Whispering Souls

Anita, the younger of the two step sisters was passing by and a part of the discussion perhaps caught her attention. She hesitated, probably thinking if it would be rude to interfere while a couple was in a conversation.

As Ron moved towards his car, she said, “some paranormal experience, eh!” 

“You have started eavesdropping, these days. Eh!”Ana mimicked her sister’s tone.

“Nah! I was passing by and could not help listening. Actually, I am more eager to tell you what Robin had experienced last week.”

” So Robindra is back. I quite do not understand why a person would change his name from Robindra to Robin!” Anita said it was all about personal choices, stopping short of questioning why she had halved her name to Ana from Ananya.

“This is about shadows and spirits of dead people, I am guessing.” Ana said, displaying a great deal of interest and curiosity.

“Somewhat similar but not exactly”, she continued to narrate how excited Robin was to visit his sister for the first time since she moved abroad.

"It was a coincidence that he had to accept a temporary assignment in a city close to where his sister had relocated, and grabbed the first opportunity that came with a long weekend."

“And then”, Ana said expressing impatience at the detailed introduction.

“Even thinking of the unique experience that he had there makes my hair stand on end.”

“Let’s go and sit in the sofa” Ana suggested and both walked towards the living rooms grabbing a bottle of water on their way. Sitting in the sofa Anita started to describe the entire episode in vivid details.

Robin had reached his sister’s house on a Thursday but had to spend that evening alone as they were unable to cancel an important social dinner. He was not willing to accompany his sister either as he didn’t know the host.

Once he was alone he took to the couch multitasking between watching TV, reading and dozing off, an art he mastered over the period of time. Suddenly he realized that was very hungry and it was already 10:05.But his loving sister had arranged the dinner at the table in small ceramic bowls and left detailed instructions on how long to warm each of those in the microwave.

Once he switched the television off, silence descended on the apartment except for the humming of the air conditioner. He began to wonder if he missed the noise of constantly moving vehicles with their sporadic honking that he was so used to back home. Sometimes one could also listen to people talking on the street outside. Some people have such high pitched voice he thought. But on the contrary the acoustics of this apartment has made this place totally noise proof.

The thread of his thought was broken, when he had the uncanny feeling that someone else were sitting at the table. But he ignored it and concentrated at his dinner, which was home-made and delicious as he missed both these qualities these days.

After a while it was evident that a man and a woman were talking at the far end of the table but he could not recognize the language. More scared then perplexed, he looked in the direction of voice again and it immediately stopped.

He resumed his dinner and so did the whispering. It continued till he stared at that direction.

After the fourth time Robin interrupted their chat, an irritated ‘argh’...  came from that direction followed by an extended pause.

Robin was trying hard not to panic and kept gulping his food with water and soon realized that they have moved to the sofa as he could hear them faintly from that direction.

He is still trying to remember if he had heard the sound of chairs being pushed back for getting up before they went to the sofa.

Robin was on the verge of collapse when, Lilly opened the door and walked in along with her husband. Looking at him they had no doubt as to what had happened.

She ran to him saying, “I should have told you about this non intrusive couple living with us ever since we moved to this place. It’s a very peaceful coexistence and need to get scared.”

“You know in this places people bury their dead instead of cremating,” she continued “and many a soul hang around unable to detach from the body they cared for so long!”

Fortunately for him, his station chief called him the next morning asking him to return immediately because of an emergency. Never in his life was he so happy to get his holiday curtailed.

Ana looked at Anita with a faint smile in her face, not knowing what to say!

A Wolf In The Sky

I was coming back home yesterday. I looked up at the sky and thought I spotted an animal up there. Felt an irresistible urge to stop for a photo shoot. .. and so did I.

Not sure what it was, I consulted my daughter and she said, "It is a wolf. It has pointy ears, two hands and fur like a wolf."

How can someone question such conviction!

An Encounter With Spelling Alphabets

We were final year students at one of oldest Engineering Colleges of India, near Calcutta and two of us joined our first job as undergraduate trainee in a company in New Delhi by the name of DCS (name changed). This was formed by borrowing the first alphabets from surnames of three partners (Dhawan, Chopra and Sharma) and the firm specialized in Master planning and landscape architecture.

We as Bongs, an identity we discovered for the first time after reaching Delhi, grew up with the notion that corruption was rampant in Delhi and any other Indian cities outside the boundary of Bengal. Consequently we too were suspicious about all activities going around us both inside and outside our offices. One evening my friend came back home bewildered.  

After a bit of persuasion he confided in us and disclosed what found out by chance. “Our firm is running a racket and have multiple operations under the same name” he said softly. We were all ears to him as he continued, “I heard with my own ears when the secretary was telling someone over the phone that the name DCS stood for DELTA, CHARLIE and SIERRA”.

What ensued was pure entertainment to say the least.

These are actually called spelling alphabets or NATO phonetic alphabets.  26 code words in the NATO phonetic alphabet are assigned to the 26 letters of the English alphabet in alphabetical order as follows: Alfa, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, Echo, Foxtrot, Golf, Hotel, India, Juliet, Kilo, Lima, Mike, November, Oscar, Papa, Quebec, Romeo, Sierra, Tango, Uniform, Victor, Whiskey, X-ray, Yankee, Zulu. NATO phonetic alphabet

SUNSTRUCK

I looked at the Sun while returning home this afternoon and found it setting. It looked lovely. I pulled up the car to the side and took a couple of pictures. I thought I was Sun-struck!

Despair: Silly me! I thought I invented the term Sun-struck. I imagined myself at the threshold of gaining fame and prosperity for being able to use my fertile mind in successfully remixing the word Moonstruck.

Reasons: I looked up in the dictionary and lo, it enlightened me that this exists in full glory. It refers to someone who is affected or touched by the sun. Incidently it has been in use since 1794.

Conclusion: Inventing something is becoming increasingly difficult, 'am say!!!... but we can discover something new in our world every moment.  

The story of Beilzebub, Ghidora & Tiny Demons

Many many years back, there was a beautiful, quiet and prosperous country at the foothills of the mighty mountains. The world then was a very different place, full of green forests, blue waters and ice capped mountains that shone like diamond in the morning sunlight. There was a big village in that country called Adorable.

Everyone liked this place and that is why it was named Adorable. A large river went through the middle giving water to everyone and plenty of small streams danced along, playfully. The water was as clear as crystal. One could see all animals swimming happily and smiling whenever someone stood by the river banks. The air was always fresh and full of intoxicating scent of exotic flowers and fruits. A dense forest surrounded the village from two sides while the snowcapped mountains guarded the other two sides. 

The king was famous for his benevolence and people were so happy that they always thanked their gods for the blessings bestowed upon them. Gods too loved this land and often visited in disguise. They used to fondly call this their mini-heaven.

One day Beilzebub, the devil came to know of Adorable and was very jealous of its abundance, wealth and happiness. He sent Ghidora, the 3-headed monster along with his wife Arachna to bring anarchy and induce sadness. They happily accepted the task and immediately moved to a large cave in the middle of the forest. They caught 5 strong men from the village and took away their heads. They became five dreaded Dulkhams or the headless horsemen responsible to guard the forest day and night killing anyone who dared to come near the cave.

Ghidora then sent Skeleton, his witchy black cat to the king with a message to provide fresh human flesh and blood every day or else he would destroy everyone. The king was helpless as the mighty Gods also could not do anything to save the people of Adorable.

The king gathered all the priests of the land in the royal temple and together they prayed to Hardes, the god of the underworld seeking his blessings. Hardes was pleased by the prayers and promised to send a savoir.

Next morning a stranger appeared in their village, riding a white horse and carrying a sharp sword that was shining bright in the morning sunlight. He was handsome, strong and brave and introduced himself as a warrior from the north and his name was Spike. He promised “tomorrow, I shall go to fight Ghidora and bring an end of all your miseries.”

The brave warrior confronted the 3-headed beast early in the morning as promised. Adorable was taken by the sound of clinking of metals and battle cries. After enduring a long and fierce battle that lasted for many hours, Spike killed the beast and sliced it into tiny little bits with his sharp sword. Arachna  ran for her life, carrying skeleton in her lap and never to look towards Adorable in her life.

Just then Beilzebub arrived to the scene and was furious to find out what has happened to his monster. He decided to take revenge and used his evil powers to reconstitute those tiny bits of Ghidora into millions of tiny monsters equipped with wings and a trunk to collect blood from humans. Since that day mosquitoes filled the earth and constantly flying around sucking blood of humans trying to take revenge for the slaying of Ghidora.

The people of Adorable got back their peace and the king was so happy that he gave the hand of his daughter, the beautiful princess to Spike and they got married in a grand ceremony.

But Beilzebub still watches over his tiny demons from above the clouds and reconstitutes new mosquitoes, every time you smash one between your palms. Now you know why the number of mosquitoes never goes down in this Earth.

This is specially written for my daughter who loves short stories.

Space, The Final Frontier .... errr ... Resting Place

Image Source

It’s good to learn a new odd thing every now and then. Today I learnt about “Space Burial”. Space burial refers to exactly what its literal meaning is. The cremated remains are carried out to the outer space into the orbit of earth, or other planetary system or maybe into the deep space.

But don’t worry, these won’t be scattered into the space to add up to the space debris but they stay sealed within their space vehicle till it reaches its final extra terrestrial destination. More information are available in the wiki site wiki/Space_burial

Private companies such as Celestis, Inc. and Elysium Space offer space burial services. I have found out that the cost starts from around $2000, which is actually quite a small price to pay for being able to flirt with the stars. This is an option, I would not mind considering when time comes for my final destination.

The website of Celestis celestis.com declared that there are two missions scheduled for this year. One can take the advantage of either The Tribute Flight, scheduled for launch on November 5, 2015 from New Mexico's Spaceport America, or The Heritage Flight, scheduled for launch in the 4th quarter of 2015 from Cape Canaveral, Florida.

Elysium Space elysiumspace.com provides three space burial service options. The plans are “Shooting star memorial” for remaining in the earth’s orbit, “Lunar memorial” to remain in the moon’s surface and “Milky way memorial” to travel to the deep space.

 Interestingly one of the first person to be buried in the space happens to be Gene Roddenberry, the creator of the Star Trek. I found this quite symbolic. Following are some statistics, sourced from wiki site, about the missions undertaken till date.

One of Those Afternoons

 Ashutosh, Santosh and Arijit were not established writers but dreamt to be one since their college days. During the good old days in Kolkata, they used to spend hours in the college street coffee shop arguing. They have now known each other long enough to understand one another and are at peace with their agreement to disagree. Not always though!
  Sometime they would find themselves on the brink of publishing their first novel after striking a fantastic plot or encourage one of them to apply for the position of an editor of a leading newspaper. But once out of that place, money and relationship took precedence over writing their journalistic dream always got pushed to the back-burner. After so many long years things haven't changed much in this respect except for the fact that now they have access to portals for publishing their thoughts.

The coffee house in the college street is famous as a breeding ground of intellectuals and artists, while at the same time it engulfed many a prospective career through never-ending debates and impractical ideas. The irony of that place, they once debated was that all the socialists minds argued within an environment, which could be best defined as a reminiscence of the British Raj of India. 

The very idea of drinking coffee, served particularly by waiters dressed in a uniform designed to evoke the memories of the orderlies from the British era is so foreign they contemplated the other afternoon.
 By sheer luck they landed up in the same city and were thrilled to find long lost friends in an alien land. Old habits die hard and this trio too caught up after work, once every week to discuss, debate and argue over steaming cups of coffee. After all the weekend debates over hard liquors doesn't have the same zing as these sessions.

Arijit started excitedly before they could settle in, “With the freedom of press enslaved by the advertisers and sponsors, is still the pen mightier than the sword?” 

 He seemed to feel threatened this afternoon by the bias in the media and the eluding truth. Moreover with the social media being evolving as the parallel media, the audiences are bombarded with photographs, videos and statistics which are often manipulated. Everyone can put forward their views and opinions to the public, which is an advantage but there are no one trustworthy to control that.
  "Unless you are aligned to the popular or the powerful your post will never matter, no matter how excellent your views and analysis may be. On the other hand they will keep flooding the scene with more and more trash." He rest his case for others to react. It was now a bit clear that his blog was not getting footfalls, eyeballs or as they call it page views causing frustration and anger towards the media.

"No one has invented a condom for the pen yet to put a cap on the productivity of all those trash" said Santosh quoting  Khuswant Singh trying to pacify his friend. 
 “Well the pen has a cap, if one wishes to put a cap on the flow of his rubbish”, Arijit later argued, not willing to give in. “There is still a lot of optimism left in this world”, Ashutosh chipped in for the first time that evening.  “After all, the pencils always last longer than the eraser” he concluded.

 “One should not undermine the power of a humble pencil when it comes to symbolism”, said Santosh as the discussion drifted along. He quoted the thoughtful remark Mother Teresa's once made to induce some serenity.

  “I am a little pencil in God's hands. He does the thinking. He does the writing. He does everything and sometimes it is really hard because it is a broken pencil and He has to sharpen it a little more.”

They were touched by this and continued with their discussions on other topics.It was soon time to depart and one of them said, “I thought of telling you guys a interesting story about the broken pencil... but it was pointless.” they giggled and parted ways for another week.

This post is a part of Write Over the Weekend, an initiative for Indian Bloggers by BlogAdda.