Dating Advice

Dear Mr. Aaman:

I’m writing this letter to tell you about this girl I see every day in the office cafeteria. She is the most beautiful girl I have ever seen from so close, which is five feet. She wears a nose ring and has her ears pierced ‘n’ times, where n tends toward a large number. Her smile is like, you know what Mr. Aaman, first I should tell you about myself.

I fix bugs in other people’s code, and it might appear to be the worst job in the world, but tell me Mr. Aaman how important is the job of a doctor in society? Everyone goes to a doctor to get better, right? Similarly these codes written by people who sit in the cubes on the floor above come to me, the code doctor, to get fixed. A noble profession it is, Mr. Aaman.

Now coming back to the main point of this email, Mr. Aaman, I cannot possibly tell you how much it hurts when I see this girl (the reason for this letter) and cannot come up with a way to talk to her. The last girl I liked, Aisha, I saw in my engineering school. I never talked to her, in case you were wondering Mr. Aaman, but I always watched her walk outside our computer science building.  She never looked at me for more than two seconds, but Mr. Aaman, she was cute. We had seventy students in our class, all brilliant engineers, but nobody had touched any women, let alone shook hands with them, except for me and Ramesh, we were stars, I was Casanova Alpha Version and he was Casanova Beta Version.

Back to the girl in question, Mr. Aaman, I don’t know how to put it, but I want you to know that I love her. I love her so much. And it’s different this time. When I see this girl every day, you won’t believe it, I only focus on her eyes, and never anywhere else as others might think, but since I’m usually fifty feet from her, I never get to know what color they are.  But I know something, I know that they must be beautiful like an elegant webpage, the kind you have to share with your friend or the kind you have to put on your Facebook homepage. By the way, I’ve added this girl five hundred and twenty five times to my friend list in the last month but there seems to be something wrong with Facebook, Mr. Aaman, because I don’t see her in my friend list, there must be a bug or something. I’m going write a letter to Zuckerberg and kindly ask him to fix the bug or allow me, the code doctor, to do it.

Often, when I see the girl, I’m writing this letter in reference to, my mind goes into an infinite loop. An ‘if’ loop, no, no, a ‘do while’ loop, actually. And then I keep on thinking the same thing again and again, that is whether she thinks the shirt I’m wearing (I’m wearing an orange shirt today) makes me look handsome or not. I might not be Shahrukh Khan, Mr. Aaman, actually, not Shahrukh, I heard he’s gay, but some other actor, but I’m handsome in my own right. My mother tells me that I am, and my mother never lies.

So now tell me Mr. Aaman, how can I make this girl (the one I have told you so many great things about) mine? I can’t wait to show her how Java Runtime Machine works or how we create an Oracle database, too much fun, I know Mr. Aaman, but what can I do? I love her so much.

~Lovelorn Computer Engineer aka Code Doctor

*

Dear Mr. Lovelorn Computer Engineer aka Code Doctor

Many thanks for writing the longest letter I have received in my life (And I thought I was the only one who had nothing to do). I’ve decided to frame your letter and hang it on my office wall. From now on, whenever I’m depressed and am experiencing a loss of appetite, I’m going to read your letter and try to feel good about my life. After all, there are all sorts of people in this world, and Mr. Lovelorn, let me get this off my chest, you’re especially precious.

About your dating life, I specifically recommend that you try some radically alternative methods. Try to forget the girl. Leave her to mortals, people who know when a girl is interested in them and when not (Don’t worry if you don’t understand this sentence, I don’t expect that you will).

I gather from the background you provided in your letter that you spend many continuous and productive hours in front of a computer screen. I think it’s well-suited for you. You appear to be the kind who would enjoy doing such a job. No offense. But have you ever thought what else you could do on the computer? If not, then this is the time.

I’ve a feeling that you’re well aware of the revolution of the World Wide Web (or WWW as you call it in your lingo) and the benefits and freedom and more importantly, Mr. Lovelorn, access to movies of the kind for which we had to earlier talk in a hushed tone to  video store owners, but not anymore. Now since we’ve access to the WWW, we can watch anything and whenever we want. It’s easy, as you must be aware, and just a click away.

Last week, I asked one of my clients, like you Mr. Loverlorn, to treat Ms. Veronica on one of these WWW portals as his girlfriend, while watching her in action, and you won’t believe it, this gentleman wrote back to me to tell me that he hasn’t been happier in his life ever since he started going out with Ms. Veronica every night.

Heartfelt apologies if I’m being presumptuous, but since you work on the WWW all day, and perhaps all night as well (I wouldn’t be surprised if you told me you haven’t slept a wink in the last ten years), the same remedy can work greatly in your case too. Just check out Ms. Rebexxa or Ms. Lindy. I heard they are stacked.

Before I sign off, I want you to keep me informed. Let me know how you feel in the coming weeks. And yes, most importantly, don’t forget to keep a pack of paper napkins handy whenever you go out on a date with either Ms. Rebexxa or Ms. Lindy, or if you’re the ambitious kind, which I think you’re, with both of them on the same day.

~Aaman

God, It’s Deepack

Another trip to Seattle. The same long flight across the corn country and over the Rockies, breaching the clouds while the airplane jiggles its butt to reach the cruising altitude, and a whole lot of free sodas, and 10-dollar meals, all that and my true-to-god co-passengers.

It was a couple this time, easily in their seventies, with their snow-white hair and a warm demeanor. As soon as I sat down in my seat, this being my second flight, having flown to Charlotte first, a few hundred miles north- east of Atlanta, instead of going directly to Seattle, the couple accepted me as their lost kid and asked me question after question, checking if the brown skin they saw was just a layer of paint I had put on myself to improve my chances of landing an IT job.

I, to send the couple the right signal, several times, scratched myself for no reason, leaving deep white lines on my skin, and said, in my caramel accent, “These days you know you paint yourself once and the damn thing doesn’t come off. Howdy, sir, you seem like my fellow countrymen.”

I even said, Hey whaddya doing, over and over again, and messed up my Vs as Ws, but the couple was hard-set on wanting to know everything about me, my shoe size, my favorite sleeping position, which hospital I was born in and if people I knew as my parents always gave me leftovers for dinner. I answered all their questions heroically, pausing for a moment in between to catch my breath and prepare myself for the next question.

Then out of nowhere the couple, first the man then the woman, started telling me how they believed in one god–I don’t know what I did to piss them off–about the god who created Earth with all its wealth of plant and animal species, and who after creating everything else created the supreme living form: human being. I told them that I kind of knew about this man who did all these wonderful things, because I enjoyed reading, not just computer manuals, but real books with characters and plots, but they didn’t quite seem to understand what I was saying and kept on telling me about how He the all powerful was watching us right at this moment. “He in a solitary action spanning seven days created heaven and earth, man and woman.” They said.

The flight was five hours long, long enough to wonder why they had a sheen curtain between the first and economy classes, and what all was happening on the other side and what the flight attendant was bussing empty beer cups for and those sumptuous entrees and yes those sparkling wines in slender flutes.

It occurred to me then that I didn’t know the names of the two people I had been talking to. I’d, within five minutes of the onset of the conversation, introduced myself as Deepack, but had not heard anything in return. The couple, it was clear, wasn’t inclined to reveal their social identity to me.

“If Jesus Christ comes back, his wrath will strike down the unholy. Are you religious?” the old man asked me.

I don’t know when but a long time back I had stopped thinking about religion and god. “No,” I replied.

Perhaps it was the sixth-grade at my school – a place where there was no concept of boy’s bathrooms and where guys peed in the bushes–a close friend of mine once asked a question on god that shook the foundation of my religious beliefs. He asked, “Who told you that god exists?” Looking into his eyes, I knew it wasn’t a rhetorical question, his way of showing amazement at my being stupid enough to believe in some sort of god, but a perfectly reasonable inquiry about how the concept of god was initiated in me and by whom. I meekly replied, “My parents.” That was it, a moment of truth, and it was clear to me, clear as the Indian summer sky.

“I don’t believe in any gods, sorry,” I added, “not the ones we have in India, not yours, or anyone’s, but I’m sure He’s there somewhere, like he must be there, but I don’t think he’s looking down at us right now. That would be just too much.”

The couple, I realized, while I was having a bit of inner aside, had moved on to looking outside the window, their eyes sweeping the vast expanse of land, and had stopped paying attention to me.

“But what do your parents say” – they had stopped thinking of me as their lost son, it was definite, not me with my religious views –”when you tell them all these funny stories of yours?”

“Well, they don’t say much,” I replied, looking straight ahead at the back of the seat seven inches in front. “My mother just smiles and shakes her head and goes into the kitchen to make the thousandth cup of tea she has been craving since two seconds back and my dad takes my mother’s eyeliner and starts drawing a fake beard and moustache on his face, adjusting his keffiyeh, and mutters unintelligible words, which I believe means he doesn’t know who I am,” I added, pointing a finger at myself.

The couple sighed; maybe because the drinks trolley was waiting on us.

A wide variety of complimentary beverages were offered. I got a cup of water and a diet coke and the flight attendant didn’t miss the opportunity of showing her displeasure at my asking for two cups of ice-filled beverages, with ice being the operative word. I said, “Thank you,” taking the cups from her. It was then that the airplane started making a bizarre sibilant sound.

I didn’t know how high in the air we were when that sound first started ringing in my ears, but I knew for a fact that we were higher than a five-story building. Your whole life flashing in front of you, the moment, your hair pushed back as you shear the curtain of air, the majestic fall, your limbs stretched out far as if you were a bird, and then that zingo, bingo, bang: The flat merciless earth acting on you as if you were a fucking water balloon. The splashing sound of the brain turning into mush, the veins bursting, the bones cracking, the last ounce of breath stuck in your lungs never getting the chance to come out, that moment of eternal pain.

Nothing of that sort flashed across my mind. I picked up John Fante’s Ask the Dust and within minutes was laughing my ass off at the protagonist’s masochistic escapades. The couple on the other hand had their jaws stuck in an open position, their eyes wide open and their pupils frozen in time as if they had seen a snow leopard walk down the aisle. “Oh, come on,” I told them. “You won’t die.” But my encouragements weren’t helping. They were truly scared of this sound, what if the right engine was dying, and the left engine had already been dead, I thought of telling them, and god’s wrath was finally making its long-bidden appearance.

“It’s not me,” I told the couple. “He ain’t coming after me, goddamnit.”

The strange sound slowly collapsed into the drone, the grumbling sound an airplane makes that causes my head to do somersaults, and the couple forgot about the unknown sound as if it had never existed. I busied myself with the book and save for half an hour during which I nodded off like an eighty-year-old man, my head lurching forward before my neck catching it, I read and read.

An hour before touchdown, the couple deep in sleep, I placed the book on my leg above the knee, and peered outside the window. The sunlight had dimmed to a smudge of red and dark gray. The outside of the airplane: lifeless, as if stricken with a chilling malaise, cold and barren, a reminder of death. Death looking back into my eyes from just beyond the peephole of a window, and its two servants sitting next to me, unaware of what it all meant. Why is it something to fear? Why would a seventy-year-old couple fear death while I sat next to them searching for something silly, something kooky, something worth living? Maybe it’s a sign. I drew out the iPod, about which I had forgotten until then, and started listening to a book I had put on it. And my eyes started to close, they started to close.

Sleepy in Seattle

Before I get all lovey-dovey about the West Coast of the United States, it’s worth mentioning that the trip from the East Coast might leave dark red crease marks on your ass. I’m not kidding and more so when instead of the aisle seat, which I wanted, I got sandwiched between two warm southerners, one of whom a y’all-speaking woman, who didn’t stop using her Blackberry to take pictures of the cloud-ridden landscape outside the window, and the other a man, who was overflowing from his seat like water from an already full bucket. He buffeted me toward my female co-passenger throughout the flight without feeling any compunction about it. It didn’t tense any muscle in his body and he flew to Seattle on the furry feathers of snores. A passing-by flight attendant once mentioned his snoring to him, jokingly, I remember, but such is the world we live in, he looked at her, his mouth in a rictus, and nodded as if he had accepted an award but was not feeling up to getting out of his seat to receive it. I listened to him shift weight in the seat, the tectonic plates of his bones adjusting to find the new configuration, and then after the tsunami, the silence, which was only riddled by asperated stertors.

Even though it I didn’t particularly enjoy his company on the flight, I was genuinely grateful to him for not farting. He looked many times guilty of muffling one of those silent ones, but they turned out to be false alarms to my immediate relief.

Before I got on the flight from Atlanta to Seattle, I had to get up and ride Marta to the airport, not rocket science I know, but it’s important to know that one thing that I hate more than the feeling that I am not tough, and that I am not performing to my full potential, and all that cry-baby blah blah, is the act of getting up early in the morning. I can do lots of things that many people might find difficult: I can bowl at 80 mph, win half the trophies at cricket tournaments, go to Arpit’s place uninvited and drink his Heineken even when he stares at me after every sip I take, tell my boss that I would have kicked his ass real bad if he hadn’t been my boss, and wear a pedometer without feeling embarrassed to count the number of steps I’m taking every day to monitor my ballooning belly, but I just cannot get up early in the morning, and when I say cannot I mean it’s not funny anymore.

I remember during my IIT days, from Agra to Kanpur, there were trains—sounds like it was a novelty—that took more than eight hours to travel 150 miles (250 kilometers) except for one that took five. It was my favorite train in the world for not being retarded like others, but its arrival time at Agra Fort – primarily a single-platform train station overrun by monkeys that bite and snatch food and frisk people’s pockets when people are busy checking out Agra’s babes (that’s such a lie I cannot believe myself)—was a tad beyond my sensibly-awake hours. One time, during my sophomore or junior year (my Americanism is off the heezy), my dad after wrestling with me for almost half an hour, made me get up and sit behind him on his LML Vespa scooter. Winding through the narrows roads of Agra at five-thirty, past vegetable hawkers, milkmen, and morning walkers, we got to the station. My dad pulled his scooter on the stand and shook me hard, I opened my eyes and saw him looking at me as if I had asked him to give me five hundred rupees for beer over the two thousand he had already given me for living expenses. It took me a few seconds to realize, but it did happen, that the only thing I was holding onto, standing at the station, very early in the morning, was the feeling that I was holding onto a bag, the bag I was to take to Kanpur.

I got into Seattle at slightly past noon. It was cooler than Atlanta, as I had expected, and it didn’t take me more than twenty minutes to reach my hotel in the middle of downtown.

I changed into my new Calvin Klein tee, thank you, and walked a block north and five blocks east, passing as many Starbucks on the way as there are Halwais in all of Agra, to reach my waterfront office. Once I entered the building and the window-less room on the fifth floor, I didn’t get out, I mean I did but mostly for going back to the hotel to sleep. They would fly you to the west coast in a cigar of a plane, put you up in a hotel that costs 240 a night and overlooks the nearby building’s cooling system, and then make you work long hours; what’s up with that? A man once said, I lowered my head to increase my salary, I think he wasn’t completely wrong.

Seattle is a strange city, I came to know within hours, the number of hobos it has on the roads pushing their grocery carts. Downtown is their home without a doubt. These hobos, or more appropriately people asking for change, or alms, I saw, ranged from teeth-less bums – one of whom was holding a poster that said ‘Bush Stole My Dentures’ and another one with Hitler’s mustache on Obama’s face—who sneaked up behind you with their sooty tin boxes and wanted to know, If you had any change, sir, any change will do, sir, would appreciate it sir, just one dollar, to this guitar-wielding guy and the violin-sporting girl, with their instrument cases open to hold cash, who wore better clothes than me. I passed these failed musicians several times on my way to get a gyro or guac-tomato-cucumber-mushroom-lettuce European sandwich. It was apparently hard for these people to lead a life similar to mine, I finally decided, and what was he wearing that yellow t-shirt for, wonder where she got her sheen apricot dress from?

The first two days went by in frenzy, nothing fancy. I worked and drank my beer, what else? But then the uselessness of my stay started playing on my mind and I sat down on the third day to do some research on the city. At most places I know it rains occasionally or rains during a fixed season, but not in Seattle. Here sunrays, not rain, fall on you. Occasionally. Fifty-four sunny days in a year on an average. I had a hard time reading this fact. If the sun is too embarrassed to show its face every day, then why should I bother? Who am I to challenge the sun? I felt a sudden pleasure in my brilliance. I decided I wanted to relocate to Seattle. The blues, I’m always in need of some, bring the mellowness in me, and the proximity to the body of water, Mt. Rainier (see how the freaking mountain has a rainy name), The Fremont Troll, Microsoft (famous for its blue screen of death), Pike Place Market, a sweet downtown, a waterfront office, what else could ‘me’ want? Me happy, me drunk here.

Hotel—office—Pike Place Market—office—hotel, the cycle continued for the remaining days. The wind picked up one day, the clouds charged in the other, it stormed for a while, the sun peeked out, and the time slipped through my hands like my monthly paycheck. Once I stood, on my lunch break, in the middle of Pike Place Market, a kick in the air, and saw people move in packs in opposite directions past me. I saw them go, talking about some movie, some show, some artist, what they wanted to buy (iPhone), what they wanted to eat, what their boss was asking them, how big that girl’s tits were, I watched them go, somewhere. Then I moved toward a little patch of sod, where many homeless people had been sitting, talking about god knows what. I sat down with them and just listened, listened to the sound of water against the air and I knew I didn’t want to go back, not to that fucking office.

A Little Happiness, Coffee, Beer, and Lots Of Living

Happiness, I’ve noticed, depends on what time of the day it is. In the morning, for example, I’m excited about the day, rising from eight hours of sleep. After snoozing for thirty minutes to an hour (depending upon how tired and late I was at the time of going to bed) I roll out of bed rubbing my eyes. I feel light and my mind crazy with the eerie dreams of the night. I lumber off to the bathroom. I see myself in the mirror, my hair mucked up, my eyes half-open, my head woozy, and think: a new day with its promises, yes, a lovely day, but … damn … why brush, shit, and take a shower? At this time my head is free of all obligations, like that of a caveman. I lift the toilet seat and stand there streaming, one hand on my hip, the other scratching my head.

The starting of the day is brilliant. I run through the things and get into my car without eating or drinking anything. I reach work and take a moment to soil my appearance. I try as hard as I can to pull up a dreary face before walking past the offices of directors and managers, muttering, Yeah, laugh it up funny boy, under my breath, but I know that my semi-wet hair gives it away. That they know I wasn’t doing squat at home and was hoping in earnest that the day won’t rise. I change my gait several times from the car to my cube, moseying, stomping, sashaying, and finally pussyfooting. I set up my laptop and drift to the breakroom. There I eat a biscotti, my breakfast, and fill a cup of dark black coffee, diluted with water, with a pouch of zero-calorie sweetener in it, and walk back feeling up my belly. Not too big, by any measure, I hear myself say, but yes, them beers … damn. How often do you get back home and find nothing but frozen pizzas in the fridge? I am sure there is a pack of yogurt and a gallon of skim-milk too, but that doesn’t count. There is a lot of candy, right behind the rotting tomatoes, the ones with black eyes on them, and fungus-encrusted cucumbers. Love those. But forget to eat them. Don’t tell me you can eat tomatoes and cucumber for dinner.

Some days, usually Mondays or Tuesdays, soon after I get in, I receive a call from my parents, which usually starts with my mother complaining that I haven’t called them in more than two weeks. I tell her that that’s not true, that wasn’t it last Sunday when I called them? Yes, I was hugging my pillow at noon crazy asleep when they had called me last, but anyway, that’s not the point, the point is that I talked to them last Sunday. No, I hear my mother say, that was several weeks back. Really? I say in response. I hear my father screaming at me in the background. He’s talking about some bride-groom show on Star TV, where parents send their kids’ matrimonial data and if the kid is selected he has to appear on the show and whatnot. He’s threatening me, I feel. I hear him ask my mother to tell me that if I don’t start calling them on a weekly basis, he’s going to come over to Atlanta and kick my ass and tie me up and take me back to India. Good deal, I ask my mother to tell my dad.

The day regains sanity and progresses as usual from Powerpoint to Powerpoint, with Excel sheets, some additions to the Project Plan, my boss IMing me that I suck donkey dicks and then telling me how these morons are driving him nuts. I join him in griping and drop in a few f-bombs and sing along with him; literally he stands up and clears his throat and sings Buckcherry’s Porno Star; Don’t you know we fuck for money, I’m a big dick motherfucking porno star.

Then we get back to work, writing nasty emails, kissing ass wherever possible, especially me – we do project management, classy stuff, no seriously -and yell at people on the phone, sometimes until 1:30 PM, sometimes until 2:00 PM, having not eaten lunch, and mind you we work in the US, in Neva York. Atlanta doesn’t sound as cool, you know. I just don’t feel like saying Atlanta.

I always think that I’ve to wait for work to subside to go out to eat because I don’t have a wife to pack my lunch. But what’s my boss’s excuse? I don’t ask him. I am sure his wife gives him the finger when he asks for a lunchbox. Anyway, 2:00 PM is common for me, that too with nothing but a biscotti since getting up. I slip into these monkish states of mental clarity. My friends tell me that this is because of dropping blood sugar-level, but I think they are just not spiritual. It feels like somebody pumped some air into my head and made it balloon up, a feeling somehow akin to getting slightly drunk, but definitely not like the feeling I dig most: not being able to tell my extremities apart: Is this my toe or finger?

We drive to one of our favorite restaurants. My boss likes Thai. He wants to eat Thai everyday, which scares me a little bit, and I put up a good fight before going his way. So we drive to the Thai restaurant, where Asian waitresses welcome us and always ask us, Two? No, I sometimes feel like saying, three. Because I think they mock us by asking the obvious question, but then what do I know about hospitality? On the way, while driving my boss squints his eyes and then closes them completely, for a few seconds, like five, at a stretch. Why do you do this? I ask him, shell-shocked, gaping. Adventurous, he replies. I realize that he’s right and decide to do it myself on my way back home.

We come back. My boss burps. My boss farts. My boss tells me how manly it is to fart and we get into the elevator and take it up; I won’t say to the madhouse. The remaining part of the day and a good part of the night is spent on the phone, talking to team leads, trying to figure out why anything can’t be done without issues. Just can’t. That’s IT for you. Cannot work without a million bugs. Ever seen them insects? Noticed that they cannot sit still. Ever. Poor creatures don’t have a head big enough to know that it’s okay to sit in one place and not to go around dopily. Several times they come back to the same spot without giving a fuck about it. Do I feel nostalgic? I hear them say. Have I been here before? No, I’m not like those other bugs. I think I know where I am going. Yes, let me start crawling again.

I tell my boss that I know why he can’t sit still, and giggle. He tells me to get back to work or he will give me another Powerpoint to work on. I’m sure you don’t want this one, he says.

The day winds down with me sneaking out the office before the lights are shut off. I slink away, fall through the cracks, get into my car and get the hell out of there. I feel sorry for my boss still sitting in the darkening cube, trying to shore things up. But you know, whatever. I crank up the volume on my car’s audio system. The song being Bulla Ki Jaana. I get back home and get to reading. I change my clothes, tossing the long-sleeved shirt and pants rolled up in a ball into the laundry heap. I sit down in a folding chair and read. I read and forget about the passage of time. I write some days, but it’s reading mostly. Many times I keep reading and forget about eating, my dinner. Reading calms me. Makes me forget the world.

Around 11 PM I pour myself a cup of milk and shake some cereal out of the box and sit on the couch and eat, dreamily. I don’t think much while eating, not about the purpose of life, or if I’m adding anything to the world. Purpose? I have read enough about it and I tend to believe that the purpose of life is to have no purpose, not finding it, because there isn’t one. It’s overrated, not to mention. I hear the sound of my masticating the flakes, the sweetness dissolving in my mouth, a little treat to the senses after a long day of work. Carpe diem. It feels like.

I finish my dinner and walk back to my room, my bed an island, the books the water around it, and me thirsty, to lap up some more. I sit right back in my chair and look for a song to play. It’s Cat Steven’s If you want to sing out: Well, if you want to sing out, sing out. And if you want to be free, be free. Cause there’s a million things to be. You know that there are. I sing along and then it stops. I play it again . And then again.

First Publication

As promised:

http://www.kartikareview.com/issue5/5maini.htm

Deepak Maini

Things

Several things have happened, some encouraging, some challenging, some disappointing, since I blogged last.

Bread Loaf rejected my application to the ten-day-long intensive fiction workshop in Vermont. I had been wishing with fingers crossed over coffee mugs to become part of the culture any budding writer would kill for.  But to be clear, I hadn’t applied under the general category, since I don’t have the 2500 dollars it would have cost me. I had applied for a scholarship.  Everybody knows it’s easier to get in when you can foot a fat bill. Then what am I complaining for? They told me out of 1100 who applied for aid, they accepted 70. Well, not at all bad. I was excited to hear that: 70 in 1100, good deal. I get excited when I fail, especially at something where only a chosen few succeed. I feel that it’s a good test for my skills. If I didn’t deserve it, I didn’t get it, but at least I know that I have lots to work on, improve on, and then if I can prolong the effect of the kick I get from failing at something prestigious, I will reach the destination sooner. As they say it: Fail often to succeed earlier.

In other stories, I got accepted, again, by god, at Sarah Lawrence for their Summer Writer’s Workshop. And you know how flaky I’m? I didn’t accept the offer yet again. Saved the whole 1500 dollars. Yay. I don’t have a solid reason as to why I don’t want to go to a writer’s conference that is going to cost me a hunk. Maybe I don’t think I am ready for it, wanting to develop the craft on my own before I let anybody in on my ways.

I am spending more time than ever at my job these days, like my complaining would make it better. It has become chaotic, disorganized, without any fixed hours. A lot of times I don’t know how detail-oriented I have to be, how much I have to yell, how I have to say no to extra work people try to pass on –trust me, I don’t let them bitches get far before I shut them down.

I finished a story too (and yes I am happy with how it turned out). It’s a love story of sorts; two strong characters trying to fight it out. Based in Boston. It’s my first attempt at going behind the psyche of love and that’s not the end of how I perceive love because I am sure if I tried again I would come up with a new way of looking at it, with completely new characters, in a different setting, trying to reconcile love with humanity. I am hopeful for it to find a new home and if it does, I am going to smile gently, sitting in my chair, by the open window, with nothing but the table lamp on, watching the world go by, experiencing the minutes ticking away, as the wind ruffles the pages of the book I am reading.

First Literary Publication

We know that Deepak Maini often looks lost, looks a little funny when drunk, gazes at things intently, and slips into worlds unknown to mankind. Also we  know that he sulks when made to stay late at work, narrows his eyes when listening to some asshole , and cries when asked to get up early for cricket.

But what we don’t know  is that he will have a story published in the Spring 2009 issue of Kartika Review: a step further in the direction of everything we talked about in the first paragraph. Now more often he will look lost,  get drunk, narrow his eyes, and cry.

For everybody’s benefit, he has promised to post the link to the journal when the story is available.

When Losing Smelt Like Beer

Our hopes had already been dashed when I walked in to bat yesterday.  I wasn’t, however, bothered much with the winning-losing aspect of the game.  I was already thinking about the succulent boneless wings and tall glasses of beer I had talked to Yogesh about for our lunch. It was 3 in the afternoon and drinking beer seemed more appropriate than hitting nine runs off one ball—I mean it was outfight unfair. “How do you expect me to hit the runs from here?” I crooned from the non-striker end to my team that was standing on the sidelines ready with bats to kill me if I didn’t score the winning nine runs off the last ball.

The game was the opening round of the Vibha tournament and we were all dressed in red and white polo shirts. It was the starting of the tournament our team had exchanged four thousand five hundred and twenty-two emails talking about and the game that the top guns of our team had thought, drinking Gatorade, would put us in the winning grove: The beginning of the saga of five games that would turn us into cricketing gods of Atlanta, barring Arpit of course because he didn’t pass the height criterion for becoming a god, he was an inch too shot  (I’d  already ordered my chakra, sword, and mace to match my godly status apart from getting silk pajamas and fancy gold-plated jewelry).

We were set a target of seventy-six off ten over. I don’t know about others, but for my team, the hard-hitting players we are, it meant hitting just about two sixes every over. But that would mean one hundred and twenty runs at least and adding the two singles Arpit would eke out edging past the keeper, that would be one-hundred and twenty-two.  Why don’t we just take singles like the other team? I said, and my team called me a mathematics snob and told me to shut the fuck up or they would tie me to a chair and blow cigarette smoke into my face.  Looking at their faces, I realized that this was the time to act according to my instincts and not take it sitting down, so I got up and walked to the place where the ball we had bowled earlier with was lying motionless, I picked it up and put it in my mouth to stop anything to come out of it.

As already known, Arpit fulfilled my dream of becoming a Cassandra and after hitting a few balls with his long and dense polyester bottoms threw his wicket in a smart attempt to edge the ball to the two-run, behind-the-keeper boundary. We still needed seventy some runs and there was nothing to worry about, I thought, because our batting was just getting started.

Surprisingly, the game that should been a cinch and that had turned into a skirmish after the first innings was now becoming a long yawn. I decided, sitting next to Yogesh, who was flexing his muscles for the benefit of nowhere-to-be-seen  Georgia Tech sweethearts and saying, “See, see, how big?” that the things the two kids sitting next to him were saying were more interesting than the game of cricket upon us. The kids were talking about how we, the team of monsters , were not scared of wasps and were instead scared of not hitting enough sixes in the game. They were cute but nothing to keep me from wandering around.

Every now and then, a little bored from having stared at the wall at the edge of the field for too long, I looked back at the game where the ball was interestingly escaping the golf swings of our sincerely trying batsmen. To my right, Arpit was sweating profusely and Yogesh was busy scratching his beard.

Earlier in the game, everybody except me had bowled with discipline. The faster I tried to bowl, the fuller I got and was thrashed for singles and doubles. It wasn’t new for me to feel frustrated with the way I was bowling, but apart from feeling the constant pressure of self-loathing, I heard  Yogesh’s words as he had told me before the game: “You need a third man for fuckers like these, that guy can’t even bench press ninety pounds, where do you think he will hit you? Not in front. It will always be behind the keeper.” I had thought of asking him, How many fingers are these?, to double-check he wasn’t drunk, but when the ball darted past Ninad three times in the first over, it dawned on me that he wasn’t kidding me, and I was reduced to tears and had to beg Arpit to stand at the first slip.

The opposition scored in singles and doubles and hit one six and two boundaries in the whole innings. The target of seventy-six was a tad insulting for the first match of the tournament, and I wondered Arpit would have something to say about it, so I asked him when he was busy putting the box inside his pants that if he had any strategy for the chase since the target wasn’t flat by any means. “I have to pee,” he replied.

Arpit had said the same thing when earlier before the start of the game I asked him to practice with me. I’ve to pee. Arpit, let’s run around the field once. I’ve to pee. Arpit, let’s go eat something. I‘ve to pee. Arpit, let’s find out why this chipmunk looks like you. I’ve to pee. Arpit, let’s exchange the batting order. I‘ve to pee. Arpit, let’s go pee. At this, Arpit stood still, eyes focused on my face, No smarty pants, I don’t want to.

I wasn’t disinvested of the feeling that Arpit had a strategy all right. After lingering around the batsmen awhile I sat down and heard him say, A lefty and a righty, confusing, confusing, huh, very important to have a lefty opener, but like always I couldn’t understand the Einstenian logic behind it.  My theory: if the opposition stinks and cannot bowl to a right and left combination without getting their heads all tangled up, one can beat them in half the number of the overs, and if the team is good enough to take you to the last over when you need nine runs off the last ball, good luck with your stellar strategy because, I guess, they ain’t no bitches.  It’s quite evident watching international cricket, though, that this strategy works, and in a subtle way, but not as much as the simple and tested strategy of rotating the strike and hitting the ball on merit instead of driving orgasmic pleasure from premeditating to launch the ball out of the park.

At the end of the game when everybody was shaking hands and exchanging pleasantries, it occurred to me that I wanted to drink beer. The game was over. You lose some, you win some, but you always drink beer regardless of the outcome. You cannot let a loss make you reconsider how you go about the game, but for a smart person there are lessons in every little thing that happens to him: be it a missed opportunity to get someone out or a swing and miss.

Why Don’t I Bat?

I’m Kachra of my local tennis-ball cricket team. When I’m not bowling my two overs in the game I stand beyond the line and clap-di-clap for the boundaries and sixes my comrades hit with monstrous flourish.  La-di-dah. My team mates, most of them great human beings except a short Gujrati fella, look at me pleading if I would not only clap but put on a show of cheering: jumping in place with pompoms. I have several times looked back at them with a similar expression that I think descends on my face when trying to poop after a long day at work and have hinted at not doing it. But they don’t understand me and lift me to their shoulders and through me as far from the batting lineup as their tennis-ball thrashing biceps would permit.

I don’t need no arms around me

I crawl back to my place on the bench in the batting-team dugout and try to crack a joke with my buddy Arpit, who after creaming a few balls on the off-side is back with a sulking face of a two-year-old and who is turning it on me and making me look mature. “But why do you want to bat in the first place?” I console him.  He screams in his high-pitch voice.  I forget that I have asked a question to him and without paying any attention to his yelping, fix my stare on the game.  “This team has many high-profile players and I am not one of them.” I hear it inside me. Then I look at Arpit and think I might have have heard him say it. You never know, as sometimes he likes to joke with me and likes to rub in the truth. He’s generally a truthful guy and it doesn’t bother me much. I turn my eyes to the game. I see a peach of a delivery walloped outside the park; man, these guys know where they’re hitting, I decide. But the next ball rams into the wickets and I feel foolish to have jumped the gun; the bowler isn’t bad either, I further decide,  he mustn’t go for more than twenty runs an over.

Three wickets are down, I calculate, and we haven’t amassed three thousand runs yet. I stand up, feeling bad for my team, and in an action of godly indifference grab a bat propped to my right. The whole team looks at me and smiles. “Okay, I know, I don’t want to bat anyway.” I haven’t batted in one year and I know how it feels to sit on the sidelines and see other people mash the bowling attack when your mouth waters at the prospect of batting. “It’s a tennis-ball league, you know, you don’t need a technique, right?” I add but nobody listens to what I say. They are busy watching stars shoot out of the bat of the new brawny batsman.

I don’t need no drugs to calm me

I understand that argument is futile. I scrunch up my eyes and lean back sitting on the bench and ease my head against the fence and the voice inside my head continues, “But you don’t come to practice asshole, yes you, you don’t wake on time, the day you show up you’re hung over from drinking too much the previous night, you make people chase you like they would never chase skirts, you’re are less trustworthy than a girl who gives you her number in a bar and doesn’t pick up your call the next day. What do you expect?”

“How about a little batting once in a while?” I answer, but nobody hears it.

I continue thinking and with boredom hitting me smack in the face slip down the memory lane. I see myself running in little shorts at home in India. I am running and prancing through the house, out of one room, into the kitchen, out of there, into the living room, eating candy dad has just bought me. He has bought it for me and my sisters. I’m happy more than I know I can be. But within few minutes I’m done rolling the candy on my tongue and now I’m sitting on the couch looking morose. My mum is not concerned that I’m not jumping anymore. Her eyes are fixed on TV. Slowly I get on my feet and stand before my mum tugging at her arm. “Wha-t-ha?” my mum says.  “I want the candy you have saved for them.”  “No,” she says, but then I cry and cry and she gives in.

“When will the captain give in?” I say.

The ball has been slapped to the boundary, I heard Arpit miaul, to me maybe, and shatter my glassy dream and wrench me into the batting-less reality. Whaaaaaat, I say. You might be next, he says. Are you serious? I say, but I know he’s kidding, that he knows I won’t believe him for one moment, that there is no chance in the world that I will get to bat the whole five balls left in the game, two balls I can understand, but five, I must be on the life-support system.

I have seen the writing on the wall.

I drift again into the clouds, this time into the future. I see myself sitting on the sidelines again.  A clean, white-hot, shiny head comes into focus. I have shaved my head for the occasion, this being my second presence at the field the whole season, and with nothing happening with my batting I have decided to bring some luck by voodoo methods. I am aware that I haven’t batted in a year and that every time I touch the bat the whole team stares at me like I am asking them to fill my water bottle with Sambhar. I’m sitting there in monkish silence gawking at the captain. I am not letting him off the hook, my eyes are tracing his every step, every shrug, every sigh. Every now and then he catches my gaze and says, “Kya, be?”

Everyone bats like a hero and I’m left with the ball?

I ramble back to my senses. Our batting has concluded and my high-profile teammates are congratulating other high-profile players. Arpit has moved on to join the gabfest. They are discussing how well they batted without me. I am still at the bench I first sat down on an hour and a half back, my ass sour from sitting for this long. “And they say cricket is a sport; the hell it is; it’s worse than working,” I say. But somewhere in my heart I realize that the game is not about being a star player, it’s about being a player, and I am a playa, however useless and cobwebbed. I stand up and pad off to the huddle of my teammates and giggle, asking for a ball to practice bowling with.

Early to Bed, Early to Rise

Early to bed, early to rise

Fucks your eyes,

Makes your back hurt down when you lie.

What reason can you have?

To follow the lame advice.

.

Ride the pony of night.

Pour a drink.

Open a book.

Snap on the lamp.

Slide open the windows.

Look out.

Dim the room.

Hear the birds twitter.

Dream on.

Lying up in that bed,

Dream the fuck on

With eyes open,

Night slipping by.

.

It might,

might just end tomorrow.