The Injection Enigma

About twenty years back, when our protagonist guy was just a small boy on shorts, a team of nursing students visited the school as part of social health check-up. The kids were asked to go to the staff room one by one to receive injection to get saved from any sort of fateful diseases that might have caught them. While standing in the queue at the door of the staff room, waiting for his turn, he heard his friend who had just gone inside, screaming out of pain while the injection needle piercing the vein. Already he had seen many of his friends coming outside of the room weeping forcefully and wiping their tears.

It was his turn the next. As soon as he stepped inside the room he faced the sisters who were filling up the syringe. In a proud manner with boosted up chest he declared,

“I won’t cry!”

Curiously the sisters looked him, and one of them asked him with affection,

“Ah, that’s good, but why don’t you cry dear?”

He had no answer to that complicated question. However there was a soliloquy, (I am Tomz! Tomz doesn’t cry!!)

He was telling the truth. He didn’t cry that day.

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After twenty years, our protagonist grew up. He came to the capital city of his State and became a Blogger! One fine morning, he started to sneeze and cough. He felt that he too was caught by viral fever, and so decided to visit the hospital.

At hospital, he peeped at the doctor’s diary while he was writing the prescription. He got worried seeing the doctor writing for an injection to be administered to his young client. As soon as he stepped out of the doctor’s room, he immediately ran to the pharmacy. Meanwhile, the young nurse who was guided to give injection to our protagonist got worried without seeing him. She chased him and finally found him at the pharmacy in a hurrying mood.

She asked him,

“Don’t you want the injection the doctor prescribed?”

“Oh, was there an injection? I didn’t notice. Was that so much important?” he asked creating an innocent expression.

“Yes, the doctor marked that it was highly important. Please come!” 

He had no other choice except to follow her unwillingly. At the injection room, he cried and screamed, whenever the nurse made a move to inject him with medicated syringe. 

“Oh...God...Jesus...help me...help me...!” he cried when the needle pierced his vein on his hip.

The nurse mocked him, “heee heee, this Tomz brother is too afraid of injections!”

So, one can’t go on with his pretensions for long is the moral of the story.

The Love Messenger

While associating with Ronnie Raj’s documentary, which he did about a renowned prolific Malayalam poet, I happened to listen to the poet’s recorded sound as explaining that every writer will face a creative block in his career. I was thinking about a Blogger’s block in my blogging life which has been preventing me from writing anything for the blog. Surprisingly, today I got a subject to write upon, which is actually the favourite subject of humans, the love. But, to rescue myself from the kind of embarrassment happened to me due to the publishing of posts like ‘Fragrance of Love’ and ‘My First Love’, let me first say that this post is not about my love, but about my friend’s.

While working in the Gulf countries, this friend acquired a few months’ leave from his company and came to his native place to try his luck in higher studies. Since tuition centre was in the city he came to our place where a gang of ‘full-bloomed youngsters’ were staying and where I met him. 

We had a very interesting time together as a gang, of which majority are in the initial stages of their professional career. Sometimes we played caroms till 2 O’ clock in the night making a sleep-loving young software engineer curse us all for not switching off the lights. Sometimes, we brought liquors secretly to the second floor without letting the uncle and aunt (the landowner and wife) know, but with the knowledge of their son, to celebrate someone’s birthday or a new job joy. (Somehow, I had acquired the image as a gentle drinker and thus eliminated from the risk of heavy drinking). Sometimes after one or two pegs, we turned on the music system in the highest volume and put vibrant steps on the floor waking up the uncle and aunt from their heavy sleep in agony and letting the neighbours go on with their sleep listening to the soulful music coming from our throats (especially mine ;)). The very next day we were threatened by our landlady that ‘this will not last long’ (she had identified my voice).

I happened to notice the happiness on the face of my friend every day after coming from his class. We had some casual talks and one day he approached me with a request to compose a sugary sms to be sent as a reply to a message that he received on his mobile. When he flattered me saying that since I was a writer I could write better than him, I helped by composing what he asked me to do. When I thought that the job was over, he again approached me to compose another beautiful sms as a reply to what he received as a reply to the former sms. So, the job continued with seemingly no end and only when he told me, I came to know that I was working as a love messenger between him and a girl he met at the tuition centre. 

So, their love flourished, as he had said. He daily described what happened between them at the tuition centre while the teacher was away for a few minutes. I began to habitually see a pink coloured scooty pep resting at our house’s parking space, which he used to take from his girlfriend during the lunch time to come to the house. When the classes were over, he prepared to go back to the Gulf. Let me say for your information that a marriage between them was almost impossible as they both belonged to different religions. And I think, none of them might have taken it as a serious relationship.

A few months after leaving for Gulf, he contacted me on phone. We had some formal greetings but nothing mentioned about the girl. He contacted me again and again and on one occasion I asked him about the girl and he said that he tried to contact her but she had changed her number. 

Yesterday, he called me again and after some formal talks, he directly entered into the matter of his old tuition centre affair. ‘Is he still thinking about that girl,’ I wondered though I had never seen her.

He requested me, ‘Buddy, the sweet memories of the days that we all spent as a gang there still stick on to my mind. Buddy, if you don’t mind, please do me a favour!’

‘What favour,’ I asked mercilessly.

“I tried to call her several times, but she has changed her phone number. Buddy, please go to my tuition centre. It is on the small by road that leads to the city’s popular TV channel. Before reaching that channel, you would see a two storied building on the right side and you will see a board something like ‘Lokmanya Tuition centre’. Please collect the phone number imprinted below that. I will call you tomorrow evening to ask you the phone number and I will try to contact her through my tutor. He must know her phone number”.

Today, after noon time, I started my ‘sincere bike’, and went through all the cut roads in the vicinities searching for a tuition centre, where two young lovers shared their romancing moments some months ago. At last I reached there and spotted a small board with letters ‘Lokmanya’ hanging on the second floor.

'So, it was the place which I envisioned as a closed lovely place while my friend was narrating about his puppy love,’ curiously I thought while writing down the phone number.

While kick-starting my bike, I also chanced to see two eyes watching me from the window of the Lokmanya tuition centre. The teacher of the institute. She might be wondering that why was this guy not visiting the tuition centre and inquiring about the coaching classes, if he really needed coaching.

('May be' continued) 
PS: Read the combined second part of A Decent proposal and this post Here

The Little Plagiarist

With my photographic memory, which I am really boastful of, I still remember the days I went to the elementary classes, so many years ago, with fresh spirit and juvenile enthusiasm. It was my fourth grade, where I was really enjoying the status of one of the smart students in terms of academic performance. I remember that the experience of writing my first story happened there.

That particular day, as I entered the class room, my main competitor (well...friend of course) received me with a surprising information. Showing me a folded single lined paper torn from the notebook, he revealed that he had written a story. A story? I wondered! When asked, he opened the paper and said me to read. 

Here my memory defeats me; I don’t remember much of his narrative. However, the story was about a boy of our age, written following the same style of the popular children’s books. The boy, as per the story went, received some good punishment as a result of disobedience. If my memory is correct, my friend had given a title like, ‘Arrogance is Unwise’ to beautify his story.

I remember the excitement I showed off on reaching my home that day. As soon as reached home, I announced that I was going to write a story. Without even changing the dress, I started writing on a piece of paper. Giving a special care in following the same narrative pattern of my friend, I attempted to write down his exact story. On completion, after giving his same title, ‘Arrogance is Unwise’, despite of some minor changes in the word order and usage, the story was exactly a copy of the one written by my friend.

I now remember, how intelligent I was, for I carefully concealed from my parents the source of my inspiration. My parents read the story carefully, and my first story received with a huge amount of criticism from its first readers. Starting from its unsuitable title, my poor handwriting and my unnecessary usage of certain words also became subject of controversy. According to mother, the suitable title to the story was ‘Disobedience’.

Though my first attempt in story writing went fruitless, after one or two years, I started to scribble on my old notebooks some children’s stories. Since I had a certain kind of hatred towards human beings, my stories had animals as its characters. Sometimes the subject line was how the animals overcame the atrocities of humans. It is to be mentioned that none was meant for publishing, but was written just for the writing pleasure. 

During this period, I understood that, the abovementioned first story writing experience was an instance of plagiarism. Probably, I could be the youngest plagiarist.

I don’t exactly remember at what period of my growth, I stopped writing animal stories, which was a mode of creative pleasure. However, when I noticed my lost interest in writing such stories, I shockingly realised that I was no more a child. 

The Girl on Crutches

Ronnie Raj called me again on yesterday! Don’t ask me which Ronnie Raj. He is well familiar to the noble readers as a too conservative fellow and as an Online Detective. That time, I portrayed him as an upcoming music director. This time he has to don his role as an upcoming short movie maker. He is actually a substitute, one who could be presented in my blog in any form belonging to the creator’s genre.

When I picked up his phone, with no usual introduction or formal inquiries or even without a customary ‘hello’, he straight away asked for a theme for his new short film.

“I heard that you have nice concepts, nice stories and you write many ‘out-of-the-box’ things on the internet. Why can’t you suggest me a good theme for my new short film?”

“New short film? You are going to make a new short film?” I asked him in a tone of disbelief.

“Yes, I want a story, at least a thread. I prefer something that would be digestible to the new generation,” he said.

I said nothing. I was thinking about a girl, whom I often see on the way back from my office every day in the evening. A bubbly pretty girl, she used to be standing in front of her house chatting with her friends. What makes her a subject of my attention is that she walks on crutches. Possibly, an accident took place in the near past might have caused fracture on her leg. As I presumed from the visible happiness on her face, she will be cured soon.

“You there? Or gone? You have nothing to give me as an idea?” Ronnie’s sound woke me up from my thoughts.

“I have a story. But it is a love story....,”I began to explain.

Ronnie jumped in between, “That’s a great idea. Young generation will definitely like a romance,” he said.

“But, it is not purely a love story. It has some tragic elements...,” I said.

“Oh you stop the introduction. Come straight to the story,” Ronnie said impatiently.

“My hero is a young man, of our age, working in the city in....well...in a software company,” I began my story.

“That’s great. Youngsters will like their hero as a software engineer...come on...,”Ronnie encouraged me.

I continued, “He regularly meets a girl while he is back from his office. This girl is beautiful with kiss curls and her dressing sense makes her even prettier. The crucial characteristic of this girl is that she walks on crutches. Due to some accidents, one of her legs has been put into plaster. She is waiting for the recovery. But seeing every day, our hero and this girl gradually fell in love each other...” I paused.

Thoughtfully my friend said, “A girl walks with the help of crutches. Sad”. He added, “Please continue,”

“Well...through glances, smiles and chats, they became closer and finally lovers. Our hero takes her for many programmes, which happens in the city in weekends. So their love flourished. You may add one song sequence here featuring our hero plucking flowers for her and such nice scenes...”I said.

“Don’t teach me how to conceive a shot. I will manage that part. You continue with your story,” my friend became irritated feeling somebody’s encroachment in his business.

Though embarrassed, I continued, “This boy went for an official tour for two weeks. In Hyderabad and Delhi, he spent a fortnight impatiently without seeing his sweetheart. When back, he saw a miracle,”

“What miracle?” asked Ronnie raj curiously.

“The girl was completely alright. She was cured from her illness. The plaster has been removed and as a result of some medical exercises, she was walking in the normal way without the help of crutches. Seeing her lover back, she ran towards him expecting a tight hug and a kiss,” I said.

“He will be delighted seeing her like that,” Ronnie tried to complete the story.

“That’s the curious part. Instead of becoming happy, he was shocked. He was shocked and became pale as if he has seen a ghost,” I said.

“Why so?” Ronnie asked.

I said, “There I have two versions. This boy may have some serious defects. He thinks that if she knows it she might turn him down. He might have thought that if she too has some disabilities, both of them could adjust each other.”

“What’s the second version?” Ronnie asked.

“The case of humanity! The boy loved a girl with a disability. He was ready to accept her as the way she was,” I said.

“So, how would you conclude the story?” he asked.

“Buddy, this is just a thread. We have to create the end part,” I replied.

“Presently I am planning to do a film with a socially relevant theme,” he said.

“That’s OK. But tell me how is this story?” I asked.

“The film that I plan to do is based on the political struggles and strikes.”

“Is that so? But how do you feel about my story?”

“My film will have fights, battles, slogans and blood everywhere. It will have revolutionary songs”

“Okey. You do that. But I am asking your opinion about my story,” I shouted.

Ronnie said calmly, “Sincerely speaking buddy, it is better if you stop storytelling and do some other jobs that you know well”

In Last Picture: Spice Girl Emma Bunton after a fall