ANNIVERSARY BLUES

Everyone looked at the box that he left on the bench with apprehension. It could be a bomb. You couldn’t be too sure these days. Terrorists came in all shapes and sizes. Yeah. But it was an old man who left that box. Why would he be carrying a bomb? That’s ridiculous. Plain stupid. Borderline crazy. Shut up. You can still see that old man. Maybe we could give him lunchbox back. Yeah, and do our good deed for the day. Hey old man! You forgot your….

Boom.

It was such simple tasks that made him smile. People would do anything to get out of paying the cab fare. Like, I don’t know, cleaning his windshield, letting him make a phone call or dropping off an unsuspecting package on a park bench on the way home. He smiled. Anything to avoid paying. 

He drove an old model Hyundai Santro. It made funny noises when you turned left. The mileage was not that good. He didn’t like being a taxi driver. But it was perfect for him. He met people. He talked to people. And when he talked, people listened. Words flowed from his mouth. His voice was a low baritone, almost hypnotic. And when you listened to him. You got voices in your head. Voices telling you what to do. Voices telling you that a stupid favor is better than paying him. It’s just a phone call. And he says its urgent. Why not? It’s just a little package. Kinda lightweight. And there was a park bench on the way home.

They didn’t know he had been planning this for month. The contents in the package, they had to be in the right amount. And the memories. They haunted him. It was because of the memories that he decided on doing the park bench thing.

He wasn’t a monster. No. Oh dear, why would you think that? Because of the bomb? Silly me. It was a bomb. But not that typical ‘I go boom and people die and shit’. No. It was confetti. It was not just a park bench for him. It was where he met his wife (May her soul rest in peace) for the first time. The bench was where they first held hands. Where he asked her to marry him. (Three times, before she said yes)

It was their fiftieth wedding anniversary. And she deserved a little celebration. A confetti cracker would make her look down and smile. He knew she was in heaven. He smiled.

Or in hell. After all, she had suggested using a real bomb.   

-Kavi

APPLIED SARCASMATICS

NOTE: This article is only for the intellectually genius. And those who hate maths.

Ram is real. Just as the air you breathe, or the sandwich you don’t make. Ram is asleep at the moment. Its (square root of 16) o’clock in the morning. The alarm is set for 36/6 AM. It goes off, screaming random derivative formulas. To make it stop, the poor guy has to complete the formula before the clock does. He gets it right on the 15^th try. Ram is now fully awake. And pissed off.

Dear readers, Maths is important. So very important. Especially engineering Maths. Or “Applied Mathematics”. We may not know how to balance a checkbook, calculate basic taxes, or simple interest. But we surely can integrate any equation. (Even if the printed question is wrong.) We can find the Laplace transform of a shoelace, if it were to be asked for enough marks. We may not be able to calculate the days remaining for our parents wedding anniversary, but we surely can belt out the Fourier series in a perfect soprano.

Ram.  After the exhausted bout with the alarm clock, he turned to the bathroom. Sigh. Business as usual in there. He came out looking exhausted. Where’s his phone? He had to trace a graph for a complex equation to unlock it. He got that right when he skipped the lock code and answered his security question. Damn.

It was a Maths-biased society. You could score hot girls is you were good at solving calculus. The local supermarket offered you more discount on onions. You got petrol for free if you could prove theorems. It didn’t matter if you weren’t skilled at the job or you had no people skills or even an ounce of self confidence, you’d get the 7 figure salary. It didn’t matter if you reeked of Axe deos, or your toothpaste had salt in it. You were a master when you saw that little ‘dx’ in an equation.

Life became simple. Like a music video. That little engineering tag was just that- a tag. After those four years of slogging, people said life would be heaven. And guess what? It did! Look around your family. All those engineers, all those people good at calculus. Everyone, happy with their jobs. Content. Satisfied. Those people want nothing. They crave nothing. Right? Life is simple for them. Like a music video. Life is Legen..Wait for it.    

-Kavi.