The Sonnet of a Frog in the Well

Replete in world are strange mouthful loud frogs,
who view their world through that one hole in well,
honing their skills of smashing the keys on blogs,
while enjoying comfort in place they dwell.
Not knowing the zenith of the heavens above,
nor the nadir of the earth beneath their damn feet,
but still will speak many words on war to love,
with ideas formed while suckling mother's teat.
The ears of democracy hears voices of all,
and so must hear voices of these loud frogs,
rueful are the state of affairs, they appal,
the rich are getting richer, the poor going to the dogs.
From my crumbling well, voicing dissent of mine,
Aren't I just another frog in line?

My Dreams

My dreams are snowflakes,
that yearn for burning summer,
held by a dreamcatcher.

Meeting in the Ballroom Dance

A crescent moon is your smile,
reflects light of those around,
being mysterious all the while.

Like the tide in the ocean unbound,
the swellings of my heart beguile,
losing track of the time unwound.

What secrets does your darkness file?
To you, my emotions, now in thrall,
and to you, I offer a dance in trial.

Requesting your hand in this ball,
O' stranger, who has me in a trance,
tell my fate, ease my chest in squall.

You grab my hand and take a stance,
our legs then move in a serenade,
we speak unspoken through this dance.

Blitzing my heart with a fusillade,
night is over, much to my chagrin,
I look around, with your farewell's bade,
the crescent moon is now etched within.

Cat Closes Its Eye and the World goes Dark

Surely there are things better for me to do
Than cleaning my room or making my bed
Sweeping the trash under the said bed that's left
Unkempt under the covers, "it's over", I said;
The lesson of responsibility or
The lesson to clean up after myself
Never to be learned; and I would be mad
To not feel happy with things as in itself.
And I wonder that's why we shut ourselves
Away from things we don't want to believe
Living in a world of our principles
And self-righteousness we deceive
Ourselves in a stupor of happiness
Turning a blind eye to the darkness
Thus drawing the final curtain over
Our eyes to the truths of the world's carcass.

Life

Like sunlight passing
through a stained glass;
we are innocent, pure
at life's beginning,
coloured by our stains
reaching the other side.

Cast Away

I sat there
on the island
under the shades
facing the stormy sea
and the usual pensive clouds
now turned black searing the sky.

The winds
heavy, swift
tousles my soul
like a wet laundry
but without clothespin
it unhinges and flies away.

I turn to
burning boats
and then bridges
reminiscing the days
of the happy sun and beach
now only awaiting death's knell.

Just another day and I scroll down

And I scroll down
And a man shot fifty people inside a gay bar.

And I scroll down
And a small little girl got kidnapped from a mall.

And I scroll down
And a beaten hindu women was forced to eat beef.

And I scroll down
And a man still shouts that he wants to build a wall.

And I scroll down
And I scroll down

And I scroll down
And I scroll down

---

Rendition of the poetry on Soundcloud.

The Stand-In

Genre: Absurdist fiction
Rating: 13+
Word Count: ~1400

The bedroom was not entirely dark, but dimly lit only by the screen of the computer. A young man in his late twenties sat in front of it. The facebook page on the firefox browser refreshed itself, showing some new updates from his friends. A friend of his got married and had uploaded his wedding pics. He clicked on the pics and browsed through the album, liking each one of them at the same time. He stopped at one of the pics that showed the groom. His friend looked handsome, smart, thin, with a bright smile, in that picture. He ran his palm around his cheeks, feeling the thin layer of beard on his face. His hands then slided over his tummy grabbing his love handles. He tried to smile, but the faint reflection on his computer screen disagreed with his own sense of aesthetics. He proceeded to like the picture in the album and move on. Just then rays of light broke through the curtain on the window. The time was 6 AM. He stood up sluggishly, and he moved his body without any real sense of purpose towards the large mirror kept in his bedroom.

The reflection was thin, handsome looking and he gave a bright smile. The reflection even waved at him, but he wouldn't acknowledge it. He simply walked into the mirror and the reflection copied his actions and came out. After they switched their positions, the mirror began to show cracks in many places. The reflection began to stretch its hands and legs. Then it moved to the bathroom, brushed its teeth, shaved and had a bath. After it came out, it made some breakfast for itself and ate it, before it went to work. The reflection came back home at 7.

"Yo! Hows your day been inside the mirror?", the reflection asked.

He came near the mirror but did not respond.

"Do you want to know how awesome a day I had today?", the reflection continued.

He stood there motionless, expressionless.

"Well, let me tell you anyway. The project that I have been working on for the past 5 months, well, its finally launching tomorrow. Not only that, I am also expected to give an investor presentation of the project tomorrow. If all goes well, we could be seeing promotion both in title and salary. How cool is that? By the way, do you remember Susie from finance. I think she is a little bit interested in us, as she asked me out for coffee today. She is smart, bright and was fun to talk to. We discussed about the latest novel from ..."

"Can we just switch places already?", he interrupted, his face still expressionless.

The reflection gave up and stepped inside the mirror, and he came out. After they switched, the cracks in the mirror disappeared. He went back to the computer, and placed an order for pizza online. He went to his company site as he waited for his pizza. He searched for the employee named Susie. Susie from finance was first on the list. She was cute and from the picture he guessed that she was quite well endowed. His pizza arrived and he had a specific routine with the delivery boy. The delivery boy would place the pizza on the doorstep and collect his tip from jar kept beside the door. After the delivery boy left, he would come out and grab both the jar and the pizza. Both him and the delivery boy went through this routine. He opened the pizza box beside his computer and began eating, as he continued to read Susie's profile on the company website. Then, he searched her on facebook, twitter and other social media websites. He found several of her pictures online and also several posts and blogs that she had written.

After dinner, he went to youporn, browsed through the many genres in the selection list and finally chose one. Among the many videos, he selected one that had a female who looked quite like Susie. He went on the grab the tissue, as he played the video while imagining an interaction with Susie. After the deed, he washed up and began browsing netflix to binge watch some tv shows. And another night spent. At 5.30 in the morning, he heard some children being noisy outside. He peeked outside to see some children playing cricket early in the morning. He went to his computer and clicked on his calendar to find out that it was state holiday but not a national holiday. This meant that the schools were closed but its not a company holiday. Just then, a cricket ball came through the window and smashed into the mirror. The mirror cracked. He jumped out of his chair and moved quickly towards the mirror. The reflection in the mirror looked chubby with a beard, a bad hair and a gloomy face. He tried to get inside the mirror but couldn't. He slumped down in complete shock. Before he realized it was already 7 AM and he was going to be late for office. He quickly put on some clothes and went to office.

As he walked around, he could feel stares all around. The stares that wondered who this person was. As he went and sat down in his cubicle, his neighbour slid his chair towards him.

"Dude, is that really you? God! you look awful, what happened?"

"N.. Nothing", he responds with his face down and trying to start his computer up.

"Nothing? You look way worse than when you began to work here. I thought you had really brightened up in the past few months. This is a complete reversal in just a day. Wait! Don't tell me! BREAK-UP!", the neighbour began nudging him with a smile as he asked, "Did some one turn you down or something? Dude, you shouldn't get so serious about such things".

Just then the manager swung by, the neighbour took that as a cue to return to his cubicle.

"Hey! How are you?", the manager asked. "You don't look so good. Are you ok?"

"Y.. yes, I am fine", he responds again with his face down.

"I hope you are. By the way, you better clean yourself up before the presentation, I don't want the investors looking at you like that", the manager warned.

"P...presentation?", he had a puzzled look on his face.

"Don't tell me you forgot! Today's the big day, you will be in line for promotion so better not mess it up! I will see you at the conference room later" and the manager walked away.

The conversation with the reflection yesterday slowly dawned upon him and he realized what the manager was talking about. He continued to feel the stares from around the room. It felt uncomfortable, stuffy and it was increasingly becoming harder to breathe. He ran out to the corridor. As soon as he reached the corridor, an elevator opened and he jumped into the elevator. He felt far more secure in that narrow elevator than he did inside his office. The elevator stopped at the roof top. The door opened to an empty roof. He stepped out. The loneliness at the roof top, away from all the gazes and expectations had the cold warmth that he sought. He also knew however that this won't stay for long, as he will be soon found out and pried away from this heaven back to that hell. He pulled out a small paper out of his pocket and wrote something on it with a pen. Then, he walked close to the rails, climbed over them. He took a look below. He could see the mirror there down below without any cracks and his reflection waving at him. He was elated and he jumped towards that mirror.

For the better half of the day, the area outside the company building was abuzz with sadness and confusion. Police had cordoned off the area near the body. The chalk outline on the floor marked the spot, while the body was already taken towards the morgue. The police waited for the autopsy report, but they were fairly certain that it was a suicide. However, the interview with the colleagues was strange. Everyone of them thought that the victim was doing quite well within the company and was up for promotion. And even stranger was the suicide note that they discovered that simply said, "I can't be Me."

What I fear is fear itself

The swallow in the sky
skin gleaming in the sun
had freedom in its wings

flew above a trash dump
and caught its reflection
in a cracked mirror

it tweeted in horror
of the sky breaking apart
and it flew and flew hard

to the edge of the world
in despair and desperation
to save from impending doom

and the cracked mirror
that envisioned the future
got drowned in more trash

never to see another;
but the swallow continued
to hide from the sky.

The Story of the Hero

Genre: Nonsense, breaking the fourth wall
Rating: 13+ (Slight profanity)
Word Count: ~1100

Chapter 1

Here we are folks. We see the hero, our protagonist facing off against a villain of the world.

(Arun, where are our hero and villain fighting? What? It doesn't matter? You just want to start the story with a fight? What's the point in that? Adrenaline rush? and it looks cool? What kind of a writer are you anyway? Yes, yes I will get back to narration.)

So, our hero and villain are facing off against each other in this place which we know nothing about and thus there is no way to know whether someone has an advantage or a disadvantage. I mean, at least the terrain of the fight place should be made known, but our writer is too lazy to do that.

(What? I am going off on a tangent? You are fucking right, I am going on a tangent. What, you will fire me? There are laws against such things you know. Huh, not in India?)

But the place and terrain doesn't matter for a fight. What matters is the heart and our glorious writer, praise be to thee, knows very well about the heart.

"So you are the hero, is it?" the villain said with a smile on his face.

"Yes." replied the Hero with a boring look.

"I guess you are fighting for something like justice. But let me tell you there is no such thing as justice in this world. If you came to know my backstory, you will know that ..."

The hero ran with blinding speed and kills the villain in a single slash with the sword.

The villain is gurgling blood through his mouth. "You are supposed to listen to my backstory and fall into a moral dilemma before making the decision to fight."

"Yeah, sorry about that. I have to go meet someone so I am in a bit of hurry. Bye bye."

(Arun, don't you think our hero is a bit weird?)

Chapter 2

Here we are folks. We see the hero, our protagonist facing off against another villain of the world.

(Oye Arun, we are not giving any backstory even today? The reader knows nothing about the hero you know and what he did to that poor villain in the last chapter doesn't necessarily give a good vibe about him. What? You are going to fix that in the next chapter? Oh ok.)

"So you are here hero! I have been waiting to fight you for a long time. Let's go Pikachu!" shouted Ash Ketchum.

(Wait, wait, wait! Won't we have trademark issues or something here? Oh, since this writing is non-profit, you think you won't have to worry about trademark infringement. That might work you know. Wait, if this work is non-profit, then how am I going to get paid? Oye. Hello. Hello? Hello? Are you there Arun? Crap, I have to get back to story)

"Pikachu use Thunder Shock", shouted Ash Ketchum.

The hero ran with blinding speed and kills Ash Ketchum in a single slash with a sword.

Ash Ketchum is gurgling blood through his mouth at this point. "Aren't we supposed to fight with our Pokemons? Also, shouldn't we be shouting our fighting moves before making the move?"

The hero goes silent for a while and then replies, "Single Slash Sword".

Ash looks at the hero confused, "that's too damn late you idiot" and then takes his final breath.

(First we made the protagonist of a popular anime as a villain. Then we killed him in an unfair fight. Why is the hero even fighting a 10 year old kid? Why is the 10 year old kid even a villain in the first place? And we are ending this chapter here? What was the point of this chapter anyway? Wait, you wanted to introduce the name of the killing move. I am speechless.)

Chapter 3

Here we are folks. We see the hero, our protagonist is standing together with a cute young girl.

(Phew, at least you changed something in this chapter.)

The cute young girl is a childhood friend of our hero.

(Wait, what? By the way where are they even meeting? Which city, town? How did they even come to meet? What, you are leaving it all to reader's imagination? That's too much man, just too much.)

The young girl is called Masoko.

(Why is the girl japanese? Why are you giggling, Arun? I will come to know the meaning behind the name later? Oh ok.)

"I heard that you are going around killing villains. You can't go around killing humans you know. You need to bring them to trial, so that we all observe due process", started Masoko as usual lecturing the hero in the ways of justice.

Suddenly from nowhere, a cockroach appeared near Masoko. Masoko shrieked and jumped. She shouted, "Hero! Look, its a cockroach, kill it! kill it! kill it!"

The hero looked at her with cold eyes, "that cockroach did nothing to you. All it wants to do, is get some food and live a happy life with its cockroach children and cockroach wife. And you want me to kill it. At the same time, you ask me to not kill those humans who hurt others for their own benefit. People like you disgust me!" The hero looked at Masoko with disgust.

Masoko hung her head and then looked up at him. Something inside her had changed. She looked deeply into eyes of the hero, held his hand and said, "Please insult me more!"

(Oye Mr. Arun, your perversions are coming through your writing. Wait, is her name a conjunction of Maso and ko? Stop giggling, that's just stupid. By the way, wasn't this supposed to be a story about hero and justice, why do I feel like we are digressing into a strange territory. What? You want this story to be your Lolita? You render me speechless)

Chapter 4

The hero and Masoko walk off into the sunset and lived happily ever after.

(What? Are we ending the story here? What's the point of this chapter then? What the hell about the backstory? What? You got bored? Do your job properly, damn you! Quick slacking around and give a proper backstory and ending. Don't glare at me like that, you know you are the one in the wrong here.)

Backstory:
Our hero at the beginning was jobless. He would live at his parent's house playing video games all day. One day, his mother asked him to buy some stuff from the grocery store. Usually, she wouldn't ask him to do anything because he was useless. But she had so much work that day, that she was forced to ask him. So, our hero went out for shopping. On the way, he found this very cool sword. He picked it up and then on that day decided that he will be a hero.

(I am sorry I asked for a backstory. Let's just end it, I can't take this any more)

Secret First Kiss in the Backyard

Your lips quivered as it was caught
in a kiss; but the fight did not end
as the fragrance slithered down like
a snake to take a bite of my heart.
And we both walked away wounded.

Virgin Strip Club

I sat there fully clothed; among
hundreds of bare bodied beauties,
swarming like fishes in the river.

They bared so much and yet so little,
and their forceful gazes conveying
unabashed desire for the greens.

They came at me without hesitation,
and all I could do was avert my eyes,
awash with sweat in a conditioned room.

I sat there fully clothed; among
hundreds of bare bodied beauties,
scared like one who knows not to swim.

Facing my fear, I met their gaze,
I committed the curves to memory,
for it is rude to not appreciate -

their beauty, their strength, their
hardwork in their remarkable showcase;
I felt my inner self surface through.

I sat there fully clothed; among
hundreds of bare bodied beauties,
panic stricken and white faced.

I sat there fully clothed; among
hundreds of bare bodied beauties,
forced to bare the self within.

I sat there fully clothed; among
hundreds of bare bodied beauties,
scared of what monster I might be.

Farmer has killed himself and what are we doing about it?

Perched atop a tree,
the crow has designs,
over a jug of water.

Few rocks here and there,
dropped inside; water rises
to satiate the black thirst.

And the crow went back atop,
looking smug over the bodies
of farmers on the barren lands.

Trust and Distrust

My open palms
push the water,
watching the ripples

move further
and further away,
disappearing

into the horizon,
and then I stand
upon the shore

and wait,
for the ripples
to come back

and give me
a second chance
to hold them.

The Open Road

Still wind frizzled through the hair,
mini cooper sailed on the open road.
The sun came up slowly warming the body,
ray bans came on the eyes bestowed.

The tie loosened its grip on the neck,
the belt stopped disciplining the waist.
The jacket flew, left the car behind,
and the sleeves rolled up in haste.

Every pore of the body breathed.

Reflexively the leg pedalled harder,
and the eyes saw what they didn't before.
The speedometer limbers towards a 100,
life passes by as we are shut indoor.

Our worries and fears caged within,
slashing away at the life's plinth.
The road is so simple, straightforward,
a distraction from the mental labyrinth.

Snuggling further within the metal wreathed.

One can think of no greater freedom,
than the one of being on the open road,
without a plan or destination in mind,
tagging along wherever the wind flowed.

One can think of no greater freedom,
than the one of being on the open road,
societal chains are left behind,
subjecting oneself to nature's goad.

The encased heart is now unsheathed.

A Message to Parents

A girl is not your burden to bear.
Her life is not for you to spare.

She doesn't come second to your son,
and deserves just as much rice when its done.

A girl's education is not an option.
Remember, her future is never up for auction.

She can run in the sun, go out to play.
She is not to be dolled up, put up for display.

She is not some goods to be sold,
or a slave who does as she is told.

She is your child, just like the others,
she is the loving sister to her brothers.

Love her so that she feels safe at your backs,
Tell her there is nothing in this world that she lacks.

Then watch her spreading wings like a butterfly,
A self propelling flower, she will be, in the world's eye.

The Man from C.A.B.I.N

Genre: Thriller
Rating: Safe
Word Count: ~2600

August 8 2012, Convocation Hall, IIT Bombay, Mumbai, India.

It was a sunny day and on any other day, Sundar would have appreciated the weather but not today and certainly not inside the closed hall. His senses were not functioning and his mind was completely blank. The silent beating of the heart and the emptiness of the mind was offset by the slow murmurs in the hall where Sundar stood on one side, just near the dias, with few other PhD students of IIT Bombay who were graduating this year.

The hall was a rectangular shaped auditorium with stadium seating arrangement. Sundar looked around, watching the students seated in the hall. All the male students were dressed in white kurta and pajama and female students were dressed in white salwar kameez or white sari. All the students were wearing variously coloured dupattas (uttariyas). The colors indicated the degree with which the student was graduating. Sundar was wearing a peach coloured uttariya. If someone were to look at the hall from the top, it would probably look like a white canvas peppered with colors of the rainbow.

The session began with the institute song -

Antar mama viksit kar
    Antaratar hey

Nirmal kar, ujjawal kar
    Sundar kar hey

Jagrat kar, Udyat kar
    Nirbhay kar hey

Mangal kar, niralas kar
    Nihsanshay kar hey

Yukt kar hey sabke sang mein
    Mukt kar hey bandh

Sanchar kar sakal karm mein
    Shaant tumhara chhand

Charan-kamal se mera man
    Nispandit kar hey,
    Nandit kar
    Nandit kar
    Nandit kar hey

This song, which is translated from Bengali, was originally written by the great Indian poet and polymath Rabindranath Tagore. The song asks the divine one to grant the virtues of enlightenment, diligence and fearlessness. These three form the essence of a strong academic spirit. As the song was being sung by a student in the most melodious voice, Sundar closed his eyes and the five years he spent at the institute flashed in his mind. In the last five years, he had faced his own weaknesses. He had to push through when the chips were down and continue on despite repeated failures. After several struggles he had published a few of his works and finally submitted his thesis titled, "Models for Precise Aggregates and their Applications to Trend Predictions". The words of the song entered through his ears, into his soul and resonated with his experiences. For a brief moment, he was overwhelmed and a drop of tear appeared in his eye. But he quickly wiped it away and kept his emotions in check. He had always dreamed of this day, to be a scientist and the dream was about to come true.

June 23 2015, Aryabhatta Labs, Kroogle Research, Hyderabad, India.

The computer displayed a Fedora desktop with a gnome terminal. Sundar typed in a few commands into the terminal to execute a program. What followed was an array of numbers being spit out at intermittent intervals onto the display. The program finally ended and an image popped up displaying a graph. The graph showed 1% improvement in advertisement prediction. Sundar had just created a new model which would increase Kroogle's advertisement revenue by at least a million dollars. Sundar leaned back on his chair, and took a look around. His colleagues were all sitting in their cubicles with their heads buried in their computer. When Sundar graduated three years ago, he expected himself to do something exciting in his life, not just make several million dollars for an MNC. He has very little to complain though, because the job paid well and with this new model, he can certainly expect an increase in salary and a bonus. However, as a child, he had always envisioned scientists in their white lab coats saving the world and over the years, he very well knew, how far was reality from his dreams and yet these three years have played a part in burying them entirely. He sighed a little and went back to looking at his computer. He opened the Thunderbird email client and began checking his email.

He saw three emails from his father and he could see that there were image attachments with all these three emails. He surmised what these images were. He had strictly told his parents that he is not interested in getting married for at least a few more years and despite that, his father would keep sending new photos every few weeks or so. He simply skipped over those emails. Then, followed a series of emails from the technical discussion group from within the company. He noticed a C++ question asked in this discussion that he could probably answer. He immediately wrote up an answer to that question and send it as a reply. Then there were a bunch of emails congratulating one of his colleagues who recently announced his wedding engagement. Then there was another thread discussing what gift to give the colleague on his wedding. Sundar had earlier suggested gifting a cactus plant with a passport size photo of every member of the team stuck on the thorns. The team simply replied back saying, "we know now what to gift you on your wedding".

The next email was titled, "Your thesis on Aggregate Models and Trend Prediction is interesting!" Sundar was a little startled and pleasantly surprised. He opened the email:

Hi Sundar,

I recently came across your thesis on Models for Precise Aggregates and their Applications to Trend Predictions. I must say I found it quite fascinating. The fact that one can look at a set of joint distributions and then characterize prediction tasks on them with some simple assumption is pretty cool.

The email then went on in detail about what the person found fascinating in the paper and the technical aspects and assumptions that they found to be somewhat restrictive. It finally ended with,

We are looking to apply your models in the work that we are doing. Unfortunately, due to several constraints, I cannot exactly disclose the organization I am associated with, nor can I disclose the nature of our work. But we are very keen on hiring you. If you are curious, then please drop an email soon, so we can schedule your interview this weekend itself.

Sundar checked the email of the sender, it was simply 'manandsuperman@kroogle.co.in'. It was a plain email id, although, Sundar did like the reference to George Bernard Shaw. He dismissed the email as a hoax, but hesitated to delete the email. He opened another application called texmaker and began writing a latex report on his new model and attached the graph which supported his claims. He then attached the report in an email titled 'I just made a million bucks' and send it to his manager. He checked the time, it was ten past twelve. He looked around and his colleagues were all getting up to leave for lunch. So, he screenlocked his computer and went along with them.

The lunch discussions at his company were usually were active. Anything from sports, films and politics would get discussed over the lunch table. Sundar would actively participate in them whenever he could. However, today he was distracted. The spoon he held in his hand grabbed a clump of rice from his plate and took it to his mouth. The hand worked like a machine and mouth chewed reactively, but his mind was somewhere else. Precisely speaking, it was still on the email he had read just before sending his report and coming for lunch. Although, he was almost sure that the email was a hoax, but the details with which it was written suggested otherwise. He could not help it, his curiosity was piqued.

"Sundar, are you ok, you have been quiet for a while now", his colleague asked him while poking him with his finger. Sundar quickly turned around and replied, "Oh, I am fine, just thinking about a minor issue, but its nothing". Soon after, he joined in their discussion and put that email issue at the back of his head. As soon as he returned from lunch, his manager came up to him and shook his hand, "Awesome work dude!" to which Sundar smiled and replied, "Thanks".

"How long before we can launch this model into production?", his manager asked with a querulous look.

"There are some technical challenges to overcome but if I sit with the engineers and work alongside them, we should be able to push this into production in a week!"

"Fantastic, are you free now? If the engineers are free as well, we can set up a meeting and go over your model and come up with list of things to do."

"Yeah sure, I am free."

"Ok, I will talk to the engineers, set up a meeting and send you an invite."

"Sounds good."

The manager walked away and Sundar returned to his desk. His manager worked fast and the meeting was soon set up. Sundar spent the rest of his day in the meeting, going over the details of his model with the engineers and addressing the technical challenges involved in implementing it. When the meeting ended, it was already close to the time, he leaves office. However, just before he was about to leave, he opened his email client, clicked on the email sent by manandsuperman and sent in a reply,

I am interested.

Soon enough, a reply came back from manandsuperman,

1. Attached are your air tickets to Vizag on the weekend.
2. Our driver will pick you up at the airport and take you to the meeting place.

Sundar just stared blankly at the screen for a minute wondering what exactly happened in those few minutes.

June 27 2015, Vizag Airport, Vizag, India.

It was 8 in the morning and Vizag had a pleasantly cold climate. As Sundar stepped out of the airport, he saw a man holding a placard with his name on it. He moved towards that man and indicated to him that he is the one whose name is written on the placard. The man smiled and guided him to a car nearby and they drove out of the airport.

Vizag was being developed as a smart city by the Government. So, there were several ongoing constructions that were visible as the car made its way through the city. Soon, the scenery got boring and Sundar fell asleep. When he woke up, he yawned and stretched his hands. With eyes half open, he noticed that he was still in the car. Then, he looked outside for a bit, only to be surprised by trees that surrounded the car. His rubbed his eyes and fully opened them to realize that they were in a forest. He got shocked and scared and asked the driver, where they were. The driver coolly replied, "Sir, we are in Kambalakonda Wildlife Sanctuary". Sundar got so scared that he immediately tried opening the doors, but they wouldn't open. The driver looking at his passenger through the rear view mirror told him to take it easy as they will soon reach the destination. Sundar curled up in a corner and sat motionless.

After half hour, they made their way to a cabin near the Kambalakonda lake. The driver stopped the car, got out, and opened the back seat door to let Sundar out. The driver pointed out the cabin with his finger. Sundar, who was still in shock and fear, thought about running away. But he was too deep into a wildlife sanctuary to pull this stunt safely. He decided to rather move towards the cabin and figure out what is going on. He slowly moved towards the cabin and as he moved towards it, he noticed that it is shoddy, and looked as if it was not cleaned for a long time. Soon, he began to wonder if this is some elaborate prank, but if it was, it certainly was an expensive one. For a brief moment, Sundar thought that this could be some serial killer, but he actively pushed such thoughts away from his mind and soon found himself in front of the cabin door. Sundar took a gulp and opened it.

The inside of the cabin was empty, except a table two chairs and a man sitting in one of them. The man was reading a binder in front of him. As soon as Sundar entered the cabin, the man looked up from his binder and stood up to greet Sundar with a wide smile.

"Mr. Sundar, welcome, welcome. How was the trip? I hope there was no trouble reaching here.", the man said extending his hand to shake it.

Sundar just shook his hand and looked around. His eyes wandered towards the window that showed the still water of Kambalakonda lake and his mind contemplated thoughts of how to escape from this cabin through the lake.

"I imagine this must be a shock for you. I am sorry that we have to be so unconventional, but that's the nature of our organization. I am sure you have several questions, but before you ask any of them, I want you to sign this NDA."

Sundar took the NDA form, read through it. It was an ordinary NDA form which every company gives, so he took out a pen from his pocket and signed the NDA. As he gave back the form, he asked, "Where am I?"

The man looked puzzled, "I was sure your first question would be, who are you? But well, to answer your question, you are at Kambalakonda Wildlife Sanctuary."

"No, I mean where am I? What am I doing here? What are you doing here?" Sundar started reeling out his question, partly in frustration, partly in impatience and partly in fear.

"Well, well, before I answer all those. What did you think about the email I sent you and my criticisms about some of the assumptions in your model."

"You are manandsuperman?"

The man nodded a yes.

Sundar sighed and replied, "The class conditional distributions being same is a simple assumption. It holds in several applications that we were thinking of at the time when we created that model. We could not find any reasonable applications where our assumptions did not hold.",

"Well, we have applications where your assumptions don't hold and we have data in which your models can show interesting improvements, if you can make it work. Will you be interested in working on such data?"

"I am here, aren't I?" Sundar spat out in frustration. He plumped on the chair in front of him, without being asked to and held his forehead.

The man chuckled a bit, "Of course, Mr. Sundar!" The man held out another form in front of him and told him, "This is an employment offer. If you are still interested in what we do, you can accept this employment offer right now or you can reject it. You can accept this offer and reject it later as well. Of course, you will be still under our NDA, so you can't tell anything about us to anyone. The consequences will be dire if you do so. However, the work is exciting and very important, I can assure you that. I would accept this offer if I were you, Mr. Sundar."

Sundar lifted his head to face the man, grabbed the offer letter and signed it and gave it back.

The man checked the signature and turned towards Sundar, "We are an organization that work directly under RAW. Mr. Sundar, welcome to Crime, Assault, and Breach Investigation Network a.k.a C.A.B.I.N".

cue stylish music
tadat tadat tadat tadat taadaa
tadat tadat tadat tadat taadaa
tadat tadat tadat tadat taadaa
tat tat tat ta daa

Mosquito

A mosquito wallows in the filth it was born,
cursing its fate, it struggles to get out,
its effort cheapened by the mosquito far away,
born in an uglier filth.

Achieving freedom, it went to nourish itself,
the first prick, the taste of success, the fruit
of the hard labour, only to be swatted away
by the palms from heaven.

As it falls to its death, the mosquito far away,
waves, cheers, acknowledging a life well lived,
but the fallen one, only wonders what it means,
to live.

Cassiopeia

Falling autumn leaves,
brushes her cheeks,
swirls gently around,
lands at her feets.
Gets crushed.

The withered remains,
carried by the wind,
tell the tale,
of the one sinned.
Gets hushed.

The autumn rains,
weep and bury,
deep into the soil,
calming the fury.
Gets rushed.

The rotting soul,
nurtures and feeds,
the young of tomorrow,
suckles and breeds.
Is gushed.

And there begins,
the story of autumn,
Anew.

Childhood Memories

A B C D E F G
G
G

A B C D E F G
H I J K elemeno P
R S T

A B C D E F G
H I J K elemeno P Q

A B C D E F G
H I J K elemeno P
elemeno P Q R S T
U V W EX WHY ZED!!!

The Child Reaper

Genre : Horror, Fantasy, Thriller
Word Count : ~1800
Rating : PG

January 3, 2016: Denver, Colorado

If there ever was a stereotype about how a 15 year old boy's room looks like, this was definitely not it. As Elle tiptoed into her older brother's room, she cannot help but be impressed by how cleaner it was than her own. Books neatly stacked on the shelf and those he was currently reading are on the desk. They were closed and the page he is currently on have a bookmark placed in them. Elle was happy to see that her brother was using the bookmarks that she had made for him a while back. His used clothes are in the laundry basket and the fresh ones are neatly folded in the drawers. There is not a speck of dust or rather anything lying around in the floor, which made the tiptoeing really easy.

Things were not always this way with her brother. Just a few months back, he was hanging out with the wrong crowd, skipping school, failing exams. He was indifferent to everyone in the house. Would never listen to her parents and hardly acknowledged her existence in the house. And yet, just one day, he drastically changed. He cleaned himself up and stopped hanging around with his old "friends". His grades got way better and in these last few months, Elle found herself growing closer to her brother than anyone else in the world.

As Elle tiptoed into her brother's room where he was sleeping in his bed, she suddenly jumped on him. David woke up startled, looking around trying to figure out what happened. As he looked around the room with a confused and shocked face, he found his sister puffing her chest and then shouting with a loud voice,

"HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!"

David let out a groan and then checked the clock, it was 6.30 AM. He usually wakes up at 7, so he lost half an hour of his sleep. He looked at his sister and simply replied,

"Thank you, thank you, now please leave me, so that I can have some sleep."

"Come on, its your birthday! Look what I made for you!" she said, as she stuck out her hand and showed him a card.

David delicately took the card in his hand. In the front it said, "Happy Birthday to the Best Brother in the World!" with generous use of glitter all over it. It made him a little happy, but he wouldn't show it. "Too much glitter don't you think?"

"Oh, psshhh, stop complaining and look inside!", she was looking at him all excited.

He opened the card and it had a drawing inside. Elle was good at drawing, but she was never confident about it. A month back, David had coerced her into entering into a competition after looking at her drawings. She managed to win a consolation prize to which David's reaction was, "I thought you were good for a second prize at least, those judges wouldn't know art if it hit them in their faces". From then on, she had been even more hard-working and dedicated towards improving her drawing skills.

David looked intently at the drawing. It had a small timid girl and in front of her was a knight in his armour. Facing the girl and knight were several nasty ghosts and monsters. The knight was extending his hand as if he was motioning them to stop. The entire drawing had a background that depicted hell with a sea of fire and corpses floating on them and several mountains spitting lava.

"This is really good. Elle, you should really enter this in the next competition."

"It is good, but no, I won't enter this one. Do you understand this drawing?", Elle was a little fidgety as she asked this question.

"The knight is saving the girl from hell", David replied staring at the drawing again to see if there is anything he missed.

"The girl is me, the ghosts and monsters are the bullies who were bullying me and the knight is you"

David looked at the picture again and he noticed the faces for the first time. Indeed, the girl resembled Elle. The ghosts and monsters had faces too. And the knights face did look like his own.

"Thank you", Elle squeaked, "I wanted to say this before but thank ..."

David flicked her forehead and she whimpered in pain. "You don't need to thank me. It's what families do."

Elle hugged him and gave him a quick peck in the cheek, "Come down, we have a surprise for you!" and she left the room hopping like a bunny.

After she left, David closed the card and checked the clock again. It was close to 7 already, so he placed the card on his desk, went to bathroom to wash himself and get ready. Then, he came down to have breakfast, his entire family stood there,

"HAPPY BIRTHDAY", they chorused.

His mother and his sister both had awoken early that day to bake him a cake. As David came down the steps, his mother approached him, clasped her hands around his head and pulled it down so that she can kiss his forehead.

"Mom, I am old now, you didn't have to do all this", he said with a smile on his face, which was getting harder to hide.

They split the cake, between them and happily ate them. David praised his mother and his sister for the delicious cake and looked at his father with a querulous look, "no gifts from you?" His father threw the car keys at him and told him, "You are old now, you don't need gifts. You need to learn responsibilities, so I am going to teach you how to drive." As he finished, his father grinned at him. David could not hide his astonishment and went ahead and hugged his father.

His father then turned on the TV. There was on-going interview with a serial killer expert on the morning show. They were discussing the latest serial killer who has hit the headlines - the "Child Reaper".

Interviewer: Child Reaper has killed 7 children of various ages across the country so far. Do you think we will be able to catch him at all?
Expert: The child reaper is a very elusive killer. The time between his kills are quite far apart. He is also killing at different locations. Even though so far his attacks have been on children, they vary in their ages from 7 to 14. 14 year old being the last known victim. So far, we haven't seen a discernible pattern to his killing, except for the fact that he leaves a note for the parents to tell them where he has buried their kid. It looks like a difficult case, but someday he is bound to make a mistake and when he does, we will catch him.
Interviewer: Speaking of the note, according to the latest information release from the police, there is some mystery around that, isn't it?
Expert: Yes. All the families of the victims tell the police that they received the note the day their child disappeared and yet when the bodies were dug out from their burial place, the time of death was several months prior to receipt of the note.
Interviewer: How does one explain that?
Expert: We don't have an explanation for it as of yet.

"Must be god's angels", David's mother blurted out while she picked the plates from the table. David, who was lost in thoughts during the interview, suddenly stood up and began helping out his mother to clean up. Elle followed her brother to help clean up as well.

"What do you mean god's angels?", David's father asked.

"Angels must be with their family so that they don't have to deal with their son's death. That is why, these families have been finding the note much later, so that they get to spend some time with their kids before they get the news. That must be the explanation.", David's mother said with an enlightened face and the conviction of a true believer.

"You should be on this show," replied David's father half jokingly.

Elle and David got up, waved their parents goodbye and went to school. It was a normal uneventful day at school for both of them. When school ended, Elle decided to walk home with her brother. They were passing by an empty park on the way to their house, when an unimaginable pain coursed through David's hand. It was moulding itself and changing its shape. David screamed out in pain. Elle ran up to him to see, worried by what she was seeing happening to his hand. David turned around to look at Elle. However, what Elle saw was not David's face but a face she did not recognize. She got scared and fainted right then. The changes that were happening to David's body stopped after a while. David looked around to ensure no one was watching, then picked up Elle in his two hands and went home quickly before anyone spotted them.

When Elle came back to her senses, she found herself tied to chair and her mouth was gagged. She looked around and recognized that she was left in the shed of their house. Somebody opened the door to the shed and came in. It was her parents. They looked scared and were relieved to find their daughter safe and sound.

"Where is Dave?", Elle asked worriedly. Her parents went quiet. Her mother began to cry uncontrollably as she continued to hug Elle. Her father lifted his spectacles and rubbed his nose. It was then that Elle had noticed a note in her father's hand.

January 16, 2016: Salt Lake City, Utah

David was sitting inside an abandoned factory lot with another kid his age and they were smoking cigarettes. This David looked nothing like that David from Denver Colorado. So, none of the kids recognized him from the picture of the dead kid that made the TV news as the latest victim of the Child Reaper.

"So David, how do you find our terrible city?", Renny asked.

"It's not bad, I have been in worse", David replied non-chalantly.

"Man, I would love to hear those stories. This city has no ambition. Look at my father, he is a fucking pinko. He helps out everyone and tries to 'share' with the community, even if it comes at the expense of his own family. And my mother does charity work in the church. But nobody fucking helps when we need them. You know what I realized, these goodie two shoes won't make anything of themselves in this world. I never regretted turning towards a life of crime. I got 300$ just by pawning a stolen PS4 and it was only too easy." Renny brought his tirade to a halt as he waved 300$ in front of David. "Sorry, I went off on my own there."

David leaned in, "No, I am quite interested in hearing this. Do tell me more about your family."