The Lost Battle

1:18 AM by Me, Inside-Out!!


The dense forest was filled up in total darkness. He found it difficult to get through it despite he knew the forest very well. He was now struggling to breathe. A desperate run up the hill and the gallop from the ridge was enough for one of his severely cramped legs to break. But still he did not stop, he was running continuously, he was running to get away from them. He was running for life.

“Father, why are we afraid of them?” he had asked his father. “Father, why are we living in a terror, when we too kill others? Aren't they just like us?” Yes! Even they are cruel; himself, his father, all of them. There were days when they went on a killing spree with their entire gang out in the open.

“Son, we kill to survive. But they do this for greed. They were not like this before. A day came when greed took over each one of them. And now it’s just the greed that’s talking. They are invading us and driving us out of our homes. They are not even sparing the young”

Suddenly a bullet came from nowhere and hit him at his other leg. He fell down with a loud thud. Blood oozing out of the opening like a gush of stream. He got up, he had to run. But his running now was more of a limping. He was scared. He just could not gauge how many of them were behind him. He saw a big thick bush nearby. He gave an extra push to himself and went inside to hide.  

The attackers were really strong. They had equipped themselves to kill. He cannot forget the day his father was killed mercilessly in the broad daylight. And yet he could not do anything. He wanted to fight. But his father’s frantic shouts to run away, had made him a mute spectator to the massacre. Now it all made sense to him. The attackers had grown strong over the years beyond his imagination, which his father had understood. His father had to give himself to the attackers that day so that his father could save him and his family.

He could not make out whether it was the tears in his eyes or the exhaustion, but his sight was getting more and more blurred. A brief pause in his run had made his legs give up. Now he was not able to even stand. He could sense that they were nearing him. But he could not understand how are they able to find him in the pitch dark forest despite him being in a dense bush.  Suddenly he realized that he had made a fatal mistake. The bush was actually an ambush, a trap cleverly laid to get him. There was nothing he could do, but wait.

Within minutes, he saw them covering him from all sides. One of them, with a gun, was just inches away from his head. He knew his end had come. His moist eyes were showing the signs of his defeat, his foolishness to not only get him killed but also push his entire family in their clutches. He cursed himself for the stupid act of him going out in the open and attack one of them, when he was supposed to be in hiding and save his family. The fit of rage had taken toll. Anger had overcome sanity.

The two smoking barrels were now pointed on his head. The sound of the motor blades was deafening, the same motor blades with which they had chopped off his father’s head. He closed his eyes and remembered his father’s words

“Son, the time has come for us to understand that we cannot fight them anymore. We need to be careful at every step. They have become too clever and too strong to be defeated. I might not live long enough to protect each of us. It’s you, who should take care of the family and protect.”

He had failed miserably. His father’s sacrifice went in vain.

Finally the trigger was pulled. Greed took another life. Now they are just 1411 left, waiting to be killed in their lost battle. Why are they in such a situation?  Is it man’s greed for money, the insatiable eagerness to show off or is it just his fetish, a plain fetish to over-power one of the most powerful beings of this planet? Even they are waiting for an answer.


9 What did you feel?

When words fail....

12:11 AM by Me, Inside-Out!!
When words fail, pictures bail out .....

I am right now in the most mute phase of my life. Its just that I am not finding anything good to write about. Lost the fizz i had, I believe. So I am leaving behind some pieces of nature I had captured while I was strolling around in the wild.





















Lets see if anything appeals you guys....

Regards,

Labels: , , , , 18 What did you feel?

The Mission

7:04 PM by Me, Inside-Out!!

Then....
They were preparing for the mission. He wanted to take the lead in it, despite the fact that it would be his first. After a long and strong canvassing, he was selected for the mission. Elated!!! He wanted to prove that he was the right choice for this. Thanking almighty, he began with the preps.....

Now....
His hands are trembling. Is he afraid of being caught or Is it because it was his first time? His reasoning ability has become numb. He knows that a press of his finger would lead to a catastrophic event, big enough to bring tremors across nation. The aftermath of this will make him one in the “Most-Wanted”s. After all, the target was of such persona. He has an aide, as the job is difficult to be handled alone. Everything is in place. The events are turning out as planned. The bait is set. The target has approached the bait. He was waiting for the right moment. He has aimed the target……

And then……. CLICK!


Later....
“ARMY CHIEF SELLING THE COUNTRY”
……caught live in the camera accepting bribe in a sting operation……..... was in the process of selling the details of the counter-insurgency tactics at the border............. leaked out weaponry strategies with a detailed account of Nukes and other artillery…

PS: My first attempt in Flash Fiction, or should I say a Micro-story. Got inspired from one of my friends, Md. Muddassir Shah's post  on the concept. Hope you guys like it !!
Labels: , , 14 What did you feel?

The Train

12:27 AM by Me, Inside-Out!!

Its not just a ticket that costs you to travel by train. Apart from the money, you need to spend a lot other stuff. And if it is the travel in an unreserved compartment then, you should be either devastated at the end or feel exhilarated for doing something brave in your life. He/she (preferably he, the fairer sex might not be able to handle the situation) has to have some qualities to get into these mediums. In the sense, one needs to be gifted to travel in the unreserved compartment. 

First thing for sure, is you need to be athletic, ‘Coz you need to catch the train before it stops. This involves atleast a 100 meter run, a perfect jump and strong hold on the handle bars to finish the first task. Bravery is a key criterion based on which your fate is decided once you get inside. At first, this has to be used to grab a seat and once you find one, then the most important part is to protect it from the constant tries of invasion from the fellow travelers. You also need to have strong legs, just in case, you are not lucky enough to get a seat. And to make matters worse, if the train is crowded then the only place you get is at the door way, inches away from the toilet and to take the worse to the state of worst, you find place sufficient only to fix your legs firm on the ground but without the liberty to move around. If you move, you may end up invading others liberty to sleep!!! Its that point of time in your life, you wish to have suffered from a terrible cold.

I had to rush to my town, so, thought of taking a train that night. I decided to let my adrenalin be at rest as always and took to the less adventurous medium, the sleeper class. The scene here is more or less the same, except that I was armed with a weapon to protect myself, the reserved ticket. An undertaking by the Indian railways, that I and only I will be the sole occupier of the seat mentioned in the agreement and no one will have the right to trespass it. So, if anybody tried acting fresh with me or my seat, I was ready to flash my ticket as elegantly as a Smith and Wesson.

I got to see (I usually get, but now that I have started writing, lets assume this is my first time) a different set of people during my travel. I thought of mentioning some of the “worth mentioning” ones.

Senior citizens- They might have got a discount on their fare. But they end up having wrong seats most of the times. They can still make an attempt to get into a middle berth. But an upper berth? Tch, tch, they have no choice but to start searching for a lower berth to trade off with. So on one side I had these aged people marketing their upper berths.

Youth brigade- On the other side I got to see this bunch of noisy boys. The first thing I noticed them doing after they got to their seats is to patrol the entire compartment in search of “you-know-who”. They were quite early to be successful so they hit the next resort, the reservation list that’s pasted on the doorway, which was like a social networking site, showing most wanted detail, ASL i.e. age, sex, location.

Eunuchs- Enough is seen and said about this sect. The only thing I did is to handover a nice 10-rupee note and wished them luck in their future endeavors before they turn animated over me. Thank goodness, they were not traveling along, that night.

Snorers- These are usually seen camouflaged at first (mufti). They show their prowess only in the middle of the night. Especially if your train is humble enough to let others to pass by at every station or even in some deserted place, you get to hear the jugalbandi of snores in the peace of night. And that’s what had happened on that fateful night. I was woken up by these bomber men, one right beside me, one below my berth and the other at the next coupé. I got to hear different versions of snores viz. the funny snores, weird snores, loud ones, the whistling ones, the ugly ones. And suddenly in came the ugliest of all, when I started to think, “What was that?” The next 10 seconds became decisive when my other sense organ cleared all my qualms.

Confused ones- these are the people who wake you up from your sleep and then ask you politely to get lost from “their” seats. It’s the deadly combination of “right train-right seat-wrong compartment” that makes these people special.


The XXLs : Imagine, what happens when the stuff to be stuffed is bigger than the box. You obviously get a spill over. Imagine a 6ft man, getting a Side Upper Berth. Spill over!!!! People walking over the aisle are constantly blessed by the protruding legs. Kicking people was never so legal.....

Ice-Breakers (or Head Breakers?) – Definitely worth mentioning. The over enthusiastic travelers, the ultra-friendlier ones. They start the conversation with some cribbing on the railways, or a local event and end up exchanging cards and phone numbers by the end of the journey. I wonder whether they even meet after they depart. I was at the receiving end of one of such species.

Less-Luckier ones – They are the less privileged, who manage to get a seat but only to sit and not to sleep. These people should either possess an excellent power to plead (to put it courteously, the negotiation skill) or the magical power of money. Both have the capacity to change their luck. Ultimately, every thing lies in the hands of the jahanpanah, the TTE.  

Bloggers- Yeah, you can even find bloggers in a train. They, in their endless search for inspiration to blog, easily let others to identify them as they tend to observe everything too keenly. They usually do not sleep peacefully at night, but start putting their experience in words right in the train. So now you know, in which category I was belonging to, that night.

Apart from these, there was a regular sight, of noisy woman folk who almost turned their berths into their kitchen, with all the utensils and the food they brought. I wonder they would have even started cooking, had the railways allowed stoves inside. A group of people fighting over the space for the luggage was not far away from the epicenter, my berth.

Its not that the journey was a very memorable one, but since the time I started blogging, this was  certainly an eventful one.

So the next time you travel, its not the Déjà vu, you are experiencing You would have accidentally tripped into this post, and remembered the characters.

Happy Journey…..:)





Labels: , , 16 What did you feel?

Am I Lost?

11:20 PM by Me, Inside-Out!!

Myriad thoughts,
Eternal Abyss,  
Why am I confused?    
Ain’t my journey towards bliss?

I found it,
And I chose it,
But why am I finding,
the efforts, not worth it?

Am I lost?
Should I retreat?
Can I bear  
the sting of defeat?

Advices soared,
Made me sour,
Did I ask from myself,
way too more?

Heart pitied,
At my mind’s puzzle,
Soothing it,
To clear the muddle,

Remember the days,
Had found too many ways,
Chose to tread on this,
matter not what it pays.

Keep walking,
stop sulking,
throw out,
the needless inkling,

You were great,
You will be the best,
Continue your voyage,
And, you will reach the crest.
9 What did you feel?

A Ray that never dawned

12:16 AM by Me, Inside-Out!!



“Its difficult, the condition is too critical to predict anything”. He never felt in his life that he would ever hear these words being said to him.

His father loved him very much. He too found a great satisfaction in making him happy. The contented smile in his father’s face, when he stood first to the school, was still lingering in his mind. He felt so delighted not because he achieved something, but to see his father happy…..

……..Now his father was on his way to the Operation theater.

The knee caps which started trembling from the time his father fainted, were not listening to his plea to stop. Eyes, almost moist, about to let go tears, saw the plight of his mother and sister and stopped. He needed seclusion to vent himself.

He saw a small temple inside the hospital premises. He suddenly felt the urge of going inside and sitting there for a while. Unlike his friends, who were arch devotees and some turning into one during exams, he never felt like visiting a temple. He followed his father, whose belief was “A good deed a day keeps the necessity of visiting a temple away”.

His eyes were so damp that he could not make out whose idol was it, in the temple. He still did not feel like praying. Perhaps the guilt of not being religious was biting him out. He sat at the far end, away from the crowd. He remembered his father always used to tell him during his exams, “Never get tensed in your life, you would get so busy in it that you would forget to get out of the situation”. He could never practice his father’s words till today. His episode of passing-out in the exam hall, is still being used by the teachers of his school as an example to their students to illustrate how difficult the paper would be, and how much efforts they have to put in.

This was the time, he felt. He turned towards the deity and stood in front of him for few seconds and went inside the hospital. His mother and sister were with some of his relatives. He went and sat beside them. He suddenly found a ray of hope, a hope that his father would be back. He started thinking for ways to get out of this situation. He strived hard to be optimistic. He understood that people pray to remain optimistic. He started to repent for not heeding to his father’s words earlier.

“The doctor wants to see you”, He could see his mother getting tensed, while he was on his way to the doctor’s cabin. The words from the doctors mouth, literally switched off his brain. This was worse than death. His father had slipped into coma and the chances of his revival were too feeble. He had to weep as he was finding difficult to breathe. His uncle who had accompanied him, took him out and broke the news to his mother. He dreaded about the consequences but the unexpected thing happened; his mother was happy hearing the news. He got confused and informed his mother again. He saw her thanking god.

“Now at least we can see him in front of our eyes, beta. We will take very good care of him. I know god will never fail me. I will see that your father recovers”

The ray was still shimmering somewhere………….

“Congrats dude! Secured a rank in the university ! Treat ! treat ! Treat !” He was smiling but he never felt his heart doing the same. Two years till date, his father had not opened his eyes. He wanted to show his medal to his father, he wanted to read out his rank certificate to him, if only his father was able to respond. The two years passed by in the belief that his father was understanding whatever he was being said to. He too sometime felt it, but the bloody biology he had studied made him more practical and stone-hearted. He was happy that his mother and sister were still seeing the brighter side and enjoying the time with his father. They would bathe him, feed him, talk to him, sing songs to him, read newspaper. They almost converted his father's room to their living. But he started to sense that the ray of hope was now more like a withering lamp yet strong enough to believe that his father would be fine, if not completely.

However, the day had to come. The day when his father had become too weak to even breathe, the day which everyone expected, dreaded, but prayed never to come. His father lost his battle and his mother too. She lost her hope, surrendered to the practicality which the doctors had said. He felt sad but for other reason. He felt sad and ashamed that he did not feel sad for his father’s death. Infact he felt relieved for his mother, his sister and most of all, his father. He had seen his father die every day. Perhaps  he had understood the fact that they had lost him the day he had slipped into coma.

Vikram, still continues to remain optimistic in his life. He still sees a ray of hope at tough times. I remember the old vikram who was very pessimistic, would even stop preparing for the exam, if he felt he was gonna flunk . 

The new Vikram has now become an idol for me. It was he who was optimistic that I would be a CA, not me. But I still feel very sorry for him, as the event that turned him into a new leaf, never saw the light of joy. A ray of hope, that never turned into a dawn…….    


10 What did you feel?
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