The Greeting Card Gentry

I stand in front of the stacks of birthday cards, selecting the 'most appropriate' one for the occasion and purpose*. After going through with the mental ordeal, I stand in line to cash out my singular simple little brithday wish. Priceless.

To my utmost shock and surprise, it cost me a whoppingly meagre twenty-five bucks! Aww, man. My Birthday wish is worth twenty-five blood-sucking smackaroos? Damn! Why in the world don't they write the god-forsaken MRP on the card? Every other thing thronging the unholy aisles of retail stores and gift shops alike do a seemingly small but heartily selfless favour of carrying a simple little price-tag, saving us from falling from grace, as I have now. No, no, no, I think to myself, the relationship is deep. It deserves a minimum of fifty, no hundred .. Okay, chill .. Seventy-five bucks worth of effort. This is outrageous. This just can't be. I pay the twenty-five and force my way out of hell.

The explanation. There was only one force against me in this decision. My own conscience; the onus of protecting and celebrating the relationship, that I honestly cherish, lying on it. What is the relationship really worth? Of the scale of one-to-ten, how much INR** is each unit worth? The rupee is appreciating against the dollar, by all means. No doubt about that. So if there is an international standard that I clearly don't know of, do I benefit now by paying less INR? But then again, there was only one force within, still standing by me. The one which these EQ tests make fun of; and newspaper supplements thrive on. Have I, like, learned nothing from Tulsi and Parvati? How dare I put a price on the sacrosanct bonds of a genuine relationship? How dare I consciously think of a bond's worth? After all, I have selected a suitable card myself; how dare I track back on natural selection? What right do I have to judge how far a relationship has gone, or is capable of going? Why has my unconscious gone so quiet? Should I resign from worldly life and meditate for revival of my true senses? Rather, have I become completely capitalist in a mixed economy, once briefly being slave to liberal tendencies?

As these two true-type forces started to collide, I paused for a moment to look at the bigger picture here. This battle of mine is too trivial. There is a bigger war we're all a part of, a greater meaning engulfing our every action. The war waging on for ages between Grand Master Money and Grand Master Emotion. Money has been renowned to have telling upper-cuts and under-currents to deal the death-blows to Emotion on many an occasion, especially recently. This great battle, of which I find myself a part, has the Greeting-Card gentry handling the left wing of Emotion's blood red-flagged army. Money's black suit-flanked green army has engulfed the teddy-bears and have even bribed some of the other enemy soldiers at MRP to march to their newly found homes and not participate. Now the Greeting Card wing has devised a guerilla tactic to confuse Money. They have removed all traces of MRP from their bodies by some recent advancement of technology. Money is now utterly helpless, having hardly any battle strength or combat expertise. But then, suddenly, there was an unusual and abnormal arrangement of stars and planets, such that a time-warp was created. The battle had to be finished in haste; and the warring soldiers had to escape the unknown dimension through the Gate of Transaction. Money used his power in numbers and forced it's way through the Gate and pushed Emotion out of it's way, heavily outnumbered by this time. Hence, Emotion, trapped for eternity within the unknown dimension had no option but to wait for the next battle. His army is reportedly recuperating, but the progress is sluggish. Money is said to rejoicing and celebrating the debatably deserved victory.

So, I, owing to paucity of time to think, rethink, imagine or consult my inner/outer/peripheral self, pay the twenty-five and force my way out of hell.

* The occasion and the purpose, both, not relevant to be disclosed here.

** Indian Rupees.

The Dawn..

The Angel taketh her hand and blest the canvas with 'er grace..
She doth but create mountains, and rivers and great cities alike..
She doth give life to trees, and to good men;
And taketh away from those who dare sin..
She giveth to me the gray-vest viewsing..
An Angel ever did bequeath to her child..

Another rout of a routine day and we negotiated for a dine-out outing. I hope you could have seen the drag of a face I felt burdened to carry, for it is not usual. I insist on your presence there for I know, these words are not nearly enough to describe the death of activity in my mind during that array of insignificant events. A few months away from home, and I embody home-sickness. Anyway, that was all to change, albeit momentarily.

In the midst of the crowd, we sit, sipping something I do not remember, gorging something I care not to remember. Any which way, in this particular direction, I notice this family of three, blissfully enjoying their meal on a table for two, with the child, I trust to be not more than a third-of-a-dozen years old, on the fathers lap, particularly disturbed and in envy (I had learnt from fables authored apparently by my mother, that she insists involve a protagonist that somehow resembles me; hence I could make out..) regarding her mother paying undue attention to food and her husband (not necessarily in that particular order), than to her. I smiled; somehow she reminded me of myself. The only way to pacify her was, as the following series of short-and-sweet events revealed to me, for the mother to take her into her own arms and stroke her gently on her back and feed her with her bare hands, bite-by-bite. And then she was to be set free onto her elder sister (elder only by about a couple of years) where she'd easily pass the remainder of the time taken by her parents to finish off their meal, brimming with the satisfaction of the day's work done.

As I follow the hop-walking sugar-coated white chocolate of a little girl that she was, I stumble upon another table for two, occupied by another little girl, who seemed to be (not from resemblance, but merely from the sequence of events that preceded) her elder sister. My engineer mind (trust me it wasn't me, not that I am ashamed of it; just that it's odd to me then as it is to you now) was immensely satisfied at the satisfaction of the law of proportionality, with each of the family now having (relative to my perception) precisely one seat.

On her table, I notice, what I remember to be six glasses with differing quantities of water. The first impression was that of that musical instrument we're all so fond of being played. However, the lack of any sound, or that of intent to play, or that of a metal spoon, pivotal to the instrument led me to believe otherwise. Next, I remember, very lucidly, I noticed three straws on the tables, a-third of each was still drenched in water; and yet another one in her bright white hand, held with the apparent finesse of an artist. And she dipped the straw in precisely the third glass from her left, then flicked it further left on the table. Further, she bathed (now to a lesser degree) the seemingly too-long-to-handle straw (I remember it seemed disturbing to me at that time, an artist of her caliber was using such archaic measures) to the second glass from the right, then reiterating the flicking procedure. After she was satisfied, and I could easily see the tension wearing off her beautiful face (well, it's unfortunate I have no other word for something so beautiful), she caressed the water she had laid down with her fore-finger and spread it in, what I could make out of it to be a rectangular structure, with an upward-pointing triangle on top. Aah, a small little village house of her own. She then used her other instrument of creation, the straw (I was already beginning to miss her holding it) to fill in the voids with whatever was the vivid colour she imagined to be.

Following the house, she created the trees, a gushing river with a boat and a smiling boatman waving at her in the joy of creation, in it. She lit up the sky with an orange-vermilion sun and painted the rest of the void with shades morphing from the hot surface of the sun to the tranquil turquoise of dawn. She didn't leave the little barking dog, or the village-women begging for life, and gave them clothes she was magnanimous enough to provide. Somewhere from the woods of the far side across the river, she left a cow to graze all she could, and a well stood nearby, around which half-a-dozen children were playing hide and seek. Further across the page, there were approaching the kings own men, with eyes gleaming, helping the sunshine to grow, with the aid the gracious saviour-of-all had sent. There were also fishermen, scouring the river for the catch of the day, and the their women preparing the grills for the village feast there was today. It was a carnival, I say! The way the temple had been adorned with all the glitter and food the village could conjure up with and more. The priests prepared for the customary traditions and fire lit up the temple foyer. It was the start of the new year..

And then she looked up at me. And I turned away. I hope she didn't believe me to be disturbing her in her own world, in her own figment of imagination. Her new world so pure, it could crush a creature as adulterated as me. Yet I cannot and will not let go of the smile she inspired me to wear to this moment. This is the beginning..