Good Riddance (Time of your Life)

There are times in every man's life, when he has to shrug it off and call it life. I have done precisely that when it comes to the last four years of my life. We've had our ups and downs, I've had my downs and downs, I've sworn at a couple of teachers quite liberally and have basically made my transition from a fat douche to a slightly less fat douche in the years I have spent on the dusty streets of NIT Trichy. From marathon AOE matches to bad movies to escape the power cuts that last through the entire day, it has been one bumpy ride from the blinking idiot in first year who bunked his first class in the college out of ignorance (ask Gokul, he was a part of this charade) to the blinking idiot who bunked all later classes out of apathy (ask anyone in my department). In this twisted journey, I have met more convoluted characters (read TB, Adharsh) than out of a Quentin Tarantino movie (read HK); some of you interesting (you), others mindbogglingly dull (everyone else), on the whole, it was a nice sample set of humanity in general that greeted my eye when I first walked into the walls of Agate hoping it would have a western toilet. All things said and done, it was a defining journey into adulthood, our own four year long barmitzvah that one needs to remember for the rest of one's life, for I'm sure that forty years down the line, if I'm still alive ( chances are, at this rate, I won't be, so you're invited to the funeral, by the way; bring champagne ) and whenever someone mentions the word Tsunami, there would always be a little part in me that would jump and turn around hoping it was someone from college trying to call me.
Not for the last time,
Tsfu

Catch 42

Curiosity is a wonderful thing. It is what that makes us get over our fear of the unknown and explore new horizons. But clearly, it is not a good evolutionary trait to possess. A curious organism is a dead organism. But with it, we've erased Terra Incognita from our maps, we've conquered the planet. Now we're consumed by an obsession. An obsession to know the nature of this universe. In the process, we have clinically alienated ourselves from the universe, which is good scientific progress, as no physicist should be a part of the experiment he's conducting, or a part of the system she studies. But what we've failed to note is that, we're inextricably woven into this universe; chances are, it wouldn't exist without us, one of the principal prongs of the Anthropic principle. An observer is as important as the system itself and detaching oneself can never be the answer. But the universe cannot be studied if we consider ourself a part of it. We must be the dispensable onlooker on the grand scheme of things, if there is any, in order to comprehend its complexities and intricacies. Would we modify our universe by understanding it? Is our universe getting progressively more complicated the more we understand it? This leaves us between a rock and a hard place. We've never dwelt upon the idea that the universe can never be comprehended, we have always assumed, at times in an insufferably cavalier fashion, that our intellect and faculties allow such a comprehension. It could be our arrogance and vanity, the answer to other equally deep questions that we just trudge along with particle accelerators, each bigger than the last, in the hope of seeing a miniature big bang, assuming it was a significant event in the first place. But the question remains, that if the universe can be understood, can one be a part of it and still hope to do so? If not, who can understand the universe, or how can we do so bypassing this stumbling block of being confined to the universe? There is no way we can study the dynamics of a system if we are bound by it. Therefore, there is no way we can fully understand how and why our universe works, unless we know what lies beyond its ends. Suppose we were to assume that we cannot comprehend our world, it doesn't seem implausible at all; after all, there are many millions of other organisms that cannot, it would be vain of us to assume we alone can. But if we alone could, we as a species would be an evolutionary singularity, an exception. As all exceptions go, we would have been eliminated by the force of natural selection. It would seem that we are well on our way into doing so. Our intellect has grown at the cost of other more 'important' abilities, and any predator would have had a field day on early human herds. Moreover, our brain is the biggest guzzler of energy in our body. It uses up nearly half of what we consume, and while such an arrangement has been declared wholly wasteful by other animals, humans have somehow, dispensed with other abilities like night vision, smell, claws and teeth to pursue a line of adaptation as improbable as remarkable. Stripped of our brain, we're a pink blob of food as ready to eat as apples and would put up as much of a fight. An organism that requires tremendous amounts of energy everyday to tend to a body that in its prime is still as helpless as the day it was born cannot be said to be the fittest. How we were not killed then, is an oddity. But, as evidence suggests, we have survived, and are one of the most dominant species on earth, a force of nature to reckon with. But it can also be, that our intellect is in itself our own undoing. We have existed on this planet for around a hundred thousand years, hardly any appreciable time interval to judge the success of a species which usually stay on the planet for millions of years before nature writes them off as a bad job. Therefore, the answer for the question of whether humans are here to stay can be answered probably after nine hundred thousand years, which seems improbable because we are already on our way to killing ourselves. The chances are, the next mass extinction will be caused by us which is happening as we speak by the way, and we shall go with it. The reason one ponders of humans as a species is because one needs to understand the nature of the observer before any experiment can be conducted. If the observer is limited by the system, it is not a very good observer as our definition of reason goes. If we are not a good observer, it is highly possible that we cannot understand the universe, or if we could, the universe is out to kill us before we do. Both ways, it's not a cheerful thought. The man who said curiosity kills the cat is a wise man indeed.

Little Red Riding Hood

Alice sat quietly, as her mother laboured away in the kitchen. What she was up to, she couldn't tell, but she had been hacking and ploughing through mounds of dough in an effort to make muffins, something her grandmother hated anyway.

Her grandmother never liked anything in the first place, she was not a nice woman. All she did, was groan about imaginary pains and the decadence of her family. She cared for no one; rolled in heaps of money and wouldn't spare a penny to an ailing lamb. Understandably, she lived alone in a stately estate, void of anything human save a pitiful maid who, for hitherto undiscovered reasons, tolerated her general misanthropy and lumbered on, suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, after her husband chose not to be.

He hadn't left without leaving behind his son, equally spiteful in every way. He chose to marry, against the guesses of many, and chose a wasted woman, who listened to anyone with a vial full of heroin and a hypodermic syringe. The reason for this unlikely twain to come to be baffled many, the closest anyone ever came was that he genuinely loved the woman. She had a valuable quality; she knew what she wanted, and would do anything to get it. All he had to do, was dangle a needle in front of her and she'd do the rest.

Their by-product was a little girl, perfectly ordinary girl in every way; she was not exceedingly beautiful, but would still fit in an open-casket. This was the girl who'd witnessed many things in her life. Drunken women came home every night and any questions from her mother were answered with daggers and cigarette burns. They would fight for hours, as strangers leered on, expressions suggesting sheer indifference.

Last night turned out to be entirely different; as her father clutched the railings up the creaky staircase, a drunken blonde on his side reeking of dried vomit and cigarettes, his wife was preparing dinner. As the little girl peered out of her room, a meat-cleaver fell on her father's neck, as he swore and spouted obscenities. It was a dance of discord, a drunken man and a stoned woman have lousy reflexes. With half his head spliced, he waved a dagger at the screaming company he brought and rammed the glinting blade into her palate.

Alice clutched her doll, terrified of the blood, as she watched the final blow from her mother that hacked his head off his shoulders, the expression of cold fury frozen in his face.

Job done, she collapsed in the living room; she was spent. Alice shut her door tight and prayed for something to happen. She spent the night under the bed shivering with fright, praying for something to happen, desperately waited for someone to wake her up, tell her it was all a dream. She felt faint in the closed surroundings. Panting for breath between sobs, she rested her head on her shoulders and closed her eyes...

The next morning greeted her mother in a frenzy of activity. She cleaned the entire house for the first time since they moved in, the dried blood on the walls were scrubbed clean and two huge bags stood in a corner attracting flies. She flung them into the incinerator and proceeded to make muffins for her grandmother.

"What happened last night?" enquired the curious little girl.

"Nothing. Nothing happened. Why do you ask?" her mother was quite flustered to discover that her acts had a witness she hadn't realised, "Your father's gone out, he'll be back any minute. Muffins?" she pointed at a batch of freshly baked muffins with blood-soaked mittens.

Alice helped herself to one. Whatever had happened last night, it was not pleasant. The house seemed to know something, it smelt different, it felt emptier, cleaner. She desperately tried to strain her memory, but all she could recollect was a faint cry and a lot of red.

"I think I had a nightmare last night." she remarked to her mother.

"How come? I didn't hear you scream. You always shout out when you had a nightmare. It's probably nothing. I-it's probably all in your head, you know, you do have a wild imagination..."

Her mother smiled weakly. Any other person would've seen through her shaky fingers, blood-soaked apron, and a flustered demeanour, but nine year old girls cannot see through such intricacies of human nature. She did sense something she couldn't put her finger on, though, but repressed memories are difficult to discern in a tender mind.

"Honey, could you get these muffins to granny? She's really sick and needs your help."

"Okay, will you come with me? I'm scared of Mr. Lupus. He keeps staring at me whenever I go out."

"But Mommy has things to do, sweetie, I really can't come with you. I wish I could. Mr. Lupus is a nice man, he drove the monster under Susan's bed away. He can't harm you, will you go? Please? I know you're brave."

Alice nodded, defeated; she wanted to be a brave girl. She took the basket of muffins, pulled over a red cardigan, her favourite, and walked out to face the chill autumn air.

As she walked about the park, Mr. Lupus, her neighbour, seemed to be reading the paper on his front garden. She started humming a tune she vaguely remembered to cheer her spirits, and proceeded about the park at the edge of the village. Mr. Lupus was reading the paper here as well, she didn't understand why he wanted to read the paper wherever she went. Taking a detour, now sweaty and nervous, she missed a left and ran as fast as she could. She didn't know how long she ran, until she faced a desolate street. Leaves were heaped on the middle of the road, no one was in sight except for Mr. Lupus, reading his paper by a bench below an apple tree.

By now, Alice had begun to panic, she screamed at him, while he just moved into the shadows as a car wound its way, crunching leaves in its wake. It stopped just short of the kerb, and the headlights seemed like a pair of patient eyes, observant and ready. By now, Alice decided it was best to get away and ran as fast as she could into the woods. This would turn out to be a bad idea, as she discovered about a half an hour later. She had a feeling she was going in circles, every leaf looked familiar, every footstep in front of her seemed like hers. Finally, someone came up to her.

"You seem lost. What do you want, my dear girl?" a kind, almost too kind a voice enquired.

He was tall, at least that was what Alice thought, auburn hair lay rustled on his head, with grey eyes that seemed out of place in a person whose voice was so warm, so understanding in a way she couldn't explain.

This what what she wanted, she couldn't bear it anymore, she immediately hugged him and cried. She cried like she never did before, she cried till she couldn't breathe, she cried till her eyes were so swollen, she couldn't see where he was taking her. She didn't have the strength in her to resist anymore, she let him guide her into the silver sedan that she saw pull over earlier. She climbed in; Lupus showed no signs of existence. Relieved, she closed her eyes, not caring where they took her, as long as it was home. He took the basket of muffins she was supposed to give her grandmother and kept it aside. Not knowing what was going on, she yearned for an answer, but was too terrified to move, let alone question his actions.

The car pulled over to familiar surroundings, it was a stately manor, Alice had no clue why they stopped at her grandmother's place. He asked her to get down, and took her in.

Alice wondered why her grandmother sent these men to pick her up. As she walked in, she knew her grandmother was not involved in this in anyway, she had no clue as to what was going on.

How she came to the conclusion, she didn't know, it was just a feeling. She did know, when she saw her body being wrapped up in a bag, Lupus wrapping her up. She let out a sharp gasp when she realised her grandmother was dead and froze. She didn't know what to do. Lupus had killed her grandmother.

"Hello, Alice. You know me, I know you. This is Hunter, by the way."

The man with the grey eyes nodded at her.

"What did you do to grandma?" she trembled, sobbing.

"Oh nothing, she's sleeping." Lupus smiled as he picked up the phone to call Alice's mother.

"You see, Alice, I lost my job, both of us, Hunter and I did, as a matter of fact, a few months ago. Grown ups don't have parents looking after them, you see, and they need money to buy things.You are going to spend sometime with us, till your mother helps us out. We're not going to harm you in anyway, don't look at me like that. I promise I'll return you to your mother as soon as she helps us."

The phone kept ringing in Alice's home. Meanwhile, Hunter picked up the basket and looked inside. There were a batch or two of muffins inside, with a note on top. He opened it.

Dear Gertrude,

Your son is dead. I think I killed him, and I don't think I can live with that.

I hope you take good care of Alice, Goodbye.

Yours regretfully,

Dianne

He swore out loud, and pointed a gun to Alice's head. Lupus didn't know what was going on till Hunter thrust the letter into his hands and Alice watched his expression chance from bewilderment to cold fury. A gunshot pierced through the large living room at the exact same moment it did in Alice's little flat, as a woman fell to the floor as a gun flew from her hand across the room.

Triumph en' Cheval

Whanne gnarly groves and knotted Weald

Stoode grene and callow 'cross the feld,

Whanne raging river and brawling brooke

Crept and crawled through every nooke,

Times were black, the skies were grea

Sōls that naught, was ever gay.

For a fær maiden had borne

A heart broken, another torne;

Split asunder, slit in twain,

'Twixt two knights of valour magne.

We battled on, I and he,

Death in life had come to be;

We did spar through day and night,

Sabre pierced with all its might.

Arms were clashed and armour crashed,

Steeds crippled and sore skin gashed.

"Death to thee!" did I crie,

As we stepped, eye to eye.

Like Chaucer's verse I wanton trie,

In owen grese, to make him frie.

Steed caught steed and steele met steele,

Lances snapt and plates did keele.

I thrust his left on my vile blaed,

As my own arm was unmaed.

The crimson tiff went on on foote,

The blaed, my knee was firmly put.

Till the worthy foe was smote,

Knife was hacked and gyred abote.

There he lay, skewered and hewn,

Half myself away I'd strewn.

The rest in me revelled with pride,

Of bloody venge for my dear bride.

I had won, with chivalrie,

My own pyrrhic victorie;

Bled and spent, I shut my eye,

Nevermore'd I open, aye.