Tag: Story

Posted in Fiction

A Walk Down the Memory Lane

Posted on by Shaily Agrawal

After an agonizing search in my desk drawer that lasted forever (who knew a 15 x 12 inch drawer could hold so many things), I finally found it–my pen!

It looked weird…too plain. Not quite what I remembered. In my memory, it was rather shiny, elegant, all pretty curves and easy on the eye, or at least, a lot better than its current reality. Perhaps, my mind had been polishing its memory like lost love, romanticizing it until I forget the reality.

It seemed, a lot of other facts escaped my memory too. For example, why did I store it with the rest of the crap I own. I agree the drawer is supposed to have working things, but mostly, mine is the museum of fossils–long-dead things that I couldn’t throw away for reasons better left to imagination.

Did it still work?

I held it in my hand gingerly. It felt awkward, like I had lost a limb without knowing that it had gone missing, and now that I’ve found it after an eternity, I don’t know how to reattach it to the rest of me.

I held it between my fingers and moved it around, ill at ease. My fingers didn’t respond happily, the way they should have. After all, it is something they had held for half their life. They ached from the effort of mock-scribbling in the air.

Did it still work? I tried scribbling on my palm. All it did was scratch the sensitive skin.

Was the refill dry? But then another lost fact sprung to my mind–these ballpoint pens were always hopeless on the skin. I looked around for a scrap of paper–a difficult task, considering I hadn’t written in eons. Why would I? In a perfect world, everything I needed to write could be typed on the Notes app of my phone and laptop.

Only, this world wasn’t perfect anymore.

Finally, a piece of paper bag presented itself. I scribbled on the back side and it worked. Great! Now, all that remained was to dig out a notebook to teach my daughter how to write…

Sigh! Home schooling can be pretty exhausting…

Posted in Fiction, Nature stories

The Forest

Posted on by Shaily Agrawal
Image copyright Ammpryt ART

The hiking trip to the forest had once seemed like a great idea–a dare–but now, it felt horribly wrong. 

The forest seemed rather bleak with the tall trees blocking out the sunlight completely. The air was heavy and sounds felt muted somehow, until all we could hear was our own heartbeat. Even the birds that were chirping outside seemed to have deserted the forest in search of happier places. Our otherwise rambunctious group was now too silent. The crunching sound our feet made on the forest floor felt like an open invitation to…

Something…

Something sinister…

Though we couldn’t be sure of what.

Turning back felt like a wise decision though nobody wanted to say it out loud. It would be admitting defeat. So we all walked along, no longer cracking jokes and too aware of our surroundings. There was a feeling of being followed the moment we stepped in, and as we went deeper, the feeling became stronger, until it was so overpowering like a serpent sitting on our chest. We walked in a tight group and kept sneaking glancing behind us.

And that’s when a twig cracked behind us. A flock of birds took off. And suddenly, everybody started screaming and running in all directions.

A stag walked out of the bushes behind us, looking scandalized.

Posted in Fiction, Twisted fairytales

Occupational Hazard

Posted on by Shaily Agrawal

Shivering with cold, he peered inside the window. The tree was ablaze with lights. Gifts beneath it awaited the next morning. One of them seemed like a large jwelery box…

Bracelet?

Necklace?

On the table sat a couple of steaming mugs. Was that coffee?

What wouldn’t he give for that coffee right now? Or hot Cocoa? His ride didn’t have heating and his buttocks got glued to the seat. He felt like he would need an icepick to get him out. His fingers were turning blue. Global warming didn’t seem to be helping him right now. The cold was just as cold now as it was fifty years back. In fact, it seemed to be getting colder each year. Or maybe, he’s getting on with years. Maybe he should just retire…

Anyway, how long are these people planning to stay awake? It was already midnight, but the couch potatoes were glued to the television screen playing a cheesy movie about Christmas with Santa in a red coat, saying, “Ho! Ho! Ho!”. He rolled his eyes. Typical! The movie seemed to have just started, which meant these people would stay awake for another couple of hours.

Utter disrespect for other people’s time!

How on earth would he get inside undetected? He wasn’t exactly a wee mousey. This ample girth wouldn’t hide behind a candy stick.

He was tempted to skip this house and try another? But then, it had been the same case for the past couple of hours. State after state, house after house, people were awake glued to their screens. First, they had set radars across the world, shooting missiles at any flying object, turning traveling at night into a safety hazard. Then, they invented central heating, reduced chimney width to the size of a drainstorm pipe and installed intruder alarms to doors and windows. And now, they stay up all night keeping him out, waiting, and shivering in the cold.

To rub salt on the wound, they say, there is no Santa Claus! What do they expect him to do? Send stuff in by Magic?

He sighed. He couldn’t skip the sweet little girl upstairs waiting for her gift. As he had done all night, he placed the package with the teddy bear at the doorstep, hoping to get away without a sound. The intruder alarm went off, waking the entire neighborhood. He ran to his waiting sledge, and his reindeers took off in the sky before the adults could come out.

Panting, he cursed under his breath. He would have to find a replacement next year…maybe those nimble little elfs would be a better match for the exhausting routine. Or may be, just may be, he would join that gym again, and try harder this time…

Author’s note: To find out about Santa’s tryst at the local gym, read Santa’s Sweatshop.

Merry Christmas to everyone stuck at home away from family. Let prayers flow freely today. I truly hope the worse is behind us all and in the new year, we would all wake up to a better, safer world.

Free Photo by Brooks Rice on Unsplash

Posted in Nature stories

My Neighbours: The Glutton

Posted on by Shaily Agrawal

It is winters again. Thanks to the tree next door that flowers during the time, we have guests from all over the place. Here’s one…Notice his look?

“Cute flowers…pity it’s lockdown. So, what do they do with it these days?”

“Oh heck! Who cares?”

Chomp, chomp, chomp!

“I hope Rose didn’t see that…”

“Damn! Busted!”

Posted in Fiction

Left Hook, Right Hook

Posted on by Shaily Agrawal

His right hook was stronger than his left hook. So, he gathered the coriander leaves together with his left hook and waged a war against the errant leaves with his right. But they kept falling out, reminding him that quality of his remaining life depended on the new set of fingers his new bosses had ordered for him, if he was to keep his current job as a housekeeper and cook.

For 34 years, he had worked at a warehouse, using his pair of sturdy hooks to carry and store the wares to be housed, never missing the set of flexible fingers that his contemporary robots sported. So, when his owner decided that his model was too old to be repaired and sold him to willing owners, he felt jilted. New beginnings weren’t easy at his age. But having a new owner was better than being thrown in the junkyard, so he went quietly.

His new owners, an old man with a broken front teeth and an equal old squat woman with a traditional nose pin, took him to one of those ‘lesser’ engineers who work for the masses. How humiliating it was to be standing in the place along with all sort of riffraff!

Then came the big blow…He wasn’t fit for the new owners who needed a domestic robot. Being new to the whole robot-thing and not knowing better, they were fooled into buying an old industrial robot with hooks unaccustomed to the nuances of household work, especially cooking–a delicate art–that need a set of flexible fingers instead of hooks. His owners had openly regretted the choice, calling him a tin-box!

There could be no greater insult. He was made of Aerosteel used in making spaceships! He suggested them to rent him to another warehouse. He offered to work overtime to pay back their money. But even he knew it was a long shot. There was no guarantee a warehouse would hire a 34-year-old robot with obsolete technology.

That’s when the ‘lesser’ engineer became his saviour. He suggested updating his program to ‘Househelp’, and getting him two set of fingers, both easily available on GooglyFace.com. Since the fingers weren’t coming cheep, the old couple needed some persuasion. But they eventually relented since they had already invested 78 thousand bucks on the tin box, and ‘another 7 thousand wouldn’t kill them’.

Hence, the engineer quickly updated his program to Househelp before they could change their mind, deleting his Warehouse program by accident. He offered to order the sets of fingers from a ‘friend’ who would give them a ‘discount’ (his discount being 30% more than the market rate but the old couple would probably never find out).

So now, he was ‘home’ with his new owners awaiting his new body parts, and praying to God, if there was a God for robots, that the engineer would know how to install the fingers properly, else he would be stuck chopping coriander with a pair of hooks for the rest of his life.

Posted in Fiction

Retort

Posted on by Shaily Agrawal

All week long,

the nagging voice

in my head kept saying,

“Stop fighting.

You aren’t getting anywhere.”

Frustrated,

I replied her,

“Stop fighting.

You aren’t getting anywhere.”

Posted in Fiction

An Exercise to Futility

Posted on by Shaily Agrawal

He hid in the dak storeroom in the middle of the night and typed frantically on his laptop. He couldn’t dare to switch on the lights for the fear of being intercepted.

His ears were on hyper-alert, registering the tiniest of the sound–the tic of the Seconds hand of the clock in the adjoining bedroom, the constant dripping of the faucet in the kitchen sink, the scurrying mice on the storeroom floor. Compared to all these, the sound of typing felt like hitting a gong over and over. What if somebody heard him?

He couldn’t go any slower too. If he took too much time, someone might realise he’s missing. They would surely come looking and realise what he was trying to do. Then, they’ll find a way stop him or at least delay him enough to make the whole exercise futile. But he couldn’t let that happen…

The information he was dealing with was crucial, and the consequences of failing to act on time would be dire. The stakes were too high to lie low, so he typed like a madman praying to the Lord to give him just enough time.

He thought of the old days…happier days when he didn’t have to live in the constant fear of detection in his own home; when human roamed the planet freely…

“Just five more minutes,” he prayed. Then, he heard the baby wail…Time to change the diaper!

Damn working from home!

Posted in My life

Of Sheep and Lion and wayward Hippos

Posted on by Shaily Agrawal

My daughter’s next killer story. Please note that the entire story has been lifted…I mean, inspired by a Disney story called Lambert, The Sheepish Lion.

Original plot:

  • One night a flock of sheep is sleeping on a farm. 🐏🐏🐏
  • A stork, by mistake, delivers a Lion baby to a Sheep. 🐈🐏
  • The rest of the sheep make fun of him, 🐈
  • and he grows as rather a sheepish lion, who is “not ferocious like a sheep but has rather a sheepish grin”. 🦁
  • One night, a wolf 🐺 tries to pull away his mother 🐏, the sheep, by the tail to eat her.
  • She cries for help. 🐏
  • It wakes the Lion’s inner ferocious Sheep. 🦁
  • He 🦁 runs to the wolf 🐺, gives him a head butt like a true sheep, throwing him down a cliff. 🐏
  • He becomes a beloved Hero.

It is a lovely video about finding your true identity. You can watch it on You Tube via this link.

So, I had asked my daughter to tell me a story (to escape a similar request from her). I told her I wanted a story of a Hippo. She offered the Hare and Tortoise again and later, Lambert the Sheepish Lion. But I told her, I wanted a Hippo story. So, she simply replaced ‘Sheep’ and ‘Lion’ with ‘Hippo’. Here is her story.

  • One night a flock of Hippos was sleeping on a farm. 🐏🐏🐏
  • A stork delivers a Hippo to the Hippo mom. 🐈🐏 (Of course, the stork won’t always be making wrong deliveries. He isn’t your local postman.)
  • The rest of the hippos make fun of him. (Not sure why…) 🐈
  • He grows as rather a…Hippo. 🦁 (What else would you expect?)
  • One night, a wolf 🐺 tries to pull away his mother, the Hippo, by the tail to eat her. (At this point, I remind her that hippos are rather heavy to be pulled by the tail. She explains that it was rather a strong wolf.)
  • She cries for help. 🐏 (I ask her why the Hippo mom did not bite the wolf with her large teeth, but she ignores the question and ploughs on.)
  • It wakes his inner Hippo. (Of course!) 🦁
  • He🦁 runs to the wolf🐺, gives him a headbutt, like a true hippo throwing him down a cliff. He becomes a beloved Hero. (Tadaaaaaaaaa)
Posted in Nature stories

My Neighbours: Mr Jakyll Mr Hyde

Posted on by Shaily Agrawal

There is famous piece of poetry in Urdu that says, “Har shaakh pe Ullu baithe h, Anjam-e-Gulista kya hoga.” (Owls sit on each branch, I fear for the fate of my beautiful country–that it would turn into ruins).

I had assumed, considering owls as a harbinger of bad luck was a common misunderstanding in India against the gentle creature, who does nothing but sleep all day and hoot sweetly at night. My belief was further strengthened when I saw a couple of Spotted Owlets on the tree next door. They are wee creatures, barely 8 inches, sitting in the tree hooting serenely or sleeping on the electric wires across the road.

One evening while I was walking up the stairs to the roof, I heard a weird screech. I had been hearing this screech ever since my first night here five years back. It gave me goosebumps everytime, and had reminded me of witches, giving me too many nightmares. Gradually, I had assumed that it was a Night Heron along the banks of Yamuna river or something on similar lines, but definitely far away, and definitely huge.

Hearing this screech, Curiosity propelled me up the stairs in half the time and I opened the door to the roof silently. Surprise! There was this eight-inch creature sitting on a pole. He was screeching at the top of his lungs until his friend flew out of the tree to meet him. He saw me, and flew away to party with his companion.

Well, so much for being gentle…I can now see how Owls earned their reputation in India! They are Dr Jakyll by the day, and Mr Hyde at night.

There he goes again…

There go my goosebumps again…