Trapped

It’s been 8 days and I’ve run out of legs to count on. The crazy-haired man keeps kicking his computer and frankly I think that if he doesn’t start being polite to it, it might just kick back. I really don’t mind him much anymore except for that putrid smell from that green shirt he keeps wearing since the very first day I visited his place. Oh how I regret the day. All me and my mates wanted was to get a few scraps of food, a good laugh at the human condition and possibly some cheese puffs for Ante. Now, normally, if a disgruntled housewife or a spoilt obese boy catches one of us, they scream like little girls and squish us under their podgy feet. And it’s all very honourable to die a martyr. But no, this potbellied hairy man wanted a friend and I was the unlucky chosen one. Now, this jaundiced glass with brown stains is my home. I’d have accepted my tragic fate much easily had he just cleaned the glass. You must know we pay households compliments by visiting them. Contrary to popular beliefs, we like clean and cool places. So if you happen to see us scurrying across your kitchen floor it means you’ve done a swell job keeping it spotless.
My flat oval body has gotten flatter and my lustrous brown coat has lost its shine. He keeps shoving paper from under the glass. I am not a cow. And just because our kind has survived through the dinosaur age, does not mean that we do not have certain standards. You are possibly wondering what in luscious-pineapple’s name was I doing there. Ante likes her cheese puffs. And I like Ante’s behind. While we were really on our way next door I noticed, on the way, this man had the puffs and I, like a fool in love, thought I could get a bit of it for her. Sigh, I miss Ante and I miss the late night parties behind the gas cylinders. Someone would always get high on the gas.
None of my mates visit, not because I want vengeance (we really are the cool sort). If only the man would treat me with some respect and not keep abusing his computer and snoring in front of the TV, I think we’d really get along. My whole being aches, I keep trying to stretch my wings but I’m afraid I might bang into the glass. I might as well start seeing the silver lining through the muck and the filth (it’s not even the kind I like in the dark wet alleys).
I wonder if I’ll be immortalised in stories, the one that bore it all with his antennae held high, like Villey who married a rat. Yeah, it’s not so bad after all. I may even have my favourite rotten cabbage named after me. I guess we are both trapped in a way. Difference is he can’t help it.

-Amrita Kar, UG III

Untitled

I could have lived a better life thinking I was going to die tomorrow. But I have a long life to live. Isolation has made me forget many words and emotions, made my life as meaningless as the words I have created in this prison cell. My reality is a dying reality. It's just another nightmare. Hope springs and fades like a wet-dream; I try to run, but it always stays by my side. Pain will gradually creep in soft-footed, carrying the lantern of remembrance: the darkness is immersed in recollections, and the heart is burdened by long-forgotten sorrows.
I was a washed-up film-maker on a comeback trail, with loneliness by my side. I had tried my hand at many odd jobs, but nothing really worked. Every girl I loved would leave me within a month: film-making was my only hope, everything else seemed so meaningless. I made forty films within a couple of years, all in my head. And now I wanted to direct a movie in real life. Real life. It had lost all it's significance: there was nothing called 'reality' in my life. The indifference of producers, the snobbery of reputed directors and the ignominions mockery of aspiring colleagues were dreams which would soon disappear. But nothing changed: I was trapped in my dreams by my reality.
It's a funny thing about life: no matter how desperate you are, there's always a right or wrong to choose: conscience is the most paradoxical realm in the human mind. I used to walk in the rain, but still returned with blood-stains on my shirt. My semi-automatic had the power to change my reality, and made me feel like a king in the lonely city-streets where beggars and criminals shared equal space during the night. The rich folks were the only victims. We were responsilble for our lives for a few hours in the dark; we always slept during the day, and committed crime during the most silent hours of night. It was a compulsion initially, but slowly became an addiction. Violence is the greatest addiction in life; we ruled the streets of violence for almost a year before getting caught. Everything that followed was merely an epilogue to a violent film.
This prison cell has protected me from alienation, but the violent impulses still remain: the mortifications on my body testify the fact. Anger billows up, and gushes out from the veins: sometimes I feel the urge of slashing them. But I have a long life to live.

Rajdeep Pal

And the Prisoners Eat Doves

He pressed his ear to the solid metal door but all he could hear were muffled sounds which he could not make anything out of. He gently tapped on it once…twice…thrice. “Knock knock” he said and chuckled softly. Some of his nails were broken from his previous attempt at displaying his strength, when he has heroically tried to break down that obstinate door. And some strange, funny looking people did things to him which he did not like in particular. He did not like being groped and touched by strangers. Besides, they smelled really horrible. Just like his room. It smelled of antiseptics and old age. It reeked of discomfort and disease. But he felt pretty fine. As good as he had ever been really. So he decided to go back to his happy-place, the bed, and threw down his body on it. It did not really matter to him what time it was or why exactly he was there. All that really mattered was his presence in that cell. Or his absence. He was not really sure anymore. Thinking made him tired.
Suddenly, he broke into a bout of perspiration. He felt very cold and he felt very angry. That same feeling of panic was gripping him again and he was not feeling as self-assured anymore. He was dizzy and he felt lonely. Very, very lonely. He murmured in inaudible whispers as he rocked back and forth. He needed some water. And he needed someone to hold. There were brilliant flashes of purple and red and he closed his eyes and desperately tried to remember snatches of his childhood. He was almost there. The golden autumn sunshine was bathing the wooden floor of the kitchen. And he saw his mother. She was knitting something and probably waiting for his sister to come home. He watched her like he used to watch her every move as a child.
Suddenly, he felt something going up his leg. A nimble, grotesque intruder.
-------
He was lying on the stiff, starched bed, sprawled on his belly and grinning. The cockroach was firmly in his grasp and he was toying around with it. Holding it by one of its legs and wriggling it in the air as it struggled to let loose of his hold. He shook it from time to time and it wriggled more violently. Suddenly, he felt furious at that disgusting little bug. How dare he protest against his authority! Well, his attempts at a tiny little mutiny would fail quite miserably, Michael told himself. He placed the insect on a small piece of stark white cardboard and with a pin, practised his surgical skills. Off went one of it’s tiny, hairy legs. It wriggled violently and squirmed under the pin. Then very carefully, he snipped off the lateral wing on the adjacent part of its body. He tilted his head on one side and paused- He was reasonably satisfied with the operation. He decided to let his patient free and picked up the cockroach with one of it’s legs and set it free on the bed. It tried to scurry as fast as it could, with its mutilated body and Michael never took his eyes off it. It was struggling, he observed, to latch on to life. Desperately trying to evade it’s predator. To cheat destiny. What a brave little idiot! He chuckled to himself, before carelessly inverting the insect on its back as it squirmed in agony and helplessness. He did not like most of his patients. Michael was bored by now, so he threw it down on vinyl floor and quickly stomped on it a couple of times. Euthanasia is a huge comfort, he reflected. Pity most people did not realise that. After brushing the bed off the dirt and invisible germs, he lied down on his side.
He was gingerly rubbing his forearm, where they pricked him. There was still some dry blood that had clotted and clung on to his skin. He rubbed it off and tasted it blankly. Vague thoughts filled his head and he was trying to picture the face of his last victim- the cockroach. He wondered how it would look like had it been a human being. It would look like his father-he concluded with an air of finality. He yawned. Sleep was descending on him like a heavy blanket as he curled his body into a sort of bundle. He shut his eyes.

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The kitchen smelled familiar, of freshly baked pies. The brilliant rays of the sun made his face glow as his mother scooped him up and placed him on her lap. She had put down her needlework and her arms were around his neck. He buried his face in her warm softness and tried to hide in her long brown hair. She gently stroked his back and was probably singing a lullaby as he fell asleep in his soft little cocoon.

Debjanee Chakrabarti
UG-III

Cleaved

by Arnab

When you have nothing but your mind to entertain you, you start seeing things. Like the wall in front of me, with the myriad cracks spreading from the ceiling to the floor. The left one looks like a lightning bolt, as anyone can tell. The one on the right however, with the little corner edging inwards?...that looks like a gun. I think of telling Vincent but then remember its been a week since he's stopped speaking or even eating much. Vincent has started resembling a mantis, with his arms bent and stick like. Come to think of it, I’m very insect like myself. The little slab of glass nailed to the wall tells me exactly what kind: a cross between a fly, thanks to my bulging eyeballs and an earwig. That’s how my goatee’s shaped…like an earwig’s pincers.

The cell is damp but the food is excellent. It’s a pity Vincent doesn’t agree. He misses his wife’s cooking. Heck, I miss his wife’s cooking. I miss his wife more, but I won’t quite go there. Fifteen minutes earlier, a familiar gruff voice shouted "Food!" and shoved the bowl in, and today we have soup with nothing floating in it and bread only two days old by the looks of it. Oh joy! And still Vincent sleeps. You’d almost think he’s dead! As I sit down on the damp floor and say Grace and start my meal, I wonder why they never, in all this time, gave Vincent his share of food. He’s always been a skimpy eater but even then. Why should I have to share? Not that I had to for the last couple of days but its unfair. Much like its unfair of Vincent to have stopped entertaining me with his jokes and fond reminiscing. Such an enormous wimp, that man, but he was funny alright. And he helped make things less dreary. Vincent had a way with descriptions. The world as we knew it came alive right in front of my eyes. So yes, I miss Vincent and I wish he’d stop sulking and wake up. “Here’s to you, ol’ chap”, I say and make an invisible toast to him. He makes no noise, and lies there, deathly still.

I finish my meal and utter a sigh of contentment and look again. It’s no longer a gun now. It’s a house. It’s a house and wait there’s more…the little slab of wall that’s missing there, that right there is a backyard and the specks of dirt…they look like lilies, swaying in the breeze. And just then a breeze really does blow in through the grills from the sea just beyond . Reminds me of a few lines Vincent used to say aloud from time to time. Something that had lilies and the sea in it.

Someone’s coming. But I don’t feel like getting up. It feels pleasant suddenly. I think its Geoffrey again. What’s he want now?

“Oy Vincent, mate”, he said again, laughing that disgusting phlegmatic laugh of his. “Not too many days left now, is there?”

Something with the lilies and the sea. I forget the exact lines.

Imprisoned

It has been a long time since I have been here. I have lost count of days. I had tried, initially, to escape. But they put me back in. To punish me, they starved me for days, and then, when I could not stand, for hunger had weakened my legs, they let HIM into the room. He whipped me. He whipped me till I was hoarse from crying. Then He left. I cowered in a corner for fear of Him coming back with the whip. They fed me the day after. It was a frugal meal that hardly appeased my stomach. But I gnawed at it as if it were a banquet. They starved me again after that. I learnt soon enough that it would become a ritual to feed me and starve me alternately. I knew they would not be able to keep me imprisoned if I was strong. This damned hunger had caused me to lose everything in life.

My memory is sharp. I remember everything. I remember how they caught me, as clear as daylight, although it was a dark night when it happened. It was hunger that drove me to steal. We did not go into the village usually. It was an unspoken rule among our kind. The villagers were the enemy. Together, they were stronger and more cunning than we could ever be. But my children had starved for a week. It was the villagers’ fault that had happened. They were taking over our territory. I remember how I crept around the cottage, a black night hiding me from sight. But I was wrong. They had kept watch. They were upon me like a wave breaks upon a boulder. I had nowhere to run. The villagers surrounded me, taunting me with their flaming torches. I shrank back. Hunger had left me weak.

“Witch!” she called me, a woman in the background, “these Godforsaken creatures have wreaked havoc on us!” was what she exclaimed, to no one in particular. I could see her, framed in a doorway. Maybe she had children too. Why did she not understand my plight? My babies, starving, left alone. I had to get back to them. But the villagers would not let me. Someone fired at me.

I woke up in this room. Tired, hungry, scared. I ached for my babies. There is a window in this room. I spent days crying through it, for my children. Hoping they would hear. I gave up after a while. They were better off wherever they were, away from this hellhole.

The man with the whip comes to my room every night. I am scared of him. I do as I am told, or else He whips me. He is here now. He cracks the whip. I stand quickly and walk out the door. I walk onto the stage to jump on stools and wave at cheering crowds. It is another regular night for me, performing for the ‘Bagher Khela’ at the Minerva Circus.

Diya Sinha

Sick As a Dog

Sniff.
Sorry people, have been struck down with a virus, as has everyone else in the house except Putlibai and one computer. Babulal too had fever for a day (an awesome sight. Everyone was subjected to concentrated cute for 24 hours). Since I can't speak much above a whisper, we won't be meeting tomorrow. But just to keep things boiling, for all those who have access to the web, post a piece here by next Tuesday.
The piece should be about a prisoner (any prisoner, you make it up. Try not to steal existing characters) and should be not more that 500 words, ie a comfortable size for a blog post.
This is like writing a poem. Every word should count. So before you post, revise ruthlessly and throw out anything that isn't totally doing its job.
Right? Let's rock.