The rain was pouring so heavily now that the legendary lawn tennis player Chris had decided to stop looking at the national broadcast of his dear friend and equally exemplary partner Adam’s farewell speech on the Cable News Network. Chris had decided to take a ten-minute break from this emotional exit of Adam and instead go up to the terrace to enjoy himself in the company of rain.
It is common knowledge that occasional rain brings buoyancy in the hearts of those who love the nature and who pride in living in the moment. So, he donned his slippers and the red robe, kept the television switched on, and swung his steps through the slippery stairs to climb seven stories.
Now that he was up there in a flash, he was wondering whether his pace of reaching up to the top was faster than the sound of the lightening he had just heard. But his mood threatened to get dampened because he found himself surrounded by closed canvas clothes that had effectively cornered any chances of him seeing the swanky splices of rain drops.
Yet, his hands moved forward to open ever so small an angle between the juxtaposed curtains to create an orifice that was large enough for him to gain an appreciation of this beautiful moment that the nature had unfurled upon him. Still enjoying this phase, he suddenly sniffed someone preparing non-vegetarian food. He being a devout vegetarian did not want to savor the sumptuous turkey being cooked at the door next to him. Instead, he quickly forced his focus back on enjoying the odorless and overcast rain drops. He could now uninhibitedly experience the enjoyment of contacting these crystal-clear dank droplets of rain.
Even though the rain persisted, he had now decided to depart from the terrace and join the commentary of Adam’s farewell speech. As soon as he entered his room, he was greeted with an advertising commercial where he saw his eyes getting transfixed like a small arc on the glimpses of beautiful objects like yellow orchid trees. Then, all the sports superstars of his generation were being shown in the next commercial. It was followed by a commercial showing a gymnast gyrating through her twisting and twirling torso with twelve turns in a matter of three tiny seconds.
As if he had seen it all with his limited vision, he felt even more so when he saw the entire career of Adam in front of his eyes that started from being a bystander ball-boy, then evolving to a splendid Wimbledon triumph and finally finishing with winning moments of French Open men’s double title that he had played along with him.
Now, his nearsighted niche had witnessed a giant gamut of uninhibited nature in the form of careers of Adam and those sporting icons, dense trees, a dense downpour, and an elegant exhibition of surefooted skills of the graceful gymnast.
Friday, April 22, 2011
Monday, April 11, 2011
Short Story: The natural log
Shane, a happy man was flying in his private jet all the way from the Carribean islands to Sri Lanka. It was his well-earned two week break from his tough office days at Capital One in Boston. He had encountered only open and clear cloudless shiny smiling skies all this way. Swiping the natural smirk on his face, he was celebrating after literally being on top of the world! He was even having a fun time with the pilot of the swift paper-like paltry pounded plane.
But suddenly, out of the blue, a lot of clouds stacked in front of his sight and also staggered across his entire line of sight. Initially he thought they would not act as a deterrent to his swift and silken ride thus far. But those manic clouds dared to continue to look at the face of the mini aircraft that was now meekly and mercifully pleading them to show another route.
The clouds looked at the honest and the once-joyous face of the two people pitifully stacked inside the cockpit, and suggested a detour to turn west. But little did those honest clouds know that they had misguided the travelers to a completely wild and unyielding set of unforgiving clouds. Now those clouds at the west wanted to feast the poor plane and its travelers; so much so that they even threatened to rain. Rain they didn’t is another story that would next day come back to miraculously save the life of the man who was happy just a dozen minutes ago!
With no option left, both the helpless souls decided to dive. Both were lucky enough to take their parachute with them, which did open as soon as they exposed themselves to the intimidating sky that was yelling in their fragile small ears “you guys cannot see below me!” And indeed they were blind sighted and not knowing where they were about to land after an estimated twenty minutes of free fall.
It had only been two of those twenty minutes when Shane lost sight of his pilot, who until then, had been shouldering like a soldier just beside him. Again, out of the blue, Shane realized that the fleet-footed plane had decided to lay its full fury on the increasingly poor pilot who was now also listless at his luck-less situation. He could not avert the plane from gyrating and then eventually crashing on top of his gut-wrenched gross body. And Shane watched in distress his pilot getting lost from his vision.
Before he could react to this shocking and terrifying incident, he quickly saw his past that lasted for only those last one hundred and twenty seconds, and saw his even worse and sickening future in just twenty seconds as he landed in Indian ocean above 3 sharks! He was now several miles away from any coast. At this, he immediately started crying at his poor fate. However, he quickly regained his senses and tore his clothes so that he could stay afloat of the shark-infested side of the stunning ocean. Next came the 17 of his most unforgettable and death-defying hours in ocean. Those long-as-eternity seventeen hours must have accumulated at least twenty one thousand cries for saving his life. But, even after so many repeated attempts, his yells yielded in no help from anyone across the planet.
Then a log came near him, and he clung on to it for the entire night and slept with it. Next morning, he found that he was still alive. His life had been saved so far in that vast ocean by the log. Immediately, he saw an island in front of his eyes, and it was a mere forty meters away. However, a sudden troubling tsunami came and slowly and painstakingly carried him away from that island even though he had the support of that “life-saving” log. That island could have redeemed his life and could have kept him away from those sharks and other countless creatures that could have consumed his life without even breaking a sweat.
So, he had to make a decision whether to cling on to the log which had made him cling on to his life by the barest of margins till now, or to let go of it. He decided to leave that log and to find some other solution to cross that vast omnipresent ocean. But, as soon as he wanted to take sigh of relief at his bold decision, he now found himself even more hopeless, for his own hands had removed the only life-saving thing that was with him. At this, he started crying internally, and later as a result of an abject misery, he was forced to reckon only the positive things of his past life.
Several good things struck his mind, from sitting in the cradle with his parents in the perambulator to saving the life of a woman who helplessly wanted help to avoid her from falling into the deep Niagara Falls. He also thought that he was one of the only few fistful remaining people in whole world who still used a pen to write and a diary everyday to log their daily thoughts. All other 6.99999971 billion people were either using a computer or iPhones to write.
Thinking about the pen and softly smelling the ink of it in his now incorrupt yet irrepressible imaginations in mind, he realized that his mood had become so good as if cozy chocolates had entered his mouth. Only then did he realize that the pen and diary both are made of trees. And he himself had left the support of a log, which also is a product of a tree.
Now, he was totally immersed in a battle of ensuing positive and negative thoughts. Next day, still in his self-state, he saw the same clouds bursting from above him to form a thunderous noise and then it rained. Now, his imagination had grown so wild that he thought that these rain drops falling on his naked body were denser and heavier than the entire stretch of eleven miles of ocean below him. But, to his utter surprise, when he next looked down to compare the heaviness of rain drops with the ocean's intimidating iconic waters, he could only see sand beneath him. He had reached the closest island! Bravo! The rain had become his "natural log"!
But suddenly, out of the blue, a lot of clouds stacked in front of his sight and also staggered across his entire line of sight. Initially he thought they would not act as a deterrent to his swift and silken ride thus far. But those manic clouds dared to continue to look at the face of the mini aircraft that was now meekly and mercifully pleading them to show another route.
The clouds looked at the honest and the once-joyous face of the two people pitifully stacked inside the cockpit, and suggested a detour to turn west. But little did those honest clouds know that they had misguided the travelers to a completely wild and unyielding set of unforgiving clouds. Now those clouds at the west wanted to feast the poor plane and its travelers; so much so that they even threatened to rain. Rain they didn’t is another story that would next day come back to miraculously save the life of the man who was happy just a dozen minutes ago!
With no option left, both the helpless souls decided to dive. Both were lucky enough to take their parachute with them, which did open as soon as they exposed themselves to the intimidating sky that was yelling in their fragile small ears “you guys cannot see below me!” And indeed they were blind sighted and not knowing where they were about to land after an estimated twenty minutes of free fall.
It had only been two of those twenty minutes when Shane lost sight of his pilot, who until then, had been shouldering like a soldier just beside him. Again, out of the blue, Shane realized that the fleet-footed plane had decided to lay its full fury on the increasingly poor pilot who was now also listless at his luck-less situation. He could not avert the plane from gyrating and then eventually crashing on top of his gut-wrenched gross body. And Shane watched in distress his pilot getting lost from his vision.
Before he could react to this shocking and terrifying incident, he quickly saw his past that lasted for only those last one hundred and twenty seconds, and saw his even worse and sickening future in just twenty seconds as he landed in Indian ocean above 3 sharks! He was now several miles away from any coast. At this, he immediately started crying at his poor fate. However, he quickly regained his senses and tore his clothes so that he could stay afloat of the shark-infested side of the stunning ocean. Next came the 17 of his most unforgettable and death-defying hours in ocean. Those long-as-eternity seventeen hours must have accumulated at least twenty one thousand cries for saving his life. But, even after so many repeated attempts, his yells yielded in no help from anyone across the planet.
Then a log came near him, and he clung on to it for the entire night and slept with it. Next morning, he found that he was still alive. His life had been saved so far in that vast ocean by the log. Immediately, he saw an island in front of his eyes, and it was a mere forty meters away. However, a sudden troubling tsunami came and slowly and painstakingly carried him away from that island even though he had the support of that “life-saving” log. That island could have redeemed his life and could have kept him away from those sharks and other countless creatures that could have consumed his life without even breaking a sweat.
So, he had to make a decision whether to cling on to the log which had made him cling on to his life by the barest of margins till now, or to let go of it. He decided to leave that log and to find some other solution to cross that vast omnipresent ocean. But, as soon as he wanted to take sigh of relief at his bold decision, he now found himself even more hopeless, for his own hands had removed the only life-saving thing that was with him. At this, he started crying internally, and later as a result of an abject misery, he was forced to reckon only the positive things of his past life.
Several good things struck his mind, from sitting in the cradle with his parents in the perambulator to saving the life of a woman who helplessly wanted help to avoid her from falling into the deep Niagara Falls. He also thought that he was one of the only few fistful remaining people in whole world who still used a pen to write and a diary everyday to log their daily thoughts. All other 6.99999971 billion people were either using a computer or iPhones to write.
Thinking about the pen and softly smelling the ink of it in his now incorrupt yet irrepressible imaginations in mind, he realized that his mood had become so good as if cozy chocolates had entered his mouth. Only then did he realize that the pen and diary both are made of trees. And he himself had left the support of a log, which also is a product of a tree.
Now, he was totally immersed in a battle of ensuing positive and negative thoughts. Next day, still in his self-state, he saw the same clouds bursting from above him to form a thunderous noise and then it rained. Now, his imagination had grown so wild that he thought that these rain drops falling on his naked body were denser and heavier than the entire stretch of eleven miles of ocean below him. But, to his utter surprise, when he next looked down to compare the heaviness of rain drops with the ocean's intimidating iconic waters, he could only see sand beneath him. He had reached the closest island! Bravo! The rain had become his "natural log"!
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