Award acceptance speeches

"Who could have predicted that the silly album that I put together with my friend in my garage, with nothing but a cheap recording device and camera, would become the world's greatest hit ever? I am glad I actually used my time to do something productive. I will remember this and remain humble and hardworking all my life."

And that's  how she spent her morning. She put off working on her silly album with her friend, planning her award acceptance speeches that she would receive for it.

...in my own image...

Day 7, Hour 3
My virtual world is heaven. I have filled it up with creatures and happenings that are very much like real life. In fact, being a person that lacks much creativity, I have made my video game world just exactly like my real world. Of course, barring the fact that I hardly do much other than gaming in real life. In that world I am a well-built, courageous, resourceful and charming guy. And in this life I am just me, munching crisps and sipping cola after another, occupying this sofa for 20 hours a day.

Day 7, Hour 10
I cannot do it anymore. The fear of making a decision that will in anyway affect my perfect virtual world is absolutely terrifying. I cannot destroy it either. I cannot face the idea of such a perfect world going to waste. Or that such a perfect world become like mine.

Day 7, Hour 100
I have done it! I wrote out some artificial intelligence code for my character in the world. Actually I think he has some thing more than what I have. I also put in a girl in there. Wonder if this world will give me some way to figure out how I should live my life in this world.


Day 3285000, Hour 30
No. Big mistake. Should never have let this happen.

Picture on the wall

It was a simple picture. There wasn't anything to interpret in it. It just portrayed what the artist saw. There was not much to talk about it. A landscape. Nothing unconventional or novel. Nothing striking, bizarre or shocking. Some would say it was not even attractive. It did not even catch attention.

It was this characteristic that was desired in a picture that hung on Hotel New Sree Sagar's walls. Nothing to draw praise. Just a means to do away with the drab wall and the need for a fresh coat of paint in the future. 

Don't do it

Dear Mr. Singh,

You have not heard of me. You don't know and will never really know for sure if my position really exists. But we are a large team of people who work tirelessly doing our jobs to make sure that the world runs the way it does.  No one knows that our team exists, not even our colleagues at the other government offices. This is the only way we can work. This protects everybody from potentially dangerous and hurtful information.

I am going to let you in on this secret because I think you need to know this. It seems to be the only way to stop the eventualities of your actions.

You remember that application you filed last week? Doesn't matter which one, they are all connected. My job was to simply make sure that your application did not get through on time. This caused you to be angry at our offices rather than your wife and we saved a lot with the help of that. I will not elaborate. Draw your own conclusions.

But we never realized this event would cause you to come upon this solution that you are poised to implement. You have the perfect idea to change the system and get it to work smoothly. If you do this, you destroy the world.

Our message to you is very clear. Don't do it.

Sincerely,
MMTSTW

(This is an electronically generated message and hence does not need a signature.)

Traveling Without

So she managed to grab on to the railings and get into the moving bus and then carried on about her business, with absolutely no regard to the fact that she had just missed being in a terrible accident. As she dug into her purse and seemed to be looking for something - nonchalantly, I thought to myself : Where was she going that she needed to get to in a hurry enough to run after a moving bus, but did not warrant taking a quicker means of transport - maybe a taxi?

When I figured out the answer to that question, it turned out to be my worst nightmare.

 I had managed evading any kind of recognition so far. Breaking out of the prison, getting to the city, finding clothes to wear that wouldn't invite suspicion and a bus in which I could travel ticket-free, it had been smooth so far. Until this ticket-checker managed to jump into this moving bus.

The Perfect Imperfect World

So, I have been reading novels and watching movies from long ago and I realized that people from back then were wrong about what future would be like.

Today's world is not overrun with machines and aliens. The world is not ending or sinking or exploding into flames. For all we know, these events might have been at the risk of happening at some time in the past but they never did.

Over the course of 200 years or so since the advent and proliferation of modern computing technology, there have been so many changes (since we all know what these are, I will not repeat them) that has caused our world to go from a breeding ground for thoughts of destruction and sorrow, to our world today. We do not know if there was cause for the pessimism that those writers and movie-makers felt. But it must have been a definite threat for people to universally agree that the world was on a downward spiral.

Our world is not perfect today. We have long established that humans subconsciously reject the idea of perfection, as a concept that does not evoke truth and balanced behaviour. But this has been the state of the world since time immemorial. And it continues to be. What is new is that we now can choose to keep it this way.

The Next World

I wonder why the people of the past were so pessimistic about their future. Stories based on the future were always about death, destruction and famine. People were supposed to be ruled by machines or aliens. They lived underground, in dirt and grime, in box-like apartments or some such ugly setting, to escape from the cruelty of the post-apocalyptic world. It seemed to always be a life of terrible sorrow and misery.

How wrong they were. 

The final page

--X--

He had searched for meaning all through his life. He had turned to religion, tried to create his own family, tried to connect to people... he had tried it all. After seeing failure repeatedly and horribly, he decided to quit it all. All in the search for meaning. He decided that he would live with nature and search for meaning within the deep recesses of his own mind. He would leave behind people and their artificial worlds. He would cut himself loose and sink into delicious depths of reason and knowledge. All by himself. He would write and record. He would create ideas. He would observe his own thoughts, catalogue them meticulously. In the end, all of it would make sense and he would achieve his purpose. 

As he wrote, he was consumed. He became obsessed with his interpretation of his world. He created his own concept of time. He created his unique method of counting it. He shed his worldly needs. He lived with nature and cut off any minute reflection of his painful and prolonged search for the answer to the question - why am I here. 

As days became months and years, the writer had became a part of his environment rather than sticking out as the only outside element in the jungle. In his mind, he had achieved much more than if he had remained in his previous life.Yet, sometimes he would sit at the edge of the jungle and stare at the lights in the distance that came to him as a sign of humanity's existence.

On his last day on Earth, he sat at his desk writing out what would be his last page. With his monk like existence and utter lack of contact with another human being, the writer had become the enlightened one. And he had as proof his hut that was filled with stacks of neatly inscribed paper. A lifetime of learning that came almost entirely from his mind alone. He was a philosopher and a sage. His quest for meaning had long passed. He had created a guide, a rule book for everyone to live by. The ultimate gateway to meaningfulness and fullfilment.

That afternoon he lay bent over his desk as the floodgates of the sky opened. The monsoon brought the walls of his hut down as his eyes stared into the distance. The water carried every sheet of paper that the writer ever laid his pen on. The water carried it into the river and then into the ocean. The words that had given his life meaning, the words that had recorded meaning in them, dissolved in the murky waters turning it into inky blue depths.

The End

The writer and other people

--IX--

There was not a single other human being in a radius of a few miles around his hut. It was just him, trees, birds and some unseen animals. There was a time when he was right in the middle of a sea of people and he felt so lonesome. Just the thought of being this far from any means of contact was exhilarating. He had great respect  for his fellows, but there was something that did not allow him to ever connect with them. In any case he had done well in the jungle. And he was not doing much for his kind. It was much better this way, he believed.

The writer's morning

--VIII--

A few hours before the sun rose, he woke up and breathed in the jungle air. A few moments later he was straining as much as possible to convert the vague images and emotions of his dreams in his mind into words before he lost them.  His hand moved across paper in swift motions as though it was racing against his brain - trying to capture its contents before they vaporized. He stretched his limbs and took a bit of time to recall where he was and what was going on. The reiteration of the knowledge of his surroundings hit him and filled him with a strange mixture of happiness for his miraculous escape and bitterness for the situations that caused him to attempt this escape. It was going to be a beautiful day. 

The writer's dream

 --VII--

As sleep crept over him he thought of what he would write the next day and how. Words danced in his head and he slipped slowly and effortlessly from concrete thoughts to wordless dreams. That night he would dream of the ending to his story.

Something set him apart

--VI--

The writer was an ordinary man. He did not have extraordinary capabilities. His teacher would say that he had no talent at all. But what he had was beyond the reach of most regular humans - perseverance. Of course this was debatable. But the writer had a history would prove this beyond a doubt.

The writer's past

--V--

Daylight crept in the next morning and filled his room with a pinkish orange colour. He squinted at the sun and stretched. It looked like a very promising day. Since the time he had left civilization he had barely felt his previous addictive tendencies. He did not need to smoke or check his correspondence obsessively. Yet he could choose to do these and feel no obligation to continue doing this as a necessary activity. The joys of reflecting on past failures, of looking at the long and tedious journey to reach this point.

The writer and time

--IV--

As he looked up at the moonhe realized that it was later than he had thought it was. The concept of time was boring to him. But he had come to terms with it and had understood how to deal with it. Now time worked for him.

The writer's walk

 --III--

He still had 8 hours to rest. That would do. The sun would rise in 10.

The weather was very comfortable and he enjoyed the sensation of movement after having spent all day behind a desk. A pair of eyes looked at him from up a tree. He looked up at it having sensed that he was being watched. He tried to discern the shape of the creature but could only catch a glimpse of a brownish orange tail as it moved swiftly away. He bent down to pick up a pebble that had rolled down to where he stood. Something or someone had caused it to move.

The writer's schedule

--II--

His book was almost complete. He was going to complete his story and give it an ending that was deserved by the intensity that filled the previous pages. He paused and looked at the pile of neatly arranged sheets on his desk. He could see in them an inspired piece of hard work that had taken eighteen hours a day in the last 4 months. He had come to the end of his eighteen-hour period today and was going to go to sleep. Then he decided that he would take a short walk outside instead.

The writer

 --I--

Threads of words held in them flowery metaphors of meaning and flew out of his pen as he drew out shapes on coarse paper. As his sinewy arm worked feverishly, there were a few beads of sweat that formed on his forehead and threatened to flow off onto to the ink. But he stopped it with a swift movement of his free hand. His brow went from being to not being furrowed as he continued to write - as each idea formed it went from one position to the other. His thick grey hair hung onto his head as it moved and shifted with the brow. The effect of this combined movement was that of almost seeing his brain thinking out each thought.

The Tree

It stood alone. There were no other trees near it. There was just a little bit of grass that grew in tufts here and there. It was a young tree with broad leaves that were very very dark in colour. They hung about the trunk and let the sunlight through. The leaves did not move in the wind either. Even though it was very young the roots emerged above the ground a bit. There were some newly built houses near the tree and perhaps it would not stand for too long after because of the fast-changing landscape.

But it didn't look like a tree that would die. It didn't look like something that would cease to exist ever in time. A tree whose leaves didn't respond to breezes, whose flowers did not advertise the tree's presence through an enchanting fragrance, that gave no traveler some joy by offering shade... The tree that stood alone against the sky as though it ruled it defiantly, not permitting another tree to dip its roots into the earth...

This tree would never die. But it came to life as her brush gently stroked the canvas.

Job Interview

The phone call came from a private number. The voice was low and had a heavy accent. She asked short and sharp questions, paused for too long after my answers. Every pause made me uncomfortable. After a few seconds of waiting, I would utter something to fill in the silence.

I had needed a job for months. I had applied to every advertisement I came across. No reservations. No preferences. I had been desperate. 

"Are you in town for an interview?" Yes.

"Do you own a bike?" No. But if it is needed for this job, I will get one.

"Have you read 'The Red-Headed League'?" Umm.. is this the Sherlock Holmes story? What.. why?

"Ms. Light , I am asking the questions." Umm... Yes I have. But I don't remember much. It was so long ago. ... Something about an encyclopaedia... And banks. Umm, can I please have your name? Or number maybe? What is this job about?

"Ms. Light, I have to remind you again. I ask, you answer." Right.

So, I was going to have to work for a crazy lady. Whatever. Who cares. The red-headed man had a house from where thieves wanted to build a tunnel. I was living at friends' houses and cheap hotels. No catch there for me!

 "Do you own a backpack?" Yes, ma'am.

Crazy for sure.
 

"Okay Ms. Light. Please come to the gerble..gerble..gerble for your first interview." ...Click... 

Didn't catch that? Neither did I.
Did I mention that the call was from a private number?

The Landscape Shaper

It started on a humid July afternoon. It was partly the weather that caused her drowsiness. But it could have even been the heavy lunch. She didn't want to get another coffee, it had stopped providing a means to wake her up. Maybe she didn't want to wake up at all, the soothing feeling of an afternoon nap coming on was intoxicating.

She got up and walked to the large window on her high-rise building's passage-way. The flat land around stretched out for miles. Out of sheer boredom, she decided to play a little game. She picked out buildings and imagined them dropping out of view. Not exactly blowing up, just getting powdered to bits to be swept away. It was not a destructive thought. It didn't involve killing people or destroying valuables. It was just her way of rearranging what looked like a miniature city model into something more beautiful, so that a garden or a canal was visible to her where she stood. She decided what she imagined was so much better.

Maybe it was the weather, or the lack of coffee. But it was quite possible that in a weird way her mind was trying to wake her up. Her imagination took a wild turn. She started imagining what she could do to make the flat land an eyesore. At first she was amused, then she became uncomfortable. By the time she was entirely awakened, her mind's eye gave her an idea of how many things could be wrong with that inanimate-looking expanse in front of her. She was offended by the ugliness, it was revolting and she shook herself to bring back the image of what was.

She woke up sweating. She ran out into the passageway looking out the window. A huge soupy mist hung above the land. She breathlessly waited for it to clear up and saw her worst imagination appear in front of her. The eyesore that she had imagined had realized itself.

In the past she had had the power to shape the future in her mind. Now that future was the present and the past that had been the present was out of her hands.