You

"Hello Darkness my old friend,
I've come to talk with you again"

~ Simon and Garfunkel


Today was the day you and I
Would meet under the floodlights 
The band would be playing a disco number 
And we'd have our hands in the air 
Or maybe we'd be dancing cheek to cheek
But the thing is, though the lights are on tonight
And the music is on loud 
I can't hear a word they're saying
Coz you aren't around 
And all I can hear is 
Darkness calling to me
Within the Sound of Silence

The Bilge Master

Lecter

A tribute to Hannibal Lecter

They told me the house on the hill was haunted 
And a mad axe murderer buried his bodies there 
They said he had never been caught 
And every full moon night his ghost came back
And took someone else 
Poor fools. 
They still don't understand 
There's no ghost in that house 
Just little old me 
And my garden of dead bodies

The Bilge Master

Rebel

If you were French 
I'd be a rebel in Paris 
Serenade you under a hail of bullets 
If you were German I'd bomb the Reich 
Maybe you'd see me 
On the fifth of November 
Painting the sky in smoke 
That spelled your name 
While around me the embers of a clock tower 
Chanted "Remember"
Sadly, I'm not a rebel 
I'm just a man 
And you're no angel 
Just a girl in a mask

The Bilge Master

Really Short Stories- Volume II

What happens when a bunch of people decide they want to tell really short stories?


This blog post.

Introducing Sangeeta from Bhavans, Debasmita Kumar of Jadavpur, Adrij from Scottish, Suprakash Basu from college, Arghya from college, my senior, Rupal Das from Automobile Engineering and the geek from Computer Science, Mr. Debanjan Bhattacharya and the one and only Udayan Das from Delhi; who have all come together to write a bunch of Terribly Tiny Tales, or as I like to call them- Really Short Stories

PS- there are a few in there by me as well. Just saying

Give them a hand people!

The Bilge Master

Part One

Sangeeta

The torn teddy reminded her of girlhood’s bliss. But today, they told her she was a woman.

What is that anyways?

Adrij

She held his hand firmly. He eased his own. She didn’t even realise. But, he knew. The other girl was waiting just around the corner

Debasmita

He smiled as he counted the coins. Outside, candles burnt beneath a portrait. Inside, the hearth burnt bright after a month.

Debanjan

Years after they broke up, she met him at a mall. She noticed their last picture, still in his wallet.

Suprakash

As the cigarette burns, so does something inside him. As the smoke steals his pain, the rain hides his tears.

Ashesh

I met someone. Wish you could have too. Been a while since I felt this way.

Anyway mom, see you tomorrow.

The hospital monitor beeped a hoarse goodbye

Part Two

Debasmita

“I was just thinking about you”, he said holding his hand out to her.

“Now you’ll live to be a hundred by my side”, she smiled crumpling the cancer reports in her hand

Udayan

“Your country needs you” read the flyers

“As a stepping stone”, he muttered as a bullet crashed into his side.

Ashesh

“I’m okay, don’t worry”

“I know”

“Trust me, the doc said everything is fine.”

“Everything but one. You never did learn to lie.”

Adrij

There was once a tree. Now just a piece of wood.

There was once a mother. Now just another name in his payroll

Suprakash

Fifteen years and a thousand arguments later, her one tear broke him.

Boxed in the coffin, his soul still feels.

Debasmita

“Ma’am we understand your sorrow.”

Clasping the medal she said with a smile, “I hope you never have to, good sir.”

Udayan

“How long will you stay?”

“What do you mean? I’m never leaving!”

Part Three

Adrij

She looked for her child desperately.

She searched her purse again and again.

“Did you lose a nickel, maam?”

“No. The memory of my son.”

Suprakash

He grew up with scars. But his father’s belt and his mother’s abuse; could not scar his child’s skin.

Her skin was flawless. Like his soul.

Debasmita

“Hello, little one!”

A sloppy kiss. A wag of the tail. Poured out all the love the heart could contain.

Part Four

Udayan

Every step was agony. Nothing could make him go on.

Except the child with his own blue eyes , cheering him on.

Ashesh

The two of them always traveled and took selfies. When she died, he went on travelling. The selfies he took had her in them, though her body was buried in the cemetery.

Debanjan

Hours after his birth, his father died. They said he was a curse to the family. But days before his death, he won the Oscar for Lifetime Achievement

Ashesh

“Bring it back!”

“But this one is real darling!”

“I don’t want real! I want the robot dog back!”

Udayan

He saw her. The same eyes, the same smile. Telling him to stay. But he could not. He walked to the light at the end of the tunnel, hating it.

 Ashesh

The silence spoke to him, and told him to embrace the darkness. One day, all alone he listened to the silence.

Adrij

She listened to music all day and played the clarinet all night.

Every Sunday she attended mass.

Imagine what she could have done, if she could hear.

Suprakash

“It’s a major operation”.

Words that paralysed his family.12 hours later, he came back with a new heartbeat. 21 days old

Persistent little bastard.

Debanjan

They lived in a bungalow. Now they own one room in a slum. But, everyday he hurries off hime, because he knows there is someone waiting for him.

Rupal Das

“Here’s your wedding gift. A watch.”

“A watch?”, she sneered.

“Time is the only thing I gave and can give to you.”

She turned and walked away to marry her banker groom.

Suprakash

“Your demons will ruin you. Accept and worship Him”, said the priest.

With a cold smile, the sinner replied, “My demons were not born to keel, but to kill.”

Udayan

He looked at his composition. Too bad not everyone understood his art. Putting a skeleton back together is an art.

Ashesh

Petichor was always soothing for him. Until they gave him a gun and he began staining the ground with blood.

Now petichor is tainted with the salty smell of congealed blood.

He hates when it rains.

Arghya

He kissed her long in the woods. They both knew this was it. The army got behind them. Taking their last breaths, they both knew they had to die one day as they gave birth to a revolution to be carried on.

Udayan

He gazed up towards the heavens. Even that gesture burned his eyes. He remembered the past. He reached out to feel for a pair of wings, no longer there.

 Ashesh

I’m not brilliant. Shakespeare is. Whitman is. I’m just a guy with a passable vocabulary.

This was his Pulitzer prize acceptance speech

Adrij

She banked herself to the corner. He approached her with caution. They snuggled. He reminded himself to be gentle. They made love.

Out came the order, “Gas the Jews”

Debasmita

The wind rustled through the trees. “Mother...?” he called.

Fifteen years. The trees still won’t give her back.

Ashesh

Mary had a little lamb. HAD.

Everyone forgot, the lamb grew up to be a sheep.

The same one Mary ate on Thanksgiving because there was no turkey.

Udayan

Alice visited Wonderland again. She paid the dealer 50 bucks for it.

Suprakash

Standing under a shed in the downpour, the man got out a fag.

“Hey man, got a light?”, he asked the man next to him.

“I wish” replied the blind man.

Rupal Das

She tied her hair, buttoned her collar and walked shaking towards her car in the parking lot.

Ashesh

He chewed gum to hide the smell of booze on his breath. Too bad peppermint doesn’t mix with blood like two pegs of whiskey.

 Debasmita

“I did it for my family”

“I did it for my family”

“I did it for my family”

“I did it for my family”

“I did it for...me”

Ashesh

“Holy Father, I have sinned.”

“So have I my son.”

“But you are above us all!”

“I am just a man. And no man is above God.”

Debanjan

He was standing in the middle of the fire. He did not abandon the house. His father had said, “Wait here. I’ll be back for you.”

Suprakash

He murdered their whole family. It wasn’t revenge. Just medicine for his scars. Guess, some scars run too deep.

Ashesh

“The words. Where do they come from?”, asked the author.

The words replied, “That is not your concern.”

The author demanded an answer.

The words left.

He hasn’t spoken or written a word since.

Ashesh

He wanted a place for his head in the house.

When she chopped it off, she did it just so, ensuring it would fit in the space above the mantelpiece, where the stuffed deer was.

Rupal Das

A right uppercut. A punch to the stomach. Finally a haymaker for total annihilation.

“Remember dad? I learnt from you. When you hit mom every night, I peeped.”

Ashesh

“Logic dictates...”

“To hell with logic! Bloody dictator!”

“But, logic is always...”

“Fuck. Logic. Just LIVE, God Dammit!”

Ashesh

“Like father, like son and like mother like daughter. Does that mean I’m gonna marry a drunk who rapes me regularly, while you sell yourself to the whiskey bottle and are the cause of someone’s pain?”

Udayan

One text message

“Son, when are you coming home?”

Beyond Equations

Math tells us three of the saddest love stories.

Tangent lines, which had one chance to meet and then parted forever.

Parallel lines, which were never meant to meet.

And Asymptotes, which can get closer and closer but will never be together.

*****

Tangent

He was a regular metro patron. He used to take the train from Kavi Nazrul and get off at Dum Dum. The Metro was the only way he could efficiently cover half the city in less than an hour. One day, he boarded the Metro from Dum Dum, after a long day in college. 

He was sweaty, clutching a case of drawing instruments and carrying a bag of books on his shoulder. He was lucky to find a seat.

The train was on time. They had crossed Esplanade and reached Park Street. That was when she walked on board.

To say she was pretty would be a lie. To say she was unattractive would be a bigger lie. Like him, she too had a bag of books with her and was carrying the collected works of Tolstoy in her hand. She sat down next to him, and he somehow plucked up the nerve to strike up a conversation with her.

She said her name was Riya and she was an English student. She told him her favourite character was Anna Karenina and she loved to listen to The Eagles and Pink Floyd. He was just about to ask her for her number, when she exclaimed “Is the next one Rabindra Sarobar? I need to get off! Nice talking to you!”

And she was gone.

He went home and searched for her on Facebook, but that was in the days when Facebook didn’t have graph search and therefore just knowing an English student named Riya with a soft spot for The Eagles didn’t help. Suffice to say, she got off the train and he never saw her again.

But he still has the memory of their meeting- a tangent to his circle.

*****

Asymptote

The two of them had been friends since high school. She was a doctor. He was an engineer. They knew each other’s families, and had been over to each other’s houses for meals and casual visits. He trusted her with his life. She did too. Their conversations never seemed to end, because they just couldn’t stop talking on and on about anything under the sun. Naturally, the gossip mills had pegged them as a couple. He was teased in college about her. She was given the third degree in college about him.

All this story needs now is Chetan Bhagat to write it into a cheesy soap opera of a best seller.

The truth is, though they had once tried dating, they found that they were better off as friends. Funnily enough, this suited them both, though initially it had made things pretty awkward.

But, thankfully nothing has changed between these two. She still calls him now and then and asks after him, and goes on yammering about what her college is like. He calls her too and tells her everything there is to know.

When they’re both in Kolkata, they make it a point to meet and spend time together.

Such is their bond. Like an Asymptotic function.

*****

Parallel

This one is easy. Easier than the other two at least. This one is the girl of his dreams. The girl who exists only for him and nobody else. The girl who looks the way he wants her to look, the girl who kisses him the way he wants to be kissed. The girl who reads the same books as he does, writes the same things he does, listens to the same songs for the same reasons he does.

In short, the girl who doesn’t exist anywhere but in his mind.

He wishes the girls he went after were like her. He reconciles himself with the knowledge that come what may, he’ll find someone like her.

Like her, but not her.

These two are like parallel lines. They will never meet, except in the pages of his dream, which as we know has nothing to do with reality.

*****

The Bilge Master

Of Insanity, Mutton and Friendship

Ages ago, in a land far far away, surrounded by highly disapproving and fat relatives wearing way too much makeup, two people got married.

A few years later, a hound from the deepest reaches of hell was born.

So begins my story. A story which has insanity in large doses, eccentricity by the boatload and mutton. Lots of mutton.

Why mutton you ask? Why NOT mutton I reply.

The thing is these two people were made for each other. They didn’t know it at the time and happened to meet and fall in love much later. But once they had met, they couldn’t bear to be apart. Not even when he asked her to meet him at Kwality in Ballygunge and she decided he had meant Kwality in Salt Lake.

She was a teacher. He was an engineer. She was a Hardy critic. He was a Tagore fanatic. She liked lipstick. He liked to make things tick. Logically speaking, they had a lot of differences. She had a very short temper. His head was colder than the South Pole in winter.

But, you know what they say-opposites attract.

Once they had seriously got to know one another, that is, on their second date stealing large ice cream portions from each other, they realised they had to get married. It was the only way she would get her hands on his epic tee shirt collection and he would be able to purloin her PG Wodehouse limited editions.

And so the die was cast.

In the presence of aforementioned hideous relatives wearing way too much makeup, a purohit who was in fact given to the simpler pleasures in life- those that you can only find at the bottom of a whiskey bottle, and a pair of highly evil in laws, my mother quoted PG Wodehouse at my father and got it straight back.

Later, I arrived. Naturally, I couldn’t just come out could I? I had to make an entrance. Therefore I sacrificed my mother’s appendix to the Gods as a gesture of goodwill. My mother swore. She screamed. But I did not desist from my noble purpose. All of this took place in the womb.

My mother sees it differently, but as it so happens she owes me for a) me and b) no appendix. I mean buy one get one free anybody?

Let’s talk about my father. His ears are yummy. They are the stuff of dreams. I gnawed them regularly.

When I grew up, my father and I used to go for long drives. In a few more years, I’d be making those drives by myself, while he sat in the passenger seat, praying to his maker that he lived to see the end of the day.

I remember the time we had a dog. I remember the dog peeing on my bed. I remember me waking up every two hours on the hour demanding to be fed in my toddler years. I remember my father dancing with my mother to Daddy Cool, while I looked on.

I remember The Beatles on a Sunday afternoon, followed by an evening of Mozart. I remember singing along to Kishore Kumar with father on the backing vocals. I remember endless discussions on Tagore, over biriyani and Oscar Wilde with the help of a little fish curry.

I remember the time I cooked burnt mutton and these two lapped it up. I remember the time we went to my Uncle’s place and my mother pinched his Christies. I remember father bunking office to go eat at KFC. I also remember him wading into the sea at Mandarmani with a very expensive phone in his pocket, just as I remember my mother setting fire to the bed with a cigarette and blissfully falling asleep next to the smouldering embers.

I remember waking up on my tenth birthday and opening the complete works of JRR Tolkien. I remember going Heyer hunting with father before my mother’s birthday. I remember mother returning home soaked to the skin clutching a PG Wodehouse which she got from a street vendor for 35 rupees.

I remember every day being a party, even when we are sitting silently- me in Kolkata and they in Asansol with nothing but our smartphones connecting us.

Such is my family. We have over the last twenty odd years, fought like alley cats; gotten drunk together and flooded the house with puke. We have taken photos. We have eaten kebabs at Flame and Grill. We have raised our glasses to those not with us and we have relocated to Asansol.

In all this time, one thing hasn’t changed. We haven’t changed. The three of us that is. They aren’t my parents. I’m not their son.

The three of us are the best of friends. We are the worst of foes. And, we are all in this together.

The point of this writeup? It’s my parent’s anniversary tomorrow. There will be mutton.

All hail mutton.

And ice cream.

And mishti doi.

And stomach upsets.

And cholesterol.

Let’s not forget blood sugar (she) and uric acid (he) and asthma (me).

Subho Nababarsha everyone. Remember to have mutton.

PS- DO try this at home.

Atish, Banu and Gutu 

Rust

Hey girl sitting all alone,

Waiting for that old phone,

To ring, and his name to show

On your caller ID,

Don't you feel rusty?

Hey boy in the fancy suit,

Selling yourself like a prostitute

To do someone else’s bidding,

Don’t you feel rusty?

We’re all gonna grow old someday,

And our joints will creak,

Motor oil won’t help then

But memories will,

So we might as well stop shackling ourselves down,

With all this rust

And start living while we can,

Before all we have left is regret

And the memory

Of what could have been

The Bilge Master

Five More Minutes

Five minutes, that's all she said;
Impress me and I'll date you,
Fail and I'll forsake you,

I stood up and got down on one knee,
Alas! It wasnt to be

My mother opened the curtains and woke me from my sleep
And the girl of my dreams had gone,
Because it took me
Five more minutes, to fall asleep

The Bilge Master

Dreams

When a dream comes to you,

What do you see?

Do you see yourself on the top of the world?

Or at rock bottom?

Do you wonder why

Only you and no one else has that particular dream

Or do you wonder who else shares that dream?

Does it make you feel alone?

Does it make you feel powerful?

Do you wake up and wonder if that dream will come true?

I do

And I wonder, does the one who governs these dreams

The one who plants them in our heads

And watches them play out, like a film in our minds

I wonder what He dreams

And if His dreams came true

The Bilge Master