No Space in Heaven

It was a clear blue sky when the first one hit the ground with a thud, and then there was another.

Thud!

As the seconds passed the tick of the clock was punctuated with many more thuds, which were getting heavier by the minute. 

Thud! Thud! Thud! Thud!

The bright skies were engulfed with dark raging clouds that were spitting thunder and spewing lightning, signaling that the deluge had begun.

Soon the streets were filled with what was falling from the sky, they were falling on the roof, on vehicles, it even fell on people walking down the street. It was not a heavy torrential rain, nor was it a hailstorm, it was not Mother Nature wreaking havoc, it was a more powerful force that was unleashing the terror. When it fell in front of Shankar, the local security guard of Jubilee Atrium who was ducking for cover, hardly could he believe his eyes. There lay in front of him the heavyset frame of Murthy, the recently deceased local MLA–a brute of a man who was notorious for conducting shady businesses that ranged from abduction to prostitution to smuggling, a man who ruled the town by instilling fear amongst its denizens through his henchmen.

Shankar looked around to see bodies falling from the sky, “Had a plane crashed in midair?” he wondered. It was like a hundred thousand people had decided to jump to their death at the same time from the stratosphere. A synchronized mass suicide. Shankar and the others were initially struck with curiosity as the cataclysm unfolded, and now as minutes passed they looked with their mouths agape and eyes wide open with fear at the horror that was playing in front of their eyes. Mothers covered the eyes of their young ones shielding them from the ghastly sight.

The thuds slowly stopped,  Shankar looked up to the sky to see the downpour had ceased, the Sun had emerged from the clouds burning bright at its full glory. He looked around to see the streets that wore the look of the aftermath of a genocide. Bodies were lying all around him, corpses that had plummeted from the sky lay motionless in open gutter, cramming the sidewalks like garbage.

“That was the last of them, Sire” said the Gatekeeper dusting his hands off the vermin he had disposed.

“Good” said the Man in White stroking his beard. “Now it feels like Heaven doesn’t it?”

“It certainly does my Lord.” the Gatekeeper replied.

“I wonder what these people down there think? That they could kill, rape, and loot from their people and get away with it at the end of the day by saying a prayer to me? That they could convert, exploit, and pillage places in the name of religion after which I will reward them with a place in heaven? That they could lie, cheat and steal the whole year to get what they want, after which they could fast for one month and visit my shrine, and that would absolve them of their sins?” the Man in White thundered.

“Humans they call themselves, my Lord” the Gatekeeper said in mock irony.

“I sometimes wonder if they are my creation, or I theirs?” the Man in White said whimsically. “Close the gates, we allow no more souls in here!”

The Gatekeeper obeyed his Master’s orders as he locked the gates, walked back to his post with a tune on his lips and slipped into his reverie.

Purani Jeans

“Hello there!”

“What do you want?”

“Wow, somebody seems to be in a bad mood”

“I lost a pair of jeans on the trip”

“Big deal, what’s the point of going on a trip if you haven’t lost anything during one? That way the trip becomes more memorable”

“These are very costly jeans I am talking about, they must have cost 1500/- each ! You cannot expect me to be cool about losing a pair of jeans.”

“When did you realize that you lost them?”

“On my way back, yesterday on the train when I was going through my bag.”

“So you have been pissed for a day then?”

“Yeah”

“To spend a whole day feeling sorry for a pair of jeans is a bit too much, people get over failed relationships within a day.”

“Nobody gets over failed relationships within a day, you’re just exaggerating!“

“All I am saying is that fretting over some jeans is not worth it. When did you buy it?”

“It’s been around for a little more than two years.”

“Any commodity that has been around for a longer time loses its value, it’s called depreciation. Look it’s pretty much like being in a marriage, the initial few weeks you would want to go home early and have those candle light dinners, cuddle up in the couch watching TV and have sex with music playing in the background, the novelty will be there. But after that everything becomes like a routine…. You would prefer staying at work, nothing excites you anymore, it all becomes just as mechanical as taking that jean from your cupboard and wearing it.”

“Where did you learn about defecation?”

“Its depreciation and I learned that in Economics….. or was it Accounts? I dunno, they all sounded the same to me back then.”

“Those jeans have been around for two years.”

 “Then assuming that you have worn it twice every week…. So for close to 96 weeks you might have worn it atleast uhhh two hundred times… and assuming that one jean costs 1500/- with each time you wear it, its value too slowly starts fading away like the jean, uhhh and then there are the occasional wear and tear, and with you not washing it frequently it might have lost some of its sheen…. So in a way you might have ended up using it for more than what it was worth! Its time was up anyway. So don’t bother and buy a new pair! Hell I will buy you a new pair of jeans. What are big brothers for!”

“Buying away a replacement is not a way of washing my hands of the guilt, what if Dad comes to know about it? If I can’t even keep my clothes safe how would I be entrusted with a Macbook?”

“Whoa! Dad is buying you a Macbook!?”

“That is not the point! I was being hypothetical. All I am saying is that I need to take up responsibility for the things I do.”

“You have a long time ahead of you to take responsibilities, mistakes happen, you need to learnt to let go of materials, invest more emotions in people, you need to–“

“They were your jeans…”

“What?”

“They were yours, it was lying around useless, and you weren’t using them so I had been using it.”

“How did you know that I was not using them? I could have been using them. For all you know I could have worn it tonight!”

“They were too tight for you after your waist size had increased by a few inches.”

“I did not get fat….”

“I am not saying that you got fat…. It’s just that as you grow older your appetite increases and all that you eat tends to get accumulated on your waist that’s all.”

“I still could have pulled off those jeans.”

“Yeah, right.”

“You were not supposed to take my jeans without my permission.”

“Look who is getting all wound up over a pair of jeans now. I thought I was supposed to 

“let go of materials and invest more emotions in people”.  Wasn’t that your mantra for life?”

“That was my mantra for getting through adolescence, people will disappoint you at some point of time, you will learn that sometime, it is then that you attach yourself to material pleasures!”

“Well, do you mind imparting your wisdom as we shop for a pair of jeans, what say?”

Pointless Conversations

“So did you call her up?”

“I did”

“What did she say?”

“It started off well, I apologized and she accepted it…”

“But…”

“How did you know there was a “but” in the conversation?”

“There is always a “but” in the conversation when a man tries to apologize to a woman.”

“But the conversation became a bit too violent in between.”

“Doesn’t matter as long as it ended amicably.”

“It didn’t.”

“That doesn’t sound good.”

“I started off saying that I shouldn’t have treated her the way I did when I was with her, and that I was an idiot for doing all that I did….”

“Can you just move away a bit…”

“Why? What’s wrong?”

“I am not able to pee with you standing so close to me, it’s an empty restroom use the urinal at the far end, I am here in a dilemma whether to listen to you or to satisfy my urge to take a piss. I cannot pee with people standing next to me.”

“OK, so I call her up and apologize for everything, I take the whole blame on me and told her how seeing her everyday made me realize that I had thrown away all that I had with her and how it was eating me up on the inside… leaving me empty and soulless.”

“Poetic, that sure must have moved her to tears.”

“No, it didn’t.  She was glad that I was feeling miserable. She said that I was too good for her and it was after I had broken up with her that she realized that she was way too niche for a dumb guy like me.”

“She called you dumb? And is glad at your misery? That is so schadenfruede.”

“A schaden-what?”

“A schadenfruede, its German for someone who takes pleasure out of your misery. But it’s such a slap in your face that she even called you dumb.”

“She actually called me dumb and incompetent.”

“That is sad… I have been called a lot but atleast not dumb and incompetent, not yet though… what did you do?”

“I told her “You motherfucking girl you.…” “

“Wait, you called her a motherfucker?”

“Yeah, what’s wrong in that?”

“You cannot call her a “motherfucker”, girls technically cannot do that, it makes sense to call a guy that… but a girl…. I cannot imagine a girl doing their mother. You could call her a bitch or a whore or a cow…”

“We are drifting off the topic here, aren’t you gonna wash your hands?”

“No I just washed my hands thrice already today, moreover I did not hold it while pissing so it’s a waste of water.”

“Anyway, so I called her names and she called me names. She listed out everything about me that made her realize that she was way too good for me.”

“This is just sad…..”

“I know, I invested so much time and emotion into her and at that end of it all she calls me good for nothing and feels happy out of my misery.”

 “No, I meant it’s sad that they don’t have any tissue papers over here, and the bloody hand dryer doesn’t work either….”

“I thought you weren’t washing your hands”

“I wasn’t washing it, but I would love to have it blown dried with the hot air coming from the dryer. Heat kills germs and is more effective than water and hand sanitizer.”

“So I just told her to go to hell, and I won’t be giving a damn about her from now on. I deleted her from facebook too.”

“I thought you already had when you broke up with her the first time.”

“Oh that was from my real account, I have a fake account where I add a lot of random chicks. Friends and friends of friends, I chat with them and like their pics… flirt with them and stuff like that…”

“You added anybody from my friend’s list?”

“I added your cousin… she is very pretty.... she in college?”

“You seriously didn’t add her…”

“Oh no way, I was just joking.”

“Good, anyway now that your ex doesn’t want to get back to you I was meaning to ask if I could call her sometime…”

“Now you better be joking..”

“Ha! Yeah I was joking…”

“And you better not use this conversation as some kind of story for your blog either.”

“Trust me, I won’t … I am a man with principles.”