Pitch dark

A shadow has crept over my soul

Inching through my defences

Making me darkness herself

I wallow in grief over things lost

In the invisible bonfire

And try to survive on the warmth of embraces

Of kindred spirits

Only that it feels like a stranglehold

And I push them away with a

Weaponized tongue and my newfound strangeness

Friends and foes are all the same

Only difference is the name.

I burn through whatever light I get

Worried I might never see again

In haste I commit little crimes

And wallow once more again. 

Sangili Bungili Open the Door

Hi guys! Wish you all a Happy New year. With New year comes the question of constantly reinventing oneself and I decided to experiment by  collaborating on a fictional story with Prason - Humor blogger and CFO of the soora mokkai blog - Chronicwriter . You can check out the blog Here , it is a damn chill blog actually and you can thank me later for introducing this kind of awesomeness in your life. So what Prason and I have done is essentially snowball a story from scratch. He writes a line and then I write one spontaneously making it all up and having tonnes of fun in the process. Hope you have as much fun reading it as we had making it.

Disclaimer - The post contains liberal doses of tanglish.

Prason

Prashanth was frantically searching for his laptop.

It was right here inside my backpack.  And now it's not. The backpack zip is open and my favourite key-chain that was fixed with the zip is missing .

My hands instinctively reached for my Jean zip and I was relieved to know that they were all in the right place.

Someone had definitely stolen my lap top. It definitely cannot be my mom. She already has a mac.

My backpack was under the bed; and hence it cannot be the maid too because she does not even clean anything under the bed.

It cannot be my girlfriend because well I don't have one and it cannot be my boyfriend too because I am not gay.

Yen ipdi mokka potu saavadikiraenaa, technically and basically I'm an IT guy and this is all I have in my life. As I am an IT guy, I do have a photography page and all my pictures are in my laptop. And oh my yesunadha! I just realized there are damning pictures of me trying out my nandu brand lungis

Well, I am kidding; there’s more than just my nandu brand mishaps. There is a floor plan of my office which I am going to rob day after tomorrow.

There are three other people in my team and I hate one of them. It cannot be Surya because he only recruited me. Or could this be his masterplan all along? It could be because we both like the same girl – “Smitha” from our team. Trust me when I say Smitha is worth sending someone to jail. Her eyes! They make my heart beat so fast that if I let it out, it can out run Ussain Bolt and create a new world record in the 100 metre dash.

Her voice makes chinna kuyil chitra sound like kovai Sarala. So I never tell her to sing. I never tell her anything actually. But I do talk a lot with Pooja, the other girl in our team. Surya hated it when ever I talked with Pooja or Smitha.

Why did I agree to the stupid robbery plan? I thought it was a stupid joke of course till it was not and by then I had already revealed too much to Pooja. I think she hated me because I liked Smitha and maybe she was the one who flicked the laptop?

My thoughts are jumping so wildly today. I shouldn't have probably had all the free filter kaapi shots. I guess Surya drugged me with those kaapi; he was too friendly with me. I am sure Pooja and Surya are together on this.

I try to call them with my phone. Alas! My phone is also missing. I had last seen it in my back pocket. What the fruit is happening guys?

All I have is this one Rupee coin. I have no other option but to invest this coin and become a millionaire. And for that I need to leave this damned room. And this is when I realize that the door is locked. Not the sharpest day for the 10th topper today.

Well I gotta pee now. My bladder is full and time is ticking too. I have used all my karate and yoga skills to control this tsunami attack. But aathratha adakkalaam. But moothratha kandippa control panna mudiyaadhu. Let me unload eshwaraaa! I wake up in a pool of sweat from my bed and I look under the bed immediately. I can see my laptop peeping through the backpack.

Prason's version of the same story is up on his blog. Do check it out!

My Bookshelf Challenge

So My favorite comic artist Grant Snider From Incidental Comics uploaded this marvellous work recently. The thing about his comic strips are that they are so detailed and the words have as much power as the images. I thought I'll do my annual book update via this structure. So Here goes..

2017 has been a disappointing year reading wise. I read only 13 books of my target 30. I also read out of my comfort zone. Sci Fi , Tamil fantasy , Rural based books and classics are really not my cup of tea and cold the cup remained till I gulped it like a medicine. 

Don't worry I also hate it when they make the movie poster the book cover

The Sci Fi book was Ender's Game. Not bad actually got sucked into the dystopian alien fighting kids fighting monsters schtick in the end. Apparently it is a whole big franchise. Read it if you are into that kinda thing. 

The two tamil books I tried this year were Ponniyin Selvan and Moondram Ulaga Por. 

Must Read

Ponniyin Selvan was every bit the epic it promised to be and I can't wait to read the next books in the series! Kalki is really an artist of mythical proportions. However , since I was reading Tamil after a very long time it took me time to read this book. 

Moodram Ulaga Por was quite honestly Moondram Ulaga Bore. While Tamil flows like poetry to our author Vairamuthu , the subject matter is handled very didactically. But lots of mann vasanai and muyal kari. I can understand why people would relate to this book. However , I didn't think we needed a literal white savior to fix our agrarian scenario. 

I read Gulliver's Travels finally. While it was fascinating at first , some of the adventures like meeting the floating island people and science hating people got boring real fast. Still a fascinating satire which makes us question the nature of Human Civilisation. 

Moving on to the challenge : - 

1) The Book I couldn't put down - Every Jefferey Archer book. Every Damn one. That man knows how to write a story. If I had to pick one , it will be Kane and Abel probably. 

<3

2) The book I couldn't pick up - My law textbooks are heavy af 

3) The book you gave me / which I haven't read - Oops. Quite a lot unfortunately. First on the line will be Jackdaws by Ken Follett gifted by Naveena which I will read ASAP. 

4) The book I brought to the beach - Who does that to books? :O Although when I was a kid I used to sneak Famous Five books into the bathroom so that I can read in between my bath. Yes , I was that kid. 

5) The book I tried so hard to like - More like the book I am trying so hard to like. War of the Worlds by HG Wells. My my I never knew end of the world can be this boring! Another book that I just couldn't sit through was Shame By Taslima Nasreen. How can someone cut paste stuff from wikipedia and call that a book?

6) Book I have multiple copies of - Only Time will Tell By Jefferey Archer. It came out in 2010 right around my birthday and suddenly everyone was gifting me the same thing! This made me lay down a rule that No more Jefferey Archer books as gifts on my b'day ( my brother was assigned to buy me them every year ^_^ somehow every Clifton Chronicle book released around by Birth date :D ) 

7) The Book that saved my life - Well a lot of books have shaped me as a person. Secret Seven Series by Enid Blyton opened the magical pathways to books for me. This saved me from becoming a Tamil Serial addict at the tender age of 8 :P 

8) The Book I lent you - I have a strict no lending policy and catalogue all my books. They are my treasure , how can I risk losing them? 

9) The book I fall asleep to every night - I never re read , there are too many books to be read out there! 

10) The book I mistook for a hat - Blasphemy!

11) The book I am desperately trying to write - History written as fun short stories for kids. 

12) All the books that changed my life - Oh boy. Five Find outers Series by Enid Blyton , Harry Potter Series by JK Rowling , Mahatma Gandhi by Louis Fischer , Perry Mason Series by Erle Stanley Gardner , Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth and Paths of Glory By Jefferey Archer. 

You can also respond to these questions in the comments! Will be fun trust me. 

Alphabet Song

Image from the internet

We’re all at the Anonymous Café

Basking in each other’s misery

Cotton over our bleeding hearts

Defying Death and all her friends

Ever ready to give it another go

Fossiled memories motivating rather than defeating

Grape sized heart can carry

Such humongous weight

Ignominious defeats

Justifying its strength

Kudos to us all for still trying hard.

Lavish meals and meringue pies

Can only take you so far

Novice Romantics chuckle at us silently

Our orchestra of sadness drown them quiet easily.

Be proud of all the battle scars

Queer we are not for choosing this

Rocky path

Songs getting written by of us at this very moment

Taste of victory after testing times is the best after all.

Right? 

So the Toads had an interesting prompt where you take a letter-word and run with it. I ran with the letters from A-T then ignored UVWXYZ because I already made my point. 

Sense of an Ending

Once I was the new girl

quietly inhabiting my corner 

Inhibitions galore 

Tongues tied with awkwardness 

wrapping me up, producing no comfort. 

It took a fair amount of time,

some nice humans and 

a good deal of ass kicking and coffee smelling 

to be me in front of them. 

Then school got over and college got me

starting all over again. 

College took a fair bit longer 

with relocation , Hindi and whatnot

I had resigned myself to my fate 

of becoming the crazy cat lady or

the pigeon lady from Home alone. 

All it took was one kind human 

to introduce me to her friends 

With them I could finally 

Stand in the sun. 

A big family of friends we became 

a noisy bunch , food bonded us 

to extraordinary measures

We ate more than we spoke

maybe the only reason restaurants

didn't kick us out! 

We handled failures and successes 

makeovers and breakdowns 

with much elan 

and stuck with each other through it all. 

Intimidating other individuals with our 

sheer numbers

we had a ball! 

Now the days are vanishing rapidly 

and the sun might set on us after all. 

The time to restart is looming around the corner 

I  wish this time that 

I can put them in my pockets 

and carry them wherever I want!