“Like a cow?” I suggested.
“No, I mean yes, but that’s not what I mean – she’s unutterably cheap!”
“How do you mean?” I asked, but even as I did, I remembered why I had that disturbing premonition I had earlier.
It had been two years earlier to that date. The teacher had been absent and the class was mostly engaged in idle banter. I was trying to sketch Leonidas based on his depiction in the history textbook. Pete-Pete was engaged in conversation with Daniel, seated behind. Taryn, who sat next to Daniel had then proposed that we discuss the stories of the movie we had most recently seen. What Daniel and Pete-Pete had related, I don’t remember. I think I had summarized Zorba the Greek. Taryn had then, with great gusto and paying close attention to detail, retold the story of what could only have been a softcore pornographic film. My ears had burned then, and the recollection burned them again.

“Crap! We have to warn Nishant!” I exclaimed, “I’m sure that’s not the kind of girl he want to be going after.”
“You do it,” said Pete-Pete dismissively, “he’s your friend.”
My protests, though I made them, were clearly redundant. The onus of having that conversation with Saahil fell, I knew, on the Elveren shoulders.

I swooped down on Nishant near the water-cooler during PE.
“Nishant, Taryn’s all wrong for you,” I blurted out.
“Why?” he asked, taken aback.
“She’s…she’s…she tells dirty stories,” I said weakly.
He gave me an interrogative look. I told him, in the best way I could, of the events outlined above. His reaction was, to say the least, unexpected.
“Wow! Jormund, I love her more than ever before!”
I staggered away from him in amazement. After school that day I informed him that I was sorry, but I lacked the skills necessary to help him propose to such a woman as that. In short, I washed my hands of the whole affair.

# # # # #

Not that a lack of co-operation from my side kept Nishant from carrying through his plans. That Friday, during the lunch break, Nishant Sahil walked into our classroom with a look of tense determination. In his hand he bore a box of Gems – button-shaped candy, I mean, not precious jewels. Kooglebottom stood, as usual with her coterie by the window. Nishant took a deep breath and walked purposefully forwards towards her. The coterie parted respectfully. Stopping before Kooglebottom, he took another deep breath.

I put aside my lunch and got up to get a better view of his actions.

“Taryn,” he said.
She chewed her chewing gum silently.
Nishant dropped to his knees, took up a fistful of candy from his box and held it up to her.
“Taryn Kooglebottom, I love you.”

An awed hush fell over the entire room. The only sounds now audible were of the basketball game in progress outside. Taryn turned her head towards the window and spat out the chewing gum, probably onto the head of some unsuspecting basketball player.

“Taryn Kooglebottom, you are so sexy!”

She reached out with her hand and picked up all the Gems that stood on the pal of his hand. Then she popped them into her mouth all at once and chewed appreciatively. I’d seen cows chew cud with less style.

“Taryn, are you listening? I love you! Let’s go steady!”

The love of his life plunged her oily fist into the box of candy that he had brought and gathered as many as she could fit into her paw. These she stuffed into her cavernous mouth and continued chewing in silence.

“Taryn!” he pleaded.

She merely repeated her previous action. Not a sound came out of her. And then, she let out a low sound that may have been a “No!” but sounded more like a “Moo!”

Even a Nishant can only stand so much. He got up and turned on his heels. She attacked the hand in which he held the Gems. With an anguished scream, he threw down the box and fled. Taryn Kooglebottom calmly picked up the fallen box and helped herself.

To say the incident created a sensation in the school would be stating the obvious. Never before had one so young done something so outrageous. Our illustrious seniors muttered in corridors that they had waited until the ninth standard when they had long pants before proposing to girls. Others cast aspersions on Nishant’s sanity. An uncharitable opinion was expressed that he had been on drugs.

The next year he informed me his father was being transferred to Delhi. He sounded glad about it. “Delhi Girls. Wow!” he said. That transfer order never came.

But this was only the beginning. In years to come Nishant was to propose to more girls than any other student in the school’s history. By the time the batch of ’96 lined up for its convocation day photograph, there wasn’t a single girl in that photo – not one – who had not received a proposal from Nishant, and even if there had been, it was for lack of time, not inclination.

These included all types – from Talmyra Kringle and the other bona-fide school beauties to Kooglebottom and her look-alikes (yes, he proposed to her on two more occasions). The result was always the same; a flat rejection. True, the mode varied, Arabella R. screamed in horror and fainted into her boyfriend’s arms. Roxanne H. slapped him with a protractor. Payal P. gave him a punch on the chest that knocked him out flat. Tania L. did nothing to him personally, but her two boyfriends thrashed him on two separate occasions.

Did any of this deter the great man? Far from it. Every year he’d tell me of the imminent transfer to Delhi that was just around the corner and how Delhi Girls made him say “Wow!” Through knocks, slaps, kicks, rejections, thrashings from boyfriends, thrashings from girlfriends (to whom he then proposed), Nishant persevered as only he could. He proposed to Drusilla because “Your hair look so good when you let them down.”, he proposed to Archie because “Your shoulders are so sexy,” and to Farah because “You’re so intelligent you can help me pass my exams.”

No reason was too trivial, no beauty too intimidating, no wench too homely. Through the summer and winter, at sports day and the Christmas Party, any occasion was good enough for Nishant to throw down a proposal.

What eventually happened of him, I do not know. We didn’t keep in touch after convocation day. I like to think his Dad did eventually get that transfer order to Delhi.

I can see him now, in my mind’s eye, standing in Karol Bagh on the footpath outside Roshan Di Kulfi, gazing at the passing thoroughfare and screaming, “Delhi Girls. Wow!”

The Journey to the Centre of the State - Part 3: There and Back Again

2005-07-23T12:08:00.000-07:00

[Where there's Part 2, can Part 3 be far behind? Poignant as this little segment is in the context of recent real-life incidents, it should still raise a laugh or two.]

Fifteen minutes later we found ourselves at the front desk of a tiny hotel facing the shrine itself. The “Traveller’s Rest” consisted of a long two-storied building, where the ground and first floors were let out to various shops, while the second-storey consisted of about fifteen rooms which were available to such travellers as made their way there.

“I had booked a super-deluxe room in the name of Elver,” the Queen Tigress informed the Lynx who manned the desk authoritatively, “with Air-Cooling and a Television.”
“Yes m’am, right this way,” he said, summoning a pint-sized minion and giving him a key, “show them Room No. 111.”
The minion led us down the corridor to Room No. 111 and opened the door. The room had a green carpet, two very comfortable-looking beds and a large flat-screen TV.
“Move the luggage in here,” ordered the Queen.
“Right ho,” I said cheerily and was about to move in when Ariel pointed out:
“Mother, there’s no air-cooling.”
“What!” the Queen wheeled around, “Jormund, follow me!”
I sighed, picked up the two humungous bags once again and followed her all the way back up the corridor to the front desk.
“I had booked a room with a Cooler,” the Queen informed the Lynx, “and Room 111 most certainly doesn’t have one.”
The lynx tried to be suave.
“Oh that room is going to get an air-conditioner later today, ma’m.”
“Later? What good is later? We’re here NOW!”
“It’s a very good room, ma’m and it’s not too warm right now anyway.”
“Oh yes, right now it isn’t, but pretty soon it will be and what then? Will you have my family baking in the afternoon sun?”
“As soon as a room becomes free we’ll let you know….,” he began
“Becomes free? Who cares when it becomes free? I had booked a room! I gave you a week’s prior notice! I said I wanted a room with a cooler and a TV and you can’t give me that. What’s the good of booking a room in advance? I ask you, what’s the good of it??”
He cowered meekly. She has that effect on people. Ariel looked at her with admiration writ large in her eyes. Papa Jormund tried to look as if he was intensely interested in the movements of a passing pig. Fenderis and I stood at the head of the staircase, read to bolt at the first sign of trouble.

“Well, m’am,” he began meekly, “There is a room with an air-cooler, but it doesn’t have a Television.”
“Hmph! Let me take a look at it.”
So we walked back down the corridor, this time to Room No. 104. It had no carpet or Television but there was an air-cooler.
“Get it swept and cleaned and we’ll settle in here…for now.”
“Yes m’am.”
“But as soon as a better room becomes available I want to hear of it. D’you hear me?”
“Y…yes, of course, m’am,” replied the Lynx and fled the scene.

Having put our bags down we now settled in to breakfast. After a while we were visited by the keeper of the shrine, who gave us an appointment for 9am. Then the power went MIA.
“The lights are gone,” I said, stating the obvious.
“Hardly matters,” said Fenderis, “It’s quite bright outside.”
“What about our baths? Where do we get warm water from?” I pointed out.
“Oh,” said Fenderis cheerily, “I had a bath last week, don’t need another one.”
Like any self-respecting canine, Fenderis detests the idea of taking a bath.
“Nonsense, everyone has to have a bath,” came the fiat from the Queen, “Jormund, go ask the front desk about warm water. “
I trotted along to the front desk. The lynx had left his post, obviously too shaken to function normally for a while. I told the bloke who was there about the hot water problem.
“Hot water here,” he said, pointing to a tap in the corridor, “but not much left, with the lights out, the geyser won’t be functioning. You’ll get whatever has been pre-heated. Three buckets at best.”

I returned and relayed this information. Orders for baths to be immediately undertaken were issued. My suggestion that Ariel and I bathe together to conserve the hot water was unceremoniously shot down. Fenderis’ suggestion that he dispense with a bath altogether met the same fate. In any event, the water wasn’t hot at all, so about half-an-hour later, four shivering but well-scrubbed members of the House of Loki and one shivering but well-scrubbed prospective member stood dressed in their Sunday best, ready to face anything.

What we did face was a dark bloke who barged into the room and offered sweets.
“Sweets,” he said, “the finest offerings to the shrine of Freyja this town has to offer. Home production. Round sweets, flat sweets, cubical sweets. Offer ‘em here, taken ‘em home, share ‘em with friends. Low on sugar, high on taste. Good for diabetics. Yes sirree. Lasts for three days without refrigeration. Give them to your friends and relatives. Share them with your neighbours. Yes sirree.”
The Queen Tigress imperiously demanded a sample, declared it to be good and ordered him to fetch more. He disappeared.

Then a mysterious hand appeared at the door bearing a newspaper. Papa Jormund who hates reading anything apart from London Edition of The Guardian didn’t want any of it, but the Queen took it in and pored over it for a while.
Just as I was reaching out to grab it for a comfortable read, she informed me not to be a time-wasting incompetent, and to join the family in offering their respects at the shrine.

When we returned to the Hotel about an hour later, we were informed that a room with a Television was now available. The Queen’s initial survey revealed that this room, too, would have to be subjected to a thorough cleaning before it could be rendered habitable. This done, I shifted the luggage once more from Room 104 to Room 112. I had just done so when Lynx re-appeared.
“M’am, the people in Room 111 want this room too seeing as there are six of ‘em so can you shift to Room. 113?”
He should’ve known better. The Queen Tigress gave him the sort of look that had once made no less a person than Odin wilt with fear. The Lynx barely survived to tell the tale. I followed him to the front desk.

“Lynx, my pal,” I said, giving him my ingratiating smile.
He gave me a suspicious look.
“Any idea how one gets back to B’bay from here?”
“You take a bus,” he replied.
“Go on, tell me more,” I said.
“Well, there’s WorryGem’s bus. That leaves from here at about eight-ish.”
“No good, we detest WorryGem, any others?”
“There’s the Off-spinner. It’s 20% cheaper than WorryGem.”
I gave a silent shudder. Anything cheaper than WorryGem would be an invitation to disaster.
“What about a break journey? Maybe we can get to some place nearby from where there’s a better service.”
He pondered for a while.
“You could go to the adjoining district,” he said finally, “the have a daily air-conditioned bus to B’bay from there. But it’s 50 kms further away.”
“You had me at air-conditioned, my man,” I informed him, “how do I manage that journey?”
The Lynx brightened up considerably.
“Plenty of buses from here to the next district,” he clarified, “and you can book both legs of the journey from here itself!”
“You rock,” I said, grinning widely, “Just tell me what I need to do.”
“Go down to the Bus Station and talk to the Agents,” he said, handing me a card, “pay up and you’re about done. You can leave from here in the evening and get to the next district- it’s an hour’s journey, and then catch the connecting bus at about 9pm.”

I thanked him profusely and returned to our room. Fenderis had located a remote control and was flicking through the channels. The first thing I realised was that the reception was better than I got at home.
“This is RIDICULOUS!” I said exasperatedly, “this place, THIS place, in the middle of nowhere, gets better reception than we do!”
He changed the channel and arrived at a music channel. Then he changed it again and landed on a Classic Hollywood Movies channel.
“By the @#$* trident of Poseidon!! They even get more channels than we do!!” I swore.
“You shouldn’t swear by Grandpapa,” said Ariel softly, “it’s not nice.”
“You shouldn’t swear by Greek Gods,” said Papa irritably, “We have a perfectly capable Norse Pantheon”
“You shouldn’t swear at your Cable Guy,” said Fenderis pontifically, “At least you have cable at home.”
“You shouldn’t swear at all,” said the Queen Tigress decisively.

I hung my head meekly and handed the card to her.
“What’s this?”
I repeated what the Lynx had told me in succinct terms.
“Good work, Jormund,” said the Queen Tigress condescendingly, “your father and I shall go and do the bookings. You stay here.”
“Take Fenderis with you!” said Ariel, perking up.
“I’m staying put,” said Fenderis firmly.
“We’ll be back by lunch time,” said the Queen, closing the door behind her.
“It’s a lovely day outside,” said Ariel, smiling at Fenderis, “You can go out and get some sun.”
“In case you didn’t notice, I’m a Fenris Wolf. We are from up north and we like it cold,” said Fenderis, turning on the air cooler with a swish of his tail.
“You pathetic mutt,” she muttered under her breath, giving him a murderous look, “it would’ve been hot enough in here if you’d gotten out.”

My mind raced back to an incident about ten years ago when Fenderis had been swimming in the North Arctic and been captured by a shark. I’d only been a young Elver then but I had fought off that shark for half-an-hour until Papa Jormund and Uncle Fenris had arrived on the scene and torn the shark to shreds. In short, I’d saved his life. Up to that moment I had regarded this incident as something of a highlight of my otherwise worthless existence. Now I wasn’t so sure.

“I’ll go get us coffee,” said Ariel, and stalked out.
Fenderis went back to changing channels. I glowered at him.
“What are you looking at me like that for?” he asked, a note of alarm creeping into his voice.
“Like what?”
“Like you want to boil me in oil?”
“Oh, that. I do want to boil you in oil, actually. But I’m not fussy – Lard or Fat will do just as well”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Fenderis, “I only stayed back for your sake.”
“For MY sake? Are you nuts? Or do you think I am?” I said, clenching my fists.
He leapt off the bed and peeked out of the door, presumably to make sure Ariel was not within earshot. Then he turned to look at me and hissed,
“You idiot, if I’d left you alone with her, she’d have squeezed a long-term commitment out of you in less time than it takes to fry an egg!”
“What are you talking about?”
“Think about it, you poor louse! You know you can’t resist her any more than I can resist a leg of mutton.”
I thought about it – for about five seconds – and then fell to my knees.
“Fenderis, old chap, I think you just saved my life. Well, at least, my life as a bachelor!”
He smiled and tried not to look too self-important.
“I owe you an apology,” I went on, “I was thinking the most terrible things about you.”
“Think nothing of it,” he said, jumping back on the bed, “and watch out, she’s coming back.”
Sure enough, the door was pushed open and the sea-princess entered bearing a tray with three cups of coffee on it. I gathered my wits (such as they were) and helped myself to a seat. She put the tray down on the bed.

“Coffee for all,” she said brightly, and we each picked up a cup, at which she suddenly pulled my hand and said, “that one’s for Fenderis, Jormund. Wolf’s special, extra strong, light on the cream.”
“I’m all right,” said Fenderis hastily, “I don’t mind this one at all.” He’s a smart kid, is Fenderis. All that time he spends with me hasn’t dulled his senses. He could recognise this was a Borgia-esque plot immediately.
She grabbed the cup from my hand and thrust it at Fenderis.
“No, you take this one.”
He gingerly completed the exchange, saying “Well, well, if you insist, you know…can’t say no to you of course, after all…oh crap! Looks like I spilled it.” - which, by a dexterous move, he had, right into the flowerpot that stood next to the door.
A sea-princess never actually wrings her hands or gnashes her teeth, but Ariel came as close to doing so as I’ve ever seen one do.
“I’ll get you another cup,” she offered.
“No thanks, I’m quite all right, really.”
“Jormund and I would feel awful if you didn’t have something,” she insisted, a steely glint in her eye.
“Oh hardly, don’t mind me, I can do perfectly well without,” he replied, smiling weakly under the onslaught.
“Some juice, maybe? Or Tea? Name your poison,” the girl was relentless, and for the moment, none too subtle ether. I found myself wondering whether she got it from her father Triton or her late mother Amphitrite.
Fenderis gave me a helpless look. I bounced to my feet, ever ready to help a cousin in distress.
“I’ll get him some cola myself,” I said, and dashed out.
Front desk took a while getting a cola, and I fell into a reverie, thinking about my Mickey-related troubles. I was shaken out of it rather rudely by the sound of yelping coming down the corridor. I grabbed the bottle of Pepsi that the Lynx was holding out to me and ran back to the room. Pushing the door open brought to light a rather alarming sight.

After having her bath in the morning, Ariel had dressed up in her favourite black and white shirt and blue skirt, and worn her favourite pink satin ribbon in her hair. This ribbon was no longer in her hair, but was firmly wrapped around Fenderis’ neck, and from the looks of it, she was trying to wrap it around a lot more tightly. Fenderis was writhing with the effort of keeping himself from being asphyxiated and not hurting her at the same time. He’s a very strong young wolf, is Fenderis, and could probably have shaken her off with very little effort, but he knew better than to injure someone whose grandfather was Poseidon. She was pressing down on him, her green eyes flashing with anger, her face flushed, her hair dishevelled and breathing heavily. She’d never looked more angry – or more beautiful. The top of the Shrine of Freyja was clearly visible from the balcony of the corridor where I stood. I turned and said a silent prayer to that kind deity for preserving my bachelorhood from this irresistible force.
Then I leaped in and separated them.
“What on earth are you two up to?” I asked, shoving the cola at Fenderis, “take this, old chap, you’ll feel better. Ariel, I demand an explanation.”
She sat with her back to the wall and didn’t meet my eye.
“I was checking if the ribbon was the right length.”
Even from a girl, this was a pathetic excuse, but I didn’t push the issue. Fenderis inched back to his position facing the TV and picked up the remote. I seated myself between them. It was a long time before anyone spoke. In fact I don’t think we spoke to each other at all until that night. Papa Jormund and the Queen arrived shortly after the events outlined above; lunch was had in a desolate atmosphere, and in the evening we took off for the adjoining district from where the connecting bus was to be caught. That was a very pleasant one-hour journey, there was a cool breeze drifting in through the window, and with the bus having no lights, it was even pitch dark. Needless to say, with my rotten luck, I spent the entire time sandwiched between a silent Papa Jormund and a resentful Fenderis.
Things didn’t change much on the bus home either. Once again I spent the night seated next to a random stranger. To his credit, he wasn’t oily, and slept like a log right through the journey.
We got off the bus as it pulled into the city.
“Well, this is where we part,” I said, feeling quite a bit better at the thought, “You go your way and Fenderis and I go ours.”
“Nonsense, we’re coming with you,” said the Queen and hailed a Taxicab.
Before I could protest, everyone but me was nestled inside it. With an air of resignation and a Cicero-like flourish, I waved them off and went looking for a bus.

On arriving home after a long wait for a bus I found myself greeted by a roaring fire, a friendly “Holla” from Papa Jormund who had adjusted the TV to receive faultless Cable reception, the sound of the Queen Tigress bustling about in the kitchen, the smell of fried shrimp wafting out of it and the sight of a beautiful sea-princess seated demurely on the staircase, a jar of cappuccino in her hand and an inviting look in her eyes.

“You know,” I said, taking my place next to her, “maybe life isn’t so bad after all.”
“Feels like heaven, doesn’t it,” she asked, patting my arm.
Fenderis emerged from the top of the stairs.
“I’ve put your luggage in your room,” he said.
“Oh Fenderis,” said Ariel in a voice dripping with the milk of human kindness, “I’m going to cook a particularly succulent leg of mutton for you today.”
He gave a look of unmitigated alarm.
“I think you should eat out for a while, old hombre,” I told him in Spanish, “you can get out from my balcony.”
“Yes, I think I shall do exactly that,” he replied, “and you take care, Senor. She’s a dangerous one!”
I winked at him as he gambolled off and turned to find her beaming at me with a smile on her lips, a mischievous twinkle in her green eyes and an even-more-than-usually pronounced flame-like lustre in her red hair. I realised that Fenderis had it spot-on.

“Dangerous” was putting it mildly.

The Journey to the Centre of the State - Part 2: Into the Night

2005-07-19T09:08:00.000-07:00

Punctually at four the next day, Fenderis and I turned up at the Bus Stand, awaiting the arrival of the rest of the family.
“Let’s eat,” said Fenderis.
“Let’s wait,” I said, “if we aren’t here when they arrive we’ll never hear the last of it.”
“To think we could’ve been pub-hopping right now!” said Fenderis wistfully.
“If you hadn’t opened your mouth we might have been!” I pointed out, “besides, this is hardly the time to be in a pub.”
“Is that them?” he asked, looking into the distance.
I followed his gaze and saw what looked like a spreading bushfire.
“It must be, or else the city is burning down.”
“We’ll have to wait and watch.”
In a few minutes, the appearance of Papa Jormund, the Queen Tigress and Ariel confirmed that it wasn’t a bushfire, but rather my beloved family. I smiled weakly in their direction. Fenderis tried to pretend he was looking very fixedly at a passing cat.
“Where’s your luggage?” came the first salvo.
“Right here, mother,” I said, indicating my trusty cat-basket, “I have in here my iPod, my camera and sea-biscuits.”
“Oh so you’re carrying hardly anything, then?”
“That’s right. Travelling light, y’know.”
“Good, then you can carry our bags.”
And before I knew what had hit me, I was saddled with two large handbags each of which must’ve weighed as much as Brokk’s Pig.
“What’s he doing here?” asked Ariel, looking at Fenderis.
I was too busy tottering about on the footpath, a handbag on each arm playing havoc with my centre of gravity, to reply.
“I’m coming too,” replied the Black Wolf himself, “Jormund made me.”
“Look, mother,” said Ariel, once again displaying her wide range of emotions which stretched from drama to melodrama, clutching my mother’s sleeve, “He’s invited his cousin along so that he won’t have to spend time with me. He’s so wicked!”
Personally I thought her practice of referring to my mother as “mother” was damned presumptive, but I let it go.
“You poor dear,” said the Queen Tigress sympathetically, “I’m so sorry I didn’t raise him better.”

I looked skywards in despair. As it turned out, this was a bad move given my precarious balance, because I keeled over and fell on my back onto the pavement. Fenderis and Papa Jormund helped me back to my feet.
“When does the Bus arrive?” asked Papa Jormund irritably.
“Let’s go corner the travel agents,” said the Queen, and we followed her to the Travel Agent’s office, a hole-in-the-wall of the State Bank Building.
“When does the Bus to Freyja’s shrine arrive?” Papa Jormund asked the sleepy octogenarian at the counter.
“To where?” he asked, and dozed off again.
“To Freyja’s shrine. District Beed. By the World Tree, I’ll bite off your head, you crusty ancient, if you don’t answer,” I said, bonking him on the side of the head with one of the handbags.
He fell off his stool and didn’t move for about five minutes. Then a chirpy little midget sucking on a lollypop, who might have been the ancient’s great-grandson showed up and demanded to see our tickets.
We showed him.
“Bus will come at WorryGem’s Office, opposite,” he said, pointing across the road.
“But we bought the ticket from you,” said the Queen Tigress, not liking this one bit.
“Yes but the bus is operated by WorryGem,” he clarified, and went back to sucking his lollypop, making it clear that as far as he was concerned, the conversation was over.

Our group turned wearily and crossed the road. I knocked over two motorcycles and one scooter with my bags while doing so. Once there, we located WorryGem’s office, another hole-in-the-wall operation.
“Bus…Freyja’s shrine…when…here?” I asked cryptically.
“Six,” the ferret who was operating the office said brusquely.
“The ticket says FIVE,” protested the Queen.
“Yes, but the bus only arrives at six. You be here at a quarter to.”
“What is that supposed to mean. Why do you write five on a ticket when the bus arrives at six? This is ridiculous. It’s a crying shame. You should be…” Papa Jormund succeeded in calming her down and guiding her away before she could go any further.
“Now what do we do?” asked Fenderis.
“I don’t know, got any ideas?”
“Let’s eat,” he said.
The motion was seconded and carried. We removed to a nearby samosa-joint and had a bite to eat.

At six we were again standing before WorryGem’s office, awaiting the arrival of the mystical bus.
“Any time now,” clarified the ferret.
Fifteen minutes later the ferret repeated the same line.
Another fifteen minutes later he collected all our tickets.
Finally at 6:45 the Bus actually made an appearance.
“It doesn’t look too bad,” I said.
As it turned out, I was talking to myself; everyone else was already in the bus. I looked around for a porter to help me carry the luggage in but there wasn’t any. So I pushed it in myself and stepped gingerly into the aisle. As I might have expected, the family had successfully isolated me. I’d looked forward to a pleasant journey with myself in the window and Ariel by my side, with the two of us a safe five rows behind the parents and Fenderis. As it turned out, she sat next to the Queen Tigress, who had bagged a window seat, while Fenderis sat next to Papa Jormund who had done likewise. I groaned and found a vacant seat across the aisle from Fenderis. The window seat next to me was empty as well so I put down my luggage on it and made myself comfortable.

In all fairness the first leg of the journey wasn’t too bad. There was a decent breeze, I had space to stretch my tired body, and I even brought out my iPod and listened to a bit of Van Halen. The first jolt came when we had just left the city. The bus took a stop and a large, dark, oily, fat man entered and informed me that he had a ticket for the window seat next to me. With a groan I lifted the luggage onto my lap and let him sit. After the bus started moving, Mr. Oily gave his head a sudden jerk, showering me with dandruff. A few minutes later he did it again. Fenderis, who had been observing interestedly, whispered to me in Polish, “I say, old chap, does he think he’s Tom Cruise or something?”
“I don’t know, but if I don’t do something about this I’ll start looking like someone from Nightmare on Elm Street,” I replied in the same language.
“You already do,” pointed out my charitable cousin, “but try pulling your chair’s backrest forward, that should stymie him.”
This deft manoeuvre on my part did work but after a while Mr Oily rested his ample arm on the armrest, edging me out completely, and dozed off. I pushed back with a vengeance, which not only awakened him, but prompted him to favour me with a fine sprinkling from his vocabulary. Fenderis, who likes to keep a track of such things, noted some of the finer words on his cufflinks for future reference.

About a hour into the journey, it struck me that something was wrong.
“Fenderis, old chap,” I hissed at him in Dutch, “why aren’t we on the Expressway yet?”
“Beats me, is he going to go by the old road?”
“Geez,” I said, “that road’s a ruddy nightmare!”
Then the bus veered off the road, such as it was. For some reason, we were now neither on the Expressway nor the old Road, but on a village Dirt Track. The Bus then rolled to a standstill at what appeared to be a dead end. It was now pitch dark outside, but I could vaguely make out mysterious figures engaged in conversation with the conductor of our bus. Some more people entered here. One bloke was left standing, even as the conductor muttered vague threats about “one seat being left empty”. Back on the last seat, a couple of passengers were making uncomplimentary remarks about each others’ ancestry. Then the bus rolled on. It seemed to have an uncanny knack for shoving itself into every bump or pothole in the road that it could find. Another half-hour or so later it stopped again.
“Dinner break, twenty minutes,” said the conductor, a ferret with a moustache.
The bus slowly emptied itself into the lawns of the Hotel Putnam. There was something vaguely familiar about the layout.
“Is this the old Hotel Putnam at which all buses stopped before they put down the Expressway?” I asked Papa Jormund.
“So it is,” said he, “certainly looks like it’s seen better days, doesn’t it?”
In a way, of course, that was exactly the case. There had been a time when the Hotel Putnam played host to almost every traveller on that stretch. The lawns had been well-manicured, the fountains gushing and you couldn’t find a place to sit for love or money between 9 and 11 at night. But today, though it was 9:30, the place looked like a ghost town. Everything had a run-down look to it. The grass on the lawns was over-grown, the fountains decrepit and empty seats as far as the eye could see. There was little to remind one of the glory days of waiting for an hour to get one’s order or of the Hotel from where the elder Elvers used to make it a point to buy their Chicken Tandoori.
“Still, the food might be good,” I said to no one in general.
By now the Queen Tigress and Ariel had made their way off the bus. Neither looked too pleased. I’d say they were shaken, but that was but literal truth.
“This bus is terrible,” came the verdict from the Queen.
“It is, too!” said Ariel, “my body hurts from getting knocked up so much.”
Fenderis and I exchanged meaningful glances, but avoided laughing out aloud at her unfortunate choice of words.
“Let’s um, go in, shall we?” Fenderis ventured, and led us in.
No one was very hungry. Papa Jormund had some bread, I tucked into some noodles and even Fenderis contented himself with only one helping of mutton. The ladies looked too miserable to be hungry. Even my mother, for a change, looked contrite and tried to explain to me why going by train had not been feasible.
Dinner over, we boarded the bus again. To my chagrin, Mr. Oily had shut the window. The atmosphere was now so close and Mr Oily himself so deodorant-deficient that I almost suffocated. Slowly, however, sleep did come to my tired eyes.

Not for long.
At midnight, the bus jolted to another halt, once again in a place that bore a striking resemblance to the desolate lands of Aunt Hel, keeper of the underworld. In the fond hope that someone would get off the bus, I rubbed my eyes and poked Mr. Oily helpfully.
“What the…?” he began groggily.
“It’s a stop,” I said as brightly as I could in the circumstances, “I thought maybe you had to get off.”
He gave a low growl.
“I get off at the last #$%^ stop, you *&$#.”
“Oh,” I said, disappointed, “Are you sure? This looks like a nice place to get off a bus.”
“I do need to….go,” he said, “and this looks as good a place as any.” With these words, he was just about to get out of his seat when there was a sudden influx of babies, women and the occasional male, into the bus. Fenderis, who had also been awakened by the stop, looked on in thinly disguised horror. I imagine I looked much the same. Papa Jormund was clearly bewildered. The ladies slept on.
After about forty-seven crying babies, twenty-three ridiculously young mothers and eleven rat-like men had entered, the door of the bus closed and it began to move again. The new entrants settled themselves in the aisle. Some stretched their babies out in comfort and sat by their side. Others seated leaned against the seats of passengers. One of the ridiculously young mothers tried to use my foot as a pillow for her baby. I recoiled and protested vehemently.
“Should I bite ‘em, Jormund?” yapped Fenderis aggressively in Mandarin, “should I? I could just make them regret this, I could.”
I sighed. The ferret-like conductor was now taking exorbitant amounts of money from the poor villagers for the privilege of standing or sitting on the oil of what was not a very pleasant Bus to begin with.
“No, Fenderis, it’s not their fault, you know, they’re just being exploited” I said, “but if you can get a good bite on that ferret who let them in, you have my blessings.”
But with the aisle crammed to the full with the villagers, there was no way Fenderis could get at the ferret. Gnashing his teeth with bootless anger, he turned and looked out of the window.
“Could you open the window a bit?” I requested Mr. Oily, “it’s awfully hot in here.”
He opened it a few inches. Then the idiot sitting in front of the Queen Tigress called out to the conductor.
“I can’t get my window closed,” he said.
The conductor came tramping down the aisle, stepping on the feet of numerous babies along the way, and began closing all the windows one by one.
Mr. Oily, who seemed to have an unhealthy respect for the ferret, promptly closed his window too.
I groaned some more and resigned myself to more discomfort.
The rest of the journey was relatively uneventful. From time to time, a baby would cry out, or two young mothers would strike up an interesting conversation about the family buffalo’s philandering ways, which made for a terrible night’s sleep. Nor was it very pleasant when Ariel and the Queen Tigress woke up to find three dusters, two sacks of red chilly, a gallon or two of baby drool and a broom on their feet. The atmosphere got closer and closer. I felt like a slab of serpent-meat being roasted over a spitfire. From time to time I’d fall into a doze and have a dream or two, always an unpleasant one.
But at about 6:30 the next morning, the Bus eventually came to a stop at the village that houses Freyja’s shrine. I picked up my two beastly burdens and negotiated the teeming multitudes at my feet to make me way out onto the road.
The rest of the family followed, ashen-faced and shaken.
“There is no way…,”I began
“That we are going back,” Fenderis continued.
“In that bus,” concluded Ariel.

The Queen Tigress turned her flashing eyes on us.
“By the Gods, no,” he said, “We won’t”

The Journey to the Centre of the State - Part 1 :The Visitors

2005-07-16T09:25:00.000-07:00

[I wrote this post after a rather harrowing bus journey some 6 months ago. For some reason, I rather liked it - perhaps more than anyone else did :) ]

“It still looks terrible,” said Fenderis.
“And now?” I asked, twisting the wire of the cable a little more to the left.
“Well it’s marginally better, in that I can now tell that they’re showing tennis and not beach volleyball. But I have no idea if it’s men’s tennis or women’s.”
I leaned my head over to one side and took a peek at the screen.
“That’s women’s tennis, you mutt, can’t you tell that Sharapova with those long legs and blonde hair playing Mary Pierce, who’s looking regal as ever?”
“Hold on,” said Fenderis, narrowing his eyes into slits, “they’re showing the score. Oh crud, it’s Agassi v/s Hewitt.”
“What the @#$%!! Back to work, then,” and I went at the cable wire with my screwdriver again.

Every now and then I reach the conclusion that the quality of Cable TV at the House of Elver is pathetic. Since asking the Cable Guy to rectify the situation is about as likely to bear fruit as a lamp-post, the steps I take consist of fiddling with the cable wire that hangs outside the balcony of my bedroom, precariously balanced on the railing, while Fenderis tries to adjust the fine-tuning and reports to me whether the picture is any better. This exercise is always futile, but I pursue it nevertheless, which only goes to show that there is a bit of Sisyphus in all of us.

On this occasion, after about half-an-hour of fruitless labour, I was about ready to call it quits, when I happened to look down onto the lawn. For a moment I thought that the bushes were on fire. Everything looked intensely red. Then cooler counsel prevailed, and I realised that I was being paid a visit by Princess Ariel, my girlfriend, (whom you might remember from her starring role in Walt Disney’s The Little Mermaid) She was probably dropped in a barrel of claret as a child by her nanny, (who I happen to know loved the stuff) which explains why her hair is the colour of a fire-brigade truck. She’s really one of the nicest people in the world, apart from being one of the hottest, which says it all, really. We get along very well, except for the fact that I neglect her terribly and she cheats on me from time to time.

“Hullo, Ariel,” I said, waving down.
“What are you doing up there? You’ll fall off! Get down here this instant!” she yelled back up.
“Right ho,” I said, and leaped off the railing onto the lawn, falling with a loudish sound on the tarmac and, I daresay, giving quite a nasty shock to several families of frogs and snails.
“Jormund, you idiot! You must’ve broken all your bones. Don’t you have any brains?”
“Of course not, sweets, I’m merely bruised. Some womanly comfort wouldn’t be amiss, though,” I said, patting her hands playfully.
“That won’t be necessary, Jormund, Ariel had best keep her hands to herself if she knows what’s good for her.”
I froze. The voice was unmistakable. Turning my head behind me, I confirmed that I had not made a mistake. And sure enough, there stood the Tigress Queen, my mother, accompanied by Papa Jormund. I struggled to my feet and performed my best imitation of a municipality tap.
“Stop gurgling and let us in,” came the command from the Queen.
“Err…ummm…I mean…..yes…of course….” I said, and then looked up at the balcony over which Fenderis was leaning, and hissed “open the door, you mutt.”
“Right ho,” he hissed back and bounded off.

In a few minutes we were all inside, with the fireplace crackling merrily. Papa Jormund was comfortably settled in my favourite armchair, the Tigress Queen was regally seated on the sofa, Fenderis was sitting on the carpet before the fire and Ariel was warming her hands before it. I stood nervously next to the fireplace, shifting my weight from one foot to another.

“Err…..coffee?” I asked, finally.
There seemed to be a general consensus that this was a good idea, so I kicked Fenderis on his right flank. He trotted off into the kitchen. There followed one of those uncomfortable silences that always tends to descend on the Elver house when the parents visit. Presently Fenderis returned carrying five cups of coffee on a tray. A few sips of Cappuccino later I felt much better and actually able to carry on a conversation.

“So, mother, ah, well, what brings you, uhm, aah, here?”
She glanced around the room disapprovingly.
“Why don’t you ever clean up around here?”
“Of course I do!” I protested, “I cleaned up as recently as….last September!”
She gave me another disapproving glance.
“Anyway, I don’t think you’ll ever learn to live in a decent environment.”
I made non-committal sounds.
“What I wanted to tell you is that we are going to visit the shrine of Freyja this weekend, so get your bags packed.”
“What? What what what? We are going where? And why? And who’s we?” I said, reeling. If Fenderis hadn’t propped himself against my knees I’d have fallen to the ground.
“We. Us. Your father, me, you and Ariel.”
“Why? Where IS this Shrine of Freyja? Why do you want me to come?”
“Look here, Jormund,” said the Queen Tigress, wagging a reproachful finger in my direction, “You’ve been leading a dissolute life for too long” – my protests here were masterfully ignored – “and you’ve kept this poor delicate girl waiting for ever so long without taking her seriously at all” – here she patted Ariel’s head gingerly –“and I want you two to visit the shrine and get Freyja’s blessings. It’s only fair.”
“Blessings for what?” I asked, getting straight to the point.
“A happy life together, that’s what!” the Queen flared up, “I’m sick of your not taking her seriously” – here she threw her coffee-cup at me and caught me smartly at the ear –“and her cheating on you” – here she pulled Ariel’s hair and made her cry out –“You two are going to come to the shrine and I’m going to ask for both of you to find some direction in your life.”

The words rang in my ears like the ringers on those old ring-dialing phones. I clutched at the mantelpiece for support.
“But, but, isn’t it ever so far away?” I asked.
“You know the thing is,” she said, ignoring me, “I don’t even blame this poor girl. The way you neglect her, it’s awful.”
Ariel, who’s never missed an opportunity to display her flair for melodrama ever since she got that acting assignment promptly started sobbing.
“Isn’t the shrine, like, way in the Interior?” I asked again.
“So it is,” replied the Queen, “I have booked us all onto a bus. We leave tomorrow evening. Here’s your ticket”
“But that’s too far!” I protested again, “think of the distance! And it’s a drought-prone area! How are we supposed to…survive so long without water? I’m a sea-serpent! Ariel here is Posiedon’s grand-daughter! We both need water!”
“Oh don’t be ridiculous, Jormund! It’s only one day. I’m not leaving you there for posterity!”
“But,” I said, this time with a little more conviction, “I have to study! I have textbooks to read! And papers to solve! And promises to keep! And miles to go before I sleep, and miles to go before I sleep!”
For a moment I thought she wavered. She gave some signs of thinking about what I just said. And then Fenderis had to shove his oar in.
“Besides, Aunt Tigress,” he said earnestly, “Jormund here promised to take me pub-hopping this weekend to celebrate my exams being over.”

That settled the issue.
“Pub-hopping!” said Papa Jormund disapprovingly.
Ariel burst into tears.
“See, mother? He’d rather go pub-hopping than spend time with me! Such a rotten boyfriend he is.”
“You poor girl,” said my mother, patting Ariel’s cheek comfortingly, “Jormund, you will be packed and ready at the Bus-stand tomorrow evening. I don’t want to hear anything more on the subject.”

And with those words, she swept regally out of the room, Papa and Ariel in tow. Ariel turned back at the door to stick her tongue out at me. When they were safely out of the driveway I slowly walked over to the door and shut it. Then I turned around and glowered at Fenderis. He was brushing his fur nonchalantly.
I pounced onto his back and held him fast in a triple-cross-face.
“You miserable mutt,” I screamed, “what did you have to go about opening your stupid mouth for?”
“I’m sorry,” he yelped through clenched teeth.
I merely tightened my grip further.
“Get off me, Jormund, you ass.”
“I’ll make you pay, you mangy piece of fur!” I said and brought down a punch on his face.
But he knew me all to well.
“What strikes me, Jormund, is that all this aggression stems from your phobia of COMMITMENT.”
No other word in the English Language has quite the same ability to reduce me to a damp piece of blotting paper. My limbs went limp. I released him and rolled myself into a corner, hiding my face in my hands.
“Woe is me,” I said melodramatically, borrowing a page from Ariel’s book.
“It’s all right, old chap,” said Fenderis, “It might not be so bad.”
I glanced up and stared at him.
“Oh you’ll find out, my dear cousin, you’ll find out. I’m booking you onto this bus with us as well. And don’t even think of wriggling out of this one!”

I ignored the murderous look he gave me and proceeded to call the Bus Service.

No I really don't know what to call this one.

2005-07-04T11:04:00.000-07:00

The best of us are only human. Sometimes you really have to wonder where you are, before you realise who you are. Could things have been different? Should they have been different? Is there any point to the whole excercise of going about living your life as you do, when you don't even know if you're in the right place?

Anyway, no rants. Not today. In case you chaps haven't yet noticed, I don't rant. I don't philosophise. I don't do anything much, really.

Blogging's been fun, though. Writing for an audience, no matter how small, has its' own little pleasures, moments when you want to add just the right polish, do just enough pruning and put out a product that you hope will not be a complete lemon, something I hope I have been able to do.

There's the persona thing. How much of yourself do you put down in words? How much of contemperory reality do you dare to show in a place where just about anyone can read it? When I set out to write a Blog that I consciously decide won't be a mundane account of my daily life, but rather a place to do some writing, that becomes an issue. Maybe it's diffidence, maybe it's just a natural human tendency to keep a little secret garden tucked away inside that you won't, that you can't let out.

Still, one hopes to be taken seriously. At least as a person. It's not easy, after all.

Without that, the whole premise falls through.

If the above post sounds entirely disconnected, make allowances for the stress imposed by twelve hours spent outside the house by an Elver of rather sedate manners.

2005-06-30T05:41:00.000-07:00

Even for someone with a reputation for being perennially depressed, the last couple of days haven't been pleasant.

The first thing you need to know is that an Elver never fits in, except amongst other mythological creatures, and even then rarely. North Midgard is, unfortunately, full of very prosaic creatures. Even those whose appearance would have given them a lyrical quality seem to be more doggerel than epic verse.

As for the Seniors, they resemble nothing so much as barking dogs. Whether they bite, is something I'm not in any particular hurry to find out.

Then there is the whole nature of the thing. I still have no idea what I am doing here. And that's not to be taken to be an existential dilemma. I actually don't know what the hell I am doing, in the Computer Center, at 6:34pm IST.

Beyond that is the whole dilemma of where I should be. Should I, like some, pretend to be a pleasant sort of Elver, feeling right at home fiddling with figures (accounting figures, I mean), preparing for presentations, reading management books, spouting management jargon and following Dale Carnegie's principles on winning friends and influcing people?

Or should I be the absolutely unpleasant, supercilious, arrogant Elver dripping with attitude, cribbing about everything and keeping damn well aloof from the lesser mortals surrounding me?

Tag, you're it.

2005-06-22T11:14:00.000-07:00

Like my pal Siddhu, I was frequently tagged as a child. Be it blind man's buff, hide 'n' seek, hopscotch or just plain "Chase the Fox", sooner or later - invariably sooner - Jormund got tagged. So it's not really surprising that, since I hit my teens, I steadfastly refused to get involved in any activity that involved tagging. I even made my decision to avoid becoming a software programmer on realising that C programs have tags in them.

Until last week, that is.

Vineet, that future Corporate Giant, presently studying at MDI, decided that such low-lifes as visited my blog deserved to be inflicted with a fresh post on the Elver's reading habits. He tagged me.

Then, to compound matters, Siddhu decided to tag me as well.

Under the onslaught of the double-tag, I had no option but to get my snaky self into writing the crap that follows.

Ideally, I'd have liked to have gone on at length and produced a masterpiece of literary criticism. Then I realised I have the intellect of a well-bred, but mostly retarded ape. So, I shall keep it short.

Total Number of Books I own :

Not even the Queen Tigress knows. The Elver collection has never been subjected to a census. To give a ballpark figure, somewhere between 3 and 4 hundred.

Last book I bought :

I bought a bunch at an exhibition; Kipling, Joyce, Anne Bronte etc.

Last Book I read:

Sigh. You know the times are bad when the last book Elver has read is a management text-book. I refuse to name it. I have a reputation, you know.

The last 'real' book I read was The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Contrary to popular perception, this book is not a biography of me. It's about a penniless Russian aristocrat who becomes rich and almost marries someone else's beautiful mistress, but doesn't. Then he almost marries a beautiful heiress but doesn't. Then he almost marries the beautiful mistress again, but doesn't. Then he almost prevents his homicidal maniac friend from killing her, but doesn't.

(My apologies to the spirit of Fyodor. It's actually a beautiful book, and I'm a confirmed admirer of Dostoevsky's work. But I'm also incapable of doing a serious analysis in my current frame of mind.)

Five Books that mean a lot to me:

Tough. Really tough, because it's damn near impossible to pick only five. In any case, what I shall do just stick to the classics and ignore Moravia, Kuprin and Butler inspite of the more lurid cover illsutrations. Anyway, 'tis best to clarify that this is, by definition, a perception analysis.

1. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
I was too young to fully understand it when I read it for the first time, but the memories of that first reading are fresh in my mind to this day. Associations with the time of year, the season, the BBC Series which was running at the time. Subsequent readings revealed to me the depth of the story, the beauty of the characters, the bleak Yorkshire Landscapes, the obession of Heathcliff - you either love WH or youre a literary Philistine.

2. Tess of the D'urbervilles - Thomas Hardy

I made the mistake of reading this book when I was 14. It left me depressed for about three months. A few years later I gathered up the courage and the mental capacity to read it again. I've been depressed ever since. Easily one of the best pieces of writing in the English Language, but I'd never recommend it to any person I considered a friend. Especially not to the B-school gang.

(Another gross exaggeration. I'm on a roll!)

3. Bleak House - Charles Dickens

I decided to have restrict myself to only one Dickens, and that's always a tough choice. Perhaps the only reason I made it Bleak House is that that's the one I re-read most recently. Brilliant satire, masterful handling of a complicated plot and just enough sentimentality to keep your heartstrings engaged throughout.

4. The Lord Of the Rings Trilogy - JRR Tolkein

More or less self-explanatory. You're either a convert or you're not. To those who are, no explanation is needed, to those who aren't, this isn't the place to preach.

5. The Illiad - Homer (G.C. Translation)

And then there was Homer. No, not Simpson, the blind ministrel. Violent, difficult, complicated (not least for the names) and wildly entertaining, the account of the wrath (well, childish petulance actually) of Achilles, the craft of Odysseus, the plight of Priam, idiocy of Patrokles and the death of Hector is all that's holy about Literature (or epic Poetry in this case). Brad Pitt and his miniskrit be damned.

Books I'd like to burn:

All the CA Institute Modules. In fact I strongly recommend burning the CA Institute as well.

Well, that's it from me. I now have to tag a few people.....

Siddhu was going to be on my list of tagged people to begin with. As it turned out, he did it before hand on someone else's tag. I'm counting him in anyway - the #1 humour writer (#2 on those rare occassions when I'm in good form ;) ) I've come across in Blogsville.

Cousin Fenderis. He doesn't have a blog, but if he will be so kind as to mail his response in to me, I shall post it here.

Archster because she's witty, writes well, and hasn't updated her blog in far too long.

RP The IIM'er. Though I won't blame him if he doesn't for lack of time.

Hedyikk's Budget Blues

2005-06-21T10:49:00.000-07:00

A rather silly sort of article on Budget 2005

“Jormund, old chap! Over here!”

I was walking to the local bakery to buy some bread for Fenderis and yours truly, to have with the quality veal that the Great Black Wolf had caught the previous day, when this urgent shout stopped me in my tracks. Turning, I beheld Hedyikk, the Einherjar, running as best his heavy frame permitted him, towards me. The Einherjar, for those who do not know, are great heroes who have died on the battlefields. They are then carried away by the Valkyries and allowed to prepare for Ragnarok, the final World Battle. Hedyikk died a long time ago, as I remember it, and was carried away by none less than Svava herself. He’s about seven feet tall and built like a sturdy ox. He usually dresses in the skin of a black bear and wears a helmet in which the curved horns of a ram are firmly encrusted. His bushy eyebrows and black beard cloud most of his face, and he was at this time carrying his trust battle-axe in his right hand. In his left was a fluttering pink paper. He lives pretty close to where I do, and I’m always glad to have a chat with him.

Accordingly, I waited for him to catch up. He was huffing and puffing, so I let him take a moment to catch his breath. Glancing at the paper in his hand, I realized that it was a copy of “The Economic Times.”

“Doing some serious reading, Hed?” I asked.
“What’s with this budget? I can’t make head or tail of it! Sometimes they say it’s putting more money in my pocket sometimes they say it’s taking money from my pocket. I can’t understand it, dammit!” he waved his hands about. Noting with alarm that his axe had just come within a few inches of giving me an involuntary haircut, I hastened to calm him down.

“Calm down,” I said accordingly, patting his shoulder, “take a deep breath.”
“I can’t take a deep breath, dammit. I’m dead, remember?” he said irritably.
“Oh yes, that’s right. You are. Well, tell you what, let’s go to the bakery and if I have some time I’ll try to demystify the budget for you on the way back.”
“You’d do that?” he said, brightening up, “that’s so awful nice of you.”
“That’s me, I’m nice,” I responded, “besides it’s not like I have anything better to do with my life.”
“Well, there’s that.”

We strolled to the famous Jamia Islamia Bakery where, as usual, there was no bread.
“Take half-an-hour,” the angry-looking bloke at the counter told me.
“Can I wait?” I asked
“All right, but tell your friend to be careful with that axe.”
“He’ll be as careful as Eugene in the Floyd song,” I promised, and guided Hedyikk to a long pew that was placed outside the oven room. I pushed the three long-bearded oldies to one side; put Hedyikk in the middle and myself on his left in order to balance the weight.

“Now,” I said, “where should I start?”
“Am I going to pay more tax or less, dammit?” he said, dashing his axe against a bicycle, “tell me that!”
I took the ET from him and pondered it for a few seconds.
“Well that depends,” I said, “on which way you look at it. Have you head that song by The Corrs? It goes,
Love laughs and love can make you cry,
I can’t believe the ways,
That Love can give
And love can take away”
He gave me a look that indicated that he, like most girls I’ve known, wondered how I’d ever escaped the Mental Asylum. I continued undeterred.
“What I mean is, Hed, that, while the resemblance between Freyja (the Norse Goddess of Love) and P Chidambaram might be minimal, his propensity to give with one hand and take away with the other would make her proud.”
“Go on,” said Hedyikk, putting down his axe, but keeping his hand on the grip just to make it clear that he was not completely at ease yet.
“Well this budget works somewhat like that. What you win on the straights you lose on the corners. Take Income Tax, for instance.” – I jabbed at the relevant section – “you’ll definitely be paying less. The slabs are all different, for instance. Counting begins at 1 Lakh and the 30% only starts biting after 2.5 Lakhs. All in all, for any level of income, your tax outgo will come down. For a 3 Lakh Taxable Income, your outgo will go down from about 55k to 30k.”
“That’s good.”
“So it is. But no Standard Deduction any more. That means you salaried blokes are at an even bigger disadvantage than before.”
Hedyikk groaned, “Why are we always picked on?”
“Because you’re easy pickings,” I replied, “But even so, tax on income is a lot less.”
“Can’t fault that. But I hear Sec 88 is gone?”
“Yup. Now you have some new Sections where the investment you make is directly deducted from Income. So if your income is within 1 Lakh of a slab limit you can bring yourself into a lower bracket.”
“So that’s good too?”
“Yes, but expect a move to EET. Your withdrawals from these investments will now be taxed as income.”
“I don’t get it.”
“Well, let me put it this way. You have some money stashed away in your Provident Fund, right?”
“Of course.”
“And you’ve made plans regarding what you’ll do with it when you retire. Based on how much it will amount to at that time. Right?”
“Yes I have,” he said, nodding, “I mean to set up a trust fund for my grandchildren so that they can pursue the career they want to rather than having to do something they don’t like because they need the money. I want them, at least, to not find money to be a constraint but rather an enabler.”
“Very noble of you,” I said, mildly surprised that Hedyikk actually thought beyond his next battle, “and how much do you think you’ll be able to put up for this?”
“Not as much as I’d like,” he admitted, “but I’m counting on at least 30 Lakhs. I do put in a lot of money into it every month.”
“Well, make that 30 into 20 and you’ll get a better idea of what you’re likely to get.”
“WHAT?!” he roared, driving his axe through a sack of flour, “dammit, why?”
“Coz you get the exemption on it now, you get taxed later,” I said, patting his arm, “now calm down will you?”
He whimpered.
“But that means all the money I’ve put in over the years….”
“Yes, the taxman will have his cut.”
“It’s unfair, dammit!”
“It’s a Congress government,” I countered. Seeing that he was silent, I pressed on. “Then there’s Service Tax. More services will be taxed every year, so that extra money you have will buy fewer services. In short, it will go to the Govt., under another name.”
“That whole give and take thing again?”
“Yup. Excise on petrol is lower, for one thing, but there’s a cess, so the price remains the same. Excise on Cars is lower, but Steel prices are up.”
“I get the drift,” he said, stroking his beard.
“Then there’s the Fringe Benefit Tax. Employers pay tax on all facilities and benefits they provide to employee.”
“That can’t be so bad,” said Hedyikk, “after all it’s not us who will be paying.”
“True, but don’t forget that to Employers, these things were business expenses earlier. Now they won’t have any reason to go on providing these benefits. Now I don’t know if I’ll ever have a decent job, but those who do might feel the pinch.”
“Zooks, that’s true. I never thought of that!” said the Einherjar, looking worried.
“But basically that’s how it is,” I explained, getting up, “don’t forget that you WILL have more cash in your hands. You can choose whether or not to invest it. You don’t have to invest huge amounts to get small concessions like in Sec 88. If you think you can beat the market, go ahead and do it. I always recommend paying tax and keeping the liquidity to locking up funds in uncertain investments.”
He licked the head of his axe thoughtfully. I went over to the counter. The bread had finally arrived. I took the loafs under my arm and walked over to Hedyikk who had also gotten up and was perusing the final part of the Budget Speech.
“Well, I’m done,” I said, “should get home. Fenderis will be hungry.”
“Yes, yes, you ought, thanks a lot, young Elver” he agreed, and I began walking out when his voice broke in on me again, “hang on a minute, what’s this Cash withdrawal tax that everyone talks about? I have to pay to take my own money from the bank? It sounds stupid, dammit! Can you tell me why that tax is there?”
I turned, thought for a while, and shrugged.
“I cant. It’s perfectly asinine. Pay money to use your own money. Hmm…careful with that Axe, Hed.”
A clatter of broken glass followed by shouting in my wake convinced me he hadn’t been.

2005-06-19T05:58:00.000-07:00

Part Two of the Mickey Experience.

The insistent sound of large paws scratching on my door at half-past-midnight could only mean one thing – Fenderis was back from the hunt. We Elvers like our sleep, but leaving a loved cousin out in the cold is not something we do, so I went downstairs and opened the door. Sure enough, it was the large Black Wolf himself, and he looked like he’d been in several fights, most of them violent. I let him in, and he made a beeline for his favorite spot next to the fireplace.

“Something to drink?” I asked, with a sympathetic look as he licked his wounds.

“Some Dom Perignon would be nice,” he replied.

I rolled my eyes and tossed him a can of beer.

“That’s as much as you’ll get,” I told him.

He prised the can open with his sharp canines and shrugged “I guess it’ll have to do.”

I took a can for myself and sat myself on the armchair next to him.

“Good hunting?”

“Can’t complain,” he said nonchalantly, “the blood of the Fenris Brood does not yield easily”

This was his way of saying “Yes the hunting was good and I got plenty to eat”.

“Need rest? You can have the spare room,” I said.

“Nahh, not sleepy,” he replied, stretching his paws, “Look, why don’t you finish your tale about Mickey and the Ball?”

I took a thoughtful swig of beer.
“Don’t see why not. Where did I leave off?”

“Mickey’s minion told you to arrive by 8:50 or else Cinderella would turn into a pumpkin.”

“Ah yes,” I nodded reflectively, “That’s why I made it, huffing and panting to JBIMS at 8:30. Needless to say while going I got off at the wrong stop, and had to walk back about a mile in these godawfully uncomfortable leather shoes.”

Fenderis clicked his tongue sympathetically.

“And guess what? I needn’t have bothered at all!”

“You mean….?”

“Yes. That whole story about Cinderella turning into a pumpkin was pure hogwash. She was in no such danger whatsoever.”

“But then why did they call you there that early?”

“Honestly, I have NO idea. When I got there, as usual there was no sign of anybody. After Bugs arrived we took the elevator and got to the same floor where the previous day’s action had taken place. This time it appeared that everyone had been herded into a corner room with a few rack-like chairs and little ventilation. There was also a list outside which had the names of everyone who had been invited by Mickey. My name was on Puddle 3 and Bugs was on Puddle 1. But – and here’s the crux of the matter – both of us were in the bottom half on the lists.”

“So you had to wait a while?”

“A long while. Close on five hours to be exact, before anything got started.”

“Five hours?”

“Five hours.”

“No, really, five?”

“Didn’t I just say so?”

He licked his paw and motioned to me to go on.

“Well, anyway, as I said, there was a 5 hour wait, followed by a Group Discussion.”

“How was that? Fun?”

“NOT,” I replied emphatically, chucking my beer can into the fire.

He tut-tutted sympathetically.“Fish-market, eh?”

“Absolutely. Not quite the Citylight Fish market perhaps but definitely Wadala.”

“Anyone particularly bad?”

“Everyone sort of spoke at the same time. Except me. I didn’t speak at all.”

He looked at me with mild surprise.“Jormund, my man, I know you aren’t what we call a silver-tongued charmer, but you aren’t that shabby either. What happened?”

I shook my head sadly.“Couldn’t get myself heard. My voice was on vacation. Must have been the damned tie. It had choked my neck for about five hours already by that time, remember? I couldn’t raise my voice above a croak.”

Fenderis sighed.“It happens to the best of us. What about the interview? How was that?”

I smiled wistfully.
“Well after that interview I think I can apply for membership of the Grave Diggers Union. Seeing as I dug my own with remarkable felicity. I don’t think I said anything right. When they asked my why I wanted to join with Mickey I mumbled something about entry points. When they asked me to describe myself I gave an answer that sounded patently manufactured. Then I went on and on about my chosen field like someone who’s repeating a vague rumor. And finally I managed to put my foot in my mouth by telling the Mickey was not my favorite cartoon character.”

Fenderis raised his eyebrows.
“You said that?”

“Uh-huh.”

“They won’t want to touch you with a barge pole.”

“I know.”

“Well, that’s that I suppose. But what were the other folk there like? People in your puddle, for instance?”

I strained my feeble memory.
“There was The Curry Queen, Kari. I knew her by reputation. She was nice, really passionate about Mickey and most other things.”

“You two get along?”

“Like a house on fire. She’s a fan of mythology and fantasy literature

A most excellent kind of fan!” he exclaimed, wagging his tail.

“We chatted a lot about that sort of stuff and about culture, the role of religion and so on and so forth.”

“So it wasn’t a total washout then?”

“No certainly not, at least I met one good person that day. She’s the sort you could talk to for hours on end.”

“Well that’s good,” said my cousin approvingly.

“Then there was the chick in red.”

“The chick in red?”

“Yes, one of the most intensely irritating specimens of womankind.”

“Do tell.”

I shuddered involuntarily.“I’d rather not. That nasal voice…that pseudo behavior…that attempt to bribe her fellow puddle-members with a big lunch if they tanked their GD’s…that patronizing manner…her attempts to wheedle inside information from the impish minion…you get the picture”

“Sounds like the works.”

“The worst kind. Then there was the chick with the nose ring.”

“What was she like?"

“Let me put it this way. Before she went in for her interview she announced that she had plans to seduce the Puddle.”

Fenderis started rolling with laughter. He’d have rolled into the fire, but I dragged him to safety.

“I’m sorry,” he said, still laughing, “she actually did?”

“She said it, honest,” I replied.

“And did she manage?”

“No, she came out asking existential questions about Gujratis and cool-ness.”

Fenderis laughed some more.
“Motley crew. Anyone else interesting.”

“Not particularly….there was the hunky but slightly psycho guy, the holier-than-thou female, the overgrown elf, the despicably self-important bloke, you know, the usual lot.”

“Ah yes the usual lot,” said Fenderis, and stretched his paws.

“Yes. In hindsight, if it hadn’t been for meeting Bugs and Kari I’d have called the whole experience a dead loss.”

“Nothing in life is ever a dead loss,” said the Wolf, yawning, “except death. That’s a dead loss.”

I shook my head, smiling, as I walked to the door and switched off the light. Fenderis stretched out his length on the carpet as I walked up the stairs.

“Good night,” I head his lazy drawl from downstairs as I reached my own door.
“Good night, Fenderis,” I said, and tucked myself in.

Mickey eventually declared the results of the interview. I, of course, did not make it. Neither did Bugs or the chick in red. The Hunky but slightly psycho guy, who we later found out was very psycho, did. Kari was made to wait a long while, but Mickey eventually relented and let her join as well. If it hadn't been for this last face, we'd have completely lost faith in Mickey, among other things. As it turned out, Bugs is now in Wellington Castle, training to be a knight, while I vegetate in North Midgard Institute.

Taking the Mickey..err MICA (1)

2005-06-16T06:32:00.000-07:00

As lame as it may be to merely re-post something already posted, I thought that since the Old Blog was deleted in its entirety, I might as well put up all the old stuff again as and when I had time. Besides, I don't know if I shall be able to write any new posts until I get my laptop. So here goes - The MICA Story, Part 1 - much appreciated in some quarters, for reasons I never really figured out.

So it happened something like this:

I’d invited my favourite cousin, Fenderis the Wolf, son of my Uncle Fenris (you may have head of him, Grandpa Loki’s eldest) over for tea yesterday, when he asked,

“Jormund, my man, how have you been?”

“Not worse than usual,” I replied in my usual, despondent tone.

“How did your visit to Mickey’s go? That test and interview you told me about? I recall you were pretty chuffed about being invited for it.”

I made non-committal noises.

“Come now, Jormund, do tell us,” he insisted, “it was for something quite different, right? To do with the Advertising Industry and what not? That’s what Mickey is all about isn’t it?”

I nodded,
“Integrated Communications Marketing to be more precise.”

“Sounds jolly,” he responded, “and with you being the creative chap we all know you are it must’ve been a breeze.”

I made a sound that in a sea-serpent less well-bred than myself would have been termed a snort. Fenderis poured himself a cup of tea and settled himself comfortably by the fire, taking care to keep his bushy tail out of harms way.

“I’m waiting to hear all about it,” he said.

"Well," I said, relenting, "The first thing you must know is that Mickey had kept the process at Just a Ball In Mickey’s Sphere.”

Fenderis raised an eyebrow.

“Isn’t that the most exalted Ball Sphere in Bombay?” he asked.

I nodded, and went on.

“The first thing you need to know about JBIMS is that it’s at the other end of the city. The second is that it only lets in 42 well-bred creatures in each year. Just 42. I mean, imagine, that’s a bloody drop in the ocean.”

“Don’t get off-topic,” interrupted Fenderis, like a faculty-member at a MBA Coaching Institute, “we’re talking about Mickey here.”

“That’s right,” I said, “I’m sorry. Anyway, I was told that I had to show up there at 8 in the morning.”

“That can’t have been easy for you,” said Fenderis sympathetically, “You rarely wake up at that time.”

“Don’t even remind me,” I said bitterly, “but it had to be done, so I arrived there a few minutes before that time, and guess who I met in the vicinity?”

“Who?” he asked, piqued.

“Bugs Bunny!”

“No kidding,” said Fenderis, “Bugs himself? I’ve been a fan for ages. What was he there for?”

“Much the same thing as I was,” I replied, “he wanted to go to Mickey as well. I didn’t know he was Bugs at the time, but he introduced himself later.”

“Well well that must’ve been nice. What was he like?”

“Oh, awfully decent chap. We had lots in common, went to the same school, speak the same language, share some common interests. In fact we stuck together through most of the process. But to move on, when we did reach JBIMS we found that Mickey was conspicuous by his absence. Nor had he left a note. I cross-checked the letter I was carrying from him twice to make sure I was in the right place. Then someone figured out that someone as important as Mickey must be somewhere in the higher echelons of JBIMS so we began climbing the stairs.”

“Like a stairway to heaven,” said Fenderis indulgently, pouring himself another cup of tea.

“Not quite that far but I’d say about halfway there. When we reached the fourth floor we realized that most of the other people whom Mickey had called had settled into a largish room and were making themselves comfortable. Not having anything better to do, Bugs and I did the same. There was still no sign of Mickey. Then eventually two of his minions emerged – a harried looking female and an impish bloke. They settled on a table and demanded a pound of flesh – no less than five hundred rupees from each one of us for the privilege of going further in the process…”

“Hold on a minute, didn’t you already pay them more than twice that amount?”

“One thousand two hundred to be exact,” I assented, “and I had to borrow those from Papa Jormundgand.”

“And you didn’t even get a copy of their prospectus against this 1200?”
“That’s correct,”

“But Mickey still demanded a further 500 from all of you?”

“That would be correct too.”

“Good Lord, this Mickey likes the colour of money doesn’t he?”
I shrugged.

"That he does. Anyhow, everyone got into a long queue and after about an hour the last pound of flesh was deposited into the bottomless envelope that is Mickey’s avarice. Then the female minions distributed the paper for the Mickey Aptitude Test.”
“What in the name of Loki is a Mickey Aptitude Test? Didn’t you sit for the monstrous Feline Test already?”

I patted his head with the air of a patient cousin.

“This is Mickey, Fenderis. He has to be different.”

“Well so what was that like?”

“They gave us an hour and a half. The Test was strange. They wanted to know things like what sort of wife I wanted, whether she would be rich and slutty or poor and demure.”

Fenderis almost choked on his tea, “They wanted to know WHAT?”

“I ain’t kidding,” I replied, “they also seemed interested in know in how many different ways I could divide the number 30 into 6 different parts."

"Honestly, Jormund, that’s a rather poor joke.”

“I’m not joking,” I said petulantly, “they did, really. Oh and yes, they wanted to know my thoughts on the Slum problem and made me write a speech to be given to 5-7 year old slum kids on the subject.”

“Strange chap this Mickey,” said Fenderis.

"That’s not the worst thing about him,” I said grimly, “but anyway, after the time was over, the minion took away the papers and asked us to come the next day by 8:50am, or else, she warned Cinderella would turn into a pumpkin.”

Fenderis looked suitably appalled.

“You couldn’t possibly let that happen!” he exclaimed, “Poor Cindy!”

“Of course not,” I nodded, “which is why I actually went early the next day at 8:30!”

“And what happened then?”

I leaned back wearily in the armchair.

“I think I’ve spoken enough for one day, cousin Fenderis, I shall tell you all the rest tomorrow.”

“Fair enough,” said he, and bounded out to hunt for meat. I followed him up to the door and closed it behind him.

Ahem....

2005-06-15T09:34:00.000-07:00

Well, as some of you might've noticed, the blog was down for few days. I thought it was a technical error at first, but it turns out the blog had been deleted by accident. You may blame (or thank) a pathetic mobile pointing device for that.

Anyway, that's where things stand. I feel too apathetic to write anything more.