Snow White

The first rays of the sun fell on the new lanes of the old city. It was a new day, but the old man's life was still the same. The sunlight inched forwards, while the old man raised his sleepy eyes towards them and waited for that warm touch. The white cat purred softly beside him, while the old man looked down at the white cat, waiting for something magical to happen, just like every day. He sat up, and saw the shadows receding; he knew it wouldn't be long before the light would reach them, and the thought gave life to a mad euphoria in his eyes.

Then, the bright shiny light touched the white fur. The sunlight reached into the snow white strands, making the cat glow in the light early morning mist. Even the cat felt something, and mewed softly – but she dared not move, for she wasn't quite sure how to react to this beauty that was both inside and outside her. The old man's smile turned into a jovial laugh, as he stretched his wrinkled, bony fingers and stroked the cat's head softly.

"My dear Phanush, what would the day be without you," said the old man to the cat, while she purred lovingly in answer.

The old man stood up, and thus began his day. The footpath was waiting, as was his tattered rug where his days were spent. The loose change spared by the generous souls of the harsh city was his way to a semi filling breakfast. His stomach rumbling, he hastened to get started with his work day, and took his spot like every day. The tree overhead provided him with a little shade from the sun during the hot days, and a little cover from the water on rainy days.

It was a bright sunny day, and somehow the white cat didn't care too much to stay under the shade of the tree all day long. The day was calling out to him, and her stomach was rumbling too. She needed a bit of food, and so she left her old man behind and ventured across the street. She turned back once, and saw her old man wearing a sad face that seemed to work very effectively on the steady flow of feet, and the change flowed steadily into the little aluminium bowl in his hand. Reassured that the old man was fine for now, she moved further along.

Still early in the morning, the world around her had already begun in full swing. The shops along the street were thrown open, and the people bustling around everywhere would stop at one or the other shop for a quick bite. The myriad of smells that surrounded her made her stop a few times to investigate, but nothing seemed to appeal to the manic hunger of a restrained predator early in the morning. She looked back again, and saw her old man looking at her for a while with a happy gleam in his eyes, before going back to his aluminium bowl. 'A beggar has no business looking happy,' he used to say, and so she turned away from him knowing that it was bad for his business.

She turned back to the street and to the task at hand; finding breakfast. The street was full of the smells of food, but there was something there that she couldn't find. Her nose twitched slightly and led her on, in search of something so wonderful that she didn't even bother to look around at anything else. The smell of that special something had gotten hold of her so completely, so wholly, that nothing else seemed to exist at that point of time for her. She was carried forward by the scent that had caught her nose, and she glided forward effortlessly, dodging deftly between the many feet that pattered away on the busy footpath. She could feel her quarry getting nearer with every step, and the many generations of instinct that flowed through her veins told her to slow down. Her gait became slower, as she cautiously headed forward still. One quick glance behind, and she could see her old man looking at her with half a bewildered look on his face; but the overpowering scent of her prey drove all other thoughts out of his mind in a flash.

The butcher's shop was just a few steps ahead of her, and she had reached the butcher's block. Her senses tingling, she slowed down to a stop just in front of the block. Her muscles were ready to leap and catch the little, bloody sinew dangling near the edge of the beaten and cracked block. Her paws were hanging in mid air, ready to make the swipe if needed. Adrenaline and instincts pumped her heart, coursing through her blood. She stood there, frozen in time, waiting for the perfect moment to snatch that little piece of meat that had been calling out to her for so long. So still was she that nobody noticed her, and the butcher continued to cut up the meat on the block. She took a moment more, and then leaped towards her target.

Just as she was about to snap and free that little piece, the butcher's hand came out of nowhere and swatted at her face. She tried to dodge the hand, but in that midair change of direction, she fell a few feet short of the block. Landing on her feet as lightly as a feather, she could see the butcher raise his knife. Defeated, she streaked away, leaving that little piece of meat with the selfish butcher, while he hurled abuses that she never heard. Still hungry and humiliated, she looked around to see if her old man was still watching her.

She crossed the street and slowly walked back to the old man, who was still wearing a sorry face. He glanced quickly at her as she reached him, and sat down on his old ragged coat. From the look on his face, she could see that he hadn't seen her defeat; the ragged old coat was just as warm as before, and nothing seemed to have changed – but she kept wondering, if the one man who had always been so proud of her, the one man who had so unconditionally loved her through and through, thought lesser of her having seen that humiliating defeat back at the butcher's block.

Schizophrenic Sid

On a typical rainy morning, Schizophrenic Siddharth and his imaginary sidekick Sandesh were having a typical discussion, on one of the typical topics that they cooked up between the two of them.

“Here we are, standing in the bloody rain, early in the morning, all according to the whims of someone else. What’s the damn meaning of all this?”

“Sandesh, we’re going to work!”

“I hate it! You’re the one who wants this job, and I have to tag along with you every day. You don’t even let me talk when you’re in office.”

“Of course I don’t, you idiot! That’s where I work; it’s not a place where I want to have conversations with you.”

“But, you know there are so many things that I want to talk to you about, Sid.”

After many failed attempts at hailing a rickshaw, Sid was finally able to wave one down. The rain was falling steadily, and in his desperate bid to be in office on time, Sid had asked another desperate man like him if they could share a rickshaw together. Now, with the rickshaw waiting obediently in front of them, trailing a bluish white cloud of engine smoke behind it, the three of them got inside. The man told Sid where he wanted to get off, and that was the end of the conversation between them. The rickshaw started off, and Sid’s attention went back to Sandesh and his extreme desire to talk to Sid.

“I miss Li’l Al,” said Sandesh suddenly; Sid hadn’t seen it coming at all, and so that sudden mention of his long gone friend made him lose focus of the beautiful Audi that was stuck right in front of them in the early morning traffic jam.

“Why, suddenly, Sandesh?” asked Sid. “How come you suddenly miss him this much?”

“I’ve been thinking about stuff, recently, and been thinking about the whole death thing.”

“What death thing?”

“You know, how people are born, and then they do stuff all their lives, and then they just die?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ve been thinking, what’s the meaning of it all?”

“The point? We’re alive, we’re here! We’re doing everything we’re doing just so we can live, and that itself is a miracle.”

“But the purpose of it all? I mean, what’s the purpose of life, ultimately?”

“To live it.”

“Is it really that simple?”

“Well, it can be that simple, but you really have to want it to be that simple. You get it?”

“Not entirely. I mean, here we are sitting in the auto early in the morning, doing something that you

think you want to do. Still, how’s it impacting things?”

“I’m going to work. It’s what I do. I earn money this way, and that’s how I live.”

“Yes, but that’s for the time being, isn’t it?”

“No, it’s forever.”

“Not forever. For as long as you live, right?”

“I think I know what you mean there, but even so. This is what I do.”

“Ok, but do you leave an impact in the world?”

“Well, kind of. I mean, I’ve got my whole family who’s proud of me at this very moment, and they all feel that I’m doing a wonderful job here.”

“And then, one by one, they all die. Then you too die, someday.”

“Yes; just so you know, you’re scaring me a little bit here, but that is true. I know I will die someday.”

“Exactly. One day, you’ll die, and when that day comes, what would be the meaning of all of this?”

“I don’t think I understand what you mean exactly, Sandesh.”

“Well, you remember Li’l Al, right?”

“Of course I do.”

“You remember all the things that he used to do? The things he used to say to us when we were growing up?”

“Yeah, I do.”

“Well, what I’m trying to say has two sides to it, so it might take a little bit of time. Firstly, when Al lived amongst us, and when he told us all those things, it was all so real, right?”

“Yeah, it was.”

“So, in that moment, we knew he existed. There was so much he told us, about how we should live, and that’s the way we remember him, right?”

“Yes, Sandesh. What’s your point?”

“Well, my point here is somewhat linked to the second point that I’m trying to raise here. In a way, Al existed because we remember what all he did, how he lived his life, and everything that he told us during his life. We used to do that while Al was alive as well, didn’t we?”

“You mean, think about everything that he said? Yes, of course we used to.”

“Even poetically, many people have said that even after death, people can live on as memories. What if that’s actually true? Not in the physical sense perhaps, but what if right now, I’m alive because of the fact that people still remember me? What if, there’s a part of me that’s going to stay alive even after my death, because people still remember who I was, and what I said, and how I lived my life, and they can predict almost perfectly what my life would have been like, had I been alive?”

“That makes sense, in a very screwed up way. I don’t have the answer to it, but it does make sense; a whole lot of it.”

“I know what you mean. Even I don’t have the answer to that, it’s still all a mystery to me. And the weirdest bit about the whole thing is the second point that I was trying to raise here. Imagine that Li’l Al lives somewhere far away, and there’s no way that we can contact him. Now, how do we know that he existed? How do we know that he’s not with us anymore? How do we know that he’s dead?”

“That’s because we saw Al die, Sandesh. We were there at his funeral, remember?”

“No, that’s not what I meant. I’m talking about a hypothetical question. Imagine that he didn’t die, he just moved away; really far away. In that kind of a situation, how would you know if he’s alive or dead? More importantly, how would you know that he existed in the first place, if you can’t contact him ever again?”

Sid stopped talking, and sat up in the auto thinking. Sid was a big guy, and the auto was a little small for him; his shoulder kept banging against the stranger who sat beside him, and Sandesh didn’t really like this part of the morning ever. Thankfully, on that day however, Sandesh seemed to have other things on his mind than Sid’s shoulder banging against those of strangers in the auto as they met up with every pothole of the city.

“You know what I’m talking about now?” asked Sandesh, as Sid tried to adjust a little better in the cramped environment. “How do we know whether someone existed, beyond what we remember of them?”

“Ok, now I’m starting to get confused, even though everything you’ve said here makes almost perfect sense.”

“With an example, then. We know that Li’l Al existed because we remember him – but what if Al existed only in our minds? What if the reason he seems so real to us is because of the fact that our memories are so vivid, and so clear? Maybe he wasn’t there, maybe we just imagined him all up, and then somehow forgot the fact that we had conjured him up in the mind. Maybe, that’s why, even though he was fiction, he seemed so real.”

“What have you got against Li’l Al, Sandesh? Why are you so hell bent on making him imaginary, when you very well know that he was just as real as you are!”

“I know that, Sid. I was just talking about a hypothetical situation.”

“Well, if you must insist on making people imaginary, then you might as well do that with people I don’t know, or people I’m not that close to.”

“Like that guy who was sitting beside you, until a little while ago?”

Sid looked beside him, and saw that the auto was empty. Somewhere along the way, the man had reached his destination, put his part of the fare silently into Sid’s hands, and disappeared in the world outside the little auto. Now, with Sandesh laughing silently in his head, the silent stranger existed only in his memories; like Li’l Al, like the many nameless faces Sid saw every morning, and even though he’d never admit it, like Sandesh himself.

Haaraano Shornogolok

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First time using the Google Transliterator, and since my Bangla is really, really rusty, this might not have come out all that well. Do let me know, anyone, in case there are any grammatical errors and/or spelling errors. I'd like to give this type of stuff some more tries...