nandhan

"All that I am"

Friday, January 28, 2005

Three Girls and a Pigeon

“Hey! Appu, it is 7’O-clock now. Get up.” Aarthi shouted from the dressing table.
Aparna opened her left eyelid and scanned the table near her cot for the small alarm clock, It blinked ‘6:52 AM’, the Mickey Mouse cartoon on it was shaking its head – once for every second.
“We have 8 more minutes ” she mumbled and closed her eyes, trying to finish the last few minutes of that ‘Maddy’ dream.

3 minutes passed by, then the sudden whistle from pressure cooker almost threw Appu out of her bed. She sat on the bed for a while trying to bring her senses back to the real world.
Nivedita emerged from the bathroom fresh after her morning ablution. “Hey, if you are not going to get ready in next 30 minutes, we will be missing the bus again and shell out 150 bucks for the auto” she gestured the usual threatening symbol at ‘yet-to-get-up’ Appu. By now Appu was in full control of her senses, suddenly she saw the difficult position she is in. She had 30 minutes to bath, press her dress and get ready. She mentally allotted timings for her activities and did a quick calculation only to find that she will have to skip either bathing or ironing the dress to meet the deadline. Both are next to impossible. She can’t afford to look sober today – it was ‘his’ birthday today. She pulled herself up and headed to the bathroom, picking up the hot water bucket enroute.

Within a minute she came out running. “What happened? Are you not taking bath today?” asked Aarthi,
“No, I will, but there is a pigeon in the bathroom, near cistern” – Appu
“So what? Drive that away and get ready soon”. Aarthi moved to kitchen to pack lunch.
Appu, stepped in and tried “Shoo!, shoo!”. That pigeon seemed not to bother her. For a second Appu thought it should be deaf. She tried to figure out whether it has ears - she couldn’t find out any visible earlobes. In the process of examining she started admiring it. She had never seen a pigeon so close in the recent times. Unlike the white colored ones often seen in textbooks this one was shiny grey. So she stood there wondering when was the last time she saw a pigeon so close. Was it during her visits to the aviary in chennai during her school days? Or was it during her last visit to her native? She had often seen pigeons in films, any film shot in India gate, Bombay will surely have a scene in which the hero/heroine runs amidst pigeon flock…
“Appu what is the matter now” – Nive asked on her way to the dressing table.
“Hey, that bird is not going away” – Appu tried not to sound too complaining
Nive dropped in to help Appu. “Oh this one, it was there at the exhaust fan hole when I was in”, Nive pointed to the circular hole high up in the bathroom wall. It was provided for fitting an exhaust fan, but the house owner couldn’t do it for his constraints in his budget. He had convinced himself then stating the west blowing wind was very abundant there and it will act as natural exhaust.
“But I wasn’t sure whether it was a male or female, so I could not decide whether I should drive it away or let it be there” Nive added.
Appu couldn’t figure out Nive’s logic. Time was running out and she will have to use the bathroom.
Nive was trying “shoo! Shoo” now and a spark fired in her mind. “Idea, Idea!!”, she turned back swiftly towards the kitchen, leaving Appu stare in bewilderment
There were some rumbling noises from the kitchen followed by Aarthi’s voice “What are you doing? What is that for?” before she could complete that sentence, Nive was out and Aarthi following her, arrived at the bathroom.
Nive had some rice grains in her hand. She stepped in, and dropped two near the pigeon, initially it didn’t respond. After a minute it moved towards the grains and pecked them. As Appu and Aarthi watched, Nive swayed into action, slowly alluring the pigeon out of the bathroom by dropping few grains. In 3 minutes she managed to get the pigeon a full 5 yards out of the bathroom door. Appu and Aarthi gaped in amazement. Wondering when did Nive get such brains? Nive stopped, glanced a look at her amazed room mates “Come on, what are you waiting for?”, she asked Appu. Appu realized that it is her turn to act now. She hurriedly went inside the bath and bolted the door.

By now the pigeon had come pretty close to Nive and with in a flash of a moment it pecked her right hand looking for more grains. Nive shrieked in pain. The pigeon, frightened by her cry moved away from her and landed on the chair near her. Aarthi chuckled, but quickly pulled herself. Her friend is attacked and it is her turn to help. But what to do? “Nive move away” – said Aarthi
Nive took a step, holding her right hand in her left. Almost simultaneously, the pigeon took off and landed on the next chair. Nive froze, she felt as if she was at the front line and her every movement was being watched by the enemy. One move – she would be attacked. Nive looked at Aarthi, and feebly whispered something.
“Anhh?” – Aarthi
Once again nive mumbled something – just like the army commando does in a covet operation. They speak slowly, at zero volume, the opponent will have to understand by reading their lip movement.
Some how, Aarthi could not understand what nive was trying to do, “Why don’t you speak aloud? No harm in saying it out. Pigeon’s don’t understand human language,”
“Get some grains in a bowl and leave it at the corner of the hall” – nive yelled
Aarthi understood nive’s plan now. Oh boy! What a way to trap that bird! She stepped into kitchen, fetched a bowl of rice, wondering how did nive become such a genius? Why didn’t it strike to me? When she came back, she found Nive standing in that exact position as she was like a statue of the roman orators in history book, holding her right hand in her left, staring the pigeon. Aarthi hurried towards the corner of the hall, placed the bowl on floor and moved away. At once nive took control and followed the same procedure she used to allure the pigeon from the bathroom. In two minutes she had the pigeon eating from the bowl happily.

“So, it is hungry”, said Nive, wiping her hands, standing next to Aarthi. Aarthi was watching the poor bird pecking the rice grains one at a time. Meanwhile Appu emerged from the bedroom, clad in saree – special for ‘his’ birthday. “Come on girls we are getting late, even for the auto!”
The three girls stepped out on the road, looking for an auto.
10 hours passed. The pigeon, which was drowsing on chair, woke up by the ‘click’ sound from the door. Aarthi opened the door and stepped in, saying something to the other girls. Immediately the pigeon swished past the open door as if it was waiting for some one to open the door. The girls jerked and then realized that it was only the pigeon. They looked foolishly at the closed windows and bathroom door. They had caged the pigeon unknowingly!!!
“Hey see this” Appu called the other girls to the left corner of hall, which was their ‘pooja’ room. There were pigeon droppings all around, the ‘ganga theertham’ spilled on floor. “The Pigeon!, it wanted to drink” declared Appu. “Oh my God!” Aarthi shouted looking at the all pigeon dropping soiled Lord SriRam’s photo. He was her favorite. She sprang at once, took the photo in her hand the started wiping it with her ‘dupatta’. The other two watched in silence.

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Thanks to Appu, Nive and Aarthi - who triggered this story by narrating how they got their exhaust fan closed to prevent a pigeon from getting inside their house. This story has nothing to do with the incident they narrated. It is just my imagination running wild :)
May be after sometime I will try spinning their narration in a separate as a sequel to this.

Wednesday, January 19, 2005

What do I write?

When I created this blog, I decided that it will hold my writings only. And not the usual stuff like how did my day go on? what is new with my job? how pretty is the girl in my office?

I wanted it to be exclusive manifestation of my thought process...but now at an introspective level I think I am far less creative (or lazy?) than I imagined to be...So I plan to divulge now and then and write something like this...I will try not to make this a diary :)

Well...I was in chennai for the book fair (how can I miss that?) bought few books.

1.Kalki - placing his works in public domain has brought down the prices. I saw a lot of families
buying Kalki - 5 books for 300 rs is pretty cheap right?
2.Baskar sakthi's Short stories
3.Sujatha's Sci-fi stories
4.SR's JJ silakuripukal
5.Dan Brown's 2 novels
6.RK Naryan's Bachelor of Arts
7.Ramakrishnan's Upapandavam

Surprisingly I meet a lot of literary figures and spent some time with them - Sujatha, Balkumaran, Jayamohan, Kanimozhi...to name a few. It was like bumping onto a celebrity every 10 mins. It actually pulls crowd.

And this time the stalls were better arranged than last time.
Will comment on these books after sometime.

One notable thing I did is to take part in a Sci-fi short story competition at marathadi I am awaiting the results...lets see.