Ram Mohan Roy ( 28.01.07 )

He looked up at the warden and said nothing. He said nothing because he had nothing to say. Infact he could not remember the last time he had said something. For him, everything ceased to exist. His last hope had also gone. His only route to escape.

He had wanted to kill himself by wringing his own neck with the bedsheet, but the usually inefficient warden, Mr. Roy, was awake that night. He had meant to be silent that night but a groan had escaped from his throat and this the warden had heard. He could not even die in peace. After that incident, his bedsheet and pillow were taken away and he had to sleep on hard ground. His misery knew no end.

His name was Ram. He was an ordinary guy living an ordinary life. He was an unusually silent person. He talked only to reply and he talked in monosyllables. He had made only one good friend in his life. His friend was Mohan. They both worked as assistant accountants and earned just enough to keep their stomachs filled.

Ram could still remember that fateful night. Inspite of all his efforts to forget, the incident seemed to have been etched in his memory. After another monotonous and dreary day at the office, he had set out to go to  Mohan`s home. He rang the bell but no one answered. He pushed the entrance door and it turned out to be unlocked. Inside, he saw his friend lying on the floor, stabbed on his chest. The sight of so much blood unhinged him for a moment but after regaining his senses he rushed to take out the knife from his friend`s chest. This proved to be a mistake, as his fingerprints in the knife would later sentence him to a life in jail. The knife stab had done enough damage on Mohan, he was dead. Ram`s next reaction was to call the police and inform them of the stabbing. After that, he left for his home and as soon as he reached his home, he collapsed on his bed.

It took a month for the city police to trace Ram. The investigating officer was keen to prove his intelligence and worth. Taking Ram`s fingerprints as conclusive proof, he piled up enough evidence to convict Ram of murder of his friend Mohan.

The judiciary was quickly convinced of Ram`s guilt. It took the judge only 3 years to decide that Ram was indeed a murderer. After listening to the public prosecutor about the case, even Ram was unsure about his innocence. It seemed to him that whoever was a better speaker between the defense lawyer and the prosecutor would get the result in his favour. The public prosecutor turned out to be a smooth orator and Ram got a life term. After witnessing this farce called justice, Ram suggested to the judge to punish him with the death penalty instead of the life term. This further confirmed Ram`s guilt in the eyes of all.

In jail, Ram was gifted a special cell all to himself where he could live in solitude. He owed this luxury to the fact that he was a dangerous murderer. In the beginning, he would tell that he was innocent to the only person in his vicinity, the Warden. The Warden would do nothing but nod his head. Eventually even those words faded away and ram stopped speaking at all.

17 years later, it was time for the Warden to retire. In these years he had not failed to notice the agony in Ram`s eyes. Never for a moment had he believed that Ram was a murderer. The Warden was basically a good man. In a gush of sympathy for Ram, he asked Ram whether he could do something for him. Ram wanted nothing but to end the never ending misery and torment that his life had become. Ram asked the Warden to lend him a blade. The Warden instantly understood the implication of the words, yet he agreed for he was a good man. Ram took his life the same day and finally gained the freedom that he was longing for.

The next day, the Warden received a notice stating that prisoner Ram was to be released and his life imprisonment term was to be reduced considering his good and peaceful behaviour.

A modern fairy tale

He knew what he was doing. People considered him insane but he was in total control of himself. Even when he was pricking his nose in public or cold-bloodedly killing a man in privacy. The world outside suffocated him. The others did not want to think nor feel. Pre-programmed bunch of automations he thought of them. No wonder people have stopped wondering he wondered. No one was able to understand him. He saw a dog from the corner of the eye. Maybe that dog could understand him. Energized by this thought he ran to the dog. "Woof Woof" he told the dog. The dog gave him a blank look. The dog started thinking " Would it be OK if I pee on it. I hope it wont bite me or scratch me with its claws". The man confused the blank look for an understanding look and hugged the dog lovingly. The dog pissed on the man lovingly. The dog and the man became instant friends and lived happily after for like two minutes.

What is the purpose of living. The purpose is theorising anything and everything.

"What" He asked.

"What What?" Someone asked.

"What is what?" He asked. He got into the mood. "Define what for me. What is the meaning of what?"

Someone looked into the floor. Someone and He had a strange relationship. They both never understood each other but needed each other because they had no one else to talk to. Someone was perplexed by what He was talking about.

'What the hell is what' Someone thought without giving it much of a thought. What can what be, he had no idea.

"What is the question?" Someone asked Him.

"What itself is the question" He replied. He had something going on in his mind but he did not know "what" it was. 'What can it be?' He was thinking. But thinking was proving to be too painful and difficult. "What is there for breakfast" He said, trying to change the subject.

"OK, so what is a thing to eat, why didn`t you tell me before" Someone replied.

Now, it was His` turn to get confused. He could not get what someone was saying. "What`s going on?" He asked.

Someone replied "I dont know".

Our friend He wanted to sound intelligent and tried to control the situation. He said "If we come to know just what is then we will come to know what is going on".

Someone did not want to be left behind in the game of sounding pseudo intellectual. Someone replied " If we know what what is then we will eventually come to know what is the meaning of life and then we will know the ultimate answer to the existence of the universe"

Satisfied with this explanation, both He and Someone proceeded to eat breakfast. Dont ask "what" it was that they actually ate.

A happening thing happened.

He was in pain. A pain which cannot be described easily. The pain was not due to any physical hurt. The scarring was deep inside. Within him something had burst and he was suffering internally, bleeding from inside. Outside he looked jolly to the world, always smiling and always cracking jokes, but all those smiles were a mask to hide that same pain. People looked at him and liked him instantly. They never saw what he was going through every moment. Nobody did. He was just trudging along existence,suffocating inside and sometimes having difficulty breathing. He would break down when alone and lie down looking at the ceiling all night. Imagining the walls crushing him from all sides. His eyes would be blank with sorrow, looking but not seeing. He had to live with the knowledge that the one person he loved the most, his mother, could die any moment.

The curious mystery which happened on a tree.

John and Terry were sitting on a tree in an open field and were trying to write a poem. They were writing a poem separately. But coincidentally they wrote the very same lines and the very same words. Even the commas matched to the dot. Incidentally both did not use any commas. This is the poem they wrote-

Random Nothingness.

Onwards towards the path of nothingness
Nothing has been seen and nothing has been taken.

On the path to disaster and plenitude
Seemingly smart, but obnoxiously dull.

There is nothing but flotsam and jetsam of everything
The life, the universe and everything as Dougie would put it.

Onwards towards the path of nothingness
The destination is reached when you dont know that you have reached it.

They compared the poems that they had written. When they noticed that the poems they had written were identical they were dismayed. Now they would have to converse with each other. Reluctantly, they started conversing. The quality of conversation was not bad. This was how it went.

John-" My day job is of an equity analyst. Instead, I daydream and become an existential analyst"

Terry-" I am a professional nailcutter. People who are too bored and lazy to cut their own nails come to me to get their nails cut. I have a booming profession"

John-"Oh"

Then they started looking at the hands of each other. Terry had the most beautiful and well shaped hands. Just like words shape your mind, the shape of the hands blow away your mind. John was getting blown away by the shape of the hands. He noticed his own hands. His hands were identical to Terry`s. He got suspicious. He carefully looked at Terry and noticed his reflection looking back from a mirror placed on the tree. He cursed expletives at having met himself. Is my name really John, John wondered. "No", his mind replied, "Your name is Jerry and you are a combination of John and Terry".

"Very convenient" thought Jerry who previously existed as John and had an alter ego called Terry.

Jerry was perplexed. He started contemplating the complexity of the situation. He decoded the situation as follows-" Its cloudy today. Chances of rain perhaps" Jerry concluded. He jumped from the tree, landed on the ground and proceeded to buy an umbrella.

The story of Alfred and Christopher, one Nihilist and the other Philosopher.

Alfred and Christopher were plagued by problems. Their problems were not the normal ones that you and I face. Theirs were of a different kind. Both of them had matured too early for their age. At age 10, when kids of that age would think of videogames or games of any sort, these two friends would discuss Socrates, Marx and Bertrand Russell. They would talk and talk and talk. One fine day they discovered the fruitlessness of life. Alfred was the first to discover it. He told his friend “Life`s of no use buddy. Eat, sleep and shit. That’s all there is to it”. Christopher comprehended it, but pretended not to. He did not want to. He went home and went to sleep. When he woke up he was a changed man. Nothing mattered to him anymore. He did not feel like earning money. His dad had left him enough money that he could eat, sleep and shit for a lifetime. He did not feel like achieving fame and success. That would only result in eating unhealthy fast food which does not taste half as good as home food. Fame and success would ensure a luxurious bed, but that would not ensure a good night`s sleep. Chasing fame and success did not seem like a good idea if it would lead to sleepless nights. Ofcourse you could shit royally if you made loads of money. There was something to fame and success after all, Christopher felt. Shitting in a palatial bathroom would be orgasmic almost. He felt a surge of motivation and an excessive urge to achieve fame and success. But these sentiments only lasted till he remembered his own bathroom. In his own bathroom, he had made friends with Gary the Mouse and Tommy the Cockroach. They had made his bathroom their natural habitat and lived a well settled life there. No, he couldn`t desert his comrade at arms. If that meant sacrificing metallic and aesthetically designed faucets and technologically advanced bidets, so be it. He was a guy who stuck with his friends through thick and thin. So the idea of fame and success was thrown out of the window. He leapt out of the window himself and proceeded to take a walk in the park. There he saw people worrying and brooding over the problems hanging over their head. Christopher felt intense jealousy when he looked at these people. “These people are so alive” he thought. The people had so many things to worry about. Job security, spouses, weight, kids, their education, getting ahead of others in the success ladder, owning a shinier car than the neighbour, the sky falling on their heads or wondering where their next meal would come from. Yes, people had so many things to worry about. There were real problems and messy situations. And here he was with nothing to worry about. He started worrying about this. Immediately he started feeling better. There was meaning to life after all. This sudden realisation struck him like lightning. “That’s it”, he thought “I will worry because there is nothing to worry about”. Excitement flooded his body and he ran to Alfred to tell him his new discovery.

A funny thing happened.

The man was an ordinary one. Mediocre in every aspect. He was boring and uninteresting. He was the kind of person that you cant write a story about. But his friend was rather interesting and worth writing about. The man`s friend was imaginative, clever and interesting things happened to him.

While walking down the park he noticed a Cat. The Cat`s name was Mr. Cat. The cat was a female. Mr Cat wanted to have the man`s friend as a pet. The man`s friend was quite OK about being her pet. But he just had one problem. The man`s friend did not want to be potty trained. Mr. Cat could not agree to this. She thought that this would diminish her image and reduce her reputation in the society. So she insisted that the man`s friend be potty trained. But the man`s friend did not agree with this. He thought that this would impinge and encroach on his freedom. He wanted his space, that guy. Being potty untrained made him feel liberated.

Thus the deal could not be carried out and the merger could not be concluded between Mr. Cat and the man`s friend. The man`s friend stoically carried on with his journey. He reached his home. There, his wife hugged him and gave him a gift. It was a brand new leash. The man`s friend said "Woof Woof" and happily licked his wife`s face.