The Science of Horoscopes

A hartal day. The Opposition in alliance with a few supporting parties have announced a strike to observe civil disobedience in all over the Republic of India protesting the price hike. That means no office, no shops, no movements on the streets, no picnics, no theatres, and what you have at hand is only sleep. Our landlady has already left for a visit to her relatives deserting us and that means no food at all! Understanding this situation I had stored one pack bread and two eggs purchasing from the nearby shop the last day itself as I felt that the combination of bread and omelette would be a favourable one. Two eggs means, one for the morning and the other for the noontime. As the hartal ends at 6pm, the case of supper could have been easily managed.

 

In the hartal morning, I picked up the newspaper and accidently let one glance drop on the daily horoscope column. As an Arien, I just looked at what the fortune-teller had told about Aries for the day. It read like this: Till 6 pm, unsuccessfulness, discomfort, loss of money. After 6 pm, availability of favourite food. 

Hearing me reading out loudly the daily horoscope, my housemate SK, who has been reading the GK column sitting beside me, began to giggle.

“I can’t understand, why these educated people also go after such nonsense,” he remarked.

“I am just reading it to check whether they have at least one percent of truth. After all, we can’t swallow whatever been taught in the name of modernity,” I argued.

“If we have the will, we can change whatever is destined for us,” my optimistic friend said.

“What is your Zodiac sign?” I inquired.

“Hmmm...I believe...yeah...I am a Capricornian,” he turned the pages of his newspaper.

I read the daily fortune of Capricorn, “Success in everything, Happiness, Recognition, till 6 pm. After 6 pm, Unsuccessfulness, Loss of money, Botheration”

SK continued his giggle and glanced at me through the top of his specs with a hilarious mocking manner. 

I began to prepare my breakfast. After taking out one egg from my bag, I went to the kitchen. After making an omelette in my own style (I like the Bull’s-eye both sides fried), I returned to my room. 

At my room, while adjusting the table space to give room to the bread pack and omelette plate, I picked up the bag in which the second egg was kept. When I placed it on another space carelessly, I heard a pathetic sound of the egg crashing. I understood the misfortune. Without wasting time, I ran to the kitchen with the egg bag and carefully poured the egg contents to the frying pan. I called SK, who was standing close to me and said him, “your good luck!”

With a hilarious smile, he said, “Sometimes Horoscopes are true”

I replied sadly, “Yeah, loss of money to me and happiness to you!”

SK winked.

The hartal ends at 6 pm. When I went to SK’s room, he persuaded me to go outside to have tea. I started my bike (yeah, the sincere bike) and asked SK to keep his purse as I was wearing a pajama with no pockets.

When we reached the junction, we found that the tea shop owner has given a full day rest to himself. We drove further through the dead street and found one hotel, which is a specialist in non-veg items, was kept open. I asked SK about eating one Shawarma (an Arabian chicken speciality), which was my favourite dish for sometime. He agreed.

After savouring the delicacy of Shawarma, when the bill came, my eyes protruded and SK had a brief giddiness. The price was something huge that we could never imagine for two Shawarmas.

SK paid the bill and when we came outside the hotel, he sadly said,

“Now, I believe that horoscopes are completely true. Today’s experience shows that”

I looked at my watch. It showed 6.20pm. I said,

“Yeah, after 6 pm, loss of money and botheration to you.....”

“....and availability of favourite food to you,” he completed.

I winked.

What do you think about the credibility of fortunetelling and horoscopes?

One more achievement, 30,000!

“Time runs fast, yet no changes made”

This was also a day similar to the one described in one of my earliest posts titled “After Travelling 20,000 Kilometers”, in which I drove my bike after lunch from my room to the office anticipating an exciting thing to happen. Just like the climate described in that post, this day also was marked with slight drizzling and wet breeze.

It was in the last May, on a rainy day, my bike’s speedometer registered 20,000 kilometers. After which, one year has passed, and on yesterday, while returning by my bike from my office to room in the evening, I saw with my ‘thieving left eye’, the sight of a digit 30,000 appears to the view panel of my speedometer by pulling up a hesitant 29,999.

I don’t call it an achievement, but still the choice of the title of the post is a question. I got a comment for the post narrating the one year back incident from one of my occasional readers. The blogger friend congratulated me for my ‘achievement’ and when last day I noticed a 29,997 on my bike’s speedometer, I thought about recording it in my blog, since at present I am really running out of subjects.

At each point of this ‘achievement’, I stopped my bike and took different photographs using my mobile cam. I planned to take the snap of the moment when my speedometer shows exactly 30000 – 0, of which the last digit denotes 100 meters. If you travel 100 meters more, the digit will be 30000-1. But, unfortunately, when I stopped my bike, the reading was between 0 and 1 after 30000 kilometers. I thought about pulling my bike a little bit backwards, so that I can take the snap of exactly 30000-0. But you know! Speedometer is like Time, there is no going back and hence the so called ‘Time travelling’ is not possible.

It’s the time of a self analysis. What changes have happened to me during the 10000 kilometers time? To tell frankly, no changes at all! Expect my job shift to a new company, I am using the same jacket, staying at the same place and hanging out with the same friends.

Fragrance of Love

"It is better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all!"

-Alfred Lord Tennyson

Have you ever thought of the properties of love? I mean, by what measures, one can identify a love? Is it a touchable thing? Does it smell? If it smells, does it stink or smells good? Does love have a shape? If so, is it in the same heart shape, depicted in Valentine’s Day greetings cards? Don’t worry! I am not trying to start my post with a regular and often practiced cliché! What I am trying to convey is that I know at least one property of love. Yes! I know the smell of love. Or at least to me, love has a fragrance, and more accurately, love has the smell of Epiphyllum Oxypetalum.

 

Now, what is this complicated thing? Well...Epiphyllum Oxypetalum is the Botanical name of a flower, popularly known as Nishagandhi (Nisha gandhi – The one that emits fragrance in night). But, let me tell you one thing first! After finding a Nishagandhi flower, smelling it would not give you the fragrance of love. Because, when I discovered the smell of love, I did not know a Nishagandhi flower. I actually mistook another flower with strong fragrance for Nishagandhi flower. So, the smell of love is the smell of a flower which was mistaken by me for Nishagandhi flower! Now clear?

The story behind the discovery of the smell of love is of a few years old. It is connected fully with the girl in My First Love (What? You haven't read it yet? First go and read it and come back!). She used to sing during some occasions in college. All the time I used to sit in the first row in the college auditorium with my friend (the naughty friend in Pretty Littima’s Profession, we reunited in college after that adventurous seventh standard) listening to her voice and watching her movements. Her occasional glances darted at me had made me happy.

Somebody brought to the class a bunch of sweet and strong smelling flowers. Actually it was not of the shape of a flower. It almost looked like a small leaf with a light green shade. I liked its fragrance at once as my teenage days were fully perfumed with love. (No, of course I was not a lover! But love was there in my heart.) I asked the flower’s name to the boy who brought it to the class. He expressed his ignorance about the name of the flower, but someone invented a name, ‘Nishagandhi’. I liked that name, and at once I fixed its name in my mind as Nishagandhi. Only later, I came to know that there was another flower by that name.

Well, on that day, when the girl was singing in the auditorium and I was watching her sitting in the front row, my shirt’s pocket was full of the sweet smelling flowers. The aroma of this flower was so strong that the singing girl’s appearance and the flowers’ fragrance blended together resulting in the formation of a specific image in my mind. Her songs lasted for some minutes and she repeatedly sang the songs in equal intervals. All the time, the flowers were also emitting its strong scent creating in me some passionate and nostalgic effect.

Days had passed and when I was in a sorrowful condition regarding my love interest (those who read My First Love can understand the reason of my sorrow), the flowers with its strong fragrance made me sickened with love and grief. In one such occasion, I went to the isolated auditorium with a pocketful of the ‘Nishagandhi’ flowers. Standing at the front row, I imagined the old days in which she sang standing at the podium and I listened to her song experiencing the smell of the flowers. Standing straight and closing my eyes, I took out some flowers from my pocket to smell them and to check whether the so called ‘time travelling’ was possible. Well, you please don’t doubt me! I had actually tried it.

After so many years, when I matured, when I understood love as an emotion and a basic need, when I forgot the girl almost, when I became more practical, when I learned to laugh at my old silliness, when I stopped assessing others with my virtually perfect intelligence and when I lost all my teenage love mannerisms, what still gives me the fragrance of love is the Nishagandhi flowers.

It is a very long time now since I saw a Nishagandhi flower. Now I can’t recollect the smell of it. But, I hope that the next time when I smell it I could sense the emotion of the same love with its genuine innocence and happiness which are common to the teenage days. Perhaps, this feeling might be the single thing that forces me to believe that love is divine – the fragrance of love!

Catching a Copybook Crook

The celebrated sixth standard again. This time it was the English class. And the thick moustached English teacher with his punishment stick in hand was very much obstinate about our regular submission of neatly written copy books on his table before he reaches the class on the second period of all working days. Since he was a fear factor of the students, everyone was keen on not disobeying his demands and if someone fails to bring the updated copybook, even the next classes would go silent hearing the fearful swishing sounds of his flexible stick immediately followed by the moaning sounds of our fellow mates.

This was just like another day. After the first period, the English teacher came to our class and after asking some questions from the last day lessons, he took a new chapter. He first gave us an outline of the story and after telling us to read the entire lesson silently, he started to check the copybooks one by one.

After checking all the available books, he said, “Has everybody submitted the copybooks today?”

A unanimous uproar from the students denoting affirmation was the reply. But the teacher felt that not all the present students had submitted the copybooks. He asked again to confirm the reply. But, what he got was the same answer.

Without trusting the students he asked the class monitor to count the copybooks on his table. He found that there was a difference of five between the number of the copybooks and the number of the present students.

The English teacher became furious. He asked us angrily raising his voice to stand up those who had not brought their copybooks. First, there rose a head, a back bencher, and then three more students followed him in the confession process. He asked all the four to come forward and stand at the corner of the class.

He asked again, “who is the fifth one, come...come...don’t try to fool me!”

But, no one moved.

The teacher did not give up. He asked the monitor to read out loudly the name on each copybook. “When the monitor calls your name, come forward and join with those who are at the corner of the class,” he said to the class.

That verification process was on. The class monitor began to call the names of the students reading the name-slip on each copybook. Students one by one began to walk to the front side of the class to join the corner. The number of students sitting on the benches was shrinking and the number of the students standing at the corner was growing accordingly.

Finally there remained only less than ten students on the benches and it became nine...eight...seven...etc so soon.

When the monitor called out the spectacled one’s name, there were remaining only four more students on the benches and I was one.

When the monitor read the next name, I decided to surrender as there were no means of escape remaining.

I picked up my bag and pretended as searching it. And I said, “What a surprise, I think I have not brought my copybook!”

“Tom! You!” that was actually a scream from the monitor.

Everybody in the class shared the broken pieces of the monitor’s scream.

The English teacher wondered, “I never guessed it would have ended like this”

He picked up the stick and asked me to extend my palm, I obeyed. Usually, the punishment for these sorts of ‘crimes’ was one beating. I got two.

Not for not submitting the copybook and not for the teacher had some grudge for me, but for not becoming truthful.

Did you guess the suspense?