Short Story - Tough luck

All set. The planning, the preparation – all set. Not long to wait now. Half an hour at the outside.

Arijit leafed carefully leafed through a mental checklist; one more time. It was his only chance. He couldn’t afford to blow it.

The two men entered the broker’s cabin together, the beams of their torches shining brightly and blankly on the opposite wall. They looked around once more, satisfying themselves that they were without company, and set to work.

Two of Arijit’s men had, unobtrusively, boarded the 21:40 flight at Mumbai along with Krishnan. Krishnan was unaware of their existence, of course. It would take forty minutes for them to reach Ahmedabad.

A Maruti Alto (ridiculously fancy cars like those shown in the movies are seldom ever actually used by those whose chief sources of income lie beyond taxability), stood waiting outside the Ahmedabad airport, with another Arijit accomplice at the wheel. It was the car Krishnan expected to be waiting for him. That morning, the real driver (a silly character of 40 something – of little consequence to Arijit and lesser consequence to Krishnan) had been coerced to surrender his cell phone and other instruments that aided establishment of personal contact & identity, paid off handsomely and allowed to walk away. Later in the day, he had been unfortunately run over by a speeding truck.

The second automobile, a Scorpio, stood right next to it. It is human instinct to watch out for safe distances; the utterly proximal is the best concealed. The Scorpio was unoccupied. It did, however, contain two perfectly silent specimens of 9MMs.

Two more men waited at the Exit – armed and holding placards with arbitrary names on them.

Arijit, himself, was stationed twelve miles away, on a hastily constructed and rarely used brick road just off a lonely stretch of the highway connecting Ahmedabad and Gandhinagar. He had walked some three miles to the spot from where the state transport bus had dropped him off. A car would have been too conspicuous.

It took less than ninety seconds to unlock the password that restricted access to the mainframe. Another thirty to find what they wanted.
‘My God! Thirty billion dollars! He must have swindled half the world’s population to bankruptcy!’
‘Poor fellow, all this effort to get blackmailed out of the money anyway!’
The data took forty five seconds to copy onto the CD.

The plan was simple. The two men on the flight would emerge through the exit right behind Krishnan, thus identifying their target to the two placard wielders and then move off in a different direction to quell any lingering suspicion. Krishnan was not expected to carry any arms on his person (too risky in an airport these days). The placard wielders would wait for Krishnan to locate the Alto and get into it. They would then approach the car from the sides and force their way into it, thus effectively boxing Krishnan inside. The car would then drive away from the airport and to where Arijit waited.
In the meanwhile, the other two (the ones on the flight) would make a detour of the area and lookout for signs of unexpected aid for Krishan. That established, they would follow the Alto in the Scorpio, again, keeping a lookout for unwarranted encounters.

Arijit had long looked forward to this encounter with Krishnan. A few pleasantries – a few more questions – the CD – and then a few shots from the 9MM.

The two carefully cleaned the room of traces that could lead back to them. In twenty minutes, they were ready to go. One of them relocked the door to the cabin. Once done, he turned to the other and exclaimed,
‘We are rich, Krishnan! Filthy rich!’
He never saw the steel rod which thudded into the back of his skull.
‘No, I am.’

Krishnan looked out through the porthole as the aircraft gathered speed on the runway and lifted off into the night sky. The experience had never ceased to exhilarate him.

The stewardess handed him a lozenge which he promptly popped into his mouth. Presently, the seatbelt sign turned off and he got up to, presumably, take a leak. He spotted the two men, trying their best to not throw sidelong glances at him, seated three rows behind and across him. Having spent a couple of minutes inside the loo, he returned to his seat and did not budge for the remainder of the flight time.

Eleven days later, Arijit was sentenced to three years of prison for an attempted robbery at Bullstock brokers. It was said that the watchman had seen him enter the office and brought him down.
At the end of three years, Krishnan was richer by nine billion dollars and counting.

That had been two years ago.

Krishnan had received his first tip-off three days earlier. An anonymous caller, who wished to remain that way, had informed him of the impending danger, promising further details on payment of a certain sum. The payment had been made and further details duly received.
The anonymous caller had been identified without any significant effort. It was found that the man could be put to further use; after much threatening and negotiating, he found himself on the Mumbai – Ahmedabad flight, three rows back and across Krishnan, sitting next to a man who thought him to be an accomplice and whom he would have to kill soon after they’d landed.
Five of Krishnan’s men lay in wait outside the Ahmedabad airport.

Krishnan had debated whether he should carry the CD on him; never yet had he let the thing out of sight. He knew the perils of carrying it on this occasion, but had eventually decided to carry it anyway. He was confident of his arrangements and mistrustful of any form of safekeeping other than his own person.

He checked his watch. Fifteen more minutes to land. He picked up a magazine and proceeded to flip through it. A little over two hundred miles away, Arijit lit his sixth cigarette.

All was set. Tonight, it would end.

By the time the control tower spotted the two bleeps on their radar closing in dangerously on each other, it was already too late. Two flights, one from Mumbai and the other towards it, crashed into each other, 213 kilometers from Ahmedabad and 6000 meters above mean sea level. A scheduling error with disastrous consequences, that was all.

The Legend

The bell tolled. The Legend stepped into the boxing ring one last time. To a standing ovation.

That this day was to come, sooner rather than later, was something the world had known for a while. It had seen, the once invincible, become progressively human. The victories had become increasingly interspersed with tired defeats. Of late, even the victories, once walks in the park, owed their being to a curious mix of resilience and desperation. Power had had to be replaced by valor; reflexes replaced by resolve.

The world had almost willed this day to come.

The Legend, too, had seen the day coming. He had felt the body groan every time he fought. A little louder, each time. He knew he couldn’t go on much longer. But he couldn’t let go either. Not in some inconsequential little bout with precious few to watch him go. His vanity wouldn’t allow it. His rise had been colossal; he would settle for no less an exit. And so through the pain and the humiliation, he had fought on.

Through the misery, there was one thing that had not been taken away. Yet. The World Heavyweight title. The Legend had earned it seventeen years ago. He had never relinquished it since.

For his final bout, seventeen years were on the line.

When the proposition of the title bout against a promising young boxer had first been presented to him, the Legend had seen his opportunity. He could not expect a grander stage to sign off. He had agreed.

That had been almost a year ago.

News of his impending last performance had grabbed all the attention he had wished it to. Every mass-transmittable form of media had latched onto the event and proceeded to submerge the general populace with any and every bit of information that had ever been made available on the Legend’s life. With all the attention, had come the pressure.

Not that the Legend had not seen pressure before. Over the years, he had learnt to ignore it sufficiently to not weigh him down. But this time, he had felt it creep into his head with a strange paranoiac power.

I must not lose. I cannot lose.

The pressure had gradually turned to fear.

I am going to lose! God, I am going to lose! But I can’t! I can’t!

The fear of failure, of the ultimate humiliation on a stage he had himself chosen so foolishly, had been too much for him to handle.

I cannot win! I must not lose!

He knew the way out. It was the only one his vanity could allow him to take.

The performance enhancement drug had restored the wavering self-belief quite effectively.

The bout was played out to an audience that remained on its feet throughout. The Legend’s name never once stopped reverberating throughout the stadium. It was a loyal world celebrating its super hero’s last act.

The bout lasted nine rounds. The young challenger was emphatically knocked out. The Legend had delivered a near flawless performance.

The teary-eyed audience cheered as the referee raised the Legend’s arm. The young challenger, sufficiently recovered from the beating he had received, came up and shook hands with the Legend. The audience cheered again.

The Legend looked around, lowered his head and raised his arms in acknowledgement.

The Hero

The Hero was back.

Earlier, while the Sidekick, armed with a semi-automatic pistol, kept the Villain and his henchmen (with several other pistols of varying shapes and sizes) at bay, the Hero had rescued, valiantly, the Heroine from inside the old, dilapidated fortress (built in the early 1500s), where she had been help captive by the Villain. He had then carried her single-handedly to one of the Villain’s henchmen’s motorbikes and proceeded, in hair-raising style, to drive her unscathed through the haphazard gunfire and off to safety.

He had driven her straight to her apartment (6 miles from the Villain’s den) and commanded her to take care of herself. As he prepared to return, their eyes had met.

Two clear teardrops had formed at the brim of the Heroine’s eyes, threatening to spill over any instant. He had found his own eyes prickling with the pent-up emotions he had kept bottled inside through years of heroism. On an impulse, he had disembarked from the bike and embraced her. Thus, they had remained until an inconsiderate truck driver had honked and bellowed (simultaneously) at them, for the Hero had parked the bike right in the middle of the road.

Joy is never meant for heroes. Duty beckons, sooner or later.

“I must go back for the Sidekick. Goodbye love.” he had said.

And now he was back.

In the meanwhile, the Sidekick, having expended his entire stock of bullets and mortally injuring about half a dozen, had finally been captured and subdued.

Before any of the Villain’s clan could realize what had befallen them, the Hero had already accounted for the three men who stood guarding the trussed up Sidekick. The next two received bullets through the heart before they had had time to reach for their weapons. By the time the rest were sufficiently armed and prepared, the Hero had slipped behind one of the many broken walls that dotted the terrain.

For some time after, everything was a blur. Observers would later report that when the gunfire had eventually halted momentarily and the smoke had thinned, they could see bodies of the henchmen strewn everywhere. The Sidekick had been freed and, along with the Hero, was hiding (this would be confirmed later) behind a stack of cement sacks, ostensibly brought there to renovate the fortress.

“Damn! I don’t have any bullets left!” the Hero whispered, between breaths.

“I have only three”, the Sidekick reported.

“What do we do now? How many of them left, you think?”

“At least a dozen. We’ve got to find a way out!”

“Yes, I am aware of that”

They peered around for a possible escape route. There were none in sight.

“We don’t have much time left. They will realize any moment that we have no ammunition left” This from the Sidekick.

They peered around some more.

Finally, the Hero spoke.

“Can you see that truck over there?”

The Sidekick saw.

“That is almost forty yards away. We’ll never make it” he observed.

“It is our only chance. One of us has to go and drive it here”

They looked at each other. The games had ended. The time for martyrdom had come.

“I will go” the Hero, volunteered.

He put his hand on the Sidekick’s shoulders and tilted his head ever so slightly. It was the best he could manage in the absence of a hat and the consequent impossibility of tipping it.

“It has been an honor.” he said.

He reached for his wallet. In it, was a passport size photograph of the Heroine, clicked three years ago for her passport application. He sighed, kissed the photograph and clasped it to his heart. He heard gunfire.

When he looked up, the Sidekick was already halfway to the truck.

Boundary

The room is 10X10 feet. The roof, high up above, is inconsequential to the point of being invisible. The distance makes awareness of its existence acutely proximal. But inconsequential, nonetheless.

The room is ill-lit and ventilated by a solitary grilled window close to the roof. Unattainable. It holds within itself, the world without. Sometimes, during the night, from a certain point on the floor and at a certain angle, a few stars are visible. The moon, never.

M is stretched out almost immediately underneath where the window is; the darkest corner of the room. The dark gives him shelter. Shelter from the unknown realm of light, in the comfort of the shadows. He has grown used to it.

He watches the shaft of light from the window, gradually broadening, on its descent to the floor. It never touches him. He is afraid it might, one day.

He sees the million writhing particles of dust and organisms in the shaft’s wake, brutally exposed; his only companions. Proofs of life beyond.

He keeps looking at the shaft for hours; notes it shifting with the ageing of the day. And the year.

When the shaft disappears, M rises to his feet and walks around the room; makes sure the light has not reduced his power over his kingdom. When he is exhausted, he stretches out in the middle of the floor, from where the stars can be seen.

There he stays till the strange foggy halo near the window warns him of the approach of the shaft. Then he seeks out the darkest corner again.

It has been thus, for many years.

But today, he does not move. The shaft reappears, traces its customary and unhurried path on the floor and reaches him. His face illuminates.

A door M has never known the existence of, somewhere in the walls, opens. Four pairs of feet shuffle in and carry him out.

The perfect family

Mr. D, the fifty something patriarch and chief bread earner of the family, was a dark, heavily bearded man of medium build. His life, like numerous others born in the early years of India’s independence, had started off in tough, poverty-ridden circumstances and had remained so for the greater part of his first two decades of existence. He had graduated from a small town university in northern India, a feat not often paralleled in those times, and had moved to western India in quest of greener pastures. He had started work with one of the several thousand private industries that had sprung up in India in the early seventies, a move not too well received by the elderly and self proclaimed wisdom capital of the family who were unflinching proponents of the ‘government job’, and had continued in the same job ever since.
The job had been an immensely rewarding one, Mr. D often asserted; that he had not worked anywhere else and therefore had had scarce opportunity for any concrete comparison did not occur to him in the least. In any event, he had risen through the ranks with dogged persistence, along the way improving his family’s finances sufficiently to allow for all but the most exotic luxuries.
The success had not gone to his head. Having hoisted himself thus far in the socioeconomic ladder and consequently finding himself in a position of security, he had taken it upon himself to aid the less fortunate members of his family. His acts of generosity had seen steady incline in frequency and weight, his magnanimity showered upon those who asked, did not and on occasions did not want it.
The hard battle fought with life and its sundries had strengthened his determination to not let his two sons go through the same again. His sons had been educated in institutions he deemed best, had received the best tuition that was on offer, had enjoyed all the luxuries Mr. D could afford. They had never had to put a moment’s thought to their own destinies; so complete was Mr. D’s dedication to their cause and so unshakable their faith in him. Indeed, any course of action but the one ordained by Mr. D had come to be perceived as unthinkable.

Mrs. D was the quintessential housewife. She loved her husband. She adored her sons. She detested but respected her in laws.

She took on the duties of the household with unmatchable vigor and religiousness. She had never once complained during all the hard times that she and Mr. D had had to face when even the most basic of expenses had to be carefully dispensed with. She had borne those times with dignity and compassion, without which Mr. D’s resolve may yet have been broken – a fact she never omitted to mention to almost everyone she met and talked with for any reasonable length of time.
Her faith in her husband’s ability and wisdom were unbreakable. And to be honest, she hardly had the intellectual capacity to comprehend, let alone challenge, either of them. Mr. D loved her for all he and she were worth.
Her relation with her in-laws was not of the highest order, something she frequently cribbed but, in the true spirit of social propriety, never complained about. She was devoted to God.

She knew she ought to be happy and therefore, she was.

Mr. D’s eldest son (We will call him D Jr. 1, or better still, DJ1) was a fair, lanky and inexplicably arrogant lad of twenty something. The most distinguishable feature on his countenance was his tousled hair, the color of which, he frequently changed to suit his changing attitudes, preferences and girlfriends. He had finished college at twenty-three and had soon been employed in an IT company. Times, though, had changed and sticking to a job for a period greater than a year was considered inappropriate and foolhardy. Likewise, he had jumped jobs till his resume had started to resemble a business directory. All his job switches had of course, met with the prior approval of Mr. D. His tastes and expenses, however, continued to far exceed his income; Mr. D dutifully compensated for the balance.
The family was currently casting around for a suitable lady for DJ1, for the boy had reached the appropriate marriageable age.

The younger son, DJ2 was widely regarded as the lesser of the two, intellectually. He, however, possessed none of his sibling’s superciliousness and was equally widely regarded as the more likeable. His academic career had been bleak; Mr. D had had to intervene frequently with monetary and other required aid to further it. DJ2 had somehow plodded his way to a highly questionable graduation from a highly questionable university. To be fair to him, the boy had never really had a bent for academia; his pleasures were derived from his frequent dabbling in outdoor sports, of which he possessed not inconsiderable talent. But sports was not the career Mr. D had had in mind for his sons and DJ2, for his part, was not even aware that such careers were in existence. His dad always chose what was best for him, he knew.
He worked for a software firm, the name of which was not known to those that frequented the office next door. A friend of Mr. D’s ran the firm and had agreed to hire DJ2. He was doing well in his job; Mr. D’s friend had proclaimed that DJ2 had a bright future in the company.

And then, there were Mr. & Mrs. D Sr. Both had long outlived their useful lifetimes and were confined chiefly to adding indirectly to the nation’s prosperity through their meager consumption of edible resources, which, apparently, had a positive effect on the nation’s GDP.
Their movements, even within the houses, had become increasingly restricted, partly due to their deteriorating physical capabilities and partly due to the obvious but never voiced revulsion of their daughter –in-law and grandchildren that met them.
On festive occasions, every member of the family diligently partook the responsibility of touching their feet in exchange for their blessings, which purportedly continued to grow stronger as the strength of the voices that delivered them grew feebler. But then, the show of respect was never undertaken in the hope of getting something in return; any such notion was outrageously blasphemous.

Theirs, was the perfect family.

Imbalance

The Engineer wiped off another trickle of sweat, as it prepared itself for the final plunge at the end of its precipitous journey from behind the left earlobe and through the grizzled, sun burnt cheek, off the cleft in his double chin. The sun beat down on the earth with a vengeance that belied the paternal fondness that had been incessantly attributed to it, since the beginning of documented time. For the umpteenth time that day, he muttered under his breath in richly decorated dialect, his antagonism for the superordinate who had woken him up from his treasured Sunday afternoon siesta and dragged him onsite to oversee the founding of a particularly critical structure in the highrise.

The structure, which would eventually stand parallel with the ground and support upon itself, an intricately textured pattern of multi colored glass, hung at a grotesque angle from the crane that would, in time, set it dutifully upon its rightful place. The Engineer looked at it, gauged the plentiful hours, as yet unconsumed, before the task would be accomplished with a satisfactory measure of impeccability, and let out an audible sigh. Just at that moment, the workwoman came up to him.

He appraised the dark, frail, unkempt thirty-ish woman with a faint feeling of distaste, as she informed him, in a high pitched, disjointed amalgamation of syllables, about the sickness of her seven-year old and the consequent need for an early return home. The Engineer heard her babble with scarcely veiled cynicism, snorted, and summarily dismissed the plea. The workwoman went back to her work, shrieking at the unjust servitude that plagued her and her kind in general.

Furious, but helpless, she picked up an oversized vessel, filled with broken, useless bricks, hauled it onto her head with both hands and set off towards the dumping ground. Her plea, unlike several other occasions, had been truthful, and the rejection of it was taken as another indication of her forsaken existence on the planet. In short, quick steps, stomping her disgust on the ground with every footfall, she covered the few dozen meters that took her to the heap of rejected objects that lay strewn tragically in a vast expanse of wastage. Once there, she carefully lowered the vessel from her head and dumped the contents onto the ground with all the hatred that was pent up inside her

The bricks crashed onto a bunch of budding Petunias, aberrations in the desolation, crushing the life out of them.

The 27th Corner

I had last posted on 23rd January, 2007.

Since then, all efforts at mustering an ensemble of workable syllables, stringing them together into a coherent whole and thus producing an output of any notable implication have been thwarted by a cruel dearth of mentionable ideas and an abundance of slumber.

For the last few days, it has become increasingly apparent that the quest for the next ‘big’ idea would end just round the 27th corner. Consequently, after much deliberation and self introspection, I have forced myself to spew a form of shit that carries a faint fragrance of ornamental English language. Nevertheless, the true calling of this piece shall not escape detection by the discerning reader.

A good friend of mine (his identity shall remain concealed for reasons of self preservation) has been confronted by similar trials since the beginning of the second term. In an effort to keep the fire burning inside, against his better judgment, he chose to submit to and seek refuge in the dreaded ‘Blogger’s Inanity Syndrome’ – a device frequently employed by a considerable chunk of the Blogger Community. Since then, his inability to construct any useful content, barring those for academic purposes, has been scary.

“Why should I write when I have nothing to say?” I asked myself one fine morning, while I sat bleary eyed in the loo. The stress on my brain, thus shifted momentarily elsewhere, I reflected, as I often do in such circumstances, on the matter awhile.

The answer occurred to me presently.

“Because if that is the case, you’d never write”

Inclined as I was to believe otherwise, I had suspected the existence of this truth for many moons. But the abrupt revelation of it, particularly in the claustrophobic confines of my temporary accommodation, unsettled me somewhat.

But then, ego seldom allows room for self realization. And eager to not become the trigger for change in this element of human psyche, I promptly proceeded to reason myself out of the absurdity of my deeper conscious’ plaintive assertion.

I will continue to write. I will continue to architect soulless and repetitive forms of literature and in the process, proudly display the retarded state of my psychological makeup.

In the hope that some day, somewhere, the 27th corner will be reached.

The In-Humankind

Through the un-paned window of my solitary, sunlight starved room, I looked out unto the sublime purity of a nature yet to be adulterated by the tell-tale symptoms of human intervention.

The warmth of the tired afternoon sun had all but melted away into the twilight. The unabashed green of the unmitigated foliage, rhythmically caressed by a gentle winter breeze, mingled surreptitiously with the fading orange shades of the darkening sky to create a surreal world of aging but radiantly intricate textures. The air reverberated with the cacophonic, melodious tweeter of winged life and the occasional tuneless and strangely melancholy sounds of other earth-bound fauna. Magic.

The sound of sudden flutter of wings and sight of movement, out of harmony of the moment, in the undergrowth close to the walls of my room, drew my attention to a pair of doves, indulged in playful foreplay. They chased each other around, making wild, unbridled noises and making complete fools of themselves. Every now and then, when one caught up with the other, they collided with one another, remained momentarily suspended in air, as if transfixed by the impact, and then submitted themselves to a glorious free-falling series of somersaults, before taking off again moments before they hit the ground – the ultimate manifestation of their supremacy over Gravitation. I smiled at the blissful innocence of it all.

And then, the eagle dived.

In one swift, razor sharp motion, it traced an elegant arc in the air as it descended noiselessly on the yet unsuspecting pair. With the clocklike and ruthless precision bred from untiring practice and knowledge of unquestionable superiority over its prey, it swooped down, picked up one of the doves in its unforgiving beak, and disappeared into the dusk. The other dove, flapped frantically for a split second, screeched in mortal fear and traced wildly haphazard contours in space before regaining its sense of direction and heading straight for home. Never once looking back…

Why then do we blame only the humankind?

Short Story - Last Man Standing

Another wicket fell. Sunil Singh walked in.

At 34/3, India was looking down the barrel yet again. And for the umpteenth occasion, the barrel turned out to be one bathed in yellow-green hues. With each passing game against the Kangaroos, India was taking predictability nearer perfection. For the Indian supporters, the scores and the result had long become matters of mere academic interest. The actual point of discussion lay more and more in the margin and the shamelessness of the defeat.

The day had started, yet again, with most things going right for India. The pitch at Eden Gardens had looked as good as any other for batting, the sun shone brightly in a sky shorn of even the tiniest hint of cloud cover, Australia’s best bowler, Shane Warner was out with an injury and they had managed to win the toss. The decision to bat was one that even the dumbest character on the planet would’ve considered a no-brainer. The execution so far was not turning out to be very different either.

The Kolkata crowd had swarmed into the ground with an enthusiasm that belied the team’s recent performances. They had looked on expectantly as the match referee, the two captains and the mandatory and totally unnecessary television commentator had wandered out towards the pitch for the toss. They had roared in unison with a zeal that would’ve put a tsunami-infested ocean to shame when the massive scoreboard informed them that India had won it and had then proceeded to outdo themselves when the opening batsmen had emerged from the dressing rooms. They had produced a stunned silence when the first wicket fell off the first ball, looked on in despair as their team had poked and prodded its way to double digits in the seventh over, had resorted to an angry booing when the second wicket had fallen which had become even more vociferous when the third had followed suit and were on the verge of hysteric mass destruction when Sunil Singh had walked in. In an instant, even as the stupefied fielding side took in the incredulously fickle and chameleon-ic ways of them, they had discovered new vigor and resorted to delirious chanting again. Other than the fact that it had looked and sounded quite ridiculous, it had also made Sunil look like a messiah, second not even to Christ himself.

Sunil Singh was the best batsman India had produced in the last two years. His rise to superstardom within six months of his debut was attributed as much to his cricketing exploits as to his ‘Greek God’ countenance. His bat had talked for those months. And since then he’d talked more than the bat. Endorsement offers had rained upon him from every known quarter; insipid and oft-repeated interviews were aired more frequently than he scored his runs. Thankfully, however, his bat had managed to hold its own against the competition from these verbal devices, and he had continued to demolish oppositions and mesmerize spectators around the world.

The first two deliveries saw Sunil unleash two exquisite square driven boundaries. The average human being, in most cases (the generalization tends to become a tad more accentuated where the un-fairer sex is concerned), is not allocated a significant quantity of that intangible commodity known as intuition, which someone with an obviously well developed numerical intellect and a retarded sense of the beauty of English language alternately also termed as ‘Sixth sense’. But there are those rare occasions when this commodity does lend itself favorably to a very large chunk of the populace, and this was one such occasion. Everyone intuitively felt that they were going to witness something out of the ordinary. A murmur of subdued but hopeful anticipation went around the ground. The buzz in the stadium was back. Sunil Singh acknowledged this refreshed vigor with another imperious straight drive. The contest had begun.

For the cricket enthusiast and the players themselves, the Eden Gardens is, undoubtedly, the best stadium in the world, comfortably outshining its nearest rival for the exhilarating experience it offers. It is a ground which lives the game. Every blade of grass seems to resonate with an intensity that is unmatched till it remains unseen. The seats might perhaps have been less taxing on the human posteriors, but that hardly matters; the human posterior hardly has occasion to descend on the seats.

One man, however, was continuously refuting this tradition and had been doing so for quite sometime. Seated right above the dressing room (A location that afforded one of the best views of the proceedings), he sat in rapt attention, and watched the game unfold.

Sudhir Vyas was generally a likeable character. At forty four, he still carried a juvenile sense of humor, which though lacking in maturity, was gratifyingly well endowed in quality. His wide traversal of the planet had made him fairly knowledgeable in the ways and charms that various parts of the world held which, intermingled with the aforementioned sense of humor, ensured that he was a good sort to be with. His profession, however, left a lot to be desired and was one of the chief reasons why, among the living, those out to get his arse were to be found in decidedly larger quantities than those out to get his camaraderie.

Sudhir had been a betting man for as long as he could or cared to remember. His formative years in the art had been fairly successful. More importantly, however, they had been shorn of possible harm to anyone else except him. His chief pleasure, during those days, had been the excitement of the game itself – undeniable qualities of the quintessential gambler. With time, however, the glorious abandon of youth had begun to fade away and had given way to more worldly desires and aspirations. That is when he had graduated to ‘fixing’.

Finding the right contacts for this diversification of operation had not been very difficult. It was almost as if the shift in outlook had been blessed and urged on by God Himself, which is amusing, for we all construe Him to frown upon anything ungodly and perhaps He too not infrequently purports to be similarly inclined, but as matters suggest and have suggested since time immemorial and indeed immaterial, this probably is not a very reliable assumption to make.

In any event, Sudhir’s stint in his newfound profession had been dazzling and he had soon made it to the big league. And that is where he had continued ever since. There had been periods of unrest, when a couple of incompetent accomplices had spilled more beans than were affordable, but he had managed to wiggle his way out of the situation largely unscathed, barring of course the financial ramifications.

But the scuffle had had its impact in other quarters. The brief drop in guard and subsequent weakening of his financial muscle, in the fiercely competitive industry, had allowed other players to move in and cover ground. Most notably among those, had been Utkal Mehta.

Sunil Singh was in total control of the game. He had moved to 42 off 35 deliveries and had pushed India’s total to 92/4. At the other end, Anupam Goel was battling away in as unwatchable a fashion as possible. To his credit though, he was hanging on where quite a few of his teammates had failed and nobody had expected a vastly differing performance from him either.

Mehta had risen to the top at a pace that had mystified everyone else. His rise had been fuelled by a cunning that was unmatched and a complete disregard for ethics and morality. En route, he had forged alliances, used them and finally destroyed them with ruthless impunity. Till all else had been rolled over and only Sudhir remained.

Sudhir had foreseen the day and had prepared his trenches for it, but he had not foreseen the ferocity and the deviousness with which Mehta had come down upon him. Stakes had been raised so high that Sudhir had given them up as foolhardy and self destructing to indulge in. But Mehta had, somehow, managed to cling on. For a while, they had both bled. After that while, only Sudhir bled.

As matters stood on this day, Mehta’s decimation of Sudhir was all but complete. In a space of three years, Sudhir, from being a multi billionaire, had been pummeled past bankruptcy and into a state of perpetual debt, running into millions. His meticulously built network had been reduced to rubbles. The point of no return was a hair’s breadth away.

The carnage had destroyed the business but it had not destroyed the man. The will to fight had survived. Sudhir, with every lost battle, had defied rationale and gone on. Every blow Mehta had inflicted and had hoped to be the last, had been risen back from. Sudhir had hung on, waiting for that one window of opportunity which would bring him back from the dead. The day had finally arrived.

Another ball disappeared into the crowd. Singh moved on to 59.

Today was Sudhir’s final roll of the die. The risk was reason-defying. But there was no other choice. Sunil Singh hadn’t been the easiest to conquer but he had, after seven long months, managed it. A dismissal on 99 – that was the deal. And Sudhir knew that it didn’t even all depend upon Sunil. A stray unplayable delivery, one mistimed shot somewhere, and all would be lost. If he won, he’d erase all his deficits and be back up on his feet again. If he lost…He knew he couldn’t lose. The .38 Automatic felt cold against his right thigh.

India – 145/5. Sunil Singh batting on 83. Singh’s progress to the moment of truth had registered only dimly in Sudhir’s consciousness. But nevertheless, the progress had been registered and the realization of the closeness of the moment had not escaped detection.

The crowd watched in a trance as Singh went past 90 with a stunning drive through Point. Two balls later, another shot went past a diving deep midwicket. Singh moved onto 96. Australia was visibly rattled and for once, their cocksure captain was at a loss of ideas. His repeated consultations with the bowler and changes in field had not helped matters in the least. Sunil Singh guided the next ball to the right of the fielder at Cover and set out for a single. He caught the other batsman napping. Halfway down the track, he found he still had a little more than halfway to go to shake hands with the non striker. Panic ensued. Singh turned back towards the crease. The ball was already out of the fielder’s hands and making its way towards the stumps. Singh’s lower limbs frantically attempted to reach safety, but he saw they weren’t fast enough. He dived.
The third umpire took a long while. Every eye in the stadium and in television sets all over the world was riveted to the digital screen, where the decision would eventually pop out. It took eternity. And then the green bulb appeared onscreen. Not out. Sudhir loosened his grip on the .38.

Three pokes and prods here and there took Singh to 99. At the beginning of the next over, he was back on strike. The first two balls were outside off stump and Singh played them straight back to the bowler. The bowler slowly made his way back to his mark. Sudhir felt his stomach tighten.

The ball was outside the off stump again. This time, Sunil Singh flashed hard at it, a reckless and needless shot to all eyes except the ones that knew. The ball took the outside edge and went towards the wicket keeper, Jack Howard – a simple catch by any standard. The keeper moved slightly and nimbly to his right to cover the ball. Singh turned and looked behind with wide open eyes. The bowler raised his arms up in the air…it all happened with such precise unision as to seem orchestraed- a picture perfect moment that remained frozen in time for a split second. And then the bowler's arms slumped.

The ball didn’t even touch the keeper’s gloves. It flew past him and rolled away to the boundary. The crowd erupted.

The shot was never heard amongst the din. No one noticed the man slump in his seat.

Three rows behind, another man chuckled to himself. He got up slowly, reached into his shirt pocket for his cell phone, gave a high five to the kid in the next seat and moved out, presumably for a leak. Once in the restroom, he dialed a number.

“Deposit Seven Million dollars to Jack Howard’s account.” he said.

Utkal Mehta emerged from the restroom and made his way into the crowd again.

Spiderman

Another insipid attempt at rhyme. Decided to try my hand at generating song-type lyrics. Not the stuff legends are made of, quite obviously.


Spiderman

As dawn breaks through the mist, a golden glow lights up the sky
A fresh-dew fragrance in the air, as earth and wind ally
The whole world seems just so right, a moment frozen in time
Fear and agony grip a man, the irony sublime…

A room on an attic dark-lit, the curtains drawn close to hide
A solitary ray breaks through a slit, falls on broken pride
Tormented he lies in a corner, the messianic red mask on his side
A hundred feet scurry on the wall, labyrinthine cobwebs preside
When Spiderman had Arachnophobia

Haunts him his greatest strength, shivers run through the spine
The boon turned to morbid bane, as years of pain combine
Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, the predator dwells within
Poisoned is the mind and blood, every breath becomes a sin

When Spiderman had Arachnophobia

They will all know the savior strong, not the man inside
They will still wait for him to come, be not by his side

Yes, when Spiderman had Arachnophobia

Hopes and dreams will slowly fade away, to demons turn servile
Life itself will cease to be, graveyards of golden memories compile