Tag: Story

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…

Posted in Fiction

Rejected

Posted on by Shaily Agrawal

Her knuckles were white as she gripped the handles of her two wheeler tight–lost, teary-eyed, not sure where she was driving to, except that she had to get away from…herself? Because he, clearly, wasn’t following her when she walked away without looking back.

Why would he? He hadn’t made any promises…just an ‘I love you’ spoken on the phone from a thousand miles away.

She, on the other hand, had taken another month to speak those words until she meant every syllable and was ready to make a promise, because for her, saying ‘I love you’ meant ‘I can’t live without you and that I want to marry you so that I can be around you for the next seven lives’. Her ‘I love you’ was a promise of eternity. His was a spurt-of-moment statement spoken in the wake of Valentine’s Day–a day she never celebrated before him and had never ever since.

She was going too fast–the road was too crowded for that kind of speed, but in that moment, she didn’t care that she couldn’t see with tears filling her eyes, couldn’t anticipate with her mind crowded with so many thoughts, couldn’t stop if needed because her brakes weren’t meant for that speed.

She wanted to die…

No, he hadn’t slept with her or done any thing to incriminate him, but knowing that she wasn’t anywhere on his list of priorities in life, was painful, heart wrenching. When during their date, she broke the news that her parents were looking for a groom for her, he wasn’t the least concerned. He later told her of his life plans, probably to clarify his stand about her, she could clearly see he wasn’t considering a future with her.

And here she was worrying night and day about losing him…Somewhere between their phone conversations, he had become her life. Somewhere between those conversations, she hadn’t become that for him.

Her stomach had dropped in a bottomless pit and she was going down with it. She couldn’t let him see that though. So, she had quickly ended the date and drove away in silence at an irrational speed.

Blurry-eyed, she saw an open rickshaw. She was ready to die but not to kill. Instantly, breaks screached and two wheeler halted–without skidding. She could hear the drivers from vehicles behind her shouting profanities.

The rickshaw had moved on without noticing her.

She moved to the side of the road and stopped. There, she cried with her face hidden under the helmet. She wasn’t sure how long but she could finally breath and see again. She drove back to her parental home, then, wearing that unwavering smile, pretending that all was well in her world.

Posted in Random Thoughts

Train of Thought

Posted on by Shaily Agrawal

This excerpt from Three Men on a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome (1889) reminds me of my childhood when we often travelled by railways, before the advent of digital tracking, and hopped from platform to platform looking for the elusive trains. It has been hauntingly true since the COVID 19 Pandemic began. God bless those who run and use railways…

We got to Waterloo at eleven, and asked where the eleven-five started from. Of course nobody knew; nobody at Waterloo ever does know where a train is going to start from, or where a train when it does start is going to, or anything about it. The porter who took our things thought it would go from number two platform, while another porter, with whom he discussed the question, had heard a rumour that it would go from number one. The station-master, on the other hand, was convinced it would start from the local.

To put an end to the matter, we went upstairs, and asked the traffic superintendent, and he told us that he had just met a man, who said he had seen it at number three platform. We went to number three platform, but the authorities there said that they rather thought that train was the Southampton express, or else the Windsor loop. But they were sure it wasn’t the Kingston train, though why they were sure it wasn’t they couldn’t say.

Then our porter said he thought that must be it on the high-level platform; said he thought he knew the train. So we went to the high- level platform, and saw the engine-driver, and asked him if he was going to Kingston. He said he couldn’t say for certain of course, but that he rather thought he was. Anyhow, if he wasn’t the 11.5 for Kingston, he said he was pretty confident he was the 9.32 for Virginia Water, or the 10 a.m. express for the Isle of Wight, or somewhere in that direction, and we should all know when we got there. We slipped half-a-crown into his hand, and begged him to be the 11.5 for Kingston.

“Nobody will ever know, on this line,” we said, “what you are, or where you’re going. You know the way, you slip off quietly and go to Kingston.”

“Well, I don’t know, gents,” replied the noble fellow, “but I suppose SOME train’s got to go to Kingston; and I’ll do it. Gimme the half- crown.”

Thus we got to Kingston by the London and South-Western Railway.

We learnt, afterwards, that the train we had come by was really the Exeter mail, and that they had spent hours at Waterloo, looking for it, and nobody knew what had become of it.

Posted in Fiction

Scouts and Guides

Posted on by Shaily Agrawal

Damn these monkeys! We’ve been following them for half an hour now. We have tried enticing with food, shouting and throwing stones. So far, nothing has worked. We can’t shoot them because the sound will alert the military of our presence, and risk igniting the RDX.

The three of us have been travelling on foot through the forest for the past 75 hours towards the closest city. From there, we’ll assume our fake identities as citizens. Once we reach our destination–the capital city–we’ll build bombs out of the RDX we are carrying for a series of blasts in the busiest public areas. The money was good, so I never asked why.

We had everything planned for a long time–training for building bombs out of everyday things, language and mannerism of the country to avoid suspicion, fake ID proofs, transport, place to stay…

But these stupid monkeys raided our camp while we were sleeping (no doubt, hoping for treats). We woke up with their chatter as they sniffed our bags. When my mate grabbed for the bag with RDX, and one of them picked it and ran away–our entire supply…

We can build bombs without it but they won’t be even half as potent. We can procure it in this country too but it will waste precious time and cost another millions of rupees. Months of planning and efforts, and several million rupees gone down the drain, or up the tree. Worse, if they accidently set it to fire, the forest fire will be out of control in this season, and Forest department will have an in-depth enquiry. That will close the path for us in the future.

Our employers will never let us live it down, or even just live…we get no second chances.

So, we’re tracking these little menace, trying to get our bag back but they seem to love teasing us. They have been moving deeper in the jungle, probably towards their family to share the ‘booty’. But they aren’t in a hurry–when one of us trips over tree roots, they stop as we curse and get back up, and then move ahead.

Are they leading us into a trap? But what could it be? They are mere monkeys, not lions. What can they do to us? Tear our clothes? It’s the mysteriousness of the dark jungle, where sun never penetrates to the ground, the humidity, claustrophobia from being surrounded by so many trees, and the training of never trusting anyone and reading between the lines.

The monkeys have stopped now. We are in the middle of a clearing and the monkeys have climbed too high on the trees. Climb or wait? Wait, because if we climb, they’ll move further away.

Now once they tear open the bag and find no food, they will throw the contents down. We just need to be nimble enough to catch it; and hope they don’t tear the tiny packets; and that RDX is stable enough to not explode by the impact. Well, we are dead without it anyway. So, we gather around the tree, put our guns inside our clothes, ready to catch, keeping our eyes trained on the bag.

A military voice shouts, “Fire!” and the firing begins.