Random Comics - Awesome Branding

Blood Rush - Buy Links

My website is down for some time. Sorry about the inconvenience.
Here are the purchase links on different platforms.

eBook:
Kindle: https://tinyurl.com/bloodrushkindle
Google Play: https://tinyurl.com/bloodrushgbook

Hard copy:
Amazon (Outside India): https://tinyurl.com/bloodrushamzn
Pothi (Inside India): https://tinyurl.com/bloodrushpothi

Scientific Inferences of Bollywood Songs:

Thousands of wise Indians have long been discussing the pleasant & adverse effects of Bollywood music over the young citizens of our country. Some have simply declared them as the major contributor to various downfalls our precious Indian culture has seen; while others have defended them as the evolution of our musical tastes.

Personally, I don’t fall in any of the groups and take each song as it is, a) Love-at-first-hearing awesome, b) Grow-on-you good, c) Nothing-else-to-hear-anyway fine and d) please-burn-this-headphone-that-I-played-this-song-with trash.

Well, I am going to bring up another side of our music – the science-defying lyrics. As you have probably guessed (because you are a bright mind), I am in a silly-funny mood today, so let us not go into the poetic depth of those lyrics and have a little fun (Thank you!).

Let’s face it, we are a very dramatic group of people, we Indians, and I am not saying that as a negative, I LOVE being dramatic! Not all the time, of course, just some particular situations, where it’s beneficial, where it’s … you get it!

Well, our music is not unlike us. In our effort to show grand dramatic expressions of love, we regularly show middle fingers to science.

Here are some examples:

Example 1:

This is a beautiful song from the movie Hum Aapke Dil mein Rehte Hain. It’s titled – Chhoop Gaya Badli Me Jaake (Hid behind the clouds). It’s a favourite of mine, but the lyrics I stumbled over was – Aapko Dekha To Phoolon Ko Pasina Aa Gaya (The flowers started sweating when they saw you).

Well at the risk of sounding nit-picky, there has been no documented proof of a flower’s ability to sweat. And if they did, they WOULD NOT smell so good! I mean, seriously! Have you smelt armpits ever?

Okay, you are saying it’s metaphorical and the flowers are just figuratively sweating at the presence of the lady. But why? Why are they so afraid? Does the lady have a ‘flowery’ diet? Is she like a Norman Bates, only, for flowers? If so, aren’t a lot of ladies? Why does the lyricist insist that the flowers have a specific range of fear just for this particular lady? Does she have chainsaws for teeth?

Or is it even deeper than that? Considering most ladies have plucked innocent flowers right out of their stem, at least a few times in their lifetime, is this the lyricist’s subtle satirical statement against flower-slaughtering? Women vs flower brethren, and stuff like that?

Well, it ain’t a rosy subject, is it? Let’s move on.

Example 2:

From the movie Gunehgar, the song goes - Rain Is Falling Chhama Chham Chham, (Sound of rain drops) Ladki Ne Aankh Maari Gir Gaye Hum (The girl winked at me and I fell).

Well, duh! It’s raining, and pretty heavily, from the sound of raindrops you just musically narrated… the road is obviously slippery! The girl’s wink has nothing to do with your falling… it’s friction & gravity you should ‘thank’ right now. And dude, in the future, look at the road rather than winking girls. Nobody has asked you to literally… fall …in love. Kids now-a-days, I tell you!

Blood Rush is out!!

What makes a writer... writer? Is it the quality of his/her writings? If so, who judges it? Is it the number of copies sold? Or is it the mere fact that he/she is published?

If it's the last one, which I really doubt, does it depend on how he/she is published? For example, A-grade writers are published from A-grade publishers, B-grade writers published from established self-publishers... and C-grade writers publishing their own stuff some how. Is that how people judge writers, or am I just going bonkers!

These questions have been eating me for a long time now. Specially, because I have not been able to convince India's renowned publishers of the quality and value of my book. There have been days when I doubted my quality myself... unworthy of contributing anything to literature.

But at the end of the day, I know these are just phases... the beaming-with-excitement phase, the down-with-pessimism phase, the lets-see phase. And I know one more thing, whatever anyone says, whether people like something written by me or not...

...I am a writer. I was meant to write... and I will keep writing.

For now, my 2nd novella (ready for 2 years) have been finally published.

If you like action-adventure stories with sci-fi and espionage elements... try Blood Rush. I have done quite a lot of research for this, as it involves real and famous locations as action set-pieces. It's also the only secret society themed story I know with pure Indian origins.

Here's how the 50-word pitch for this goes:
An average boy-next-door is about to find out that he is the most crucial part of a centuries old good-vs-evil war, that will take him trotting all over the globe trying to save the seven wonders… and that he inherited an ancient lost wondrous martial art – the Blood Rush!

The first edition was just ebooks - published both in Kindle and Google Play.
The second edition was published as hard copies, from - CreateSpace (Amazon's print on demand) and Pothi. The updates were applied to the Kindle and Google Play versions as well, while the CreateSpace version is presently under some changes.

Here are the purchase URLs for anyone interested:

Hard Copy:

For Indian buyers:

http://bit.ly/1z1sVZ7
Price - 200 Rs


For overseas buyers:

  http://amzn.to/1Giojv8
  Price - 8.00 USD

Soft Copy:

http://bit.ly/1vXE4ql
Price - 128 Rs

http://bit.ly/1AIFZSi
Price - 186 Rs


Will update the list when I add to more distributors.

Looking forward to receiving the first comments on this.

Bye!
-Sharit

Incomplete Story: Everything's Weapon

“But we don’t have any weapons! Except that colt with only one extra magazine!” Rick pointed to Sarah’s gun, with utmost irritation. “I am not a coward, but I am not suicidal either!”

“Oh, so you think you need bullets!” Neel smiled shrewdly.

“Don’t you?”

“Well, I think, in our job, bullets don’t kill people. The guy who uses the bullet does.”

“Oh, save that crap!” Rick turned around; he was getting bored with the lecture.

Neel looked at him for a second and then gestured at Sarah. Sarah threw him the gun. Neel swiftly took out the magazine and dropped one bullet on his right palm.

“Oye!” Neel called Rick to turn him around, holding the gun in left hand and the bullet in right.

As soon as Rick turned around, Neel threw the bullet at him, with full force. It hit him on the chest, as he backed up a step.

Rick stared at Neel with a what-was-that look on his face.

“See! Bullets don’t kill people! You do, I do….” Neel stroked his brain twice. “..with a lot of help from this.”

Rick was still staring at him.

“What you need to learn is, with your brain around, everything that you can see beside you can be a weapon, even a lethal one.” Neel looked at Rick and understood maybe the words weren’t enough to convince him.

“Let’s go for a stroll! We need to collect some frozen food and I know just the place!”

Neel gestured Sarah to stay put.

After 15 minutes, Neel and Rick were on the foot road around the hill. They could see a small wooden house. The house had no color or even the smallest pretense to show off by anything.

“Isn’t this where the two guys live, that we saw yesterday?” Rick enquired.

“Yes, they are out in town, don’t worry!”

Neel went and kicked the bolt open.

“Should we be doing this? They are dangerous!” Rick sounded nervous.

“Don’t worry, they won’t be home for another 10 minutes!”

“What? 10 minutes? Why did we come in then?”

“Chill. I was planning of a demonstration. They are on top of our hit-list anyway.” Neel took the remote and turned the TV on. “Check the fridge inside.”

“Are you insane? You don’t have a gun! I just have this stupid dagger! What are we gonna do?”

A car screeched outside.

“Oh shit!” Rick whispered.

“Go, hide in the kitchen…. And sit somewhere you can watch the show from.” Neel kept changing the channels.

Rick looked at him for a second and then tiptoed to the kitchen.

“Who broke the door?” Pete asked.

“I can see somebody standing inside. Go bring the gun, I will handle him.” Kane passed through the door with his handgun pointed at Neel. Neel was calmly changing the channels.

“Who are you? What are you doing?”

“Looking for the music channel, pal! Bloody hell, searched 68 of them, found none!” Neel spoke in a disgusted tone, his remote pointed at the TV on his stretched hand.

“You bloody…” Kane almost leapt at him. Rick clutched his dagger tight, ready to rush in.

Neel swiftly turned the remote and held it as a knife. Before Kane could realize what was going to happen, Neel thrust the remote inside his mouth. The remote came out from the back of his neck by one centimeter.

Kane’s body dropped on the floor.

Pete came inside with a shotgun and fired instantly. Neel ducked like a lightning.

He rolled on the floor and stood up just where the switchboard was. A liquid mosquito coil was plugged in it. He took that out and leapt to the left as Pete fired a second time.

Neel kicked the sofa towards Pete. Pete jumped and stood on it. Neel leapt ahead and with full force turned the sofa down. Pete couldn’t fire as he tried to balance him on the fallen sofa.

Neel held the mosquito coil with its two plug pins out. Before Pete could recoil the gun, Neel caught his hair and pulled his head with his left hand. With his right hand he injected the mosquito coil in the small valley of the back of his neck, just below the hair.

The gun fell from Pete’s hand. Neel pulled the coil aside forcefully and ripped the back of his neck like paper.

“Medulla oblongata, very useful part!” Neel commented. Rick slowly came out of kitchen, his mouth half open. “So, what’s today’s lesson called?”

“Everything is a weapon.” Rick smiled. He was going to enjoy Neel’s company.

“Good. Well, you can also have some of ‘your’ weapons here too.” Neel pointed at the fallen guns and pulled the remote out of Kane’s vocal cord. “Go check the fridge, let’s get what we were here for.”

“What are you doing?”

“I didn’t lie to the big guy here. I am looking for the music channel….aah, there it is!” Neel finally stopped at a channel and sat on the couch.

Rick frowned and went into the kitchen.

Incomplete Story: Disconnected

Chapter 1: An Evening With A Cynic:

What’s normal?

How do we define normal living? Is having a good salaried job normal, even if you don’t like it? Is being cheerful normal, even if you are on the edge of frustration inside? Is pretending to be happy called normal, even if you are not?

If so, then I am normal, just like any other guy who is reading this, or who is throwing it away to go for a better book.

But I have something that cannot be hidden behind a smile or cannot be scared away by tax statements and EMI-s, I have something that can never be called normal.

I am allergic to phones.

No, not physically, of course. I can safely touch the phone or hold it long enough to listen to all the blabbering or the other side. It’s just dialing the numbers that scares me away.

Just imagining speaking with people on phone makes me shiver, my tongue hesitates, all discussable topics start to disappear out of my brain. I am bloody scared of connecting, reaching out to people.

Yeah, I was in a serious stage and a treatment was evident. But as weird as the disease was, the treatment had to be weirder.

And it was.

It all started on a Saturday night.

Like any other normal Saturday night, I was lying on my sofa, with the TV turned on as a background sound, as the fan noise wasn’t enough to distract me from the outside world. The light was turned off and a beer can stood on my table, almost empty. The remote was tired of changing channels one after another and prayed, maybe more than me, for something watchable to come on.

I was helpless, thousands of sari clad perfectly dressed women crowded in my new 36 inch LCD TV and followed me whichever channel I visited. For a moment I felt men becoming extinct slowly, at least in the daily soap multiverses.

Then there were the reality shows. Millions of people fought for their 15 minutes of fame by claiming to acquire talents and unmatchable passions, some succeeded, few proved their mettle – everybody vanished after a week.

Next in the list were the News channels; most of them showed the same interview at the same time from different camera angles. The ones who desired to stand out of the crowd, showed repeat telecasts of TV shows, which had already tortured me and my remote a few minutes ago.

Then came the Sports channels. Most of them aired the limited Cricket triumphs of our country again and again or some lunatics with bizarre underwear, masks and capes pretending to beat each other’s ass off. The ones who were sure of never being watched, safely showed sports like Hockey, badminton, which could never be popular in our gimmicky nation.

Well, I hated them all. Come on, I had a perfect excuse! I was disillusioned!

The only channels that I liked were the movie channels. It was a fantasy world and I was heavily drugged by it. But my poor luck, even the movies that aired were already in my watched movies list.

I scanned and scanned and scanned…

When my finger started to pain, I stopped at a F.R.I.E.N.D.S. episode, which I had watched a thousand times.

It was raining outside. Drops of water kept knocking the glass panes of the window next to me. I glanced outside but couldn’t see through the thick watery fog. It was perfectly depressing, just like I always loved.

You might wonder if I had any friends. Well, yes, I have friends. I have some solid good friends from my college who deliberately chose the same city for job. I used to go out every weekend with them and did what any normal guy does, bird watching, a little shared smoking, occasional drinking and very rarely, shopping. But with my present condition, I hated everything normal. It wasn’t long before I grew a sense of detachment from that typical guy behavior.

They still went out every weekend, at least once in 2 days. They even kept inviting me for some time, but when I myself had given up on me…they too had to, eventually.

It’s not like I don’t speak to them. I do, but most of the time, it’s when they call me. My call returning ratio was 4:1. With my mother, it was 2:1. Yeah, I had shut myself off.

Grief? No, not anything in particular. There has been no sudden death in the family, except the very elderly people, of course. I wasn’t bankrupt, not yet at least. My girlfriend didn’t leave me, that scenario wasn’t possible, since I didn’t have any. I had no siblings, so there was no imminent backstabbing over any ancestral property, not that my family had any property.

Well, okay, my parents have been divorced. But it was almost 10 years now…and I had numbed myself out of that long ago. I guess, that was my problem. I had numbed myself out of everything.

It wasn’t hard to do, all you had to do is to dislike everything, reply to everybody sarcastically, avoid taking advices because you do whatever you want to do, suck at all kinds of relationships, rest pretty much fell into places…and I was left alone with my TV soon.

My mom tried to stay with me for a year. But as days were passing by I kept turning more and more into a cynic. Even God couldn’t have stayed with me if He tried! Mom left for her sister’s home in the thirteenth month.

Me? I swallowed it rather easily, I had a fridge full of beer!

I lazily dragged my body to the fridge to bring out another beer can. That’s a good thing about cans. They always sound very positive and motivating…one more can? Yes I can!

I poured a quarter of the can in my throat. There is something very magnetic about this bitter fluid, it slowly keeps getting sweeter, sweeter than everything else surrounding me at least.

Cliché? Well life’s a cliché! There are 20 billion people in world, God can’t come up with that many different and unique life-paths, can He?

Anyway, enough of this fourth wall breaking and back to my depressing room.

My calling bell rang. Who was it disturbing my perfectly gloomy evening? Not my friends of course, they knew better!

I went to open the door despite of my desire to just hide inside forever.

Have you heard of the unlimited and un-funny ‘knock, knock’ jokes? My life was just going to turn into one.

Chapter 2: Shadow From The Past:

I looked at the man standing on my doormat for 10 seconds. He was soaking wet; I got worried for my doormat.

“I knew it, you wouldn’t recognize me.” The guy smiled while putting his huge camping bag down on the floor of my balcony. Though raindrops didn’t harass my balcony much, the wet and cold breeze made it impossible to stand for long.

“I am sorry…I…” I tried to move my focus out of the doormat and into recognizing the stranger.

He sighed heavily over my incompetent memory. “Turn the light on, idiot!”

When the CFL glowed over his face, my memory cells sat up straight. I knew this guy, he has changed a lot…but I could remember something.

“Okay, I guess you would remember that night at least.” He riddled me. “If I hadn’t leapt over you that night, we would’ve got caught…”

He didn’t need to say another word, the night flashed before me.

FIFA World Cup ’98, Semi-Final, Brazil-Netherland. It was a must-not-miss match for two groups in our boarding school, the Brazil supporters for obvious reasons and the Argentina supporters, who hated Brazil with all their guts and prayed to God for their loss. I was in the latter.

I was never a sporty person, but it was a different time. Everybody became football fanatic for those few months, so did I. It was a very strict school; we weren’t allowed to watch matches in weekdays, which would interrupt the study time scheduled for all for us. Some extremists still bunked the study somehow to go and sneak up where the teachers and wardens enjoyed the live matches.

I still remember the Brazil Netherland match was a night match. It was 10pm and the match had already started. Our warden was out of town but he had strictly ordered the night-guards to lock the hostel gate after 9. Still, the football-crazy guys were planning to get out of the hostel. Some of us, wannabe-s, joined them as we smelt adventure.

All windows were grilled and so was the whole ground floor balcony. The gate was impossible to sneak out of. Our only choice was to use the pipe from 1^st floor. We slid down the pipe one by one and fell straight into a cement dumpster, it was unavoidable as it was fixed right there. We didn’t mind though. The idea of doing something secret and risky had taken over us.

Our campus was huge. There were different hostels for every class, two separate school buildings for junior and senior classes, a big diner building, a big gymnasium, a large prayer hall and a number of playgrounds with the size of standard football fields.  The major risk was crossing the 3 big football fields before reaching the gym, without running into the night-guards.

We were a group of approximately 10 guys. Such a large group would have a hard time hiding as there were very few trees near the playgrounds. So we broke up in groups. Me, Sushil and Deep were in one.

We were comparatively lame, considering the enthusiasm and knowledge in sports. That’s why we were left behind to come in our own group. Pretty reasonable, I would say!

So, we moved ahead in our own pace. The other groups were taking the fields, so we decided to be a little safer and headed for the Junior school building instead.

It was dark like a coal mine inside the building. We couldn’t risk lighting a single bulb either. We could merely see the pillars coming from the front and turned left & right accordingly. But what about the stuff lying in the floor?

Well, what about them!

Of course, like any other temporarily blind guy, I kicked a wooden dustbin with all my might. It was so slient for last 10 minutes that my feeble kick sounded like a piano being dropped from the roof. Overwhelmed, Deep tried to run backwards and kicked another! Oh my God, why the hell are all dustbins kept right here? Another piano dropped.

We saw a few lights in the fields, all turning this way. If they catch us, it could be an instant TC – Transfer Certificate, in other words, look for a new school pal!

We ducked and ran backwards with our heads down through the school corridor. A few whistles blew behind us, it looked like the guards might catch up with us. We ran out of the building but there were other guards standing in between the hostel and us. Crap!

The whistles blew very close. No time to waste, we ran in a new direction this time.

“You guys realize that we are heading for the teacher’s colony… right?” Sushil asked us while running.

“Shut up and run!” I tried to think, but it was very hard with all the whistling. The road was heading right to the most restricted place in the whole campus, the teacher’s colony. Of course, that hasn’t stopped us from going there earlier, but tonight was different.

Like three moving silhouettes we ran through the shadowy road, past our school building, past our prayer hall… past all the places in limit. We couldn’t hear the whistles anymore, so we slowed down.

Teacher’s colony was like Govt. quarters with bushes and trees everywhere. We sat down on the grass, tired of running.

“Hey, how about checking out the score with Pradeep Sir?” Deep asked. We were 2 meters away from Pradeep Sir’s house and to tell the truth, the thought had already occurred to both Sushil and me. But we were in a chase right now, and it didn’t look safe to stop here.

“Come on, they don’t have any idea that we would dare to come here! It’s just for a minute, anyway…. Come on, guys!” Deep insisted.

I looked around. The place looked dead without the street-lights, like a whole colony had converted into a graveyard overnight. Not a single leave rustled, neither did a hood-rat squeak anywhere nearby.

“What the hell, let’s do it.” I sighed. Sushil shrugged his shoulders.

We tip-toed to Pradeep Sir’s quarter. Deep knocked the door.

Pradeep Sir came to open the door. His sleepy eyes sparkled with surprise and shock.

“What are you guys doing here?” He rubbed his eyes in urgency and checked his watch. “It’s 10.30pm!”

We looked at each other. Clearly, he wasn’t watching the matches. Deep still uttered with a little hesitation, “Can we know the score sir?”

“What?” He looked at us as if we were here to murder him. Since our expressions didn’t change, he opened his mouth again. “I am not watching any matches, you psychos! I have a relative in my house today who is quite ill, so I slept early along with him. And do you have any idea what could happen to you if you were caught?”

“So, no way to find the score, eh?” I wanted to confirm.

“My god, no, of course not! And it’s a load-shedding here anyway! Can’t you see the street-lights are not working?”

Oh… we did notice that, but just couldn’t attach any further intelligence to the fact. Bummer!

“Now, off you go! Scram to your hostel, otherwise you are going to cause me some trouble too!” Sir closed his door in a hurry.

We can’t say we weren’t disappointed. Though sports wasn’t our thing and if we dug much deeper, we didn’t care much whether Brazil made it or Netherland showed them their mettle, it still felt bad that our little adventure have met a dead end, after all that running away like wanted criminals.

I stepped ahead to the small road passing through the colony. “Now, what?”

“WHO’S THERE?” To our shock, just a few feet away from me, somebody shouted harshly, in top of his voice. His flashlight stuck on me in a second. Sushil and Deep ducked rapidly in the bushes, expecting me to follow them.

But I looked straight at the light.

For a second, my future flashed in my brain. The guy walked though the bushes shouting at me, but I didn’t move. I just stared at the light in a trance. It was as if I was having an out-of-body experience.

I could see my Dad; he stood in front of all the school board members with my transfer certificate; he kept begging my principal and school secretary to re-consider it. I stood at a corner like a convicted person, tears flowing from my eyes. I could see Dad’s tears too; all his money, all his self-respect, shattered into pieces and each piece turning into a tear-drop.

“Duck, Akash!” Sushil came out of the bush like a slashing whip and jumped over me.

It happened within a couple of seconds, but I felt as if I was standing there for ages. The guard started running as we had fallen down into the bushes, out of his sight.

“Come on, quick!” He pulled me while crawling rapidly towards a tree. I was back to the present, so I just followed him, my heart beating like a time-bomb, ready to go off any moment.

It was a huge banyan tree and it looked at least 100 years old. The branches and roots spread all over nearby, making it hard to separate it from the nearby bushes. If it was another time, I might be scared of the probable snakes that could live in the tree, considering many such incidences had already happened here. But this was a different moment.

We rapidly climbed up the tree.

The guard came under the tree; he looked around in the bushes crazily. His flashlight kept making asymmetric polygons in the dark. We hid ourselves behind its stout stems, hanging from his upper branches somehow.

Bewildered, the guy looked up and flashed his light on the tree. Thank God, the tree was really large! The stems completely covered our lean bodies.

But he was desperate; he turned around and moved towards Pradeep Sir’s house, where we last saw Deep. We were still hanging as even a slightest movement could either give away our position or just let our hands slip. Deep couldn’t be seen anywhere.

The guard rummaged around in Sir’s garden after taking care of the nearby bushes. Where the hell was Deep?

After what seemed like a millennium, the guard finally gave in and walked away. We still hung on the tree to make sure he is really gone.

After 5 minutes, we came down. I sat on the ground. “What the hell happened to me back there? I was like, hypnotized! My feet didn’t move, my body froze…!”

“You were done for, pal!” Sushil nodded with a faint smile.

I looked at him, a thank-you smile running through my eyes. Speech was never one of my strong points.

“Come on, now, we gotta find Deep.” Sushil patted me.

We moved towards Pradeep Sir’s quarter, still a little tensed. There was no sign of Deep.

“Deep… Deep…” We whispered, as loud as we could. The light was still gone, and the street lights couldn’t help us with the search, which was a good thing even a minute ago.

“Is he gone?” Somebody whispered back, but we couldn’t see him. The location was very simple, bushes in both left and right, quarter in the front, an un-crowded garden at diagonally left. Where was he?

“Here… here, idiots!” The sound came from the sky. We looked up. Deep peeked from Pradeep Sir’s roof.

“How the hell did you get there…?” I tried to calculate. The only stairs to roof was inside the quarter.

“Never mind. Just come down from there, we need to run.”

To our horror, Deep just jumped straight from the roof.

“Are you crazy? We can barely see each other, what if you hit something or fell badly?” Sushil almost shouted, maintaining his whispering level.

“Well, I didn’t.” Deep smiled as if we were complimenting him.

Sushil shook his head sideways and sighed. “Let’s go.”

Chapter 3: Unwanted Flashbacks:

“Let’s go.” Sushil picked his bag. “Let’s go in, I am soaking wet here.”

Incomplete Story: Everyone, But Me

“She needs to think about her younger sister! She cannot be selfish like this!” Mr. Thomas shouted at me, with his vocal veins all trying to stretch out.

“Yes, you are right. She has to think about her sister. She has to think about her family. But…who is going to think about her?” I was not afraid of anyone anymore; I knew exactly what to speak.

“So, we are not thinking about her? All this arrangements, who are these for? All these guests, all these trouble we have gone into to choose the right person, all these…. What are these for? And you think, I am not thinking about her?”

“No, you are not! You are not. You are thinking about your society’s satisfaction over this marriage, your religion’s sanctity, your other daughter’s marriage, your guests’ pleasure….everything, but her. Tell me if I am wrong.”

“Oh, you little pathetic moron… first stand at my side and then say all those rebellious words. First be a father of two daughters….”

“So, there, I AM right.”

He was still breathing fire, but he didn’t know what to say.

“I know Sir that you need to think about Pat too. But, is that at the cost of Kate’s happiness?” I looked around to all the invited guests, their pathetic social-code-following faces made me angrier. “Who are these people, this so-called society? What gives them the right to choose what’s best for her? They do not fucking care a damn about her! They just want to live in their pseudo-utopia and maintain their stupid idiotic superficial social standards. Why should Kate be caring even a penny for them?”

“Shouldn’t she at least care about us?” Mr. Thomas looked as if he could break anytime now.

“She should and she is, Sir. She is. Isn’t that why she is standing there, ready to go to the altar without any air of sadness? She is hiding her pain behind that beautiful smile just because, the people she love can stand and watch her getting married, with peace, with tears of happiness.”

Kate was standing speechless, with tears dropping like a small fountain from her eyes. She stopped them for months, but they couldn’t hold anymore. Mr. Thomas looked at her, trying to read her.

“Yeah, we all know the famous lines, that “time heals everything”, “She will be living happily and forgetting everything in no time” etc etc. But why? Why for once, she can’t be happy because she wants to, not because she has to?” I was not stopping today, for anything. I have had it. I looked at the to-be-groom, Dennis.

“Every single moment she lives with him, he will remind her that he is not Vishal. She will hate those moments, she will hate her life, she will hate herself and then drink up her tears, like almost everybody present here have done, for some or other reason.” I looked at the crowd again. They were all looking at me as if I was a nasty runt of a litter. “Is that why you people want her go through same pains too? Because, you cannot stand others not feeling the pain you had? Yeah… that has to be it. You didn’t have it, so why should others? Right? Even if she’s your friend, family, sister…or daughter?”

“You have crossed all limits…” Mr. Thomas couldn’t resist anymore. He came forward and slapped me hard. “Shut up, that’s enough! Don’t say what you don’t know. You think I am marrying off my daughter because I want her to go through pain?”

“Then why? Why are you doing this after knowing everything?” He looked at me and realized I couldn’t be stopped today. “Why can’t you just accept that she has found the person she wants to spend her whole life with, with whom pain doesn’t seem pain, sadness doesn’t find its ground, looking at whom she can face any consequence, any misery that may come. Why can’t you be happy, just because she is…and will be? Isn’t that the whole point?”

He looked at Kate and sat down, he was tired of shouting at me, trying to hold onto the strict social side of him.

“Do you remember, when she was a kid and her teacher blamed her off something she hasn’t done and beat her? Remember how you went up to that teacher and blasted her? Where was your social code that day? I will tell you. You threw away all that code because you wanted your daughter to be happy, at any cost. I know you will do the same again, if need be. But why this strange meaningless attachment to the social and religious conventions of marriage? What makes these norms so logical, so good, so pathetically unavoidable? Why do you have to care about social status, religion, family background, people speaking bad on your back, pleasing people who will never be with you when you need them, and everything….but her happiness? Why does that single word come after all other things when you marry off your children? If they were immature kids, I would understand your logic. But they are full-grown, highly matured people who can make a living on their own. Why don’t they deserve to decide what and who they want in their lives?”

“Fear God, you insolent kid. How can you speak ill of age-old social conventions like this? Fear God.” Dennis’s mother came ahead, raging with anger. People started to whisper loudly.

“No, I won’t.” I looked straight into her eyes. “I won’t fear God, because I haven’t done anything wrong. And I don’t think God wants us to fear Him, unless we have done a sin. Also, God hasn’t made society or their rules. God hasn’t divided us into religious boundaries. We have.” I gasped for breath. “And, we have believed in these rules for so long, that we do not realize what’s right or wrong anymore.”

I looked at everybody… and I realized, this wasn’t my crowd.

“You know what? I just realized that whatever I say is not going to make you people realize anything. You are just praying this moment to be over, so that you can return to your utopian rules and standards. Nothing I say or do will make you feel any guilt or grow any new senses. You all are mentally handicapped. The only thing you can do is to believe what you said was right and throw away others’ opinions, impose your belief on others….”

“Aren’t you doing the same?” Dennis spoke up.

“No, I am not. I don’t care what you believe and what you do with your life…and none of you present here. I just care about her.” I looked at Kate, she was standing behind her father, clueless about how to console him. “What I am saying are just her views, which she could never speak out.”

“Tell him, that it’s not your views.” Dennis demanded from Kate.

Kate looked at me; she wasn’t the strong girl I knew anymore.

“You don’t have to fear Kate. The truth is out now. It cannot go any worse.”

“Tell him, Kate! Tell him to stop this social revolution of his!” Dennis was getting louder.

“Kate, speak out. Say it, for the first time let everybody know, what makes you happy.”

“Just fucking tell him Kate!” Dennis shouted.

“They are not my views, I am happy with whatever my Dad thinks.” She blurted… and then she knelt down hiding her face. “I am happy, happy, happy….” Her words turning into whisper gradually.

Dennis looked at me.

I nodded.

“Great.” I paused to have a last look at everybody. “Sorry for ruining the party. People who are pissed off can come and beat me up, I am waiting at the gate.”

I rushed out of the door.

It was raining outside. One of those accidental rains. I let my tears run along…after a long time.

I couldn’t, I just couldn’t do it, Kate. I am sorry. I tried, I tried so much.

I sat down on the fresh mud near the gate. I was waiting for my punishment. It came, disguised as 5 young men - Dennis’s friends.

They started hitting me like anything. I didn’t resist, my senses were not working anymore. All I could think of, was what the hell I just did in that room full of people? Why did I make a fool out of myself? What did it gain me? What could it gain me possibly? I am not Vishal…! I am just the pathetic super-loser called Neel. Why did I do it?

The last thing I could remember was somebody’s shoe coming straight for my chins… and then I blacked out.

***************

When I woke up, I was in a bed. The room was not familiar, but looked very clean and homely. I was bandaged at places, including left elbow. I felt that it was broken. And, suddenly the pain spurred out. Oh, those bastards!

 I felt my face. It was plastered almost everywhere. Who did this?

I tried to get up, but felt very weak.

“Hello? Anybody?” I raised my voice.

Kate entered the room. Oh, it’s her house then! She has done all this! Man, it would have been better to lie unattended on the road.