Category: Random Thoughts

Where is that crazy girl who calls me Rapunzel? I am no Rapunzel. What does it even mean? If someone insists on giving a name, I would say “Henry” may be more suitable to my age and gender. But these human kids have a knack of giving weird names. One of them even called me “Gandalf, the gray”. But I guess it is still better than “Rapunzel” any day.

Hmmm, coming back to Rapunzel, where is that weird girl who used to try talking to me every day, complaining that I wasn’t responding and being rude. I would be sitting quietly on my favourite branch while soaking up the sun on those cold mornings, listening to the loud, raucous, erratic music created by those huge things that humans travel in, when she would open the window of her third floor room and begin chatting up like I’m an old friend. She would ask about my day, my nest and how the kids were doing, as if I would have time to sit there if I still had kids. They have flown away to find their own life–every single one of them since I and Mrs. got together. Now that she too has moved on to the higher skies, I would rather spend my time sitting quietly remembering her rather than play with a pesky kid.

But it still doesn’t make sense. She was always here, playing in this room and one fine day she was gone. I haven’t seen her in so many days. It left me uneasy. May be she too has flown away. But that couldn’t be possible. Sometimes, I hear her voice from lower floors but she doesn’t come to our window anymore.

Is she being kept a captive? Not sure why I felt the compulsion but I had to find out so I tried sneaking into the house–thrice. But I was always thwarted by that big human who said something like “Fan” and closed windows on my face. When I enquired with her about the little girl through the window glass, all she did was look at me like she couldn’t understand me and say, “Rapunzel, Betu’s gone school”. Moron! Fine, I’ll just sit here and enjoy my music.

Humph! May be I will turn my back to the window. That should help the urge to look out for the little inconsiderate brat, worrying an old bird like me because she is too busy to come visit!

“Oh Rapunzel! You were right mom, Rapunzel is waiting for me.”

“For the last time, my name is NOT Rapunzel!”

“Mom, I think Rapunzel is talking to me again!”

What the ****?! Humph! I’ll just ignore her as always. Now where is that music when I need it?

Not sure what I am writing today. But there are several stories in the edges of my conscience that I am unable to catch and yet unable to ignore, like an errant flyaway hair that constantly tickles me while I am trying to work, talk, cook, teach…

Some are great beginnings with no end in sight. Some are just middle like waking in the middle of journey realising you have come so far but with no recollection of where you started and where you want to go. Others are faint memories of dreams I wanted to turn into stories but never got to it.

I am also in the middle of looking for a publisher/agent for my second book. It has been 4 months with no traction, which keeps me awake at nights. I have mails from people who want me to give them money to publish my book. Why would I do that? I think the whole point of writing a book is to SELL it to a publisher. Or am I missing something? I haven’t even found a literary agent since Short Stories is, apparently, not a great market.

So, if you know a literary agent who might be interested in Short stories from a writer in India, please let me know.

As for the bee in my bonnet, I guess, I will have to deal with it myself.

Have a beautiful Sunday!

Here I am,

waiting for you,

but your arms are full with another

who speaks as and when you want,

what you want and

however much you want–

a slave to your wishes,

forever your companion,

sleek, stylish–

your smartphone…

Author’s note: The first line of this story was offered as a prompt by Darlene when I had hit a writer’s block. I hope I did it justice.

She whispered, “Home at last.”

Last year, he had hit his wife in a fit of rage, as he had so many times before that. But this one became one time too many. She had succumbed to the injuries. He had his job cut out for him as he disposed off the body and dodged the authorities, trying to prove that she had, in fact, run away with her new lover. The case was finally closed and he was celebrating his new-found freedom with a new date when ‘she’ had walked out of the closet where he had once hid her body.

She had never been a pretty one and death hadn’t done her any favours–unmade hair, shrivelled skin, bloodshot eyes, the eerie air she carried around her and the rancid smell that accompanied her had made him shit in his pants. Weirdly enough, his date couldn’t see anything and she only smelled a faint flowery perfume! So, when he went berserk, she assumed he was a crackpot and had run for it, leaving him alone with a murderous ghost who wouldn’t kill him, just brought him close enough every time. She had promised she would make him feel every single scar he had given her in her lifetime; that she would make sure he regretted the day he had married her. She had made good of her promise ever since.

When she wasn’t hitting him with things or strangling him in sleep, she would pleasantly discuss how she would torture him once she was stronger. She would often show up suddenly behind him in the mirror, in the car, in the grocery store and at work; and scare the daylights out of him. She would touch his back in the bath, leaving a trail of goosebumps, promising an eternity of pain once she was ready. He couldn’t tell anyone she was haunting him because saying that would mean confessing she wasn’t eloping and actually dead.

He tried praying, but his prayers only kept her mildly amused. Apparently, when you kill someone and they come back to haunt you, God declines to interfere and all bets are off. Eye-for-an-eye and all that. He had tried holy water, witchcraft…

When in a moment of insanity, he had begged her to kill him, she had smiled sweetly, “Killing you atones your sins. It frees you to go to heaven while I rot here in nothingness. I certainly can’t lose my only source of entertainment, can I? I want to finish what you started, very slowly, in the dragged out painful manner that you always loved…”

After too many sleepless nights with an overactive ghost trying to strangle him, always falling a little short of killing him, he had fallen sick. Hospitalised, he would wake up to find her sitting on his bed near his feet, smiling cruelly, waiting for him to wake up, so she could start over again…

He hated her now even more than he had hated her in life. He knew he had been right to kill her in the first place. But after too many sessions like this, he broke down. Assuming that gradually she would gather more power and hurt him worse, he had split his veins open, hoping to be finally rid of her. She had smiled at him sweetly then and whispered, “Running away, are we?”

When he left his body behind, he waited for the white lights to arrive, how it happens in the movies. But none came. Suicide was a sin. He realised he wasn’t going to heaven or anywhere at all. He finally understood what she had meant by once she was “ready” and “stronger”–that he had entered the same domain where she had been gathering power–when she had given him a twisted smile that promised an eternity of endless pain and whispered, “Home at last!”

I wanted to write about this for past one month but either I didn’t have time or the will or energy… So, our area is in temperate zone, around one kilometre from the river–half a kilometre by flight… of course planes don’t fly for such short distance, but birds do and that’s why we often see a lot of water birds here. Also, there is a small farm–I mean, really tiny farm–across the road inside what once used to be a government park. Which means that we get lot of birds around harvest and tilling. And there are trees, quite a lot of them where bird’s nest.

In short, it is a bird watcher’s paradise.

Every year, during winters I and my daughter spend an incredible amount of time on the rooftop, taking in the sun, watching birds and feeding birds. Several birds visit the rooftop on a daily basis and others we see in the overly large trees closer to water and larger fields close by.

We have gray and black Crows, Eagles, Hawks, Owls, Peacocks, Rock Pigeons, Wood Doves, Orange-black Mynah, Yellow-brown Mynah, Pied Mynah, , RufousTreepie, Babblers, Barbets, Cuckoo, Parrots, Magpies, Sunbirds, Sparrows, Tailor Birds, Kingfishers, Egrets and Lapwigs as a usual fare.

We also get guest birds during winters: green pigeon, Indian gray hornbill, black Ibis, brahmini starlet, speckled finch, black and white finch and others unnamed but awaited birds that grace us with their presence every year.

Out of all these birds, Gray Hornbill and Green Pigeon are the most difficult to take pictures of because of their colour and reclusive behaviour. They choose the densest tree and the shortest flight route. They move from trees to tree, hardly ever crossing more than a few feet at a time. A bunch of them is nesting in a tree that is just far enough that my phone never captures their picture. The only way is to either befriend the neighbours who live close by (not my cup of tea) or climb to the highest branches of the 60-feet tree (What are you even suggesting?!). So I had send out a prayer to God to let me take a pic and they started coming to a tree closeby so I and my daughter can look at them properly.

I took a few pictures. See if you can spot them.

first pic: At least 5 hornbills in the tree along with starlets

second pic: what horn bill looks like

third pic: Black Ibis

Fourth pic: at least 8 green pigeon.

Let me know if you see anything in the first and last pic. 😄

The Hungarian horntail 🐉 guarding a clutch of eggs 🥚🥚🥚, one of them golden, between her feet, throwing flames 🔥 at Harry Potter 👦🏻 while he flies around on a broomstick 🧹 with a huge smile on his face.

My daughter is five-year-old and she is a Harry Potter fan. She is not old enough to read the book on her own but she has been eating it up in large doses since last year, thanks to her mother who has read the entire series 7-8 times already. She has reached the Goblet of Fire and Harry has just finished his first task with flying colours, and my daughter is celebrating with his portrait with the dragon. I think they both look handsome.

Or rather, Harry looks handsome. The dragon is pretty with her open blond hair.😊 

And then, there is the unicorn…