Integrity

I received shocking news last night. He was getting married soon. To compound it further, he was marrying a woman.

What is happening? How is this even possible? I remember the days and nights we spent together, in each others' arms, unable to tear apart, steeped in lust.

The first time we did it - it is such a fresh memory. We were just plain tired and we happened to share a wooden cot with a flattened mattress and our lips found each others' and the tongues crept into one another's mouth. The moment was intense and we could not keep apart. We slept naked in each other's arms after we were spent. We tried to pray for God's forgiveness after we committed our sin. We were too weary - we coiled in each other. He had an early morning errand to take a visiting friend from the train station and he missed it by a couple hours. He swaddled me carefully in my blanket and I awoke to sweaty naked skin rubbing textile and sun shine waking me up as he hurriedly dressed up and took leave. It was to be kept our first secret.

We never spoke about it again. I made casual mention of it, not saying his name, when I spoke about it. My rainbow friends knew of him. It was a pleasant feeling.

We met again. I stayed with him for a few days, keeping him company as we planned to attend a wedding. The day we met, early in the morning, we got horny. I did not want to do it then, but we did it because he insisted we do it. That night, after the wedding, he was fixing pictures he had captured on his new camera from the wedding and I went to bed alone. But I woke up in his arms, his lips planting kisses on mine, setting fire to what was ready to burn.

We did it again the next day. It was not a bad thing at all - it felt good when we did it and even later, when we parted, as I made my way home.

And now, he is getting married, to a woman.

I remember seeing his profile on men-dating-men websites. I remember the passion we felt when we were in the act. I remember how much he could love me, another man. I cannot forget how we kissed - fiery kisses in sweaty nights that never lacked in lust.

What did I miss?

Does he like women too? Did I not know that he was bisexual? Do I bring out the homosexual in him when we are alone? Was our lust a temporal pleasure he did not really need? Did he get over a phase of homosexual desires to mature into a bisexual bigot?

Did someone force him to take the match? Did someone accuse him of our sin and force him to get a gay beard? Is the woman he chose a willing gay beard?

Does she know he could love a man like a man could love a woman (or a woman her man)? Does she know we made love? Does she even know of my existence?

Did he lie to me by not letting me know he was a bisexual? Did he even admit to her that he experimented with men long after his teenage years? Does he really have a heterosexual identity, if not a bisexual identity at the least?

Am I am omission in his life story(though still a painful, living reminder in his life)?

Fall

It was an evening in September.

The days were shrinking. The sun set earlier than it used to. There was a chilly breeze and it carried fallen leaves. The leaves grated the cobblestones, like they were clawing in vain to save their lives from whatever death the breeze was going to put them to.

The car came onto the driveway. Though it was not dark yet, the headlights were on. As soon as it came to a standstill, they powered down. There was a fumbling of the keys. A momentary look in the mirror before the door opened and a few moments to gather a briefcase, a coat and gloves. After a quick check of the wheels, the door was slammed shut. The car lock button was pressed twice - a hoot followed, confirming the doors on the car were closed and it was secure. Then, a pause, as mascaraed eyes took in the view.

And after a swift turnaround, footsteps ensued. The leaves that were clinging on the cobblestones grated to their pulverized deaths. They marched on in a smart tempo. A strong gust. The pullover was pulled tighter to beat the cold from the breeze. To augment protection against the cold, the coat was thrown across the shoulders. The strides grew longer - quicker. A shiver had set in before the coat could get to action. A shrug to toss it off.

At the foot of the stairs near the end of the driveway, the feet skipped lithely to the top of the small stairs to the door. Another gust. Colder fingers. An index finger hastily pressed on the doorbell while easing the left hand into a glove. It was getting colder. Hand half in glove, the finger pressed the doorbell again. Painted nails quickly plunged to their places in the garment.

Inside. A tap had been filling the sink. Suds had formed in it, in preparation for the array of cooking dishes that awaited harsh rubbing. Hands in latex gloves were working their way on a greasy saucepan, scrubbing the dirt off it and restoring it to a shade of its past glory. A doorbell rang, causing an exclamation. Before composure could be restored, another ring of the doorbell. A knowing smile lit up the face. Feet grew light. Heart beats took flight. The saucepan, half done, was cast aside.  The latex gloves revealed painted nails before they fell on the counter, neatly. The apron was tossed on its side of the shelf. A clean pan was a momentary mirror - a couple of burrs were set right. A nod of agreement was shared between the head and its reflection. The pan resumed its place on the hanger and slippered feet rushed to the door.

A quick peek through the peep hole. Excitement on the face as it confirmed the expected visitor, who was holding too tightly to the coat and seemed to have become a little resistant to the cold. A finger inadvertently raced to the painted lips. Hands quickly tugged on the skirt to smoothen the squishing it had endured from leaning against the kitchen cabinet later, the door opened.

Two excited squeals. A gust. One body shivered in the gust. The other came on over it. The shivering from the cold ceased, but not the shivering from the excitement. Lips pushed against each other. Lips locked together, smoothly. Lipsticks messed up. Breasts squished. Bodies embraced tightly. Another gust. A shivering body was swathed by the better protected one. More lip locking. A little tongue.

To keep cruel nature from interrupting a moment so precious, a gloved hand dropped a briefcase and slammed the door shut behind it. The moment moved to the inside. A warm house. A home. Filled with love.

Flushed faces pulled apart and regarded each other. Bodies were still knit at the middle and down. After catching their breaths, one said, 'Darling!'. The other, 'Mi amore!'. They looked at each other's messed up make up and broke into laughter. A cheek was pecked by happy lips.

And that, is love. And that, is happiness.

Smartphone

I want a smartphone.

It is as simple as that. I want a smartphone - no - need a smartphone.

Why do I need one? Simply because everyone around me sports one. And also because I don't want to be left behind.

Anywhere I go, any where I see people around - I see them on their smartphones. When you sit for lunch at work, you have a gang of people sitting at the next table, sharing interesting snippets out of their smartphones. At another table, a bunch of guys sit huddled together making conversations with people across the planet and sharing loudly cheers, jeers and exchanging high fives. A group at another table is competing on a smartphone app - everyone is sitting a little apart and is jerking or making sudden moves in response to what is on their screen. Suddenly, one of them loses and seeing the eyes glued to the screens, goes around putting a finger and dragging it to a random edge, making everyone lose the game at the table, with loud protests. Another table has food getting cold on it but the people are deep in discussion with people around the world connected through their smartphones.

The world has become a crowded web with the advent of smartphones. Everyone owns one and is well-connected. Besides keeping people connected even better than with a regular cellphone, everyone is more occupied thanks to the smartphone - countless apps have people with their fingers glued to their smartphone screens. They are either playing games, writing out chapters of novels that may never publish or making their shopping lists for the upcoming discounts sale.

And the smartphone industry has become one that causes heads to turn - there have been so many businesses that have opened channels into the smartphone by creating or publishing a dedicated app for speciality stores or online tools. Some businesses have their loyalty programs on the smartphone app and therefore, reach customers faster with ads and with rewards. Some even have payments enabled via the app - this means customers simply use the app to pay at the stores. Totally saves using the cash or credit card. The industry is also one where acquisitions and mergers have been up and coming, each pricier than the one before.

The smartphone is a very personal device as well - it is like that one single portable device on which everyone performs their daily calls and texts in addition to several other everyday tasks. And for my desire, my need, to own one, I finally did buy myself my first smartphone on 17 March, 2013 and my second on 5 February, 2014. There is a need to upgrade to keep up with the times, you know.

Deserted

It is not strange that we find we have someone in our life about whom we have centered ourselves over a considerable period of time that not a day goes by without a line thrown to that person and we believe that under no circumstances will the bond between us break nor erode.

That person may have been someone we totally hated but grew to love, someone we stood far from but cannot grow apart from, a person who put a bitter taste in your mouth once but you grew fond of in time. At times, the person may be someone you simply feel so comfortable with that you would confine your views to what the person gives you and at other times, you would feel so prickly about how the views about the person are so against your own and you feel a need from all over yourself that wants you to break free from the prison you put yourself in.

But people are not easy to shrug off from our lives. We have little success in moving from a person who at some point of our life meant the world to us to a different person or a group of people so that we keep our sanity with little effort. Do we really need to make the switch?

The world has billions of people in it and in big cities, there typically are millions of people. This math simply makes us wonder why we cannot just hop from someone to someone else to find that person with whom we want to try things with. But the math does not consider the difficulties in setting to the task. There are way too many factors involved in this epic search we often don't feel like getting out and doing it. Very often we don't feel like overcoming the pain and hurt and so we simmer under it and take a couple of steps back when we ought to be moving forward.

Along those lines, if that hardship were not there, one could possibly hop from person to person in their lifetime and be gone a long time after having spent brief periods with too many people. But it is merely an obstacle of the mind to place such restrictions on one's own borders.

Meeting people is a good thing. Who knows, perhaps out there is someone more compatible. Or perhaps, it would teach us that someone most compatible had already touched our lives and we need to focus there. If the person we so badly need does not need us as much, it is time to learn to love oneself more and let go. And if convinced beyond doubt that there is no better half or other half out there, perhaps it is time to become whole and touch the skies.

Books

Books are the best friend of a man who wants to improve himself. There are books on a range of subjects - from how primitive life forms survive on the planet to how complex life forms obtain their nutrition, why life exists underwater and the possibility of life in some distant planet on a yet unnamed galaxy, from how to bring stability to a relationship to how to walk out of one, from how to keep an aquarium to how to cook the best sea urchin dishes -the list is quite endless. To a man who is of too few words, there are books on improving the vocabulary. For any shortcoming that you would like to turn into a strength, there exists a book that would help the transformation. There are different kinds of people who write the books too - expert nutritionists write on foods one must consume for a suitable diet, fitness gurus break down complex workouts and your favorite body-model would write on how he or she keeps their body that way.

But books present us with difficulties too. That large tome you bought, the encyclopedia of roses, filled with pictures of pretty flowers, indicating origin of the individual variety, salubrious conditions in which to maintain them, manures to use for getting the award winning flowers and close-up pictures of every individual variety - is so heavy that you bought it, thumbed through every page of the book, albeit lazily, for a couple of times and then left it on your mantel piece to gather dust and possibly, fungus. Or imagine you were going through a coffee-table book, chomping through a sandwich and splosh! that is a bit of ketchup on your book. That book you used to browse through with interest when you were a toddler - now has yellowed pages. Your farher's books from his childhood - are falling apart. The journals your granddad maintained - they are almost dust. The book you forgot to take from your garden when it started to rain - is soggy after the rain and does not feel the same ever after. Or that book you slept over as you were reading it late at night, weary as you were - is dog-eared beyond redemption. Consider the books you bought and stored in your house - they use up a good deal of precious shelf space. When you get new books, you end up wanting to find creative ways to accommodate them in the limited quarters you have for yourself.

What does all that mean? It takes a lot to maintain a book. And the effort you put in to taking care of books could be put to better use - seriously. To dust your library would take a good deal of your lifetime if you were an avid collector of books. Even if you weren't one, you would end up spending considerate invaluable lifetime on keeping them in order. You need to keep them safe from possible spills, fungi, insects and accidents, among other things. On the same line do you need to preserve your newspapers and magazines, though these find a way to be recycled.

All this does not cover up the fact that books are made out of precious trees that go into making the paper that comes out as a book. Take a look at the amount of green cover that we lost in the recent couple of centuries owing to the human need for lumber, food, living space and - books. Though we have been exploiting the forests through the generations, it does not make sense that we take over the space that our remaining co-inhabitants of the planet are using for residence to our selfish demands for farmland, penthouses and books. Not to mention that the loss in forest habitation has resulted in the loss or near extinction of several species and intrusion of forest dwellers into our settlements. It is even possible that some small animal or endemic plant species went unnoticed and was never put through the procedures of taxonomy since it went extinct before the experts reached the place.

How do we overcome the labors of safekeeping our books? How do we conserve our forests and the creatures within? How do we ensure we get the pleasure out of reading books without books? After all, we definitely do need books, but they do require a great deal for making and keeping.

Greet the eBook. Or rather, the eBook reader.

It may sound simple, to the tune of stupidity, but the solution to this awful problem of books is as simple as that. Get an eBook reader!

If only the solutions to many of the world's biggest problems were as simple as that.

So, you are reading your book and splosh! A large dollop of sauce drips onto your eBook reader. All you have to do is wipe it clean and voila! It's as good as nothing happened - unless the memory of it weighs heavily on you. Or, think about that huge volume with the entire collection of Agatha Christie's mystery books. How big a space do you reckon the thousands of pages will occupy? Not the entire space you got on your shelf - oh no. It will only be in that one device you will ever need for all your books, ever. Not to mention that you could store all your favorite encyclopedias on that one space - and still not worry about losing room to rows of bookshelves lined with dusty, musty volumes of books that will fall apart some day.

Imagine that you are reading in the park and suddenly, the sky decides it needs to make the earth wet. You will most certainly not forget to pick your eBook reader as you scramble for your stuff and move to the nearest shelter. Even better, you may have a waterproof sleeve for the eBook reader in which you will keep it safe and use it to shield your head from the rain water.

Or on a windy day, when you are walking, reading out of your eBook reader, you need not worry about the gusts blowing the pages away or track of the last spot on the book that you were at.

On your bed, you try to read things through drooping eyes and you end up sleeping, shifting positions and the reader moves from near your face down your chest and somehow, to your feet. When you wake up, you don't have to worry about sadly dog-eared books - your book is right the way it was when you got it, but your reader may be depleted of charge - and that, is easily fixed.

You can leave tabs on the places where you left reading the last time you read the book, highlight passages of interest without physically marking on the books, make notes on pages as you require for your reviews at a later time, and if you have trouble reading the tiny print, you can pinch and zoom to a size that better suits your ophthalmic abilities.

It gets even better - you don't have to step into a shop, browse through rows of shelves, long list books you list, make a short list out of that, and finally, settle on the couple of books you need. All you got to do is visit an online book store (and believe me, many have a fine collection of books on the variety of subjects you would find in a bookstore), select the books you want to buy, make your payments and have them in the cloud. You could pick them from there when you need them. Also, there is no question of final copy, last but damaged copy, not in print, folded page with overprint, missing or damaged pages or other shortcomings that come with a physical book. They are all alike. You can remove the damage analysis phase of your book-picking process at the store.

We always complain our school-going children are burdened under their school bags. If all the years' text books were reduced to a single book sized device (it is smaller than a single book in the higher grades), imagine how light school bags would be. Workbooks and notebooks with one single text book reader in their bags definitely lightens the load on a generation already burdened under the curriculum.

We all love making our personal statements on the books we own - we sign on the first pages, stick some favorite stickers on the books, scribble in fancy ink on select pages we consider lucky(?) - now, all those tasks are reduced to being performed on a single eBook reader or, if you like to keep different sizes for the different things you read (hand books, pocket books, story collections of authors with little time, collections from full-time authors, encyclopedias and world maps), once for each type of eBook reader (a 7" one for smaller books that you carry around, a 10" one for bedtime reading without glasses, maybe a 14" one for poring over coffee table books and encyclopedias and pondering over maps). You could deck your reader with decorations as you like and get colorful sleeves that go with your clothes (maybe your moods too).

Say, you are a family and you like to read a lot. You could have a single account on various book vending portals, get your books on the cloud and all of you can access it from the cloud. It is simple as that! And you can accomplish all that with no difficulty.

You want to read at night but your roommates cannot stand having the lights turned on as you go through your book very late into the night - that is easily fixed since your eBook reader is a self-illuminating device and you would disturb no body going over that.

Do you think this increases power consumption overall and still does not contribute adequately for the benefit of mankind? You could make the difference by giving your two pence for using a renewable source of energy to off set at least a fraction of what you consume.

Today, eBooks are a lot cheaper than a regular book - and that means you spend less for more than on a conventional book. Of course, you get more for what you have that way.

Mankind needs the teeny little bits of humanity to work out the kinks and make an overhaul to get things on track for a better planet. It is possible for our next generations to preserve this planet on which we dwell for at least a couple of generations more (life in outer space - we have not had any updates to that any time, have we?) and if we succeed in showing them a way to move from our destruction of other kinds for the fancies of mankind (which is robbing Peter to pay Paul), perhaps we would have succeeded in letting them know not all hope is lost.

A small step for man, but a giant leap for mankind.

Spark

It works in certain ways. One thing leads to another, two people find they like talking to each other and then decide to spend more time with each other. In time, they will make their minds up about how things should go between them and from there, it is a journey with the other person at a distance and pace they choose mutually.

It all started on a very small scale. He is a nondescript guy, but charming. Still, there was something about him I instantly liked. I really wanted to check him out. I reached out to him on the portal and he responded. He seemed interested too. That was good for a start.

But time, in its course, made us focus on our tasks at hand. We were not talking much - just the occasional good morning and good night. It went on like this for a while but I had to do something about it. I wanted to reach out to him and chat him up. On 6 June. we exchanged phone numbers. But he forgot that he had shared his number with me.

Finally, on Saturday, I could not hold it back much longer. I had to call him. I tried calling him once - but he did not take my call. I was unsure if he would take my next call. But call I did. He took it this time and let me know that since he was outside, he could not chat me up but asked if I would call him up after 30 minutes. I was glad he took my call and called him up again after 35 minutes - and boy, was I so glad I had!

We started speaking. It was a catchy start. I was trying to find stuff about him. We figured we were from the same college. It was a shocker for a start and I could not believe he was 2 years senior to me and from my own alma mater. It was a pleasant surprise for me. I loved hearing him talk - he had a dimension to his voice and I simply loved hearing him speak. He spoke sense and that is a huge deal to me. Hearing him made me feel really good about myself. The conversation seemed to have no end. It was so lively, light and kept us both talking, sometimes one of us more than the other, but it was such engaging conversation unlike any I had ever had. I liked hearing about the person on the other end of the line and I wanted to keep hearing him speak.

But time is a humorless friend and sleep came naturally to both of us. We were yawning on the call from the toils of the day and we could not help it. The yawns kept coming and one of us had to stop the conversation. He suggested we go to bed and take it up again from where we left off later.

Initially, I was a little reluctant but I wanted to give in too since I felt very tired and I did not want to be the reason for someone's sleepless night. The next day, when I was doodling about with my Facebook I found him on a friend's friends list. He was cool as I imagined and it appeared that he made short films briefly. I liked the one movie I saw. I mentioned to him that I had looked up his stuff on Facebook which creeped him out. I told him I did not intend it but I helped myself to it since I got the stuff on my screen. We did not chat much since and I let him know that I wanted him to include me in his plans for the next weekend.

I was excited when he said he would. I feel so high that I am looking forward to a weekend where I meet someone who may be my someone special. I am in fact thrilled about it. I am waiting for his call which I hope comes soon.

I am dying to hear him speak again. But will he? How will things move from here?

Only time will tell.

Shadows

Weekends - life seems to pass, one weekend at a time. And when 52 weekends are past, a new year arrives.

The joys associated with weekends seem to mellow out with every passing one. Earlier, weekends were the time when one would definitely go about the place - meeting buddies for lunch or treat, going places to see new things, shopping for a wardrobe or a new read, make plans for a birthday - there were plenty of things to do in the 2 days that come after 5 days of baking oneself on an executive seat staring into the depths of an LCD thin screen, weaving one's way through the tasks of the day. Rest was never the first thing on one's mind for the weekend.

But that aspect was set to change. The body, getting weary under the toils of the week, seems to lose a lot of its old self - including patience, resilience and a yearning to burn away the calories that would otherwise stack up on the body. The erosion of the strength is very similar to senility sinking in and makes one wonder if this is how getting old is.

Not to be left behind, the people in your life seem to have a bustling life they are thrilled about - of which you get to hear barely a whisper - people sleep with each other, get interested in someone else and leave someone behind to wallow, get married or have kids, lose a loved one or buy a new house. And the one place where you can see what is going on in someone's life is undoubtedly facebook - this place has ended up being the forum for one's thoughts and feelings ranging in variety from announcing a brand new purchase to a private thought with hidden messages intended for someone who may never glance at it.

Maturity is long forgotten and people tend to forget science and logical thinking. Casuistry and the ability to convince run the world today and there are 3 kinds of people - the people who conjure new logic and state it to the crowd. the people who base their logic on scientific foundations and anyone who would buy a logic that fits like a glove to their perspective on things and help them push their way down the depths of ignorance.

Truth is of no value today. Honesty goes out the window at this point. Everything runs on what people want to believe in or rather, on what the people with truth in their hands prefer to say. Nobody cares about taking a lot of truth to the grave to be silent on it forever. Nobody cares about whether or not they hurt someone's feelings by lying. Nobody would admit to doing wrong. Conscience is dead. Everyone does and says as they deem fit and do not care about the consequence of word nor deed. Nothing really matters. Everything is immaterial and makes very little sense. Everybody hears things, builds their beliefs on things and acts with things in their mind but the things are always baseless things with a strong sense of value attached to them.

The heart is merely an organ of the body and not a spring of emotion in poesy. People make room for nobody there anymore. Everyone is scared of breaking someone's heart but nobody cares about breaking trust. Trust is easily rebuilt - hurt, easily overcome, by choice. Though distrust mounts every time trust is broken and rebuild, the cracks on it don't seem to matter - better a bridge in repair to a known devil than a fine one to an unknown angel.

Friends are not people you can always rely on - they have their weaknesses - and for most, it is the person or thing the slightest sight of which causes a stirring in their groin. Nobody will stand by you. When you need someone the most. the most human touch you can get is from the pet you love. Humans are creatures that love to keep a distance from other humans with whom they tribed. And friends are also the people who stab you behind your back more often than you can blink your eye.

Money is something you will never see much of. Unless you bother to take some out of an ATM or a bank branch for handy expenses. People handle less money personally by the day, which is a good thing. A sore realization is that everyone on the planet is interested in your money. Nobody understands that what you earn and what you do with it is your business - these days, it simply is not. From the daily callers at the bank where you keep your savings account to the guys handing out flyers right in front of your office building, everyone is after your money.

Humor is very shallow. Nobody knows what it is today. Sarcasm is taken over what used to be humor. Satire is a will o' the wisp, cropping up here and there sometimes, but sarcasm is the rule of the day. Everyone is tired of it, but nobody will admit - unless they want to be made an example of.

Encouragement - is a diminutive expression these days.

Even with all the above said, I simply have to say - I am heavily blessed. I got a buddy like no other who lights me up with his selflessness and cares enough about me that I feel no discomfort or hurt when I know he is around. I know he is my friend and I know he is the bestest ever. He puts this grin on my face like I am a sunflower staring into sunshine, even when I am faced with affliction. And my, am I glad for it!