Dream home

The old man and the young girl sat on the porch under a busy spider furiously weaving an invisible web over their heads. "Look at it," she said, "so amazing. It's working so hard." The spider raced across the underside of the shade over their heads. Its silken threads were so delicate, the spider looked like it was walking on air, like some arachnid prophet.

The old man and the young girl looked on at the spider spinning a home out of moonbeams and raindrops.

"Now it's too bad," he said, "that it doesn't know that I'm going to use my broom to demolish its new home tomorrow."

Stuart Baron Cohen?

Look what Bruno can do!

...look like Stuart from Mad TV, that is.

Anomaly

The two energy spheres on the moon stirred. The first one resonated to the other's frequency and communicated its confusion at the sudden phenomenon.

What was that?

The other maintained the resonance.

I don't know, but it's coming from Earth.

They'd never encountered such vibrations emanating from their study planet before, at least since they'd started observing the deceivingly tranquil world many earthly revolutions ago. The invisible entities opened themselves up to the unusual waves that were washing over them and everything else that lay around the blue globe. Isolated occurrences of weaker strains were normal for the planet, but the visitors had been detecting a vibration that had been growing stronger over the past half revolution of the moon they were stationed on. This was a curious development that had not been seen before on this planet.

A sudden explosion of light ripped through the universe and interrupted the entities' focus. The epicenter of this cosmic earthquake was Earth. The entities sensed a spatial displacement in a nearby galaxy. A distant nebula crackled as if electrically recharged. The whole universe seemed to be ringing with the echo of...

...a song?

The entities maintained their mutual resonance.

The planet is singing?

The inhabitants are. One song, together, at the same moment.

Do you see that? The whole planet seems to be focussing on one thought strongly enough to have tripped the cosmic circuit.

The entities' energy spiked.

This phenomenon has only been observed in highly evolved species throughout the universe. Could it be...

...that the humans have discovered the secret force behind all of existence?

Do you know what this means? Do you think they are even cognizant of what they have just stumbled upon?

It is hard to say. Earth's inhabitants are not naturally inclined towards unconditional cooperation. On the contrary, their first instinct is to aggressively break themselves down into hostile groups on the basis of recursive layers of biological and social identity.

Precisely. But what can be causing this uncharacteristic behaviour in such a self-destructive violent species?

The planet now glowed with an unusual aura.

The collective consciousness of the inhabitants of Earth is directed towards one end of the continent of North America.

In the city they call Los Angeles.

An energy metamorphosis is occurring in a large structure there. I believe it is the human ritual of passing into a higher dimension.

Human beings all over the planet are focussing intensely positive thoughts on the one transformation occurring in that structure there. All of them, sending powerful mental signals over an extended period of time at the same instant. They've even managed to emit overlapping harmonic sound waves at the same time. That's the song. In its particular human language, it is called Heal the World.

Intensely focussing their mental resources on positive thoughts of love. They've discovered the secret power behind Creation. But who is the human that has stimulated its species to take the first step towards transcending its own barbaric nature?

It seems to be the one human we'd been documenting as emitting the strongest sonic and mental vibrations for fifty of Earth's revolutions. That specimen has just transcended into a higher plane of existence.

The entities transmitted this historic turn of events to their world thirty-six planes perpendicular to the one they were currently in. Even they, in their infinite wisdom and patience, did not know what this startling incident in Earth's present would mean for its future. According to their data, the human race had a history of unpredictable behaviour. That is what made the study of Earth a highly desirable assignment.

What's on your altar?

I barely had the courage to reach out and touch the old man's diary. It felt like I was going to disturb something silently sacred, but I couldn't help it. I picked up the leatherbound notebook and held it respectfully before touching its dry pages with my fingertips. I looked at the thoughts handwritten in dark blue ink and wondered about the dead man who had made sketches in his diary of the birds he used to like to observe as a hobby. My eyes wandered over the rest of the small table and stopped for a few pensive moments at the framed black-and-white photo of the old man at whose altar I stood. An old pair of eyeglasses lay neatly near an empty bottle of Dr. Pepper. A pair of binoculars together with an old hat and cane completed the altar of the man who's name I have forgotten.

It was the night of El Dia de los Muertos, or the celebration of the Mexican festival of the Day of the Dead. A local art gallery in Tulsa, OK, USA, had been converted into a mausoleum of sorts where people had set up altars in memory of loved ones they had lost. A common practice in Mexican and Latin American communities around the world, these altars are decorated with items that represent the life and personality of the deceased relative or friend. Loved ones remember those that have passed on by retelling favourite stories about them at the altar. Some say that this makes the souls of the departed happy when they visit Earth on the day of the festival. It is a time of celebration, not of mourning.

The little art gallery was crowded with altars, the people who had made them, and the people who had come to see them. A crowd of merrymakers in the blocked off street outside was cheering on the fire-eaters that were breathing hot light in the dark night. A local band was performing near the stalls that were selling Mexican handicrafts and music.

The light inside the art gallery was yellow. I detected the musty smell of age at some of the altars. I saw one altar for a young girl that had her ballet shoes, bottles of nailpolish, and favourite music. Another young man's life was showcased by his guitar and songbooks. There were photo albums, clothing, perfumes, food items, certificates and prize ribbons, books, pieces of art, stationery, and other mementos. God knows when these people had passed away, but they looked at me through their photos and their belongings, like static phantoms from yesterday.

I wondered how I would be remembered after my passing. What would people put on my altar? More importantly, what would I want to see on my altar? I noticed that no altar bore any indication of the person's wealth, employment, or general status in society. What was I going to leave behind? How would people remember me after death snipped off the artificial labels?

What do you see on your altar right now?

Milestone

She slid off the hairdresser's swivel chair and leaned into the mirror in front of her, bits of dark jagged hair lying about her feet. She peered into her reflection and began to critically assess her new layers. Her hands expertly tousled her hair, her eyes never leaving her doppleganger's mane.

She picked at the hair on her crown. She paused. Her fingers stroked a silver strand that hadn't been there before. She leaned in closer to the mirror when she saw yet another silver shimmer. Maybe it was the light reflecting off of the shine in her hair?

The sound of a giggle made her turn to the counter next to her. The middle-aged Trinidadian woman with the short red hair was chuckling to the elderly lady in her chair. "She just found a white hair," said the stout brown hairdresser. Her customer smiled on, her short fine hair wet against her paper-thin white scalp.

She turned back to the mirror and focused on the new colour in her hair. The salon fell away as her life played before her eyes. She thought it only happened when you're drowning. It felt like minutes but in just two seconds, she had witnessed all her defeats, her conquests, her humiliations, and her courage.

"Don't pull it out - you're lucky you only have one." The old woman in the chair had her eyes closed as the rust-haired hairdresser massaged sugar-scented conditioner into her hair.

She pulled away from the mirror, her eyes deep into the eyes that shone back at her. She smiled and flipped her hair back with a toss of her head. She had made it.

Never thought I'd see the day

Reality? Check.

"Excuse me? Excuse me?"

The little South Indian girl was straining to reach above the DQ counter at the deserted airport terminal. She caught my attention from the corner of the restaurant between mouthfuls of burger and fries. No one came to her aid because no one was there. Maybe the grownups were having a meeting in the walk-in freezer in the back.

Her oily pigtails continued to tremble as her huge black eyes darted about nervously. "Excuse me? Excuse me?"

I dabbed my mouth with the corner of a tissue and rose from my unfinished meal. "Do you need something?" I asked her as I crossed the empty restaurant, making my way towards her. She fixed her black eyes on me. She couldn't have been more than four feet tall.

"Tissue."

I looked around and noticed a stack of tissues behind the counter. "There are some here," I said. "Go take some."

She looked around, smiled a small hesitant smile, and shook her head. What if the grownups came back from the giant freezer?

We stood there for a second, the little girl and I, at the terminal time had forgotten. Then I walked up behind the counter and grabbed a bunch of tissues and handed them to her. "Here you go."

She clung to the flimsy paper, and her shiny dark brown face lit up. "Thank you, aunty!" she chimed. She turned to run off but paused when I help up my hand.

"Woah, woah, don't call me aunty," I declared with a smile that masked my horror at her obvious error.

She cocked her head to the side. "Then what?" she demanded.

My mouth opened to tell her that I wasn't an aunty but a damn cool young person with a great lust for life. Why, only yesterday was I voted Miss Sunshine at my high school farewell party. But one look at her confused face had me cringing in embarassment regarding my sudden surge of raw vanity.

"I...I...okay, okay, go on now," I muttered as I shooed her away. She shrugged and hopped off. Time may forget terminals but it doesn't leave us behind.

The Sound of Music

It's not often you come across a tune that just punches you in the gut and makes you add it to the soundtrack of your life that they'll use when they make a movie about you. Sometimes a song just feels like what your eternal soul would sound like if it could sing.

I was in the car waiting for my mother when 'When Love Takes Over' (David Guetta featuring Kelly Rowland) came on the radio. I hadn't really been paying attention to the music until then, it was just something to fill the silence as I waited for my wet hair to dry in the oven-like desert afternoon. Simply put, I was struck, like when something resonates with your soul. OMG I can't stop listening to this song, it makes me want to jump up and yell out loud for the joy of being alive. Have you ever felt like that?

A Difficult Conversation

"Amma, I don't like it when Abbu talks to you like that."

The older woman shrugged. She shook her head and shrugged because she didn't want to talk about it. "Leave it", she said. She didn't stop rolling the ball of dough in her hands. She suddenly didn't want to look at anyone's face, least of all, her daughter's.

"No, Amma, it's not fair."

The woman rolled out the dough into a thin sheet. "It's okay."

"No it isn't!"

The woman flipped the sheet of dough onto a hot pan. "It's okay, at least he's always been faithful."

The young girl watched her mother spin the cooking dough on the pan until the roti began to puff like a paper bag filled with hot air.

"Amma, it isn't normal. It is wrong to make a habit of taking out one's frustration on someone else."

"He'll change when we go to America. They have laws there."

"No, Amma, you think the laws there stop their men from behaving like that?"

The woman tossed the hot roti into the breadbasket like the thousands of rotis she'd made over the years that her husband had taken for granted. The girl had just wanted to let her mother know that, like the other criticisms, it hadn't been her fault.

Gossip Girl

Eve-teasing is not anything new in India. I was eighteen and propped up on the back of my uncle's scooter in Aligarh, Uttar Pradesh, on a quiet street after sunset when some guys on two bicycles started hovering around us. They all looked like they were in their late teens and early twenties. They were hooting at me. I couldn't believe the nerve. My six feet tall uncle was right there, I was covered from head to toe in unattractive bag-like clothing, and it didn't even matter to them. My uncle tried to yell at them but one of the bicycles veered too close to us, and my uncle lost control of the scooter. Nothing major but the scooter teetered off to the side of the road and fell to the ground. My uncle and I got a couple of scratches but that's it. We didn't actually even fall because the bicyclists had really slowed us down.

That summer I was in India after finishing 12th standard in Oman. When an old classmate called me from way down in South India, I happened to tell her the scandalous story. Then I forgot about it.

A month later I was back in Oman making salad with my father when the phone rang. It was a friend of my mother's. She sounded a bit confused when she asked me how I was doing. I told her I was fine and was just about to have lunch. Then she told me that her daughter, who was a year behind me at my old school, had told her that I had been terribly injured in a car accident in India. She said her daughter had heard the news at school.

I laughed and told her that I was fine. I thanked her for a hilarious story I could tell my grandchildren (or blog about, but this was 1999 and there were no blogs then), and hung up. I told my dad who wasn't thrilled about the nature of the gossip.

But I knew what must've happened. Have you ever played Chinese Whisper? My friend must've told her mother who was a teacher in Oman. She must've told some friends of hers, most probably teachers, and the word must've spread in the Keralite Christian community (there was only one church in Muscat then) about the terrible fate of the impish student from Indian School Muscat who had just graduated from childhood. Most of my teachers were South Indian, and my Biology teacher for four years was a Keralite Christian. It must've been pandemonium when the news hit my school. I was a well-known student.

The imp in me chuckled naughtily. I decided to pay a surprise visit to my alma mater. This was too good an opportunity to pass. That day I landed straight into the senior science supervisors' room. As I burst into the office with a smile on my evil face, the three teachers who wielded the fate of the senior Physics, Chemistry, and Biology departments leapt to their feet, shouting and waving their hands about all at once. Pandemonium further ensued as I happily walked about the campus and ran into students who had heard that the accident had left me bed-ridden for life. Someone even said that they had heard that I had died. The whole school was buzzing about the girl who had come back from the dead...sort of. I felt popular in a sick way.

It's kinda cool to know how the world will react when I die for real. It's like I saw the future or something.