This is what I'm watching

Dead End

The railway station was still alive at two in the morning. A man was selling smokes and tea... his cycle was his stall. Stale, old and cold vada pavs were available, the station was full of tired and sleepy people, and when the train came, it was almost as crowded as it would have been in the peak hours. This was the last train for the day, and most of the travelers had an hours journey ahead of them. I climbed in, I had to travel just one stop, and then take a bus ride home. Hung out near the door, feeling the quiet wind, and thinking thoughts of nothing in particular.
The railway station drew up, I got down just before a huge influx of people climbed in. God help them I thought, and went out. Outside the station, everything was empty. The street lights lit up the concrete... there was nothing on the roads. Another man, in another cycle was selling cigarettes, but that was all. A couple of beggars were sleeping soundly on the footpath, on a bed made out of newspapers. The shutters of all the shops were shut, bolted and locked. I headed over to the bus stop, there were no lines, and no buses either. It would be stupid to wait in an empty bus stop, with no buses in sight, and I was wondering what to do next when a big red bus drew up. It slowed down, I climbed in. Apart from the driver and the conductor, there were six people. One old married couple, the man glaring at me through his thick soda glass spectacles, and the old woman in the wrinkled sari whose face was crunched as if she had no lower jaw. There was another man with bloodshot eyes, singing away some song he alone knew, a bald man with a thick gold chain around his neck, and another fellow reading a book on some technical topic. The other occupant was a woman yakking away to someone on a mobile phone. The bus wasn't exactly my route, but it would drop me close enough to my home for me to walk it up, and I didn't have too many choices really. I should have realized something was funny, when the conducter came upto me and gave me the ticket. It had letterings of a language I could not recognize, and when I looked at him questioningly, he laughed and said "you probably need some time."

Resume

There was this road at the back end of the housing colony that was dirt and dust and a great place to cycle. Nothing went up and down it but big trucks full of stones - didn't know what they were really for. It was then that the light blue gate propped up on that road. It was as tall as one and a half men, and had thick vertical rods down the middle. There was a wide gap at the bottom, through which the stray dogs could easily pass through for years later. There was a big navy blue sign with white letters no one took the trouble to read. Over a the course of a single week, all the trees disappeared. A bunch of us kids got to play football in the large field - by crawling underneath the large gate with the meaningless lock. Almost a year passed, the grass grew so much, we could play hide and seek between the tall shoots. One day a few men came and burnt everything down. That was when the workers came with their colorful clothes, polythene tents and tiny children. They dug up the field, and the rain came and filled the rectangular holes with water. We floated paper boats in the pools. But thin rods of iron cropped up, and fresh cement from mixers were poured into them - and after that the watchmen kept us out. For our own good.
Other buildings and companies and shops cropped up that road, and soon it had a drain and a footpath, and yellow and white streaks on the concrete. Despite that, there was little traffic and it was still the best roads around to cycle on. The light blue of the gate continued to lighten, dots of rust creeped up the corners of the gate, and a few potholes came on that road. On one of those many bike rides, I remember saluting the watchman in a mistaken display of patriotism during the Kargil war. He saluted right back, and smiled and nodded to boot.
For a long time after that, I stopped going down that road. My cycle was worn through and sold for twenty rupees to my watchman. One night, came the strange nightmare. A big fire engine rushed down the road, screeched to a halt, and two lines of prisoners were herded into a light blue gate by security guards. The mothers worried about their children, some of them cried. The men tried to fight the security guards, who struck them into submission with their batons. Then the men too started whimpering, and the children just sat still, scared, and worried. I was on the other side of that gate. I turned around, and the fire truck was coming towards me, it hit me, I turned around again and hit the headboard of my bed. It was, after all, just a nightmare. Sheets of paper got wasted without ever being made into boats. Whether you wanted them or not, a huge pile of paper came to the door every morning. Among many other convenient things, it had the schedule for the television. If that was not enough, the Internet came into the picture, making the world smaller and bringing everyone closer. The final triumph was that of the mobile phone. Everyone could have you in their pockets.
People had deep pockets. The company behind the gate had planned much in advance. A barbed wire fence appeared on the compound wall, which had so far managed to keep out intruders with only jagged pieces of glass embedded in the cement. They repainted the gate, alternating rods of black and white with a black frame. They welded spikes on the top of the gate, and a mesh to the bottom. Now even dogs cannot go through.

The firetruck

Broken lines of yellow ran across the streams of concrete. A few random grains on the flat grey caught the sun. A parking lot of some kind, a big building with a large, closed shutter on one side, and a brown wall on the other. There were rusted stairs up a walkway, people went and came without taking a notice of me. There was a blue car in the lot, parked hastily and out of place. A man in a blue uniform and a yellow jacket ran towards the blue car. He was bleeding from two places in his back, and from one place in his chest. He was carrying a shotgun, made all of steel, which dropped to the ground when he collapsed. I promptly grabbed the gun, and made a run for the railway station beyond the walkway.
No one had really noticed. As soon as I entered the railway station, two trains drew out, headed in opposite directions, like giant silver ribbons parting. I jumped across the tracks, making sure that I didn't get electrocuted by them. Cars went by on the road on the other side. Eight lanes. I ran in front of the next one that came. It was a Sedan of some kind. The driver came to a halt looking at me standing in the middle of the road. I ran to the vehicle, opened the door, punched the guy out cold, and drove off in his Vehicle. I headed north, towards the village. There was a phone call I had to take, but first, I needed a vehicle, a special vehicle... I needed a police car. So I mowed a few people down with my car, and sure enough, they came. I didn't stop my car immediately though. I decided to wait for a while, I needed to get closer to the village. So I hit the pedal to the metal.
I wove in and out of the traffic, not too fast really, but like crazy, bumping into other vehicles even when they were lanes away. Soon enough, I could hear the blaring siren following me from some distance, but I couldn't see them. There was a clean stretch of road, no traffic, they almost caught up to me then, but I was as fast as they were, so they just tailed me for a bit. The village was nearby, I took a turn, leading them on into traffic I didn't know was there, and stopped the car. The police stopped too, and two uniformed officers came after me. I had my shot gun ready. The first one went down in a single shot. The second one went down in two. I don't aim too well.
I got into the cop car, turned it around, and headed straight to the village. I mowed a few more people on the way... maybe, I was driving too fast to notice. I screeched the car to a halt, got out and headed to the telephone booth where I knew I would get my call. Two police cars came to a halt, four officers to handle, killed them all, and with two rounds left in the shotgun, I picked up the receiver.
Bastard on the other end yakked something I didn't really listen to. He wanted me to get a Police Car, and await further instructions. I told him I already had a police car. He was surprised. He told me of the Van I could get into only from a police car and in a police uniform. I found a mobile phone on one of the officers, and scammed it. There was a News Van. It had an antenna on top, and painted in a dirty shade of gold. I quickly changed clothes with one of the dead police men lying around, and got into the police car, and drove south, out of the village, and into the city, in search of the van.
The deal was with this new flamethrower. The guys were playing with stuff that would let them stick a flamethrower on top of a fire engine. How ironic, for a fire engine, to throw fire instead of water. But first, I had to find the Van. I spotted it eventually. It did not have an antenna on top... that was just a trivial detail, the point was the locking mechanism. It had a keypad. There was no way to get into the thing by force. The glass was probably bullet proof too. I blared my horn, and my borrowed uniform persuaded the driver to stop. He was in a yellow uniform, with a white name tag that splattered with his blood before I had time to read it. He fell to the ground, and I got into the van, and closed the door, and called up my contact.
I do not know what was being transported in that van, or why it was so important, my only thoughts were on the flamethrower. These people were neat, they put directions on the GPS inside the Van, and I drove it into a large grey garage in the Village. I met a technician in the garage, who was ready to fit the flamethrower on top of the fire truck, if I could find him a fire truck.
Great. It was a little more difficult to jack cars with a passenger in tow, and a flamethrower technician with his equipment to boot, but I managed it. Now was the time for patience. I could use my Uzi to gun down cars, and create a few fires, but that would have been a waste of good ammunition on meaningless nuisance. Even if the fire trucks did come on time, the police would come with it in tow, making the job all the more difficult for the technician. I was responsible for keeping him out of jail while he was with me, so I fucked around the city a little in search of the fire truck. Drove into the southernmost district, all the businesspeople walking around made me feel sick. So I turned east, and headed to where all the factories were. Didn't feel like exploring too deep into that area, so I turned around, and headed west. There, finally, unattended, was a fire engine. As easy to crack as a regular car.
The technician didn't do his job though. Instead, I got a call. There was another condition. This was about gang warfare, and I didn't even care. The flamethrower appealed to me, but the condition that I could use it only rival gang members was another trivial detail. I drove the big fire truck, carefully to make sure it didn't bump into too many things. I think I hit a taxi somewhere, but that was all. We headed north east, and I had a very satisfying rampage.

The Anti-essay

It is important to get to the point. So here goes. People just dont read anymore. You just cannot blame them really, letters, words and sentences are a strain to the eyes. Its not just their form, but what they disguise. The letters of newsprint for example, strain in their sides to thrill you; and every single letter on the net is trying to sell you something, more so if it is blue and has an underline. Then there is the voluminous grind of letters in phonebooks, directories and the classifieds. A small portion of them might mean the world to you, but the rest of it bears the charachter of bullshit.
It is unfortunately important to get to the point. It probably passed by somewhere. There is a need to drive home messages, and any delay, in meandering sentences where the so called point flirts, revealing but a little of itself is too much trouble for the brain to process and it merely gives up.

Just for kicks

So there were this bunch of fucked up kids in school who thought it was cool to get high and stuff. They were in something like the ninth standard and they didn't really know where they could buy "drugs". If anyone could come up with a way to get high, the rest of the group like thought it was cool - like smothering each other to a blackout - but it never really worked.
One of them had this connection to the internet, and he looked up the whole thing up properly and arrived at stopping blood circulation to the brain. So he thought of choking himself. And he choked himself by hanging himself. He sent his grandmother out of the room for fifteen minutes and he hadn't arranged for anyone to cut him loose after he hung himself.
All the boy wanted was to get high.

Shelved argument

Time but waits to catch its breath
Slow to take the soul to death
A tear glistnes and cures the mind
Love it isn't; if it isn't blind

Swirls of color, blurred but bright
Black is white and wrong is right
Soar and fly for the night is high
Slow to fade are dreams that die