The Rat Story

I am Tar 239to the power of 298. Well maybe not all that much but then I have lost count. I am not a young one anymore am I now?? Many seconds have passed since I was considered a prime specimen (not by my own kind of course.) according to our laws I will an elder only next mensem (there I go again talking in that other tongue). Sometimes I wonder whether my being the chosen one was a blessing or a curse. Too many things have happened to let me live my last days in peace here in Egabrag. It amuses me and frightens me too that I am held in such reverence and esteem by the young ones here. It’s their tails that give them away. You see they begin to whip very slowly, not back and forth, but up and down in a sort of swishwa. There, Athram is telling me to explain that word because it is too archaic. Archaic! Humph, I suppose she could consider me archaic then. What swishwa means is a kind of undulating; I think the word is, movement. That means they are excited and don’t want to or are not supposed to show it.

There she goes again, shriller than a whole mob of tars out to get fresh, mouldy, saccharine saturated, caffeinated doughnuts, and that is saying something. What is she saying now? I’ll tell you what you can listen to her yourself and then tell me what you think she is shrieking there.

“You’rewanderingagainIcanhearthewayyourtailthinkswhenyouarewanderingIamsuretheydon’twanttoknowallabouttheyoungonesTheyhavecomeallthewayforyouandgivethemsomeproperandthewaythingsactuallywentwhenyouwereupthere…”

Can’t make sense of it can you? I thought not. Anyway for once I will listen to her and tell you everything. All the way from the start.

I was born here, as anyone and everyone in the street will tell you. Seems to me that they know my story better than I do. So if you want a, what do the others call it, a. …biography, that is the word, go to any young one and it will tell you. In a terrifying monotone that reminds me of the hum of those machines (funny how words come back to you when you most need them and least expect them) that the others had in these huge white spaces that seemed to have no end. I will start from the very beginning.

It all began on the day my progenitor approached me on the can only at that time I had no idea he was my progenitor. He (or she) said, “ you are to come to the Supreme Commandura right now” in a terrifying monotone. He (or she) caught me by the point of my tail, which is what any one of us would do if we wanted the other person to come along without any delay (which is always possible in this beautiful city of ours. So much window and street shopping to do here. The lemon rind for the staircase and the yellow mould will go so well together). So I was forcibly marched all way up to the Dil*, which is our centre of power. I was ushered in to a large and well-lit eloh. There I was told by a squeaky voice with no visible source, “youareherebycommandedtowithdrawtothecommunityofotherswhoserveintheholysanctumcalledrowantechniologiesandwillhavetoreportbacktothesupremecommandurainsixmonthstimean…” To cut a long and squeaky story short I was to be sent as a (shudder to name it even now) lab rat to a place called Rowan Technologies as part of an ancient spy system that allowed us to keep tabs on the others.

I was of course thrilled, as I had no idea what I was to encounter there. I won’t deny it was fun but then it had its moments too. Some were quite bad. In fact most were downright horrible and I lost count of the number of time I came close to ascending to the paradise I was told awaited me if I was ever privileged enough to die in the line of duty. That most did apparently ascend to this most marvellous of places did not bother me much then. I in my youthful zest for life love and food, not necessarily in that order mind you, I considered myself a non-believer. I am of course a convert to our credo, which is “ whatever might happen to the rest of you guard your tail with absolute faith for it is the source of all life and all sadness.” Not that I know what it means even today but one thing I do know for certain I will never ever let my tail be insulted in the manner in which it was in the world of the others.

I know I am jumping again but then what is the point of my telling you anything if you want it all your own way.

I thought that would shut you up. Now stay quite till I finish the tale. Hehe pun intended.

The Beginning

My first encounter with the others was memorable to say the least. I had to let myself be captured by them in an elaborate chase that spanned more than half a day across the considerable floor space of the local shopping mall.

They absolutely refused to give up and in the end I had to let myself graciously surrender as per orders from the Commandura. I have to admit they were quite good though there were others in later years that would exhibit greater skill and fortitude (not to mention craftiness) than these ones. I was then transported in what was called a cage I think. You must have seen pictures of it in your textbooks. Obsolete now, what a pity. I almost miss the wires and the small squares that limit your view to one perspective rather like your TV’s.

So where was I? Right. I was taken to this laboratory. Amazing how much of there equipment was redundant and useless. They were and still are amazingly backward. They used generators to power their machines. Generators generate electricity dunderhead. Don’t you learn anything in that pathetic excuse for a school they have here. This is what comes of adopting the other education system.* Useless, absolutely useless.

Alright, alright I’m getting on with it. Women! Nag, nag, nag that is all they ever do. Especially this one.

I fascinated them. Called me a fine specimen. Specimen humph! I’ll show them specimen.

So I was put in a “controlled environment”. Just a fancy way of not calling a cage a cage. They had a wheel in it for god’s sake. I was supposed to run around on it like some kind of moron. Unfortunately I was under strict orders to give them full satisfaction and cooperate with them. That, young ones, is bureaucratese for “don’t screw up or we’ll have to dump you permanently”.

Anyway we had been studying them for quite sometime and the local skrinsh had told me all about programmed responses and behavioural patterns. I followed their instructions to the ‘m’ and of course gathered all the data I could on their responses.

The most common one seemed to come from the female of their species who had a particularly disgusting habit of bending down and shrieking (into my ear no less) “ Oh! How adorable. Isn’t he just the cutest mousie wousie you ever saw?” To add insult to injury they would the brush those two appendages that are always flapping open at the slightest notice over my (shudder) head. I would have red streaks or pink on my head for days after. Disgusting!

The first of the experiments was simple-devastatingly so. I was trained to salivate at the sound of a whistle. They made sure that every time I saw food a whistle was blown. I was supposed to salivate every time I saw the food and hence they assumed I would automatically do so every time the whistle was blown. Well that truth of the matter is that-I did. God! They dangled strips of mouldy doughnuts in front of me. What was I supposed to do about it?

Then I decided to have some fun with them. I never could resist messing around with their carefully laid plans. More than that it was an excellent chance to lead the higher ups on a wild goose chase.

The next time they blew that whistle I salivated so much my cage was half full of goo. I regurgitated the previous days dinner, lunch and a few unmentionables. (I never knew how good deodorant tasted until I was introduced to Revlon.)

Well I pretended I had drowned in my own spit. You should have seen the uproar it caused there. Hoo boy! It makes me feel twenty moons younger to think of that. They pulled me out and one nut even tried CPR-from human to rat. One of his colleagues wondered whether I would survive the onslaught of his co-worker’s halitosis. What they didn’t know and still don’t know is that we tars survive on halitosis.* I was naturally “revived” to the fullest by the smell and in order to investigate where that delicious olfactory sensation was being produced I decided to track down the source. Of course that meant having to wiggle into the other’s cavernous mouth. The fathead actually went into convulsions and in the end his overburdened heart went in to hyper drive and he.. Well he warped out straight into the next dimension. Personally, I think it was because of all those chocolates he used to stuff himself with and not the sight of himself with a pink tail hanging out of his mouth and a furry sensation inside it. It still is a lovely tale-I mean tail.

That wasn’t quite the end of it. I was (as usual) told in the strictest possible terms that if I did not behave myself my supply of fresh, mouldy, saccharine saturated, caffeinated doughnuts would stop. Now that was a warning I had to take seriously considering the fact that it was enforced by a shrill squeaky aggravating female enforcer who sounded (and looked) like she meant every word of it. That she stills threatens to do that to me today is only because it’s become a habit with her. She hasn’t even changed the wording since the time we’ve been married.

Yes, yes that’s how we met. She was my “watchdog”. At least that’s what those others would call her-if they had known of her in the first place. Believe it or not, she was the one who dragged me to the Supreme Commandura to get married. All that other talk of women’s lib really got to her in those days. She claimed it was for my “protection” and that it would be easier for her to keep tabs on me that way. Women, I tell you, have the funniest notions at times. She actually thought she would be able to keep me in check. Hah! She soon learnt that wasn’t going to be possible… “ Yes dear! Yes dear I took out the banana peels…yes I dumped the leftovers for the cat outside…yes I had my milk and cheese…”

Where was I? Ah yes…we had many adventures together Athram and I. There is so little time to tell you all about them. She insists that I get to bed now…there she goes again. Nag, nag, nag. Women …can’t live with them; fool enough to want to live with them.

Goodnight then. Maybe some other day I will tell you all the adventures I had topside. Maybe I’ll even call them “The Tail of the Tar”…has a nice ring to it. Don’t you think so?

---

* The rats in an attempt to distinguish themselves from the Homo sapiens species (whom they felt they were imitating to an alarming degree) decided to adopt human words but in the reverse order to ensure that no human ever found out that the rats had such an advanced society. Rats have always been fiercely protective of their interests and their territories especially after a particularly nasty incident wherein a dyslexic rat was sent as a specimen volunteer to the laboratory. He wrote all his communications the wrong way round (for the rats that is) and in the process allowed the humans to catch a glimpse of what their intentions actually were.

* The tar’s dislike for all things human are well documented. What they particularly loathe is the human education system. They believe that this education is actually a form of brainwashing and shudder to even think of putting their young ones through such a grinder of a system. One well-known experiment with human educational systems saw an entire generation of tars throw themselves in front of a speeding 16 wheeler. Research scholars have still not found the motive behind this unusual instance of mass suicide.

* Rats are well known for their attraction towards foul smells and all kinds of rot. One of tar’s illustrious forbears categorised halitosis into 298.769 types and categories. His work is regarded as a masterpiece and is believed to outstrip any research done on the subject by human medical specialists. There is an ongoing movement to publish this seminal work topside so that adolescents can work towards that elusive dream of finding a partner for prom night.

The First Story

So in the beginning there was nothing. Narada (who lived right at the edge of the nothingness) was bored of looking out onto the …well nothingness. There wasn’t anything else he could look at you know. He had been banished to the edge of the void because like all other fourteen-year-old boys, he had taken his dad’s vimana out for a spin on the Milky Way (not the chocolate by the way) and had gotten caught for speeding. So he had been banished (temporarily of course). And he was bored.

“Just gotta getta aaout, just gotta getta raight aout of heeare”. He had a very funny accent-a cross between an aatchi and some uptight English kaaran- a precursor, some say, to Freddie Mercury. If you don’t know who that is, ask your dad. And if your dad was one of those not influenced by the hippie movement, then …well find someone who was. Actually you could ask your mom too but then she might not want to admit that she was one of the pot smoking, free thinking, …you know what they were like back then.

So he decided to do some exploring. He went out and explored and then gave up after some time as he soon found out that you couldn’t really explore nothingness. So he clomped back to his house, sat at the window and stared…and stared…and stared.

And jumped up, rushed out of the house and scooped up the shining ball from the edge of the void. It was round-as all balls should be. It sparkled and shimmered and pulsed with all kinds of colours. It was also warm to the touch, which was really surprising, as you know how cold the void can be. That did not occur to Narada because he, like many other children of his age, had not been paying any attention to his physics classes at all.

He looked closely and saw that the ball was made of hundreds of iridescent streams of colours that seemed to flow into each other and not stop flowing. They mixed and moved like the chutney in a mixie except the ball did not make any noise.

He was puzzled and intrigued by it. He turned it this way and that and this way again but no, he still couldn’t figure it out. Then he saw something even strange. In the midst of all that colour he saw something black. A little, black pointy tip kind of thing, you know the kind that just begs to be pulled and poked and twisted. So he did exactly that and then…there was light.

Narada was flung several light years away and thankfully landed on what was to become the Oort cloud-you know, the nebulous thingamajig from where the comets come…right you don’t know. Well, it suffices to say that he landed in a softer part of the galaxy. He was still recovering from that outpouring of incandescence when he was rapidly hauled up by his ear. I am sure you must all know what a painful experience it is to have your ear pulled, even in fun and this was not fun.

He saw or rather squinted at a tall, handsome man with a pair of very fancy shades wrapped around his head. No this is not Cyclops…wait won’t you! This tall man with the shades had a furious look on his face, to put it mildly. “What have you gone and done this time, you young rascal?”, he thundered. Narada looked really terrified now. “By my formidable father’s beard, I have had it,.” he thought to himself. He put on a look of injured innocence and started to shake his head when a voice like the chiming of a thousand temple lamps boomed out across the now rapidly filling void. “Look Oh beings! Look! Our hour of reckoning draws near. We must retire or die.” With this rather gloomy pronouncement, the world as we know it began to take shape. There did you see that? That was the first volcano and that BHOOm was the first sea coming into being. By the way all the water spilled out of the lota Shiva was carrying, as he was so surprised at the turn of events that he dropped the vessel with a clang. It later went on to become the Big Dipper.

Everything was in fast-forward or so it seemed to the beings that stood silent spectators to this once in a lifetime act of creation. They saw small little things crawl out of the sand live and die in a few precious microseconds. They saw planets die and form again in the rapidly increasing expanse of the galaxy that filled the void. They saw many, many things but the strangest of all was the emergence of a creature that looked like a miniaturised version of the great beings that stood watching this process. Naturally they were most shocked at this development.

You see what had happened was that Vishnu’s youngest child had lost his ball. Now that ball was very special because that sphere contained the essence of all life. So you see, that is why it was so necessary to have the contents of that ball constantly being churned up so that in the end you would have a perfect mix, rather like the perfect dosai batter, to make the perfect world. Vishnu’s youngest child was supposed to grow up to become the guardian of this perfect world but as things turned out; the ball was unravelled at the wrong time. So the world that was created wasn’t perfect- not by a long shot.

Vishnu realised what had happened and so banished Narada (again) to the edge of the universe. Except this time, he made sure that Narada could not get out of his house at all.

Meanwhile the gods watched in astonishment and surprise as the world evolved into a planet unlike anything they had ever conceived before. More than one admired the sheer diversity of life and intelligence on the planet and even went so far as to say, “This has got to be the greatest miracle of all”. Truer words were never spoken. You guessed it…this world was what we call Earth today. The gods really didn’t have a name for it then so they just called it Srishti, which means creation in some old, obscure language. Little did they realise what the creation of this new planet actually meant for them.

They watched as these strange creatures did stranger things to the planet they called home. One of the species suddenly took two random sticks, rubbed them together and made ahhhh! They made fire…that’s right, Fire. The gods looked around in wariness now wondering which one of them could have given the formula for this most sacred of elements to these uncouth animals. Then something even more terrifying happened. They suddenly started speaking…intelligible sounds that even the gods could understand. Worse, they were speaking in that obscure language the gods themselves used. Then things fell apart. These creatures became civilized and started doing all the things the gods used to do. From predicting the weather, to writing about the existence of other life forms, even creating new materials from the resources they had on the planet…and all without external aid. This really angered the gods. One of the braver gods volunteered to go down to the planet disguised as one of the creatures and find out exactly how they managed to gather so much information in so little time. Before he could do that they heard a startling pronouncement from this new planet.

“God id dead”, said a small, tinny voice. There was absolute silence for a heartbeat. Then the entire universe seemed to convulse with laughter at the absurd statement. Everyone knows that the universe would not exist if the gods had not thought it up in the first place.

Wait a minute! What was happening? The gods were fading away as if …no it was not possible. There was no way they could be fading away just because of one silly, presumptuous statement made by some anonymous creature. But it was true. The gods were fading away, slowly and then faster and faster until there was nothing left of them at all. They just vanished as if they had never existed at all.

The universe thought it was just some prank that they had decided to pull. But it waited and waited until it realised that they weren’t coming back ever. No gods at all, would the universe dissolve into chaos? The answer to that seemed pretty obvious when a pert little star commented, “I don’t see why we have to worry so much. We have managed not to dissolve into chaos for quite sometime now. Who says we can’t do without the gods? And oh yeah…in case you have forgotten, Narada is still alive somewhere on the edges of the known universe. He would qualify as a god, wouldn’t he?”

The universe nodded its sage head in agreement and managed to get Narada out of the house he was not supposed to leave. Narada was nonplussed and very confused. He had no idea about what had happened during his confinement. When he found out that all the gods had vanished because of that one statement he took a trip down to the new planet.

He found that not one of the inhabitants of that planet had any clue as to how they got there in the first place. What was even worse was that, all they had were some nonsensical scientific theories about the beginning of time and absolutely no stories. He couldn’t believe it. They had no stories anywhere at all, no way of telling their children what their heritage was all about.

He had to do something about it. He owed it to his parents and the memory of the other gods. So he sat down and started writing the story of how the world was created by accident and not because some particulate matter had collided with some other random material floating about in the void causing a Big Bang. See that is exactly why he had to write a story to explain the creation of the world. He wrote, and wrote, and wrote and after many, many solar months, he finished it. He put it down on a comet just so that he could stretch his arms when the comet suddenly whizzed away and his story went flying all over the universe.

It whizzed away so fast that he had no time to catch it. By some strange coincidence (for which the universe is known), the story finally fluttered down to this planet now known as Earth. It fluttered gently onto a pile of books in a small dusty little bookshop, in the middle of a little village with an unpronounceable name. A little boy came wandering in. It was his birthday and he had some money to spend so he wandered all over the bookstore trying to find a book that he liked. A thick pile of papers on top of the used notebooks pile caught his attention. For some reason he felt compelled to buy the book, though it did not look like any book he had seen before. The storekeeper himself was puzzled as to the origin of the book but then why should he bother with it as long as he gets the money. So the little boy took his new book and sat down to read it. He opened it to the first page and saw, “In the beginning, there was nothing. I mean absolutely nothing. I can’t tell you it was dark or bright or empty or full because….there was nothing. Ever tried to describe nothingness? I thought not.”

So that is how the first story came into being.

It's midnight. Or rather midnight has passed on and the first phase of the day has already started. Its is rather funny to say day when the view outside consists of darkness and more darkness punctuated by pinpoints of flickering light; the last bastions of humanity in a world going slowly but surely insane. This is reminiscent of a scene from Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand where Galt stops the motor of the world and all that lights go out except for one constant flame that is Wyatt's torch waving in the distance. There is a curious mix of anticipation and dread that courses through me at this point in time. I have never stayed awake this late. It feels strange and not a little bit exciting; a bit like sneaking out of hostel to take a walk to Cave rock just so that you can slip past the watchman. Except here there is no one to outwit and no one to cock a snook at. That does make the entire exercise a little disappointing. Funny how the mind seems to insist on reasoning out the consequences of such adventures. I have class tomorrow...So what? It isn't as if I will be doing much there anyway. The year has come to an end and which self respecting student will want to study when you know holidays are just around the corner. I am a self respecting student and no, I don't want to go to college tomorrow i.e. today.
I also detest having to stick to deadlines as a friend of mine would cheerfully attest to. I wonder what my journalist pal has to say about this. Maybe he hates deadlines too...Who knows! Deadlines are the punctuations that liberally checker my student career and have always spelt doom for me.I have either lost my drafts or placed them somewhere so carefully that i have forgotten where exactly i kept them in the first place. Or else I just take the easy way out and not to do it at all. That, in my opinion, is the easiest and hardest way to get out of assignments and tamper with deadlines.

me 

of Dreams and Laughter

I just finished a production with the Madras Players and Just us Repertory called Rural Phantasy. I can't begin to describe the incredible joy that this production engendered for me. The initial reservations looked to be quite insurmountable and I wondered what in the world was i doing? It took a lot of convincing and a lot of midnight rambles on the parapets of my terrace to finally figure out that i wanted to do this play. Initially there werejust two factors that absolutely impelled me to take part in this:
a) T.M.Krishna-whom I revere, adore and place second only to my guru. The man can sing and boy does he know it.
b) Gowri akka...that is what she is to me now but before i met her I adored The way she wrote and had heard enough and more about her talents and her genius. Add to that the fact that she is steeped in music was enough to pull me in.
Looking back on those early days, I can see how reserved and cautious I was. There...I can almost hear the rest of the gang saying,"Namboodri, you! cautious! hah!"Their voices echo in the inmost recesses of my mind, I do not think they will ever go away. I don't think I want them too.
So i gave it a shot and fell in love...with the most amazing bunch of people i have ever met.Eclectic would describe them to the T...different walks of life,different age groups and none of it made the slightest difference at all.I, the eternally hungry one, just sat on the sidelines, munching away on channa bun and puff, and watched them enjoy themselves. That, to me, was the most astounding phenomenon i had ever seen...a whole bunch of people just enjoying themselves.It didn't matter if you had a rough day or had fought with your better half, everyone seemed hellbent on making you smile.
There was Andrea wafting all over the place as if a puff of air would blow her down and then you saw her wolf down those deliciously sinful, ghee laden sweets Ramnarayan uncle got us from Grand Sweets. Sundar usually waltzed in on her arm doing his own version of the St.Vitus hop. I heard thunder one day wondered how it was going to rain on a fine, humid Chennai day when Mathi comes thumping in on his brute of a bike. I have a serious crush on the bike.
Karthik would walk in, moving to his own version of 'Zombie'...he added depth to the term Dead Man Walking or should I say Stoned Man Walking?
The women were the highlight of the day. All of them were equally gorgeous and equally bright. They were graceful,delicate and... oh boy!I can hear the howls of denial flying in from the ether and crashing into my head here...as i was about to add, the craziest bunch of women i have ever met.We have had some downright crazy times together...Manasi, remember our inside joke on vaadyar saar and the unmentionable part of his life? That , I must add, was all thanks to yours trulyi.e.moi
For me , the most unforgettable experience was watching vaadyar saar bob up and down, and up and down and back again while he walked around in the dances. Whatever he might say, he is not an execrable dancer, he is merely deplorable. He should have been a vaudeville performer...he is that good.
The people-they are the ones who made this come alive for me. Without them, i don't think this play would have worked. But then, I am just a wriggly,sqiggly infinitesimal part of the entire 'ensemble' and what i know about theatre would fit into the smallest stitch, at the end of the little toe of a baby's sock(just so that you all know too).
I miss them and miss them terribly. Now i know why they call it withdrawal symptoms. We all wander down our chosen paths, now to meet and now to part. One of those turns was this play and now i wish it were the road instead of just part of the way.

ok here goes an experiment I hope will be successful..to say the least.There is so much to say and so few pointers. I guess it is nice to wade through uncharted territory. A little frightening, very exciting and wholly satisfying.
I can't even pretend to be bored by this phenomenon. I am not ashamed to admit that i am technically challenged...anyone who knows me knows that. So it's exciting to hop onto the blogging bandwagon and just have fun. that's what life isabout ....having fun. All the time and every second. To just ride on the happiness that seems to pull you along with it and take you to places you never dreamed of knowing. At times like this, the world is at your feet and i feel like Alladin on his first magic carpet ride. A whole new world it is and i intend to keep exploring.